‘You know what? He was like Johnny in a lot of ways, or the way Johnny would have been if he’d been smart and had an education and if God had thought to give Johnny a great big slug of talent inside of him instead of just a head for dope and a nose for wet pussy.
‘I thought nothing of him but to steer clear of him, nothing at all. But when Mama Delorme leaned over me, so close I felt like the smell of cinnamon comin out of her pores was gonna suffocate me, it was his name that came out with never a pause. “Peter Jefferies,” I said. “Peter Jefferies, the man who stays in 1163 when he ain’t writing his books down there in Alabama.
He’s the natural father. But he’s white!”
‘She leaned closer and said, “No he ain’t, honey. No man’s white. Inside where they live, they’s all black. You don’t believe it, but that’s true. It’s midnight inside em all, any hour of God’s day.
But a man can make light out of night, and that’s why what comes out of a man to make a baby in a woman is white. Natural got nothing to do with color. Now you close your eyes, honey, because you tired — you so tired. Now! Say! Now! Don’t you fight! Mama Delorme ain’t goan put nothin over on you, child! Just got somethin I goan to put in your hand. Now — no, don’t look, just close your hand over it.” I did what she said and felt something square. Felt like glass or plastic.
‘ “You gonna remember everythin when it’s time for you to remember. For now, just go on to sleep. Shhh . . . go to sleep . . . shhh . . . ”
‘And that’s just what I did,’ Martha said. ‘Next thing I remember, I was running down those stairs like the devil was after me. I didn’t remember what I was running from, but that didn’t make any difference; I ran anyway. I only went back there one more time, and I didn’t see her when I did.’
Martha paused and they both looked around like women freshly awakened from a shared dream. Le Cinq had begun to fill up — it was almost five o’clock and executives were drifting in for their after-work drinks. Although neither wanted to say so out loud, both suddenly wanted to be somewhere else. They were no longer wearing their uniforms but neither felt she belonged among these men with their briefcases and their talk of stocks, bonds, and debentures.
‘I’ve got a casserole and a six-pack at my place,’ Martha said, suddenly timid. ‘I could warm up the one and cool down the other . . . if you want to hear the rest.’
‘Honey, I think I got to hear the rest,’ Darcy said, and laughed a little nervously.
‘And I think I’ve got to tell it,’ Martha replied, but she did not laugh. Or even smile.
‘Just let me call my husband. Tell him I’ll be late.’
‘You do that,’ Martha said, and while Darcy used the telephone, Martha checked in her bag one more time just to make sure the precious book was still there.
The casserole — as much of it as the two of them could use, anyway — was eaten, and they had each had a beer. Martha asked Darcy again if she was sure she wanted to hear the rest. Darcy said she did.
‘Because some of it ain’t very nice. I got to be up front with you about that. Some of it’s worse’n the sort of magazines the single men leave behind em when they check out.’
Darcy knew the sort of magazines she meant, but could not imagine her trim, clean little friend in connection with any of the things pictured in them. She got them each a fresh beer, and Martha began to speak again.
‘I was back home before I woke up all the way, and because I couldn’t remember hardly any of what had gone on at Mama Delorme’s, I decided the best thing — the safest thing — was to believe it had all been a dream. But the powder I’d taken from Johnny’s bottle wasn’t a dream; it was still in my dress pocket, wrapped up in the cellophane from the cigarette pack. All I wanted to do right then was get rid of it, and never mind all the bruja in the world. Maybe I didn’t make a business of going through Johnny’s pockets, but he surely made a business of going through mine, ‘case I was holding back a dollar or two he might want.
‘But that wasn’t all I found in my pocket — there was something else, too. I took it out and looked at it and then I knew for sure I’d seen her, although I still couldn’t remember much of what had passed between us.
‘It was a little square plastic box with a top you could see through and open. There wasn’t nothing in it but an old dried-up mushroom — except after hearing what ‘Tavia had said about that woman, I thought maybe it might be a toadstool instead of a mushroom, and probably one that would give you the night-gripes so bad you’d wish it had just killed you outright like some of em do.
‘I decided to flush it down the commode along with that powder he’d been sniffing up his nose, but when it came right down to it, I couldn’t. Felt like she was right there in the room with me, telling me not to. I was even scairt to look into the livin-room mirror, case I might see her standin behind me.
‘In the end, I dumped the little bit of powder I’d taken down the kitchen sink, and I put the little plastic box in the cabinet over the sink. I stood on tiptoe and pushed it in as far as I could —
all the way to the back, I guess. Where I forgot all about it.’
She stopped for a moment, drumming her fingers nervously on the table, and then said, ‘I guess I ought to tell you a little more about Peter Jefferies. My Pete’s novel is about Viet Nam and what he knew of the Army from his own hitch; Peter Jefferies’s books were about what he always called Big Two, when he was drunk and partying with his friends. He wrote the first one while he was still in the service, and it was published in 1946. It was called Blaze of Heaven.’
Darcy looked at her for a long time without speaking and then said, ‘Is that so?’
‘Yes. Maybe you see where I’m going now. Maybe you get a little more what I mean about natural fathers. Blaze of Heaven, Blaze of Glory.’
‘But if your Pete had read this Mr Jefferies’s book, isn’t it possible that — ‘
‘Course it’s possible,’ Martha said, making that pshaw gesture herself this time, ‘but that ain’t what happened. I ain’t going to try and convince you of that, though. You’ll either be convinced when I get done or you won’t. I just wanted to tell you about the man, a little.’
‘Go to it,’ Darcy said.
‘I saw him pretty often from 1957 when I started working at Le Palais right through until 1968
or so, when he got in trouble with his heart and liver. The way the man drank and carried on, I was only surprised he didn’t get in trouble with himself earlier on. He was only in half a dozen times in 1969, and I remember how bad he looked — he was never fat, but he’d lost enough weight by then so he wasn’t no more than a stuffed string. Went right on drinking, though, yellow face or not. I’d hear him coughing and puking in the bathroom and sometimes crying with the pain and I’d think, Well, that’s it; that’s all; he’s got to see what he’s doing to himself; he’ll quit now. But he never. In 1970 he was only in twice. He had a man with him that he leaned on and who took care of him. He was still drinking, too, although anybody who took even half a glance at him knew he had no business doing it.
The last time he came was in February of 1971. It was a different man he had with him, though; I guess the first one must have played out. Jefferies was in a wheelchair by then. When I come in to clean and looked in the bathroom, I seen what was hung up to dry on the shower-curtain rail -continence pants. He’d been a handsome man, but those days were long gone. The last few times I saw him, he just looked raddled. Do you know what I’m talking about?’