Victory Over Japan (27 page)

“My money, Harry. My money. Every cent he spends is one more I'll never inherit.
What kind of hunt? What's he up to now?” She turns her head and raises her eyes at me like only I can understand what she really means by
anything.

“He's got the Lost Horizon stocked with game animals,” Mr. Harry says, getting a serious expression on
his face now he's talking hunting. All the men in Miss Crystal's family got that look. They put their elbows on their knees and their chins
in their hand and put on that look whenever they got to talk about hunting anything, whether it's animals or King the time he ran away to the
hippie commune. Scare me to death when they look like that. “He's got antelope and water buffalo and Russian boar. Well, the water buffalo
aren't there yet but they're on their way. He's arranging African safaris for people that don't have time to go to Africa. It
could be big, Crystal. He could get back all the money he lost in the duck decoy factory. He could make up for that land deal in Joburg.”

“He's having safaris at the Lost Horizon? That little scraggly piece of land? There aren't even any trees. I
don't believe anybody would pay two thousand dollars to go down there for anything.”

“You'd be surprised
what people will do. I put some of my own money into it. So I think I'll just drive the car on down there for him, to protect my
investment.”

“Russian boar?” she said, like she couldn't believe she heard right. “He's
importing Russian boar?”

“We better be getting Crystal Anne on home now,” I say from the back seat. “I need
to be putting her down for a nap.” We were out in Jefferson Parish, almost to the lake, cruising along, it's like riding in a big green
cloud, air conditioning so quiet you can hear yourself breathe, big old tires going thump, thump.

“I think I'll go
with you to Texas,” Miss Crystal says. “I'll take Traceleen and Crystal Anne and go along. It's a perfect time. Manny's
out of town and King's in Meridian with Big King. I want to see this operation. This boar hunt. Honest to God, Harry, Phelan's outside the
limits. He really is, you know he is.”

“You just can't resist the car,” Mr. Harry says, laughing and
smiling, laying his hand on her knee. “You want to keep riding in it as much as I do.”

“Let's don't
forget to stock the bar,” she says. “I want to really fill it up. Fix it the way it ought to be.”

So the upshot
of it is the very next morning Miss Crystal and Crystal Anne and Mr. Harry and me are driving out of town on eye-ten headed for San Antonio.
“I've never been to Texas in my life,” I said to Mark, getting my permission to go. Mark's my husband, sweetest man you'll
ever know. He don't stand in anybody's way. “Go ahead,” he says. “See the country. I'll be right here when you get
back, right where you left me.” That's how it always is with Mark and me. Miss Crystal, she can't believe my luck in men. My first
husband was just as sweet as Mark. I've had two since Miss Crystal knew me, one just as sweet as the other. “Your turn'll come,”
I tell her when she gets low. “You'll find your true love before it's over.” Well, it didn't happen on this trip to Texas.

The first thing that happened was we stopped on the outskirts of Baton Rouge and stocked up the bar. They must have put two
hundred dollars' worth of whiskey in the car. One hundred ninety-six, seventy-eight, to be exact. I saw it on the cash register when Mr. Harry
paid the bill. Crystal Anne, she picks up a plastic lemon and starts sucking on the cap so he bought that too. I started getting worried when I saw all
that whiskey. Mr. Harry, he's got a bad head for whiskey and much as I hate to say it Miss Crystal's not much better. They started mixing
drinks in these little silver cups that come with the car and by the time we're to Lafayette I'm driving. Miss Crystal and Mr. Harry in the
back seat drinking and singing country songs and me up front with Crystal Anne strapped in her seat sucking on the lemon. “Don't let her
swallow the cap, Traceleen,” Miss Crystal said. “Keep an eye on her.” As if I didn't have enough to do driving the number six
hundred down the road and it starting to rain. I mean rain. We were just outside of Crowley when it started coming down. Coming down in sheets!

People from other parts of the country they see us on television having our rains and floods and sometimes I wonder what they think
it's like. Because the thing the television can't show them is the smell. Not a bad smell, a cold clean smell like breathing in water.
We're below the sea in south Louisiana and when the rains come we're in the sea. The rain that day was the worst I've ever seen. I
hadn't been driving ten minutes outside of Crowley when I knew we'd have to stop. “I can't see a thing,” I said. “I
can't see the road before me.”

“Pull over,” Mr. Harry said. “Let me take the wheel. Pull over on the
side.” I tried to. Crystal Anne was screaming and standing up in her seat belt. And the rain was coming straight at us like a hurricane. I thought
I saw a place to pull over beside a bridge. I turned the wheel and the next thing I knew we were sliding down a wall of mud headed for an oak tree. We
hit it broadside and came to a stop not ten feet from a river. “It's the Lacassine!” Mr. Harry yelled. “Goddamn, I've
fished this river.”

“Oh, my God,” Miss Crystal said. She set down the glass she was holding and pulled Crystal
Anne into the back seat. I'll say one thing for Miss Crystal. She's a good mother when she wants to be. “What are we going to do now,
Harry?” she said. “What in the name of hell are we going to do?”

“I bet that door'll cost a couple of
grand,” he said. “At least two.”

“To hell with the door,” she said. “How are we getting out of
here?”

“I'm not sure,” he said. “Fix me another drink and let me think it over.” So, there we
were and it kept on raining. Every now and then I'd feel the car squench down in the mud, like it was settling. You could see me shudder every
time it did it. Miss Crystal, she fixed me a bourbon and Coke. That helped a little. Crystal Anne had fallen asleep on her momma, just screamed a few
minutes and went on off.

I guess this would be as good a time as any to tell you about the inside of the car. It was all made of
leather, everything was leather. There wasn't anything that wasn't covered with leather but the dials. Even the refrigerator had a leather
cover, softest, sweetest-smelling leather you could dream of in a million years, dark tan with here and there a black stripe.

Every
place you turned there was a little hidden mirror. One beside each seat. I couldn't help but think of Mr. Phelan looking himself over while
he'd be driving. The bar was in the middle so you could fix drinks from the front or the back and underneath was this nice little refrigerator
that makes cubes the size of table dice. Net bags on the back of the seats for holding things. Just like on a Pullman. Oh, it was some car. And there we
were, rammed up against a live oak and the rain coming down and no one knowing what to do next. “I'm for getting out and trying to make it
up the bank,” I said. “It's too big a chance to take, getting washed into the Lacassine inside a car.”

“This car's not going anywhere,” Mr. Harry said. “It weighs a ton. The best thing we can do is stay right here.
Just sit tight till it stops raining.”

“I think he's right,” Miss Crystal said. “Let's just
make another drink and eat some of this lunch you had the sense to bring.” It
was
thanks to me there was anything to eat. I'd
fixed a lunch of cream cheese sandwiches on Boston bread and radish roses and a little pie made of chicken scraps. Food tastes so good when you're
in danger. We ate it every bite.

The highway patrol finally came and got us out. I never have been so glad to see a policeman. A
black man, black as me, not coffee colored. “How you doing, ma'am,” he said in the sweetest voice, sticking his head into the car. It
was still raining but it was passing. “You hold on. We're bringing a rope for you all to hold on to going up the hill. We'll have you
out of here before you know it.” Then they came with ropes and took us one by one up the hill, Crystal Anne first, awake now and screaming her
head off and in a while we're all up on the road and the policemen are writing everything down. The rain's slacking up but it's still
falling.

Getting the car out was something else. They had to send for a wrecker and when that didn't pull it they had to get
a tractor and lay boards on the hill and I don't know what all. Crystal Anne and I were sitting in the policeman's car watching and talking
to him about everything. His people are from Boutte where Mark's from. Know everybody we know. Finally they got the wrecker and the boards all
lined up and here come the car inching up the hill and back out onto the highway. Everybody clapping and cheering. The side that hit the tree
didn't look too bad after all. Not as bad as I thought it was going to. Of course the doors won't open. All the men and policemen
they're walking around the car, admiring it and commenting on it, talking about how much it cost and after a while Mr. Harry got into the
driver's seat and turned the key and it started right up. Everybody cheered. “They make these things out of old tanks,” Mr. Harry
said, laughing up at the policemen. “Those Krauts can make a car. You got to hand it to them. They can make a car.”

“Let's get going then,” Miss Crystal said. She was starting to look pretty bad, her hair all coming out of her pageboy
and her pants covered with mud. I can't stand to see her like that, hard as I work ironing everything she owns.

“Get
in,” Mr. Harry called out. “We're back on the road. We're on our way.” So we all piled back into the car, this time
I'm in the back with Crystal Anne and they're up front and as soon as we're out of sight of the policeman Miss Crystal tells me to
reach in the refrigerator and hand her a bottle of wine. “No more hard liquor till we get to Texas,” she said. “We've had enough
trouble for one day.”

Then it seem like we're driving forever. Like driving into a dream. First Beaumont, then
Liberty, then Houston and we got to stop and let Mr. Harry get some Mexican food and call Mr. Phelan and tell him what's going on. Then someplace
called Clear Lake where Crystal Anne went to sleep for the third time, this time for good. Then Almeda, then Salt Lick, then Seville. I'm
memorizing the names to tell Mark. Then we're only six miles away on an asphalt road, then we turn onto gravel, then to dirt and we're
there. Country as flat as a pancake and dry, hardly a tree in sight. It's the middle of the night and we're at this Mexican-style house all
sprawled out in the moonlight, must have twenty rooms. Mr. Phelan's waiting for us in the yard, about six dogs with him. These big red dogs with
skinny faces, like the ones Judge Winn have over on Henry Clay, look like they'd take your arm off. The minute I saw them I just held Crystal Anne
closer to me.

“There he is,” Miss Crystal said. “Wearing black. Look at those pants, Harry. Can you believe
he's kin to us?”

Mr. Phelan always wears black. Every time he come up to New Orleans he's got on black. Look
like that's his only style. This night he's got on a long-sleeve shirt with a big collar and his pants are sewn up the side with white
stitching. His hair all cut off real short. Look like it's been shaved, and he's standing with his hands in his pockets, standing real still
and not letting anything show on his face. If he's seen the side of the car he's not letting on. Mr. Harry, he turn off the motor and get
out and hug his cousin. “Goddammit, Phelan,” he says. “Put those dogs up. I've had enough trouble for one day without fooling
with your dogs.”

“They won't hurt you, Harry. They won't move unless I tell them to. Sit,” he says to
the dog pack. “Show Uncle Harry your manners.” Every last one of them sit down on their hindquarters the second he say it.

“Hello, Phelan,” Miss Crystal says, getting out. “Look in the back seat. There's your niece. Well, come on, stop
acting like a movie star and look at what we did. It isn't all that bad.” She walked around to the bashed-in side and he followed her.

“Who was driving?” he says. He still hasn't let on that he even cares.

“Traceleen,”
Miss Crystal says. “And Crystal Anne was in the front seat with her. It's a wonder she didn't crack her head open. It's a wonder
we aren't all at the bottom of the river.”

“You were letting Traceleen drive?” He let out his breath and
moved in to put his hand on the bashed-in door. I moved back deeper into the back seat, keeping Crystal Anne between me and him. “Holy Christ,
Crystal. You let the nigger maid drive my car? This goddamn car isn't even insured. Well, Jesus fucking H. Christ…I don't believe
it…I can't understand…” He stopped and stuck his hands back into his pockets. He looked off into the sky, this look coming onto
his face like he is surrounded by a bunch of people that don't know what to do and he is tired of fooling with it and might just disappear into
the night some day. “Never mind,” he says. “I guess I'm lucky that it drives. I've got to use it tomorrow to pick up a
party in San Antonio.” He bent over and tried to stick a piece of chrome back on that was falling off. I felt sort of sorry for him for a moment.
He'd been having a rough time lately from all I hear Mr. Harry and Miss Crystal say. Up to his ears in debt and all like that.

“Well, come on in,” he was saying. “Come in and see the place.” We all went in together. You've never seen
such a sight as was in that house. No words will describe it. Every animal you ever heard of was in there. A full-sized baby giraffe, that's one
thing. A big pile of elephant tusks. I don't kow how many. Lion heads and leopards and some kind of curved-horn sheep and several deer and this
caped buffalo that almost killed him when he shot it. In between the animal heads was pictures of Mr. Phelan on his hunts. He's kneeling over
animals in every picture. Like a preacher. Every way you'd turn there's another picture of him kneeling over something. I was thinking maybe
if he was so broke he might think of starting him a museum.