Baby Face, page 3
part #2 of Bubba Mabry Series
She jerked her head toward the stage, and I followed it with my eyes, and we both watched as the skinny man silenced the crowd by clearing his throat into the microphone.
He made a show of patting his forehead with his hankie, and said, "It's certainly a hot one tonight, isn't it, folks? Soon as that wind died, things warmed up."
His voice had a boom that seemed to come up from the soles of his shoes. It didn't match his body, which was short and frail, the body of someone too pious to enjoy a meal. He wore a stifling black suit and a starched white shirt; his sharp-nosed face had the hard squint of a farmer. In another life he'd be a rural disc jockey, one of those who always surprises you when you meet him in person. A big voice coming out of a little man.
"Yes, the Lord gave us a nice clear night for this rally. And he threw in a little heat to remind the sinners what it's going to be like in Hell."
That got the crowd cheering, and I watched over Felicia's shoulder as she scribbled down what he'd said. She took notes in some strange mix of shorthand and abbreviations and scrawled words, and it might as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics for all I could make out.
At the top of the page, though, in block letters, were the words Rev. Skip Jericho, and I figured that was the scarecrow at the microphone. I recognized the name from Felicia's news stories. Jericho was a leader in the anti-prostitution crusade, and the politicians had stampeded to his door. Felicia followed, and had quoted Jericho often.
Preachers make me nervous, but Jericho started off all right. He made a few little jokes, he played to the crowd's enthusiasm, he got in a plug for his church.
"We call it Victory Chapel," he said, "because it's a church for winners. God likes winners. And He's willing to grant victory to those who give Him their all."
There was a smattering of applause, and Jericho used the break to rearrange his features. The smile slid off his face, pulling his mouth down at the corners, and his eyebrows knitted a deep furrow over his nose. Those in front saw the transformation first, and sent a hush racing to the back of the crowd.
"Now, let's talk about losers." His deep voice had changed, too, becoming angry and flat. "The losers are the ones who refuse to bend to God's will, the ones who won't play by His rules."
He gestured over the crowd, toward the people on the far side of the street.
"These people let money or sex or other worldly pleasures become their focus. They want everything now, now, now, and they don't worry about the long-term cost. They push aside the truth, which is that life is a long struggle and the victory doesn't come until the end."
A few scattered "Amens" rose up to meet Jericho, and he nodded slightly to acknowledge them. He wiped his face with the handkerchief, and his scowl deepened. His voice dropped until it was an amplified whisper breathing from the speakers.
"These losers always think they can have their victories in this life. Some even profit from the weaknesses of others—"
He waved his handkerchief at the porn shop across the street.
"—and God has reserved a special corner of Hell for them."
That got a rise out of the crowd, which hooted and applauded other people's Eternal Punishment.
"Our city has let sin thrive down here on Central Avenue. Pornographers sell their dirty books, and bars pour whiskey, and young women lose their dignity and their souls, selling the bodies God has given them."
Nodding and concerned muttering from the crowd, right on cue.
"We citizens have ignored it. We go to our houses in other parts of town, and we stay away from Central. We ignore what's going on down here, what's happening to our young people.
"That's what people did in Sodom and Gomorrah. They ignored the sinfulness, until it spread like a cancer through both cities, until it was too late to stop it. And you all remember what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. God rained fire on them."
I spotted a wide-eyed little girl who clutched at her mother's skirt, terrified at what God had wrought. Years of nightmares to come, I thought, just because Mommy believed someone named Skip Jericho could actually stop sin along Central. Or anywhere else.
"There are ways to stop it," he said, like he was reading my thoughts. "We have to show the mayor and the City Council we won't stand for it anymore. Central Avenue runs through our fair city like a dark blot, the way the river makes a black strip in the city lights at night. It's up to us to shine God's cleansing light down here."
A cheer rose from the multitudes, and Jericho waved and stepped back from the microphone. A few of the women in front had tears in their eyes. All were flushed with love and zeal and righteousness. It occurred to me they probably all were members of Jericho's congregation, the vanguard of his crusade. And I thought about how few people it took, if they were dedicated, to change the city's mind about things.
Jericho introduced the next speaker, a city councilman named Quentin Dudley, who was at the microphone by the time I started paying attention again. Dudley had a tough act to follow, and seemed to know it. He read quickly and mechanically off a page.
Dudley was a contrast in build, too, standing tall and muscular inside his summer-weight suit. He had cropped blond hair and a thick neck and a square jaw. His eyes were a little close-set, which gave him an air of stupidity he'd somehow overcome.
His speech consisted of automatic things about how the council always wants to know what the citizenry is thinking, and how he appreciated the efforts of those at the rally and how much he'd like to have their vote on Tuesday. I had pretty much tuned him out when he said something that pricked up my ears.
"You know, it's not just pornography and prostitution we're talking about here. It's murder."
He wasn't referring to his notes anymore. Maybe he figured he needed to liven it up after Jericho's mini-sermon.
"Several prostitutes have been killed along Central Avenue recently. Some of you might think that's the way God intended those people to go, but the fact is we've got a district here where it goes on all the time. Because we've let Central Avenue get so bad, it's like a magnet to the prostitutes and the criminals and the killers. You put all the bad people in one place, and they're going to start killing each other."
My neck got hot as anger crept up from my chest. What about the good people who live down here? What about the ones too poor to live anywhere else? What about people like me, who choose it?
I made a sound, between a grumble and a growl, and Felicia shot me a look over her shoulder. She cocked an eyebrow, as if to say, "I told you so," and I shut up and looked away.
These people didn't understand the Cruise. Dudley was from the Heights. Felicia might even live in his district. And, like her, he couldn't see past the dirt and the sin and the crime statistics when he looked at life down here.
Every city needs an area for transients, especially a city like Albuquerque, an urban oasis at the crossroads of two interstate highways, plunked down in the middle of freaking nowhere. People move— geographically, socially, economically. There's got to be somewhere for them to live while they're bringing themselves up from the fringes of society. Sure, it's going to be a tough place. They're tough people. But if there's nowhere for them to go, eventually they're going to start bedding down in your living room, and they'll be too tough, or you'll be too soft, to do anything about it.
Within this transient society, things happen at a faster clip. Friendships form and dissolve, romances last one night, strangers kill each other. Transient people are like pinballs, bouncing from one location/situation/addiction/relationship/job to another until they find a place they fit. Some never fit. Some never try. Some never get a chance to fit before they're taken from the game. And it all happens so fast, they're never really sure what happens next. They're moved by forces beyond their control, governed only by the laws of nature and by chaos.
The trick, then, is to watch it from up close. If you get close enough, and squint just right, you can see most anything. You can see the subtle, tremulous strata of the society, the rapid rise and fall of human lives. A person's position on the Cruise can change overnight with the good fortune of meeting the right person or scoring some dough. If the luck really hits, they'll disappear from the Cruise, never looking back. But it can go the other way just as randomly, resulting in a slow slide or sudden death. The trips down the escalator are the only ones you'll read about in the newspaper, the only ones you'll see from the Heights.
By the time I tuned in again, Dudley was done, and was offering his wife, Marilyn, the microphone. Marilyn looked very prim in a navy-blue knit suit, dark stockings, and low heels. Long black hair framed her pale face and emphasized her skinny neck. Her eyes bulged a little, so that she looked startled or frightened all the time. Maybe she was.
"Thank you, Quentin," she chirped in a shrill little voice. It was a voice I knew I couldn't listen to for long.
"I would like to speak to you from the perspective of a woman," she tweeted. "Women get exploited in every way down here on Central Avenue."
Central was still filled with slow-moving cars, and tires squealed and a car honked and someone shouted loud enough that heads turned in the crowd.
The mumble that rippled through the audience made Marilyn Dudley go even more rigid and frigid than before. She cleared her throat and rattled the papers in her hands.
"Now I'm no feminist," she continued. Felicia glanced back at me and rolled her eyes. "But I'm against the degradation of these women through pornography and prostitution and even murder. The women of Albuquerque must stand up for themselves, and for women everywhere, by putting a stop to the sin on Central Avenue."
That got some applause, more than her husband had gotten, anyway, and you could see it fill her with confidence.
Then a hoarse shout came from the back of the crowd, "Hey, baby!"
Marilyn's head jerked at the sound, like someone had slapped her, and a warm blush flooded her cheeks.
Heads snapped around to glare toward Central Avenue. I stood on my toes as the cars parted and saw a drunk tottering at the far curb. He looked like a pile of old clothes. Battered shoes topped by baggy jeans and a faded lumberjack shirt hanging loose. He was standing just outside the wooden fence that screened the entrance of the porn shop from the street. He glanced back over his shoulder toward the door, like he'd just been thrown out of there, then wheeled back toward the street. The sudden pivot made him lose his balance, and he teetered just long enough that it looked like he might fall into traffic. Then he caught himself and staggered backward a step.
The crowd muttered and some of the women automatically dropped their hands over their children's eyes. Most of the heads slowly swiveled back toward the stage.
Marilyn Dudley fidgeted and cleared her throat. "As I was saying—"
"Hey, baby!" The whiskery drunk grinned across the street.
Marilyn's head drooped, she was so mortified, but she gave it one more try.
"The women of this city—"
"Hey!"
The heads turned back and forth, like the crowd was at Wimbledon. It was Marilyn's serve, but she didn't look like she could deliver. Her face was crimson.
Quentin Dudley stepped over to his wife, tried to put his arm around her. She shrugged him away and her back went stiff and she looked up at the crowd.
"It's all right, dear. I'm fine." Quentin took a step back, not sure what to do. "I'd like to finish," Marilyn said.
The crowd murmured appreciatively. Felicia scrawled furiously, flipping page after page of her notebook. The others around her did the same, and I felt conspicuous, empty-handed.
All eyes were on Marilyn Dudley. She took a deep breath, straightened the papers in her hands.
"It's nearly election day, as you all know—"
"Hey, baby!"
Marilyn's chin snapped and she glared over the crowd at the weaving, grinning drunk.
"What?!" she screamed. "What do you want?"
Everyone for three square blocks froze in place. The sudden scream reverberated off buildings and rattled windows and straightened spines.
No one was more surprised than the drunk, who stumbled backward until a wall caught him. The shock slid off his face, and he looked down and patted the wall like an old friend who'd done him a favor. When he looked up again, the grin was back.
"I want you, baby!"
The crowd huffed indignantly, and the men scowled and the women frowned. This was getting to be too much.
"I want you to sit on my face! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha."
The mothers moved their hands from their children's eyes to their ears. The children looked bewildered.
The drunk pushed himself off the wall. He grabbed the crotch of his baggy jeans and yanked it around, like he was looking for something in there.
"I want you to turn my crank!"
He laughed some more, staggered around in a circle. A grimy hand clutched at his butt as he bent over, and he waggled the sagging denim toward the Christians.
"I want you to kiss my ass!"
A couple of young men in tight jeans and bulging polo shirts detached themselves from the crowd and moved toward the drunk, but they couldn't get through the traffic, and the drunk continued his awkward jig on the far side of the stream of cars. Some of the street people who'd gathered on either side of the dancing drunk saw the clean-cut Christians headed their way, and they edged away.
"I want you to lick my dick!"
The drunk snaked out his red tongue to show her what he meant. Marilyn still stood burning on the deck, her eyes on her shoes.
Two more young lions made their way to the curb, and the four of them pounced through a gap in the traffic and sprinted toward the drunk.
"Hey!" He stumbled backward when he saw them, tried to run, but his coordination had long since fled the country and he couldn't make his legs work.
"Hey!"
Once they reached him, the Christians didn't know quite what to do. They circled him, and he wheeled around and yelled boozily into their faces, "Don't touch me, you motherfuckers! Stay back!"
I caught movement on the stage out of the corner of my eye. Reverend Skip Jericho snatched the microphone off its stand and boomed into it, "Let's drown out this noise, my children!"
The congregation spun at his voice, and he began to sing: "Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves. . ."
Guess that was the first song to pop into his head once he'd broken the trance the rest of us were in. It was a hymn everyone knew, and the Jericho devotees lifted up their voices in song.
"We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves ..."
Others in the crowd were more reluctant to give up the spectacle across the street, where the four strapping men had finally figured it out and had grabbed the drunk by the arms.
"Get your fuckin' hands off me!"
The hymn did make it harder to hear the scuffle as the drunk fell against his captors and yanked his arms around. He grunted and shouted obscenities as they dragged him down the street.
"Bringing in the sheaves . . ."
Realizing he was lost, the drunk gave up fighting and turned his head to shout back over his shoulder toward the stage.
"I don't care! I don't care!"
"Bringing in the sheaves . . ."
"I still love you, baby!"
The reporters around me tried not to laugh. The congregation sang even louder, determined to defeat the Devil with decibels.
The goons disappeared around a corner with the drunk, and we didn't hear anything more from him. I glanced around at the TV cameras to see who would follow. But the cameras were pointed at the stage, and I saw no one cared what became of the drunk. I turned to find the scene I knew would be the one they'd show on the news, the picture that would make tomorrow's front page.
Quentin and Marilyn Dudley stood to Jericho's right, arms around each other, their ail-American faces beaming with song. They towered over the little preacher, who clutched his handkerchief to his forehead as he sang into the microphone with all his might. Someone had handed Quentin Dudley a sign on a stick, and he waved it triumphantly at the crowd.
The sign said clean up sin-tral avenue.
CHAPTER FOUR
The congregation kept bringing in those sheaves, over and over, until I thought my head would explode. Some women instinctively slipped into hymn-voice— that dry, flat singsong that sounds like you're holding your nose. The monotonal edge spread through the crowd until they all were doing it, mesmerized, chanting their mantra.
I felt a little dizzy. I closed my eyes, and I was back at the Antioch Rock Baptist Church in Nazareth, Mississippi. The wild-eyed preacher and his hypnotic handkerchief. The punishing uncushioned pews. And those dried-up old crones in every row, whining at the top of their lungs for Salvation, their hearing aids safely turned off.
I spent every Sunday of my childhood squirming through those services, drawing glares from my devout mother, keeping my father awake. Until they ostracized Mama, then we gradually stopped going. We tried other churches, but they didn't feel right to Mama, all the people staring, and she ended up doing all her praying and Bible-reading at home.
My mother, Eloise Cutwaller Mabry, was visited by Jesus every week or two for nearly a year, starting in the fall of 1967. She sat at the kitchen table every night until all hours, after the rest of the house was silent and asleep, awaiting Jesus. He'd show up at the back door, and Mama would feed him and listen to his fractured parables. Then he'd disappear into the piney woods.
Mama was a celebrity at first, on TV and in supermarket tabloids. But resentment got the better of the town, and celebrity turned to curiosity and pride melted into embarrassment.
Then the sheriff caught Jesus. The official investigation found that Jesus was a hippie wild man, living in the woods, his brain circuitry blown. My mother refused to believe it, and Jesus didn't stick around to sort it out for her. As soon as the judge freed him on his own recognizance, Jesus vanished.
My mother's stalwart resolve about the visitations made people talk about the infamous death of her father, Pincus Cutwaller, who'd plummeted from a New York hotel window during the radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds." My grandfather had gone to New York to receive an inventors' award. He was a naturally curious man, Mama always said, and had probably been leaning out the window to marvel at spaceships and ray guns when he fell. Of course, most people believed he panicked at the news of a Martian invasion and flung himself out the window in fear.
