Finnerty’s talent lay in his limitless contempt for all things female. He treated women as though they were mindless. And in time they began to act mindlessly.
At the moment he actually had two hooked on the chicken farm story working under the same roof, and both well on their way to becoming ‘that one there.’
Frenchy and Reba worked side by side, each satisfied that it was the other whom Oliver would betray when the Judas hour struck. Meanwhile they competed, week in and week out, to show Oliver his faith wasn’t misplaced. If one week Reba was top broad, Frenchy was moping all the next, feeling so useless and so untrue that Oliver had to buck her up a bit – ‘Don’t feel so bad, honey, you done your best. That week she had was just lucky breaks. You got the looks all over her, you know that. I’m laying the odds on you this week.’
Inspired by the knowledge that her owner was still betting on her, Frenchy went all out, getting tricks to finish their business almost before they had their pants down, hustling them out the door to make room for the next, clucking at them like an enraged hen if they didn’t hurry and – lo! At the end of that week she had made half again Reba’s take.
‘I never been so proud of anyone in my life,’ Oliver congratulated her that Saturday in front of everyone. ‘Don’t bother me, you,’ he turned on Reba – ‘buy your own drinks, bum.’ But bought Frenchy drinks all night, paraded her about, asked her what she wanted for her birthday, where she wanted to go New Year’s Night (this was July) and told her the chicken farm was now actually within reach. ‘Only two more weeks like this one, little baby, and we got it made for life.’
But for the next two weeks Reba topped the whole house, they had to hold her back from pulling tricks in off the street – and so it went, week in, week out, playing the one against the other till it was a standing joke at Dockery’s Bar to ask who was Finnerty’s top broad now.
A joke which only the two butts failed to understand.
‘You must despise women something terrible,’ Mama once grew bold enough to challenge him.
‘I believe, whatever you are, be a stompdown good one,’ was all Finnerty replied.
And no one could deny that, at his trade, Oliver was anything but a stompdown good one. In fact, he was a perfect little dilly. For he never came on cheap and loud, such as ‘Meet the Stinger from St Louis, have a piece of skin. Got six broads in Miami, six in Kansas City,’ and all of that.
Yet why should any right-minded girl ruin her health just to keep some unfinshed product in sideburns looking sharp? What right-minded girl could let any forenoon lush bounce himself off her fine pink hide to wear off his hangover before going home to his wife, in order that some Finnerty could bet the daily double? Why wind up, scarred from ankles to breast, in some panel house in Trinidad?
It was something Mama pretended not to understand, but understood better than she let on. The fact was that an unprotected girl got into all manner of mischief, such as getting drunk on the job and ripping off her joint togs and trying to catch a Greyhound for home. It took a good pimp to keep a girl honest, Mama knew.
Mama Lucille abhorred violence; yet hardly a week passed but she was forced to say, ‘Honey, don’t make me get Finnerty here with his mittens.’
Yet when he put his mittens on, Finnerty always said, ‘Baby, this is going to be a wonderful lesson to you. Some day you’ll thank me for it.’
More than one innocent, deciding she’d rather keep her earnings than give them away, would shake some half-breed ponce in Omaha and go into business for herself in New Orleans.
But sooner or later, wherever she rented, rooming house or hotel, desk clerk or landlady would make certain arrangements with or without her consent. The line the landlady used might be, ‘Honey, I’d like you to meet a nephew of mine in the sporting goods line. He’s a sweet boy, good-looking and lots of fun, just in New Orleans for a weekend. Would you let him show you a good time?’
Desk clerks didn’t bother with that. There was a knock and there he was, checkered vest and one hand in his belt.
‘I’m not hard to get along with,’ he’d assure her after he told her the score. ‘Whether you want to come along easy or come along hard, that’s just up to you, baby. I’ve got us a nice little flat above a bar in the class part of town. There’s a smart girl.’
Mama boarded only one girl who had never been pandered and never would be. Hallie Breedlove had found her way to Perdido Street when small-town gossip had gone around that a certain schoolteacher wasn’t really white. Hallie had succeeded in passing as white half her life, and had married a white man who would not have married her had he had the faintest doubt of it. When the gossip had forced them to move to New Orleans, she had kept him believing it was no more than gossip. Then their baby was born and the secret was out. She had not seen him since.
She held herself higher, and took greater care of her health and earned more money, than any of the other women. If any of them actually wound up with a chicken farm, it would be Hallie.
Yet when Finnerty propositioned her, he made no allowances for the fact that he wasn’t, for once, talking to a demented child. He went at her exactly as though she were as mindless as the others.
‘Why, that sounds almost too good to be true, Little Daddy,’ Hallie tried not to appear too excited at his offer. ‘Only I’m mad—’ she stood half a head higher than him, but she baby-pouted.
‘Mad at your Little Daddy?’ Finnerty couldn’t believe it. ‘Why?’
‘Because you promised Reba she’d never have to pull feathers and you promised Frenchy all she’d have to do was candle – but me you got stepping over droppings, carrying feed and slapping new coops together. Little Daddy, it just don’t seem fair.’
‘Them two fools,’ Finnerty scoffed merrily, ‘you don’t think I’d let a couple city clowns like them on my chicken farm, do you? You and I know what hard work is, we know what chicken farming is. Now wouldn’t I look good trying to tell a smart country girl like yourself that all she had to do is candle? That’s why with you I’m sincere. A country girl and a country boy. We know you don’t get nowheres without hard work. Don’t we, little baby?’
‘What country exactly is that, Little Daddy?’
Not until then did Finnerty see he’d been had.
‘Go on turning tricks till you’re sixty,’ he gave up on Hallie. ‘Just don’t come running to me for help, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t.’ Hallie kept a baitless string bobbing.
Yet when Frenchy would shake her head and say sadly, ‘Reba, poor thing. I really don’t dislike her, I just feel so sorry for her, the fool Oliver is making of her,’ Hallie would be noncommittal.
For Reba was equally concerned about poor Frenchy, and worried what would happen to the girl when she and Oliver left for the farm.
Hallie pitied both, and Floralee as well, and nearly everyone.
Everyone, that is, but Oliver Finnerty. There was no place in her heart, inside or out, that did not freeze over at sight of him gnawing his little nail. And while Finnerty could respect her lack of interest in his farm, he could never forgive her indifference to his physical charms. He was hurt.
‘The broad carries herself mighty high for one I got reason to think aint even got the right to be working the doors of a white house.’ He had tried and she had mocked him. There was only one answer now: force.
So he caught her alone petting her lame cat, the very one that had crippled his mouse, and came right to the point: