Death by the Riverside (16 page)

Chapter 17

Ranson called me early in the day, but it was strictly business. She outlined the deal she was working on for Frankie. I told her I would get in touch with him and get back to her.

I had to wait a couple of hours before I called Torbin. He worked late and it was bad enough saddling him with naïve young men just coming out; I didn’t need to interrupt his beauty sleep, too. I called from a pay phone, just in case.

Frankie was beginning to sound like Torbin, which I took as a good sign. He agreed to everything, except turning himself in at the police station. That he absolutely refused to do. “No, no, no,” he said. “They get people killed in jail all the time. Their informant is well connected and knows everything they need to know. It has to be someplace public and well populated with law officers of all kinds, everywhere. I’m sorry to be a pain, but it’s my life.”

I couldn’t disagree with him. I spent another hard-earned quarter calling Ranson. She said she’d do what she could.

I left messages on both Danny’s and Cordelia’s answering machines, saying hi and that I was fine. Cliched, but adequate. Then I called the hospital. Still no change.

The next day a messenger brought me a package from Ranson. It contained an invitation to the Krewe of Nemesis Ball for M. Knight and escort. Ranson had enclosed a note saying, “Will this do?” It would be a private affair, but there would be too many diverse law enforcement officials there for even a rabid rat like Milo to try anything. It would mean going out to One Hundred Oaks Plantation one more time and seeing my bosom buddy Karen Holloway, but it seemed a good idea for Frankie.

I found a pay phone and called Frankie and told him to get his dancing shoes ready for Saturday. He agreed. We discussed his wearing the dress and me the tails, but decided that it would have to wait for another ball. Torbin agreed to lend me a suitable dress, but warned me to find my own shoes. I got Frankie’s measurements to rent a set of tails for him.

I wasn’t going to go over to Torbin’s until Saturday, much as I would have liked to. Torbin is a great way to pass time, but I didn’t want the risk, however small, of someone following me there.

I prowled my way through the week taking care of the other case that had shown up on my doorstep—tracking down a missing eight-foot dragon’s rump from a Mardi Gras float. Why is it that I get the tail end of everything?

Finally, on Thursday, I decided to do something boring and practical and all too necessary. Get my car fixed. There was a garage here in town that my car was inordinately fond of visiting, but I decided, for financial reasons, to avoid the high overhead of city rents and taxes.

Azalea Decheaux’s oldest son had a garage out in Bayou St. Jack’s. It seemed reasonable and practical to go out there and get him to fix my car.

These were the reasons I kept repeating to myself as I drove out of the city. Also, I told myself, I might try to find out where Ben was and how he was doing. And to visit my ghosts, but I didn’t let myself dwell on that.

I drove down the narrow road through the browns and muted green leaves of winter. The trees had always come to the edge of the pavement, but now they seemed smaller, less dense than in my memories. They were the same, but I had grown taller, tall enough to peer over the jumble of grass and weeds that had met the face of the child.

The sign for Bayou St. Jack’s appeared. It had only been put up in the last five years, but looked much older, bitten and buffeted by salt winds from the Gulf and the boredom of small boys with BB guns.

My dad had told me that no one was sure how Bayou St. Jack’s got its name. He’d wink and say, “Us Cajuns know it’s supposed to be Bayou St. Jacques, but the damned Americans can’t speak French, so they ended up calling it Jack’s. Of course,” he would continue, “they say we were just so friendly that we wouldn’t stand for any formality, so we nicknamed St. John, St. Jack.” I wondered if there was any truth in either version.

I didn’t head into town, the whole block and a half of it, but instead took the turn out to the shipyard. Just to make sure everything was all right, I told myself.

I saw a figure walking beside the dirt road. He wore a Navy peacoat and black pants. Then I realized there was something familiar in the way he walked. He was going to the shipyard; he had to be if he was traveling down this road. I had to know if I had recognized something or if I was seeing ghosts from my past.

I caught up to him, then passed with a seemingly casual glance in his direction. If he wasn’t who I thought he was, I would drive on by.

“Ben,” I called, slowing the car as I caught up with him.

He turned to see who it was, looking for a moment like he might run, a man unsure of his welcome.

I stopped and got out. I hadn’t seen him in twenty years. It looked like forty had passed for him. His hair, once a thick black, was now thinning and streaked with iron gray. The lines I remembered as softly etched on his face were deep, wide channels; his eyes were uncertain, almost haunted.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know you,” he said, starting to walk away.

“Ben,” I repeated. I was shocked to notice that I was taller and stronger. To the child it had never seemed possible that I would look down on those broad shoulders that used to carry me around my dad’s shipyard. “It’s me. Michele. Little Micky.”

His eyes seemed to cloud in thought, then catch focus, his face breaking out in the wide grin that hadn’t changed. “Micky! Damn, girl, you bigger ’n I am now. You look great.”

I had known that he was in prison. I had visited him there after I had turned eighteen and Aunt Greta could no longer control my life. But we lost track of each other after I had left for college and he had gotten out.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in the soft accents of the bayou.

Visiting the same graves that you are, Ben.
But I didn’t say that. Instead I replied, “My car needs to be looked at. I trust the mechanics out here more than I do the ones in the city. Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”

I got back in, reached over and unlocked the door. He got in, stowing a small satchel between his legs. There was an awkward silence.

“You still keep up with folks out here?” he finally asked.

“Some. Not that much,” I answered. “I live in the city now,” I continued, to avoid another awkward silence. The truth was that I did my best to see as few people out here as possible, always imagining their pointing fingers and hushed whispers of “illegitimate” and “accident” behind my back. “I kept up with the Decheauxes for a while until Mrs. Decheaux died. Her son runs a garage and is a good mechanic. And the Claytons,” I rambled on. “Do you know them?”

“They new?” Ben asked.

“Naw,” I said, letting my accent broaden to match his. “They own the bait shop down the bayou.”

“Oh, them Claytons,” Ben said. “The nigras.”

“Yes, them,” I said carefully. I knew I would have to say some-thing, but I was caught, an unsure child about to criticize an adult. “I went to college with their oldest daughter, Danielle. She’s one of my best friends,” I answered, indirectly confronting him.

“Yeah, well, that’s nice. I don’t know ’em too well,” Ben replied.

I turned into the shipyard. Ben got out and opened the gate, like he had so many times for my dad. The action, the face seemed so familiar, yet so out of place. How many years had it been since I had watched Ben Beaugez open that gate? He got back in and I drove to the cleared area near the dock.

“I could look at your car, you know. I know a few things ’bout engines,” Ben said as he opened his door.

“You don’t have to,” I answered, getting out.

“Naw, it’s okay. I’m real used to fixin’ things ’round this place.”

I propped open the hood for him, and he started looking at the motor.

“I used to fix my bike, but that’s as far as I ever got mechanically,” I said. I was talking to fill time and space, to fill the emptiness made by all the people who should have been here with us, but weren’t.

“I might fix this if I had some tools,” he said.

“I can get some. I still have all of Dad’s tools. I’ll be back in a second.” I was glad of a task, glad not to have to think of something to say that didn’t have anything to do with the real reasons we were here.

I walked purposefully over to what had been Dad’s workshop. Indoor junkyard, he had called it, since he only worked there during major thunderstorms, hurricanes, and other irascible acts of nature. Again his words. I had kept all his tools; I didn’t even know what some of them were for. But they had been his, he had touched them.

I found the tool chest I wanted, the one Dad had always carried with him when he worked on engines. I hefted it up and carried it back to the car. Ben had walked down to the dock and was surveying the bayou and marsh on the other side.

“Hey, that skiff’s still as tight as a drum,” I called out to him.

“’Course. When Ben Beaugez makes a boat, he makes it right,” he grinned proudly at me.

“Remember teaching me to catch crabs?” I asked him, walking down to the dock. “Right here on this very pier.” I pointed to a particular plank, as if I could remember the exact spot.

“I remember you wailin’ and screamin’ the first time you missed and that ol’ crab got a finger in his claws. But you was a tough kid, you went and got a Band-aid and was back here to catch a few more.”

“I still catch crabs that way, to the consternation of my friends. They all use tongs,” I quickly explained, not sure that he would know what consternation meant.

“Yeah, you was the tough kid ’round here. Two days after your dad bought that bike, you come in and announce it’s time to take the trainin’ wheels off. He shook his head, took ’em off, and said they’d be on again the next day. The next day comes and you show up with scrapes and bruises, but them trainin’ wheels never got put back on.”

“With that bike I could go down to the ice cream stand whenever I wanted. I kept getting back on because I bribed myself with a banana split.”

“I remember your dad and me sneakin’ into the workshop to put it together for you. It was so bright and shiny new. You give it away?”

“It got stolen,” I replied.

“That’s too bad. It was a real nice bike.”

“I was too tall anyway,” I said, pretending that losing the bike didn’t matter.

“Yeah, you sure got real tall, like your mom was. I can’t believe you’re the same little Micky I used to know.” There was a pause; the bike used up, there was nowhere else to go. “Well, let me go look at that foreign car of yours,” Ben finished. We started back to the my car.

“Several times secondhand,” I responded, “but it gets me where I want to go.”

“Yeah, that’s what counts, I guess,” he said, looking under the hood.

He seemed intent on what he was doing and I didn’t know what to say. I watched Ben, wondering what twisted path had brought us here today. I wanted to talk to him, to say,
Tell me everything, everything you know about my father, my mother, fill all the gaps. Give me the man complete; he was taken before I had time to know him.

But I wasn’t a child of ten, instead a woman of almost thirty with too many nameless lovers and cheap bottles of Scotch in my past to ask for an honesty I couldn’t return.

“You married?” He broke into my thoughts.

“No, I’m not married. I did change my last name,” I answered. “Didn’t want the same name as Aunt Greta,” I finished lamely.

“Yeah, I thought ’bout looking you up, but I figured you had to be married by now. You got to be almost thirty, right?”

“Some things work out and some things don’t,” I evaded.

“You never been married?” he asked.

“No, never,” I answered, trying to think of a way to change the subject.

“Guess it’s just as well. Don’t know if ol’ Ben could take seein’ little Micky Robedeaux so growed up as to be divorced. So you went to college, huh? ’Round here?”

“No, up in New York.”

“That far, huh? Your dad always wanted you to go to college. You was smart enough. But New York’s real far away.”

“I was getting away from Aunt Greta,” I said. “Besides, I kind of hoped I might find my mom there. Do you remember much about her?”

“Naw, sorry, Micky, not really.”

“Do we look alike?” I persisted. Ben was the only connection I had to my past.

“Yeah, some. She was tall, too, like I said,” he answered hesitantly. “But don’t you worry ’bout her. She had some problems. Had no business trying to raise a kid,” he suddenly burst out. “She should’ve stayed here and been a good wife and mother, not running ’round like she did.”

“But, Ben,” I said, discovering a need to defend her, “she was only sixteen when I was born.”

“Me and Alma was married when she was sixteen. She had David a year later. No excuse.”

“I wouldn’t want to have a child at sixteen,” I replied.

“No, maybe not. But if you did, you would’ve taken care of that baby and done right by it. She even thought of not havin’ you,” he said angrily.

“Can you blame her?”

“Yeah. She did what she wanted and she should’ve been takin’ care of you. What’d they teach you at that New York college, anyway?”

“To think for myself,” I answered.

“Now, you see,” Ben said, grinning a bit, backing away from the argument we were about to have, “That’s why you ain’t married yet. You just got too smart for most of the fellas ’round here.”

“Yes, I guess so,” I responded. But I knew if I had been sixteen and pregnant, I would have had an abortion. Of course that wasn’t very likely because by the time I was sixteen I was sleeping with women. I couldn’t say that. I remembered Ben, Alma, and David going off to Mass every Sunday.

“Guess we ain’t got much in common no more,” Ben said.

“A lot of good memories, Ben,” I answered.

“Yeah, that counts for somethin’, I guess. That’s all we end up with, a bunch of memories,” he replied, a sad look crossing his eyes.

“Things change. They always do. Us kids have to grow up and sometimes it seems we grow away. But…but I still have that little wooden horse you carved for me. It reminds me of you and my dad. I’ll never grow so far away as to forget that.”