The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (27 page)

“Oh, man,” Wanda said disgustedly when the whole thing had been run down to her. She looked at them as they hoisted their gimlets in green plastic cups, Dean in a pair of lavender French-cut panties, and Cecil in a pink pair with a red zipper down the middle she’d gotten mail-order. “You fellas go on and just
keep
them panties, hear? My treat.”

Wanda’s presence seemed to bring the fun buddies down, and pretty soon she got the gun away from them and they turned the TV on and cuddled up to get
au courant
with some soaps they’d missed since Braxton. Wanda went into the kitchen and Jadick came out of the bedroom in his pants, but shirtless.

She fixed him with a baleful gaze and said, “I hope to god the FBI ain’t buggin’ this house, Emil. They’ll ridicule us in court.”

“Bad day?” he asked.

He went to the kitchen sink and splashed water on his face.

“I found out what you wanted,” she said. “Hedda was half lit when I got there.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jadick said, suddenly intent. He held a dish towel at his face, poised to dry it. “Where?”

Wanda took a seat at the table and began to stack all of the empty beer cans.

“A tits and ass dance joint out on River Road.”

“Is it Beaurain’s?”

“I imagine, it’s out this side of town.”

“Hmm,” Jadick went, and sat down across the table. “So there’s liable to be a bunch of wise guys in there. That could be a problem if we come on too loose.”

“I don’t know about those things,” Wanda said. Looking through the litter on her own kitchen table she turned up half a doobie and put fire to it. As she choked out a deep toke she asked, “You always been a stickup guy? Or have you did different things?”

Jadick smiled, and it was a shockingly pleasant, white-toothed smile. He held a finger to a flat part of his nose.

“I used to be a fighter,” he said.

“Before you were a stickup guy?”

“Kind of in between,” he said. “This was some years back, in Philadelphia. I had moved there to be a fighter, plus I was drawn’ some heat in Cleveland. I knocked a grown man out with one punch when I was thirteen, so I always held it in the back of my mind that I could have a career down that line. So I went to Philly, and all these experts said a white dude couldn’t stand up under all the shit they’d dish out in that bad town. But I didn’t listen and became a sparring partner, which is to say a punching bag. They were all the time poundin’ me ’cause I’d never had formal lessons or nothin’, just instinct and a wallop.” He shook his head wistfully. “Pun-kin, them niggers zapped my eyes shut, and never even sprang for a soda, just beat on me and said, ‘Can’t take it, can you, ofay?’ ”

“What’d you do?”

“I went back to the stickup dodge, gorilla work. I won’t tolerate that shit from niggers. Fightin’ niggers is like dancin’ with a pig, anyhow, it ain’t meant to be.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “You got a plan for The Rio, Rio Club? That’s where the game’ll be.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Well,” Wanda said, “I was fixin’ to intrude an idea of my own on you. See, the boy across the street works there. He’s older’n me, really, so I shouldn’t call him boy, but he gets a tent in his britches every time he sees me. I reckon he’d show me a good time out there if I acted interested.”

“When could you do that?”

“Tomorrow. He’s already there by now.”

“No,” Jadick said. “We’d have to cap him, then, or he’d snap to it after the rip. No.” He leaned across the table and patted her hand. “I think you should go out there right away and apply for a job. I want to hit them tonight.”

“Tonight? Tonight? Man, your gang is in the other room too drunk to wear men’s clothes!”

“Nah, I can sober ’em up.” Jadick stood and walked to the fridge. “If we hit ’em again tonight I think they’ll be sort of freaked out, ready to fall.”

“Emil, I’m no stripper.”

“You got the raw talent,” he said. “Just juggle it around.”

The phone was on the wall by the fridge. When it rang Jadick answered it, listened for a moment, then said, “Yeah, we’ll accept charges.” He turned to Wanda. “It’s Ronnie.”

“You shouldn’t be answering my phone,” Wanda said. She took the phone from Emil and cradled it to her ear. “Hello, Ronnie. What? Yeah, that was him. He’s here. Your relatives are here.” She leaned against the fridge and watched Emil. “You heard that already? Up there? He was a what? What? Oh, man.” She held the phone down and said, “That was a cop, Emil. You all killed a cop.”

Emil shrugged and opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk. “Life goes on,” he said.

“Yes, Ronnie. Of course, yeah. I’m a little worried now. Naturally I am. Uh-huh, I know I have to be strong. I understand.”

Wanda hated the picture of her legal lover man she had in her mind, for she thought of him as jailhouse pale, chain-smoking Luckies, dressed in that bright white target uniform they wore at Braxton. She had this sad image of him at the same time Emil stood before her drinking milk straight from the carton, his stomach all muscled and firm, crying out for her fingertips to be stroked down it to the happy stick.

“You know I do, Ronnie. You know I love you. Uh-huh. I did what you told me.” She began to twirl the phone cord around her fingers as Emil locked his eyes on hers. “Uh-huh, you told me I should. Well, that’s why I did. Ronnie, I ain’t going to lie to you: I dug it. He’s younger’n you. You know he’s real built, big arms and all.”

Jadick, realizing that he was under discussion, fell back against the kitchen counter, his legs spread, his chest puffed.

Wanda could not take her eyes off him.

“Uh-huh, Ronnie, yes. I’ll do what he wants because it’s for you, really, it’s for you. Everything I do is for you. Uh-huh. Okay, I do like him. Well, you know,” she said, her eyes going to Emil’s, “he’s a little bit sentimental and a little bit mean: in other words, just right. Okay, Ronnie. You know I love you and that’s no shit, neither, baby.” She hung up the phone and sighed.

“He says to go on, keep doing what you need.”

“I knew he would,” Jadick said. “Ronnie knows what it takes, pun-kin. Not everybody does.”

“Uh-huh.” Wanda felt flushed by the conversation and the manly aroma of a sweaty Jadick. “Let’s don’t kid each other,” she said, “the bedroom’s thisaway.”

Jadick laughed and took her by the arm in a nearly courtly manner.

“There you go,” he said. “I’ll get you good and limber for your audition, pun-kin.”

8

T
HE
C
ATFISH
Bar was on Lafitte Street, the main artery of Frogtown, a short stroll from Shade’s apartment. He left his car at home and took the railroad-track route, the back way to the bar. He passed two old men who were hauling a stringer of channel cat home from a slough, and a smattering of drunks dozing it off in the sun. Up the tracks at the bridge he saw a group of neighborhood lads, neophyte sadists in dirty Air Jordan sneakers and fresh scowls, prowling for ethnic winos or solvent strangers to ratpack. As he reached the dirt alley beside The Catfish he passed a young man and a mature woman sitting in a candy-colored four-barrel muscle car, friskily familiarizing themselves with each other’s anatomy.

The Catfish was a place of raw wood and a colorful past, the chief neighborhood rendezvous for as long as Shade could remember. His grandfather Blanqui had hung out here when the floors were sawdusted, free lunches did exist, and the Kingfish was everybody’s hero. Little had changed over the years except ownership, and that had passed into the hands of Shade’s older brother, Tip.

When Shade came into the bar Shuggie Zeck was sitting on a barstool talking to Tip. They both turned toward the sunlight that came in the open door.

“Well, well,” Shade said, “I’ll be dogged if it ain’t Joe Shit, the ragman, live and in person.” He sat on a stool twice removed from Shuggie. “How you hanging?”

“You talkin’ to me?” Shuggie asked. “I don’t believe you’re talkin’ to
me
like that.”

“Believe,” Shade said. He nodded then at his brother. Tip was an up-and-down sibling, into a lot of secret this-and-that, and the brothers were not close. “You’re looking good, Tip.”

“Hey, you, too, li’l blood.”

Tip Shade was large and pock-faced with a heavy dose of the sullens and long brown hair.

“I’m the one you’re here to see,” Shuggie said. Shuggie was a hybrid of flab and flash, who, try as he would to upscale his image, could not groom himself past looking like six feet of Frogtown funneled into pinstripes. He had a Lafitte Street yen for gaudy rings and wore two to a hand. His hair was dark and curly and his face was like that of a bulldog who smiled easily. “We’re goin’ to be pals, right, Rene? Like the old days, huh? Remember the old days?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Shade said. “Every time I look into the holding tank.”

Shade and Shuggie had shared an inkish youth, an adolescence given over to the moiling passions of white-trash teens, and on nights fueled by fear and anger, pride and chance, they had done many things criminal and a few just plain mean. As serendipity would have it, Shade escaped charges on all counts, was only stomped by cops once, and outgrew his criminal aspects when he devoted himself to boxing. Over his sporting years Shade drifted apart from Shuggie and Tip and a street-corner choir of other accomplices. He had since endeavored to go down that endless crooked road that was somehow misnamed the straight and narrow.

“Want a beer?” Tip asked.

“Sure. Très bien, big bro.” Shade reached into his pocket and pulled out the black beauty cached in the Alka-Seltzer foil, and popped it into his mouth. Tip handed him a draw in a mug and he took a swallow. “Merci.”

“What was that you just ate?” Shuggie asked.

“Sinus tablet,” Shade said. “This humidity. So, Shuggie, let’s get it
right straight from the giddyup—I’m going along with you as long as it seems to be going somewhere.”

“I’ll be going somewhere, all right.” Shuggie smiled and beckoned to Tip. “Tell your hard-on brother what you seen over at Frechette Park, Tippy. Tell him where I’m takin’ him.”

“Well,” Tip said, and leaned against the bar, his massive arms folded, “I was over there in the park, there, Rene, up above Bum’s Hollow, there, and at a picnic table I seen Bobby Gillette and two other fellas. This was yesterday, and they were all huddled together, you know, fomentin’ something for sure.”

“Bobby Gillette, huh?” Shade said. “Who the fuck is Bobby Gillette?”

“He’s a fella who never learns,” Tip said. “That’s what I’m tellin’ you, I know the dude, and he never learns.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Shade said.

“Hey look, don’t you remember?” Shuggie asked. “A couple of years ago? You don’t? Well, Bobby Gillette was the one who knocked over a game Delbert McKechnie had, then he did one on me. He’s a tush hog, lives out in the country, on a spit of soggy dirt out there called Gumbo. Know the place?”

“I’ve been by there.”

“Back then, Mr. B. was worried about Mayor Gene’s election that was comin’ up, so we had to play it smart. So Gerry Bell ended up nailin’ Gillette in the act of a burglary he never heard of, but the beef stood up in court.” Shuggie sipped from his own drink, his pinkie rings bright in the tavern gloam. “Tough guy did a bit on Trahan’s Farm, got out a month ago.”

“I never heard about those games being hit,” Shade said. “I never heard a thing.”

“That’s the price you pay for bein’ standoffish,” Shuggie said. He spun on his stool to face Shade. “If you were still my friend you’d hear things like that.”

“I’m sure I’d hear things all right.”

“If we were friends you’d hear the
right
things, Rene.”

“You don’t know any right things, Shuggie.”

“Jerk,” Shuggie said. Shuggie Zeck, who considered himself to embody the Horatio Alger myth, if Horatio had been as wise to the angles and had his connections, but who did not feel that ambition necessarily required deceit, said, “Did I ever lie to you?
Ever?
”

Shade, whose sense of trust had been badly singed by experience, sucked down some suds, then said, “That time we stole four cases of Old Grandad from Langlois’ Liquor and hid them under the bridge you did. You said somebody else ripped it from us, but I always have figured you beat me out of it.”

“Jesus,” Shuggie said with a wince, “that’s really goin’ back there, man. But I told you the real deal then, and I’d tell it to you now, once in a while, if we were friends.”

“I’d come in handier than Officer Bell, huh, Shuggie?”

“I doubt that,” Shuggie said. “Bell had motivation, and you don’t seem to.”

“I seen a good ball game up in St. Louie,” Tip said out of the blue. “Jack Clark belted one I just missed by two rows.”

“I’ll never work for you, Shuggie.”

“Ah, you don’t want to ’cause you know me and familiarity breeds contempt.”

“Familiarity with
you
certainly does.”

“Clark is the best power hitter they’ve had since Stan the Man if you ask me.”

“Fuck you, Shade.”

“Fuck
with
me, Zeck.”

“Give him a heater on the inside of the plate and somebody gets a free ball in the cheap seats.” Tip suddenly slammed a palm on the bar, the boom startling even the drunks nodding in the far corners of the room. “Shuggie,” big Tip said, “this is my li’l blood, Rene. Now, Rene, you li’l piglet, you, this is Shuggie. You two start over from scratch, huh? What’s buried in the past is dead and already returned to nature, such as shit does. If I was you fellas I’d be friendly first; then, if and when that don’t work no more, then go ahead, what the fuck, settle it at Knuckle Junction.”

One of the drunks who’d been startled awake by Tip’s conciliatory boom began to sing some crazed gimmick song from way back that claimed the singer was entangled by incest and was in fact his own grandpa. His drinking buddy shooshed him but made no effort to leave, and soon joined in on the sad family refrain.

“Come on,” Shuggie said. “Tippy’s right. Let’s go, there’s somebody who wants to meet you who I think you ought to meet.”