James Sallis - Moth

No: Hurt.

I HURT.

And what I said then, unintended, unexpectedly, came in a rush.

I had been in New Orleans a little more than a year when I met your mother. I was a fatback-and-grits kid from Arkansas who’d read a few books and thought they’d taught him whatever secrets he needed to know. I had this black gabardine suit that I’d wear all the time, press it and one of my three shirts every morning, put on a tie of some kind, buff my shoes with a towel. I wasn’t drinking much, then. That came later. But I always tried to look presentable.

I’d been in and out of several jobs by that time. Bell-hopped at the Royal Orleans for a little while, worked the ticket counter at the bus station, even did some short-order cooking and janitored at a grade school when times got really hard. I was living with half a dozen or more people, the number kept changing from week to week, or even day to day, in a house on Dryades, an old camelback double. People used to kid me because everywhere I went I wore that suit.

I was sitting at the counter in a diner one morning about four, nursing a cup of coffee, wearing my suit. I’d been fired the day before for “talking back” to my supervisor (actually, I’d told him to go to hell), and I left the store, went out and got drunk by midafternoon, somehow got home and passed out there till thirst and jittery nerves shook me awake a little before midnight.

Someone sat down beside me. When I looked at her, she smiled, sipped her coffee and said “Nice suit.”

I thanked her, and after a moment she said, “Things kind of slow for you tonight too, I guess.”

And that was your mother, the first time I ever saw her. And that’s all we said. But the next night I was there at that same diner from two to six, and the next night she came in, around five, and sat down by me again when she saw me, and we talked. So then we started having breakfast together most mornings. And after a couple of weeks I asked her to have dinner with me that night. “You mean like a date?” she said. And I said, “Yeah, like a date.”

By the end of the month I’d had two more jobs, quit one and got fired from the other, and had moved in with her on a more or less permanent basis. She helped me get another job, someone she knew from her work knew someone else, that kind of thing. It was with this furniture and appliance outfit over on Magazine. They’d sell all this stuff on time at inflated prices and have people sign contracts agreeing to forfeit everything if there was ever a missed payment. Mostly poor black people, and most of them not even able to read the contracts. But the company was considerate. They always sent their man around to try to collect before they were forced “to invoke the terms of contract.” And I was their man.

So I’d go humping all over town doing what I could to help these people keep their things. I’d explain what the contract said, tell them if they didn’t scrape a payment together by Friday, or Monday, or whatever, the truck would back up to their door and haul it all away and they’d still owe the company money for whatever payments were outstanding at the time of repossession. A couple of times I even threw in some of my own money.

Then one day the owner wants to see me in his office. “You doin’ okay, Lew?” he says. Then he tells me word’s got to him how I’ve been going about my collections, that I know damn well that’s not the way it’s done and he never wanted to hire me in the first place, and I had better get my black butt in the groove or out of his store, did I understand.

It went on like that a little while, not too much longer. Finally I just reached across the desk, pulled him toward me by his shirtfront and started pounding at his face. Afterwards, I went on home.

The police picked me up within the hour. I was sitting out on the porch, cleaned up and dressed in my black suit and waiting for them. The officers and I were polite. A few days later, the judge was polite. He said, politely, that I had a choice: prison for assault and battery, or the armed services, who might be able to put to some good use my, ah, talent for mayhem. A squad car delivered me directly from courtroom to recruiter who, once I’d signed papers, took over. I never even had the chance to call your mother.

It didn’t last long. The army didn’t think I was nearly as desirable as that judge had. And when I got out, your mother was there at the bus station in New Orleans waiting for me. Wearing, since she was working that night, a blue satin dress and blood-red heels, and looking unbelievably beautiful.

After that, we were together, even when we were apart, for almost thirty years. She never let me down. She was always there when I needed her, even when I didn’t know I needed her, even though I was a mess for a long time-more years than you’ve been alive. All that time, I didn’t do much besides hurt myself and other people. Your mother was the one I hurt most.

I’m trying to tell you that I know a little about what you’ve been through. And that I’d like to help, however I can. If you want that help. If you’ll accept it.

And that I loved your mother.

Three days later, when she was up and about, we told Alouette that her baby had died and she said, “Yeah, I thought so.” She was still on sedation, her eyes dull stones.

I went out that afternoon and bought clothes for her. Jeans and sweatshirts, for the most part, but also a plain cotton dress. That’s what she chose to wear when I came by to take her, out on pass, to dinner.

“Well?” she said, standing at half-slouch in the doorway of her room. She had pulled her hair, damaged from months of poor nutrition and utter lack of care, behind her head with a barrette and tried to fluff it out, to give it some body. She wore lipstick that, pale as it was, only emphasized her waxy, sallow complexion. She’d borrowed shoes, navy pumps, from one of the nurses, I guess, along with the lipstick and barrette; I’d bought her a pair of knockoff Nikes.

“ Well ,” I said. “Your mother’s daughter. No doubt about it.”

“Yeah? Well you can be pretty charming for an old fart, even if you are full of shit.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Take it any way you want. Where we going?”

“Up to you. Kids still live off pizza?”

“I don’t know. Next time I see one, I’ll ask.”

“I stand corrected, and apologize. How about burgers?”

“How about steaks?”

“That was going to be my very next suggestion.”

“Big ones. What time do the gates slam shut on me here, anyway?”

“Ten. So there’s plenty of time for a movie too, if you’d like.”

“You’re pretty ordinary, aren’t you, Lewis?”

“I try.”

“Okay,” she said. We stepped together out of the hospital into a warm fall evening, day’s final light fading in a blush of pink and gray just above the trees. “I’ll try too.”

The place we decided on, with the improbable name of Fred’s Steak-Out, looked as though it had slipped through a crack in time from Dodge City or Abilene circa 1860. You could see space between the bare boards of floor and wall, the tables were slabs of wood nailed to lengths of four-by-four and covered with butcher paper and drinks came in old canning jars. The spitoons must have been out back for cleaning. And of course the food was wonderful.

Alouette had prime rib that looked like about half a small cow, a baked potato the size of a football, and mixed greens, mostly kale and collard greens, from the look of it. I ordered grilled tuna with a Caesar salad. We both had iced tea. Lots of iced tea. She still complained of a sore throat from having had the tube in, and thirst from all the drugs.