Black Betty (26 page)

“Where we goin’, Easy?”

“Take me to Felix Landry’s house.”

Odell took a half step backwards. His left eye squinted nearly closed and I was glad that he was nowhere near that shotgun.

“I think he knows where Betty is, Odell. I think she’s stayin’ in one’a his houses.”

“This ain’t no play game, Ezekiel.”

“I ain’t playin’, Odell.”

ODELL DROVE a 1936 DeSoto. He’d bought it new, for cash, and had kept it in perfect condition. The plush leather front seat was like a sofa. I settled in remembering the first time I’d ridden in Odell’s car; I was sixteen years old and so proud to be seen in that chrome-and-jet automobile. Even grown men looked at me with envy down the wide lanes of Houston’s Fifth Ward.

People were looking at us that day too. They were pointing and smiling but that was because there weren’t too many cars from 1936 out on the roads anymore.

We went down toward Manchester and then up Normandie. We finally turned down a little street called Carpenter and pulled to a stop before a tiny block house that was surrounded by a white picket fence and painted turquoise.

There I was again standing at some door I’d never been to before, a pistol in my pocket and a pain with every breath. It struck me at that moment that I was searching for death. Why else would I have been there?

But all those thoughts disappeared when she answered the door. Older now and a little heavier—she was still a beauty. Her left eye was bloodshot and swollen from my backhanded blow but that didn’t take a thing away from her.

There was hate in her face for me.

“What you want here?” she asked in cast-iron words.

“Betty?” Odell said.

“It wasn’t me,” I said. “I was lookin’ for Terry and I found him like you did. But I didn’t do that to him.”

“Betty? You okay, honey?” Odell asked.

The question broke her. She seemed to fall in on herself, backing up and bowing to the pressure of her grief.

I recognized the decor of the house. It was as if Felix were trying to re-create the same house all over again—inside and out. The couches weren’t the same style but they were upholstered like the ones near Avalon. He had the same curtains and similar Mexican blankets on the floor. The walls even had the same kind of rough paintings on them.

“How’d you find me, Odell?”

“Easy figured it out. But we thought Felix might be here.”

“Easy?” Betty looked at me again.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You that little boy used to follow me around?” There was almost a smile on her battered face. And then there it was, that look of appreciation that Betty had for the male sex. A look that was at once hungry and satisfied. Men communicated to Betty with their bodies and sex. She didn’t care about our words or our hearts.

Here it was nearly thirty years later and I was almost in her thrall again.

Almost.

“Marlon’s dead in Odell’s basement,” I said, and the spell she weaved out of instinct was shattered.

“What? Marlon?”

“I couldn’t tell you on the phone like that, Betty,” Odell said. “You just told me about Terry…”

“It’s true?”

“We’re gonna bury him,” I said. “But I don’t think he’d like to go without you there to tell him ’bye.”

It was hard news. It would have put most people on their backs. But not Betty. She leaned against the wall for a few minutes while Odell and I stood there, half in the house. Then she went to the bathroom on the other side of the room. We watched her through the open door splashing water on her face. It might have been cold water because she called out loudly when it hit her face and chest. After that she leaned on the sink with both hands and sobbed.

When she came out again she asked, “How?”

“Cops,” I said. “They beat him…” I was going to say, “…to find out where you was,” but decided that I had brought her enough pain.

“I know it’s hard, honey,” Odell said. “But Marlon said that it was the cops who did it. We didn’t know what to do, so he’s down in our bomb shelter. We got to do somethin’.”

Long minutes went by where we were silent. Betty sat down hard on a chair and just stared down around her ankles. There was a crow cawing outside. I wondered if he’d followed me all the way from Riverside to get a good laugh.

After a long time Betty held out her hand. I let Odell help her up and out to the car. I sat in the backseat. It was easy to sit back there feeling nothing, with my mind blank.

ODELL AND MAUDE had gotten the first four hundred pounds of ice delivered. After that Odell went out by car and got the bags, which he drove straight into the garage.

When Betty saw his cold corpse she cried, “Mary! Oh, baby!” She was the only one that Marlon took that nickname, Mary, from.

She went to him on her knees and took his half-stiff body into her arms.

We stood around her, sad but satisfied that Marlon’s death wasn’t anonymous. He had his sister with him. He was going out under the shelter of family love.

More than half an hour went by with our vigil. Finally Maude took Betty by the shoulders and drew her away.

I made a thick paste out of the lime with water and rubbed Marlon’s body with it. When I was a boy on the farm down south we took care of our own burials as often as not. I’d learned young how to handle the dead.

The corpse wasn’t fully stiff, and with work Odell and I managed to wrap him in a sheet and then fold him into the small grave. I covered the shroud with more lime and put what dirt back would fit.

Then I piled the powdered cement into a hill and gouged a volcano crater in its peak. I used the hose to fill this crater with water.

While I mixed the quick-drying cement Odell took a stance at the head of the grave.

“Lord,” he called, hands clasped tightly before him. “We submit to your wisdom. After all we’re only men, and women, tryin’ to find our way in the darkness. We heed your words and follow them blindly because there is no right but your right and there is no law but you.”

If we were in a church someone would have intoned, “Amen.”

“Marlon Eady comes to you now, Lord. He sinned and he is saved. I believe that because you have said it. He came to me all bloody and broken and he called out to you, Jesus. He begged you and he died. We all die in your name and in your shadow praying for your light.”

Betty and Maude were both crying. I looked down and stirred my cement.

“I ask you,” Odell said as if he were talking to some celestial peer. “Let Marlon’s load be lightened in your name. He will add to your immensity and celebrate your love.”

Using my bad arm for a prop I shoveled the first heavy load of cement onto the grave. I dug, swiveled, and dropped eighteen times and then I got down on my knees with a block of wood to smooth out the floor. It wasn’t perfect but no one would notice unless they were to suspect. There’d be an odor for a while but the lime would eat through the flesh soon.

Odell, Maude, and Betty watched me work.

When it was over the rest of us left Betty downstairs to say good-bye alone. Maude started making lemonade in the kitchen. Odell sat on the sofa in the next room.

I went out on the porch feeling so tired that I was afraid to close my eyes. There was so much left for the living to take care of.

I WAS ON MY FOURTH CIGARETTE when the screen door opened. I expected Maude with her pitcher of lemonade. But it was Betty. Her eyes were bloodshot things not even able to be sad.

“Is it really you, Easy?” she asked almost as if she were afraid to believe it.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She hiccoughed and then cried for a moment, making a sound like a panting dog. For an instant her face had a thousand lines in it and then she was fine again—except for her eyes.

“I’m sorry for hittin’ you and stabbin’ you,” she croaked. “I was just so mad… and when I seen you I just thought…”

I reached for my sore arm. “It’s done.”

Betty sat down on the porch chair. I leaned against the railing and looked up at her.

“Was you that Ezekiel-man that Felix said come by?”

“Yes I was.”

“What you got to do in all this, baby?”

“Miss Cain hired me.”

I expected that to scare Betty, or at least get her to talk. All she did was to shake her head sadly. She didn’t even ask why.

“They want you to come back up to work for them.”

“That job is done.”

“What’s this all about, Betty?”

She splayed a hand out over her breast. It was her touching the heart. The tears for Odell’s sermon burned behind my eyes.

“He had TB,” she whispered. “Doctors said he’d’a died, so we come up here. An’ I had to work. I had to.”

Two lime-green hummingbirds darted into the bougainvillea that blossomed at the edge of Odell’s porch. They stopped sucking sap for a moment and cocked their little heads toward Betty.

“You went to work for Albert Cain?”

“After a while I did. I worked by the day for the first year but then I come to work for Mrs. Cain and she liked me.” Betty cried for a moment again. “I had a whole house out in the back and when Marlon was really sick I took him in. There ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that, now is there?

“Mr. Cain was an im-portant man,” she continued. “What he said went with most people. And so when I was first there he come in one day an’ says that he want me t’shine his shoes. An’ I tells him that I was busy right then an’ went on back to my work. I could see it that he admired me. People didn’t say no to Mr. Cain, ’cause he had a mean streak—but I didn’t care.” Betty sat straight up in her chair and scowled.

“And then one day he come up behind me while I’m makin’ the bed. Now you know that ain’t no kinda way t’be askin’ me somethin’.” Betty looked at me with the arrogance of a young woman.

I laughed.

“Anyway I liked his wife so I pushed him down on the floor and walked out. I went back to the house they gave me an’ was puttin’ my clothes in the suitcase, ’cause you know ain’t nobody gonna disrespect me. But he come runnin’ down an’ apologizin’ an’ sayin’ he was playin’ when I knew he wasn’t. He begged me to stay on an’ I finally said that I would—at least until Mrs. Cain found somebody else. But then, for a while after that, he was okay. Maybe a little too nice or polite or somethin’ but I thought he was just tryin’ t’say that he was sorry.”

“So what happened then?”

“By that time Marlon was better and had a ’partment down around San Diego. He had a job in the navy yards an’ he was fine. Fine. He come up an’ stay wit’ me on his time off. But then one day he comes runnin’ to me all scared. He wanted me to hide him. But where could I hide a man?

“Then the police come. He come right up to my place wit’ Mrs. Cain behind’im. He come bustin’ in here an’ th’ows me down and hits Marlon all in the face.… He cracked a bone in Marlon’s neck.”

“Who was the cop?” I asked.

“I don’t know his name, Easy. Just a big ole redheaded white boy who smiled like he liked you and then he hit you in the head.”

“So what happened then?”

“The cop took Marlon off in his police car. Then Mr. Cain come runnin’ and he seen what was happenin’. He told me not to worry an’ tore out in his car. In about a hour he come on back wit’ Marlon.”

“What was the cop after Marlon for?” I asked.

“They said that he broke into the house next door and took some goldware. The cop figured he come from here. I fount out later that the gardener put Marlon up to it. Told him he knew how he couldn’t get caught.”

“And that’s it?” I asked. “They just let Marlon go?”

Betty noticed the hummingbirds. That shadow of a smile went past her mouth.

“Mr. Cain come up into my room the next night all drunk an’ wavin’ a piece’a paper around that he took from the police. He said that that paper costed him three thousand dollars. He was a li’l man wit’ arms and legs that was too short for his body. They say that li’l mens yo’ meanest kind ’cause they always think people be laughin’ at ’em.

“He was wearin’ a Chinee robe that was open up an’ he didn’t have nuttin’ on under it.” Betty’s voice came out flat, with no real feeling at all. “He told me that I better make him happy or he was gonna send Marlon down under the jailhouse. He fucked me three times and then he went away. And then he come back a little later an’ fucked me again.”

“You didn’t fight it?”

The look in Betty’s eye was enough to silence my question but she answered anyway. “Fight him how? Hit him and then see Marlon put in jail? Kill him an’ go to jail my own self?”

A huge potato beetle hoisted himself up on the porch. His bloated amber-colored and tiger-striped body was heavy enough to make a dragging sound on the roughened paint. His dwarf wings buzzed now and then—just a memory of flight.

“Next day he come up with diamond earrings and says how sorry he is. I took ’em cause I was scared that he’d’a hit me if I turnt him down. That’s how he was.” She looked down at me. “He said nice things and then if you didn’t answer right he’d get mad. He used to slap me when he’d be fuckin’ if I missed just the littlest word.

“But I took his presents and Felix and me bought five houses wit’ what we could get for’em.” The spite in Betty’s voice was a bittersweet revenge. “I was savin’ up for Marlon. He couldn’t hold on to money a’cause’a them damn horses.”

“Did you meet Felix through Odell?”

“Naw. Felix was the one drove me an’ Marlon up here from Texas. I known him since then.”

“Did you tell Felix about Cain?”

“No. I didn’t want him to hear it. But he knew. He knew because he could see it in me. You know it was all the time, baby.” Betty rocked a little. The motion of her body brought to mind the rhythm of unwanted sex. “Cassandra, that was his wife, hated me now. But she didn’t say nuthin’ ’cause he’d’a beat her up and down the stairs if she did. One time he knocked out one’a her front teeth an’ wouldn’t pay for the dentist. He said she was ugly inside and she should be like that on the outside too.

“He’d even beat young Sarah if she said somethin’. It was terrible for a long time. He roamed around the house half naked mosta the time. He always told everybody that I was the one he loved. That I had been drivin’ him crazy the whole time I was there. And it was because’a me that he did what he did.