Too Black for Heaven (9 page)

Ames stopped talking and stepped off the curb to look up at the corner in front of the hotel just as two cars collided with an impact that almost drowned the shrill, frightened scream of a horse. “Oh, Lord,” Ames said. “Here we go again.”

Dona walked around the trunk of her car to stand beside him. Directly under the traffic light the hood of Beau’s blue sedan, its metal crumpled like tissue paper, was firmly imbedded in the right hand side of a pale yellow Lincoln Capri. Attached to the Lincoln was a horse trailer, bearing the name BLAIR STERLING PLANTATIONS.

Chapter Sixteen

A
ROUSED FROM
their torpor by the colliding cars and the scream of the horse, the men on the benches got to their feet. Merchants came out of their stores. Faces appeared in the windows of the hotel. The street door of the cocktail lounge opened. Country folk still in town hurried up the walk or crossed the square of shaded green, adding their numbers to the crowd gathered round the two cars. A police siren wailed. Horns began to blow.

“Let’s go have a look-see,” Ames said.

His scarred face white with anger, Blair Sterling was attempting to quiet the terrified mare in the trailer. With nostrils distended, eyes rolling, and whinnying her fear, she was rearing stiff-necked in an effort to break the halter rope that snubbed her to the tie-bar of the trailer. Beau, stunned or injured, sat gripping the wheel of his car, watching Sterling through the shards of his shattered windshield.

One of the bell boys from the hotel said, “I’ll gentle her, Mister Sterlin’.” He crawled over the tailgate and caught the halter rope. “Steady, girl. Steady, now. It’s all right.” His free hand kneaded the mare’s quivering flesh. “Unlax now, afore you hurt yo’se’f.”

The frightened mare stopped trying to snap the tie rope and gradually quieted under his expert hands. Sterling looked over the tail gate of the trailer. “Is anything broken, Luther?”

The boy’s head disappeared as he felt the mare’s legs. “No, sir, Mister Sterlin’. She doan seem to have taken no harm. She’s standin’ sound an’ square an’ she ain’t bleedin’ nowhere.” His head re-appeared. “She’s jist shook up a bit, I’d say.”

Chief of Police Clyde Simpson stationed four officers at the four entrances to the intersection, then came back to the two cars. “Are you hurt, Mr. Sterling?”

Sterling tapped one of his dusty heels with the riding crop he was carrying. “No. I braced myself when I saw he was going to plow into me.” He looked at the pale yellow Lincoln. The entire right side was pushed in. A growing pool of oil spread across the red bricks. “But the nigger sure played hell with my car.”

The frame of the door of the blue sedan was sprung. Simpson had to wrench it open. “How about you, Beau? You hurt?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why don’t you get out? You been drinking?”

Beau got out of his car. “No, sir. It’s just it happened so sudden, I still can’t believe it did.”

“It happened, all right,” Sterling said. “What was the idea of running the light?”

Beau took a deep breath and said, “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. Why did you run the light?”

“But I didn’t run the light, Mr. Sterling. It was green my way when you jumped the bell.”

“When
I
jumped the bell?”

Beau backed away from possible trouble. “There’s no need for us to dispute this, Mr. Sterling. I’m insured. I’m sure you are. Suppose we leave it to our insurance companies. If I was in the wrong, I have sufficient insurance to cover all damages.”

Simpson said, “That sounds fair to me. But I’ll have to make a report.” He turned to the gathered by-standers ringing the two cars. “Who saw it happen? How many of you were standing on the corner?”

One of the waiters from the cocktail lounge said, “Not me. I jist hear the crash an’ come out.”

“That’s right, Clyde,” Belle Morgan said. “It sounded like two trains colliding. Then we heard the horse scream.”

The blare of horns grew louder.

Sheriff Early forced his way through the crowd. “Is there anything I can do, Clyde?”

“Yes,” Simpson said. “See if you can get those fools to stop blowing their horns.” His normally sallow face became mottled with anger as he looked back at the people around him. “You can’t all have been in the cocktail lounge or looking the other way. Who saw it happen? Speak up.”

No one in the crowd volunteered.

Sterling laughed. “There’s no need to put anyone on the spot, Simpson. I know what happened. I was crossing on the green light and Beau crashed into me.”

“But that isn’t so, Mr. Sterling,” Beau said soberly. “I may have been traveling a trifle too fast but the light was green when I entered the intersection and the next thing I knew, there you were, right in front of me.”

The tieless, collarless little man edged to the front of the crowd. “Gawdamn drunken niggers. None of ‘em should ought to have a license.”

No one paid any attention to him.

Chief of Police Clyde Simpson spotted Ames in the crowd. “How about you, Jack? You see it happen?”

Ames shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Miss Santos and I were standing by her car, parked half-way down the block, when we heard the crash.” He refrained from repeating the remark he’d made about Beau.

Dona realized Sterling was looking at her and met his eyes. He touched his riding crop to the brim of his hat. “Good evening, Miss Santos.”

Dona inclined her head. “Good evening.”

Sterling returned his attention to Beau. “All right. As long as the law insists, let’s get to the bottom of this. I say the light was green when I entered the intersection. You say I jumped the bell.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In other words, I’m a liar.”

The nervous tic in Beau’s jaw twitched. “I didn’t mean to infer that, Mr. Sterling.”

“No. You didn’t infer it. You said so in so many words.” Sterling lifted his riding crop and lashed Beau across the face. “And no nigger calls me a liar.” He struck Beau again, then a third time. Blood spurted from Beau’s nose and mouth. “You’ve been getting too big for your britches for some time. And I’ll tell you what I think. I think you deliberately ran into me. Now tell Chief Simpson the truth.”

Except for throwing an arm in front of his face, Beau made no attempt to defend himself or strike back. “I’ve told the truth.”

Chief Simpson said, “Watch what you do with that crop, Sterling.”

“I’ll do what I please with it,” Sterling said. “I pay more taxes than any other two men in the county. And if the law can’t protect me, I’ll protect myself.”

“No one’s harming you.”

Sterling was amused. “I’d just like to see a nigger lift his hand to me.” He looked back at Beau. “Now tell Chief Simpson who ran the light.”

The tic in Beau’s jaw twitched wildly. “You did. And don’t hit me again or I won’t be responsible.”

Sterling laughed. “Am I to consider that a threat?”

“You can take it however you want to.”

Sterling lifted his arm and Ames took a quick step forward. “Hold it, Sterling. That’s like throwin’ a gun on an unarmed man.”

One of the loafers from the square said, “Nigger lover.”

Sterling turned to face Ames. “Why are you butting into this?”

Ames replied, “Because this thing could get out of hand and give us all a bad name. Besides, you’re blockin’ traffic for blocks. After all, no one was hurt. Both of you are insured and all damage done will be paid for.”

Simpson asked, “Will your car run, Beau?”

Beau wiped blood from his face. “I don’t think so.”

“Try it. See if you can back it away from Mr. Sterlin’s.”

Beau got back of the wheel and started the motor. The blue sedan backed a few feet, then the damaged front wheels collapsed and the frame struck the pavement, spewing water and oil into the already formed pool.

Beau got out of his car. “That’s that.”

Chief Simpson told a patrolman to call a wrecker. “How about your car, Mr. Sterling?”

“I wouldn’t drive it two feet in that condition. Have someone pull it over to the curb if you’re so anxious to get it out of the intersection, then have the wrecker tow it to the Lincoln agency. I’ll send someone for the trailer.” Sterling pointed his crop at Beau. “But as long as you’re so bound to see justice done, I want Beau arrested.”

“On what charge?”

“Reckless driving and running a red light. And while he may not be drunk, he’s been drinking. His breath reeks of the stuff. So I want you to run a drunk test on him.”

As Simpson hesitated, Beau said, “It’s all right, Chief Simpson. I haven’t had a drink since last night and as soon as we get this mess cleaned up I’ll walk over to the station with you and post bond on the other charges.”

The bellboy who’d gentled the mare drove the Lincoln and the trailer out of the intersection and parked the car parallel with the far curb. Deputy Sheriff Ransom herded a group of colored trusties through the crowd and had them mop up the oil and sweep up as much of the glass as they could. The driver of a tow truck hooked a chain around the front frame of the sedan and winched it up off the pavement. “What do you want me to do with it, Beau?” he asked.

“Junk it,” Beau said, quietly.

“Whatever you say.”

The collarless, tieless, little man spat tobacco juice into one of the buckets the trusties were using and cried, “I declare. I do declare. He cain’t even drive a car. An’ that’s the nigger who wants to be a lawyer.”

Dona could taste the lemon in the Collins she’d drunk. She was afraid she was going to be sick.

The merchants returned to their stores. The patrons of the cocktail lounge went back to their tables. The horns continued to blow. Chief Simpson called to the four men stationed at the intersection. “All right. You can let them through, boys.”

Ames escorted Dona back to the sidewalk. “You’re sure you won’t have dinner with me?”

“I’m positive.”

Ames hesitated. “You’re the one to say. In that case, I’ll walk over to the station with Beau.”

Chief Simpson looked at Beau’s face. “You’re cut up pretty bad, Beau. We’d better stop at the drug store an’ have Doc put somethin’ on your face.”

“I won’t die.”

“It won’t do you any good to be bitter.”

“How am I supposed to feel? What am I supposed to do, sing a spiritual? If only once I could be right.”

Ames laughed. “Come the promised land.”

“Come the promised land,” Beau laughed, too.

The sun dropped back of the courthouse. The shadows in the square lengthened. Dona walked slowly toward her car, then realized Sterling was walking beside her.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’m going to beg a ride back to the place.”

Dona tried to think of some logical reason to deny his request and couldn’t. “Of course. I’ll be glad to give you a lift.”

She expected him to be garrulous, perhaps amorous. He was neither. He sat on his own side of the seat, detached, pre-occupied, slapping the blood spattered crop against his boots. Except to explain he’d been on his way home, after inspecting a tract of land he’d just bought, his talk was concerned with small things like the blood line of the mare in the trailer and the amount of good the rain had done.

The twilight deepened as she drove. Night wasn’t far away by the time she reached the plantation. There was a light on the open gallery. The white-haired butler was waiting for Sterling.

“I most gave you up,” the man said.

Sterling opened the door of the car and stepped to the ground. “You were very kind to drive me home, Miss Santos.” He took a step toward the house and turned back. “Oh, yes. I almost forgot.” He extracted a wallet from the hip pocket of his riding pants and took out two limp bills. “Hattie found these under your bed when she cleaned your cottage this morning. You should be more careful with your money. All of our colored help aren’t as honest as Hattie.”

Chapter Seventeen

N
IGHT CAME
quickly, breathless in its haste. The lake, like unbroken black glass, mirrored a crescent moon and the stars. The sleepy twittering of the birds and the scolding of the squirrels died. The furtive rustling in the reeds and rushes grew bolder.

Dona lay on the bed, reading a paperbound novel she’d purchased at the hotel cigar stand in Natchez. Her head ached from the strain of waiting. She’d used too much perfume. In the close stillness of the cottage, the scent sickened her. Under the combined films of nightdress and negligee, she could feel running rivulets of perspiration.

Two cars passed the cottage at intervals but neither one stopped. At midnight she decided Blair wasn’t coming. Either he felt his day had been too strenuous for him to do justice to his libido or because of the rebuff the night before, he was playing a waiting game.

She closed the table drawer in which she’d put the revolver. There was nothing she could do about the metal hook of the screen door she’d wrenched free from the wood to substantiate the story she’d hoped to tell Sheriff Early. Tomorrow night she would tell him. Or the night after tomorrow night. The rent on the cottage was paid for a month.

She closed and locked the glass louver door, then looked in the refrigerator. She should have eaten in town or accepted Jack Ames’ invitation. Her thinking was confused. It had been confused ever since Estrella had told her. The evening needn’t have ended as she’d pictured it. Apparently, Jack regretted what had happened as much as she did.

She made toast, then fixed a bowl of shredded wheat. The butter was rancid. The unpasteurized milk had a raw, animal taste. The shredded wheat biscuit was stale. Through the venetian blind the lake looked cool and inviting but slightly ominous. The thought of christening her new bathing suit flitted through her mind and died. There might be anything in the lake from snags to alligators. With no particular fear of death, as she felt that death would solve her problem, she wanted to get even with Blair Sterling before she died.

“Why didn’t you kill him?”
she’d asked Estrella.

“I tried to,”
Estrella had told her.
“I cut him. I cut him bad the next day. That’s why I had to leave Blairville. Then you came along and I had my hands full taking care of you and scrambling for a living, too busy to worry about how I got you.”

Vaguely disappointed, Dona took the cover off the studio bed, then remembered the two bills Sterling had given her. She found them in her purse next to the gun permit Jack had gotten for her. Both were ten dollar bills, bills she’d missed when she’d picked up Beau’s money.

Sterling had been mildly amused when he’d given them to her. She wondered if he knew about Beau or Jack’s visits the night before. If he did, it explained the way he’d acted at the scene of the accident. It also opened a new avenue of thought.

A bellboy from the hotel had gentled Sterling’s horse. The boy, obviously, at one time or another, had been in Sterling’s employ. Men were as loose-tongued as women. During his drunk, Beau could have talked. He could have passed on the information that there was a high-priced white girl in two-fourteen and that shortly after Jack Ames had left he’d walked in and found her half-nude and drunk, with money on her night stand. If the talk had gotten back to Blair Sterling, it could be the reason her father hadn’t walked into the trap she’d set. His jaded senses wouldn’t allow him to be aroused by a professional.

Dona put the bills into her change purse. She’d return them to Beau in the morning, then see what she could do about Sterling. Then she read the gun permit, then read it a second time. When Jack had pushed it across the table he’d said:

“Now, if you’ll sign your name attesting you’re white and of legal age and have never been convicted of a criminal breach of the law.”

But there was nothing concerning color in the wording of the permit.

She threw her negligee over a chair and started to return to the bed and stopped in the middle of the floor, halted by an uneasy impression that someone was watching her. It was an effort to walk to the table and open the drawer to get the gun. With the gun in her hand, she called, “Whoever’s there, go away or I’ll shoot.”

The only answer was the rustling of the furred things searching for food and a small splash far out in the water. She spread two slats of the blind and looked out. There was no one on the lake side of the cottage. She didn’t dare to look on the porch. After switching out the light she sat on the bed in the dark, gripping the butt of the gun with sweat-slippery fingers. There was no sound from the porch. She sat in the dark a long time, then slid the revolver under the pillow and lay down.

It seemed hotter in the dark than it had been with the lamp lighted. She lay for a while, unable to sleep, then slept restlessly, with wild dreams about Jack Ames and Blair Sterling and Charles and Beau threshing through the night.

The sun was hot in her eyes and her body was beaded with perspiration when the knocking on the door awakened her. Subconsciously, she made certain she was decent and sat up.

“Who is it?”

The girl on the porch said, “Hattie.”

Dona walked bare-foot across the floor and opened the louver door. “I thought the breakfast arrangement was only for one morning.”

“I ain’t got no basket,” Hattie said. “I just come to rid up the place.”

Dona stepped aside to allow her to enter. “I see.”

“My,” Hattie breathed, “you’re purty even when you jist wake up. Even with your hair touseled like that an’ your eyes sleep-puffed. But you suah mus’ have slept oneasy. Your bed look like you bin tossin’ all night.”

Dona walked into the bathroom to shower, then changed her mind and put on the black-and-white bathing suit she’d bought at the Bon Ton.

She felt physically and emotionally depleted. Her dreams of the night embarrassed her. None of them had been pleasant. She’d never dreamed such dreams before. She wondered if she was mentally ill. Maybe, instead of driving south, she should have gone to a good psychiatrist.

The swimsuit fit her perfectly. She put water and coffee in the percolator and placed it over a low flame. “Watch it, will you, Hattie? Let it perk a few minutes, then turn it off.”

Hattie stretched like a tawny cat. “Yes, ma’am.” She laid a newspaper on the table. “Mister Sterlin’ say you might like to see this.”

Dona unfolded the
Courier
. The paper had printed the picture of her standing on the beach, looking out over the lake. The caption read:

Kelly had been hard put for something to write about her. The bulk of the story was concerned with the known facts pertaining to Estrella’s climb to fame. All he was able to say about her was that she was on a vacation, that she liked the South very much, that she thought Blairville was charming.

“What’s it say ‘bout you?” Hattie asked.

Dona gave her the paper. “Read it.”

Hattie shook her head. “I kin make out the pictures fine but I doan read too good. I only git to the fifth grade when Mister Sterlin’ hire me fo’ to work in his house.” The sly smile returned to her lips. Her silver earrings jingled as she lifted her head. “Since then I bin too busy with one thin’ an’ another fo’ any mo’ book larnin’.”

“I see,” Dona said. “Oh. And thank you for returning the money you found yesterday. But why didn’t you give it to me instead of Mr. Sterling?”

Hattie tossed her head. “It’s his cottage. Long as you git it back why should you care?”

Dona shrugged. “I don’t. I just wondered.”

She walked down the stairs and around the path leading to the beach and tested the water. It was as cold as it looked. She waded in up to her waist, then plunged in a shallow dive. If she had to go through many more nights like the one she’d just spent, her mind would leave her completely. She was saying and thinking and doing things entirely foreign to her nature. She smiled as she remembered last night’s fears of the lake. If she was so panicky now, what would it be like after she had killed Blair Sterling?

She swam a few hundred feet and turned on her back and floated. She wished she could stay where she was forever. Unfortunately, she couldn’t. After swimming to the pier and diving from the board several times, she sat sunning herself until hunger drove her back to the cottage. The thought of stale shredded wheat and dry toast spread with rancid butter nauseated her. She toweled quickly in the bathroom, did up her hair as best she could, then slipped into a green sun-back dress and drank a cup of black coffee before she put on her shoes and stockings.

“You swim good,” Hattie said. “I was watching you from the window.”

“You like to swim?”

A slight trace of the sullen look of the day before returned to Hattie’s eyes. “I like it fine. But they’s no place ‘round heah, ‘ceptin’ down in a ol’ muddy slough, where us colored folks is allowed to swim.”

Hattie brightened. “We kin fish, though. So mostly we gits us a ol’ cane pole an’ wades in up to our waists an’ pretends to be fishin’ whiles we enjoyin’ the water.”

Dona spooned more sugar into her coffee. It didn’t make sense. Blair Sterling was willing to wallow all night in Hattie’s bed, but she couldn’t swim in his lake.

The day was hot. The benefits of her swim quickly evaporated. She found a pair of clean stockings in her bag, then decided to go bare-legged and had to powder her feet before she could get her shoes on.

“Is it always this hot?”

“Only in summer,” Hattie said. “In the winter it gits real col’. Some days you have to wear a sweater and build a fire.”

Dona pinned a flowered halo hat to her damp hair and picked up her purse. “When you finish, snap the lock on the door, please, Hattie.”

“You ain’ goin’ to eat heah?”

“No. I’m going into town.”

“It mus’ be nice to be white.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Hattie’s eyes were veiled. “I doan mean nothin’. I jist makin’ talk.”