The note was written in a scrawl

10) Maggie goes to Crooks Tail
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Maggie lied to her parents again telling them she was going to the drive-in with her girlfriends.
Becky picked her up in front of the house and dropped her off on Main street. River Boy picked her up around the corner.
He borrowed Top Hat's car.
It was Saturday, an hour before sunset.
They were going 58 miles to Lewiston, then another mile down to Crooks Tail next to the bayou.

Yes, Crooks Tail. The old slave market.
Everything was on the table there. All were given the equal chance, Negro or white, from china to France, to go without malice toward the poor, wretched, rich or evil.
At night the alligators bellowed and birds screamed in terror, but nobody could hear over the angst coming from that iniquitous slice of town that delivered only the loudest most ingracious ecstasy of human soil.

In the car, Maggie was full of nervous talk, half thinking it was not a date, but her first real outing with a man.
She asked, what are we going to do? It felt strange talking to River Boy, thinking how Tad couldn't match the excitement.
River Boy, not knowing what to say to this beautiful girl, replied, whatever you want.
She saw his shyness and enjoyed being in charge, as if that was true.

Feeling coy, she asked, do you have a girlfriend?
Feeling equally coy, knowing there was no sense saying one way or the other, he got busy with a knob on the radio.
Maggie took his refusal as yes, and asked, is she pretty?
Just as the channel sparked up the new Sinatra song, he turned with wide eyes and said, huh?
She laughed and looked out the passenger window. The standoff continued as the two young foxes chased ... each afraid to catch the other.

It was a long drive with fog setting in. They arrived after dark.
Maggie was excited. Both sides of the street were lined with buildings like Trinity, except tall and disrepaired, with brightly lit doorways and dark windows.

They parked among hundreds of cars in a field across from the rows of neon-lit buildings.
Maggie jumped out and pointed. Let's go there.
River Boy barely caught up. There were knifemen and robbers about. He should have warned her, but didn't expect her to run off in the dark.
They crossed the street and got up to the brightly lit theater. River Boy paid 25 cent admission and they entered a tall lobby decorated with nude murals painted in bawdy red and gold.
The auditorium was full so they went up to the balcony and had to sit two seats apart.
River Boy was white, the next woman was Negro, and the next man lighter skin, and then Maggie was white, and the old man at the end didn't give a shit because the music was great.

The stage carried old-time variety acts.
The jokes were dirty, but the jugglers and band, shouting and cheering, and all those people wandering in and out amazed sweet Maggie.
Auditorium doors opened and closed, showing all the people coming in and going out past in the lobby.
Women were dressed with feathers, furs and hats. Men mostly looked ordinary, but some wore bright suits with tall hats, and some cocked, some decorated with stars or angled and twisted, or carrying advertising signs telling about another show, and one fool wearing deer antler pants, all trying to gain notice or boldly sport their attribute.

When they left the theater, Maggie was jumping around and said, somebody told me there's a room with holes in the wall.
Oh they have it. He couldn't believe she asked about that, not sure how she would get in unless they grabbed her to work on the other side of the wall.

River Boy hadn't seen it and didn't come often except to bring Top Hat's payment.
Big Mak told him it was down one of the halls that ran behind the buildings.
Mak was a soft-hearted purveyor of lewd violent money and told River Boy about the perversions and secret passageways.
Mak's theory was Crooks Tail was the law.
It's just the truth, he said. Miserable souls should be there. Where else can they go?

River Boy and Maggie walked down into that dimly lit stench hallway lined with red lights.
They stopped so she could get a cotton candy, and he got a Bazooka Joe.
She was giggling and holding his arm.
He hushed her with his hand.
She might be filled with sex, but women were raped and men killed in that funhouse without a breath.

They passed several side shows, until she saw a sign pointing upstairs to a live show. River Boy paid the man a full dollar to climb up the stair to a walkway that crossed over the hallway below. Maggie started leaning over looking at the people passing underneath. She was bringing attention so River Boy grabbed her and pulled her toward the show.
The music drew them to an open door with light streaming out.
 
The far end of the hall was unlit and River Boy felt eyes. They were looking at him, not Maggie. It struck him somehow thinking it had to do with the payments coming from Blacktown, but who could be down there? It was a bad feeling.

They entered the doorway and saw the live act in the middle of the room. The performer was the beautiful Cashew Lynn. She was laying across a red velvet table on her stomach with two naked men at attention.
Other naked men waited their turn around the table watching her rock back and forth.
The whiff of incense barely covered the classic blend of whiskey, beer and semen.

Cashew was holding her feet behind with both hands, servicing one man in her mouth while another spread her apart, bent over laying his face between her behind. Her taut buttocks flexed in rhythm with the man in front while the man from behind bobbed up and down with his tongue.
She held firm her position when the man at her mouth finished with a spasm that ran down her chin, before another stepped in and took his place.
It was magnificent blue carnality and Maggie couldn't look away.

Then she saw the silver chain around the girl's neck. It looked like the one her mother gave Joddie.
Maggie moved over to the side where she could see the girl's face.
It couldn't be.
It wasn't possible.
It was.

Good god, it was Joddie.
Maggie screamed, Joddieeeee.
The girl on the table looked over without responding.
Yeah, it was Joddie.
Joddie was the show ... it was her ... it was what she needed ... it was the risk, the men, the hate, the lust ... it was everything to her. And she didn't stop, and couldn't stop because it kept her from dying inside.

Maggie's mind blew off hysterical.
Her sister Joddie was naked lying on a table having sex with men in front of dozens of people.

Maggie ran out, filled with shriek, practically falling down the steps before River Boy could catch up. She broke away, running down the hall past hundreds of people and out the front door into the damp night air.
River Boy raced behind and finally grabbed her hand.
She broke away again, blindly running across the street not knowing or caring what happened next if only she could escape.

Her emotions were stretched.
Never imagining a moment like this.
How could her own sister, a married woman, do such things? Why? Why ... how could she do that?
But what power Joddie had.
Her body.
All those men, and the thick sticky vile slippery uneven wood floor.
It was the devil's hand that sex.

And Bob, where was Bob?
They looked so wonderful together at Christmas dressed for church.
Bob wore the pinstripe suit and Joddie wore that beautiful dress with the high lace neck, with her mother's cross on the same silver chain she wore tonight.
Her sister was always wonderful, and never talked about sex.
How could this happen?
What would mother say?

Maggie unexpectedly spun back to face River Boy and laughed. Suddenly flirting and tempting River Boy while walking backward toward the car.
She watched his silhouette against the carnival lights, the same silhouette she saw at the river when they met. Except closer, and darker, and filled with torn feeling of everything at once.
She reached out and grabbed his belt with fingers that rubbed down the front of his pants, and said, I'm not wearing panties, did you know that?
Of course she was. She always wore proper undergarments. Her mind was skewed.

The parking lot was dark, not that it mattered in Crooks Tail, she jumped up and sat on the edge of the car hood, and they kissed. River Boy knew it was stupid, but pushed her back and ran his fingers over the top of her legs and pulled off the panties she was no longer wearing.
He let his tongue enter her maiden while she heaved a deep breath of impossible yet most wonderful moment in her life.
Sure hell fire righteous to the bone, sex had overcome that girl.

Maggie didn't feel the drive home.
Twisting and shaking her head back and forth in convulsions not able to choose between laughing and screaming.
Slamming her fists against the dash crying.
She had never been touched by a man in a private way. And now her virginity was gone, not just taken but destroyed, by the strange man she didn't recognize sitting next to her in the car.
Who was he? Why would he do such a thing?
Why would he take me to that place?

They passed over the river bridge into Trinity.
She wanted to jump out and grab the bridge and touch something familiar.
Only a few short hours before she felt none of this.

River Boy played the line of fire many times, but taking Maggie to Crooks Tail was pure mistake. A woman in this virtue could yell rape and extract a rendering, except she loved River Boy in his senseless little way.
He started driving up Main Street real slow.
The beautiful little town with clean streets lit up with lights at each corner, calmed her down. She told him to stop the car.
He pulled over in front of the hardware store.
Officers Ranny and Dack were coming from the opposite way. They saw Top Hat's car and figured it was a good time for some equal rights.
They stopped the police car and got out. That's when they saw River Boy.
River Boy knew those bastards with a cane but rolled down the window and waved.
Maggie could feel something wrong between River Boy and the officers. They were nice to her family. The occurrence of a feeling aside from Crooks Tail electroshook Maggie's brain and she regained sanity.

The officers were eager to knock around a Negro and River Boy was a fine choice.
Until they saw Maggie.
Dack put his liquored face through the driver's window, looked at River Boy, all smiles like a wild dog, and then said, hi Maggie whatcha doin' here?

River Boy was sweating down his pants.
If she screamed it was done for him.
She said, hi Dack.
We're coming back from the drive-in.

Oh what'd you see?
Good thing she lied to her parents and knew the features.
Dack said, ah that's a good one. Did you like the part where he kissed her?
That drunk sewer-smelled lawman was flirting with Maggie to push it over River Boy. Ranny pulled him back, and Dack said, well goodnight Maggie. We'll see ya later River Boy.

As soon as they drove away, Maggie said, what happened between you guys?
River Boy said, it's built up over time. In the back of his mind, wanting to fix Dack as much as Dack wanted to fix him.

She said, you have to get Joddie out of there.
He said, what? Are you joking?
No, she was serious, except he didn't know how to do that. Yet how could he refuse? What if Maggie told somebody?

Shocked and hoping to postpone a ridiculous promise, he agreed.
Sure, he was a good story-teller and had bravado in Trinity, but those guys in Crooks Tail? Who could he ask? Not Grandpa or Top Hat. Not that crazy ass Spade. Maybe Big Mac.

It was even more stupid because he delivered payments to Crooks Tail after the trouble started between Spade and Top Hat, and he just received a stare-down from somebody in a dark hallway.
More immediately he couldn't drag Maggie into all that, even though he already had.

When Maggie got home, her parents were waiting. She ran straight upstairs without looking at them.
Joel usually let his wife take care of the girls, but this scared him.
Her mother nervously added, oh don't worry she's growing up.

River Boy dropped off Top Hat's car then nervously picked his way down the dark streets in Blacktown towards Grandpa's.
At the last house, Mrs Mons Washington sat on the porch smoking.
She called out, hey River Boy, I ain't too old I can't see yo white ass at midnight. He laughed. That old lady was the heartbeat of Blacktown.

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