He meant she didn’t have to sell him anything, leastwise not reports of his own life’s catastrophe.
“You ought to read some of these,” Lucille Blaine said. “It was me that saved the day on this one.”
Her voice faltered as she spoke.
In her voice — accent of ridgeback Tennessee, one of the cast-down — he heard a river winding, dark, shining river of life descending the falls and granite steps from the high mountains to the valley, running onward through the hay fields to the plains and the sea. Was it simply too dim in this room for her to make him out? Had he changed that much? She’d never seen him anyway, really, not close. Maybe she had not even paid attention. The single long-necked bulb was shaded on the window side with a sheet of yellow paper taped to it. He could smell the hot paper. He could smell too the sumpy odor of female blood and, wearing at the sharp blade of it, the odor of a familiar perfume, elixir of the bordello, all-purpose solvent concocted of middle eastern fossil life soaked in essence of decomposing lilies, Heaven’s Night — Whore’s Holy Water, it was familiarly called — shipped out of Detroit City by the tankcar load throughout whoredom, perfume she was at that moment even as she continued to clutch their two lives in beggarly embrace atomizing into the air between them; his mother’s perfume.
For a second rage filled him. It flashed like a hot white light, like something alive and so strong its grip hurt him to feel it. But it was passing through — he knew this, felt it give and start to swirl away just as the Ghost, who had snuck up close, hit him from behind.
He lurched into the woman who with surprising agility shoved him away. He fell onto his face on the bed with the Ghost’s knee standing in his back. Against his throat he felt the sharp edge of a razor. “You collect that, don’t you?” the Ghost said. “You collect what that is?”
Delvin said nothing. The woman in a swirl of garments and perfume had scrambled to her feet away from him. His head was turned to the side and he could see her standing against the wall staring shock-eyed at him, as if he was — not the the devil, but worse, and she recognized him. All right. He waved at her as once in a moment of hopeless hilarity he had waved in a courtroom at her, and before the Ghost could cut him reared and knocked the razor away. The woman sprang on him but he too was quick and he slipped under her flailing and away and as she fell hard on the bed he cracked her in the side of the head with his fist. She slumped senseless into the pillow. He too had a razor. The Ghost was scrambling around after his on the floor. He came up with it, a short cutter with a pearl handle, and saw what Delvin was holding.
“You better get out of here,” the Ghost said.
Delvin looked hard into his eyes.
“I got to preserve order here,” the Ghost said.
“Think you can?”
“I don’t know, but I got to.”
The woman on the bed looked asleep.
“Jou kill her?” the Ghost said.
“Naw, boon. I knocked her out.”
“Well, you better hightail it.”
He didn’t want this man telling him what to do. But he knew he had to go.
“Stand away from the door. “
The Ghost edged away, closer to the woman on the bed. She was snoring.
“Don’t come after me. Don’t call anybody.”
“I won’t.”
Delvin grinned at him. “It’s all yours,” he said.
“Has been — is — will be.”
“Sho.”
He turned and dashed out into the hall, bounded down the stairs and then, walking calmly, quietly, left the house.
Over the mountains to the west the stars were up, little white parings. He headed that way, the woods weren’t far. In his mind he was already gone, riding a freight north. As he ran, the train faded and was replaced by a small, spare room. . in Ypsilanti maybe. . or Toronto. He was in the little kitchen making himself a pot of chinese tea. On his desk a fresh page poked up from the typewriter. In it he was running through a field of blossoming sorghum, escaping from Uniball prison. He ran toward the blue bristling escarpment of leafed-out mountains. As the first cries started up behind him he entered the dark woods of his freedom.
Thanks to Michael Signorelli, PJ Mark, and Cal Morgan for their help in carrying the load, and to Buzz Wagner, Anne Sunkel, Michael Block, Lawrence Joseph, Stan Brent, Robert Morris, and Jack Eppler, and thanks to the folks on Tuesday nights at St. Mary’s and to my fellow travelers at the Chinatown Y, and thanks to Marcia Markland who stood up for the book, and a special thanks to Arlo Haskell, Miles Frieden, and the trustees of the Key West Literary Seminar for making possible several lengthy stays in KW that were revitalizing and essential to the work I did during those years, and most of all thanks and love top to bottom, front, sides, in around under and behind the house of this fiction to Daniela.
