from WILD AT HEART (1990)

WILD AT HEART

SAILOR AND LULA lay on the bed in the Cape Fear Hotel listening to the ceiling fan creak. From their window they could see the river as it entered the Atlantic Ocean and watch the fishing boats navigate the narrow channel. It was late June but there was a mild wind that kept them “not uncomfortable,” as Lula liked to say.

Lula’s mother, Marietta Pace Fortune, had forbidden her to see Sailor Ripley ever again, but Lula had no intention of following that order. After all, Lula reasoned, Sailor had paid his debt to society, if that’s what it was. She couldn’t really understand how going to prison for killing someone who had been trying to kill him could be considered payment of a debt to society.

Society, such as it was, thought Lula, was certainly no worse off with Bob Ray Lemon eliminated from it. In her mind, Sailor had performed a service beneficial in the short as well as the long run to mankind and should have received some greater reward than two years in the Pee Dee River work camp for second-degree manslaughter. Something like an all-expenses-paid trip for Sailor with the companion of his choice—Lula, of course—to New Orleans or Hilton Head for a couple of weeks. A top hotel and a rental car, like a snazzy new Chrysler LeBaron convertible. That would have made sense. Instead, poor Sailor has to clear brush from the side of the road, dodge snakes and eat bad fried food for two years. Because Sailor was a shade more sudden than that creep Bob Ray Lemon he gets punished for it. The world is really wild at heart and weird on top, Lula thought. Anyway, Sailor was out now and he was still the best kisser she’d ever known, and what Mrs. Marietta Pace Fortune didn’t find out about wasn’t about to hurt her, was it?

“Speakin’ of findin’ out?” Lula said to Sailor. “Did I write to you about my findin’ Grandaddy’s letters in the attic bureau?”

Sailor sat up on his elbows. “Were we speakin’?” he said. “And no.”

Lula clucked her tongue twice. “I was thinkin’ we’d been but I been wrong before. Sometimes I get like that now. I think somethin’ and then later think I’ve said it out loud to someone?”

“I really did miss your mind while I was out at Pee Dee, honey,” said Sailor. “The rest of you, too, of course. But the way your head works is God’s own private mystery. Now what about some letters?”

Lula sat up and fixed a pillow behind her back. Her long black hair, which she usually wore tied back and partly wrapped like a racehorse’s tail, fanned out behind her on the powder blue pillowcase like a raven’s wings. Her large grey eyes fascinated Sailor. When he was on the road gang he had thought about Lula’s eyes, swum in them as if they were great cool, grey lakes with small violet islands in the middle. They kept him sane.

“I always wondered about my grandaddy. About why Mama never chose to speak about her daddy? All I ever knew was that he was livin’ with his mama when he died.”

“My daddy was livin’ with his mama when he died,” said Sailor. “Did you know that?”

Lula shook her head. “I surely did not,” she said. “What were the circumstances?”

“He was broke, as usual,” Sailor said. “My mama was already dead by then from the lung cancer.”

“What brand did she smoke?” asked Lula.

“Camels. Same as me.”

Lula half rolled her big grey eyes. “My mama smokes Marlboros now,” she said. “Used to be she smoked Kools? I stole ’em from her beginnin’ in about sixth grade. When I got old enough to buy my own I bought those. Now I’ve just about settled on Mores, as you probably noticed? They’re longer.”

“My daddy was lookin’ for work and got run over by a gravel truck on the Dixie Guano Road off Seventy-four,” said Sailor. “Cops said he was drunk—daddy, not the truck driver—but I figure they just wanted to bury the case. I was fourteen at the time.”

“Gee, Sailor, I’m sorry, honey. I never would have guessed it.”

“It’s okay. I hardly used to see him anyway. I didn’t have much parental guiding. The public defender kept sayin’ that at my parole hearin’.”

“Well, anyway,” said Lula, “turns out my mama’s daddy embezzled some money from the bank he was clerkin’ in? And got caught. He did it to help out his brother who had TB and was a wreck and couldn’t work. Grandaddy got four years in Statesville and his brother died. He wrote Grandmama a letter almost every day, tellin’ her how much he loved her? But she divorced him while he was in the pen and never talked about him to anyone again. She just refused to suffer his name. But she kept all his letters! Can you believe it? I read every one of ’em, and I tell you that man loved that woman. It must have broke him apart when she refused to stand by him. Once a Pace woman makes up her mind there’s no discussin’ it.”

Sailor lit a Camel and handed it to Lula. She took it, inhaled hard, blew the smoke out and half rolled her eyes again.

“I’d stand by you, Sailor,” Lula said. “If you were an embezzler.”

“Hell, peanut,” Sailor said, “you stuck with me after I’d planted Bob Ray Lemon. A man can’t ask for more than that.”

Lula pulled Sailor over to her and kissed him soft on the mouth. “You move me, Sailor, you really do,” she said. “You mark me the deepest.”

Sailor pulled down the sheet, exposing Lula’s breasts. “You’re perfect for me, too,” he said.

“You remind me of my daddy, you know?” said Lula. “Mama told me he liked skinny women whose breasts were just a bit too big for their bodies. He had a long nose, too, like yours. Did I ever tell you how he died?”

“No, sugar, you didn’t that I recall.”

“He got lead-poisoned from cleanin’ the old paint off our house without usin’ a mask. Mama said his brain just fell apart in pieces. Started he couldn’t remember things? Got real violent? Finally in the middle of one night he poured kerosene over himself and lit a match. Near burned down the house with me and Mama asleep upstairs. We got out just in time. It was a year before I met you.”

Sailor took the cigarette out of Lula’s hand and put it into the ashtray by the bed. He put his hands on her small, nicely muscled shoulders and kneaded them.

“How’d you get such good shoulders?” Sailor asked.

“Swimmin’, I guess,” said Lula. “Even as a child I loved to swim.”

Sailor pulled Lula to him and kissed her throat.

“You got such a pretty, long neck, like a swan,” he said.

“Grandmama Pace had a long, smooth white neck,” said Lula. “It was like on a statue it was so white? I like the sun too much to be white like that.”

Sailor and Lula made love, and afterward, while Sailor slept, Lula stood at the window and smoked one of Sailor’s Camels while she stared at the tail of the Cape Fear River. It was a little spooky, she thought, to be at the absolute end of a body of water. Lula looked over at Sailor stretched out on his back on the bed. It was odd that a boy like Sailor didn’t have any tattoos, she thought. His type usually had a bunch. Sailor snorted in his sleep and turned onto his side, showing Lula his long, narrow back and flat butt. She took one more puff and threw the cigarette out the window into the river.

UNCLE POOCH

“FIVE YEARS AGO?” Lula said. “When I was fifteen? Mama told me that when I started thinkin’ about sex I should talk to her before I did anything about it.”

“But honey,” said Sailor, “I thought you told me your Uncle Pooch raped you when you were thirteen.”

Lula nodded. She was standing in the bathroom of their room at the Cape Fear Hotel fooling with her hair in front of the mirror. Sailor could see her through the doorway from where he lay on the bed.

“That’s true,” Lula said. “Uncle Pooch wasn’t really an uncle. Not a blood uncle, I mean. He was a business partner of my daddy’s? And my mama never knew nothin’ about me and him for damn sure. His real name was somethin’ kind of European, like Pucinski. But everyone just called him Pooch. He came around the house sometimes when Daddy was away. I always figured he was sweet on Mama so when he cornered me one afternoon I was surprised more than a little.”

“How’d it happen, peanut?” Sailor asked. “He just pull out the old toad and let it croak?”

Lula brushed away her bangs and frowned. She took a cigarette from the pack on the sink and lit it, then let it dangle from her lips while she teased her hair.

“You’re terrible crude sometimes, Sailor, you know?” Lula said.

“I can’t hardly understand you when you talk with one of them Mores in your mouth,” said Sailor.

Lula took a long slow drag on her More and set it down on the edge of the sink.

“I said you can be too crude sometimes. I don’t think I care for it.”

“Sorry, sugar,” Sailor said. “Go on and tell me how old Pooch done the deed.”

“Well, Mama was at the Busy Bee havin’ her hair dyed? And I was alone in the house. Uncle Pooch come in the side door through the porch, you know? Where I was makin’ a jelly and banana sandwich? I remember I had my hair in curlers ’cause I was goin’ that night with Vicky and Cherry Ann, the DeSoto sisters, to see Van Halen at the Charlotte Coliseum. Uncle Pooch must have known nobody but me was home ’cause he come right in and put both his hands on my butt and sorta shoved me up against the counter.”

“Didn’t he say somethin’?” said Sailor.

Lula shook her head and started brushing the teases out of her hair. She picked up her cigarette, took a puff and threw it into the toilet. The hot end had burned a brown stain on the porcelain of the sink and Lula licked the tip of her right index finger and rubbed it but the stain wouldn’t come off.

“Not really,” she said. “Least not so I recall now.”

Lula flushed the toilet and watched the More come apart as it swirled down the hole.

“What’d he do next?” asked Sailor.

“Stuck his hand down my blouse in front.”

“What’d you do?”

“Spilled the jelly on the floor. I remember thinkin’ then that Mama’d be upset if she saw it. I bent down to wipe it up and that got Uncle Pooch’s hand out of my shirt. He let me clean up the jelly and throw the dirty napkin I used in the trash before doin’ anything else.”

“Were you scared?” Sailor asked.

“I don’t know,” said Lula. “I mean, it was Uncle Pooch. I’d known him since I was seven? I kind of didn’t believe it was really happenin’.”

“So how’d he finally nail you? Right there in the kitchen?”

“No, he picked me up. He was short but powerful. With hairy arms? He had a sort of Errol Flynn mustache, kind of a few narrow hairs on the rim of his upper lip. Anyway, he carried me into the maid’s dayroom, which nobody used since Mama lost Abilene a couple years before when she run off to marry Sally Wilby’s driver Harlan and went to live down in Tupelo? We did it there on Abilene’s old bed.”

“ ‘We’ did it?” said Sailor. “What do you mean? Didn’t he force you?”

“Well, sure,” said Lula. “But he was super gentle, you know? I mean he raped me and all, but I guess there’s all different kinds of rapes. I didn’t exactly want him to do it but I suppose once it started it didn’t seem all that terrible.”

“Did it feel good?”

Lula put down her hairbrush and looked in at Sailor. He was lying there naked and he had an erection.

“Does my tellin’ you about this get you off?” she said. “Is that why you want to hear it?”

Sailor laughed. “I can’t help it happenin’, sweetheart. Did he do it more than once?”

“No, it was over pretty quick. I didn’t feel much. I’d broke my own cherry by accident when I was twelve? When I came down hard on a water ski at Lake Lanier in Flowery Branch, Georgia. So there wasn’t any blood or nothin’. Uncle Pooch just stood and pulled up his trousers and left me there. I stayed in Abilene’s bed till I heard him drive off. That was the bad part, lyin’ there listenin’ to him leave.”

“What’d you do then?”

“Went back in the kitchen and finished makin’ my sandwich, I guess. I probably took a pee in between or somethin’.”

“And you never told nobody about it?”

“Just you,” Lula said. “Uncle Pooch never acted strange or different after. And he never did anything else to me. I always got a nice present from him at Christmas, like a coat or jewelry? He died in a car crash three years later while he was holidayin’ in Myrtle Beach. They still got way too much traffic there for my taste.”

Sailor stretched an arm toward Lula. “Come on over to me,” he said.

Lula went and sat on the edge of the bed. Sailor’s erection had reduced itself by half and she took it in her left hand.

“You don’t have to do nothin’ for me, baby,” said Sailor. “I’m okay.”

Lula smoothed back her hair with her right hand.

“Damn it, Sailor,” she said, “it’s not always you I’m thinkin’ of.”

Lula sat still for a minute and then she began to cry. Sailor sat up and held her in his arms and rocked her and didn’t say anything until she stopped.

DIXIE PEACH

SAILOR AND LULA sat at a corner table next to the window in the Forget-Me-Not Cafe sipping their drinks. Lula had an iced tea with three sugars and Sailor had a High Life, which he drank straight from the bottle. They’d both ordered fried oysters and cole slaw and were enjoying the view. There was a nail paring of a moon and the sky was dark grey with streaks of red and yellow and beneath it the black ocean lay flat on its back.

“That water reminds me of Buddy Favre’s bathtub,” said Sailor.

“How’s that?” Lula asked.

“My daddy’s duck-huntin’ partner, Buddy Favre, used to take a bath ever’ evenin’. Buddy was a stumpy guy with a mustache and goatee and kinda slanty eyes so he looked like a devil but he was a regular guy. He was a truck mechanic, worked on big rigs, eighteen-wheelers, and he got awful filthy doin’ it. So nights when he got home he soaked himself in a tub full of Twenty Mule Team Borax and the water turned a kind of thick grey and black, like the way the ocean looks tonight. My daddy would go over to Buddy’s and sit in a chair in the bathroom and sip I. W. Harper while Buddy bathed, and sometimes he took me with him. Buddy smoked a joint ever’ night while he was in the tub. He’d offer it to Daddy but he stuck to the whisky. Buddy said the reefer come from Panama and that he was gonna end up there one day.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know, honey. I lost track of him after Daddy died, but Buddy was a pretty determined type of man, so I imagine he’ll make it eventually if he ain’t already.”

“Where’d you get high first, Sailor? You remember?”

Sailor took a long swig of his High Life. “Sure do. I was fifteen and Bobby Tebbetts and Gene Toy—my half-Chinaman friend I told you about?—we was drivin’ Bobby’s ’55 Packard Caribbean to Ciudad Juarez so we could get laid. Bobby’d been down there before when he’d been visitin’ some family in El Paso, and he and a cousin of his went over to Juarez and got their peckers wet for the first time. Gene Toy and I got Bobby to talkin’ about it one night and we just decided on the spot to get up and go get it done.”

“That’s an awful long way to go,” said Lula, “just to get some pussy.”

“We was only—let’s see, I was fifteen and Tebbetts was seventeen and a half and Gene Toy was sixteen. I had my first taste on that trip. At that age you still got a lot of energy.”

“You still got plenty energy for me, baby. When’s the first time you done it with a girl who wasn’t hookin’?”

“Maybe two, three months after Juarez,” said Sailor. “I was visitin’ my cousin, Junior Train, in Savannah, and we were at some kid’s house whose parents were out of town. I remember there were kids swimmin’ in a indoor pool and some of ’em was standin’ around in the yard or the kitchen drinkin’ beer. A girl come up to me that was real tall, taller than me, and she had a real creamy complexion but there was a interestin’ star-shaped scar on her nose.”

“Was it big?”

“No. About thumbnail size, like a tattoo almost.”

“So she come up to you?”

“Yeah.” Sailor laughed. “She asked me who I was with and I said nobody, just Junior. She asked me did I want a beer and I held up the one I was holdin’. She asked me did I live in Savannah and I said no, I was visitin’ family.”

“She know them?”

“No. She looked right at me and run her tongue over her lips and put her hand on my arm. Her name was Irma.”

“What’d you say to her then?”

“Told her my name. Then she said somethin’ like, ‘It’s so noisy down here. Why don’t we go upstairs so we can hear ourselves?’ She turned around and led the way. When she got almost to the top step I stuck my hand between her legs from behind.”

“Oh, baby,” said Lula. “What a bad boy you are!”

Sailor laughed. “That’s just what she said. I went to kiss her but she broke off laughin’ and ran down the hallway. I found her lyin’ on a bed in a room. She was a wild chick. She was wearin’ bright orange pants with kind of Spanish-lookin’ lacy black stripes down the sides. You know, them kind that doesn’t go all the way down your leg?”

“You mean like Capri pants?” said Lula.

“I guess. She just rolled over onto her stomach and stuck her ass up in the air. I slid my hand between her legs again and she closed her thighs on it.”

“You’re excitin’ me, honey. What’d she do?”

“Her face was half pushed into the pillow, and she looked back over her shoulder at me and said, ‘I won’t suck you. Don’t ask me to suck you.’ ”

“Poor baby,” said Lula. “She don’t know what she missed. What color hair she have?”

“Sorta brown, blond, I guess. But dig this, sweetie. Then she turns over, peels off them orange pants, and spreads her legs real wide and says to me, ‘Take a bite of peach.’ ”

Lula howled. “Jesus, honey! You more than sorta got what you come for.”

The waitress brought their oysters and slaw.

“Y’all want somethin’ more to drink?” she asked.

Sailor swallowed the last of his High Life and handed the bottle to the waitress.

“Why not?” he said.

THE REST OF THE WORLD

“I’LL DROP MAMA A POSTCARD from somewhere,” said Lula. “I mean, I don’t want her to worry no more than necessary.”

“What do you mean by necessary?” said Sailor. “She’s prob’ly already called the cops, my parole officer, her p.i. boyfriend—What’s his name? Jimmy Fatgut or somethin’?”

“Farragut. Johnnie Farragut. I suppose so. She knew I was bound to see you soon as you was sprung, but I don’t figure she counted on us takin’ off together like this.”

Sailor was at the wheel of Lula’s white ’75 Bonneville convertible. He kept it steady at sixty with the top up to avoid attracting attention. They were twenty miles north of Hattiesburg, headed for Biloxi, where they planned to spend the night.

“I guess this means you’re breakin’ parole, then?” said Lula.

“You guess,” Sailor said. “My parole was broke two hundred miles back when we burnt Portagee County.”

“What’ll it be like in California, Sailor, do you think? I hear it don’t rain much there.”

“Considerin’ we make it, you mean.”

“We got through two and a half states already without no problem.”

Sailor laughed. “Reminds me of a story I heard at Pee Dee about a guy had been workin’ derrick on the Atchafalaya. He hooked up with a prostitute in New Iberia and they robbed a armored car together, killed the driver and the guard, got away with it. The woman done the shootin’, too. She planned the whole thing, she told this guy, only she was followin’ a plan laid out by her boyfriend who was doin’ a stretch for armed robbery up at Angola.

“They were headed for Colorado and had gone north through Arkansas and then over through Oklahoma and were around Enid when who bushwhacks ’em but the boyfriend from Angola. He’d gone over the wall, went lookin’ for his old squeeze, and learned about the armored-car robbery. It’d made all the papers because it was so darin’ and ingenious. It couldn’t have been nobody but her, he figured, ’cause of the way it’d been pulled off, and he’d told her the best route to take to Colorado where the cash could be hid out in a old mine he knew about. He never counted on her attemptin’ to pull this gig on her own, of course. It was the score he’d reckoned on makin’, maybe usin’ her, when he got out of Angola. Anyway, he caught up with ’em before the feds did, and blew ’em both away.”

“Nice story, honey,” said Lula. “What on earth made you think of it?”

“They’d made it through two and a half states, too, before the road ended.”

“What happened to the hardcase from Angola?”

“He got caught by the FBI in Denver and sent back to Louisiana to finish his time on the robbery beef. He’s supposed to’ve stashed the armored-car loot in the Colorado mine. The bodies ain’t never turned up.”

“Maybe they’re buried in the mine, too,” said Lula.

“Could be. I heard this from a guy’d done time in Angola. You hear lots of stories in the slam, babe, ain’t many of which float. But I buy this one.”

Lula lit up a cigarette.

“That don’t smell like a More,” said Sailor.

“It ain’t,” said Lula. “I picked me up a pack of Vantages before we left the Cape?”

“They sure do stink.”

“Yeah, I guess, but they ain’t supposed to be so bad for you.”

“You ain’t gonna begin worryin’ about what’s bad for you at this hour, are you, sugar? I mean, here you are crossin’ state lines with a A-number-one certified murderer.”

“Manslaughterer, honey, not murderer. Don’t exaggerate.”

“Okay, manslaughterer who’s broke his parole and got in mind nothin’ but immoral purposes far’s you’re concerned.”

“Thank the Lord. Well, you ain’t let me down yet, Sailor. That’s more’n I can say for the rest of the world?”

Sailor laughed and shot the Pontiac up to seventy.

“You please me, too, peanut,” he said.

SPEED TO BURN

“ ‘I DON’T LOCOMOTE NO MORE.’ ”

“What’s that?” said Sailor. “You don’t what?”

“I’m just readin’ here? In the Times-Picayune?” said Lula. “About Little Eva, who sung that song ‘The Locomotion’ that was a hit before we was even born?”

“Still a good one,” Sailor said. “What’s it say?”

“ ‘Little Eva’s doin’ a brand-new dance now,’ ” Lula read. “ ‘I don’t locomote no more,’ said Eva Boyd as she wiped the counter at Hanzies Grill, a soul food restaurant in Kingston, N.C. It’s been twenty-five years since Boyd, as teen-aged Little Eva, hit the top of the charts with ‘The Locomotion.’ ‘I ain’t into singin’ over chicken,’ the forty-three-year-old Boyd said in a recent interview. She still sings with a gospel group from her church and is considerin’ makin’ a record. ‘She sounds beautiful,’ said waitress Loraine Jackson.”

“Good to know she ain’t quit singin’,” said Sailor. “It’s a gift.”

Sailor and Lula were sitting on a bench by the Mississippi watching the barges and freighters glide by. It was late evening but the sky was plum colored, soft and light.

“I don’t think we should hang around too long in N.O.,” Sailor said. “This is likely the first place they’ll come lookin’.”

Lula folded the newspaper and put it down next to her on the bench.

“I don’t see what Mama can do about us,” she said. “Seems to me unless she has me kidnapped, there’s no way I’m goin’ back without you. And you’d just get popped for violatin’ parole if you do. So, there ain’t much choice now.”

“You know Dimwit Taylor, guy hangs around front of Fatty’s Dollar-Saver?”

“Sure. He don’t have no teeth and’s always smilin’ so ugly and sayin’, ‘Man ain’t lonesome long’s he got a dog.’ Only he ain’t got no dog?”

“The one.”

“What about him?”

“You ever sit down and talk with him?”

“Not hardly. Always looks like he just crawled out of a pit. Smells it, too.”

“He used to be a ballplayer, professional, mostly on barnstormin’ teams around the South. Told me once in Alabama, like forty years ago, he was playin’ in a game against a black team from Birmin’ham had an amazin’ young center fielder could grab anythin’ hit his way. There wasn’t no outfield fence at the field they was playin’ at, so nobody on Dimwit’s team could put the ball over this kid’s head. He’d just spin, run out from under his cap and take it out of the air like a piece of dust. After the game, Dimwit talks to the boy, turns out he’s only fifteen years old.”

“What’s this got to do with us bein’ on the run?”

“That’s just it,” said Sailor. “Dimwit asked the kid how’d he know just where to head soon’s the ball’s hit, so he’d snatch it before it touched the ground. And the kid said, ‘I got the range and the speed to change.’ Dimwit said the kid had it exactly right, and he made it to the big leagues, too.”

“So you figure you got the range, huh?”

Sailor laughed. “I do, peanut. I just got to trust myself, is all. And I got speed to burn.”

Lula pushed herself right up against Sailor and rested her head on his chest.

“I like how you talk, Sailor. And you know what? I believe you, I really, really do.”

TALK PRETTY TO ME

“KNOW WHAT I like best, honey?” said Lula, as Sailor guided the Bonneville out of Lafayette toward Lake Charles.

“What’s that, peanut?”

“When you talk pretty to me.”

Sailor laughed. “That’s easy enough. I mean, it don’t come hard. Back at Pee Dee all I had to do to cheer myself up was think about you. Your big grey eyes, of course, but mostly your skinny legs.”

“You think my legs is too skinny?”

“For some, maybe, but not for me they ain’t.”

“A girl ain’t perfect, you know, except in them magazines.”

“I been makin’ do.”

“Can’t see where it’s harmed you none.”

“I ain’t complainin’, sweetheart, you know that.”

“I think most men, if not all, is missin’ an element, anyways.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Men got a kind of automatic shutoff valve in their head? Like, you’re talkin’ to one and just gettin’ to the part where you’re gonna say what you really been wantin’ to say, and then you say it and you look at him and he ain’t even heard it. Not like it’s too complicated or somethin’, just he ain’t about to really listen. One might lie sometime and tell ya he knows just what you mean, but I ain’t buyin’. ’Cause later you say somethin’ else he woulda got if he’d understood you in the first place, only he don’t, and you know you been talkin’ for no good reason. It’s frustratin’.”

“You think I been lyin’ to you, Lula?”

Lula stayed quiet for a full minute, listening to the heavy hum of the V-8.

“Lula? You there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“You upset with me?”

“No, Sailor, darlin’, I ain’t upset. Just it’s shockin’ sometimes when what you think turns out to not be what you think at all.”

“It’s why I don’t think no more’n necessary.”

“You know, I had this awful, long dream last night? Tell me what you think of it. I’m out walkin’ and I come to this field. This is all in bright color? And there’s all these bodies of dead horses and dead children lyin’ all around. I’m sad, but I’m not really sad. It’s like I know they’re all gone to a better place. Then a old woman comes up to me and tells me I got to bleed the bodies so they can be made into mummies. She shows me how to make a cut at the sides of the mouths of the corpses to drain ’em. Then I’m supposed to carry the bodies over a bridge across a real beautiful river into an old barn.

“Everything’s really peaceful and lovely where I am, with green grass and big trees at the edge of the field. I’m not sure I got the strength to drag the bodies of the horses all that way. I’m frightened but I’m ready to do it anyway. And I’m sorta cryin’ but not really sad? I can’t explain the feelin’ exactly. So I walk to the rear of this huge grey horse. I go around to his mouth and start to cut him. As soon as I touch him with the knife he wakes up and attacks me. The horse is furious. He gets up and chases me across the bridge and into and through the old barn. Then I woke up. You were sleepin’ hard. And I just laid there and thought about how even if you love someone it isn’t always possible to have it change your life.”

“I don’t know what your dream means, sweetheart,” said Sailor, “but once I heard my mama ask my daddy if he loved her. They were yellin’ at each other, like usual, and he told her the only thing he ever loved was the movie Bad Men of Missouri, which he said he seen sixteen times.”

“What I mean about men,” said Lula.

OLD NOISE

“YOU DIDN’T RAISE A FOOL, Marietta. Lula got too much Pace in her to throw her life away on trash. My guess is she’s havin’ herself a time, is all.”

Marietta and Dalceda Delahoussaye were sitting on the side porch of Marietta’s house drinking Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth over crushed ice with a lemon slice. Dalceda had been best friends with Marietta for close to thirty years, ever since they boarded together at Miss Cook’s School in Beaufort. They’d never lived further apart in that period than a ten-minute walk.

“Remember Vernon Landis? The man owned a Hispano-Suiza he kept in Royce Womble’s garage all those years before he sold it for twenty-five thousand dollars to the movie company in Wilmington? His wife, Althea, ran off with a wholesale butcher from Hayti, Missouri. The man gave her a diamond ring big enough to stuff a turkey and guess what? She was back with Vernon in six weeks.”

“Dal? Just what, you tell me, has Althea Landis’s inability to control herself have to do with my baby Lula’s bein’ stole by this awful demented man?”

“Marietta! Sailor Ripley prob’ly ain’t no more or less demented than anyone we know.”

“Oh, Dal, he’s lowlife. He’s what we been avoidin’ all our lives, and now my only child’s at his mercy.”

“You always been one to panic, Marietta. When Enos Dodge didn’t ask you right off to go with him to the Beau Regard Country Club cotillion in 1959, you panicked. Threatened to kill yourself or accept an invitation from Biff Bethune. And what happened? Enos Dodge’d been in Fayetteville with his daddy and asked you soon as he got back two days later. This ain’t a moment to panic, lovey. You’re gonna have to quit spittin’ and ride it on out.”

“You’re always such a comfort to me, Dal.”

“I give you what you need, is all. A talkin’-to.”

“What I need is Lula safe at home.”

“Safe? Safe? Ain’t that a stitch! Ain’t nobody nowhere never been safe a second of their life.”

Dalceda drained the last drop of vermouth from her glass.

“You got any more of this red vinegar in the house?” she asked.

Marietta rose and went into the pantry and came out carrying a sealed bottle. She unscrewed the cap and poured Dalceda a drink and freshened her own before sitting back down.

“And what about you?” said Dalceda.

“What about me?”

“When’s the last time you been out with a man? Let alone been to bed with one.”

Marietta clucked her tongue twice before answering.

“I plain ain’t interested,” she said, and took a long sip from her glass.

Dalceda laughed. “What was it you used to tell me about how Clyde carried on when you and him made love? About his gruntin’ that come from way down inside sounded so ancient? Old noise, you called it. Told me you felt like you was bein’ devoured by a unstoppable beast, and it was the most thrillin’ thing ever happened to you.”

“Dal, I swear I hate talkin’ to you. You remember too much.”

“Hate hearin’ the truth is what it is. You’re just shit scared Lula feels the same way about Sailor as you did with Clyde.”

“Oh, Dal, how could she? I mean, do you think she does? This Sailor ain’t nothin’ like Clyde.”

“How do you know, Marietta? You ever tried the boy on for size?”

Dalceda laughed. Marietta drank.

“And Mr. Dogface Farragut comes mopin’ and sniffin’ around you regular,” said Dalceda. “You could start with him. Or how about that old gangster, Marcello ‘Crazy Eyes’ Santos, used to proposition you when you was married to Clyde?”

Marietta snorted. “He stopped askin’ after Clyde died. My bein’ too available musta thrown him off the scent.”

“That’s most certainly the case with Louis Delahoussaye the Third,” said Dalceda. “I don’t think he’s asked for it more’n twice in six months for a grand total of a not so grand eight and one-half minutes.”

“Dal? You think I oughta keep dyein’ my hair or let it go white?”

“Marietta, what I think is we both need another drink.”

THE MIDDLE OF THINGS

IN SAN ANTONIO, Lula said, “You know about the Alamo?”

“Talked about it in school, I remember,” said Sailor. “And I seen the old John Wayne movie where mostly nothin’ happens till the Mexicans overrun the place.”

Sailor and Lula were in La Estrella Negra eating birria con arroz y frijoles and drinking Tecate with wedges of lime.

“Guess it’s a pretty big deal here,” said Lula. “Noticed drivin’ in how ever’thing’s named after it. Alamo Road, Alamo Street, Alamo Square, Alamo Buildin’, Hotel Alamo. They ain’t forgettin’ it in a hurry.”

“Pretty place, though, San Antone,” said Sailor.

“So what we gonna do, hon? About money, I mean.”

“I ain’t worried. Figure we’ll stop somewhere between here and El Paso and find some work.”

“When you was a boy?”

“Uh huh.”

“What’d you think about doin’ when you grew up?”

“Pilot. Always wanted to be a airline pilot.”

“Like for TWA or Delta, you mean?”

“Yeah. Thought that’d be cool, you know, wearin’ a captain’s hat and takin’ them big birds up over the ocean. Hang out with stews in Rome and L.A.”

“Why didn’t you do it?”

Sailor laughed. “Never really got the chance, did I? Wasn’t nobody about to help me toward it, you know? Not bein’ much of a student, always gettin’ in trouble one way or another, I kinda lost sight of it.”

“You coulda joined the air force, learned to fly.”

“Tried once. They didn’t want me ’cause of my record. Too many scrapes. I never even been in a plane.”

“Shoot, Sail, we oughta take a long flight when we got some money to waste. Fly to Paris.”

“I’d go for that.”

As soon as they’d finished eating, Sailor said, “Let’s keep movin’, Lula. Big towns is where they’ll look.”

Sailor drove with Lula curled up on the seat next to him. Patsy Cline was on the radio, singing “I Fall to Pieces.”

“I wish I’d been born when Patsy Cline was singin’,” said Lula.

“What’s the difference?” Sailor asked. “You can still listen to her records.”

“I coulda seen her maybe. She got the biggest voice? Like if Aretha Franklin woulda been a country singer all those years ago. That’s what I always wanted to do, Sailor, be a singer. I ever tell you that?”

“Not that I recall.”

“When I was little, eight or nine? Mama took me to Charlotte and put me in a talent show. It was at a big movie theater, and there was all these kids lined up on the stage. Each of us had to perform when our name was called. Kids tap-danced, played instruments or sang, mostly. One boy did magic tricks. Another boy juggled balls and stood on his head while he whistled ‘Dixie’ or somethin’.”

“What’d you do?”

“Sang ‘Stand By Your Man,’ the Tammy Wynette tune? Mama thought it’d be extra cute, havin’ me sing such a grown-up number.”

“How’d it go?”

“Not too bad. Course I couldn’t hit most of the high notes, and all the other kids on stage was talkin’ and makin’ noises durin’ my turn.”

“You win?”

“No. Some boy played ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’ on a harmonica did.”

“Why’d you quit singin’?”

“Mama decided I didn’t have no talent. Said she didn’t wanta waste no more money on lessons. This was when I was thirteen? Prob’ly she was right. No sense playin’ at it. You got a voice like Patsy’s, you ain’t got no hesitation about where you’re headed.”

“Ain’t easy when you’re kinda in the middle of things,” said Sailor.

“Like us, you mean,” said Lula. “That’s where we are, and I don’t mean in the middle of southwest Texas.”

“There’s worse places.”

“If you say so, honey.”

“Trust me on it.”

“I do trust you, Sailor. Like I ain’t never trusted nobody before. It’s scary sometimes. You ain’t got much maybe or might in you.”

Sailor laughed, and put his arm over Lula, brushing her cheek with his hand.

“Maybe and might are my little brothers,” he said. “I gotta set ’em a good example, is all.”

“It ain’t really them worries me, it’s those cousins, never and ever, make me shake.”

“We’ll be all right, peanut, long as we got room to move.”

Lula clucked her tongue twice.

“Know what?” she said.

“Uh?”

“I don’t know that I completely enjoy you callin’ me peanut so much.”

Sailor laughed. “Why’s that?”

“Puts me so far down on the food chain?”

Sailor looked at her.

“Really, Sail. I know how you mean it to be sweet, but I was thinkin’ how everything can eat a peanut and a peanut don’t eat nothin’. Makes me sound so tiny, is all.”

“How you want, honey,” he said.

WELCOME TO BIG TUNA

BIG TUNA, TEXAS, POP. 305, sits 125 miles west of Biarritz, 125 miles east of Iraaq, and 100 miles north of the Mexican border on the south fork of the Esperanza trickle. Sailor cruised the Bonneville through the streets of Big Tuna, eyeballing the place.

“This looks like a lucky spot, sweetheart,” he said. “Whattaya think?”

“Not bad,” said Lula. “Long as you’re not large on cool breezes. Must be a hundred and ten and it ain’t even noon yet.”

“Hundred twelve, to be exact. What it said on the Iguana County Bank buildin’ back there. And that’s prob’ly two degrees or more shy of the actual temp. Chamber of commerce don’t like to discourage visitors, so they set it low.”

“I can understand that, Sail. After all, there’s a big difference between a hundred twelve and a hundred fourteen.”

Sailor circled back and stopped the car in front of the Iguana Hotel, a two-story, whitewashed wooden building with the Texas state flag draped over the single porch above the entrance.

“This’ll do,” he said.

The second-floor room Sailor and Lula rented was simple: double bed, dresser, mirror, chair, sink, toilet, bathtub (no shower), electric fan, window overlooking the street.

“Not bad for eleven dollars a day,” said Sailor.

“No radio or TV,” said Lula. She stripped off the spread, tossed it in a corner and sat down on the bed. “And no AC.”

“Fan works.”

“Now what?”

“Let’s go down to the drugstore and get a sandwich. Find out about where to look for work.”

“Sailor?”

“Yeah?”

“This ain’t exactly my most thrillin’ notion of startin’ a new life.”

They ordered bologna and American cheese on white with Cokes at the counter of Bottomley’s Drug.

“Pretty empty today,” Sailor said to the waitress, whose plastic name tag had KATY printed on it.

“Ever’body’s over to the funeral,” Katy said. “This is kind of a sad day around here.”

“We just got into town,” said Lula. “What happened?”

“Buzz Dokes, who run a farm here for twenty years, died somethin’ horrible. Only forty-four.”

“How’d he go?” asked Sailor.

“Bumblebees got him. Buzz was on his tractor Monday mornin’ when a swarm of bees lit on his head and knocked him off his seat. He fell underneath the mower and the blades chopped him up in four unequal parts. Run over a bee mound and they just rose up and attacked him. Poor Buzz. Tractor trampled him and kept goin’, went through a fence and smacked into the side of a Messican’s house. Took it clean off the foundation.”

“That’s about the most unpleasant incident I heard of lately,” said Lula.

“There’s always some strange thing or other happenin’ in Big Tuna,” Katy said. “I’ve lived here all my life, forty-one years, except for two years in Beaumont, and I could put together some book about this town. It wouldn’t all be pretty, I tell you. But it’s a sight better than bein’ in a place like Beaumont, where people come down the street you don’t know ’em and never will. I like bein’ in a place where I know who I’m gonna see every day. What are you kids doin’ here?”

“Lookin’ for work,” said Sailor.

“Any kind in particular?”

“I’m pretty fair with cars, trucks. Never done no ranchin’, though, or farmin’.”

“You might talk to Red Lynch. He’s got a garage just two blocks up the street here, ’cross from the high school. Called Red’s. He might have somethin’, seein’ as how the boys he usually hires don’t last too long before they take off for Dallas or Houston. Not enough goin’ on to keep ’em here. Red oughta be back from Buzz’s funeral in a half hour or so.”

“Thanks, Katy, I’ll check it out. Tell me, why’s this town named Big Tuna? There ain’t no body of water around here woulda ever had no tuna in it.”

Katy laughed. “That’s for sure. All we got’s wells and what falls from the sky, which ain’t been a whole heck of a lot lately. The Esperanza’s dry half the year. No, it’s named after an oilman, Earl ‘Big Tuna’ Bink, who bought up most of Iguana County back in the twenties. Used to be called Esperanza Spring, only there ain’t no spring, just like there ain’t no tuna. Bink’d go off on fishin’ trips to California, Hawaii and Australia and such, and have these big mounted fish shipped back here to his ranch. He died when I was ten. The whole county went to his funeral. Ever’body called him Big Tuna. There’s a oil portrait of him hangin’ in the Iguana County Bank, which he owned. Where you-all from?”

“Florida,” said Sailor. “Orlando, Florida.”

“Boy, my grandkids’d sure love to go to that Disney World. You been there plenty, I guess.”

“Lots of times.”

Lula sucked on the straw in her Coke and stared at Sailor. He turned and smiled at her, then went back to making conversation with Katy. Lula suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

“I’m gonna go back up to the room and lie down, Sailor,” she said. “This heat makes me tired.”

“Okay, honey, I’ll see you later.”

“Bye,” Lula said to Katy.

“Have a nice siesta, dear,” said Katy.

Outside everything looked cooked, like the white of a fried egg, with brown edges. Lula walked very slowly the half block to the Iguana Hotel and barely made it up the stairs into the room before she threw up.

NIGHT AND DAY AT THE IGUANA HOTEL

“HOW DO YOU GET SIXTEEN HAITIANS into a Dixie cup?” said Sparky.

“How?” asked Lula.

“Tell ’em it floats.”

Sailor, Lula, Sparky and Buddy were sitting in the lobby of the Iguana Hotel at ten P.M., sharing Sparky’s fifth of Ezra Brooks and shooting the shit.

“Sparky’s big on Florida jokes,” said Buddy.

“You need a active sense of humor to survive in the Big Tuna,” said Sparky.

Bobby Peru walked in and came over.

“Hey, everybody,” he said.

“Sailor, Lula, this here’s the man himself,” said Buddy. “Bobby, this is Sailor and Lula, the most recent strandees, economic variety.”

Bobby nodded to Lula and offered a hand to Sailor.

“Bobby Peru, just like the country.”

Sparky and Buddy laughed.

“Accordin’ to Red and Rex,” said Buddy, “Bobby’s the most excitin’ item to hit Big Tuna since the ’86 cyclone sheared the roof off the high school.”

“Only in town two months and there ain’t a young thing around don’t know how that cobra tattoo works, right, Bob?” Sparky said.

Bobby laughed. He had a lopsided grin that exposed only three brownish front teeth on the upper right side of his mouth. He had dark, wavy hair and a small, thin nose that bent slightly left. His eyebrows were long and tapered and looked as if they’d been drawn on. What frightened Lula about Bobby Peru were his eyes: flat black, they reflected no light. They were like heavy shades, she thought, that prevented people from seeing inside. Lula guessed that he was about the same age as Sparky and Buddy, but Bobby was the kind of person who would look the same when he was forty-five as he did when he was twenty.

“You from Texas, Mr. Peru?” Lula asked.

Bobby pulled up a chair and poured himself a shot glass full of whisky.

“I’m from all over,” he said. “Born in Tulsa, raised in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, lived in Oregon, South Dakota, Virginia. Got people in Pasadena, California, who I was headin’ to see when my Dodge busted a rod. Still meanin’ to get out there.”

“You was in the marines, huh?” said Sailor, noticing a USMC tattoo on Bobby’s right hand.

Bobby looked down at his hand, flexed it.

“Four years,” he said.

“Bobby was at Cao Ben,” said Sparky.

“What’s Cao Ben?” asked Lula.

“How old are you?” Buddy asked her.

“Twenty.”

“Bunch of civilians got killed,” said Bobby. “March 1968. We torched a village and the government made a big deal out of it. Politicians tryin’ to get attention. Put the commandin’ officer on trial for murder. Only problem was, there weren’t no such persons as civilians in that war.”

“Lotta women and kids and old people died at Cao Ben,” said Buddy.

Bobby sipped the whisky and closed his eyes for several seconds before reopening them and looking at Buddy.

“You was on a ship, pardner. Hard to make contact with the people when you’re off floatin’ in the Gulf of Tonkin. It weren’t simple.”

“Saw Perdita this afternoon,” said Sparky. “Came by Red’s lookin’ for you.”

“Had some business over by Iraaq,” said Bobby. “I’m just about to go check on her now.”

He stood up and set the shot glass on his chair.

“Good meetin’ you,” Bobby said to Sailor and Lula. “Adiós, boys.”

He walked out.

After Bobby was gone, Lula said, “Somethin’ in that man scares me.”

“Bobby’s got a way,” said Buddy.

“Can’t shake that institution odor,” Sparky said, and poured himself another shot.

Lula put a hand on Sailor’s leg.

“Darlin’, I still ain’t feelin’ so well,” she said. “I’m goin’ to bed.”

“I’ll come along,” said Sailor.

They said good night to Sparky and Buddy and went upstairs.

In the room, Sailor said, “Man, that barf smell don’t fade fast.”

“I’ll get some white vinegar to rub on it tomorrow, honey, take care of it.”

Lula went into the bathroom and stayed there for a long time. When she came out, Sailor asked if there was anything he could do for her.

“No, I don’t think so, Sail. I just need to lie down.”

Lula listened to Sailor brush his teeth, then urinate into the toilet and flush it.

“Sailor?” she said as he climbed into bed. “You know what?”

“I know you ain’t particularly pleased bein’ here.”

“Not that. Might be I’m pregnant.”

Sailor rolled over and looked into Lula’s eyes.

“It’s okay by me, peanut.”

“Well, nothin’ personal, but I ain’t so sure it’s okay by me.”

Sailor lay down on his back.

“Really, Sailor, it ain’t nothin’ against you. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“I know. Just I’m sorta uncomfortable about the way some things is goin’, and this don’t help soothe me.”

Sailor got out of bed and went over by the window. He sat down in the chair and looked out. Bobby Peru and a Mexican woman with black hair longer than Lula’s were parked across the street in a maroon 1971 Eldorado convertible with the top down. Sailor watched as the woman pulled a knife out of her purse and tried to stick Bobby with it. He took the knife away from her and tossed it. She got out of the car and ran. Bobby fired up the Eldo and drove after her.

“I know this ain’t easy, Lula,” Sailor said, “but I ain’t gonna let things get no worse, I promise.”

FRIENDS

“NICE OF YOU TO DROP BY,” said Perdita.

Bobby let the screen door bang shut behind him as he came in. “Told you I would.”

Perdita sat down on the couch, shook a Marlboro from the pack on the coffee table and lit it with a red Bic. Bobby roamed around the living room. The taps on the heels and toes of his boots clacked loudly against the hardwood floor.

“You still riled?” asked Bobby.

Perdita laughed. “You still screwin’ sixteen-year-olds in the ass?”

Bobby smiled and kept circling.

“Ain’t never had no teenaged girl pull a blade on me.”

“Wish I’d cut you up good.”

“Heard from Tony?”

“Juana called. They’re stayin’ another week.”

Bobby stopped walking and stared at a family photograph on the wall.

“Stayin’ a few extra days in the cow town, huh? This you?”

Perdita turned her head and looked, then turned back.

“Yes.”

“How old were you? Twelve?”

“Almost. Eleven and a half. Ten years ago in Corpus.”

“Mm, mm. What a tasty thing you musta been.”

“Nobody was tastin’.”

“Shame.”

Bobby turned around and leaned down and put his face next to Perdita’s from behind.

“The cobra’s waitin’ to strike, chica,” he said.

Perdita crossed her legs and smoked. Bobby lowered his hands into the front of her blouse and cupped her small breasts. Perdita pretended not to care. He rubbed her nipples with the tips of his fingers, making them become rigid. She burned the back of his left wrist with her cigarette.

Bobby jumped back, then grabbed Perdita’s hair and pulled her over the couch onto the floor. Neither of them spoke. She tried to stand up but Bobby kept his right foot on her chest while he blew on the back of his wounded wrist. Perdita shoved his leg to one side and rolled away. She stood up and spit at him.

Bobby grinned. “I knew we could be friends again,” he said.

BOBBY’S BAD DAY

“TAKE ONE OF THESE,” Bobby Peru said, handing a plastic-wrapped package to Sailor.

“What is it?”

“Panty hose. Work better’n stockin’s. Pull one of the legs down over your face and let the other leg trail behind your head.”

They were in the Eldorado, about two blocks away from the Ramos Feed Store in Iraaq. Perdita was at the wheel, Bobby was next to her and Sailor rode in back. The top was up.

“Here’s the pistol,” said Bobby, taking the Smith and Wesson out of his belt and passing it to Sailor. “Remember, soon as we get inside you keep that bad boy up where those hicks can see it. Once they notice the Ithaca and the Smith, they’ll know we ain’t foolin’ with ’em.”

Perdita tossed her cigarette out the window and immediately took out another and lit it with the dashboard lighter.

“Comin’ up on it now, Bobby,” she said.

Bobby slipped the panty hose over his head and adjusted it. His face looked crooked, distorted and flat, the lips pancaked across the lower half and his hair plastered down over his forehead like broken teeth on a comb.

“Come on!” Bobby stage-whispered, his head snapping toward Sailor like a striking asp’s. “Get that mask on!”

Sailor ripped open the package and pulled a nylon leg over his head, stretching the calf part to fit.

Perdita pulled up in front of the store. The street was deserted.

“Keep it revved, Chiquita. We won’t be long,” Bobby said.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon and the sun took up the entire sky. As Sailor got out of the car, he felt the intense heat of the day for the first time. Until that moment, he’d been numb. Sailor had passed the preceding hours in a kind of trance, unaware of the temperature or anything other than the time. Fourteen hours, Bobby had said, that’s when they’d go in. They’d be out at fourteen-oh-three and thirty seconds, he promised, with something in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars.

Bobby went in first, carrying a black canvas Sundog shoulder bag in his left hand. He raised the sawed-off shotgun with his right and in a firm voice said to the two men behind the counter, “Move into the back room, both of you. Now!”

They moved. Both in their mid-fifties, portly, with wire-rim glasses and crown-bald heads, the men looked like brothers.

“Stay here,” Bobby told Sailor as he followed them. “Keep an eye on the door. If anyone comes in, herd ’em on back, quick.”

Sailor held the Smith up high, where Bobby could see it if he looked. Behind him, Sailor could hear Bobby instructing one of the men to open the safe. Neither of the men, so far as Sailor could tell, had said a word.

An Iguana County deputy sheriff cruised up in a patrol car and parked it on an angle in front of the idling Eldo. The deputy got out of his car and walked over to the driver’s side of the Cadillac. He looked at Perdita through his aviator-style reflector Ray-Bans, smiled, and placed both of his hands on the rag top.

“Waitin’ for somebody, miss?” he said.

“Mi esposo,” said Perdita. “He’s in the feed store picking up some supplies.”

“You’d best be careful of that cigarette, ma’am. It’s about to burn down between your fingers.”

Perdita stubbed out her Marlboro in the ashtray.

“Gracias, officer.”

Bobby came out of the store in a hurry, still wearing the panty hose on his head, carrying the shoulder bag and the shotgun. Perdita jammed the gearshift into reverse and peeled out, knocking the deputy down. She floored the Eldo for fifty yards, braked hard, yanked it into drive and spun a mean yo-yo, fishtailing viciously but managing to keep the car under control. Perdita hit the accelerator again as hard as she could and never looked back.

The deputy came up on one knee with his revolver clasped in both hands. He fired his first shot into Bobby’s right thigh and his second into Bobby’s left hip. The shock of the initial slug caused Bobby to drop the bag. The impact of the second forced Bobby’s right hand to twist sideways so that both barrels of the shotgun wedged under his chin. The Ithaca went off, blowing Bobby backwards through the RAMOS on the plate-glass window of the feed store.

Sailor had been right behind Bobby until he saw Perdita hightail it. As soon as he spotted the deputy, Sailor hit the ground, losing the Smith as he fell. He put his hands over his hosieried head and kept his face in the dirt until the deputy ordered him to stand up.

LETTER FROM LULA

Sailor Ripley
# 461208
Walls Unit
Huntsville, Texas 77340

Dearest Sailor Darling,

The first thing youll want to know is Im keeping the baby. Mama wasnt for it in the beginning but I think shes looking forward to it. Im gonna name it Pace no matter if its a boy or a girl. Pace Ripley sounds good dont it? Its kind of hard to believe that Pace will be ten years old when you get out.

What else can I tell you? Im feeling fine its not so terrible being with mama cause shes calmed down a lot. I think our running off that way scared her plenty and she has more respect for me now. She doesnt even speak poorly of you no more at least not so often. I explained to her how you was worried about us not having money and the idea of a baby and all and how of course it was no excuse for committing an armed robbery but there it is.

I hope its not too horrible for you inside the walls again I know how much you hate being confined. Is it different in a Texas prison than it was at Pee Dee? I bet it aint as pretty. The doctor here says I got to stay at home while Im pregnant. Theres something wrong with the way Im carrying the baby but if I keep still and dont smoke and eat right which mama and her friend Dalceda Delahoussaye are seeing to he says I should be just fine. It sure is hard not to smoke. I miss my Mores!!! I feel like Im kind of in prison too but I know in six months itll be over and Ill have a son or daughter to show for it. Our child!!

I hope you know it hurts me to not be able to visit you all I can do is write letters which is OK I like writing. Did you know that Johnnie Farragut is a writer? Mama told me he showed her some stories and things he wrote and that she liked them. She says he has an interesting imagination.

Did Perdita Durango ever get caught? Ill bet shes in Mexico now or somewhere out of the authorities reach. I have to confess it dont bother me one little bit about Bobby Peru being shot dead. He was one of them types you could feel it was coming and he killed his share as we know. Remember once I called him a black angel well hes not in heaven Ill guarantee. If he is then I never want to go there!!!

It was excellent of you to give yourself up the way you did and not try to shoot it out youd be dead too and never have got to see your child Pace. I hope this name is all right with you Sailor if its not tell me and Ill think it over some more but I love it and certainly hope you do.

Im going to take a nap now. Your probably thinking about how I was always sleeping at the end there in the Iguana Hotel and now I still am but the doctor says sometimes being pregnant makes the mother be that way and Im one of them. I love you Sailor. I dont know how much or what it means though I miss you an awful bunch sometimes I know your thinking about me cause I can feel it. I miss your not being around to call me peanut nobody else ever called me that.

Like I said I have to rest again. Its not really so simple to write like this at least not like it was before when you was at Pee Dee cause that was for only two years not ten. Time dont really fly honey does it?

Love,
your Lula

LETTER FROM SAILOR

Lula P. Fortune
127 Reeves Avenue
Bay St. Clement, N.C. 28352

Dear Lula,

It is fine with me about the baby as you already know. And Pace being your family name and all is just right. What about a middle name if it is a boy after my grandaddy Roscoe? He would be proud I know though he is long passed. Pace Roscoe Ripley does not sound so bad do you think? If it is a girl instead choose whatever name you want for a middle I do not care. Leaving it be is OK without a middle or you might want to put in your mother Marietta. Anyway is good. Just you stay healthy.

Your right this place is not so pretty as Pee Dee. Not pretty at all. There are boys inside these walls meaner than Peru you can bet. There is a Death House. I am getting along. The only thing is not thinking about the future. Your right there 10 years is not 2. The baby will be 10 but I will be 33. There is always a chance of early parole though the rap back home and the fact I busted parole there probably cancels that. I am not there idea of a good risk.

I really got no idea what happened to Perdita. She disappeared as you figured. She is a strange person and I did not know her well. Tell your mama I am dreadful sorry about each and everything that has happened and the last thing ever in my mind is to see you harmed. You are her daughter but I would like to marry you if you would consent while I am inside. This can be arranged because I asked. The preacher would do it but I know you cannot leave home. Maybe after you have the baby you would come here.

Write often peanut. I am in the laundry at 5. There are car magazines and TV. Other than that is mail.

I love you. It is hard to end this letter. If I stop writing your gone. There is not a lot more to say though. Vaya con dios mi amor.

Sailor

from WILD AT HEART (1990)

WILD AT HEART

UNCLE POOCH

DIXIE PEACH

THE REST OF THE WORLD

SPEED TO BURN

TALK PRETTY TO ME

OLD NOISE

THE MIDDLE OF THINGS

WELCOME TO BIG TUNA

NIGHT AND DAY AT THE IGUANA HOTEL

FRIENDS

BOBBY’S BAD DAY

LETTER FROM LULA

LETTER FROM SAILOR

from SAILOR’S HOLIDAY (1991)

PLAN B

SAVING GRACE

BROTHERS

THE CUBAN EMERALD

NIGHT IN THE CITY

OUT OF THIS WORLD

THE OVERCOAT

EVIDENCE

from SULTANS OF AFRICA (1991)

SULTANS OF AFRICA

THE MIDDLE YEARS

RATTLERS

AFTER HOURS

BACK TO BUDDHALAND

THE PARADISE

RIOT AT ROCK HILL

SHAKE, RATTLE & ROLL

PURE MISERY

from CONSUELO’S KISS (1991)

CONSUELO’S KISS

THE AGE OF REASON

RED BIRD

PICKUP

PROFESSIONALS

from BAD DAY FOR THE LEOPARD MAN (1992)

BAD DAY FOR THE LEOPARD MAN

ARTIFICIAL LIGHT

WRANGLER’S PARADISE

CAT PEOPLE

BALL LIGHTNING

KITTY KAT TALKS

FODDER

LETTER TO DAL

from PERDITA DURANGO (1991)

FAST FORWARD

LOCAL COLOR

BAD ROAD

HEROES

IL AFFARE

GHOULS

SALAMANDERS

HISTORY LESSON

BACK AT THE NURSERY

59° AND RAINING IN TUPELO