"HARRY & IVORY" – Chapter 11

"Harry & Ivory"

A love story you have not heard before.

   Chapter Eleven

    "In His Blood"

    The following Friday morning, Harry took the long way to the boat-yard. He left a little early, the air was warm for a January morning – warm even for Miami – and he felt good. Maybe it was the vitamins he had been taking so religiously lately (even to the point of keeping a bottle of Vitamin-C tablets in the glove-box of the pickup).
    Bumper-to-bumper traffic. Harry studied the up-tight normals on either side of him – most of them late, he assumed, with farther to drive than he had. The women driving station wagons with kids on board were the worst, so hostile and tense, tsk tsk.... Love Jones, and another pickup which was attempting to pass on the left, were nailed by a light. Front row seats for the intersection.
    The blond, female passenger leaned toward her open window and said something to Harry. She had been sitting in the middle, snug up against the man driving.
    She spoke up louder. "Your truck's got iron-poor blood."
    "Yeah, that must be it – I was wondering." Harry caught a whiff of her perfume knifing through the blanket of vehicle exhaust. He blipped the throttle and let Love Jones snarl at the couple for a second. "Tell your boyfriend to get his AC fixed so you can roll your window up so your hair doesn't get all messed."
    The girl said something to the driver and then turned back to Harry. "He says for you to fuck yourself and roll your own window up."
    "Tell him I took my AC out so I could fit this iron-poor Ford four-fucking-sixty cube engine under the hood. Tell him the hoses hissed for twenty-minutes when I cut them. For three days there was a hole in the ozone layer over Miami."
    "Ha ha! I'll tell him!"
    The light turned green and Harry let them move out ahead.
    Intelligent.... Pretty....
    Harry pictured pressing the blond girl down on his big, brass bed. He pictured milky-white tits with pink nipples – not that he had ever seen a nipple that was actually pink. He pictured his dark body covering hers and suddenly remembered that he was white himself. Traffic had begun to move faster and the vehicle behind him honked.
    At the time-clock he found a hand-written note clipped to his card. "Boo!" Then a hand-drawn smiley face signed: Furman Burd.
    "Furman...." Harry sighed and headed for the construction bay where Furman worked. Deep-south redneck. "Alabama born and bred" as they liked to say. Huge upper body mushing out over tight-ass jeans crammed into engineer boots. Harry found him working on a twenty-eight foot speedboat with three Mercruiser outdrives. Furman had an air-gun in his hand when Harry walked up, and was blowing crud off of one of the drives. No goggles, what the hell....
    "What do you want, Furman?"
    "Oh! How nice! No 'Good morning?' No 'How are you?'"
    A dragonfly, velvety-black with an iridescent border on the leading edge of its wingtips, fluttered past them and landed on the far outdrive. Harry watched it and wondered if it was rare. Furman went back to blowing dirt off the unit he had started on.
    "Doing nigger work now?" Harry said.
    A black man stood up inside the boat. He had been working down inside where Harry could not have seen him. It was Jimmy.
    "Doing white man's work now, Jimmy?" Harry said, in an attempt to ease his own embarrassment.
    "Harry – you the only white man I know what talks race in front of everybody, yah."
    "Race is real and race is beautiful, Jimmy."
    Furman stopped what he was doing. "Yeah, so I heard. 'Sit true you eat colored cunt, Harry?"
    "Black women are proof that Jesus loves us, Burd." Harry grinned. He loved to tangle with Furman as long as it stayed verbal. "Burd, if your father knew how to spell, Bird would be spelled right on your birth certificate."
    "Yeah? Well, I know my father knew how to fuck. He knew what to fuck, that is."
    "Your mother white?"
    "As snow."
    "And Jesus made that dragonfly there. See? It's black! Black, with other colors for decoration. And since it's winter-time now – dragonflies aren't in season – God must've sent this one here. To land right there on that greasy outdrive just for you, Furman. As a sign. To show you your attitude is incorrect."
    Furman took his tiny eyes off Harry and turned the air-gun at the dragonfly, blowing the wings clean off of it. They looked down at the creature, flopping and twitching where it had fallen on the gritty, oily concrete.
    "I need some grass," Furman said. "Jimmy says you can supply me."
    Harry looked up at Jimmy, who was shaking his head.
    "Jimmy didn't tell you that, thimble-dick."
    "Okay, but that Cuban project – everybody knows what those boats are for. I need an oh-zee. Columbian. The good shit. An ounce."
    "Yeah?" Harry stepped on the dragonfly to put it out of its misery. "Dumb asshole!"
    "Yeah. Today."
    "Forget it, Furman. There hasn't been any Columbian in Miami since before Christmas."
    "Would I be asking you if I could get it from a white man?"
    "Besides, if you want the best nowadays you buy domestic."
    "Domestic?" Furman gave Harry a peeved look, and burped.
    "You would call it home grown."
    "Buds?"
    "Two-hundred. Cash."
    Furman dug into the front pocket of his discount-store jeans and flipped a wad of bills onto the top of his rolling tool-chest. Harry counted out two-hundred dollars worth, straightening out each crumpled bill – taking his sweet time. He flipped a ten back. "Now you can still go to McDonald's for lunch."
    Furman pocketed the balled-up ten-spot. "I got me a new chick."
    "No need to explain, Burd."
    "Yeah? Picture this girl. White. Like cream. Tiny nipples. Tits full of milk. White milk. (Note those details, Harry!) Ninety-five pounds in just her panties on my bathroom scale. Got that? Huh? Now picture her stoned. Picture her oh-so-happy 'cause I just scored her a big, fat bag of pretty reefer. Picture her happy, willing little body. Pussy so tight I got to bust her to get in. Long, pointy, snow-white tits mashed up against my sweaty bod. Oh, God!"
    "God?"
    "The One Who made white girls."
    Harry looked up at Jimmy, who was still standing in the boat. Jimmy had a dreamy, faraway look on his weathered, black face.
    "You're a poet, Furman," Harry said.
    "Poet?"
    "Yup. You can't escape it. It's your fate."
    "Just bring me the reefer, Cro."
    "Cro?"
    "Cro-magnum."
    "Right. Be back directly."
    "You better. I don't want you disappearin' down one of them black, inexhaustible holes. Not till I get my bag, anyway."
    "There's nothing you can do about it, Furman. You're a poet."

* * *

    Monday. After work. Late afternoon sunlight turning the bathroom skylight into a bowl of gold. Harry toweled off after the shower and poked around in the kitchen. Sunday should have been over by now – they had agreed over the phone to do some grocery shopping together. She had been avoiding him. It was the Thunderbird. Had to be. Cruising, showing off her car, dropping in on all her friends after work each day, flaunting the pretty T-bird which Harry and Danny and the Lord had provided. Then, on the weekend, she called to tell him her parents were in Miami for a visit. Well, fuck her. Didn't he need to dump her, anyway? Wouldn't she be much better off without somebody like him? Really! Harry looked at his telephone and would have called off the shopping trip right then and there. But Sunday had promised a blowjob if she couldn't stay over. A man can only do so much.
    He pictured home. Annie. And the kids. And Ivory. He pictured the day he and Ivory met. He closed his eyes and saw her, and took in a deep breath of her fragrance. Her low, sweet voice and the pressure of her slender arm against his as they bent over her map of Florida. It hurt Harry to remember, though, that she did not come out the next time he stopped by – and her father had not invited him in. But the two men had enjoyed a good talk, and exchanged seeds, and discussed the marketing of Clearson's reefer for more money in Miami. Once, during their talk, Harry saw Ivory's face in one of the windows, just briefly, and he knew she had been watching them.
    The map.... I know she won't forget....
    Wonder if Janey gave her the Miami address like I told her to. If she gave her my note.
    Harry pictured Ivory slowly unfolding the little note, maybe freezing up a little on seeing there was a phone number, too.
    If she writes, somebody would have to mail it for her....
    No! They've got the mailbox on the road!
    Harry saw her quietly leaving the cabin when her father was away, and slipping her letter to him into the box, looking up and down the road first, flipping the red flag-arm up – hoping the mailman would arrive before her father returned.
    "Harry! Don't you ever lock your door?" Sunday was standing right behind him, hands on her hips. "What if a mugger were here right now instead of me?"
    But Harry was already reaching for the gun behind the toaster. He swung around and pointed it at her face. "Down on your knees!"
    Sunday screamed and ran to the bathroom. It sounded funny to hear her try to throw the bolts on all three doors. Ivory would not have flinched. Harry knew he couldn't know that, but he knew it.
    He dressed. His ice-cold-grocery-store outfit: Levi's and a long-sleeved sweatshirt. Black, Reebok originals – why fight success? Then Sunday sat him down on the outdoor steps and brushed out Harry's blond hair, which had grown down to his shoulders past the point where Annie usually trimmed it for him.
    "We can go in my new Thunderbird."
    "Only if I drive."
    "Nope."
    "We'll go in the truck then. Come back here and you can grill us up some steaks."
    "I am not cooking, Harry. You see a slave sitting here?"
    "Oh, ho, cooking is slavery?"
    "It is to me!"
    "Shit – I'll cook."
    "We'll eat out!" Sunday hesitated. "Unless you really want to cook."
    "If I cook, you do the dishes. That's my rule."
    "If I have to do the dishes, I'm not staying over. That's my rule."
    "Staying over? You were going to stay over?"
    "I was going to stay over, but that's all changed now."
    "Oh, Sunday!" Harry gave her a hug. "You're staying over! I'm in Heaven!"
    "Thank you, Jesus! This man is beginning to understand!"
    Harry's hands slid down over Sunday's ass. "Thank you, Jesus! Thank you so much!"
    At the store, Harry grabbed a cart after Sunday had already pulled one out. She stopped him and insisted they use only one cart for the both of them. "We're a couple, Mister Harry!"
    "Okay, you can drive then!" Harry shoved his cart back into the pile.
    "No, you drive! I'm not going to be looking like I'm your dim-witted little slave!"
    "Little? You got slavery on the brain?"
    "And whose fault is that?"
    They attracted little attention as they stood there. The neighborhood Winn-Dixie was one of the largest supermarkets in Miami, and Harry and Sunday were not the only mixed couple there. He gave her a swat on her pleated rump and headed the cart to the far side of the store. As they started down the first aisle, Sunday began to load the cart from a list her mother had written. Harry pushed some items aside to make room for two six-packs of Corona.
    "That Pabst Blue Ribbon you like is cheaper."
    "Hey. It'd be cheaper to tear up that long list The Lord provided us."
    "My mama wrote me this list and it's her food stamps we'll be using, so don't get all..."
    "Food stamps! Sunday? I'm not going up to that check-out counter with food stamps – I don't care whose they are!"
    "Well, not for that beer, but..."
    "Not for anything! Are your parents crippled, or starving? Didn't they just buy a brand-new mini-van?"
    Sunday ignored him. She was looking over the dessert section, piling up a stack of frozen cheese cakes and pies. "We like the Mrs. Smith brand," she said finally.
    "Food stamps. That's why all these welfare slime are so ugly and fat! Fat that never gets worked off!"
    "It's all Cubans in here today," Sunday said, moving on down the aisle.
    "Cubans work!"
    "And drink that Corona."
    "They earn it."
    "Harry, look at those people over there. I don't feel right with all these Cubans here today, all those big, noisy women and all those little, old men with the mustaches fornicating me with their eyes."
    "Do you have to shout it all over the store?"
    Sunday lowered her voice. "Doesn't that bother you, Harry? All these Cuban men fornicating me with their eyes. Your girlfriend?"
    "Shit, Sunday, it's forty degrees in here and you're prancing around in a summer dress giving everybody goosebumps. It looks like your nipples are trying to drill their way out of that blouse!"
    "I slipped off my bra before I came over, for you."
    "Thanks."
    "You're welcome."
    They did not speak for the next twenty minutes. When they were ready to check out, Harry looked down the row of registers and spotted Sandra, his all-time favorite check-out fox. He began to maneuver the cart through the crowd, hoping Sandra's lane would not be crammed up.
    Sunday tugged at his sleeve. "Harry – this lane, here!"
    But Harry's eyes were on Sandra. He was picturing her face at the moment of a slow penetration. There would be a smoldering, hint of a smile, and just a hint of fire in her half-open, bedroom eyes. Sandra – so cool, so aloof, so – regal.... Sandra was not just a dream. She was real. Right here. Proud and black. Which left Harry out.
    When she sees me with Sunday – that'll get her attention.
    "Harry! This line over here is going faster!"
    He looked over at the next lane. Sunday was right. But the check-out lady was a stocky hispanic with a mustache and a giant wedding ring. Mustaches were only erotic on very tall, elegant women, in Harry's opinion. He held his ground.
    Man lives not by bread alone....
    He was fucking Sandra with his eyes. She glanced up at him from three customers-and-carts away and gave him the slightest of smiles – so brief that Harry couldn't be sure whether he had imagined it or not. He turned to Sunday, who was frowning, and looked back to Sandra. This time she flicked a smile that connected and he grinned. But it was a moment already gone, and Sandra was back to business – dap dap dap – her graceful, princess hands tapping at the register and whipping the customer's items back toward the white bag boy.
    "We're going to be here forever," Sunday said. "The scanners are down or something."
    Harry shrugged. Sandra – you are so fine.
    "Harry, you make me so mad at times!"
    Harry turned and looked Sunday in the eye. "Sunday, shut up." He said it quietly, but with all the firmness of the righteous.
    Only two customers to go now between them and the Princess of Winn-Dixie. Kidnapped from a desert caravan. Sultry, half-open, bedroom eyes peering from behind the veiled curtains of her slave-borne sedan-chair. Long, straight, noble nose. Favorite daughter of a nomad chieftain. Glimpses of the slow fire in her eyes behind the flutter of a fan...
    The man just ahead of Harry turned and said "Hi." They had talked once before. A wiry old fart in leather sandals and khaki shorts – a German-American who had moved to Miami from Milwaukee "before the great depression, before the '26 hurricane". The man had informed Harry that, among other things, up until just recently, niggers in Miami had to be off the streets before dark. Harry had ended that conversation by asking him how many "decades" were in a "recently".
    The man was checking out countless six-packs of Old Milwaukee beer. Shit which no self-respecting German, especially from Milwaukee, would drink, in Harry's opinion. Harry thought he heard the old guy say to Sandra: "I like your hair that way." Sandra's face remained unchanged. Cool. Regal. Her countenance was a priceless work of flesh and spirit personally supervised by The Creator Himself. Harry was sure. Not to be wasted on white, skinny-old, cheap-beer drinking scum. The man began fumbling with his check-book while Sandra looked out into space, her fingers tapping quietly on the conveyor mat.
    With Sandra so close now, Harry forced himself to concentrate on other things. Like the circus act of blacks that was on stage in the next aisle. A family he had seen a few times before (thinking the adults made a neat pair, but their kids, well....). The head of the tribe, the elder, was a gray-haired, square-shouldered, husky patriarch with a shiny, squashed-down, chimpanzee nose, bleary eyes with yellowish whites, and tufts of grizzly hair sprouting from his muscular forearms. He was wearing black slacks and black bedroom slippers with the backs mashed down, and the black T-shirt Harry had never seen him without. The T-shirt, in fact, in combination with this man, Harry considered a major work of street magic. Laundered countless times but the art work on the front still legible – timeless and immortal:

    CAPTAIN QUAALUDE
    (a picture of dice rolling to a stop, and)
    "714"

    Harry caught the man's eye and nodded. The elder nodded back with a quick smile. Recognition.
    Captain Quaalude's wife, or girlfriend, or daughter was a coffee-and-cream colored, middle-aged, cheerful-looking woman with a bright, red babushka around her head. On their cart, at the bottom, mashed in with the dog-food and a twenty-five pound bag of rice, hung a pudgy, snarling, black baby with diapers on, no shirt – the diapers yellow with pee. Hanging onto the cart with one arm, the baby would growl and lash out at his two, older sisters when they weren't making brief dashes to the gum and candy rack. Two, precocious, pretty, pre-teen girls, both in tight cut-offs and little, knit tops – tiny, tough-nipple tits poking through – chunky little asses – ashy-black, long legs.... Sucking their thumbs and cutting their eyes up to Harry. Virgins, but not for long.... Hair in thick, pretty braids with ribbons which said: We're still jus' little girls, so better leave us alone!
    Harry tried to stop watching them. He looked away from the little virgins and ran right into Sandra's accusing eyes.
    Sandra!
    Sandra's fingers went back to dapping at the register keys, checking out the items Sunday was slamming onto the belt.
    I'm sorry, Sandra, but.... Better me than some dirt-bag pimp fucking these pretty babies soon – shooting them up with heroin – putting them out on the street.
    Sunday mumbled something nasty, pushed her way past everyone, and stomped out of the building.
    Harry ended up paying for all of the groceries. Cash.
    "Sandra?" He was handing her the bills, and wondering if she resented having to wear a name tag.
    Her eyes looked up to his, as if to say: Yes?
    "You are my dream."
    Sandra counted out the money. No expression, no response. With the last bag of groceries loaded into the cart, the bag boy made a point of slamming the two six-packs of Corona on top of everything. Harry ignored him and looked back to Sandra one more time. Her eyes bored into his, her exquisite face cool and unyielding. Her lips parted.
    "Thank you."
    Harry rattled the heavy cart through the crowded parking lot with reckless abandon.
    Thank you....
    Yeah, but that's what she's supposed to say to the customers.
    Except Sandra never does.
    Sandra nevers says shit to the customers.
    Sandra....
    Sunday said something to Harry, in a pleasant voice, but he missed it, his mind racing along with more important things.
    Ivory.... Isn't Ivory my dream?
    Oh, Sandra....
    "I'm not staying with you tonight, Harry. Mama's only going to be here one more day or so."
    "Okay. Whatever."

* * *

    The next day, after his after-work shower, Harry decided to sit out on the balcony and smoke a good, fat joint. Dissolve all those circular programs in his head so he could make some decisions – configure some sort of order to his life. He settled himself into the rocking chair, feet up on the railing. He listened to the sounds from the streets – neighborhood kids – a football game somewhere. He could not see anything down there, sitting so low, all the philodendron vines and leafy plants growing in pots all along the balcony. His enclave of Paradise in the middle of The Magic City.
    Sometimes, a nice lady would give him an exotic plant in a pot or a hanging basket to add to the jungle there....
    Stoned out of my gourd! I grow good shit!
    I'm a lucky man.
    Thank you, Lord.
    Whoever you are....
    Sunday says she knows you. Must be nice....
    Harry closed his eyes. He could hear Annie's voice, and see her face, her smile, her eyes sparkling.
    One time she told him how it would be. "You're going to get a bill for all of your doin's one day, Harry."
    You're probably right, Annie.
    You're the only faithful thing I have, Annie.
    I love you, Annie.
    He had told her one time that his pickup truck, Love Jones, was the only thing he could count on. They had both gotten stoned that day, and were sitting outside. The children were in school. A storm was brewing but the wind felt good. The chairs were so comfortable. Senses heightened by the reefer, the approaching storm was putting on a show just for them. Wind-devils sucking up leaves in flimsy whirls. The sky growling black. But Annie was thinking about what Harry had just said.
    "No, I'm the only thing you have you can count on, Harry. One day that truck will break down. I hope when it does the weather isn't turning bad like it is right now."
    "All weather is good weather."
    "Yes, well, when Love Jones breaks down, there you'll be. Cars whizzing by you like you're a nobody. Which you are. Which we all are. Which..."
    But Harry had gotten up and walked away.
    Why did I walk away from her when she said that? Because she was right?
    Harry's thoughts were interrupted by the screaming of a low-flying aircraft overhead. Miami International Airport was located between Harry's flat and the boat-yard, and it seemed to him that the big jumbo-jets flew lower in bad weather. Or they used a different runway.... Harry suddenly realized that the sky had become darker. An omen! No, maybe he felt the storm coming first and then remembered what Annie had said that day. No, it was an omen.
    There was a bright flash of lightening, and thunder rolled across the city. It's crazy! This is the dry season! I'm so high....
    Another low-flying plane, the whine from those incredible engines tearing the air directly above Harry's head, the underside and belly of the machine greasy and dark and heavy-looking, the engines screaming for a bite of the clean air, screaming for life, screaming to gain speed, the plane ponderous and heavy and not high enough yet to soar with the joy of flight.
    Relative silence and peace. A car door slammed down below. Raindrops began to patter on the roof. Harry turned to see Sunday racing up the steps, her breasts juggling and heaving, her face happy and bright.
    "I'm back, you lucky white man," she said.

     <end chapter-11>

Humanism with attitude! Rev: 26 March 2005