Only the Strong (27 page)

“I'm 56 years old and I'm drowning,” he said at last. “The years are like water, you know? They keep rising and rising. I feel like I'm running out of air.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Save me. You could do that. You could save me.”

Artinces said nothing. She slid her hand across the bench toward his until their fingertips barely touched. They remained like that, side by side, as night fell.

The next day, in a motel called the Riverbend, across the river in a little town that hip folks were starting to call East Boogie, Artinces laid down the law. But first she took Goode to bed.

They panted and sweated, going after each other like two hormone-struck teenagers.

To get there, they'd crossed the bridge and taken the second exit. The long, squat structure was built of blond concrete and garnished with turquoise shutters. Bright and ultra-modern, it was totally out of place amid the bleak splintered wood, crumbling brick, and rusty corrugated aluminum of East Boogie. Its unorthodox brightness totally defeated the purpose of a motel, in Artinces's view. But she might think differently, she conceded, if she were a road-weary traveler, lulled to drowsiness by the highway's dividing line and desperate for a blanket, a pillow, and a warm place to snore.

Once inside the fake-wood-paneled room, decked out in Early Proletarian furniture and daringly adorned with a brilliant orange blanket and a Magic Fingers bed, Artinces delighted in the scandalous squalor of her surroundings. As Goode moaned and muttered and urged, she shouted in perfect counterpoint, wondering all the while how anything so good could ever be bad. Why did it have to be a secret? Why shouldn't she be proud to walk with this man in the bright light of black society, bedecked, beribboned, and arm in arm? She'd take him anywhere, follow him anywhere, stamp his initials on her forehead—whatever it took, just as long as she could do this wonderful thing forever.

But her bad-to-the-bone alter ego faded as soon as her hunger was emphatically and completely satisfied.
Of course you could think such foolish thoughts in the middle of the deed
, she chided herself. In the unforgiving glare of day, going public with their affair seemed patently unreasonable. So she issued her ruling. “This is how it will be,” she said.

Goode, silent, was nuzzling her breasts, her belly.

“Once a week,” she continued. “Wednesdays. My office closes early on Wednesday. You'll have to get your fill of me.”

Goode looked up. He had made his way to her hips. “That's crazy,” he protested. “A man can't live like that. I could never do that.”

“You'll have to. Or you'll get nothing.”

Goode sighed. “Whatever you say, Tenderness.” He lowered his lips to her thigh but she reached out and lifted his chin.

“On any other day, we hardly know each other. In fact, we don't even like each other.” She looked gravely into his eyes before pulling his face to hers.

According to her edict, they bickered at board meetings and brushed by each other at public events. She learned to curl her lip in disgust when they had no choice but to interact in the presence of others. They were like oil and water, people said.

By the summer of 1970, they were going strong as ever. Goode liked the Riverbend so much that he bought it and decorated a suite to which they had sole access. All the furnishings were purchased to suit Artinces's taste and designed to create the illusion of a bedroom in their imaginary private home. She had to admit he'd done a good job. All they needed was that picket fence.

Later, much later, Billie would ask Artinces why she never noticed an elegant Eldorado trailing her a few cars back as she made her way to Goode one Wednesday, shifting lanes smoothly in tune with her own steering. Why, Billie wanted to know, did she think she could carry on with a notorious gangster without anyone getting curious enough to follow her trail?

Artinces would shrug her shoulders and change the subject. She decided not to tell her that when you are preparing to wrap yourself around the man who, despite everything, fits you perfectly, you might not be aware of the curious stares of others. You might not notice a sharp-featured man picking his teeth in his rearview mirror while idling behind you at a random red light. When the man with the perfect fit will soon be moving in you and you will feel nothing besides the sweet pulse of his thrust, the rhythm of his hips as he holds you while chanting, “Tenderness, Tenderness, Tenderness” over and over, you aren't likely to think of anything else at all.

“H
ELLO
, N
ORTH
S
IDE
,” the Man in the Red Vest bellowed. “Welcome to Afro Day in the Park!”

The quiet corner of Fairgrounds Park where Guts Tolliver spent his favorite mornings had been transformed into a carnival. Banners, hung the previous month by the men of the Black Swan, draped the gates at Kossuth and Fair Avenues. A Tilt-A-Whirl, a Ferris wheel, and a carousel surrounded the Abram Higgins memorial garden. Nearby, the Harry Truman Boys Club sponsored a dunking booth. An elaborate sprinkler set, vast and tentacled, sent prismatic spray in the air. Families relaxed on picnic blankets and enjoyed the shade beneath beach umbrellas along the path on which Crusher Boudreau usually ran his miles. Crusher stood a few yards off the path in his standard workout gear, but he wasn't exercising. He'd been drafted to oversee the Swing the Hammer, Ring the Bell game. On the stone bridge, Reuben Jones and Lucius Monday sat behind easels, offering instant portraits and caricatures for three dollars each.

At Softball Diamond No. 1, a bandstand had been erected in the shallow outfield. The Man in the Red Vest presided there as master
of ceremonies, strolling a stage festooned with his radio station's call letters. Teenagers gathered at the foot of the stage to mingle and flirt. From her booth between Stormy Monday's pie stand and the autograph kiosk manned by Rip Crenshaw and the home team's fleet center fielder, Artinces offered free blood-pressure screenings and lead-poisoning tests. Charlotte was supposed to assist her, but hadn't showed up yet. It was just about noon.

The last of the lingering morning mist had all but burned away, leaving behind a shimmering curtain of heat. Artinces watched as, on the far side of the pond, the curtain parted and the three women stepped through. Barefoot, they strolled to the edge of the concrete dock jutting into the water. Two of them shielded their brows with their hands. The other twirled a parasol. Fairgoers moved around them as if they weren't there. Oblivious to the trio, a fisherwoman, her hat pulled down low over her eyes, set out a metal lawn chair and fishing gear on the dock. The women apparently didn't mind or notice but they did seem to be aware of Artinces. They were staring right at her.

The emcee introduced the first of the afternoon's bands, a local quartet of siblings whose modest repertoire was mostly limited to Jackson Five covers. Their opening salvo of “I Want You Back” sounded like a cross between a whistling teakettle and faulty brakes.

“Lord Jesus,” Irene Monday exclaimed. She fanned herself with a carryout menu from her restaurant while leaning on the counter of her booth. Her vantage point gave her a clear view of her husband at his easel nearly a hundred yards away. “Bless their hearts, but those children should think of taking up something other than singing.”

“Yes,” Artinces agreed, “like mime, perhaps.”

“It's going to get better though,” Irene said. “I hear Rose Patterson might sing a little later, if she's up to it. Her belly's so big she's about to burst.”

Artinces had met Rose only recently. She and Gabe were expecting their first child any day. Thinking ahead, the couple had already enlisted her services.

“I've heard she has a wonderful voice,” Artinces said.

“Like an angel. Sweet as sugar for all she's been through. Her first husband had the devil in him.”

“That's no good,” Artinces said.

“You telling me. I've been through it too. Thought I'd lose my mind before Lucius came along and swept me off my feet.” Irene smiled at Artinces. “Some folks, though, are just blessed. Like you, I suppose. Smart and successful as you are, I bet you've made it through life with hardly a scratch.”

Artinces forced herself to turn toward the pond, determined not to let the three women stare her down. They were gone. Near where they had stood, the fisherwoman bent to pick up something lying on the dock.
The parasol
, Artinces thought. But it was a fishing pole. The heat curtain had evaporated, as if it had never been there. Artinces watched as the woman attached bait to her line. “I've had my share of scratches,” she said.

If pressed, she might have found a way to change the subject. Or she might have told Irene that her first “scratch” was more like a kick in the gut. That's what it had felt like when she found her mother facedown in the dirt.

It was 1935. Coming down the road and seeing Sadie Noel spread-eagled on the ground, Artinces had the impression that her mother had fallen from a great height. Blades of grass had bent sharply away from the outline of her still form, as if shuddering at the impact of her landing. Neighbor women knelt near her and made comforting noises, but Sadie remained where she lay until four men pulled her to her feet. Then she let loose with a sound that Artinces had never completely forgotten. Half wail and half roar, it was one of the last audible utterances to rise from her mother's throat. Years later, while Artinces stood at the bedside of dying children, when she had to tell the parents that time was running out, she would occasionally recall Sadie's furious bawling. Sometimes, the stricken parents would howl in similarly desperate fashion and Artinces would find herself hurtling backward through time.

Her mother had hit the ground with a head full of thick, dark, shiny hair. Minutes later, with clods of dirt in her eyebrows and
thick dust coating her face, she tottered beneath a thatch of stringy white strands.

Artinces grabbed her mother's sleeve. “What's wrong, Mama?” she asked. “What happened?” Her mother stared right through her, shaking her head. She looked blind.

There had been a dispute between Luther and Mooney Hicks, a white man. Hicks had asked Luther about two cows that had turned up missing. When Luther said he knew nothing about it, Hicks suggested it would be a good idea for Luther to turn over a couple of his own cows, to keep things simple and peaceful-like. When Luther declined as respectfully as he could, Mooney Hicks shot him in the back.

Sadie had been preparing to return a basket of clean laundry to Miss Agnes, a mean-spirited white woman who insisted that only Sadie knew how to wash her drawers just right. When the news reached Sadie, she tossed the basket and toppled straight over. She remained there, still as a stone, while sheets, pillowcases, and women's underthings slowly floated down like snow.

The next day, Artinces collected the laundry that her mother had spilled. She washed it in a big iron pot in the backyard, stirring it in boiling water and washing it with homemade soap before rinsing it all and hanging each item on the line to dry. These were tasks she knew well. Her mother had put her to work on small pieces in a tub at the age of six, shortly after she learned to read. She had begun feeding and weeding at age four. By the time she was 15, there was little she couldn't do around a farm. By 15, she was also certain that she despised everything about agriculture. With her father's blessing, she had begun to dream of a different destiny. His brutal erasure hastened her plans.

Miss Agnes demanded to know why the washing was late, even though she already knew the answer. Word of Luther's death had spread quickly.

“My daddy got killed,” Artinces said. Standing attentively on the back porch while Miss Agnes frowned at her from the doorway, she held the heavy basket and waited for permission to set it down or bring it in.

“A shame,” Miss Agnes said. “Niggers do get into scrapes. Them jook joints ain't nothing but sin and depravity. I thought Luther knew better.”

“It was a white man done it,” Artinces said, faster than she wanted to.

Miss Agnes leaned down, grabbed her by the chin, and pulled her close. “You listen to me, Lula Mae. For as long as you live, there's three things you should never do. Never lie, never cheat, never steal,” advised the woman who had neglected to pay Sadie for the past four weeks. “God sees everything you do and He knows it as soon as you go wrong. You can count on Him punishing you for it just like He punished your daddy.”

Artinces was pretty sure some kind of force lurked in the world, a presence she couldn't explain and often preferred to ignore. It wasn't the loving God her mother would mumble to with increasing fervor each night—a pale, patient old man who would one day reward Sadie's lifelong virtue by raising up Luther like Lazarus and sending him back to her waiting arms. Far from that. Artinces suspected the force was a hunger as old as the universe, a phenomenon that was neither good nor evil but nonetheless fed on human suffering. She had no patience for talk of angels and saviors. But she knew the hunger was real.

She determined to sidestep its tireless jaws as best as she could, immersing herself in study until the day she headed off to college. Her white-haired mother, befuddled and nearly mute, had managed to press into her hands a pitiful stack of dollar bills Luther had carefully stashed for the day his little Pepper Pot would leave for school. It was enough to get her about as far as the train depot—thank goodness for her scholarship.