Pete Hamill - Loving Women

“ ‘Maaaaaaa-uh-uh-me, Maaaaaaaaaa-uh-meeeeee …’ ”

“Now you gonna get us killed by the niggers ,” Bobby Bolden said.

“It’s the Klan we don’t want cutting up our ass.”

“I wunt talkin about ya color ,” Bobby Bolden said. “I was talkin bout ya fuckin singin .”

We all laughed, but I glanced back at the trailer as we followed the gravel road into the woods and I wasn’t thinking about the Ku Klux Klan or anything else. The car was there . I imagined her in the half light with some man. Some man . Showing him my drawings. Laughing at his remarks. Through the woods I saw small unpainted houses, some with the doors wide open and lanterns inside on tables. Black kids moved around in the fading light, playing ball or running through bushes. There were no streets. She’s making him shrimp with the red sauce and a salad. She’s bracing her feet against the roof of the trailer . Bobby Bolden pulled the car through an opening in the bushes and down a narrow path and stopped in front of the house: one story with a front porch and a peaked roof. In the darkness, I could make out peeling traces of white paint. The shades were drawn and the front door closed. She’s got the door locked and his trousers are folded over a chair and there is ice clunking in a glass. They will whisper for a long time . We got out of the car.

“Try to behave yourselves,” Bobby Bolden said. “You in a civilized neighborhood now.”

“ ‘The sun shines east, the sun shines west—’ ”

“Sal, you better shut yo mouf, boss,” Bolden said, sounding like Rochester from The Jack Benny Show .

I realized then that Bolden was dressed entirely in black: shiny black shirt, black tapered trousers, high black shiny boots. He looked as if he’d painted himself in silhouette. The eyes seemed greener. He glanced behind us at the road, as if expecting someone. All he saw were a couple of black kids staring without visible emotion at the visiting white men. Then he led the way to the front door and knocked: one-two, one-two-three. Footsteps. Bolden said, “It’s me.” Two locks were turned and then Bobby Bolden’s white woman was framed in the light. I couldn’t see her face. She hugged Bolden warmly and then he casually introduced her as Catty Wolverton. She shook my hand, then stepped aside to let us in. She locked the door behind us.

“Ugliest group a strays I ever seen,” she said.

“Saved them from a vagrancy arrest,” Bolden said.

Catty was about twenty-five, with brown liquid eyes and a red-dish tint in her hair. She had a short pert nose and an overbite that stopped just short of bucked teeth. Some people might think she was homely. But she had a dark smoky voice and heavy breasts above a narrow waist and a drowsy manner and a dirty laugh and I thought: Yeah, I see .

“Help yourself to the booze, guys,” she said, and waved us toward some bottles, glasses and an ice bucket perched on top of a nearly empty bookcase. She went back to the stove. Inside, the house was very bright and clean, the walls painted white, but it was essentially one very large room that felt as if someone had just moved in or moved out.

A bed was shoved up against the far wall, with a braided rug beside it on the plank floor, flanked by two unmatched pinewood bureaus, and on one of them there was a phonograph and a stack of records. The kitchen was larger than the sleeping area; a wide round table was placed in the middle, covered with a red plastic tablecloth and set with dishes and silverware, and there was a new gas stove that contrasted with the plainness of the room. A small refrigerator huddled beside the range and next to it was a stainless-steel sink. There were no pictures on the walls and no flowers. He will smell lilac and begonias and myrtle. He will stare out at the dark lake. He will hear insects droning on the River Styx . Sal poured Jim Beam bourbon into three glasses, added ice, handed them to Max and me.

“So what are you three jackoffs up to?” Catty said, stirring something in a black iron pot. Smelled like gumbo.

“Chastity,” Sal said. “Only thing that works every time.”

“Not for Jews,” Max said. “Go ye forth and multiply, saith the Lord.”

Catty laughed in a dirty way and stirred the pot, then built a drink for herself and Bobby Bolden.

“Hell, chastity don’t work for anybody ,” Catty said.

Bobby stacked some records on the record player and a man with a deep throaty growl began to sing:

Catty hummed along with the chorus, talking about the Navy and being stationed at Mainside (touching the small of Bobby’s back) and her stupid son of a bitch of a chief yeoman (pinching his neck) and how as bad as he was, he wasn’t as bad as that total butternut muffdiver out at Ellyson, Chief McDaid. She knew McDaid from Dago, she said. Son of a whoremaster (she said, brushing Bobby’s ass). Then she picked up the bowls from the table and went to the stove and ladled out the gumbo. Why lie to me, woman? Why say you’re working when you’re not? Hey, you got to reap just what you sow .… The Boulder rose and expanded and then I was sipping the gumbo, made with chicken and vegetables, and it was good but not as good as the first gumbo I’d ever had, down the road, under the live oaks, facing the lake. Then as quickly as it had arrived, The Boulder began to fade.

“Great,” Sal said. “The best. Redneck minestrone.”

“I figured I shouldn’t give you pussyhunters anything too solid,” Catty said. “Ruin your routine.”

“Is this chicken kosher?” Max said.

“Is Chief McDaid?” Bobby Bolden said.

“That cunt,” Sal said. That was the first time I’d ever heard any man use the word in front of a woman, but Catty didn’t react the way I thought she would.

“Sal,” she said, “please don’t demean a perfectly beautiful piece of human anatomy by using it to describe that prick McDaid.”

“You mean that cunt is a prick ?”

“You ofays sure talk dirty,” said Bobby Bolden.

“This is strictly a discussion of nomenclature, Bobby,” Sal said. “Catty says a cunt is a beautiful thing and obviously I agree. Nothing has brought me greater happiness in this vale of tears. But then she implies that a prick is bad and dirty. So I say, if you can’t call McDaid a cunt then you can’t call him a prick either.”

“Is he circumcised?” Max said.

“Only from the ears up,” Catty said, and slammed the table. The bowls of gumbo all bounced.

Sal turned to me and said, “Welcome to the Pensacola chapter of the Holy Name Society.”

Bobby fixed himself another drink and Max went to the stove for more gumbo and the blues man sang again about his lovin woman. There was no inside bathroom. A rotting outhouse stood in the woods behind the building but it looked so bad that the first time we all had to piss we just stood on the back porch and let go.

“Ooooh, wow,” Sal said. “This gotta be the closest man can ever get to God.”

“Do it downwind, will ya, wop?” Bobby Bolden said.

“Mine aint big enough to feel the wind,” Sal said. “Where’s downwind?”

“Toward me,” Max said, “so aim for the tomatoes.”

“ Aaaaaahhhhhh ,” Sal said, shook himself vigorously, and zipped up.

The moon was out now, and through the trees we could see its silvery reflection on the lake.

“God, it’s beautiful,” Sal whispered.

“It sure is,” I agreed.