Power in the Blood (22 page)

“That’s exactly right, Drew boy. These ladies are sensitive to a fault, and can’t abide the conditions of humidity this part of the world inflicts on them.”

“Why don’t they go somewhere else to live?”

“Because Vanda won’t let them, not until they’ve paid for room and keep. Vanda’s put a lot of cash into these females, and they owe her plenty. They’re hers, so don’t you be talking with them overmuch and distracting them from their work, or Vanda’ll take it out on my hide.”

Drew was left puzzling over the nature of the ladies’ work, since none of them ever seemed to go anywhere or do anything. Of course, he was confined for the moment to his and Yancy’s room on the top floor of Vanda’s big house. Vanda was a friend of Yancy’s, so Yancy said, and wouldn’t mind them staying with her for a while, but Drew had to remain cooped up for a little while yet. It had already been two days, and Drew was becoming bored.

On the third day he waited until Yancy left the room, then went out into the hall. There weren’t any ladies around to tell on him, so he went down to the floor below, where two of them were talking together. They turned to look at him, and one said, “Hello there, sugarpie. He let you out today?”

“I let myself out,” Drew said. He didn’t like the way their smiles seemed to be making fun of him.

“’Scuse me,” said the lady, and resumed the conversation with her friend.

On the next floor down, Drew bumped into Winnie, who quickly steered him into a room and sat him on a chair by the window. He could see the ships in the harbor from there, and kept glancing outside while she spoke.

“Does he know you’re out?”

“I can do what I like.”

“You’re supposed to stay upstairs, Mrs. Gentles said.”

“Who’s she?”

“Only the person who owns this whole entire building you’re sitting inside of, that’s who.”

“It isn’t. That’s someone called Vanda.”

“Well, that’s her first name, peckerhead.”

“Oh.”

“She doesn’t want you here, that’s what they’re saying.”

“Who is?”

“The heavenly chorus, who do you think? Does he get in the same bed with you?”

“Who?”

Winnie rolled her eyes upward in exasperation. “Handsome Yancy, that’s who. Well, does he?”

“Why would he do that? There’s two beds.”

“Are you telling the truth? I’ll hurt you if you’re not.”

“I am.”

“Good; that’s fifty cents I won. I said you weren’t his little pooter boy.”

“What’s a pooter boy?”

“One that spreads his butthole for gentlemen.”

Drew didn’t understand that at all, but thought he might look a fool if he asked for further definition.

“So if you’re not,” said Winnie, “what are you?”

It was a tough question. He decided to be straightforward. “I’m Drew Kindred … no, Drew Dugan.”

“And I’m the Empress Josephine. No, I’m Cleopatra. No, Queen Victoria, that’s who I am.”

She found this funny, for no reason Drew could see. He was beginning not to like her, even if her face was kind of pretty. “Why do you wear half your clothes?” he asked, to steer talk away from himself.

“Why? Because that’s the way they want you to look.”

“Who does?”

“The customers, donkey. They want to see what they’re getting before they pay, give us the eye before they buy, that’s what they do. I made that up myself. Mrs. Gentles laughed when she heard. She’s fancy Yancy’s mama.”

“His mother?”

“Everybody’s got one, or had one. Mine’s dead. You still got one?”

“No.”

Drew was a little dazed. Yancy had said Vanda was a friend. No one could mistake his mother for a friend, so it was another one of Yancy’s colossal fibs. He should have expected it to be untrue.

“Are you his sister?” Drew asked.

“You’re a stupidhead. Why would I be his sister, for heaven’s sake?”

“I don’t know,” Drew confessed.

“You’re certainly not very smart, are you?”

“You shut up.”

Winnie jumped up and smacked him across the face. Before he was aware of it, Drew had smacked her back, but not very effectively. They glared at each other, breathing hard.

“Pooter boy!” Winnie accused.

“Pooter boy yourself!”

Again, he’d said something hilarious. Winnie fell across the bed, giggling. Drew realized this must be her room, the way she rolled around on the covers. Finally Winnie stopped, and sat contemplating her guest for a minute or so.

“Come here and kiss me this instant and I’ll forgive you,” she said.

“I didn’t do anything. You hit me first.”

“Just you quit arguing and do like I say, or I’ll tell Mrs. Gentles you came down from upstairs.”

“She can’t be his mother or her name’d be Berdell, so you told a lie.”

“I didn’t, and it doesn’t matter a damn what their names are, punkinhead, because she was never married to the man that put Yancy inside her, so you don’t know as much as you think you know!”

Drew absorbed this, and was silenced. Winnie tossed her hair and patted the bed beside her. “You come here,” she ordered, and Drew took himself away from the window and its view of masts and spars to place himself gingerly beside her. He half expected another slap, and was ready for it. The talk of kissing was obviously a trap.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

Drew shrugged, beginning to experience embarrassment. Winnie apparently was sincere in her request; her mouth was puckered and ready. He stared at it, then decided he’d better do what she wanted. This would be his first kiss that wasn’t given to a mother. When it was over with he pulled back fast.

Winnie shook her head. “You were supposed to kiss me on the lips, stupid, not the goddamn cheek like your granny does. Do it again.”

He did it again, and was startled when her mouth opened like a pit and seemed to draw him inside. His entire body felt completely different from the way it had felt mere seconds before, especially his toby, which began thrusting against his pants in an insistent manner.

Winnie broke off the kiss and grabbed at his crotch, then smirked at him in a way Drew didn’t think he liked, but couldn’t actually dislike, not with the blood pounding through him that way, and her hand being where it was, kneading him with a practiced deftness that made him ashamed yet exhilarated at the same time.

“Well,” said Winnie, “I take it back. I guess you’re not a pooter boy after all.”

“I told you,” Drew gasped.

Winnie jumped up and pointed to the door. “You better get, before someone finds out you came down here.”

He didn’t want to leave, but could think of no good reason for staying that would not have sounded like some kind of begging. Winnie had done something to him that made him want to do whatever she told him to, so she’d like him and maybe later on invite him to kiss her again.

“All right.”

He stood up, stooping a little.

“Bye-bye now,” Winnie told him. “Don’t strangle it, will you.”

This enigmatic farewell accompanied Drew upstairs.

In the afternoon Yancy returned. “Come and meet Vanda,” he said. “What’s the matter? You look blue.”

“Nothing.”

“Well, put a smile on. Vanda likes happy souls.”

They descended four floors, and Drew saw that although the upper stories were divided into many rooms, the ground floor consisted of just three large chambers. The first and biggest was occupied by the women and a few men, mostly sitting around on small sofas, the like of which Drew hadn’t seen before. The second he knew was a barroom, because of all the bottles and glasses.

The smallest of the three rooms had the fanciest wallpaper of any of them, and the biggest desk Drew had ever laid eyes on. Behind the desk sat a woman much younger than Drew was expecting, and fully clothed. He wondered if Winnie had told him the truth about Vanda being Yancy’s mother. There was no resemblance between them that he could see.

“Vanda, meet my intrepid pard from out west. Drew boy, say how-do to Vanda, only you’ll call her Mrs. Gentles.”

“How do you do,” the woman said, smiling just a little.

“I’m very well, ma’am, Mrs. Gentles.”

“Sit, please.”

Drew perched himself on the edge of a plush armchair facing the desk. Mrs. Gentles studied him, then asked, “Will you tell me about yourself, Drew? Yancy says you have had quite an adventure.”

He told her everything, excluding the siesta noises between Yancy and Maria Huntzucker, and Yancy’s two killings at that desert location.

When he was finished, he was told, “You are a boy with grit, I think, to have come so far alone.”

“Yancy helped me.”

“And rightly so. Where will you go now?”

“Go, ma’am?”

“If you could be taken to any place you chose.”

“I don’t know,” Drew said, and hung his head, knowing it was an inadequate response.

“Look up. I ask because I wish to know what I should do with you. Have you any suggestions?”

“No, ma’am. Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“If this is where Yancy lives, I’d like to stay here, ma’am, if you don’t mind.”

“No, he does not live here.”

“Oh, I thought he did, you being his ma.”

“Who told you this?” demanded Mrs. Gentles.

He had to protect Winnie. “Yancy did, ma’am.”

“That’s not so,” Yancy protested. “As if I would …”

Mrs. Gentles lifted a hand to silence him. Drew was impressed by the way it made Yancy shut right up, which wasn’t like Yancy at all.

“Drew, I have a question for you.”

“Ma’am.”

“What is this place, do you know?”

“This place?”

“Is it a baker’s shop, or a bank, or a dry goods store?”

“No, ma’am, it’s a … a whorehouse.”

He had concluded this after much thought upstairs. Whorehouses had never been discussed in the Kindred home, but a few tantalizing morsels of information had reached him in the schoolyard back in Dinnsville. Winnie’s brash behavior and the state of undress of the other women made it obvious, and he felt a fool for having taken so long to become aware.

“That is correct. What is your opinion of such places?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. I was never in one before.”

“You will have noticed that apart from the gentlemen customers, and yourself and Yancy, who are guests, we are all women here. How would you fit in with so many ladies all about?”

“Ma’am, do you live here?”

“I? No, I have a small house for my own use, next door.”

“Well, I could live there.”

“Could you indeed. And what if I say I have no use for a boy.”

“If Yancy isn’t your son, then … I could be.”

Mrs. Gentles looked across Drew to Yancy, and it seemed she smiled a little.

“Tell me, Drew,” she said, “what is the function, or shall I say the duty, of a son to his mother?”

“Oh, well, he’s got to study hard on his lessons, mainly, and … uh … do chores when she says.”

“Is that all?”

“Kiss her good night and not get in trouble.”

Mrs. Gentles burst out laughing. When she was calm she asked, “Should he wander the country seeking after he knows not what? And come visiting with a smile and an outstretched hand once or twice a year?”

“He ought to come more often than that.”

“Much more often,” confirmed Mrs. Gentles. “Indeed.”

Drew could hear Yancy stirring restlessly behind him.

“And if I allow you to share my house, will you be the kind of son a son should be, or will you go your own sweet way as the notion takes you?”

“I’ll do my best,” Drew promised. “I can already read and write and figure better than most, my teacher said.”

“Then I shall give you the chance to prove her correct.”

“He was a man, ma’am.”

“Yancy will return you to your room. Good day, Drew.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Mrs. Gentles.”

She smiled, and looked again at Yancy. “You may call me Mother, if you wish.”

Having few possessions, he moved quickly and easily into the small house next door to Mrs. Gentles’s brothel. Yancy insisted on helping him, which meant carrying Drew’s rifle, leaving Drew empty-handed. Drew allowed this peculiar assistance, curious to see Yancy’s reaction to the house.

They ran into trouble at the door, when a handsome Negro man asked Yancy kindly not to set foot inside, as per instruction from Mrs. Gentles.

“You just step aside now, Meggs,” Yancy told him, “and go take the matter up with her yourself. Or you could just not tell her I was here, in which case she won’t shout at you for not doing what she wanted.”

Drew was dragged past mildly protesting Meggs. Once inside, Yancy released him and began prowling from room to room, as if in search of something. Drew trailed along behind, and was in turn followed by Meggs, who wore a deep frown of consternation. In the kitchen, Yancy greeted a black woman who was preparing supper. “Hello, Sukie. Long time gone.”

She looked at the rifle in his hands. “You aiming to shoot me, Mr. Yancy?”

He laughed. “No, I’m not. That’d get me in trouble, now wouldn’t it.”

“Guess you’d know ’bout that.”

Yancy laughed again. Drew heard the annoyance in it, and knew Yancy didn’t like to be spoken to that way by kitchen help. He knew also that these two black people worked for Mrs. Gentles, and so were safe. Yancy was afraid of his own mother, which struck Drew as nothing less than amazing, given the man’s behavior to date. He had killed someone for allegedly cheating at cards, without batting an eye, yet was obliged to grin while his mother’s cook sassed him.

“That the boy she told about?” Sukie asked.

“This is him. He’s my pard, so you feed him up good and be nice.”

“She already told me.”

“Which room’s his?”

“Reckon you know the one,” said Sukie, and turned to her chopping of vegetables.

Drew saw Yancy’s face harden. “This way,” Yancy said, turning and pushing past the hovering form of Meggs. He led the way to a small room at the rear of the house, flung Drew’s Winchester onto the bed and shut the door firmly in Meggs’s face. Drew didn’t like to look at Yancy, knowing as he did that this had once been Yancy’s room. He felt guilty somehow.

Yancy joined the rifle on the bed, lay back and looked at the stamped tin ceiling. “Drew boy,” he said, “you’re smart for your age, so tell me what you make of all this.”