The Up-Down (16 page)

 

 

2

Pace remembered that in her letter to him following Lula's death, Dalceda Delahoussaye confessed that she had never really believed in God or the devil—who she dismissed as “an excuse exists in stupid peoples' minds”—or in the Big Bang Theory, either. Pace was on a similar wavelength. He did not discount entirely the physicists' explanation that the universe was a result of a big bang, but who or what lit the fuse? There was still a long way to go, he figured, toward explaining the set-up for this explosion. He would ask the small grays what they knew about it, if he got the chance.

“Disney against the metaphysicals,” Ezra Pound wrote in the last of his
Cantos
. Truth in fantasy versus falseness in science. It was useless to expect a definitive answer, so why do people try so hard to sell one? For money and power, of course. Those were temporary rewards but for some—perhaps most—they were enough. True believers were better off for providing a fix for their own insecurities; and
The Road to Enlightenment
should have been the title of a final Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movie.

Pace was in a cynical mood. He rose from the kitchen table and went outside to chop kindling. He looked up and there was the constellation of Cassiopeia, queen of Ethiopia. Perseus had arrived there holding the head of Medusa, the Gorgon, whom he had slain. Did Rangoon Angola know that story? If Gagool were here, Pace would tell her about Perseus and Andromeda and Cassiopeia, who, according to the poet Milton, was black, like her, and was so beautiful that after her death she was placed among the stars. Had Gagool become a star yet?

Pace cut into a block of wood with his hatchet. Among all of the people he had known, there were only a few Pace truly missed, and Gagool Angola was one. He would see her again, if it was in the stars.

 

 

3

During his earliest years, when Sailor was in prison in Huntsville, doing ten years for his part in an attempted armed robbery of a feed store in Big Tuna, Texas, that resulted in the maiming of an employee and the death of Sailor's accomplice, Bobby Peru, Pace was raised exclusively by his mother, with occasional assistance from his grandmama Marietta. Lula never visited Sailor while he was incarcerated but regularly corresponded with him, providing details of Pace's development. She remained faithful to Sailor, rarely even entertaining the thought of being with another man. Lula explained to Pace that his daddy had made a bad mistake by allowing himself to be coerced into committing a serious crime. Lula was pregnant with Pace at the time, and she and Sailor were out of money, stranded in West Texas. Sailor's foolish act was born out of desperation, and he was fortunate not to have been cut down along with the black angel Bobby Peru. He promised Lula that he never again would betray her trust in him, and in all of their years together following his release, he had not.

Pace did not really miss his daddy while Sailor was in the penitentiary due to the circumstance of his never having known him. Lula worked during those years at odd jobs, mostly waitressing, in New Orleans, and accepted supplementary financial help from Marietta, who doted on her only grandchild and refused to allow him to suffer for want of proper clothes or food or decent housing because of poor decisions made by her daughter and Pace's lunkhead daddy. Lula was an attentive mother and always put her son's needs above her own. She retained her spirit of independence and feisty character, however, which frequently sparked conflicts between Marietta and herself, but her mother recognized and acknowledged Lula's devotion to Pace, and so maintained civil relations with her, but from a distance. Marietta's fervent desire that Lula end her relations with Sailor Ripley did not, of course, come to pass, a situation that Marietta eventually came to terms with, albeit reluctantly. True love was a condition Marietta Fortune had not experienced, therefore it was difficult, if not impossible, for her to fully appreciate the concept. Prior to her death, however, having witnessed Sailor's turnaround and well-intentioned parenting of Pace, she told Lula that Sailor had gained her respect, an unexpected gesture that satisfied her daughter and enabled Lula to think more generously about Marietta in the years following her mother's passing.

Lula's fidelity to Sailor faced a severe test only once, when Pace was seven and a half years old. Lula was not working at the time she met a trumpet player named Duke Davis one night when she and a dancer friend of hers named Baby Doll DuQuoin were having a nightcap in Renaldo's Martini, a club on Iberville Street. Baby Doll—she swore that was her real Christian name—had danced in a show in Miami that Duke's band had played in a year or so before they met up at Renaldo's Martini. Duke was thirty-five years old, from Chicago, where he lived with his wife and three children, as Baby Doll was quick to inform Lula. Davis was not very tall but dark and handsome, with impeccable manners, and Lula could not help but be attracted to him. As she later admitted to Beany Thorn, he reminded her of Sailor, the way he moved and gestured with his hands, even his voice. Duke was in N.O. working a weeklong gig at the DeSalvo Hotel. He had a drink with the two women and exchanged small talk with Baby Doll, who gave him her phone number and told him to call if he had time. After ten minutes, Duke excused himself—the band had a final set to play at one a.m.—and left, but not before paying for their drinks.

“Seems like a nice guy,” Lula said.

“I would have gone to bed with him in Miami,” said Baby Doll, “but one of the other girls, Lorna Dune, who's a porn actress now, got him away from me. I couldn't compete with her 36-double D's. She sat on his lap, let her top drop, and put one tit in each of his hands. Skinny little me was toast.”

At noon the next day, Duke Davis called Lula.

“How did you get my number?” she asked him.

“From Baby Doll. I'm free until nine tonight. Would you like to have lunch with me? How about Galatoire's, at three?”

Without hesitating, Lula said yes. Duke said, “Great!” and hung up. She was more than a little surprised at herself for capitulating so quickly, and considered calling Duke back, but she didn't have his number or know where he was staying. She decided to stand him up, but after she picked up Pace from school at three-fifteen, she drove down to the Quarter, parked her car, and entered Galatoire's at a quarter to four with Pace in tow.

Duke Davis was sitting at a table against the far wall, drinking a Bloody Mary. As soon as he spotted Lula, he stood up and waved, smiling broadly. Then he noticed Pace, lost his smile a bit, but put it back before they reached his table.

“I thought perhaps you'd found something better to do,” Duke said.

“Had to fetch my son from school. Pace, this is Duke. Duke, this is Pace.”

Duke took the boy's small hand in his own big one and said, “Glad to know you, son.”

“What's wrong with your lip?” Pace asked. “You get punched?”

Duke grinned and Lula said, “Mr. Davis is a trumpet player, Pace. If you play it for a long time, the mouthpiece leaves an impression.”

“It's called an embouchure, son. That's the way a musician applies his lips and tongue to a wind instrument.”

“I'm Sailor Ripley's son, mister, not yours. He's in prison in Texas. You gonna have that embutcher forever? It's ugly.”

“Why don't we all sit down?” said Duke.

Pace never forgot having lunch that day at Galatoire's. Duke Davis kept trying to hold his mother's hands and she kept pulling them away. Afterwards, when they were standing on Bourbon Street in front of the restaurant, Duke Davis asked Pace if he'd like to take a ride in a carriage pulled by a mule, and Pace said, “You take it, we got a car.”

Lula met Duke by herself in the bar of the DeSalvo between sets the evening before he and his band left for Chicago. He had phoned her several times after their luncheon date, wanting her to meet him following his gig, but she told him that was too late, that she had to be up early to take Pace to school. When she said she had to go, Duke walked Lula outside and around the corner into Père Ferdinand Alley, where he gently but firmly pushed her up against a wall, kissed her and put his right hand under her skirt between her legs. Lula let him keep it there while they kissed, then pushed him away.

“You're wet,” said Duke.

“Your wife's pussy probably is, too,” she said. “Have a good trip to Chicago.”

The next day, Baby Doll called Lula and asked how her date with Duke had gone.

“It wasn't a date, Baby Doll. We just had a drink before his band went on again.”

“You didn't stay?”

“No, I went home.”

“Shoot, Lula, I wanted to know what his dick is like.”

“You should have asked Lorna Dune.”

Pace did not know that his mother had seen Duke Davis again following their lunch at Galatoire's. One day three years later, after Sailor and Lula were reunited, while the three of them were watching Louis Armstrong play cornet and sing on a television show, Sailor said, “I wonder how it feels for a woman to kiss a man with a split lip like Satchmo's.”

“It's called an embutcher,” said Pace.

 

 

4

The morning was cloudy and cold with a whiff of moisture in the air. Pace had been awake since four-thirty; rarely these days did he sleep more than four or five hours at a stretch. The time now was twenty past seven. For the last hour or so he had been reading Wilfred Thesiger's fascinating book,
Arabian Sands
, a personal account of the British explorer's crossing of the Empty Quarter of Arabia from 1945 to 1950, before oil was discovered in the region and changed forever the vast expanse of desert then occupied almost exclusively by Bedouins. Thesiger had spent most of his adult life among the Arabs, only in his penultimate years residing in Kenya; and then, in his final, fading days, back in England, where he died at the age of ninety-three. The Oxford-educated Thesiger had led a daring existence, experiencing deprivation of various kinds and danger during his travels, distinguishing himself by his service in World War II, and capturing it all brilliantly in his books. Pace did not expect to live to be ninety-three, but that was only ten years from now, so it was a possibility. After all, what was the alternative? He still felt pretty good on most days, and to his knowledge no antagonistic termites were gnawing on his insides.

Pace had been deeply impressed by the scene in the film
Lawrence of Arabia
where Lawrence is seized by the notion of approaching Aqaba by land, crossing an expanse of desert known by the Bedu as The Devil's Anvil. The Turkish guns in Aqaba face the sea; therefore, he reasons, Prince Faisal's army, with whom the British are allied, could blind side the enemy. To carry out this audacious enterprise, Lawrence takes fifty men, who, against all odds, cross the forbidden Nafud desert, then—aided by a rogue Arab tribe—attack the Turks from the rear and conquer Aqaba. Thesiger was a chance-taker in this mold, possibly the last of his kind. Pace would have liked to have been an explorer with a purpose: like Lawrence, fighting to unite the Arabs; or Thesiger, mapping previously uncharted territory. Unfortunately for him, this was not to be—not written, as the Arabs say. Even acts of ingenuity and bravery unravel given time and political chicanery. T.E. Lawrence was betrayed by his government and by himself; Thesiger was put out of business by the ways of the world. Life itself was a cautionary tale, and Pace's difficult conclusion was that he had lived his too cautiously. Men such as Lawrence and Thesiger had a measure of greatness in them; by what stick, Pace wondered, would his life be measured?

After having had his coffee, blueberry muffin and a banana, Pace went for a walk in the woods; as always, since the almost-fatal shooting mishap of several years before, keeping an eye out for rogue hunters. He did not, however, expect to encounter a dozen young Chinese women bound together by a thick, tight rope in the middle of the clearing where the spaceship bearing the small grays had landed. The women were wearing only thin black jackets and pants; they were crying and shivering, having apparently spent the previous night exposed to the elements. All of them looked to be in their teens or early twenties. When they saw Pace approaching, they began talking loudly to him all at once in Mandarin.

“Please, I don't understand Chinese,” he told them, gesturing as he came closer with his arms extended, trying to calm them down. “Do any of you speak English?”

“Yes,” said one. “We slave girl, come bottom ship. Men put in truck, make stay until come back.”

Pace took out his pocket knife and cut the rope strand by strand as he spoke to her.

“What is your name?”

“Li. Man bring Ah Kung. Buy girl China family. All afraid.”

“Do you know where Ah Kung is taking you?”

“Work city. New York.”

Pace had almost severed the rope and was trying to decide what to do about the women when he heard a tractor-trailer truck drive up and come to a stop on the dirt road at the eastern side of the woods that bordered the field. Two men, one Chinese, one white, entered the clearing on foot. The white man was carrying a rifle. The women's wailing increased. Pace continued cutting the rope as the two men advanced toward the group.

“What're you doin' here?” the white man shouted at him.

“I own this land. You're trespassing.”

“Just comin' to pick up our property,” the man said, “then we'll be on our way. Best you leave off workin' on that rope.”

Pace cut through the last strand and stood up straight, facing the men. He folded his pocket knife and put it in his coat pocket. The Chinese man began barking at the women. They all stood up.

“He Ah Kung,” Li told Pace. “Say he own, must go him.”

The snakehead was a small man dressed in a blue suit and white shirt without a tie, wearing a New York Mets baseball cap. It was hard to tell how old he was. Pace guessed forty. The man with the rifle was big, more than six feet tall, two hundred and fifty pounds, with a thick reddish-brown beard. He had on a long, black leather coat and a floppy leather hat.

“These women are illegals, aren't they?” Pace said.

“Ain't none of your business, mister,” said the bearded man. “Get on your way and so will we and that'll be the end of it.”

“They're on my land, so I'm responsible for them now. You two can go, but I'll take care of your cargo.”

Ah Kung started shouting louder and was shoving the women, motioning for them to walk toward the path through the woods by which he and the other man had entered the clearing.

“The hell you will,” the big man said to Pace, and pointed his rifle at Pace's chest.

The snakehead struck Li across the face and twisted one of her arms. There was nothing Pace could do to prevent the two smugglers from herding the women toward their truck without risking his own safety. He half-expected the big guy to shoot him anyway. Pace watched them all march away, but walked quickly in the same direction after Ah Kung and his accomplice disappeared into the thicket. He kept out of sight until the women had been loaded into the container and the men had boarded the cab of the truck, then crept closer, took out a pen and small wire notebook from his coat pocket, and copied down the license number on the truck as well as the code letters and model number on the container.

Pace hurried back to his cottage, called the Highway Patrol and gave the information to an officer. He had done the only thing he reasonably could do. Li and the other women were no doubt intended to be forced into prostitution or to work in sweat shops in New York's Chinatown. Pace searched the internet for news of female trafficking from China, hoping to find out something about Ah Kung that might be of help to the FBI or INS. The only mention of a man by that name was an article from the
San Francisco Chronicle
newspaper, dated September 23, 1912:

Chinatown was stirred into uneasiness last night by the news, quickly learned by every Chinese, that a secret meeting of representatives of the tongs engaged in slave girl traffic had been held and that a price of $2000 had been set upon the head of the man who is believed to have betrayed the presence of three slave girls rescued from 5 St. Louis Alley a few days ago by Sergeant Arthur Layne and Captain Frank Ainsworth of the Immigration Bureau. As a result Sergeant Layne at Central Station dispatched a detail of uniformed men into the alleys to assist the Chinatown Squad. The spectacular raid by Layne which resulted in the capture of Ah Kung, in addition to the three slave girls, valued at $3500 each, was the culmination of a number of similar rescues, each of which, rumor has it, resulted from betrayal by Chinese “stool pigeons.” The tong men have sought to discover the informer and the action of offering $2000 for certain identification is expected to cause trouble. That the presence of three slave girls was betrayed to Captain Ainsworth first, instead of to the police, caused suspicion to fall on Loy Yee, proprietor of a disorderly house at 7 St. Louis Alley, running in competition to the one raided. Loy Yee quickly took cover after protesting his innocence to Ray Gatchalian of the Chinatown Squad.

Pace never did hear back from the Highway Patrol or read anything about the Chinese women hidden in his woods. Was it possible that this Ah Kung could be a descendant of the Ah Kung arrested in San Francisco for slave girl trafficking more than a century ago? Pace was dazed by this latest bizarre experience. First the gathering of small grays, and now a dozen Chinese slave girls, all of them aliens. Strange, he thought, how that same word was used to designate human beings from his own planet as well as extraterrestrials; and both had by some crazy coincidence appeared within days in the same small clearing in the woods behind his house in North Carolina.

“Mama,” he said, “this is more than weird. I sure do hope I get the chance to tell you about it.”