Several hours after the office had closed for the night. Ken Warren arrived to rifle his In box for new assignments, closeouts, memos, and skip-trace reports on current cases. He went through them quickly, stopping at the new REPO ON SIGHT assignment on MAYBELLE PERNOD, res add unknown.
“Oh, hndammit, nhanywhay!” he exclaimed aloud when he saw her name on the case sheet.
Lord, Lord, nuthin ever seem to work out the way you want it to. Maybelle sang in a soft rich contralto:
No action, none at all on the street tonight. The ribs joint had closed hours ago, she was all souls alone out here, her varicose veins hurt, and not a single trick to show for all the hours, not one, not even gas money. And no chance of any now. Not much traffic on the street, let alone pedestrians.
Time to drive down and park in her usual spot under the freeway off Alameda where a lot of other homeless gave safety in numbers. Get her shower in the morning at the cleaning plant...
A long-bed pickup pulled over to the curb and stopped. It had a camper on back and three white guys in the cab. The window was open.
“Hey, lookit the nigger cow,” exclaimed a cracker voice right out of south Georgia.
She didn’t turn her head, just quickened her pace for the corner of Turk. These men wasn’t no tricks, she wouldn’t get no money from them, just trouble. Just a few more steps... But the truck backed up to keep pace with her, rolling slowly, motor mumbling, exhaust rising in white puffs on the chilly night air.
“Hey, Mama, how about you do us right here on the street?”
She turned the corner. They were behind her now. But the pickup backed around the corner into Turk and kept on coming. For the first time since she had started hooking, she wished a cop would cruise by. Wanted to run but she was too old, too fat, too scared. Besides, it was when the deer ran that the feral dogs chased it and dragged it down, any country gal knew that.
Squeerg of brakes. Creak of doors. Hurried heavy feet on the sidewalk. She speeded up. Get to her Connie, jump in sudden, they wouldn’t expect that, slam the door, hit the automatic door lock... Safe then. Just a few more steps...
The three men were upon her, surrounding her. Tall men, two bulky, the third lean and athletic. Maybe she could still make it turn out right. Maybe they’d be satisfied with some head, specially she didn’t charge. She found a pathetic simper.
“Ah... you gemp’men lookin’ for a little fun?”
“Lookin’ at you, Mama, I’d say a lotta fun!”
He wore a soiled white cowboy hat and a soiled expression on a heavy red face with burst capillaries in nose and cheeks. Probably weighed 250. He hefted one of her massive mammy breasts with one hand. His fingers had black hairs on the backs of them.
“Dug of the month!” he exclaimed.
He ripped her dress down off her shoulder, half baring one breast.
“Flavor of the month — chocolate!” exclaimed the Athlete, making slurping noises with his mouth. He had styled blond hair and a striking profile and a high skinny laugh. White shirt under a blue and white sweater, the collar points outside the sweater in Joe College style.
“In the truck,” said Cowboy Hat.
“In the back — in the camper,” amended the third.
He was very wide, weight-lifter shoulders and chest, day’s growth of beard, grimy green gimme cap with a darker green shamrock on it, a black warm-up sweatshirt with the hood back. Fleshy nose, heavy lips, slitted mean angry eyes.
Maybelle felt herself shrinking, heard her own voice, little, as she’d been when, pigtails sticking straight out from the sides of her head, she’d been chased into the barn by some white boys...
The little voice said, “Please, don’t... hurt me...”
But by now they were already guffawing and pinching and feeling and poking. Cowboy Hat grabbed her hand, tried to shove it down the front of his pants. Athlete came up behind her, put his hand up under her tight red split skirt.
“Into the fuckin’ camper,” he ordered.
Maybelle wanted to scream then, because she knew that if she got into that camper they would hurt her real bad ’fore they let her out again. As if in confirmation, Green Cap suddenly had a big bowie knife in his hand.
“Into the camper, bitch, or I’ll...”
Just as suddenly he was gone. Flying, had to be almost a dreamy sensation. Except a lamppost was coming at him, coming at him hard, CRUNCH! face-first into the curved metal cylinder, fell in a heap on the sidewalk amid his sharded teeth.
Athlete whirled, nimble and quick, reaching into the cab for his baseball bat — but the big mean-looking mother with short-chopped brown hair slammed the door on his wrist. He started screaming, high and thin like a grammar-school girl finding a snake in her bed.
The attacker picked up the bowie knife. Cowboy Hat ran, so fast his ten-gallon Stetson flew off and landed in the gutter. He was bald under it, somehow vulnerable without it.
The big mean-looking dude stood on the hat, ripped it in half with the knife, but let the man go. Maybelle was glad. She couldn’t take no more people gettin’ hurt, not even bad people.
Totally ignoring the fallen warriors, the man smashed in the windows of the pickup with the baseball bat, slashed all four tires with the bowie knife — in this part of town, no windows would go up, no police patrols would come.
Finally, he reached in and twitched out the keys to drop them and the knife down the nearest sewer grating. Then he came back to Maybelle and looked her up and down, thoroughly and unhurriedly, taking in her tight red sequins and too much lipstick and breast half-exposed by the torn dress.
Only then did he yell at her.
“Gnew awtta nbe hathamed!”
Ken Warren took off his tan corduroy jacket and draped it around her shoulders. Maybelle couldn’t quit crying. She was ashamed, and terrified, and knew God had let him see her like this as punishment for what she was doing to keep her big fancy prideful Continental.
Warren drove the company car in on Post toward the Tenderloin with Maybelle sobbing beside him on the front seat as if her heart would break. He looked glumly over at her.
“Nthtop nhat!” he finally ordered.
Maybelle seemed to have no difficulty in understanding him. She reduced the crying to sniveling, then stopped altogether.
“Where you be takin’ me?” she asked in a small voice.
His apartment, that’s where, he told her. He’d just moved in last week, had this new good job so he was out all hours, anyway, looking for people, cars, how’d she think he’d found her? She could sleep there until she got something better.
“Lord, Lord, child, how’m I gonna get somethin’ better?” she asked him, the tears coming again. “Ah cain’t...”
She fell silent. She’d raised her son Jedediah without a man to home, raised him, as he’d always said with laughing eyes, with the Bible in one hand and the hairbrush in the other. Then God had forsaken her, and killed him. Killed her son. Her Jeddie gone, and her still here. Lord, Lord, it wasn’t fair.
“Takin people’s cars,” she said finally. “Whut sorta job is that to—”
“Mbesth tl’ve never ntad,” said Warren.