The Last Queen of the Gypsies - William Cobb

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left, drinking black coffee. It was already hot and stuffy in the kitchen, the sun higher in the sky, moving toward mid-morning. “He said two or three weeks,” Mrs. McCrory said. “I’m on a waiting list.” Her mind seemed particularly sharp this morning; possibly it was seeing her son, being mentally jerked back into a time when her thinking was clear.

      “Yes, ma’am,” Lester Ray said. Maybe there was something he could do. If there were, he would do it. In a minute. He was well aware that Mrs. McCrory was his only friend, unless you counted the several guys that hung out at Saddler’s Lounge, and he didn’t consider them friends at all. He only just stopped in to pick up a six-pack now and then. She was the only person in the world he felt comfortable with, could relax around, the only person who, even in her sometimes addled way, seemed to understand him.

      “Maybe you could fix Mr. McCrory’s old car,” she said, “and we could just take off.”

      It was a thought that Lester Ray had had before. He had no idea if the old car would ever run again. It was an Oldsmobile, a 1939 model sedan, and it had been sitting in her sagging garage for as long as Lester Ray could remember. She had once told him that it had never been driven one time since her husband had died, twenty years ago, so it had been there that long. And she did not remember how to drive it if she ever knew. It was black and had a huge back seat, the kind of old hump-backed car that would be noticed anywhere it went, Lester Ray was sure, not an ideal car for a getaway. Lester Ray had spent a few nights sleeping in the back seat, when his daddy had come home drunk and mean and wanting to beat him up, the old rough upholstery smelling sharply of ancient dust and dully of vintage, out-of-date motor oil. It had a tall gear shift lever for the transmission and a choke on the dash. It was covered with dust and cobwebs and there was a dirt dauber nest in the tailpipe. He figured the thing had long since rusted through.

      He had once raised the hood and looked at the motor. He knew little about cars, but he could see the rust and the spider webs, an old rat’s nest atop the engine. He knew enough to know it would be a long shot to get it to run again. But it was sure as hell worth a try.

      “I’ll see if I can find somebody to help me fix the thing,” Lester Ray said. “But I’ll need some money.”

      “Don’t you worry about that, Lester Ray, honey,” she said, “and I know you can do just about anything you set your mind to.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

      He could see the open road stretching out in front of them, fading into the distance, beyond the horizon a vast, mysterious cloud that hid his mother and contained all the secrets of his life and his world. He knew, had no doubt, that it was within his reach. If only he had the means to go there, and maybe now he did. If they could get the car fixed.

      3

       Central Florida

      November 1932

      At a crossroads, Minnie sat against a sandy bank, across a shallow ditch, waiting for the sun to chase away the chill of the morning. She shivered in the thin dress, but she had not wanted to stay in the woods a minute longer. She had found ample downed wood—pine branches and a couple of wind-destroyed oaks from some old hurricane or tornado—and she had kept a good fire going all night, for the warmth and to keep the alligators and snakes away. And the panthers and black bears, too, for all she knew. The linings of her nose still held the stench of burning coal oil and kerosene so that the smoke from her own fire smelled that way, too, a constant reminder of the old man’s body being consumed by the fire, her fire. She had slept very little, dozing off only to be jarred awake by a vision of the old man’s face, grinning at her and then bursting into flames. The woods were haunted; she heard owls and frogs and scurrying creatures all night long.

      The land was flat as a griddle, and she could see at least a mile down the roads in two directions, where the woods thinned and marsh grass took over. She did not know which road her family had taken, and she amused herself for a little while playing eenie, meenie, miney, moe. She wondered if they were already in Tallahassee. She didn’t know how far away it was, nor how long it would take to get there. A lot longer walking than in the ramshackle car, she knew that.

      Once the sun was over the tops of the live oaks it warmed her through. She felt her eyelids begin to droop over her scratchy eyes. She forced them open; she didn’t want to fall asleep in the daytime out here in the middle of God knows where. The sky was cloudless, so vast a blue that it made her feel even more diminutive and insignificant, since to a hawk in the sky searching for rabbits, much less to God, she would appear as little more than a tiny speck sitting in the center of a huge wheel, the roads the wheel’s spokes. She sat in the sun for a long time, not knowing which road to take, knowing that as long as she stayed right there she didn’t have to make a decision. She didn’t really think it would be very important, anyway, which road she finally took.

      As she reclined against the sandy bank, very gradually she began to hear a metallic jingling that grew louder as it got closer to her and she knew someone was coming along the road that crossed the one she had come up, traveling west she knew, away from the sun, toward the Gulf of Mexico (though she did not know this fact, since her young life had been defined so thoroughly by travel, constant movement from place to place, that she was always unaware of where she was in relation to anywhere else, only that she was where she was, her understanding of the geography of the state of Florida, and even of the United States, nonexistent). Her instinctive reaction to the sound was to tense in fear, her immediate consternation that it was the old man himself who had somehow come back to life, or perhaps even escaped the flames, who was coming along in the wagon (she could now hear the hooves, and knew the jangling to be harness) but even with her lack of knowledge of geography, her sense of direction was good enough to know that the wagon was not coming from the old man’s direction but perpendicular to it.

      The mule came into view first, a pale gray bony creature, its ears flopped forward, its harness whose noise had preceded it and announced its coming pieced together from ancient leather and cotton rope in an elaborate rig that seemed ready, at any moment, to fall apart. On the seat, the cotton rope bridle draped across his lap, was an old Negro man, sound asleep. He had on a worn denim coat and wore a brown felt hat; the hat was too big for his head and fell to the tops of his ears and bent them downward. His head lolled on his chest and bumped up and down with the movement of the wagon over the ruts. The wagon’s wheels had been repaired with planks nailed on in an X, and they wobbled and left squiggly trails in the sand. A brown coon hound trotted underneath the wagon. When the mule reached the crossroads it stopped and the old man’s head jerked up and he said, “Hey up, Maylu!” The hound dropped into the dust of the road immediately and seemed to go right to sleep. Then the old man spied Minnie and he jerked on the reins—even though the mule had not moved at all—and said, “Whoa, there, Maylu, hold on there, gal.”

      He sat there peering curiously at Minnie. She sat on the bank hugging her knees. She just stared back. Finally, the old man said,

      “Who you?” He shifted on the seat and it creaked. Then there was only silence. She didn’t know whether to tell him her name or not. She was cautious, especially after her experience with the old man yesterday. “I don’t reckon she heered me, Maylu,” he said, “I done axed her who she is and she don’t answer, so I reckon she deef and dumb.”

      “I heard you,” she said.

      “Uh-huh,” the old man said. After a minute, he asked, “Where you headin?”

      “I ain’t headin nowhere,” she said.

      “Uh-huh,” he said, “you done took up residence in a ditch?”

      “No,” she said, “I’m restin.”

      “Restin,” he said, “uh-huh.”

      “Where are you headed?” Minnie asked.

      “Rosewood, honey,” he said, grinning widely, “I’se headed home!”

      “I didn’t figure you were goin to Tallahassee,”

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