Leonard Gardner - Fat City

“I didn’t do that.”

“You can tell me the truth. I know how it is. I accept that. It’s only human. It’s a natural drive. I don’t hold it against you. But why with that rotten bastard? There ought to have been something else available, and I guess there was, too, wasn’t there? It’s only natural with a woman and I accept that. It really doesn’t bother me. That’s just the way things go. How can you fight nature? What’s past is past. It’s just the present that counts. But if I ever catch you with him I’ll kill both of you.”

“Who?”

“With anybody! I know what you were doing before you met me. It didn’t take any great brain to figure that out.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You don’t have to lie to me. Tell me all about it, I don’t care. It’s natural enough — you’re a healthy girl. I’m not jealous, I’m just warning you. Now okay, forget it, I’m not mad, everything’s fine. For Christ’s sake, don’t cry. I’m not mad. What went on before me is your own business, and if anybody wises off I’ll bust his head. Didn’t you know he’d shoot his mouth off to everybody? Didn’t you even think about that? That’s what I can’t stand — knowing that son-of-a-bitch is laughing about it. I’m going to kick ass royal around this shit town. Will you stop crying? I told you I’m not mad. Can’t you understand that? Maybe you loved him, I don’t know, though I don’t see how you could, but maybe you did. I know you got urges. It wouldn’t be right if you didn’t.”

She uttered a wail of such resonant grief, loud and deep like an inhuman moan, that he was frightened.

“Faye?”

She was silently rocking. From between her fingers tears dropped to the sheet. Again that deep animal moaning, terrifying in its immodesty, rose from behind her hands. It was a sound he had never heard before. He sat up, rigid, staring at her bowed head, her clenched and digging fingers, saying: “Faye, it doesn’t bother me, it doesn’t bother me. It really doesn’t bother me. Faye, it doesn’t bother me at all. It really doesn’t bother me.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be without that man?”

“Uh,” said Billy Tully.

“And he didn’t mean it. He just gets so nervous. You don’t know what you have to take when you’re interracial. Every son-of-a-bitch on the street has to get a look at you. And Earl’s really a peaceable man. He’s even-tempered. He didn’t hurt that guy and he didn’t want to. Just a little nick on the back of the neck. He wouldn’t any more try to assult somebody than you’d get up on that stool and try to fly. He couldn’t. He’s just not made that way. He’s the sweetest-natured man in the world.”

“He’ll get out,” said Tully, glancing at her in the mirror, her eyes darkly circled, nose dented, mouth bracketed with lines, her lips red and sorrowful and with a fullness, for an instant there beyond the reflected bottles, like the fullness of his wife’s lips. He turned to her, but her face was down and her lips, blocked from his view by her mass of curly hair, could not be like his wife’s because his wife would not have worn that hairdo. His wife had had taste, which had the effect of disqualifying the woman beside him. He turned back to his drink with a pleasurably melancholy sense of fidelity. Impressed by the breadth of his love, he resigned himself. Hopefully he had come to sit by this woman, Oma, whom he remembered as having once intrigued him, but now he felt only indifference. As she talked on, he looked wearily down the lighted bar, lined with beer bottles, glasses, brown bare arms and hot-sauce bottles filled with salt. He had spent the day picking peaches.

“He’s so jealous. I wouldn’t put it past him to be out already, spying on every move I make.”

Tully glanced at the open doorway. Mournful Mexican howls came from the jukebox. On a calendar above the ranks of Thunderbird and Silver Spur, a bare-breasted Aztec maiden lay sleeping at the feet of a warrior, flanked by two giant bottles of Cerveza XX, against a background of snow-capped volcanoes.

“He won’t let me talk to people. He’s so possessive. He’d never let me out of his sight. And he’d get so mad at me. You know when we talked last time, you and me, way back then? You know what he did to me afterwards? He raped me.”

Tully turned to the brown eyes, the lids puffy, eyebrows a short stubble under bluish penciled lines.

“He just picked me up and threw me on the bed. Well, don’t look at me like that. I’m not ashamed to say it. I’ve never been ashamed of the act of love. I believe it’s a part of life.”

Tully was regaining his interest. “Sure, why not? I mean, after all, if people like each other.”

“I don’t mean free love. I got no use for that.”

“Well, free, depends what you mean free. If it’s not free can you call it love?”

“I mean real love. I’m talking about love, not just sex. When you’re really in love you marry for life. That’s the only way it can be. I don’t consider my second marriage sanctified. I should of stayed true to Frank.”

“Who’s that?”

“My first husband. He was a full-blooded Cherokee.”

“You married an Indian?”

“What’s wrong with that? You think you’re any better?”

“I’m not knocking it.”

“Just watch what you say. I won’t stand for any insults against Frank. I heard enough smart talk when I married him. My family turned against me, and he was cleaner than any of them. They talk about Indians drinking. I never saw Frank drunk. I said to hell with all of them. He was the handsomest man I’ve ever known. I still wear his wedding ring.”

Tully looked at the gold band. “What happened, you split up?”

“No.”

“But you’re not married any more.”

Oma paused before replying: “I’m a widow.”

He lowered his eyes. “Uh. Too bad. What happened to him?”

“He was shot.”

“No kidding. Who did it?”

“He was a police officer. He was killed in the line of duty. He’d only been on the force two weeks and he didn’t know what they do to you. He was too brave to be careful. A couple of guys were holding up a bar and he was right there, he and another officer. They got the call and they were right there before the men got off the sidewalk, and Frank jumped out of the car first and they killed him.”

“Where was this?”

“Oakland. We moved up there after we got married and Frank worked in the post office, but that didn’t pay enough and he didn’t like it. Then he heard they needed policemen, and he was big. We didn’t even have time to have children. I married white next time and all he was good for was running us off an embankment. Marrying him was the biggest mistake of my life. He had unnatural desires.”

“He did?”

“The white race is in its decline. We started downhill in 1492 when Columbus discovered syphilis.”

“What did he want to do?”

“White men are animals.”

“We’re not so bad.”

“White man is the vermin of the earth!”

“All right, not so loud.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. Who do you think killed the American Indian? I don’t care who hears me. I know I’m making a nuisance of myself to all these goddamn Mexicans sitting here just waiting for me to leave so they can get comfortable without any gringos around. To hell with these greaseballs. They don’t know who their real friends are.”

“What are you going on about? Take it easy.”

“You can just shut your damn mouth. What do you know about it?”

“What did you say to me?”

“I said you can shut up. And keep your hands off me, too.”