"HARRY & IVORY" – Chapter 13

"Harry & Ivory"

A love story you have not heard before.

   Chapter Thirteen

    "The Panther"

    Perry, Florida. Ku Klux Klan territory, or so Harry believed. Ivory looking straight ahead, twirling the empty Corona bottle in her lap. Harry had a carry permit and he considered placing the 9MM Walther on the dash where everyone who could see Ivory could see the pistol. He pulled the piece out of the glove box, checked the loaded-chamber pin, and laid it on the seat between them.
    "Fuck 'em!"
    "Mmmm - hmmmm."
    Red light. Two colored children on the other side of the intersection, looking both ways, deciding to cross. Each carrying a brown grocery bag which looked too big and heavy for them. A pickup truck coming to a stop alongside, next to Ivory in the parking lane. Another pulling up on Harry's side. The men all looking each other over. White boys. Locals. Greasy, one-size-fits-all pro caps. Cat Power. Pennzoil. Leering at Ivory, throttles blipping and engines snarling. Harry figured he could take them. And then the law could take him a block down the road. The light switched green. The trucks on both sides tore away with yells and screaming tires. The children froze in their tracks as the two pickups burned past them on either side. The boy dropped his grocery bag and the contents splattered all over the road. Harry did not remember stopping Love Jones in the middle of the intersection but there he was suddenly, picking up stuff and handing it to the boy, the boy placing the items into the torn bag the girl was holding out. Neither child was crying. The broken jar of apple-sauce they left in the road – Harry realizing that a cop would be along soon, asking why his pickup was blocking the intersection, asking if the children belonged to the nigger in the truck, finding the reefer and the open beer bottles and the moonshine – slapping the cuffs on....
    Interrogating Ivory separately in some back alley....
    The kids said: "Thank you, Mister!" "Thank you!"
    Harry drove off, and Ivory did not speak for a long time. Alternate-27 south – double-lane both ways. Smooth, efficient, modern....
    Or it could've been a real cop – a good cop....
    "You forgot to turn on Highway-98," Ivory said finally. "But it be okay. I feel better goin' your regular way. Maybe one day...."
    "No, we'll do it today!" Harry was surprised that she'd been watching the road signs. He had missed the turn at Chiefland – running on automatic pilot. "We can catch 24 at Bronson and that'll get us back to 98. Then St. Petersburg, and Fort Meyers – we can take the interstate there and make up some time. I want us to be able to watch the sun go down over The Everglades."
    Ivory smiled when he mentioned The Everglades. But for the next few hours she would not talk again, even neglecting to answer questions. It was as though she were troubled with some new thing which made her sad or wary. Harry would glance at her often, each time his heart beating with the love for her. What was it besides her particular grace and lanky, exotic beauty? She was his fantasy made manifest – a wonderful and rare thing – considering that his fantasies never more than brushed the fringes of reality.
    Thank you, Jesus!
    Harry tried to cast out Sunday's voice from his consciousness. Was that going to be permanent? Another cross to bear across the burned fields of his brain?
    THERE'S NO FREE LUNCH, HARRY!
    Yes, Lord.
    From time to time, Harry would break the silence by telling Ivory things about himself, hoping she was listening and taking it all in. And when he offered her the choice of what tapes she wanted to hear, if any, she looked through his cassette collection without a word, and put them all back in the case without making a selection. Once, when it became too much for him, Harry pulled off onto the shoulder and took her hands in his and kissed them, and tried to explain (to both of them) what she meant to him – and how beautiful she was.
    "Even your name. Ivory." Harry picked up her left hand again and watched and felt her fingers gently curl around his.
    Oh, Ivory, I love you so much!
    I don't understand any of this either, okay?
    Her hand tightened on his briefly, as if she had heard his thoughts.
    "Ivory – even when you're changing positions, you know, to get more comfortable, you move so pretty. Like a cat. I wish you would talk to me. Do you want to talk but you can't? Is that it?"
    She pulled her hand away. "Mmmm - hmmmm...."
    "When you're so quiet, are you busy inside your head? I get this feeling sometimes – like I can almost hear you thinking."
    "Yes...."
    "But you can't tell me?"
    "It's not important."
    "It is to me."
    silence....
    "Ivory, I'm ready for another beer. There's two left. Don't worry, I have a handle on it. I have a good life, a happy life. I'm not going to turn into some kind of monster."
    "It's okay...."
    "You know, when I was younger, and my kids were small, we all lived in one place, in Miami, in a regular house in a regular neighborhood, together, like a TV family: the father has a steady job, the wife stays at home, everyone watches TV at night with home-made popcorn.... And I hated it! Well, no, that's not true. Most of the time I think I liked it – it was nice."
    Ivory smiled, and turned and looked him in the eye. But it was a bewildering, soft look, and Harry could not see in.
    "You'll have another beer with me?"
    "For the trip it's okay, I guess."
    "When we get home, well, I mean my place in Miami – it's neat, you'll like it – well, I'll be tired and with drinking and driving all day.... What I mean is, don't worry, I'm not going to bother you tonight."
    "Mmmm - hmmmm."
    But you are so beautiful and sweet, well, I know the time will come when I'm going to want to make love with you."
    "Mmmm - hmmmm." Ivory turned away and looked straight down the highway. A line of cars and trucks zoomed by them as they sat there, the eighteen-wheelers shaking Love Jones as they whooshed by.
    Harry jumped out during the next lull in traffic and retrieved the two remaining Coronas from the cooler. He thought about digging out the reefer tin but decided against it. Ivory was too strange. He would not know how to handle her if something unexpected came up while he was stoned, and too high to make decisions. She was too precious a thing for him to take a chance like that.
    Precious?
    Perry said she's just a retarded nigger.
    Jumping back into the cab with the dripping, cold bottles – Ivory reaching for them, nesting the bottles in the fold of her skirt between her legs, her movements so fluid. Her bare, black midriff....
    Precious!
    Thank you, Jesus!
    But back on the highway, a familiar feeling washed over Harry. After merely thinking about reefer, he had gotten high. It had happened to him before. A marijuana flash. Not now, please, not now.... Harry looked at the speedometer. Only forty - forty-five. Jeez! Vehicles moving up on them in the mirrors. He forced himself to step on it. Would Ivory be able to tell? He looked over at her. He had been wrong. She wasn't all tense inside. Not at all! He glanced at her again, the traffic heavier now that they were farther down the coast. Ivory was an aura of peace. Peace surrounded her and was filling him with an indefinable, warm glow – the glow warming and penetrating every bone in his body. Acid flashback! Fuck! He looked at Ivory again. So beautiful and serene....
    She's scary!
    Eyes back on the road. Love Jones humming to him, the tires singing, heading south, heading for The Magic City, with Ivory beside him. A princess. A queen from another planet and another time. An alien seeing what he was seeing, going where he was going, relishing the freedom that rides the highways and blesses the few who have the courage to brave the loss of community.
    Harry was forced to develop mental strategies to keep Love Jones at a steady fifty-five. Thank you, Jesus! They were approaching a lone, blond girl hitchhiking the other way, a small, green sack over her shoulder, a golden collie-dog trotting alongside. The girl broke into a smile suddenly when she saw Harry and Ivory, the two of them already raising their arms to wave, then looking at each other afterwards, Ivory with a real smile on her face this time and Harry forcing his eyes back to the road, horsing the wheel to get back off the crunching of the shoulder – and brushing a tear from his left cheek.
    The jolt of adrenaline from running off the road dumped the flash-back. But Harry knew something now. Ivory was alert to everything, and had an inner resource he would be wise to respect. One more look at her and he loved her even more. She had been tracing a finger down the dimple of her neck, her other hand sliding a tiny bottle back into her purse. The hint of a smile. A whiff of perfume....
    The lady was not without guile.

* * *

    At least an hour to go before St. Petersburg and they were dodging heavy traffic. Having to slow down through one, tacky, brand-new highway town after the other. Convenience stores and litter-strewn mini-malls and gas-stations stuck to the right-of-way like ticks on a dog – 45 MPH speed limits – mothers in baggy shorts and hair in curlers – station wagons squirming with brats. Suddenly Harry found himself cruising right past a package store with a huge, Pabst Blue Ribbon delivery truck parked right out in front.
    "Hang on, Baby!" He cranked a hard right and burned Love Jones into the parking lot of the little shopping center next door. Radio Shack. Payless Shoes. E-Z-1 Hour Photo.... A low hedge separated the lot from the liquor store, and Harry jumped out and leapt over it. It felt so good to be alive! He ignored the sound of a police siren coming from the highway. The screeching of brakes. Fucking tourists!
    The air-conditioning in the liquor store smacked him hard. "Cold as hanging beef!"
    The delivery man in the blue PBR shirt eyed Harry up with a smile, but the old man behind the counter did not look up from his newspaper.
    "Sol here thinks it's hot outside and he wants to keep an edge."
    "Got any PBR in bottles?"
    "No, I'm out, but those six-packs in the cooler there are cold. The bottom ones. Hear that, Sol?"
    Sol nodded without looking up.
    "I saw your truck outside and I thought, well, maybe the west coast's not so dumb after all if people drink Pabst here."
    "It's dumb," the driver said. He was a huge man. Young and tough, but friendly looking.
    Harry brought two six-packs to the counter.
    "Sol? Want to increase your order now?"
    "No."
    "But it's selling like hotcakes!"
    "No. Pabst in cans tastes like piss."
    "But the customers like it!"
    "Like flies take to shit," Harry added.
    Sol looked up. "Let's see you walk up-side-down on the ceiling."
    The front door busted open and a short, porky cop rushed in, Smokey-the-Bear hat in place, huge revolver in his unsnapped holster, billy-club in his hand. "Gotchya!" he yelled. "You!" He poked his stick at Harry. Turn around! Hands on the counter!"
    Harry turned, his mouth open, his brain scrambling for a reason. He laid his elbows on the counter and saw everything coming to an end. The trip, his home-grown reefer under the seat, his life, Ivory....
    The cop dangled a pair of nickel-plated cuffs in his face. Harry looked down at the counter and stared at the two six-packs there, the red, white, and blue cans running cold with sweat. He felt his feet kicked apart and remembered (whew!) that in his haste he'd forgotten to jam a gun under his shirt before leaving the truck. But the cop stopped right there, and didn't frisk him.
    "Hey, Daryl! That's my buddy!" the delivery man said. "What'd he do?"
    "Resisti' arres', reckless drivin' out yonder in the parkin' lot, harborin' a contraban' illegal alien in his vehicle, fer starters."
    "Not me," Harry said. "You got the wrong man."
    "Yeah? That fancy blue pickup with the uppity colored woman ain't yourn? She got ID?"
    "Hey, Daryl! He just bought some PBR!"
    "She's not uppity," Harry said. "She has a mental problem. A mental disability."
    "That's called alternately abled now, boy!"
    "Ha! Not to me!"
    "Stand up like a man."
    Harry picked his elbows off the counter and straightened up.
    The deputy looked older now that Harry had a better look. They locked eyes. The cop grinned. Alternate dentures. "Now what you doin' with that poor, dumb girl. You tell me that."
    "I'm carrying her down to Fort Meyers as a favor for her brother." Harry's mind raced to stay ahead of his story. "Her brother did some work for me."
    "Oh, yeah? He your yardman?"
    "He's an attorney – a lawyer."
    "I know what an attorney is!" The grin left the deputy's face. A lawyer....
    "He may be a colored lawyer but he helped me out and he's being patient about the bill. I owe him."
    "What county?"
    "Holmes. And I know my rights. I'm clean and I got a carry permit."
    "Oh, yeah. What you need a lawyer for?"
    "They found a still on my farm that wasn't mine."
    "Moonshine still, huh?" The man backed away a little, taking the smell of freshly dusted talcum powder with him. "You got any shine in the truck?"
    Harry hesitated.
    "You ain't got a choice," the deputy said. "The dope dog'll be along soon. Name's McGruff. Reefer, cocaine, Doan's Little Liver Pills.... You've got it, McGruff'll find it."
    "Daryl, he ain't paid for the PBR yet. In a minute, Sol here'll be through reading his newspaper and he's going to look up and he's going to see that you fucked up his first sale of Blue Ribbon today!"
    "See – I don' do no illegal searches." The deputy moved back up to Harry's face. Talcum powder. Johnson's. Streaks of it on his neck. "See, after I arres' you I got to impound your vehicle. An' when they bring it to the pound I'm require' to make a thorough inventory of the contents. 'Course that pretty nigger gal got herself locked up inside – she rolled the winders up on me out there you know – that's a capital offense around here! An' the boys at the pound, well, they don' hardly ever get any, if you catch my drift. No tellin' what could happen after they cut your sugar outta there."
    "I got a gallon with me, for evidence."
    "Oh, good. Glad to hear it. I'll jus' hold that evidence for you. Where is it?"
    Harry looked at the PBR man. The truck driver shrugged his shoulders and nodded.
    "It's under the bed on top of the spare tire."
    "Well, I left my coveralls under my girlfriend's pillow, you know what I mean?"
    "I'll get it out."
    "'Course if it turns out to be illegal whiskey I'll have to bust you next time you come through here...."
    "I'm not coming back through here. Not ever."
    "I'll drink to that!" The deputy laughed. "An' I don' b'lieve that nigger lawyer story for a minute, neither. But your heart's in the right place so I'm gonna let you and your little jungle-bunny go."
    They were outside now, in the bright sun. Ivory looking straight ahead. The deputy headed toward her side and smacked his fist hard up against the door. Ivory did not flinch.
    "You're an asshole."
    "Yeah, but I'm an official asshole."
    "Roll the windows down, Ivory. It's okay now."
    "Ivory? Jesus H. Christ!" The deputy spat, and popped open the trunk of his cruiser. The trunk was clean, and carpeted, and empty except for the spare tire, a jack, and a nickel-plated, pump-action shotgun. "I'm goin' over yonder an' get me a burger. You drop that shine right here behind this tire where it won' roll around – then slam the trunk lid to. Period."
    "Deal." Harry was relieved. If he had been alone it would be different, but with Ivory.... But then, if he were alone, the man wouldn't be leaving him here with the shotgun. It was surely loaded. But a deal was a deal. Florida! Only in Florida!
    When Harry was finished, Sol let him use the bathroom to wash up. "You married?"
    "Yeah, but not to her." Harry figured Sol was Jewish, and Jews understood stuff. "I love her, though."
    "You love your wife?"
    "I love both of them."
    Sol nodded. "Your wife white?"
    "Yeah."
    "See? You married a white girl. Marriage is a special thing. Am I right?"
    Harry grinned. "I'll have to think about it."

* * *

    At St. Petersburg, they took the Sunshine Skyway Bridge – so high over the bay and the boats – and Harry pulled over to take pictures of Ivory on the other side. She perked right up as soon as he turned the camera on her, striking dramatic poses one right after the other, without any direction on his part.
    "Damn, Ivory, you're a natural-born model!"
    Ivory looked happy to hear that and struck a sexy pose, arching her back to display her sassy little ass and pointy breasts. Harry was amazed.
    "You sure change when the camera's on you!" He knew as soon as he said it he'd made a mistake. Ivory's smile disappeared and she looked down at her feet. Harry lowered the camera and walked up to her.
    "Ivory.... Come on. Look at me."
    Ivory glanced at him, and looked past him.
    "Look me in the eye. How much do you weigh?"
    "One hundred an' ten...."
    "Look at me!"
    She flinched when he raised his voice, but she looked him in the eye, her face determined now, her eyes only inches away. Harry swallowed and his own eyes failed him for a moment. "Damn, Ivory, what is it about you? Your spirit is..." Harry shook his head and looked back into her eyes. Bright, brown eyes flecked with gold and sparkles of green. Their eyes were at the same level – she was so tall. Her look was steady, and boring right into him. Harry swallowed hard, and leaned forward and kissed her lips – a little kiss, a little love-note. A car roared by and honked, happily breaking the spell.
    "Fuck, Ivory, I don't believe this! There's no way! I look at you and I'm out of breath and my guts burn.... No way am I ever going to give you up! Never! You're mine now!"
    Ivory's face calm. Eyes burning into him. Inches away. In command. Relentless.
    Harry turned away and stomped a boot into the ground. "Damn!"
    Another car rolled by them, crammed with young people. A honk. Whistles. Happy white faces. Arms holding up beer cans in salute.
    "I love you, Ivory!"
    "Mmmm - hmmmm."
    Back on the road. Sarasota coming up. Two more beers open, cold in the hand. Real. Beautiful Sarasota. Cruising down south to Miami – to The Magic City.
    Fort Meyers. Police roadblock at an accident. Some kind of disturbance. The only way Harry knew to catch Highway-82 out of Fort Meyers was through the heart of the city's untamed, black neighborhood. For ten minutes or more Harry drove easily but cautiously through that sea of outrageous, colorful blacks. Foxy bad girls, shiny-black and mean, and sweet – prancing, jeering, spitting, blowing kisses. Bands of silent, colorful, brooding, dark men.
    "You want to stop and call your brother?"
    "No.... We better keep goin'."
    Sweet, green, open country again. Far enough south to catch the smell of The Everglades – the land Harry loved the most. And traffic had died down to nothing in this vast expanse of flatland. The road was theirs, and Harry stopped to take a beer whiz, Ivory, for the first time, letting Harry help her out of the pickup. Standing guard beside her once again while she tinkled into the clover at the shoulder – her skirt spread about her in a colorful circle. Dragonflies hunting all about them, the sun glancing flashes of iridescence from their rattling, brightly decorated wings, their machinery – the dragonflies snatching away mosquitos before the mosquitos could land on these two human targets and suck the blood they had been programmed to love.
    The pickup purred through the vast, green veldt of South Florida. The town of Immokalee up ahead. Harry pulling in deep breaths of the sweetest air in the USA, thanking God. Whoever you are.... Harry and Ivory each with an empty beer can between the legs.
    They stopped for gas on the far side of Immokalee at a funky, full-service station – antique pumps, a rusting, Model-A truck on jacks, cans of oil stacked up in pyramids at the front window.... An old, wiry, white lady marched out of the tiny office straight for Ivory's side.
    "How much, Hon?"
    Harry answered her through Ivory's window. "Fill 'er up with high test, please." He had been careful all the way through town, avoiding gas stations crowded with beefy rednecks and four-wheel-drive pickup trucks.
    "High test? This here truck of yourn a time machine?"
    Ivory whispered to Harry that she had to use the bathroom again.
    "Is the ladies' room locked?" He steeled himself for whatever punishment he was about to receive – for referring to Ivory as a lady, for starters. Ladies don't pump gas, either! he could say....
    The woman dug into her apron and handed the key-on-a-stick through the window. She was so small. "Here, sugar," she said. "You just take your time!"
    Thank you, Jesus!
    Harry got out and stood with the old woman. He played back the movie of Ivory's soft, warm lips at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. The gasoline pumping into love Jones, the pump going tick tick tick tick...
    The sun sliding down close to the treetops.
    "I'm right on time," Harry said, breaking the silence. "If I can watch the sunset from Highway-29 anywhere near Jerome, I'm on time."
    "Well, I declare. You going to Everglades City?"
    "Miami. The Magic City!" Harry could hear the alcohol talking but he couldn't stop. "And Route-29 from here to 41 is the prettiest land in this world, and the sunset there'll put fear of the devil and the love of god in your heart at the same time!" Harry tried to wrench-down the grin on his face. Jeez, Harry!
    "Well, I declare. I seen that look on a man's face before, son." The old lady laughed. "You're in love! I think you got a little of God and the Devil riding with you in this truck! 'Course them two don't need to stop and use the bathroom!"
    Harry laughed. He looked down into the lady's eyes. Gray, bright-steely eyes, friendly eyes, eyes with stories to tell.
    "I love that girl there." They watched Ivory walk toward them. Harry lowered his voice. "I love her so bad!"
    The pump clicked off and the old woman jerked in a few more drops to make even money. Ivory handed her the Ladies' Room key.
    "Honey, this here man loves you. I can tell. You take good care of him, okay?"
    Ivory smiled and nodded. She looked so shy again, so afraid.
    After he paid her, the woman stood there and watched them get in. Harry shouted back to her as they pulled out onto the road. "Thank you! I love you, too!"
    Doing sixty-five and seventy down the narrow, blacktop ribbon. Stands of cypress, and open pastures with emerald-green grass, and palmetto thickets....
    I love life!
    I love this planet!
    I love you, God!
    Well, maybe I don't actually LOVE you, but....
    "Look at that sun, Ivory! When we get near Jerome or Copeland, I want to pull over for a few minutes. Watch the night sky come in. Maybe finish that lunch you brought, okay?"
    Ivory had the map spread out in her lap, but was looking out the side window. "Mmmm - hmmmm."
    "Sometimes I wish I'd bought land here instead of in the panhandle."
    "My Daddy, he say he work some place aroun' here. He tol' me – when he was young he was here. He say the people 'roun' here be bad to colored folks. But I always say black folks."
    "What about that old lady at the gas station, huh? She was beautiful!"
    "She different."
    "As I am. As you are."
    "You drunk, too."
    "Ha! How are you doing?"
    "Well.... I feel funny – but, yes, I guess I'm gettin' drunk, too. But I feel good."
    "Well, when you write your father, you don't need to tell him I let you drink, okay?"
    "Mmmm - hmmmm. I keep on thinkin' I'm dreamin' all this an I get scared thinkin' about I might wake up. But I don' wake up. An' here I am in your truck an' everything be okay an' I keep on feelin' good. Yes. I think I'm drunk, too. I know 'cause I'm runnin' my mouth." Ivory smiled. She placed a hand on Harry's forearm but quickly withdrew it. "I only be drunk one time an' I got sick, so sick – I thought I was dyin'."
    Harry took Ivory's hand, but just for a moment – the road was so uneven. The power of the feeling he got as her fingers curled around his was almost more than he could bear. But he wondered who had gotten her drunk, and where she was at the time, and the burning came back in the pit of his stomach. He tried to shake the bad scene out of his mind.
    "I won't let you get that drunk. Get sick. We'll stop for a Pepsi if we can before we eat. His eyes lingered on her bare midriff – her tiny waist. His hand yearned to feel of her tummy, to slide up under her shirt....
    "Big cat," Ivory said.
    Harry snapped his eyes back to the road.
    A panther!
    Up ahead, a puma was loping along the guard rail, coming toward them. Harry hit the brakes and moved the pickup into the opposite lane. Suddenly the huge cat jumped the rail and disappeared into the palmettos, its long tail a flash of gold in the late-afternoon sun.
    "That was a real panther!"
    "Mmmm - hmmmm."
    "I was a kid last time I saw one of those – first time I ran away from home!" Harry snatched a sideways look as they passed by the place where the animal had jumped over the guard-rail. "There's hardly any left. You ever see one before?"
    "Well – in a way."
    "In a way?"
    "In my dreams I see one sometime...."
    "Like that one?"
    "Jus like that one. He tell me stuff, you know – an' I write it down in my book. I don' have to be dreamin' for it."
    No problem, Harry.... You hear voices yourself.
    "Your book?"
    "I keep this book. I write my thoughts in. Things I see an' I can' tell nobody about.... But I write it in good English."
    Ivory looked serious, and Harry kept on switching his attention between her and the road. She was digging into her purse, pulling out a large notebook. She flipped through the pages. The pages were crammed from top to bottom (and sideways at the sides) in fine script – in different colors from different pens.
    "Ivory! That's so beautiful!"
    "Well, yes, but I can' let nobody read it."
    "Are you sure? Can't I look at it sometime?"
    "Nooo.... I'd like for you to read them, but I don' want you to. I have more."
    "Do you put your dreams in there, too? I mean, things you dream of doing? Do you ever think about running away and doing impossible things? Like people do in movies?"
    "I be runnin' now."
    Harry bit his lip. "Yeah. Yeah.... Oh, baby. I love you so!"
    And we saw a panther. A real panther!
    She thinks he tells her stuff....
    "And you write down what the panther tells you? Like what kind of stuff does he tell you?"
    "Bad people livin' in there," Ivory said, pointing.
    There were wide drainage canals on either side of the road, and every now and then there would be a wooden, hand-made bridge across, leading into the jungle. From the road it was usually impossible to see what kind of dwellings were hidden back in there, and more often than not the bridges were barricaded with jury-rigged steel gates and KEEP OUT signs.
    Love Jones slowed down. They passed a bridge with a crudely painted sign out in front:

PRIVATE!

DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT STOPPING HERE!

    "They bad," Ivory said.
    "Oh, I don't know.... maybe they just don't want to be bothered, or get ripped off – there's no police around here – or go to jail for shooting somebody who's trying to rip them off. Maybe they prefer animals to people! That place back there wasn't even hooked up to electricity. Hardly any of these places around here seem to be tied to this powerline running along the road."
    Harry glanced at Ivory and it bothered him to see how sad she looked again.
    "What can I do to make you happy?" Harry said finally. "I feel so good – and I wish you could, too."
    "Oh, I always be sad. That's me...."
    Between Jerome and Copeland, they sat on the tailgate and watched the sky burst into color before turning into violet night while they finished off everything left in the lunch-bag. And in the growing darkness, each would steal looks at the other. And in silence, they each drank another beer.
    Then boring through the Everglades at night. A full moon rising – a good omen. Living in the city the way he had been, Harry did not know what phase of the moon to expect.
    Ivory trusting him again, surprising Harry by sliding over to him (after nodding off a few times) and leaning her head against his shoulder to fall asleep.
    Ivory....
    Precious cargo....
    My dream. Curled up against me, trusting me, giving herself to me....
    After a while Harry's back began to hurt. For a long time he denied himself the luxury of shifting his position on the seat, fearing Ivory might move away from him and break the rapture.
    And finally, far to the east and south, a glow on the horizon, the cities of the Gold Coast – millions of people, modern people, modern times. The great, technical dance.
    "Ivory?"
    Harry pulled off the road. He kissed Ivory's head – kissed the top of her head through the bandanna, surprised briefly with feeling the rows of knotty braids underneath.
    "Ivory, we'll be in Miami soon. I thought you might like to see what it looks like at night."
    Ivory sat upright with a smooth and swift movement, eyes wide open, her posture proud, cool, alert. Harry marveled at the lack of transition time between deep sleep and wakefulness.
    "Thank you. Okay. I be ready."
    She did not speak again for the rest of the trip.
    The southern Everglades is protected land, and the change from country to city on Miami's western side is abrupt. From one lane to four lanes to eight within a minute – shooting the expressways. From serene darkness to bright, noisy, electric brilliance. Harry's heart rushed with the flash of traffic, the crush of speed and people and lights, the concrete and the steel. The quiet island of the lady sitting beside him.
    A sideways glance caught her smile.
    She sees it! The reality of it! The outrageousness of it!
    Does she?
    Yes, she does!
    The eight-lane pinball machine. Slinging through the interchanges. Love Jones bore through the bright and noisy hustle with ease, with the glow of the two of them. The glow mellowing as they exited into the old part of the city, the streets narrowing as they turned into the neighborhood, the glow warming them as they turned into the palm-fringed driveway to Harry's flat. Ivory got out of the truck without a word but she was looking at Harry with her eyes bright and just the hint of a smile. And she followed him up the staircase to the balcony as if she had known the place all her life."

     <end chapter-13>

Humanism with attitude! Rev: 28 March 2005