"HARRY & IVORY" – Chapter 1

"Harry & Ivory"

A love story you have not heard before.

   Prologue

     "The Black Girl Jones"

    He had left Miami before dawn. Now, a joint and a six-pack later, Harry was heading north out of Ocala with only three-hundred miles to go. He had put in long hours during his last month in South Florida and it was so beautiful to be getting back home for a few days. "Home before dark!" he yelled, his tanned, beefy arm hanging out the open window of the pickup and his fist pounding happily against the door. The traffic light up ahead was due to turn red and Harry slowed down and allowed it to catch him. He flicked a wave at the two, teenage black girls starting to walk across the intersection. They giggled and smiled and waved back. So slender and animated and pretty. Not a precious ounce of food-stamp fat. "Dear Heavenly Father," Harry said to himself, "May I have just one? Please?" The light switched to green and the car behind honked. Harry glanced to the side for one last look and caught the girls looking back at him. You're old enough to be their father.... "Yeah, well, what can I say...." He gave the pickup just enough throttle to rumble off the mark without burning rubber. They like blond hair. No, they like me! They like this pretty truck.... Harry began to sing. "Jesus loves me, this I know, 'cause the Bible tells me so." US-27 North stretched out ahead through the green and sunny Florida countryside.
    Black girls got ESP. They can tell I really lust after them....
    Home before dark -- that was the plan. He'd have time to walk around the place a little, maybe watch the chickens roost, maybe count the new ducklings down at the swamp, check out his prize-winning hen, "Peaches". So often they would lose chickens and ducks to owls or coons, and gators. Harry recalled the first time his son, Perry, had killed a wild fox. Little Perry was proud, but at the same time he was fighting back tears when he carried the dead animal in to show them. They had been eating dinner, and Perry was the only one to jump up when they heard the squawking coming from the fenced-in chicken yard.
    "Big deal!" Janey said as her brother ran outside with his .22 pistol.
    Now Perry was standing in front of her, holding the limp animal up by the hind legs. Perry tossed his long, blond hair and shook the fox in her face. "Big deal, huh, Janey? Big deal? It almost got Peaches!"
    "That nigger hen...."
    Blood was running out of the fox's slack jaws and dripping onto the floor. Annie, the family wife and mother, commenced to bitch at the children and Harry was forced to restore order. The next morning, when Harry went outside to burn trash, he found Perry's Natural Wildlife poster of a red fox. Ever since the family moved to the country the picture had been taped proudly over the boy's bed. So cute, the fox's long tail and cocky ears. It was in the barrel now, crumpled but face up, on top of the heap, waiting for someone to burn it. To end it.
    Home before dark....
    Harry tilted back his head and finished off the Corona he had been sipping, tossing the empty beer bottle into the back of the pickup with a hook-shot over the cab. The vortex of air behind the window whipped the clear glass against the front of the truck-bed with a healthy clunk. Harry burped. Piss on the "open bottle" law. At least he wasn't a litter bug.
    ...nigger hen....
    Janey's probably more of a brat than ever now.
    Neat sense of humor, though.... And tough.... She gets that from me.
    Harry thought about rolling another joint and getting another beer out of the cooler in back. He decided to wait until he stopped for gas, and checked the oil and stuff. With the tank full he could drive on for a long time. Get stoned without anyone noticing. Then, when he got near Tallahassee, he could turn on the FM. Tallahassee had a good soul station last time he was through, and good, hard, old-time rock. Good country. No electric organ music with canaries singing in the background. No Lawrence Welk.... No Montovanni.... No new-age trash....
    A heavy pickup truck was approaching from up ahead: a massive winch over the front bumper and a pair of long air-horns over the cab, like Harry's. The two drivers waved to each other as they passed. Recognition.
    Harry felt of the sharp points of the clear, lead-crystal star which hung from a heavy, gold chain around his neck. The star was about an inch across, and fat, and Harry rubbed the five points with a fold of his flannel shirt, polishing the brilliant glass. It was his magic star and it brought him good luck and happy days and Harry believed in it.
    Worse than a damn hippie....
    "Yeah, well, I'm happy!"
    One day you'll give that star to some colored witch and you'll never see it or her again....
    "A nice, shiny black one. Not coffee colored. They're okay, too, but... Let the brothers have the light ones, the coffee-colored ones." Harry caught himself speeding, and slowed back down to sixty or so.
    Up ahead was an old man, a white derelict walking along the near side of the road. Harry hesitated before slowing down, ready to change his mind after he got a better look. After passing him, Harry pulled off onto the shoulder and waited. In the mirror the man kept on coming with the same, slow shuffle, and Harry decided to jump out and get a beer. He stripped off his outer shirt, the day having warmed up considerably since dawn.
    "You want a beer?" Harry popped the lid off with the opener which was permanently screwed to the outside of the passenger-side of the cab. He held out the bottle -- tall and cold and dripping wet from the cooler, gleaming in the sun.
    "Don't mind if I do." The man smiled with one tooth -- the lone tooth surprisingly white. His hand was small and dark, and the back of it was covered with short, black hair.
    Harry opened another Corona for himself and they drank, standing there. The man smelled like damp hay.
    "Where you headed?"
    "Perry, Florida."
    "We're in Florida now!" Man, are you burned out, Harry thought.
    "There's a Perry, Georgia."
    "I'll take you as far as Perry, Florida."
    "'Preciate this beer." The man looked at the bottle as if he had never seen a Mexican beer before, drained it, and tossed the empty into the grass.
    "Hey! Pick that up!"
    "They got niggers pick 'em up. Pri'ners."
    Harry pitched his empty into the back of the pickup. The old man coughed and wheezed for a spell and Harry stood back from him and watched. "I don't leave my trash and shit all over the country."
    "Yeah? Well, that's dumb."
    "Yeah?" Harry looked away from him, down the road. "Every time I pick up one of you old farts I do it because I'm thinking: Maybe the way I've been living lately, you know, maybe one day I'll end up like you. Fucked out of my house. On the road and no place to go, no ride, no more family, no wife...."
    A Greyhound bus rushed past them with a whoosh, sucking over the tall grass and trailing a warm blanket of diesel fumes.
    "I got me a wife."
    "Yeah?" Harry pulled out his sky-blue T-shirt, which had been tucked into his jeans, and pulled down the zipper of his jeans to pee. He turned his back. On the back of the T-shirt was a picture of a long-barreled rifle with a scope. Above the rifle was printed: "Long Distance" and underneath: "The next best thing to being there." Harry commenced to piss into the grass between his snake-skin, pointy-toed boots. Boots he wore only when traveling.
    The vagrant stopped coughing. "Yeah, I got me a wife. I go visit her on Thanksgivin', and Christmas, or like now when I'm broke or feelin' sick. You got another beer?"
    "No. Not an extra one, anyway." Harry shook off the last few drops and checked the big knife sticking out of his back pocket when he zipped up.
    "Well...."
    "I changed my mind about giving you a ride, too."
    "They see them empty bottles back here an they'll get you DUI. You'll end up like me one day. Yup. An inch from dead. Drinkin' and drivin' like you do."
    "Listen! Drinking and driving is my favorite thing on this planet!" Harry straightened up and heard his voice rise. "It's not my fault some people can't handle booze and don't know what side of the road they're on! God made everybody different! That's not my fault! Some people are born without legs -- does that mean I have to ride around in a wheelchair? Huh? And I'm never going to be like you. I'm clean and you need a bath, for one thing. I've got a ride and you don't – let God get you one! And I don't litter and I don't hate niggers, and I brush my teeth, and..."
    "I brush my tooth." The man grinned and his single, pearl-white tooth flashed back triumphant. "Anyways, we all end up the same. Dead. It don't matter. Least when you get old, it don't matter no more."
    "Bullshit."
    "You ain't old yet."
    "Bye," Harry said.
    Back on the road, Harry watched the man get smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror.
    After scoring gas in Perry, Harry took a few tokes off the fresh joint he had rolled before pulling out. The deep tread of the big truck tires began to sing on the blacktop-and-crushed-shell highway, and the big V-8 under the hood was purring white power. Soon he would be within FM radio-range of Tallahassee, and after that, just another hundred miles and home. He'd be cramped up and wasted by then, well, not bad wasted, and Annie would come running out to greet him and see if he needed help down from the truck, and Janey and Perry would be hanging back, checking his condition out, pouting, disapproving, then finally running up to him for their hugs and their coming-home presents.
    Harry couldn't stop grinning and his face was beginning to hurt from it. And the pickup sounded so fine! No need to turn the radio on just yet. His grin broadened as he remembered the box of tapes he always brought along and never seemed to play anymore. He pictured the hooker he had picked up in Miami one time. A lunch-hour hooker. Young, part time, maybe even somebody's housewife. The very next day, Harry had tried to find her for some more. And for days after that. But she had disappeared from his life forever. She had been so eager and happy to please. He pictured her beside him in the truck that one time he picked her up. He had been compelled to take his eyes off traffic so many times to look at her while he drove her to his place -- the upper flat he rented near Miami International Airport. She was coffee colored. Yes, please, sugar and cream. He pictured her standing there in his sunny living-room that first few minutes, in her skimpy, frilly panties -- heavenly-blue with little, pink bows. She was standing there before him proud, pulling on her dark, pokey nipples with her fingers, toughening them up. "My name is Jeannette," she smiled, so pretty, her eyes bright. "How do you want me?"
    Jeannette cost Harry fifty dollars and days and nights of remembering and longing. Almost every lunch hour he would leave the job and cruise her neighborhood. Sometimes he would stop the few, foxy-looking hookers he could find there and ask them about Jeannette. He would get out of the pickup and run up to them. Sometimes they got angry and spit, and sometimes they would smile and proposition him. "Jeannette not out today. Don' know where she live. You wan' a blowjob? I'll make you forget all about that Jeannette."
    One bright and sunny noon Harry spotted the tallest, super-fine black girl he had ever seen walking the curb. On the other side. He pulled his pickup over to park as soon as he could, risked crossing the busy street, and trotted back toward her. She was in heels and tight jeans, and a red, unbuttoned blouse. Harry would never forget the flash of her smile as she turned and waited for him to come up to her. An Abyssinian princess. Her hair hung down in front of one shoulder in a long, stiff, jet-black pony-tail. Long, pointy breasts were tucked loosely into her open shirt. Instead of becoming annoyed, she nodded and smiled when Harry asked her about Jeannette. "I unnerstan', baby," she said. She explained that she hadn't seen Jeannette for a long time and that maybe she had moved out of the neighborhood. He shouldn't worry about Jeannette being murdered or anything like that. She would've heard about it. Then she told Harry that her name was Tracy.
    Harry took Tracy to his upper flat. When they got there, Tracy told Harry that she loved his place, the outside staircase, the long balcony outside the front door, the hanging pots there full of exotic, flowering plants, the huge bathroom with the skylight.... She laid Harry down on his big, brass bed and loved on him for half an hour. Her long, sweet body cost Harry a fifty dollar bill and weeks and weeks of longing and pain. He never saw Tracy again, not that he didn't try.
    A bend in the highway and a slow-moving tractor with a hayrake brought Harry back to earth. Stomping on the throttle pedal, he smoked tires around the tractor, the big V-8 pressing Harry back against his seat until he eased off. The tires began to sing again as the engine settled back to purr along.
    I'll find you one day, Tracy.... When I get back to Miami. We'll sit out on the steps and I'll do up your hair. In braids. A hundred long, fine braids -- all in pretty rows like a garden. And I'll kiss your beautiful eyes, and your mouth. I'll sit there on the step above you with my legs around you and my arms around you and I'll feel of your devil body while we sit there. We'll watch the sun go down over the rooftops, and watch the kids go riding by on their bikes. The neighbors strolling around after work -- they'll look up and see us and they'll wave, and they'll say to each other: "Now that man there -- he loves that woman!"

   Chapter One

     "Home"

    The soul station from Tallahassee was breaking up, out of range, and Harry was banging his fist against the outside of the pickup to some old Credence Clearwater Revival. "Willie and the Poor Boys". The tape was one of Harry's favorites and he was glad that he finally plugged it in. He was drunk, and high, and it was time to pee again – but he decided he could hold it until he hit the rest-area outside Cottondale. And before leaving Cottondale he could get out the last Corona, "La cerveza mas fina", which was still floating around in the slushy darkness inside the cooler (he could see that darkness), and finish off the joint he'd started back there near Perry. And in less than an hour -- home!
    I'm sorry there aren't any decent jobs for a man in the panhandle, Annie....
    It was well into Saturday afternoon now, and Cottondale, along US-90, was deserted. Harry cruised through the town as close to the speed limit as he could. He generally avoided the Interstates. Even though there were more county mounties on the state and county roads, they were cops Harry felt he could deal with. The state troopers, real men all, would be less compromising – the most likely to nail him for DUI. Just doing their job, of course, but hey, he had a family!
    Cottondale....
    Miami must be on another planet.
    There was a white girl sitting on the wide, front steps of the Cottondale High School. She was reading from a large book in her lap, and a white boy on a horse was riding right up to her, slowly, sitting tall and proud in the saddle. The girl would not look up.
    "Chicks," Harry said aloud.
    There were only two cars parked in front of the public restroom outside Cottondale, and a bulldozer. After parking behind the dozer, Harry popped open his last beer and caught the cap in his hand, taking a swig and setting the bottle down in the back before heading toward the building. There was a cool breeze blowing now and it was scuttling the leaves around on the ground, and it ruffled his hair. The crispness of the air reminded him he that he had finally arrived in Western Florida, the panhandle, where his family was waiting. After looking back pridefully at his vehicle, Harry turned for the door marked "MEN" and bumped slam into a huge white man coming out. The guy had a grin on his fat face and was busy stuffing a revolver back into his belt. He caught Harry by the arm to stop him from stumbling into the wooden partition. The first thing that flickered in Harry's brain was that he had left his own pistol back in the truck.
    "Hey! Don't worry, mister!" The man laughed. "I was just teachin' that queer in there about the fear of God." He stood back and looked down at Harry's shiny boots for a second. "Don't be surprised if he looks a little green around the edges!" He laughed again and took off.
    It was dark inside, and the light switch had been ripped out of the wall. Harry waited for his eyes to adjust. Got to piss!
    There was a sink, a urinal, and next to the urinal, a stall. The door was missing from the stall, and the partition beside the urinal had a hole carved into it. At pecker height. A pair of skinny legs was showing at the front of the stall, underwear-shorts and trousers crumpled around the ankles. Harry went over and looked in. It was an older dude and he was holding his mouth, and it looked like blood was running through his fingers. Too dark to tell.
    "You all right?"
    "My teeth," the man moaned. "He mashed that gun barrel right through the hole. I didn't -- I wasn't -- I..."
    "Yeah, sure." Harry went to the urinal. "Turn around! I get upset when people watch me piss!"
    Harry stood there staring at the cold, concrete wall in his face, waiting for the flow to come. As much as he was hurting to, he could not pee. The old faggot must still be watching. God, how he hated to walk up to a urinal to piss and then couldn't for the other people. From now on, his 9MM went with him every time. When you're carrying a gun, everybody looks the other way.
    Well, at least he hadn't forgotten the big bear-knife in his back pocket. "If you're watching, I'll cut your lips off!"
    "I'm not watching! I'm not watching!"
    "So pull up your wormy pants and get out of here!"
    The piss came. Hesitantly at first, then a glorious river.
    "I can't! There's no paper in here! I need paper!"
    Jeez.... Harry finished, and handed the man some paper towels from over the sink.
    Outside, sweet and cool, the funky country air invaded his senses, his soul. Pine. And a hint of wood smoke. Country! Harry let out his best rebel yell and retrieved the bottle of Corona, parking it on the hood of the pickup between swallows (and keeping an eye out for the law). Fuck the war on drugs and alcohol! His pickup was painted blue -- glossy, light, heavenly, robin-egg blue -- and Harry was proud of it. Proud of his taste in such things. As part of the wonderful paint job, winged corncobs -- the DeKalb Seed Company logo -- graced each side of the hood, and on each door was painted:

"LOVE JONES"

    "Love Jones!" Harry shouted. And boy, do I have a dose of it! A mini-van full of kids hummed past and a little Hispanic girl with a big, white bow in her hair shot Harry a bird. He shrugged his shoulders and lit what was left of the joint. He was so happy. He was a man, and he was coming home. The roach burned down to his fingertips and took the smile off his face.
    Open road again. "Get it, Love Jones!" He decided not to turn the Credence Clearwater tape back on. The truck was singing to him again.
    "Singing!" Tears came into his eyes. He was that happy, and that high. He passed by a what looked like a black mother-and-daughter scene. The two were standing next to an open mailbox on a post beside the highway. Harry waved to them just as they both raised their own hands.
    They know. They can tell.
    The daughter reminded him of Ruby. Ruby.... One time, when the children were small and they all lived in the city – in Miami – Harry came down with the flu. It was the most sick he had ever been. Ruby, who had moved with her parents and ten younger brothers and sisters into the house next door, came over and found him in bed. After making sure that Annie was away at the liquor store where she worked as a gun-toting security guard, (Ruby often baby-sat for them), she sat on the side of his bed for what seemed like an hour. She told him sad stories about her childhood in the quarters and told him about some happy moments, too. Somehow through all of this she ended up holding Harry's hand. This was the first, black, female hand Harry had ever held and her skin felt like velvet, like magic. When Ruby left, she bent over and kissed him in his ear. With his body so limp and weak with fever, the kiss came through loud and clear, and Harry knew that Ruby was special.
    So many of them are special.... Harry pounded the outside of the door again with his fist and let out another, happy yell.
    Later, a doctor told Harry that he had had pneumonia and didn't know it. And shortly after Harry recovered, Ruby got married and moved out of her parents' house next door.
    The town of Chipley. Then Bonifay. Caryville. "Count down!" Finally, Westville, and his turn-off. Harry braced himself for the dirt road. Ka BOOM! Love Jones dropped off the blacktop. Fifty and sixty miles per hour over red clay and sand. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! Over the railroad tracks. The machine and the man were one with the scent of home. Flying past swamps and cypress stands, tearing up and down hills, boring through dark plots of hardwood and busting out into bright corn and soybean fields golden in the afternoon sun. Harry slowed for the tricky turn onto a wooden bridge and another turn for their private road. In second gear now, he eased the pickup around the curve before Janey's welcome sign:

DEATH TO TRESPASSERS

    Past the power poles papered with Perry's dried rattlesnake and cottonmouth skins. Dark woods on either side again. Wild flowers everywhere -- splashes of yellow and purple....
    Harry pulled the air-horns. He pictured weighing Annie's ample, creamy-white tits plump in his hands. It had been a long time....
    Annie's pickup was parked next to the trailer but no one was in sight. Nobody came running out. Harry sighed and slid down from the cab, and tested his legs. Perry's pit-bull dog was straining to get to him, snapping his chain with every lunge, docked tail-nub wagging. Harry staggered over to him and gave the monster a hug, getting his arms slobbered and scratched bloody in the process.
    "Damn, Pounder!" Harry stepped back out of range and examined the damage. "Well, at least somebody loves me!"
    "He does that."
    Harry wheeled around. It was Janey. She was standing there with her hands on her hips, her eyes squinty, hair radiating about her head like an electrocuted lion. Faded and raggedy jeans, and tiny nipples poking a T-shirt that said:

SQUEEZE ME -- Florida Orange Juice

    "You surprised me," Harry said. "You're still growing, I see!"
    "Me, or my tits?"
    Harry had been about to give his daughter a hug but changed his mind. "Janey...."
    "You drunk?"
    "You friendly?"
    They stared at each other for a moment.
    "Mommy had the name painted on her truck finally."
    "Yeah? I didn't notice. Where is she? How've you all been?"
    "She named it ANNIE."
    "Heh! Yeah, well...."
    "Harry!" Annie came running up, her extra pounds heaving. She put down the basket of string-beans she was carrying and gave Harry a hug.
    "I want to fuck you," Harry whispered in her ear. He gave her a big, happy kiss.
    ...kissing a white woman...
    "He's drunk," Janey said, when Perry came running up. "But not real bad."
    Harry gave Perry a hug, scrunching him up off his feet.
    "The pole-beans in Annie's basket," Perry said, nearly out-of-breath. "Mommy picked those this morning only she saved bringing them in till you came home so she could look like on the cover of Mother Earth News."
    "Oh, Perry!" Annie said. She looked so happy, and her face was tan from working out in the sun. Harry noticed that for the first time in years she actually looked beautiful to him, little wrinkles and all. They hugged again.
    "It's country living does it," Annie beamed.
    "You can read my mind. I love you, wife!"
    "Everybody can read your mind. I love you, Harry!"
    "I'm hungry."
    "Here's a cold one, Dad." Janey handed him a beer, a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. She turned sideways and showed her father the leather beer-can holster she had on her belt. She laughed and her smile seemed so wholesome to Harry. He could remember a time when it was a chore to get her to brush her teeth.
    pschttt! Harry popped open the PBR and took a long swallow. He would put Corona on the shopping list later.
    "Oh, Harry!" Annie's smile faded. "Haven't you had enough?"
    "The alcohol will dampen his sex urge," Janey said. "Make him more manageable."
    "Wrong!" Perry shouted.
    "Shut up, both of you! Harry – Janey's making dinner tonight. Beef roast and some of our own potatoes and some of our own green beans. It'll be ready by dark."
    Harry pictured Annie's heavy, over-ripe, milky-white tits again. Hanging over his face. Hot in his hands....
    Strange stuff
    He took her arm and pulled her close. "I want a blowjob," he whispered. His penis swelled in his Levi's.
    "Before dinner?" Anne whispered back.
    "Before dinner," Janey said.
    "Your mother and I are going for a little walk, owl-ear. We have something to discuss. What kennel to board you in."
    Annie looked undecided.
    "Funny, Dad," Perry said. "Oh, I have some bad news."
    "That's okay, Son, it can wait. Every time I come home there's some bad news."
    "There is? Well, this is bad bad news." Perry paused for effect. "What are you grinning about, Janey? Butt out!"
    "Well -- what is it?"
    "Peaches is dead."
    Harry's eyes narrowed. Can't they do anything right?
    "Harry," Annie said. "It was only a chicken."
    Harry chug-a-lugged the rest of his beer and tossed the empty on top of the "Sacred Mountain of Pabst Blue Ribbon" beer cans he was building near the drive. (Beyond that, "beyond" because the glass threw farther, was the smaller, newer, "Corona Bottle and Shard Mountain").
    "Must've been a possum or a coon," Perry said.
    "Damn it!" Harry loved Peaches. She was the only hen he ever knew that would come up to him and let him pick her up and hold her.
    Annie took Harry's hand and tugged on it. "Harry -- don't start anything on your first day home. Okay? Come on, let's go for a walk."
    Janey turned and stomped toward the trailer, the strap on the beer-can holster clicking against her ass and her hair glowing in beams of golden light. The sun was a giant, orange, smoldering ball sinking through the pine-tops.
    "It wasn't just a chicken, Annie...."
    Annie squeezed his hand. "Mommy's little boy."

     <end chapter-1>

Humanism with attitude! Rev: 17 March 2005