***   No One Left To Burn  ***

Chapter 1

19

                The bewitching hour crept up without notice while we enthusiastically got it on.  Copulating to the wild sounds of the limbo queen’s sensual moans and lustful groans while thrashing and flailing frantically about from room to room, caused the time to pass in a fleeting manner.

                Finally, thunderous, simultaneous orgasms.  Orgasms of such magnitude and grandeur that a lengthy wave of overwhelming frenzy was released.  The resulting gyrations ultimately concluded with a climax of multiple, powerful spasms erupting turbulently within Martha.  Caution had been thrown to the wind earlier as we bounced and bounded about, and I was holding on tightly for dear life by the time our lascivious exhibition came to a sweaty, panting completion. 

                It was exactly midnight when I finally pulled away from Martha’s driveway.

                Highway 90, when traveled in the middle of the night, was pitch-assed black.  As I sped east toward home, my entire universe was only as far forward as the reach of my headlights.  There was nothing to be seen to the left, to the right, or to the rear, except darkness.

                I experienced an enigmatic sensation as I sat alone in the dark.  My body remained motionless except for an occasional finite steering adjustment.  It seemed as if I was sitting in the car that was not moving, and everything outside the car was shooting past me.  Trees, ditches, signposts and road kill were all traveling at great speed as they zoomed by.

                Staring at the forward edge, the outer limits of my light beams almost became hypnotic.   The results were soporific and several times during the wearisome drive back, I had to stop, get out, and walk around a bit to shake off the results of the sleep-inducing drug called boredom.

                It was two o’clock in the morning when I finally stepped into my room at the Sheraton.  I was beat. Bushed. My ass was dragging so badly, it was wiping out my own tracks.  I was so fucking tired, I barely got my clothes off before I collapsed, exhausted, onto the bed. When I awoke the next day, I still had one sock on.  Not too bad, I must say, considering I could barely remember the last fifty miles of the return trip from Pont-Rouge.

                It was almost noon before I felt rested enough to rise and shuffle clumsily into the shower.  By the time I’d completed all of the necessary functions of beautification, I actually felt like I was going to live.  I ordered up a pot of coffee and a Sunday Times Picayune.  The coffee was good and hot and without chicory.  The newspaper was good and heavy.  Folded into the middle was about three pounds of filler ads.   Sears, Target, K-Mart, Walgreens, Home Depot and numerous other merchandisers less well known, wasted their sales hype on me because each promotional circular was tossed directly into the shit can unread.

                After several cycles of coffee, reading, dozing, peeing, reading, peeing, dozing, I finally rolled out of bed and dressed for the remainder of the day.  The remainder of the day wasn’t going to be that much longer, since it was already almost half past eight .  Not that that’s late.

                Perhaps half past eight on a Sunday night is late in Ozawkie , Kansas , population 403, but it’s not late in New Orleans , Louisiana , where the bars are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and where nightlife doesn’t even start until after nine o’clock .  Some people who are really in to New Orleans late night entertainment will go to bed in the evening before going out that night.  Now, you must understand that I wasn’t planning on having any part of that shit. I only said that I felt like I was going to live, not that I had fully recuperated.

                Recuperated?  Au contraire.  Convalescence would not be achieved this day.  Not even close.  Partial rehabilitation maybe, but by no means any more than that.  I still felt like I needed an Ace bandage on my head for my brain sprain.

                I gave Jan a call, just to let her know I was still alive.  I had no trouble declining when she asked if I would be coming by.  There were a couple of things I needed to do, that I knew I wouldn’t even get started on if I went over to her hacienda.

                One was get something solid in my gut.  Yesterday’s crawfish were long gone.  And speaking of crawfish, I did find them hotter than I thought they were the day before.    The other thing I wanted to do was to just sit down in a nice quiet place alone and think.  I needed to refresh myself with a review of the activities of the past few days and then plan my actions for tomorrow.  The key word here was alone.  Sitting silently on my balcony by myself, I can perform astonishing feats of cogitation.

                Before I went downstairs to fill the hollowness that I felt behind my belt buckle, I placed a call to Pont-Rouge.

                “Hello,” she said.

                “Martha, this is Rick Stevens.”

                “Yes, Mr. Stevens.”

                The way she pronounced Mr. almost sounded like it came out Massuh.  I knew that she didn’t say it that way, but still, I was bothered by what I thought I’d heard.  And for a moment my mind drifted back in time to circa 1860.

                 The sprawling grounds of meadow fescue before a large plantation house had grown lush and bright green from the profuse spring rains.  Precipitation had been heavier that spring than normal.   I wasn’t sure from what point of view I was seeing this mental image, but the large main house could have easily passed for the sprawling Oak Alley Plantation.  If it were not that historical structure my mind saw, then it might have been any one of the many others with their massive, round columns that lined the banks of the lower Mississippi River .  Majestic oaks bordered the road to the entrance of the enormous white frame domicile.

                An ornate black and gray horse-drawn carriage had just been brought to a stop in front of the estate.  The tall, gangling man who stepped down was a vulgar looking and slovenly dressed individual who was, I’m sure, the colonies’ most despicable, unscrupulous scumbag of a human being.

                He was unshaven and unbathed.  His mouth was full of snaggled teeth that were crooked and dingy yellow in color.  His knee-high riding boots were dusty and scuffed and had not been touched by boot wax for some period of time.  Even though it was evident that he was the head sumbitch of this vast sugar plantation, to me he looked like a shameless, evil degenerate.

                He stood alone for a brief span of time looking about silently.  Then with an explosive raspy voice he bellowed out, “Martha!  Martha! Goddamn it!  Where are you?  Come here, woman! - Martha?”

                Martha came trotting out through the wide double screen doors.  The look on her face spoke volumes about mental and physical abuse, about fear and about people held down.  The look on her face was one that I’d seen many times before.  It said, “What’s worse than having no past is having no future. No hope.”

                She ran up to the sleazy looking slaveholder and stood silently before him with her head partially bowed.  She was wearing blue jeans and a baggy fitting man’s shirt.  She was barefoot and wore no bra.    Finally she raised her head and submissively spoke.  She said, “Yes Massuh.”

                Son of a bitch.

                My mind cleared when I heard her repeat,“Mr. Stevens?”

                “Yes, Martha,” I said, and wiped my upper lip with my index finger.   “ Yesterday before I left you mentioned that if you heard from your nephew, you’d ask him to give me a call.  I just wanted you to know that for the next few days I’m staying at the Sheraton Hotel on Canal Street .”  I gave her the phone number of the hotel and my room number.  She said that if she heard from him, she’d give him the message.   I said thanks and started to hang up.  Then I stopped and asked, “Martha, have you ever been to Oak Alley Plantation?”

                Asshole.

                “No, I haven’t, Mr. Stevens.  But a long, long time ago some of my people were there.  My family used to talk about it.  I can remember when I was a child hearing stories about it.  I understand that it wasn’t good.”

                Shit.

                “Why do you ask?”

                “I don’t know, Martha.  No reason.   I was just thinking.”  I was just thinking shit.

                I finally let her go.  When she hung up she sounded like she might be a bit under the weather.

                 I returned from the hotel dining room actually feeling pretty fucking good.  I had recovered so significantly that after eating dinner I had walked to a liquor store on the corner of Magazine Street and bought a bottle of Mr. Walker.  Why fight it, I thought, and I fixed myself a potion. I walked out and took my place in the lounge chair on my balcony. 

                My room was located on the west side of the building and I could look down on the sprawling city from twelve floors above.  Off to the left, past Decatur Street , I could see the lazy Mississippi River flowing slowly south. I could see several big, paddle wheel boats moving up and down the river. Each had its outlines illuminated with neon lights and winking and blinking light bulbs.

                The tourists loved those big, old fashioned looking boats with their tall dual smokestacks.  Anytime friends or relatives from out of town visit me, we take the paddle wheel boat ride.  I could visualize the passengers standing at the side rails while the current of the water rocked the big rig.  Lovers holding hands.  Others raising a can of Dixie beer to salute the gulls they see diving into the frothy wake made by the paddles.  Diving to grab bits of food floating on the water’s surface.  After ten minutes of looking out and down on the Big Easy, I settled down to some serious rumination. 

                Whitney had to be involved in this shit.  I was sure of that.  I wasn’t sure how, but I was convinced that he was implicated up to his fucking chin.  That made the Chardon business card I found in the wallet of the guy who tried to chill me in front of my apartment a key item.  It not only tied Charlie to the guys who tried twice to pop me, but it also hinted at the possibility that Charlie might have been the one who sent them after me.

                It may have been Charlie, who said to Redford , “Go waste that fucker, Stevens.  And if you can, stick a shotgun up his ass and blow his goddamned brains out.”  When I thought the son of a bitch might have said something to that effect, it really pissed me off.  I went inside and fixed myself another potion.  As I took a sip, it occurred to me that finding the seafood business card could have just been coincidental.  Perhaps Redford was only looking for a good buy on a sack of oysters.

                Coincidence?  Horseshit.  It was no fucking coincidence.

                I planned to have a-face-to-face consultation with Charlie first thing tomorrow.   How that meeting went might determine if I leave him with his cojones still warmly tucked away within his scrotum.  Shit.  Even if the confrontation went slick as a gut, I might still rip his nuts out and cram them down his goddamned throat.

                That last, wild and irrational thought was clearly the product of my anger, anger that had not yet been acknowledged.  Rage?  Fury? 

                Whatever word that’s used to express the infuriation building inside me, must be dealt with.  Dealt with timely, openly and crushingly, or it will become so consuming that it might cause some dimwit to create stupid thoughts like the one I just had of ripping Charlie’s balls off with my bare hands.

                So I dealt with it.  I sat there and dealt with the anger.    I handled the situation timely, openly and crushingly.  When I finished I felt much better.  I felt much better, not because I finally calmed my furor, no sir.  I was still highly pissed off, but now I understood more rationally that even though I might still want to rip his balls off, bag and all, I just couldn’t really do it.

                I spent some time speculating on where and how Henry’s Marine in Madisonville might fit in, if at all.  Just because I found his business card in the same wallet where I found the Chardon Seafood business card doesn’t necessarily mean it follows that Henry’s Marine is also linked to the numerous wrong doings that had of late, been dispensed maliciously upon yours truly by the two malefactors in the blue Cadillac, one of whom was now among the recently departed and was currently pushing up daisies.

                But wait.  There was also a business card from Pizza Hut in that wallet.  What clandestine activities could those sneaky, flour-covered chefs be up to?  Are they also surreptitiously plotting to bump me off by jamming a lengthy piece of pepperoni up my ass?    Perhaps some undercover surveillance is in order here.  After all, I am a citizen of the U.S. of A., and as such  am entitled to FBI protection and…

                “Jesus, Stevens,” I said aloud into the darkness below my balcony.  “Get a life for Chrissake.” 

                I discounted Pizza Hut as a threat, but I put Henry’s Marine on my mental to-do list for tomorrow, after my visit with Charlie at Chardon’s Seafood distribution plant.

                It was ten-thirty when I went inside, dropped onto the side of my bed and was reaching for the phone to call Jan.  But the gods must have been with me because before I could do something so utterly stupid, I was startled by the phone’s own jangling hotel style ring.

                Hotels must surely pay a premium to the phone companies to ensure installation of telephones that emit irritating clanking sounds and extremely annoying clattering rings when the things are set off.

                My phone sat on the nightstand beside the bed and sent out reverberating rattles synchronous with the little red light flashing on its top.  Who the fuck could this be I thought, as I uncradled the receiver.  Most likely a wrong number.  Yeah, that’s it, I thought, a wrong number.

                Hold on there pardner, not so fast.  Because maybe, just maybe, it’s that petite and charming lady of the night.  At least that’s what I thought she was.  I’d met and spoken with her at great length downstairs earlier while waiting to pay my restaurant tab for my evening meal.    She was well dressed and fresh looking like she was just about ready to start working.  I wondered at the time how she would appear in a couple of hours when her night was half over.

                She had the strangest looking hair I’d seen since CNN carried a segment on Ronald McDonald getting hit by lightning in Cincinnati last year.    Hers was a massive clump of weird looking, crinkly, long and wild blonde hair.    It was the color of shiny straw and looked like it had been styled with a hand grenade.

                Other than that inconceivable hair-do, she wasn’t too bad a looker.  She was friendly as hell.  Small tits, but still a really cute, well built little shit.  I’d only guessed that she was a hooker.  What the hell do I know?  She might have been the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. for all I knew.

.               I had the phone to my ear when I answered.  “Hello.”

                “Mr. Stevens, this is Martha Goodstuff.”

                Goodstuff?  Jesus Christ, I never knew her last name.  Goodstuff.  Great Scott!  Does that moniker ever fit?  However, I thought, greatstuff would be more descriptive, and fabulous stuff an even better characterization.  Goodstuff, I thought.  Well go to hell.

                “Yes Martha?”

                “My nephew called from Madisonville a while ago.  I gave him your message to call you, but he said he’d better not, at least not from there.  He sounded strange.  Nervous.  He plans on returning to Pont-Rouge Wednesday.  I’ll talk to him again then.  Maybe I can still get him to give you a call.”

                “Maybe I have a better idea, Martha,” I said.  “I plan on driving over to Madisonville tomorrow.  Perhaps there’s some way I can meet and talk with him then.  I’ll see what develops when the time comes.  Do you know where he takes the boats over there?”

                “No I don’t, Mr. Stevens.  I’m sorry.   “Wait,” she said after a pause.  “It has a man’s name.

                I said, “Henry’s?”

                “Yes.  Yes I think that’s it, Mr. Stevens.”  She sounded excited that she’d remembered.

                “Okay, Martha.  That’s good.  When I find the place, whom should I ask for?   What’s your nephew’s name?”  I guessed I should know it if I didn’t want to look like a complete jerk.  I can’t believe I didn’t get his name when I was at Martha’s.  But, there were other things going on.   Sure, I suppose I could walk into the place and ask, “do you have a big black kid working here whose aunt has huge tits?”  I’m sure that wouldn’t work.  Besides, it might be a woman I had to ask, like an office employee. She might be one of those liberated types and take serious offense to my inquiry.   But then again she might just look me in the eyes with a puzzled expression on her face and say, “I don’t know for sure.  Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.  How big is his dick?”

                Martha said, “His name is Monroe Washington Taylor.”

                Why did that not surprise me, I thought.

                “He goes by Monroe ,” she added.

                I scrunched my eyes shut tight and rubbed my hand over my face. 

                “Okay, Martha,” I said.   “ I appreciate your calling.  If I should miss him in Madisonville , you might still ask him to call me.  If I’m not here at the Sheraton, I’m in the book.  Better still, let me give you my home phone number.”  I did, and with that over, we said our adieus and hung up.

                I sat on the side of the bed for a few moments staring at the phone, contemplating the wisdom of calling Jan.  I knew I wasn’t going to because it was almost eleven o’clock , and I knew she was, I was quite sure, in bed fast asleep.  I would make no brownie points with her by doing a dumb shit thing like waking her in the middle of the night.  Some women can be cranky as hell if you disrupt their slumber.  And I certainly didn’t want to take any chance of putting myself at risk of her irritation.

                I was also aware that it was Mr. Walker who was trying to get me to call her in the first place.  Mister Iced Tea, if he’d been around, would have known better.  He would never try to con me into doing such an outrageous thing.  To pull such a dip shit stunt.  My logic was credible, and I was satisfied I was doing the right thing when I decided to let her sleep the night away peacefully.

                I’d completed my planning for tomorrow.  I knew what I was going to do.  Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.  Charlie and Henry in that order.  By this time tomorrow my brain should be full of all kinds of shit.  I did, however, need to be very sharp tomorrow.  On my toes, eager but alert.  Aggressive but cautious, physically strong.  Mentally awake, morally straight.

                Shit.  It was as if I were in training to be a Boy Scout. I wondered if I could achieve all that physical, mental and moral preparation and be ready for tomorrow?  “Only if you get plenty of restful sleep first, Mr. Stevens,” I said aloud to my reflection in the mirrored closet door.   I got no reply, but I knew the guy standing there looking back at me totally agreed.

                Sleep, if restful, can work wonders in the restoration of the brain and body.  Sound sleep is characterized by a lowering of blood pressure, a slowing of the heartbeat and shallower breathing, and a lower response to external stimuli.

                If a person happens to be a dreamer, which I most definitely am not, those physical functions will rise slightly and may become irregular.  In males, which I most definitely am, dreams may be accompanied by a partial erection.

                I expound here on the sleep process, not to demonstrate the depth of my learning, or to reinforce some latent insecurity I might have because of my lack of understanding on such subjects as the birth of the universe, or how the position of the planets in the galaxy might eliminate anxieties and influence how well I sleep tonight, or how the stars will control what happens tomorrow.  I ramble on and on about this mundane, meaningless bullshit because I’d suddenly become groggy in the head, and my body sluggish.  I felt an urgent, overwhelming need for lengthy inactive hibernation, to slumber silently and peacefully.

                I rapidly stripped down to my skivvies, taking little time to tend to the future integrity of the crease in my pants.  Shirt and socks flew about the room as if no particular spot for them to lie was required.  And so they all lay crumpled where they fell.  I jumped into bed and flipped off the light.  I was asleep almost before my head stopped bouncing on the spongy pillow. 

                I dreamt.

                I tossed and turned and dreamt.  I dreamt that I was frantically running after a young lady.  I was trying to catch her, but I didn’t know why.  She easily stayed just beyond my outreaching grasp.  Looking back over her shoulder, she smiled a knowing, wild, wicked smile.  She acted as if she knew why I was running after her.

                What could it be?

                She ran.  I ran.  We both ran.  We ran all over the fucking place.  We ran and yet we didn’t seem to move or go anywhere.  I couldn’t see her face clear enough to recognize her.  She had a slim, muscular, athletic body that looked somewhat familiar, but yet I couldn’t place her.

                I continued to toss and turn and, I dreamt on.

                We ran in slow motion.  With each step we took, we seemed to lift up higher in the air than we went forward.  We were just bouncing along, not really going anywhere.  Suddenly the scene changed and we were on a grassy knoll.  The long blades of grass were soft, deep green and very cool.  It was quiet and serene there.  Again I reached for her, but again she eluded my touch.  Then without warning she slowly began removing her clothes.

                Soon she was completely naked except for a strange-looking hat that she wore.  She was standing directly in front of me now, hands on hips, legs wide spread, head tossed back with that strange looking hat on top.

                I tossed and turned, heart rate up, breathing rapidly.  I dreamt on. 

                I could see her face clearly now, and yet I still could not say who she was.  Her identity continued to dodge me.  Why the fuck is she in my dream anyway?  It pissed me off that someone I didn’t know was into my nocturnal fantasies.

                I continued to gaze upon her.  Still trying to solve the mystery of this strange lady.  Again I failed.  I remained ignorant as to whom this person might be.  There was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind.  Something about her demeanor tried to communicate with me, tried to tell me what I wanted to know, why she was there, what her presence meant.  Slowly she began to walk toward me, hands raising up as if to reach out to me.

                What was it about this girl that brought athletics to mind.  Games. Skill.  Something about her called out the need for physical strength, for stamina.  What could it be?  She was small in frame, light in weight.  Certainly not what would be expected from someone with a propensity toward sports.

                Jesus Christ!

                I knew what it was.  It was the fucking Dallas Cowboy football helmet she was wearing.  That was the strange looking hat she wore.

                As she continued toward me, her hands reached, not out to me, but up to the helmet she wore.  She slowly released the chinstrap, and then using both hands, she flipped it off.

                Son of a bitch!

                When the helmet came off, her long and wild looking, crinkly, massive clump of shiny straw-colored blonde hair came tumbling down.

                Shit.

Page Twenty

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