How the Hula Girl Sings (2 page)

“This is premium gasoline.”

I stared out the dirty windows. It was already getting dark. I shook my head, feeling it turn down in my gut.

La Harpie.

A place of a kind of quiet villainy and secret lust. A place where the dirty dreams of every twelve-year-old man-child were visible on the bus station’s bathroom walls in hand-scrawled tattoos of ladies with oversized breasts and inappropriate female genitalia, inaccurately portrayed as a singularly dangerous triangle of doom. Those kinds of drawings set me up for a world of confusion.

I stared out the huge glass windshield and frowned.

A pretty girl walked right in front of the bus.

Jesus—no.

The bus heaved to a stop, burning up its brakes, almost running the pretty lady down where she stood, tall upon her cheap high heels. The girl just shook her head and straightened her white blouse. Those breathy pneumatic doors opened with a hush and she climbed on up.

“Nearly ran you down, missy.” The gray-toothed bus driver frowned. The pretty lady just gave a little smile.

“Then you might’ve mussed up my skirt.”

The bus driver gave a weak chuckle and took her fare. She held her black suitcase at her side and took a seat across from me.

The girl was really something. A nice toast-and-butter kind of gal. Her eyes were big and brown, her hair was dark black like fine molasses and ran in curls down to her shoulders. Her whole neck was covered in little beads of sweat. There was a tiny white collection of her perspiration along her blouse’s thin collar. I could see her delicate white brassiere moving beneath. I could hear her underwear as she crossed her legs.

My god, I hadn’t touched a woman in nearly three years. My hands began to tremble. I began to feel like a real stranger, impure and swarthy as hell. The bus shook a little as it moved. This lady just flipped her curly hair over the other shoulder and stared down at her feet. Then she looked up. Then she looked me right in the face.

“I know you, don’t I?”

“I don’t think so,” I grunted. I turned and held my breath and looked straight ahead. My face began to get all red and hot.

“No, I think I know your name,” this woman whispered. “Isn’t it Luce Lemay?”

“Sure is.” I grinned. “How’d you happen to know that?”

“We’ve met before. My name is Charlene Dulaire.”

“I’m sure I would have remembered meeting a pretty lady like you,” I whispered.

The lady blushed a little, then stared hard at my face. She looked down at my arms, along the back of my sweaty hands to my wrists.

“I do know you.” Her thin black eyelashes fluttered just once. “I know those tattoos.”

“Excuse me?”

Her eyes were bright as she ran her fingers over my wrist, up my arm. Her touch was so light, so soft. I felt my stomach curl into a knot. There was a dark black tattoo of a sacred heart burning along my forearm. She smiled.

“You’ve had those for a while, haven’t you?”

“Since I was about sixteen or so.”

Her soft face blushed red like two perfectly round apples turning hard on her cheeks.

“You used to make it with my older sister in high school.”

“How’s that?” I mumbled. My face was creaking with humiliation.

“Ullele. That’s my older sister’s name. You used to sneak into her bedroom and make it with her on Sunday nights when our parents were at Mass. My Aunt Fiona, remember her, the one who thought she had a bird living in her chest, she just kept getting crazier and crazier, so my folks would go to church every Sunday and light a candle. Then you’d sneak in up the tree and climb in my sister’s room. Me and my other sisters used to listen to you doing it through the heating vents.”

“Jesus.” This girl, Ullele, her eyes were dark and round and brown, her legs were thin and long, but there was some problem with her teeth. There were three or four extra teeth that made her mouth look huge. It was a horrible thing to see that poor girl smile. Her daddy owned a used car lot in town and was known as Milford Dulaire, the Used Car King of the Greater Southern Illinois and Northern Kentucky Area. He was a tall thin man who hated me more than you could ever believe.

“Which sister are you?” I asked.

“The littlest one. I remember my father wanted to murder you. He really did. He told my sister to stay away from your kind. He called you a hood. He said you were born with those tattoos.” She looked away, down at her feet. Those big brown eyes got sad. “He shook his head when he heard about you in that trouble a few years ago.”

I gave a frown. I felt like I couldn’t breathe at all.

“That was a few years ago all right …” I said in a kind of sigh. “It was all some kind of accident … it was all some kind of mistake I made …”

“My older sister cried all night when she heard you’d been sent away. Cried all night and through the better part of a day.

Nearly left a running stream in her bed there were so many tears. But that’s Ullele for you. She cries sometimes when the sun’s too bright. She’ll cry in the middle of the day for missing the night.” Charlene gave a little smile and stared up into my face.

“Looks like you made it through it okay. I mean to say, you still look good. How long were you in for?”

“Three years,” I replied. “Three longest years of my own short life.” This pretty girl was so smooth and soft. I wanted to press my fingers along her lips and kiss her chin more than anything. I wanted to feel something good beside my skin. But now she knew. No parole board could make me a different man in any beauty’s big brown eyes.

“Did you ever get married to that girl?” Charlene asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“That girl, Dahlia. My older sister hated her. Said she stole you away from her.”

“No, that’s not true. Ullele and me broke up a long time before. She started dating some guy from Colterville and she didn’t miss me at all after that.”

“No. She still has a torch for you. All my sisters do.”

Charlene’s eyelashes fluttered like a summer dream as she crossed her legs. “So did you marry that girl?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That was like a bad joke.”

The girl twitched her nose.

“Oh, dammit, I have to go.”

“You heading on some kind of trip?” I asked.

“Huh?” She looked down at her suitcase like it was the last thing she expected to find in her hand. She gave a little huff and shook her head.

“Where you headin’?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m going back to my parents’ home.”

She shot up out of her seat and started toward the front of the bus, then turned around and looked back at me. She gave a quiet smile and stared right at me, making the air around my head seem perfumed and sweet. Then her lips parted and the softest words ever spoken came unbuckled from behind her white teeth.

“Welcome home, Luce Lemay,” I heard her say and I felt like I was about to faint. Charlene shook her head and walked to the front as the bus rolled to a stop. The doors opened with a hush. She stepped off and out into the road before I could find a single word to speak. The bus took off again and I felt my tongue come undone from its knot.

“Hey … wait,” I kind of mumbled. I imagined her young lips firm against mine. I fell back into my seat like an invalid.

“Hey, that sure is a nice suit,” the crazy old man beside me said. I nodded. The bus rumbled along, stinking with all our sweat. “That sure is nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Where’d you get a nice suit like that?”

“I’m not sure.”

The suit I was wearing was red polyester, with a red collar, the only suit I owned, the one I had worn to trial, the one that had sat in a drawer somewhere in the Illinois Department of Corrections for three years. It was old and wrinkled and stank of a short stay of incarceration.

“So you want this gasoline or not?”

“Sure. All I got is three dollars,” I said.

“Fine, that’s fine.”

I dug into my suit pocket and handed him three bucks. At the next stop he hopped off the bus and slipped into the Five-Spot Bar on the corner. The bus pulled away just as the old man was probably ordering a strong bourbon in a dirty white glass.

The gas can beside me shook as the bus pulled away.

I leaned back in the seat and stared outside, then dug into the pocket of my suit and pulled out Junior Breen’s old letter.

To my good old pal,

How is life? I hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits. I hope everything is dandy as a peach.

Junior Breen was one of the few friends I had made in the pen. Junior had gotten out a few months ahead of me. He had gone to La Harpie and gotten a job at a service station there because the owner was an acquaintance of my old man and had a soft spot for cons. Junior got me a room at the old hotel where he was staying. He had been too afraid to go back to his own town. He didn’t want to face the things he had done in everyone’s shallow stare. He had a kind of face that let you know he was all alone. He was a square guy, but a little strange. I met Junior when he was sitting alone in the library, the only part of the pen that was always air-conditioned, a big behemoth of a man staring hard at one of the glossy concrete walls, mumbling words quietly to himself. His hair was short and brown. He had enormous pork-chop sideburns. His forehead sloped down over his two deep blue eyes. He was carving something with the end of a pen hard into a linoleum desk. From where I sat all I could read were the words
old red organ
. Then he got up all of a sudden and took a seat beside me and smiled, looking me hard in the face.

“Tell you what I miss the most.” He frowned. “Ice cream. There ain’t nothing like a good ice cream on a hot day like this.”

“That’s the truth.” I smiled. “I’d pay a year of my life right now for a visit to Dairy Queen.”

“Name’s Junior Breen,” he said. He offered me a big white hand. His fist seemed to envelop mine as he gave a hearty handshake.

“Luce Lemay,” I replied. “How long you in for?”

“Twenty-five years, no parole.” He frowned.

“How many you got left?”

“This is my last one.” He smiled.

“Boy, that’s swell. Where you hail from?” I asked.

“Colterville. Home of the best Dairy Queen I’ve ever known.”

“Colterville? They do have the best Dairy Queen in the state. I’m from La Harpie myself. Never had a ice cream store in our town. We used to have to drive over to your Colterville if we wanted something cool to eat.”

“Don’t know what I’d do myself.” Junior frowned. “I’d consider moving, I guess.”

“Man, I’ll tell you, when I was about eighteen or so I was in love with this girl that worked at that Dairy Queen in your town. She was something. Luanne Wurley, that was her name. You know her? She was something. A real sight. With her little cutoff jeans and ponytail and vanilla shake, she had everything. Used to sneak dilly-bars to me for free.”

Junior kept smiling and let go of my hand. “That sure sounds nice.”

“Give a year of my life for a kiss from a girl like that,” I said.

“I’d give a year just for the ice cream.”

I took to him right away. He was a big man, about twenty years older than me, somewhere around forty-five. He was in for murder of the first degree. He had strangled a fourteen-year-old girl when he was only seventeen himself and left the body out on a plank of wood and sent it down a river. Junior told the jury he thought he was doing the girl a favor. They sent him away for twenty-five years without the hope of an early parole. They thought Junior was something like a mental defective. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t slow, he’d just have these spells where he’d climb into his bunk and sit and stare at the wall for hours. He wasn’t dangerous or anything. In fact, he seemed downright scared most of the time. He knew he had done an awful thing and you could almost hear it there, burning in his heart late at night, poor old lug. Junior was a big man. He weighed close to 280. Big and burly but tender as a pup. He was the kind of big guy other cons used in order to make themselves look brave or tough.

“Hey there, fat boy.” A con named Toreador grinned. He was in for three counts of theft and one for aggravated assault. He had robbed a carful of old-folks and stolen all their cash and clothes. The cops had picked Toreador up wearing one of the old men’s flowered shirts. “How’s breakfast, fat-ass? You get enough?”

Junior shoved another spoonful of oatmeal in his big round mouth. Toreador took a seat beside him and put his arm around the bigger man’s shoulder. Toreador wasn’t that big himself, he was thin and wiry, but his face looked mean as hell, long and greasy, his skin brown and full of pockmarks. “How come you eat so much, fat boy?”

Junior just gave a shrug with his shoulders and tried to finish his grub.

“You like to look so fat? Have big fat titties for yourself?” “Why don’t you leave him alone?” I said. I held my fork in my hand. I could see the thick blue vein where Toreador’s blood ran up to his evil head.

“I was talking to fat-ass, if you don’t mind?” Toreador turned back and leaned in close to Junior. “So you like to be fat? A big boy like you could be a real wild fuck for a lonely con. I oughta sell you as my bitch.”

“Just leave him alone,” I said again.

“Hey, I said I wasn’t talking to you, OK? If you want to get your ass beat, then keep on interrupting.”

Junior’s big face was caked with sweat. He was trembling like a big baby. He couldn’t move. His wide forehead dribbled perspiration around his tiny doughy eyes. Some spit was bubbling along his mouth. Some snot was flagging in his nose.

“Is he your bitch?” Toreador smiled. “You like those fatboy titties, don’t you? You like fucking that lard-ass, huh?”

“The only cocksucker at this table is you,” I said.

“La Santa Angel de la Guarda,” Toreador whistled. “You sure have a mouth for such a pretty thing. Make your move, go ahead, pretty thing. Show me what a tough girl you are. Go ahead. Make your move.”

I gritted my teeth together hard and flung my metal tray across the table straight into Toreador’s chest. Grits and meal flew all over his prison-issued white T-shirt and dirty blue pants. Before I could make another move, he was already at my throat. He had his long thin fingers gripping me tight, choking me hard, banging my face against the cold metal table.
Crack
I could hear the skin along my nose tear open. Then my jawbone.
Crrrrrrrack.
He began screaming and just kept smashing my face against the table’s end. I could hear some correctional officers hollering.