Meeting Billy

By Nancy English Perry 

I was breaking yearlings in Benton waiting for opening day at Louisiana Downs. One of the horses I got on was a filly named Martha’s Princess. Martha was getting married and invited me to the reception at her parent’s home. 

The side band played slow jazz as old friends laughed and made lewd toasts to the bride and groom. The toasts subsided and dancing began. Their soft leather shoes slipped across the floor in sync, flirting with their eyes as they looked over their partners’ shoulders.

There I was, right back in the life I was trying to get away from. I gathered a little pile of crustless cucumber sandwiches onto a chilled plate, skipped the caviar and champagne and found my way out to the back porch. I was relieved to see the cooler. Digging a Heineken out of the slush I sat down in a wicker rocker and began popping the diminutive triangles into my mouth like artillery rounds. The icy beer trickled Olympic rings on the painted floorboards. 

On the back porch I was invisible. I “knew” these people but not their names or their families.   I didn’t want to know them anymore. I wanted a new kind of life. I wanted to take risks, to travel taking only my mind and my wits. I wanted to see what happened when you leave your calling cards at home. 

Billy shuffled out to the porch and grunted, surprised to see someone. He took a pack of short Luckies out of his shirt pocket and mashed a cigarette between his fingers. He steadied his hand and then guided the match to the waiving cigarette.

“You that gal working for Floyd out at the training center?” he exhaled.

“Yes sir.”

Slowly. “How’s that Joey Bob colt coming along?”

“He’s OK. You have to pick him up a little.”

“Humph.” Eyeing my tan legs he asked. “You don’t dance?”

“I - forgot - my - loafers.”

Billy walked across the porch, his hand skimming lightly along the railing. His fingernails were hard and yellow, dead from decades of smoking non filter cigarettes.

“I’ve known Martha since she was a baby. She named that horse after herself and I don’t mean the fore name.”

That was the first time I heard Billy laugh. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” Pleased with himself.

Billy and I were comfortable together, that singular occurrence that only happens when you travel alone. You meet someone on a train, in an art gallery, at a café. You end up sharing a table and walking out together, natural as rain.

Billy and I hung out all that summer. We would drive around in his old beige four door Impala. If we turned right out of the training center, he would show me places he’d worked as a young man learning the “oil bidness” but mostly we’d go left, past The Hayride to the corner of Highway 3 and the Bossier Strip.

The Kick-A-Poo motel, bar and restaurant was a kind of Twilight Zone time warp. It could have been any time: ‘30s, ‘50s, ‘70s. Nothing ever changed. The stools at the counter were hard red plastic, some wobbled, but they all spun fast and easy. We would sit in the back booth, the one that curled around the corner. Billy lit a cigarette and ordered black coffee.

“Get anything you want. Get a steak.”

“For crying out loud Billy. I don’t want a steak. You know what I want? Eggs.”

The waitress smiled and shuffled off behind the counter to the pass through.

“Over medium, bacon, biscuit, hash.” She hung the ticket and gave the wheel a spin.

She came back with a napkin roll of silverware, the coffee pot and a mug. 

We were usually the only ones in there at three in the afternoon. It was quiet. The air conditioning was cool but stale, probably the same air circulating through the condensers as when Elvis played The Hayride. Maybe just re-cycled cigarette smoke. 

I would eat eggs, and Billy would drink coffee and tell me stories. Tales when he and Bunker Hunt would pull horses out of their stalls at midnight and match race them on the landing strip at the King Ranch. 

“You raced horses on tarmac?”

“No, no. It was grass. They kept a little Cessna to ride fence and check cattle. We would line the horses up best we could and then the night watchman would flip the switch. The runway lit up like major league ball and he’d let out a holler. The horses would bolt and run right down between those two straight lines of little green lights.  It was a match race, just like the bushes, no holds barred.  

“What happened when you ran out of lights?”

Billy looked perplexed.

“We’d pull ‘em up.” 

***

One afternoon Billy asked tentatively. “Do your parents know where you are?” 

I didn’t say anything.

 “Do you need any money?”

I was taken aback. No one had ever asked me that.

 “No. I’m good.” 

***

“What are you doing Tuesday?”

“It’s dark. No races. I’m going to wash clothes, rock on the back porch and read my book.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“But necessary.”

“Come with me?”

“Where to?”

“Coushatta. I want you to meet Sister.”

“Marg?”

“No. I have another sister. She’s a lot like you…or like you’re going to be... when you’re old.”

***

Billy picked me up and we immediately decided to stop at the Kick-A-Poo. I love that kind of rigid itinerary. Back in the Chevy we drove south on 71 to Coushatta. What a beautiful, mystic name. I loved the place already.

Driving through the countryside with Billy was a story in itself. He used cigarettes for punctuation, blowing smoke out the window as the ash floated into the back seat. He knew the land, the oil beneath the land and he knew the families who had made fortunes and lost fortunes, sometimes in a poker game. Some people tell stories and you wish they’d just shut up. Billy told stories like a good book reads. 

He slowed down and turned off the main road at a single mailbox onto double tracks of red Louisiana dirt that wound through a soybean field.

Sister’s place barely came up out of the ground, low with a metal roof and porches that were attached like dominos – somewhere in between Hobbits and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The architect was Hobbit, the woman was pure Rawlings.

Sister came out wiping her hands on an apron tied around her waist with the bib over her shoulders. Her gray hair gathered on top with pins into a loose bun. Her eyes danced when she saw Billy. I couldn’t tell if we were expected but I found out later, we weren’t. Sister didn’t see any reason to have a phone. 

“I’ll made some tea.” As she turned back to the house.

“Come on Gal.”

Billy led me down a path lined with slender trees and maidenhair ferns to a dock that bobbed up and down as the weight of our footsteps caused the water to ripple. There, laid out, was everything a Louisiana dock needed: chairs, a cooler and pipe ladder that sank into the water.  A bait table for cleaning fish with cane poles resting against the top shelf.

“This is the Red River. Every couple of years we lose some bank and then get it back again. Can’t run the river.”

Sister came down with a tray of iced tea. 

We sat in the shade as the river formed eddies and currents up stream passed us by and continued down to Natchitoches and Alexandria. We shot skeet, Billy could hit anything, I couldn’t hit a clay pigeon if it were sitting on a tree branch. Billy and Sister smoked, and we talked and drank sweet tea until it started to cool off.

Around four o’clock Billy said we better be getting back. It was a long drive, and I had to gallop horses in the morning. I’d forgotten all about that.

***

“Hey Gal.” Billy’s voice came across the line soft and wispy.

“Billy…” I choked up hearing his faint voice and couldn’t finish.

“Where you at?”

“I’m in New York. Belmont Park but I’m coming down to see you.”

I could hear him breath, heavy and short.

“Don’t die before I get there.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

“I love you, Billy.”

He never told me I love you back.

***.

When I pulled into the driveway Jasmine met me at the back door.

She crushed me with her soft bosoms and held me for a long time. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Oh, I’ll be here as long as Mr. Billy needs me.”

The kitchen was just the same as it always was. Old Formica countertops, fridge with a long handle, Jasmine’s table with her Bible and movie star magazines. I recognized the clean smell from the cotton tablecloth.

I followed her into the living room and gasped.

“We took all the furniture out. It’s been gone since Miss Margret passed.”

“Where’s Billy?”

“He’s back in his room.” Leading me down the hall.

“Mr. Billy. Nancy’s here,” she said as she slipped inside.

The room was fully furnished with tables, books, a dresser and pictures on the wall, curtains at the windows. Billy was sitting up, his back surrounded by a fortress of pillows.

“Billy.” As I gently put my arms around his shoulders, thin as a sparrow. I pulled up a chair and the first thing Billy said was.

“Can you get me some cigarettes?”

“Where are they?”

“No. Buy me some.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

It might have been our best time ever, strange as that sounds. I got a pack of Luckies for him. What did it matter? We ate ice cream and fresh peaches. I brought flowers and Jasmine put them in water and placed them on the dresser. Billy wanted to call his friends, many I remembered from the track back in the day. We talked about the times we flew down to New Orleans and Laffettiet to watch his horses run.

After three days I said goodbye to Billy and walked through the empty, waiting house. I sat on the front steps and cried and cried until my shoulders shook because I knew, if I stayed, Billy would live.