Morning Glory

Chapter 20

The war had been hard on Lula. It deprived her of everything she cared most about: nylon stockings, chocolate ice cream-and men. Especially men. The best ones, the healthy, young, virile ones were gone. Only shits like Harley were left, so what choice did she have but to keep on getting what she needed from the big ape? But she couldn’t even blackmail him anymore. In the first place there was no gas to drive to Atlanta and window-shop the way she used to-who could go anywhereon three measly gallons a week!-and even if she could, there was nothing in the stores worth blackmailing for. That damn Roosevelt had control of everything-no cars, no bobby pins, no hair dryers. And nothing, absolutely nothingchocolate! It was beyond Lula why every GI in Europe got so many Hershey bars they were giving them away when folks back home had to do without! She’d put up with a lot, but it took the cake when Roosevelt handed down the order dictating what flavors of ice cream could be made! How the hell did he expect a restaurant to stay in business without chocolate ice cream? And without coffee?

Lula rested a foot on the toilet lid and spread brown leg makeup from toes to thigh, riled afresh by having to do without nylons. How the hell many parachutes did they need anyway? Well, never let it be said that Lula didn’t look her best, no matter what inconveniences she had to put up with. When the makeup was applied, she carefully drew a black line up the back of her leg with a "seam pencil." Dressed in bra and panties, she scooted into her bedroom, leaped onto the high bed and turned her back to the dresser mirror to check the results.

Straight as a shot of Four Feathers blended, right from the bottle!

From her closet she chose the sexiest dress she owned, orange and white jersey with enormous shoulder pads, a diamond cutout above the breast, bared knees and nice, clingy hips. One more time she’d try it, just once, and if she didn’t get results this time, the high and mighty Will Parker could cut holes in his pockets and play with himself for all she cared. After all, a woman had pride.

She squirmed into the dress, tugging it over her head, then returned to the bathroom to comb out her pincurls and fashion her hair into its usual whisked-up foreknot of curls. At least she had wave-set; the curls were hard as metal springs and bounced against her forehead gratifyingly.

All zipped, made-up and perfumed, she patted her hair, posed before the mirror with hands akimbo and calves pressed close, like Betty Grable, practiced her kittenish moue, bared her teeth to check for lipstick smudges, and decided the man’d have to be out of his mind to choose Crazy Elly See over this!

She licked her teeth, breathed into her cupped palm, smelled her breath and dug in her purse for a packet of Sen-Sen. Damn Wrigley’s right along with Roosevelt, for supplying the entire U.S. military service with free gum for the duration of the war while people out here who were willing to pay for it had to suck this rotten Sen-Sen!

But her breath was sweet, her legs sexy and her cleavage showing as she set out to bag her prey. Hot diddly, that man set her to itchin’ worse than ever! An ex-Marine now with a Purple Heart-imagine that!-with a bit of a hitch still detectable in his walk. It only made him more appealing to Lula.

She’d seen him from the window of the restaurant the day in May when he returned from the war, and she’d nearly drowned in her own saliva watching him limp up those library steps to see that old biddy, Mizz Beasley. Before he’d reached the door Lula had pressed her pubis against the backside of the counter for a little relief, and it hadn’t changed since. By August she was still watching the square incessantly for mere glimpses of him, and when he wasn’t in town all she had to do was think of him to get the old juices flowing. Lord, the way he’d looked in that uniform, with those crutches, and that tan, and those sultry eyes beneath the visor of his Marine dress cap. He was the best piece of flesh this town had to offer, and Lula’d have him, by God, or wrinkle up trying!

The back door of the library was unlocked. She turned the knob soundlessly. Inside, a radio played softly and a dim fog of light showed at the far end of the narrow back hall. On tiptoe Lula crept its length, paused at the end to peer into the poorly lit main room of the library. He had only one light on, and the blackout curtains drawn. A stroke of luck-privacy!

He was working with his back to her, squatting down on one knee, peering up at the underside of a table with a screwdriver in his hand, whistling along with "I Had the Craziest Dream." Lula silently slipped off her shoes, left them beside the checkout desk and crossed the room on catfeet.

Stopping close behind him, she could smell his hair tonic. It set her nostrils quivering and her private muscles twitching. As usual, Lula followed the instincts of her body, not her brain. She didn’t stop to figure that you don’t blind-side a jumpy ex-Marine who’s fought on Guadalcanal, whose reaction time is quick, whose instincts are deadly and who’s been trained in the art of survival. He looked good, he smelled good, and he was going to feel good, she thought, as with a feminine, gliding motion she moved in and began slipping her hands around his trunk.

His elbow flew back and rammed her in the gut. He lurched to his feet, spun, knocked her off-kilter, landed a deadly blow on the side of her neck and slammed her to the floor, where she slid six feet before coming to a stop wrapped around the leg of a table.

"What the hell are you doing in here!" he exploded.

Lula couldn’t talk, not with the breath knocked from her.

"Get up and get out of here!"

I can’t, she tried to say, but her jaws flapped soundlessly. She curled up and hugged her stomach.

War had taught Will that life was too precious to squander in any way, even a few precious moments spent with people you didn’t like. He stomped over and jerked Lula roughly to her feet. "What you got to learn, Lula, is that I’m a happily married man and I don’t want what you’re sellin’.So get out and leave me alone!"

Doubled over, she stumbled several steps. "You… hit… me… you bastard!" she managed between gulps.

He had her by the hair so fast he nearly left her leg makeup on the floor.

"Don’t you ever call me that!" he warned from behind clenched teeth.

"Bastard, put me down!" she screamed as he held her aloft.

Instead he raised her higher. "Whore!"

"Bastard!"

"Whore!"

"Owww! Put me down!"

He opened his hand and she fell like a piece of wet laundry.

"Git out and never come sniffin’ around me again, you hear? I had enough of your kind when I was too damn dumb to know the difference! Now I got a good woman, a good one, you hear?" He picked her up by the front of the dress, slammed her to her feet and nudged her roughly from behind-nine times-all the way to the back door, snatching up her shoes on the way. He fired the shoes like two orange grenades into the alley, pushed her outside and offered in parting, "If you’re in heat, Lula, go yowl beneath somebody else’s window!"

The door slammed and the lock clicked.

Lula glared at it and hollered, "Goddamn you, you peckerhead! Just who do you think you’re knockin’ around!" She kicked the door viciously and sprained her big toe. Clutching it, she screamed louder, "Peckerhead! Asshole! Toad-suckin’ Marine! Your dick prob’ly wouldn’t fill my left ear anyway!"

With tears and black mascara streaking her face, Lula hobbled down the steps, retrieved her shoes and limped away.

She arrived back home enraged and marched straight to the telephone.

"Seven-J-ring-two!" she yelled, then waited impatiently with the black candlestick mouthpiece tapping against her chest, the earpiece pressed above her orange flamingo-feather earring.

After two rings she heard, "H’llo?"

"Harley, this is Lula."

"Lula," he whispered warily, "I told you never to call me at home."

"I don’t give a large rat’s ass what you told me, Harley, so shut up and listen! I got me a hard-on that’s bigger’n any you ever had and I need you to do somethin’ about it, so don’t say yes or no, just get in your goddamn truck and be at my house in fifteen minutes or I’ll be on my bike so fast I’ll leave a trail like a cyclone. And when I’m done payin’ your precious Mae a little social call she won’t be left wonderin’ what them yellow stains on your belly was from, com-prend-ay? Now move, Harley!"

She slammed the receiver into the prongs and nearly loosened the table legs whacking the telephone down.

Harley had little choice. The older he got the less he needed Lula. But she was dumb and ornery enough to louse things up real good between him and Mae, and he had no intention of losing Mae over a two-bit whore. No sirree. When he retired from that mill with his pockets full after this lucrative war made him rich, he intended to have Mae to bring him iced tea on the porch and his boys to go fishing with and the girls-well, hell, girls weren’t much use, but they were entertaining. The oldest one was sixteen already. Another couple years and she could be married, having his grandchildren. The thought held a curious appeal for Harley. Damn Lula, she could louse it up good if she started flappin’ her trap.

When he opened her door he was already yelling.

"Lula, you got no brains or what? Where the hell are you, Lula?"

Lula was sprawled on the bed, wearing her orange high heels and her orange flamingo-feather earrings and a few black and blue marks from Will Parker’s hands. An ingot of incense burned on the bedside table and her lacy underpants were draped over the lampshade to cut the light.

"Lula, what the hell you mean, callin’ me up and givin’ me orders like I was some-"

Harley rounded her doorway and stopped yelling as if a guillotine had dropped across his tongue. Lula was touching herself with one hand, reaching toward him with the other…

Two months later, on a bleak day in October, Harley got another call from Lula, this time at the mill.

"Harley, it’s me."

"Jesus, what’s the matter with you, callin’ me here! You want the whole damn world to know about us?"

"I gotta see you."

"I’m working a shift and a half today."

"I gotta see you, I said! I got somethin’ important to tell you."

"I can’t tonight, maybe Thurs-"

"Tonight, or I’ll blurt it out on this phone with Edna Mae Simms rubbering in down at central right now-you there, Edna Mae? You gettin’ all of this?"

"All right, all right!"

"Eight-fifteen, my place."

"I don’t get off till-"

The phone clicked dead in Harley’s hands.

When he arrived at Lula’s house she was dressed in a black sheeny dressing gown patterned with cerise orchids the size of cymbals. Her hair was neatly upswept and she wore high-heeled shoes to match the orchids. They reminded Harley of one time when his mother had made him eat beets and he’d vomited afterward. Lula opened the door and closed it behind Harley with a sober snap, then turned to face him with her hands on her hips.

"Well, I’m knocked up, Harley, and it’s yours. I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it."

Harley looked like a bazooka had just been fired three inches from his ear. For a moment he was too stunned to speak. Lula sauntered into the parlor, chin lowered while she pressed a bobby pin into its holding place high on her head.

Bug-eyed, breathless, Harley stammered, "Kn-knocked up?"

"Yup, all yours and mine, Harleykins." She patted her stomach and flashed a sarcastic smile. "Bun in the oven."

"B-but I ain’t seen you for two months, Lula!"

"Exactly, and if you’ll remember, you didn’t use any rubber."

"How could I when I didn’t have any! Goddamn rubbers’re gettin’ as scarce as tires these days. It’s a wonder Roosevelt hasn’t got the Boy Scouts out collectin’ used ones like they collect everything else!" Harley dropped to the sofa and raked a hand through his hair, muttering, "Pregnant… Christ."

Lula braced a stiff arm on the back of an overstuffed chair, drumming paradiddles with her hot-pink nails.

"Oughta be here about next May."

"You seen a doctor already?"

"Yup. Went to Calhoun today."

Harley jumped to his feet and paced. "Dammit, Lula, why didn’t you tell me you could’ve got pregnant that night! This is your fault, not mine!"

Lula came to life like a kicked cobra. "My fault! Why you cheap, sniveling penny-pincher, don’t you blame this on me! You’ve always been a great one to hump first and ask second. And I know why! ’Cause all you think of is money-money-money! Up there at the mill haulin’ it in hand over fist puttin’ up government contracts at time and a half overtime, and too cheap to go to the drugstore and spend a quarter! Well, don’t you point fingers at me, Harley Overmire! All you’da had to do that night was take ten seconds to put one on, but no, you had to leap on me like some tomcat sniffin’ pussy!"

"Now you just wait a minute, Lula. I come in here and you were sprawled out like a tomato sandwich waitin’ for salt and pepper and you expect me to back off and think! You could’ve shut your legs for just a minute, you know!"

"Me, me, always me!" Lula yowled. "You been layin’ me for six years and how many times you ever thought about it before? Huh? Answer me that, Harley! I’m always the one got to think about it-well, I get sick of it! Just once I’d like you to do the thinkin’ and treat me like the lady I am and take a little time first, instead of jumpin’ on me and ruttin’ like a boar!"

"A boar! So now I’m a boar!"

"Don’t change the subject, Harley. I said I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it and I want an answer!"

"Answer-hell, where’m I supposed to get an answer?"

Lula had done some reconsidering and had come to the conclusion that Harley Overmire was better than nothing. Besides, he wasn’t really so bad in bed. And at least her kid would have an old man. Lula curled four fingers and studied her nail polish for chips while suggesting, "You could leave Mae and marry me."

"Leave Mae!"

Lula’s nonchalance disappeared abruptly and her mouth grew sullen. "Well, what’s she to you anyway-you never even do it with her. You told me so yourself!"

"She’s the mother of my children, Lula."

"Oh." Lula tapped her chest. "And what am I?"

Harley couldn’t think up a fast answer.

"What am I, huh, Harley? There’s one of yours breedin’ in me right now, but since Mae is the mother of your children, maybe she’d like to add it to her collection, huh? How about that? How about I pay Mae a call and just happen to mention, Oh by the way, Mae, I’ll have another little monkey-faced brat to add to your brood next summer. How about that, Harley? Would that suit you?"

"Lula, be reasonable-"

"Be reasonable! Be reasonable, he says, when I’m the one faced with disgrace and he’s off rockin’ on his front veranda with Mae and his legitimatebrats. Be reasonable? I’ll give you reasonable, Harley. How’s this for reasonable? Two months. Two months and I’ll be starting to show, and by that time I want one of two things. Either your name on a wedding license beside mine so I’ll know my kid’ll be provided for for the rest of his life, or ten thousand dollars in the bank, in my name, Lula Peak."

"Ten thousand dollars!"

Turning to a bevel-edged mirror on the living room wall, Lula opened her lips and edged each corner with the side of a finger. She patted her varnished topknot and added as if in afterthought, "Or I could still offer it to Mae to raise and my worries’d be over." She swung to face Harley in a shimmer of black and cerise. "Oh, well…" She flipped her palms up. "I never cared much for monkey-faced brats anyway."

It was not a good autumn for Harley Overmire. Lula wouldn’t leave off him. He earned good money at the mill-sure-but it’d be a cold day in hell before he’d hand over ten thousand dollars to a slut like her. And she’d almost torn his face off when he’d suggested looking for a doctor to get rid of it. But worst of all, she was beginning to pester him at home, calling him in the middle of the night, at breakfast time, asking for some trumped-up name if Mae happened to answer.

She showed up at the mill one night when he was getting off at nine o’clock, just to remind him he had only four weeks left to come up with the money or the marriage. When another week passed without any progress toward a solution, she actually called Mae, giving her correct name, and told him about it afterward.

"I talked to Mae today."

"You what?"

"I talked to Mae today. I called her up and said I was collecting for the Red Cross and wondered if she had any donations for Care packages. She said she had buttons and soap and tablets and pencils, and that I could come over there and pick them up anytime, so I did."

"You didn’t!"

"Oh, but I did! I went right over and walked up to your front door and knocked and Mae answered and we had a pleasant little chat."

"Goddammit, Lula-"

Lula’s expression turned serpentine. "You see how easy it is, Harley?"

Harley developed an ulcer. The stomach pains intensified one night when he came home and looked through the mail to find Lula had brazenly directed the doctor in Calhoun to send his bill directly to Harley’s house. When Mae asked what the bill was for, he told her somebody had been hurt at the mill and the bill had come to the house accidentally.

But Lula’s harassment continued daily. Harley began to detest her, wondering what he’d ever seen in her in the first place. She was hard and shallow and stump-dumb to boot. To think he’d actually jeopardized his marriage over a pussy like that.

At work Harley was distracted. At home, jumpy. Everyplace else, wary. The damn woman would show up anywhere, saying anything, doing any rash thing she took a mind to do.

The corker was when she stopped his oldest boy, Ned, coming home from school one day and talked him into Vickery’s to give him a free ice cream cone. Afterward, she had the gall to tell Harley what she’d done and add in a sultry voice while fussing with the ugly yellow hair of hers, "You haven’t been around much, Harley. And that boy of yours is gettin’better lookin’ by the day. Losin’ his monkey face and growin’ tall. How old is he now, Harley? Fourteen? Fifteen maybe?"

The threat was clear as that varnish she spread on her pincurls and it was the last straw. When she started in on the kids, it was time to put a stop to Lula Peak.

Harley planned it out carefully in his mind. The gift he’d left under Lula’s Christmas tree would shut her up temporarily, but he’d do it right after the holiday.

It’d work. He knew Lula and what Lula craved worse than anything, and it’d work. He hadn’t been deaf, dumb and blind these last couple years. The men at the mill made ribald jokes about how Lula stalked Parker, how she ogled him out the window of the restaurant and even pursued him outright at the library. But word had it Parker had never given her a tumble, so Lula’d still be itchin’ to get at him.

Parker. Even the name galled Harley yet. Parker and his goddamn Purple Heart. Parker, the town hero while people sneered at Harley Overmire behind his back and accused him of cutting off his finger on purpose to avoid the draft. Not one of them could even guess what kind of courage it took to run your finger through a sawblade! And besides, somebody had to stay behind and make crates for all those rifles and ammo.

So you think you’re a hero, eh, Parker? Hobbling into town on those crutches and parading around the square in your fancy uniform so everybody’ll fall on their knees and wave banners. Well, I didn’t like you the first time I clapped eyes on you, whore-killer, and I don’t like you any better now. It might not’ve worked when I tried to run you out of town the first time, but this time it will. And it’ll be the law that’ll do it for me.

It took Harley three nights of scouting the library trash cans in the back alley before finding the perfect garrote: a piece of discarded shop rag filled with easily identifiable dust and lemon cleaning oil.

Once it was in his possession, Harley prepared the note carefully, selecting oversize individual words and letters from newspapers which he glued perpendicular to the typesetting on an ordinary sheet of want ads from the Atlanta Constitution. No stationery to identify, no fingerprints left on the greasy newsprint.

MEET ME BACK DOOR LIBRARY 11 O’CLOCK TUESDAY NIGHT. W.P.

He mailed it in a used envelope from his electricity bill, addressing it by cutting away the old address with a razor blade and fitting a newsprint address in its place.

When Lula got the note in the mail she tore it in quarters and swore like a longshoreman. Fat chance, Parker, after you knocked me around and called me a whore! Go cut holes in your pockets!

But Lula was Lula. Undeniably hot-blooded. The longer she thought about Will Parker, the hotter she got. Big bad boy. Big tough Marine. All shoulders and legs and sulk. She loved that sulkiness and the brooding silences, too. But she’d had a taste of his temper, and if he flared like that in the middle of a good piece of sex-oooo-ee! That’d be one to remember! And another thing she’d learned-men with long earlobes usually had peckers to match, and Parker’s earlobes weren’t exactly miniature.

By nine o’clock Tuesday night, Lula was taping together the torn note. By nine-thirty she felt like a piece of itchweed was stuck in her pants. By ten o’clock she was in a tub full of bubbles, getting ready.

Harley Overmire hunkered in the cold December drizzle, cursing it. One thing was lucky though: the blackout was still in effect in the coastal states. No streetlights. No window lights. Nobody on the streets after ten unless they had a permit.

Come on, Lula, come on. I’m cold and damp and I wanna get home to bed.

The rear door of the library was eight feet above his head, giving onto a set of high concrete steps with an iron handrail. He’d heard Parker lock the door and leave well over half an hour ago, had sat as still as a sniper in a tree, listening to Parker’s footsteps scrape down the steps, to the sound of his car starting and driving away without lights on.

Now Harley hunkered in his black rubber jacket and old fedora hat, feeling the rain seep into a tear on his shoulder. He hugged himself with crossed arms, feeling the cold concrete pressed against his back, and listened to the rain drip from the library eaves onto the alley below. In his fist the oily dustrag formed a hard knot. Something solid to hold on to.

When he heard Lula’s footsteps his heart hammered like that of a coon before a pack. High heels-click… click… click… probably toeless, because she stepped in a puddle and cursed. He waited till she’d reached the third step, then quickly slithered around the base of the steps and up behind her.

He’d planned to do it swift, clean, anonymously. But the damn rag was old and rotten and tore and she struggled free, turned and saw his face.

"Harley… don’t… pl-"

And he was forced to finish the job with his hands.

He hadn’t planned to see the shock and horror on her face. Or the grotesqueness of the throes of death. But no blackout was total enough to hide it. And Lula struggled, fought longer and harder than he’d have thought a woman of her size could.

When she finally succumbed, Harley staggered down the steps and threw up against the north wall of the library.