Thomas Adcock - New Orleans Noir

They reached a car, a pale blue sedan — theirs, I guess — and it was only when I watched them trying to get into it that I began to think that the beers they had drunk had hit them awfully hard and fast. They weren’t big girls, after all, and they hadn’t eaten anything that I had seen. They giggled and stumbled, Cowgirl dropping her keys — Pony Girl didn’t have no place to keep keys — their movements wavy and slow. The pavement around the car was filthy with litter, but that didn’t stop Pony Girl from going down on her knees to look for the keys, sticking her tail high in the air. Even at that moment, I thought she had to know how enticing that tail was, how it called attention to itself.

It was then that Big Roy jumped on her. I don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe he assumed Cowgirl would run off, screaming for help — and wouldn’t find none for a while, because it took some time for screams to register on Mardi Gras day, to tell the difference between pleasure and fear. Maybe he thought rape could turn to sex, that if he just got started with Pony Girl, she’d like it. Maybe he meant to hurt them both, so it’s hard to be sorry for what happened to him. I guess the best answer is that he wasn’t thinking. This girl had made him angry, disrespected him, and he wanted some satisfaction for that.

But whatever Big Roy intended, I’m sure it played different in his head from what happened. Cowgirl jumped on his back, riding him, screaming and pulling at his hair. Pony Girl rolled away, bringing up those tiny boots and thrusting them at just the spot, so he was left gasping on all fours. They tell women to go for the eyes if they’s fighting, not to count on hitting that sweet spot, but if you can get it, nothing’s better. The girls had all the advantage they needed, all they had to do was find those keys and get out of there.

Instead, the girls attacked him again, rushing him, crazy bitches. They didn’t know the man they were dealing with, the things he’d done just because he could. Yet Big Roy went down like one of those inflatable clowns you box with, except he never popped back up. He went down and... I’ve never quite figured out what I saw just then, other than blood. Was there a knife? I tell you, I like to think so. If there wasn’t a knife, I don’t want to contemplate how they did what they did to Big Roy. Truth be told, I turned my face away after seeing that first spurt of blood geyser into the air, the way they pressed their faces and mouths toward it like greedy children, as if it were a fire hydrant being opened on a hot day. I crouched down and prayed that they wouldn’t see me, but I could still hear them. They laughed the whole time, a happy squealing sound. Again I thought of little kids playing, only this time at a party, whacking at one of those papier-mâché things. A piñata, that’s what you call it. They took Big Roy apart as if he were a piñata.

Their laughter and the other sounds died away, and I dared to look again. Chests heaving, they were standing over what looked like a bloody mound of clothes. They seemed quite pleased with themselves. To my amazement, Pony Girl peeled her leotard off then and there, so she was wearing nothing but the tights and the boots. She appeared to be starting on them as well, when she yelled out, in my direction: “What are you looking at?”

Behind the highway’s strut, praying I couldn’t be seen, I didn’t say anything.

“Is this what you wanted to see?” She opened her arms a little, did a shimmying dance so her breasts bounced, and Cowgirl laughed. I stayed in my crouch, calculating how hard it would be to get back to where the crowds were, where I would be safe. I could outrun them easy. But if they got in the car and came after me, I wouldn’t have much advantage.

The girls waited, as if they expected someone to come out and congratulate them. When I didn’t emerge, they went through Big Roy’s pockets, took the cash from his wallet. Once the body — if you could call it that — was picked clean of what little it had, Pony Girl popped the trunk of the car. She stripped the rest of the way, so she was briefly naked, a ghostly glow in the twilight. She stuffed her clothes, even her ears and her tail, in a garbage bag, then slipped on jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of running shoes. Cowgirl didn’t get all the way naked, but she put her red hat in the garbage bag, swapped her full skirt for a pair of shorts. They drove off, but not at all in a hurry. They drove with great deliberation, right over Big Roy’s body — and right past me, waving as they went.

I suppose they’s smart. I suppose they watch those television shows, know they need to get rid of every little scrap of clothing, that there’s no saving anything, not even those pretty boots, if they don’t want the crime to be traced back to them. I suppose they’ve done this before, or at least had planned it careful-like, given how prepared they were. I think they’ve done it since then, at least once or twice. At least, I’ve noticed the little stories in the Times-Picayune this year and last — a black man found dead on Mardi Gras day, pockets turned out. But the newspaper is scanty with the details of how the man got dead. Not shot, they say. A suspicious death, they say. But they don’t say whether it was a beating or a cutting or a hot shot or what. Makes me think they don’t know how to describe what’s happened to these men. Don’t know how, or don’t feel it would be proper, given that people might be eating while they’s reading.

Just like that, it’s become another legend, a story that people tell to scare the little ones, like the skeletons showing up at the foot of your bed and saying you have to do your homework and mind your parents. There are these girls, white devils, go dancing on Mardi Gras, looking for black men to rob and kill. The way most people tell the story, the girls go out dressed as demons or witches, but if you think about it, that wouldn’t play, would it? A man’s not going to follow a demon or a witch into the night. But he might be lured into a dark place by a fairy princess, or a cat — or a Cowgirl and her slinky Pony Girl, with a swatch of horsehair pinned to the tailbone.

Seventh Ward

As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.

1 Peter 4:10

Some priests you know what they’re up to before they open their mouths. Father Murphy acted so righteous you’d believe his sermons were spun gold, but he really didn’t need to say a word, I already knew all about him. He hated Negroes, and if they made the mistake of coming to his church and sat in the colored section, the last two pews of Sacred Heart, like they were supposed to, he would berate them for being so brazen and uppity as to actually attend Mass. Colored people needed to make novenas, and I don’t think the Lord makes a distinction between white people and everybody else, so we had to put up with this heartless man who must have thought wearing a collar excused him of having to treat Negroes with a hint of kindness, Christian or otherwise. He still had a swollen face and the shadow of a black eye he had received almost a month ago from Father Fitzpatrick, but obviously you can’t beat the hate or hell out of someone. It doesn’t work no matter how good it might feel to try, and Father Fitzpatrick had done his brutal best.

I looked as white as anyone at Sacred Heart, but I didn’t pretend to be anything other than Negro. I assumed I’d receive a special dispensation from him, I’d be spared the vicious race baiting that he’d become notorious for, but before he began his sermon he pointed at the last two pews to the few Negroes who were there and shouted, “You people are not welcome, but you still come!” Then he looked directly at me, red-faced and breathing heavily; but it didn’t seem as though he knew who I was; he didn’t seem to recognize me as the daughter of John Carol, his friend, drinking partner, and fellow Irishman. I couldn’t imagine him saying to me during Mass, Helen, move to the back of the church. Don’t make me embarrass you, but after hearing the venom in his voice I wasn’t sure. I sat there stone-faced and could only breathe easily when Mass ended and the pews emptied.