A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell Read online

  Shifty folded the napkin into his pocket and limped off.

  "What's your name?" I asked.

  "Like I told. Egret."

  * * *

  My time boxing was without event. Ebert was not good enough to teach or to hurt me, though I'll wager he was considerably tougher in the long haul. He was finally mostly a clown, very gentle in the center, and he was living in a tough, tough world. When Stebbins saw us pawing each other he yelled, "Punk and white punk. Punkpunk." It didn't bother me, but Ebert explained something to me later.

  "When Frank call you punk, it's race. When he call me punk, it's sex."

  I sat there, apparently failing to respond as he would have liked.

  He suddenly offered, "Got two kids."

  "What?"

  "Two kids."

  "Who?"

  "Me."

  "You?" I figured him about eighteen.

  "Selfsame individual you see."

  All I had to go on was the race and sex thing. "They black?"

  "Who?"

  "Your kids."

  "Dit."

  "All black?"

  "Dit."

  "All right. Nobody's white, except me, nobody's queer."

  "Dit."

  "Except Stebbins."

  "Siss. I hope the Frog eat his ass."

  "You want a beer?"

  Ebert looked around. "This early?" It was about 7:30.

  "You better have one. Tomorrow I bust your ass."

  "Oh. He serous. Okayden. A Curs."

  When I left Bilbo's that morning I did not go to Camel Tent. I walked back to do some waving with the actress. We'd reached a peak of waving. We were, I figured, waved out.

  We had been waving now for nearly three weeks, and it was not the simple acknowledging of passersby. From the start, from that first morning I surprised her by going the wrong way, it seemed she had waved with a forthright openness that suggested we were not, to her mind, altogether strangers. It is unsettling to be acknowledged by a stranger who appears to think himself familiar, of course, and in this case, as I've said, the stranger was hailing me boldly in a turquoise robe, holding a forty-foot spray of water on a half acre of violently blooming color.

  I recall once being waved at by a man in drag from a balcony window in Baton Rouge, and as I ignored him and kept walking, he shouted loudly down, "Well, it's only hey!" and shamed me. I gave him a weak, noncommittal wave that made him laugh..

  The watering woman and I had fully explored the dynamic of stranger-to-stranger waving, and it had developed its own periodicity. I could have drawn up the elemental chart of waving. On a Monday she'd give me a haggard little gesture from very near her hip, where her free hand rested as she watered with the other, and I'd return in kind a little thing with a finger or thumb from near my pants pocket. By Wednesday she'd be offering more arm, more motion, with loose-wristed familiarity and a smile. By Friday we were at a quantum ledge of hand semaphore; she waved like a relative down at the docks to greet the ocean liner I was on. It made me respond by waving so vigorously in return I'd go off the sidewalk.

  On this Friday she saw me coming, crimped off the fat red hose, and began to gesture so wildly I was certain she intended a slapstick parody of us, that she was saying finally, Well, it's only hey. She got her arm up stiff, not unlike a German salute, and swung it gravely over her head, leaning a bit with the motion as if she were signaling with a great, heavy, brass railroad lantern overhead. It was so far out on the chart I could not wave back properly. I walked up to her fence.

  She gave the hose a further dip and crimp, and some water flew onto her robe, which she stared at, dabbing the spots into broader spots.

  "That material will dry quickly," I said.

  She looked at me. "I know how quickly this material will dry. I spazzed out."

  I was aware that we had already abandoned the innocence of strangers waving at one another. It seemed a bit of a shame.

  "I hope you're not standing there like a geek because you think I'm that woman named Drown."

  "Ma'am?" I said.

  "Ma'am what?"

  "I think you might be what?"

  "You think I might be a fool. Come on in and let's have us a gin something." She turned and walked into the flowers, from where, out of sight, she called, "Gate's unlocked." She called then, from inside the house, "Fizzes or will simple tonics do?"

  I managed the gate and said with fake aplomb, "Tonic's divine."

  "Divine is right," she called from the kitchen, where I could see her through a bank of jalousie windows which enclosed a patio. It had flowered oilcloth furniture and a concrete floor. On a table beside a yellow weatherproof sofa with blue hydrangeas printed on it I saw a Sunday newspaper entertainment section, the cover of which was a color photograph of a woman standing on a spiral staircase. Her hair blew to one side, and gray moss on oak trees blew in from the other. The colors of the woman's face were printed out of register, yet it was still recognizably the woman in the kitchen fixing gin somethings. The caption read Mary Constance Baker in "A Woman Named Drown."

  "Some of these people get the idea you are what you act in the amateur theater game," Mary Constance Baker said, coming out with two drinks. "I have to wear a disguise to go shopping."

  "Because you are famous here?"

  "Because there are folk out there who think I drowned a plantation--mules, Ashleys, slaves, my mulatto children, and all."

  "That happens in the play?"

  "That happens in the play."

  "Sorry I missed it."

  "Sugar, play like that will be back every other year. Sit down."

  "This is you," I said to her, pointing at her photo in the Sunday paper.

  "Bingo." She was already through with her drink, shaking the ice.

  "I hadn't seen this before."

  "It's no federal case. You shoot pool?"

  "No."

  "Come on."

  We went into a sunken room, which was walled on the garden side by glass blocks. The colors of the flowers came through softened and mixed so that the room felt as out-of-register as the newspaper photo.

  She racked the balls and started running them off the table.

  "Where'd you learn to shoot like this?" I finally said.

  Not looking up from her shot she said, "My old man."

  "Where is he?"

  She kept shooting.

  "What happened to him?"

  "What?" She interrupted a shot.

  "Your old man. What happened?"

  "Oh," she said, realigning. "Lost his stick." She ran the table. She put her cue down and turned on a two-tone hi-fi in the corner. "Ray Conniff," she said. "You look ready." She left for the kitchen with my glass. If I could see her dancing to Ray Conniff and His Singers as she made the drinks. She came back, racked t again, and started dancing from shot to shot, swooning dreamily, then snapping up with eyes all business, sinking balls with precise cracking collisions of incidence and reflection, rolling in rocket trails of the candied light.

  I asked, without planning to, if I could take a shower.

  "No ceremony here," she said, indicating another part of the house with her cue.

  "Before I do," I added, again more or less surprising myself, "should you know me any better?"

  "Like what?" she asked, looking up.

  "I don't know. ]ob, name, sexual preference. That sort of thing."

  "I thought you kids did away with that song and dance."

  "We tried."

  "Take a shower."

  In the shower, beautiful pink-and-green tiles seemed to move a bit along with Ray Conniff, too. I held my head in a big towel for a while and saw a double bed and without ceremony got in it, under a spread that had a thousand fuzzy balls on its fringe and millions smaller on its surface.

  When I woke up--it was one of those sleeps in which you drool--I was out of the covers and people were talking.

  "Well, you'd think a bitch named Drown'd dress before goddamn t'ree o'clo
ck, for Christ sake," boomed a male voice. I heard Mary say, very formally, "What can I get you, Virginia?"

  The door opened and Mary came in, motioning for me to stay put. "Guess what?"

  "What?"

  "A drop-in."

  She slid out of her robe and into real clothes with her back to me. "There's two drawers of the old man's things when you want to come out."

  She left and I got up. Not once do I recall wondering what in hell I was doing there, though now, looking back, it seems a good time to have wondered. Perhaps I was held by the certainty that I had to stay in order to find out. I tested my head with a small shake and saw my face was waffled from the knitted bedspread. I looked like a kid up from a nap.

  In one of the indicated drawers, I found the old man had left two kinds of pants: swimming trunks with built-in net liners and bright putter pants with elastic waists. The shirts were all pastel Ban-Lons. I did not see the clothes I came in. I found some white shoes. I emerged in a canary golfer's ensemble.

  When I stepped into the den I was converged upon by the loud man, who introduced himself simply as Hoop and pointed out his wife, Virginia, as if she were down the block. Virginia waved vaguely to us while talking with Mary, who came over with a tray of drinks. Hoop and I took one.

  Hoop had balls in play on the table. "Hey, bud, you play this friggin sport?"

  "I don't shoot for shit." My language seemed to delight him.

  "It's a bitch all right," he said. "It's a motherin bitch." He then missed his remaining shots, feigning dissatisfaction with himself. I thought he was going to ask for a game, but he racked his cue and came over to me, stopping within a whispery, conspiratorial distance. "Hey, Constance," he yelled, winking at me, "what's two sailors got to do get some liquor in these drinks, for Christ sake?" He quickly whispered, "You got a good one there--lotta the boys give a nut be where you are. You know what I mean?"

  "Sure I know what you mean."

  Hoop shot out his hand for a confirmational men's shake, and I shook it solidly. Still holding on to me, and pulling me closer, Hoop bellowed, "This boy's all right, Constance!"

  Holding and squeezing and tugging me to and fro, he said again, "He's all right, he's all right." Mary came in bearing more drinks and a very patient hostess face.

  "You takin 'm to Florida or something?" Hoop said to her. "He looks just like Sam."

  "No plans, Hoop."

  "What's your handicap, son?"

  "I peg the meter," I said.

  "Ha! Whorin Mary! I'm off the friggin scale myself. We'll shoot thirty-six sometime. That's how to beat you youngsters. Thirty-six. Sudden death." He offered the handshake again. "Sudden friggin death."

  "Let's go up with the girls, Hoop. I want to meet your wife."

  "Blame you for that, I don't," he said. Tapping his front teeth with a fingernail, he said, "Perfect teeth."

  We went up from the sunken den into the bright patio.

  "Goddamn if you aren't a green thumb to beat the friggin band, Connie," he yelled as we entered the undiffused, flowery light. He opened a bank of the jalousie windows and beheld the garden, stooping a bit to look through the slits. "Jesus the rumrunner, would you look at that?" We both looked through the slits.

  "Remind me to cut you a spray, Ginny," Mary said to Virginia, who stood by smiling. She did have perfect teeth.

  "Oh, please--" Virginia said.

  "No, it's no trouble. You know me: Too many glads in the glasshouse."

  "Goddamn. Trouble, my purple baboon ass. She's got to cut 'em down, honey. Need someplace to walk in this friggin Amazon."

  "It's my pleasure, Ginny, it really is."

  "Thank you, Constance," Virginia said.

  "Hey! Friggin idea! You gals go out there and mow some friggin parrot jungle down and the kid 'n me makes a round."

  Hoop rushed toward the bar, a substantial rattan-and-hardwood thing I hadn't noticed, dusty in a corner of the patio. Virginia and Constance went out with a pair of shears.

  "Would you look at the dust!" Hoop yelled. "Find me some swabbin gear, Chief."

  I went in the kitchen, made us two drinks, and returned with a rag and soap. "She's been making them in there."

  "I know, for Christ sake. Broad's got this bar from the islands, beautiful friggin teak here, won't use it. We take it apart and hide it on board and get it here and get it back together--that's the friggin miracle, and tight when we busted her up--no friggin numbers on it like your dinosaurs and shit."

  "Where was this?"

  "Mutton fart capital of the world."

  "You were in the navy?"

  "Guam, Guadalcanal, one of them G islands. No, Seabees. All them islands is alike. This bastard could've come from the halls of friggin Montezuma. What the shit difference. It's heavy, pure-quill teak, we stole it from an operating whorehouse, we got it here is the thing. Contrabandits! Joke!"

  Hoop threw the rag and soap bottle at the bar's small chrome sink. "Whore called Five-ton sits on it, crying, see? Because Stump and me are having at it with screwdrivers, see?" He goes into falsetto. "I love you, Joes, no shit, Joes, but need post office for sell love.' Five-ton whines this at us, see? Imagine that: some wiseheimy tells 'em a friggin whorehouse is a post office and they buy it. 'You want first class, Joe?' It was a scream. 'You want special delivery?' There Five-ton is, trying to hold the bar down, crying, and Stump and me start pulling it apart. Beautiful." He is wiping the bar with great, broad strokes. I already feel drunk again. Hoop's rag is steaming in vigorous circles on the teak.

  "Doesn't come over here that he don't wash the friggin bar," Mary is suddenly whispering in my ear. I have the sensation that some time has passed that I missed. Hoop is furiously twisting a dish towel inside a glass.

  "It's his past," Mary says. She rolls her eyes. Virginia comes in with flowers, looking for a vase, her perfect teeth apologetically out front.

  Hoop squeaks the rag in his glass and holds it to the light. "That's a clean glass," he says. "Something about a really clean glass, eh, Chief?"

  Virginia passes through the room again, still looking for a vase.

  I had the feeling that time was lurching and braking and bouncing me around within it. Ray Conniff and His Singers, for one thing, were suddenly very much with us, and I seemed to be swaying along with Mary to them.

  "Always use your twist on these," Hoop said, grinding a lemon rind around a glass rim. "People never follow their friggin recipes?

  I jumped because of breath in my ear. "How's your clutch?" Mary said, inches from me.

  " 'Ere you go, Chief." Hoop plunked three new drinks squarely on fresh cocktail napkins in front of us. "From the bar, where they ought to be," he said I proudly. Mary blew smoke at him and took a stool next to mine. She put a finger into the waistband of my putter pants.

  "Hoop," she said, "you're a goose." She was tugging at the waistband in rhythm to Ray Conniff and His Singers. Hoop squinted at her. She shook ice at him.

  "Excuse me," I said.

  On my way to the bathroom I saw Virginia's spray of shrimp-colored gladiolas on a marble stand and was drawn to them like a huge, clumsy bee. My face went in--lipstick corals and green leaves as delicate as nylon. Virginia was, I then saw, taking a nap on a daybed a few feet away. She looked patient, flat on her back, serene, her teeth concealed.

  When I got back to the bar, Hoop and Mary were squared off about something I got the feeling was well rehearsed.

  "If it had sunk it would still be all right," Mary was saying.

  "Sunk?" Hoop boomed. "Aboard the U.S.S.--"

  "Too much that should sink never does!" Mary intoned, slapping the bar with a flat-palmed crack that made Hoop jump. She put her arm around my shoulder.

  Hoop winked at me.

  I said, "Hi, Poop. Hoop."

  He tried to take my glass.

  "Have you gathered," Mary said, again inches from my ear, "that my old man and Hoop won the Second World War holding hands?"

  "Sort of."
r />   "And I imagine a young man like you has been around, too."

  "I've not been a man named Drown." Looking back, I see this remark could have been tasteless--I still don't know that her husband didn't drown--but it was innocently said.

  "Funny," Mary said.

  "Do you do that stuff for a living?"

  "Ha," Mary said, motioning for Hoop to light her cigarette. "That's community theater. I do to get out of the house."

  Hoop lit her up and she blew a big spiral at the ceiling, watching it as if she had forgotten us for a bit.

  "My point is, the world doesn't go around on biographies. Remember that and we'll get on fine. No bio."

  "I will." I had to recall the Orphan.

  "Act!" Hoop suddenly shouted. "That's about right. Chief knows more than he looks. She acts, all right."

  Mary looked at Hoop. "Ensign Hooper here believes in quartering on board while in port." She held her cigarette near her ear, smoke swirling irregularly up around her hair.

  She looked at me with low eyelids. "What do you intend to do about Mother Nature?" she said.

  *Hoop stopped his fussing with bar things.

  "I'm not sure yet," I said.

  "Mush!" Hoop said. "We're out of ice." He went to the kitchen.

  Mary leaned toward me, as if falling, and pressed her forehead to mine, holding me behind the neck with her cold drink hand. She rolled our foreheads together.

  "How do these work?" Hoop stood in the door with a blue plastic tray of ice cubes. "There's no arm."

  "Twist them, Hoop," Mary said.

  "There's no arm," Hoop said again.

  "They don't make arms on them anymore," I offered.

  Hoop looked at me. "Yeah, I see."

  I took it for a slur. "You torque them, Hoop," I said, trying to somehow slur him back.

  "Yes, Hoop," Mary said. "Torque you ice trays."

  She made the sense I couldn't. She was holding some liquor. She laughed.

  Hoop turned and retreated. We heard ice cubes popping loose and hitting the floor.

  "Friggin torque is right." Hoop came back and fitted the new cubes into the glass-lined ice bucket. As soon as he settled them in and achieved a tight fit with the lid, Mary held her glass in the air to him, tapping out her cigarette. I started to swivel away from the bar, but she got me by the waistband and tugged me back around.