Jaimy Gordon - Bogeywoman

What a nerve. It was true my fungoid, chewed-down toenails looked like sumpm that grows on dead people, but I was affronted-here I had bit my tongue all this time about her hands-how about a little polite disregard for the ugliness of youth as for the ugliness of age? “Never mind, naked is best disguise-get in.” From a closet by the front door she rolled one of those lidded trash bins marked PROP HOMEWOOD HOSP MEDICAL RES and the apartment number splashed in red-“Get in, Bogey,” she commanded, and though it reeked of rotten citrus and a No way Jose was rising to my lips, I did it. The elevator wheezed and sank and then she was racing the caddy on its squeaky little wheels down some bumpy floor, then Chug was saying slowly over my head: “Nuh-uh, no suh, no way we ain’t taking no marked hospital garbage bin in this here junk wagon, that’s a major heat-thrower right there even if it don’t have no dead body in it, which it probly do.” “No body,” Doctor Zuk barked, “see for self,” and suddenly the lid flopped up over my head and there was Chug blinking at me in the purple twilight. I clapped my hands over my momps but I guess I should have clapped em over my face. Chug said in a scared voice: “Jesus take me home. It’s the mayor’s daughter.” Tuney looked over the edge and went: “ She-e-e-e, she-e-e-e, she-e-e-e … How you figga, Chug?” “I don’t know nothing,” Chug muttered.

Then Zuk did the fuddiest thing of all-one offhand flip of a palm by the hip pocket and she showed, just showed, those boys a roll of lettuce under the street lamp, under the eggplant sky. Bills got forked around so fast I couldn’t see. “Okay, man,” Tuney said, “but no damn trash bin.” They lifted me out by the armpits, silver sandals dangling, and as soon as my feet touched the wagon, I scrambled under a smelly green tarp. Zuk said: “Gentlemen, you will drive to harbor. You will take Broadway to Bank Street to Wolfe Street and when you see water you will drive very slow while I look for boat with name of Jenghiz Khan . When I say stop you stop. Is understood?” “Yessuh,” “Yessuh,” Chug and Tuney said.

And Zuk crawled under there with me. She was packing a squat little doctor’s bag not at all her style. Cowpea clopped off, bells jingling. Under the tarpaulin it was black as a cave and between the sweet straw beneath and the tarry reek on top I was dizzy and itched like crazy. All along my naked body I longed to scratch. The straw poked and Doctor Zuk’s wool suit crawled. “This is torture,” I whispered, “ cheese I itch. What if we get stopped? What if we roll over?” “Some follower you have turned out to be,” Zuk grumbled. “What if I get killed? Who are you gonna say I am?” “Who are you?” she said. “In dark you are nobody, I am also nobody, if we are nobody I suppose I may kiss nobody.” And her mouth spread over mine like a jelly, maybe I should say a jellyfish, I dunno-some moisty tasty halfway disgusting thing between definite and infinite. Then I was a cave, mammoth and dark, how could I know what was going on in all of my ends? A bat rocketed down my spine. I think she had me on her finger, turning. The rims burned off one after another. You could throw up from this. Seasick down a spiral chalk drops burning ribs of silverware gutter spill

[“Chug?” “Whuzzup.” “In your opinion what exactly is we took up with here?” “I don’t know nothing. That’s what we gets paid a hundred a piece for, to know nothing. We gets paid good to know nothing, Tuney, so I know nothing.” “Chug?” “Huh?” “You thank she the mayor’s daughter?” “Say what? Hell no she ain’t the mayor’s daughter. I seen the mayor’s daughter in a parade one time, she a boney redhead with chopstick legs and a freckle face and that ain’t her. Ain’t you never see the mayor’s daughter, Tuney? All the goings-on she show up at? this soup kitchen here and them new projects there?” “Nope.” “She ugly like the mayor too.” “Yeah? What he look like?” “You shucking? You ain’t never see the mayor of Baltimore?” “How I’m gonna see the mayor? I don’t get invited to that shit.” “On the TV, brother, where else?” “Can’t use no TV, give me a pain in my head.” “Well, this here ain’t the mayor’s daughter. This some kinda he-she we got here, but you right she somebody’s daughter. Some big banana.” “Huh. Could be you right.” “Sho I’m right. What I really like to know: that jeffrey in the grease-gray suit, who he? I thank this jeff from some foreign place like Turkey where they don’t got no mayor. Over there they got sultans, pry ministers, like that. What I like to know: what this he-she out the bughouse doing with some jeffrey from Turkey? What he want with a bughouse he-she? Got me wool-gathered, Tuney.” “Tell you what, this fella thank he somebody. Gentlemans, you will this way, and gentlemans, you will that way.” “Yeah. He used to running something big, what it is. Them hundred-dollar bills, they clean like a Chinese laundry. Hadda peel em apart. That’s brand-new money he holding.” “Say-you thank this sumpm big? sumpm on the gummint level maybe? They is a war on, ain’t they? What you thank, Chug? Them two heading for the harbor, muss be tryna get out the country. That boat, what they call that boat? Sound like a spy boat to me.” “A spy boat… I be dogged.” “That’s it, Chug, I got it now. They a spy from Turkey and some gummint bigwig’s daughter escaped out the bughouse. The he-she done emptied out the big banana’s safe, it’s all war money in they, and they be booking out the country on a spy boat.” “I be dogged, Tuney. That’s it. Must be it.” “What we gone do about it, Chug?” “We ain’t gone do nothin. I don’t cay nothing bout no Vietnam war. We got paid good. That’s all I know.” “Yeah? We ain’t paid that good if that black bag full of new money. Less us get lost in them little alleyways and boatyards yonder end of Broadway and pull up back the harbor po-lice. Then we ask what else that Turkey spy got in the bag, you dig?”]

“Gentlemen, you find out right now what I have got in bag. So. See for self.” Sumpm about Zuk’s big face, the barbarian sweep of the cheekbones-I wasn’t one bit surprised to see it rise like a moon behind a big gun. A squared-off, down-to-business-looking pistol with black pebbly handgrips-“Just don’t shoot em,” I whispered, “or when they catch us I’ll never get out of the bughouse.” “You must give up that mental peon think, always bughouse bughouse bughouse,” Doctor Zuk snapped. “You will drive straight to end of Wolfe Street, gentlemen. When you see water you will drive very slow, and when I say stop you will stop, all this time without you say one word. Or I shoot you, is it clear?”

She sat grimly in the straw behind the coachbox, her head poking up the tarpaulin like a tentpole. With the grainy gray evening around her, with the straw and the horse and the gun and the filthy canvas over her head she looked like a fugitive from some world war, which she was. “You can drive no faster, gentlemen?” “Cowpea already in high gear,” said Tuney, “for her.” We went on itching and bouncing and clattering over the tar-patched brick until I was sick of the ride to the roots of my teeth, so I had my fill of ayrabbing in the end, and horse and wagon into the bargain. We hobbled over a last set of trolley tracks, the street bent right and the next block ended in the harbor, or rather at a seedy marina on its edge, dock lights on poles, flat black ripples turning on their spindles, little white boats bobbing on black sheeny water-and one of them must be ours.

“So,” said Zuk, crawling out from under the tarp. “I think maybe I take you gentlemen along with us on People’s Ship Jenghiz Khan for quiet holiday.” I stuck my head out and looked at her in disbelief. She stood on the wagon, the gun at her waist awkwardly poking out her Foofer-style jacket. “Why you wanna take us with yall?” Tuney inquired, “thank yall get sumpm outa somebody? She-e-e-e, she-e-e-e, she-e-e-e , we so lowdown our own mamas pay yall to take us. If we had mamas.” “Yall be stuck with us,” Chug said gravely.