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THE MAN WHO got on the flight from Miami to New Orleans and took a seat next to a huge black woman whose rolls of fat seemed to drip into the aisle wore Bermuda shorts, red tennis shoes, a canary-yellow T-shirt with Mickey Mouse’s face on it, and big, round sunglasses that were as black as welders’ goggles. His skin was the color of powdered milk, his hair like wisps of corn silk on a doll’s head, his smile a slice of watermelon.
He stepped on the black woman’s foot, tumbled across her body with his drawstring beach bag, and smashed his head on the window. “Owie,” he said.
“Are you hurt?” the black woman said.
“Not much,” he said, pressing his hand against the red knot on his forehead. He gathered up his sunglasses. “I hope I didn’t hurt your foot too bad.”
“I been reading my thought-of-the-day book. I don’t let nothing bother me.”
“My name is Chester Wimple. What’s yours?”
“Birdie.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Birdie.” He took two unpeeled peaches from his beach bag and gave one to her and began sucking on the other, like a child finding a teat. “Sometimes people call me Smiley. I can speak Spanish.”
She couldn’t quite put the two statements together. “Smiley is a very nice name.”
“I have a lisp. People think it’s because I’m from New Or-yuns. It’s because I had a cleft palate that had to be operated on when I was little.”
“Don’t let nobody be telling you your voice ain’t nice. It’s nice.”
He flipped down the table on the back of the seat in front of him. “Do you like checkers?”
“Our church group plays checkers and Monopoly at the old people’s home every Sunday night.”
“I love Monopoly,” he said. He pushed back in the seat with the thrust of the plane, his face filled with delight, then felt the plane level off and catch hold of the clouds. He could see the city disappearing behind him in the twilight, the condos and palm trees and waves on Miami Beach miniaturizing, the way every stage of his life seemed to shrink and diminish into nothingness whenever he decided to move on to his next adventure. He did not understand why people had trouble with life. Every so often you got on a plane and flew away and let whatever was wrong with that place correct itself. Even the Everglades were shrinking into a tiny pattern of green islands and brown canals and bays that looked like a map rather than a watershed. Distance allowed you to sort things out. Otherwise, there was too much confusion, too many voices bouncing around in your head, too many people who needed correcting.
He opened his folding checkerboard and set out the checkers for his new friend and himself. “You’re a lady, so you go first.”
* * *
SHORTLY, AS THOUGH in a dream, the sun was gone, the sky blue-black as they approached the Louis Armstrong Airport. Chester could see Lake Pontchartrain and headlights streaming across the causeway, the Mississippi winding in serpentine fashion through the wetlands, Algiers shrouded in mist across the river, the revelers dancing in the streets of the French Quarter, as though none of them had to die, the Garden District and Tulane and Loyola Universities up St. Charles Avenue, all of it streaking past him, about to become real and not as much fun as it was up here.
He took a pad from his shirt pocket and wrote on the top page and tore it off and handed it to Birdie. “That’s my number. If you ever have any trouble, call me.” He always had difficulty with his r’s, and “trouble” came out as “twubbel.”
Birdie looked at the blinking sign above the captain’s cabin and buckled her seat belt. “You have been very courteous to me, Smiley. I’m not fond of flying. But wit’ you, I didn’t feel no fear. Your father probably wasn’t no good. But your mama was.”
“How do you know that?” he said.
“Women know these things.”
Inside the airport, he retrieved his small wheelie bag and rolled it next to Birdie out the door to the cab stand, which was located in a car tunnel under the building. Two black guys, maybe nineteen or twenty years old, locked on to Birdie and Chester as soon as they saw them, the way school yard and sidewalk bullies always recognize the weak and the vulnerable, the halt and the lame, those born ugly or fat or mentally handicapped or misshapen, those who somehow seemed deserving of torment.
They were probably stealing luggage or shagging change or maybe shagging a country girl new to the city. They were a classic pair: sneering, loud, stupid, cruel, born of a single mother, detested in the womb, raised on welfare, smelling of funk and pomade and rut, users of their roles as victims to cause scenes when confronted with their abuse. They were both chewing gun, smacking it, their eyes bright, the unpredictable glaze you saw in the eyes of meth heads.
“Here come Aint Jemima and the Pillsbury Doughboy,” the taller one said. He had one gold tooth and one missing tooth.
“Shut your mouth, boy,” Birdie said.
“Big Mama speaks,” the other guy said. His pants were so low his pubic hair was showing. “Got her jelly roll ready to rock.”
“I’ll slap your face,” she said.
He responded by tripping Chester. “Sorry dere, boss. He’p massah wit’ you bag?”
Chester got up from the concrete, Birdie’s face like a hurt child’s.
The taller guy was chewing his gum rapidly, grinning. “Go on, man. We didn’t mean nothing. Hey, you listening? Get the fuck out of here.”
