Borrow Trouble (32 page)

Reminiscing about Franchetta and the girls made Baltimore feel a little homesick. Maybe he'd slide by Whiskey Bottom and look in on his mother and baby sister, if the old man wasn't around to stop him. But first, he'd have to pay a special trip to Harlem and make good on the debt that had started all of this nonsense in the first place. That ought to stop that old bad luck shadow from easing up behind him for a good long while, Baltimore figured. He was willing to bet on it.

BAD LUCK SHADOW

VICTOR M
C
GLOTHIN

 

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The suggested questions are intended to
enhance your group's reading of
BAD LUCK SHADOW
by Victor McGlothin.

1. Do you think that Baltimore Floyd was inherently a bad man or a good one who did bad things?
   
2. How do you feel about Henry getting involved in the murder of the businessman on the train when he walked into a bad situation growing more intense?
   
3. Baltimore told Henry that being his best friend involved him automatically? Do you agree or disagree?
   
4. Soon after Baltimore and Henry reach Kansas City, they encountered a woman being detained from shoplifting. Do you think it was a wise thing for them to do, considering Baltimore's bad luck shadow?
   
5. Speaking of Baltimore's rotten luck, how much of it was his own doing, from beginning of the story to the end?
   
6. How does Franchetta's description of her first run in with Baltimore years before help explain his personality, his ruthlessness at times, and his overwhelming generosity and unflappable loyalty at others?
   
7. Although it appeared that Franchetta loved Baltimore, discuss why she allowed her roommates to share him in bed, among other things?
   
8. Baltimore shot one of the men in his own crew during the robbery. Do you feel he was justified? Why or why not?
   
9. Henry was a lot like Baltimore when it came to women. Do you think thy story would have turned out differently if he'd stayed with Hattie instead of taking up with Estelle and then going on the subsequent shopping spree to impress her?
   
10. Macy, wife of the abusive man whom Baltimore goaded into a fatal battle, didn't quite know what make of the money that she was awarded supposedly by her missing and repentant husband. Why do you think Baltimore lied about where the money really came from? Do you think Macy ultimately knew the truth?
    
11. Tough men like Unca Chunk, Rot, Dank, and others from the story offer a rich, dangerous slice of life many of us would steer clear of. Is it possible to understand their plight in life and why they lived on the edge?
    

Turn the page for an excerpt from GOD DON'T PLAY,
by Mary Monroe,
on sale now from Dafina!

M
y worst nightmare began with a black snake and a cute envelope. I had no way of knowing that my life was about to fall apart on the most beautiful day that we'd had all year.

The bold morning sun was shining down on my freshly painted house like a lighthouse. I had just had some of the best sex that I had had in years, and there had been no one else in the same room with me.

“You give good phone sex. You should call me up more often,” I teased my husband, Pee Wee, as I'd struggled to catch my breath before hanging up the telephone on the wall next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. I couldn't remember the last time I'd enjoyed sex standing up, and nibbling on a Pop-Tart at the same time.

“Well, it is the next best thing to me bein' there,” Pee Wee told me, whispering so that his cousins in the next room at his cousin's house couldn't hear him. “Did you get naked like I told you?”

“Uh-huh. Naked as a jaybird,” I lied, smoothing down the sides of my muumuu. There was no way I was going to shed my clothes in the middle of my kitchen floor. It was hard enough for me to get naked in my own bedroom. But I did remove my shoes.

“Did you stick your fingers where I told you to stick 'em?” Pee Wee asked with a moan.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, lying again. The only thing that I'd stuck my fingers in was in that Pop-Tarts box. However, I had massaged a few other spots on my body like Pee Wee had instructed, and that had been enough for me.

I had enjoyed my passionate telephone tryst with my husband, but I was glad when it was over. Not only did I feel downright ridiculous doing some of the things to myself that he'd ordered me to do, but I had started getting cramps in my legs. And I wanted to clean myself up and put on some fresh underwear.

With a satisfied smile on my face, I stepped out on my front porch to retrieve the mail. A large butterfly that had wings every color in the rainbow landed on my hand.

The sun felt good on my face as I clutched my mail and shook the butterfly off my hand. I waved to the friendly, good-looking White couple from down the street as they walked by, pushing their homely toddler in a creaky stroller. Everybody on our block, except for the husband, knew that the homely toddler's daddy was the homely insurance man who made house calls.

A large, light-skinned man that I didn't recognize, with his black hair in large pink foam rollers, waved to me from a shiny black Lincoln that was cruising down the street. I yelled at a stray dog who had decided to lift his crooked leg and water the prizewinning rosebush in my front yard.

My biggest concern that day was trying to decide what to do first: get my nails done, go shopping, do the laundry, or treat myself to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants. I was in a frivolous mood so I didn't want to do anything that was too serious, like go pay bills or visit my fussy parents. But the bizarre uproar that I was about to face would cancel everything else that I had planned to do on that beautiful Saturday. From that point on, my life would never be the same again. What happened to me on this day would haunt me for the rest of my life, because it was the beginning of the end for me in some ways. And it all had to do with a black snake and a cute envelope.

There was nothing that unusual about the cute envelope that had arrived in the mail that morning in late August. I had almost missed it among the usual stack of bills and other unwanted junk—like the Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue with the picture of a beautiful young blonde woman in a white negligee on the cover.

I laughed when I saw the catalogue, wondering what the world was coming to for my name to end up on the Frederick's of Hollywood mailing list. I had to give them credit for advertising muumuus, waist clinchers, capes, bras with cups large enough to hold forty ounces of beer, long flowing nightgowns that looked more like parachutes, and other inducements every now and then to appease us full-figured gals. But almost everything else that the mysterious Mr. Frederick—who probably looked like Buddha or worse himself—sold was for women half my size and even smaller. On the first page inside the catalogue were some “one size fits all” panty hose. Yeah, right. The see-through gowns and low-cut blouses were outrageous enough, and I had absolutely no use for crotchless panties. I'd probably be wearing diapers again before I broke down and put on a pair of crotchless panties.

I was not surprised when I flipped the catalogue over and saw that it was addressed to Jade O'Toole, my best friend's sneaky teenage daughter. Some of the clothes that the girl wore every day showed just as much skin as the frocks she ordered from Frederick's that she hid from her parents, so I didn't know what the big deal was. But I didn't have a teenager yet, so I couldn't really judge the behavior of the “in your face” music-video generation. They had their own culture and Jade kept it in my face. I had allowed her to take too many liberties with me so it was too late for me to revise my position in her life. I was no more of an authority figure to her than a cat was. She had started using my address without my knowledge or permission. I shuddered when I thought about what that girl might do next.

Here's a preview of
Victor McGlothin's novel,
Ms. Etta's Fast House
.
Coming soon from Dafina!

T
hree months into 1947, a disturbing calm rolled over St. Louis, Missouri. It was unimaginable to foresee the hope and heartache that one enigmatic season saw fit to unleash, mere inches from winter's edge. One unforgettable story changed the city forever. This is that story.

Watkins Emporium was the only black-owned dry goods store for seven square blocks and the pride of “The Ville” the city's famous black neighborhood. Talbot Watkins had opened it when the local Woolworth's fired him five years earlier when he allowed black customers to try on hats before purchasing them. The department store manager had warned him several times that clothing apparel wasn't fit for sale after having been worn by Negroes. Subsequently, Mr. Watkins used his life savings to start a successful business of his own with his daughter, Chozelle, a hot-tempered twenty-year-old who had a preference for older, fast-talking men with even faster hands. She often toyed around with fellows her own age when the opportunity to lead one of them around by the nose presented itself. Chozelle's scandalous ways became undeniably apparent to her father the third time he'd caught a man running from the back door of his storeroom, half-dressed and hell-bent on eluding his wrath. Mr. Watkins clapped an iron padlock on the back door after realizing he'd have to protect his daughter's virtue, whether she liked it or not. It was a hard pill to swallow, admitting to himself that canned meat wasn't the only thing getting dusted and polished in that back room. However, his relationship with Chozelle was just about perfect, compared to that of his meanest customer.

“Penny! Git your boney tail away from that there dress!” Halstead King grunted from the checkout counter. “I done told you once, you too damned simple for something that fine.” When Halstead's lanky daughter snatched her hand away from the red satin cocktail gown displayed in the front window, as if a rabid dog had snapped at it, he went right on back to running his mouth and running his eyes up and down Chozelle's full hips and ample everything else. Halstead stuffed the hem of his shirttail into his tattered work pants and then shoved his stubby thumbs beneath the tight suspenders holding them up. After licking his lips and twisting the ends of his thick gray handlebar mustache, he slid a five dollar bill across the wooden countertop, eyeing Chozelle suggestively. “Now, like I was saying. How 'bout I come by later on when your daddy's away and help you arrange thangs in the storeroom?” His plump belly spread between the worn leather suspender straps like one of the heavy grain sacks he'd loaded on to the back of his pickup truck just minutes before.

Chozelle had a live one on the hook, but old man Halstead didn't stand a chance of getting at what had his zipper about to burst. Although his appearance reminded her of a rusty old walrus, she strung him along. Chozelle was certain that five dollars was all she'd get from the tight-fisted mister, unless, of course, she agreed to give him something worth a lot more on the back end. After deciding to leave the lustful old man's offer on the counter top, she turned her back on him and then pretended to adjust a line of canned peaches behind the counter. “Like what you see, Mr. Halstead?” Chozelle flirted. She didn't have to guess whether his mouth watered, because it always did when he imagined pressing his body against hers. “It'll cost you a heap more than five dollars to catch a peek at the rest of it.”

“A peek at what, Chozelle?” hissed Mr. Watkins suspiciously, as he stepped out of the side office.

Chozelle stammered while Halstead choked down a pound of culpability. “Oh, nothing Papa. Mr. Halstead's just thinking on buying something nice for Penny over yonder.” Her father tossed a quick glance at the nervous seventeen-year-old obediently standing an arm's length away from the dress she'd been dreaming about for weeks. “I was telling him how we'd be getting in another shipment of lady's garments next Thursday,” Chozelle added, hoping that lie sounded more plausible. When Halstead's eyes fell to the floor, there was no doubting what he'd had in mind. It was common knowledge that Halstead King, the local moonshiner, treated his only daughter like an unwanted pet and that he never shelled out one thin dime toward her happiness.

“All right then,” said Mr. Watkins, in a cool, calculated manner. “We'll put that there five on a new dress for Penny. Next weekend, she can come back and get that red one in the window she's been fancying.” Halstead started to argue as the store owner lifted the money from the counter and folded it into his shirt pocket, but it was gone for good, just like Penny's hopes of getting anything close to that red dress if her father had anything to say about it. “She's getting to be a grown woman and it'd make a right nice coming-out gift. Good day, Halstead,” Mr. Watkins offered, scaling the agreement and extending his cheapest customer the opportunity to slink his conniving behind out of the same doorway he'd tramped in.

“Papa, you know I've had my heart set on that satin number since it came in,” Chozelle whined, as if the whole world revolved around her. Directly outside of the store, Halstead slapped Penny down onto the dirty sidewalk in front of the display window.

“You done cost me more money than you're worth,” he spat viciously. “I have half a mind to take it out of your hide.”

“Not unless you want worse coming to you,” a velvety smooth voice threatened from the driver's seat of a new Ford convertible with Maryland plates.

Halstead glared at the stranger, then at the man's shiny beige roadster. Penny was staring up at her handsome hero with buttery complexion for another reason altogether. She turned her head briefly, holding her sore eye, then glanced back at the dress in the window. She managed a smile when the man in the convertible was the only thing she'd ever seen prettier than that red dress. Suddenly, her swollen face didn't sting nearly so much.

“You ain't got no business here, mistah!” Halstead exclaimed harshly. “People known to get hurt messin' where they don't belong.”

“Uh-uh. See, you went and made it my business by putting your hands on that girl. If she was half the man you pretend to be, she'd put a hole in your head as sure as you're standing here.” The handsome stranger unfastened the buttons on his expensive tweed sports coat to reveal a long black revolver cradled in a shoulder holster. When Halstead took that as a premonition of things to come, he backed down like most bullies when confronted by someone who didn't bluff so easily. “Uh-huh, that's what I thought,” he said, stepping out of his automobile idled at the curb. “Miss, you all right?” he asked Penny, helping her off the hard cement. He noticed that one of the buckles was broken on her run-over shoes. “If not, I could fix that for you. Then, we can go get your shoe looked after.” Penny swooned, as if she'd seen her first sunrise. Her eyes were opened almost as wide as Chozelle's, gawking from the other side of the large framed window. “They call me Baltimore, Baltimore Floyd. It's nice to make your acquaintance, Miss. Sorry it had to be under such unfavorable circumstances.” Penny thought she was going to faint right there on the very sidewalk she'd climbed up from. No man had taken the time to notice her, much less talk to her in such a flattering manner. If it were up to Penny, she was willing to get knocked down all over again for the sake of reliving that moment in time.

“Naw suh, Halstead's right,” Penny sighed after giving it some thought. “This here be family business.” She dusted herself off, primped her dry twigged pigtails, a hairstyle more appropriate for much younger girls, then she batted her eyes like she'd done it all of her life. “Thank you kindly, though,” Penny mumbled, noting the contempt mounting in her father's pensive expression. Halstead wished he'd brought along his gun, and his daughter was wishing the same thing, so that Baltimore could make him eat it. She understood all too well that as soon as they returned to their shanty farmhouse on the outskirts of town, there would be hell to pay. Although whatever Halstead saw fit to beat Penny with, it wasn't no never mind to her. At age seventeen, with scuffed knees and ashy elbows, Penny became a woman that day in front of Watkins Emporium. There was no turning back now.

“Come on Penny,” she heard Halstead, gargle softer than she'd imagined he could. “We ought to be getting on,” he added as if asking permission to leave.

“I'll be seeing you again Penny,” Baltimore offered. “And next time, there bet' not be one scratch on your face.” Those words were meant for Halstead. “It's hard enough on women folk as it is. They shouldn't have to go about wearing reminders of a man's shortcomings.”

Halstead hurried to the other side of the secondhand pickup truck and cranked it. “Penny,” he summoned, when her feet hadn't moved an inch. Perhaps she was waiting for permission to leave, too. Baltimore tossed Penny a cordial wink as he helped her up onto the tattered bench seat.

“Go on now. It'll be alright or else I'll fix it,” he assured her, nodding his head in a kind fashion and smiling brightly.

As the old pickup truck jerked forward, Penny stole a glance at the tall, silky stranger, then held the hand Baltimore had clasped inside his up to her nose. The fragrance of his store-bought cologne resonated through her thin nostrils for miles until the smell of farm animals whipped her back into a stale reality—her own. It wasn't long before Halstead mustered up enough courage to revert back to the mean tyrant he'd always been. He'd have taken a steaming dump on Penny's head if he thought she'd sit long enough to let him. His unforgiving black heart and vivid memories of the woman who ran off with a traveling salesman fueled Halstead's hatred for the girl his wife left behind. Until his dying day, Penny would be subjected to his angry fits and violent episodes, which always pitted her on the wrong end of a backhanded or a book heel. She'd decided that's what God had planned for her or else things would have been different, because Halstead had sufficiently drilled it in her head how ugly, skinny, and worthless she was.

“Ain't no sane man gon' have nothing to do with you, so's you can git that out your mind,” he'd berate her. “You best be glad you're my own or I'd throw you out into the streets myself.” Penny didn't want to believe his insults, but there's something to be said for repetition even when its misused for the sole purpose of breaking a child's spirit, and Halstead was determined to destroy Penny's since he couldn't do the same to her mother. He treated his daughter worse than a mangy dog. Penny surmised through the years that a woman and a dog weren't much different if a man beat them both with the same blatant disregard. She'd heard Halstead brag while in a drunken stupor, “You call a dog by the wrong name enough times, he'll come 'round to answering to it soon enough.” He called Penny some of the vilest names while beating her, so she figured what he said was true.

“Git those mason jar crates off'n the truck while I fire up the still!” he hollered. “And you might as well forgit that man in town and ever meeting him again. His meddling can't help you way out here. He's probably on his way back east already.” When Penny moved too casually for Halstead's taste, he jumped up and popped her across the mouth. Blood squirted from her bottom lip. “Don't make me tell you again,” he cursed. “Ms. Etta's havin' her spring jig this weekend, and I promised two more cases before sundown. Now git!”

Penny's injured lip quivered. “Yeah Suh,” she whispered, her head bowed.

As Halstead waddled to the rear of their weather-beaten house of orange brick and oak, cussing and complaining about wayward women, traveling salesmen, and slick strangers, he shouted additional chores. “Stack them crates up straight this time so's they don't tip over. Fetch a heap of water in that barrel, brang it around yonder and put my store receipts on top of the bureau in my room. Don't touch nothin' while you in there neither, useless heffa,” he grumbled.

“Yeah Suh, I will. I mean, I won't,” she whimpered. Penny allowed a long strand of blood to dangle from her angular chin before she took the hem of her faded dress and wiped it away. Feeling about as inadequate as the names Halstead saddled her with, Penny became confused as to which order her chores were to have been performed. She reached inside the cab of the truck, collected the store receipts and crossed the pebble-covered yard. She sighed deeply over how unfair it felt, having to endure such a beautiful spring day in hell, and then she pushed open the front door and wandered into Halstead's room. She overlooked the assortment of loose coins scattered on the night stand next to the disheveled queen-sized bed with filthy sheets she'd be expected to scrub clean before the day was through.

On the corner of the bed frame hung a silver-plated colt revolver. Sunlight poured through the half-drawn window shade, glinting off the pistol. While mesmerized by the opportunity to take matters into her own hands, Penny palmed the forty-five carefully. She contemplated how easily she could have ended it all with one bullet to the head—hers. Something deep inside wouldn't allow Penny to hurt another human, something good and decent, something she didn't inherit from Halstead.

“Penny!” he yelled, from outside. “You got three seconds to git outta that house and back to work!” Startled, Penny dropped the gun onto the uneven floor and froze, praying it wouldn't go off. Halstead pressed his round face against the dusty window to look inside. “Goddammit! Gal, you've got to be the slowest somebody. Git back to work before I have to beat some speed into you.”

The puddle of warm urine Penny stood in confirmed that she was still alive. It could have just as easily been a pool of warm blood instead. Thoughts of ending her misery after her life had been spared flew quickly. She unbuttoned her thin cotton dress, used it to mop the floor, then tossed it on the dirty clothes heap in her bedroom. Within minutes, she'd changed into an undershirt and denim overalls. Her pace was noticeably revitalized as she wrestled the crates off the truck as instructed. “Stack them crates,” Penny mumbled to herself. “Stack 'em straight so's they don't tip over. Then fetch the water.” The week before, she'd stacked the crates too high and a strong gust of wind toppled them over. Halstead was furious. He'd dragged Penny into the barn, tied her to a tractor wheel, and left her there for three days without food or water. She was determined not to spend another three days warding of field mice and garden snakes.