The Spyglass Tree (7 page)

Such was people’s downright exasperation once they finally came to realize that they might as well give up so far as she and all of that were concerned, that the very way they called her name (behind her back to be sure) sounded as if they had already decided what to put on her headstone: C
REOLA
C
ALLOWAY
—S
HE COULD HAVE BEEN FAMOUS
.

And yet nobody ever really hated or even disliked her. How could you not like somebody who was just as friendly as she was good-looking? She was not a nice girl because nice girls didn’t ever go into the low-down joints and honky-tonks she spent so much of her time in. Still, she was such a nice person.

Yet even so, by the time I was old enough for Mama to start worrying and warning me about fooling around and getting myself all tangled up with no good full-grown women out for nothing but
a good time day in and day out, it was as if Creola Calloway had become the very incarnation of all the low-down enticements that had always led so many promising schoolboys so completely astray.

That was why Little Buddy Marshall turned out to be the one who finally got to do what I too had hoped to grow up to do, if only one time, one day. When he came back from one of his L & N hobo trips and asked me if I had made any move on her yet and I told him what Mama and some others, especially Miss Minnie Ridley Stovall had been preaching for my benefit, he said, Man she may be getting on up there with a few wrinkles after all these goddamn years of fast living and all that, but man I don’t care what anybody say I got to see if I can get me some of that old pretty-ass stuff.

He said, Man, I been wanting me some of old Creola ever since I found out what this goddamn thing was made for. Man, remember what we used to say when she used to say what she used to say. Man couldn’t nobody else in Gasoline Point, Mobile County, Alabama, say hello sweetheart to a little mannish boy like she could, and I ain’t just talking about the sound of her voice. I’m talking about couldn’t nobody make it sound that good because couldn’t nobody else look at you with a smile like that.

I said, Oh man. I said, You know it too. Remembering also that she was the only grown woman you didn’t have to call Miss and say ma’am to. You said Creola because that is what everybody else always said and also because it was what she herself said when she wanted you to do something for her. That was when she always used to say: Hello, sweetheart. Come here sporty. Listen darling, would you like to do Creola a great big favor and run up to Stranahan’s store if I say pretty please and promise you something very nice. (Oh Lord!)

What she almost always wanted was a package of Chesterfield ready-rolls and two or three bottles of Coca-Cola and when
you came back you knew she was always going to say, Now there’s my sweetheart, and you also knew that she was always going to say, Keep the change, sporty. Then she was going to give you a hug and a kiss, and you would be that close, and she would be wearing cologne that always made her smell as good as she looked, even when she was smoking a cigarette. Some lagniappe!

But the more Little Buddy Marshall went on talking and I went on remembering, the more I wanted to change the subject because I didn’t want to say anything about being on the spot, since you couldn’t bring up anything about school with him anymore. You couldn’t, but he could, and he did, because he already knew and he was rubbing it in without ever mentioning it.

As if I didn’t know, and I also knew that he honestly felt that he, not I, was the one with the experience and nerve you needed to make a move on Creola Calloway because he, not I, was the one who had skipped city and made it back from beyond far horizons (although not yet all seven of the seas) and on his own. But I just let that go. I just said, Old Lebo, I said, Hey man, goddamn. I said, Yeah man.

To which he said, Hey man, let me tell you something for a fact. Man, I ain’t never stopped having them goddamn dreams about me and old Creola. Man when I think about all the times I been thinking about that frizzly-headed quail when I was climbing up on some tough-ass northern whore, man you know I got to find out if I can handle that heifer. Man I got to see if I can make somebody that pretty whisper my name in my ear.

When I saw him again, it was about three weeks later and when he saw me he started sporty limping and whistling “Up a Lazy River,” and as we slapped palms he winked and then he said, Hey man guess what? and stood straddling his left hand and snapping fingers with his right saying, Hey shit, I reckon hey shit I fucking fucking reckon.

S
o well now, hello there, Mister College Boy, the one I had given the nod said as we came on into the upstairs room she was using that night. She was the same shade of cinnamon-bark brown as Deljean McCray, but her hair was slightly straighter and glossier and I guessed that she was about three or four years older than Deljean McCray, but her legs were not as long because she was not quite as tall as I was.

I said, Hello Miss Pretty Lady, and she smiled and said, So where you hail from handsome, and when I said, Mobile, she said, You don’t tell me, and looked me up and down again, stretching her eyes as if in pleasant surprise and then she primped her mouth and said, Well go on then, Mister City Boy, you can’t help it. And watched me blush.

Then she said, You know what I heard. They tell me you young sports from down around the Gulf Coast and all them cypress bayous and all that mattress moss and stuff supposed to be real hot-natured from all that salt air and fresh seafood and fresh
fruit and all them Creole spices and mixtures and fixtures and gumbo and all them raw oysters. And I said, I don’t know about all that.

I said, I don’t know anything about what other people think about us yet because this is really my first time away from down there, and she said, Well that’s what they been telling me for don’t know how long, probably ever since I found out what it’s made for. And that’s when I said what I said. Because I had been warned that if you came across as a smart aleck you were going to find yourself pussy-whipped and back out on the sidewalk in one short verse and about one-half chorus if not a verse and a couple of bars.

I said, Is that supposed to be good or bad, and she said, That’s what I want to know, so come on let’s find out. If I like it that means it must be good and if I don’t, it’s bad. And I saw my chance and said, Or maybe there’s really nothing to it in the first place and got myself a quick smile and the nicest squeeze I’d had since saying goodbye to Miss Slick McGinnis.

The room surprised me. I already knew that the houses in the district were supposed to be safer and nicer than those in Bearmash Bottom, Gin Mill Crossing, or out on Ellis Hill Road, and that this was the best house in the district because it catered strictly to the campus trade. Not that I had expected any joints of any kind anywhere in that section of Alabama to be as rowdy as just plain old everyday back alley jook houses around Gasoline Point or side-street joints off the waterfront in downtown Mobile. I wasn’t concerned about anything like that at all. I just hadn’t expected the room to be what it was.

I had thought that there would be just a bed and maybe two chairs and a nightstand with a washbasin and soap and towels and a clothes rack. But it was as if we were in one of the cozily furnished guest rooms of a big two-story house of a prosperous small-town businessman. Not only were there double windows with frilly curtains, a vase of fresh flowers on the chest of drawers,
and watercolor prints and sketches of Paris, Rome, and Greece, but also a private bathroom with hot and cold running water, which was something very special everywhere except in deluxe hotels when I was a freshman.

So come on over here, sweetie pie, she said, pulling my arms around her waist and when I moved one hand up and the other down and waited, she said, Nice, very nice, you got nice manners Mobile, and when I moved my hands and waited again she said, Well all right then, sweetie pie, but just a minute, just a minute, and she stepped back and slipped off her boa-trimmed kimono and sat on the bed and kicked off her slippers and when I pulled off my shoes and stripped down, she said, Well hello sweet popper shopper. Let’s have some
fun
. Let’s do some
stuff
. She said, Let’s have us a
ball
. She said, Me and you, baby boy, me and you, me and
you!

You couldn’t hear any voices in any of the other rooms down the hall. There was the static-blurred music and chatter on the radio downstairs for a while, but then there was only what was happening in the room where I was as she whispered sometimes with her lips and tongue touching my ear and sometimes as if to herself. But even so I was still conscious of the dark, damp mid-October night outside and the campus that far away back across town.

I had the feeling that she went on whispering not only because that was something she did sometimes but also because she really wanted me to enjoy myself. So I said, Talk to me, big mama, talk to me hot mama, talk to me pretty mama, and she said, Me and you snookie pie, me and you sweet daddy me and you sweet papa stopper, and it was a very nice ride because that was the way she wanted it to be. Because as smart about things like that as I had already become before I came to college that year, I was also sharp enough to realize that I wouldn’t have been any match at all for a pro like her if she had wanted to turn me into an easy trick.

Afterward in the bathroom she said, Here, let me do this, and
I raised both arms as if she’d said hands up and she winked and said, I hope you realize you getting some very special brown-skin service over here schoolboy, and I said, You bet I do, Miss Stuff, and she said, I heard that Mobile, that’s pretty good Mobile if it mean what some people mean by it, and I said, How about something you knew how to strut second to none how about something you got to watch because it’s so mellow, and she said, And what about something you trying to hand because you already so full of it and ain’t even dry behind the ears yet.

But you still all right with me, Mobile, she said and then she also said, You a nice boy, Mobile, I mean sure enough nice like you been brought up to be. Don’t take much to tell when it come to something like that. When you and your buddy first walked in down there, the very minute I laid eyes on you I said to myself, un-hunh, un-hunh, un-hunh, and then here you come picking me.

And I said, What did you think of that? and she said, I had to wonder if you thought you so smart you had my number but since there was something about you I said to myself, I’m just going to give him the benefit of the doubt and find out what he think he putting down. And I said, I sure am glad you did and I sure do thank you for such a special treat, and she said, Well, that’s what you get for being such a nice boy.

While I was pulling my clothes back on, she sat on the edge hunched forward with her legs crossed and her left elbow on her knee smoking and asking me about Mobile and the Gulf Coast and when she stood up I had the feeling that she really wanted us to go on talking. So when she said, You better come back to see me now and I really mean it, I got the feeling that she was just as interested in talking again as she was in doing business.

I said, I sure will, but I didn’t say when because I didn’t have any idea when there would be enough cash for something like that
again. There was no point in putting up a front; and you couldn’t put on the poor mouth, so I just smiled and touched her as if I were really looking forward to it, and she said, You sure better.

Then she said, Come on now, I got to get you out of here so you can be back across town before that curfew sound. Ain’t no use to you missing that since you already got what you come over here for, and I said, And more, much more, and she said, Tell me anything, Mobile, but you take care of yourself and hit them books and don’t be no stranger over here.

Downstairs, she left me in the little sitting room to wait for my old pardner and he came in from down the hall before I even sat down, and back outside in the damp central Alabama autumn night once more with our sports jackets draped over our shoulders cape-style, we slapped palms, and I said, Hey, man, goddamn, hey, man, how can I ever thank you enough for getting Old Troop to include me on this, and he went into his penny-dreadful heh-heh-heh again and said, You can’t, old pardner. It’s not allowed. Absolutely not. Strictly forbidden.
Rigoureusement interdit!
which he articulated better than any student I ever met and which, what with our make-believe capes, also turned us into two elegant
flâneurs
winding our way back across fin-de-siècle Paris from Montmartre to the Left Bank.

But once we were back in Atelier 359 with the lights out but still too high to fall right off to sleep, he said, One more thing, old pardner. Tell me. When you hit the homestretch, did she start snapping her fingers, and I cut in and said, Saying sic ’em, and he said, Yes, and I said, Or maybe sic ’em baby or sic ’em daddy, and he said, So yours too, and I said, Not this one but I know what you mean and he said, It caught me by surprise but it was really something, and I said a little something idiomatic. I said, A little down-home stuff for the city boy from up north. Man, she had your number as soon as she saw us.