Death by the Riverside (22 page)

“I could barely see Alma and I couldn’t see David.” She was moaning in a low voice, but I couldn’t tell Ben that. “I tried to think what to do.

“Then I heard a woman scream and a man cursed loudly in the car that was half off the other side of the road. There was a dull thud and the woman screamed again, then another thud and she didn’t make any more noise, but the man was still yelling. He climbed out of the car and came over toward me. I ducked into the bushes. He was cursing and yelling. He was dragging the woman behind him. She didn’t move. He threw her into the back of the truck. He threw her hard enough that she should have yelled, but she didn’t. She didn’t make any sound. I had a bad feeling, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know…he had killed her.

“He went back to his car and returned with a heavy metal can. It looked like a gas can. At first, I thought he was going to put it in our truck and drive it, but our truck already had gas. Then he poured it all around the truck.”

“That bastard,” Ben said, knowing what would happen.

Cordelia shuddered, closing her eyes for a moment.

“He walked back and lit a cigarette. Then I thought maybe it wasn’t gas because I knew that that was dangerous. I knew not to get cigarettes or matches or anything near gasoline. I thought he didn’t know what he was doing. I had to say something, to stop him, because if it was gas, he would hurt my dad and Alma and David.

“So I came out of the bushes. He took the matches out and lit one. Then I knew he did know what he was doing. I yelled at him to stop and pointed the gun at him. He threw the match. I…I pulled the trigger.

“There was a brilliant flash and a roar. The kick from the gun threw me off the road and down the bluff. I was on my back and the trees over my head flickered a harsh orange.

“It took me a while to climb up the bluff, dragging the shotgun. The truck was black, with flames still licking around it. The man lay in the middle of the road, his eyes staring, a glassy orange by the firelight. I kicked him, over and over again, but he didn’t move. There was a gaping, bloody hole in his chest. I knew he was dead…and I knew that Alma and the baby inside her were dead and that David was dead and…that my dad was dead.”

I couldn’t stop the tears now. “And that I was alone in the middle of the night.”

I stopped. There were no words anymore.

“Thanks, Micky. Little Micky. I had to know. You always were the best kid. You deserved better,” Ben said. His voice cracked.

“So did you, Ben,” I cried out.

“Take care of yourself, Little Mick. Keep a hold of the best memories,” Ben said. “It’s too late for me. Too many bad ones.”

He let go of Cordelia and pushed her to me.

“Oh, my God,” she said, putting her arms around me. I held her tightly. She was shuddering.

“It will be all right,” I said, looking at her.

The only sound was our breathing, the three of us, distinct and audible in the dusty silence of the warehouse. Then behind me, the soft breath of another person. Ranson was there. I glanced at her, and the bulge beneath her jacket. I let go of Cordelia to keep myself between Ranson and Ben.

“Give me the gun, Ben,” I said. “You don’t need it anymore.”

“I’m going back to jail, ain’t I?” A horrible bewilderment crossed his face, perhaps realizing that what little he had left, he had lost.

“No,” I said, then, “I’ll do what I can.” Because I knew that I couldn’t stop him from going back to jail.

“Please give us the gun,” Ranson said, trying to slowly edge past me. She reached out and took Cordelia’s hand, pulling her to safety behind us, telling her quietly, “Go. Walk out of here now.”

“Joanne…Micky—” Cordelia started.

“Just go,” Ranson cut her off.

Cordelia slowly backed away, unwilling to walk away and leave us, but not wanting to directly disobey Joanne. She moved behind a heavy wooden crate, but went no farther.

“I can’t stand jail, I jus’ can’t do it,” Ben said softly, as if pleading with heaven itself. “Stay where you are!” he suddenly shouted as Ranson took another slow step toward him. “Goddamn lyin’ cops!”

“No, Ben,” I moved quickly, putting myself between them again.

“Go ’way, Micky. Get outta here. If I kill a cop they kill me. Better ’n rottin’ my life away in jail.”

“You don’t want to do that, Ben.” I took a step toward him.

“I don’t want to go to jail. That’s all I want—not to go to jail.” The desperation in his voice scared me.

“Joanne, back off.” I turned to face her. “He won’t hurt me. Let me talk to him,” I said in a low voice, not wanting Ben to hear me bargain with her for his fate.

“And what are you going to say?” she answered softly.

What was I going to say? What the hell was I going to say? What words did I have to recall those lost years and burned lives?

Joanne took my arm, gently trying to push me out of the way. “No,” I said, savagely shaking off her hand. I wasn’t close enough to get to Ben. Ten or fifteen feet still separated us—that and all the differences between us. “Let him go. End this now.”

Joanne slowly shook her head. “I didn’t start it, Micky. There are always consequences. He chose this end.” She took my arm again, trying to pull me behind her.

“He might shoot you.”

“Get Cordelia away from here,” she told me.

“Get out’a here, Micky,” Ben called. “I don’t want you hurt, Mick, God help me, I don’t want you hurt. Now get out’a here. This don’t concern you no more.”

“I’m not moving,” I yelled. “It does concern me. You can’t just shoot each other.” I grabbed at Joanne, not letting her push me aside. Not letting Ben get a clear shot at her.

“Please, Ben, put the gun down. Micky’s right, we can’t just shoot each other. That won’t solve anything,” Joanne called to him.

“I got nothing to lose…”

Ben intended to die here. His life had been pared down to a need to avenge the murder of his wife and kids. On parole for manslaughter, he would spend the rest of his life in prison even if he did put the gun down right now.
Don’t do this to me, Ben
, I wanted to shout. But what right did I have to ask that? What part had I played in his life for the last twenty years?

“Ben, please…there has to be some other way,” I said hopelessly.

“There’s no other way. Not for me, Micky. You go ’way now. Your dad wouldn’t want you here.”

“It can’t end like this,” I said angrily, feeling Joanne’s restraining hand.

“Micky,” she warned. “Don’t make me fight…” She stopped.

I tried to pull away from Joanne, but there was no time. I could only stand and watch. Ben put the barrel of the pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Its report was hollow, muffled by the flesh and bone of the man, muted echoes quickly dying in the empty warehouse. He wouldn’t be going back to jail.

I couldn’t stop staring, still desperately trying to recognize Ben in the bloody mass that now lay on the dirty floor. Cordelia had to bury my head into the crook of her neck, so I couldn’t see anymore. All the best memories…

We were no longer alone. Cops, reporters, who knows who, entered the warehouse. Somebody pulled us apart and Cordelia was hastily dragged into the crowd. If she had been shorter, I would have lost track of her immediately. I saw Thoreau put his arms around her. Then she was gone.

No one came out of the crowd to hold me. I stood stupidly for a moment. Then I angrily wiped my face with my sleeve.

“Uh, Ranson wants to talk to you,” Hutch said, appearing very suddenly for a man his size. I followed him to where Ranson was talking heatedly to several other people. I didn’t listen to what they were saying. Ben was behind me. I kept wanting to turn back and look, just to be sure that his head was shattered open. But I kept my back turned. Unless he was going to get up and be Ben again, I couldn’t let myself look.

“I said, have you ever obeyed an order in your life?” Ranson repeated, standing very close to me. I hadn’t seen her turn to me and I hadn’t heard her talking.

“Not yours,” I retorted. I was being deliberately belligerent, wanting to fight.

“Go wait by the car. Take her to the car and make her wait,” Ranson ordered me, then Hutch. He tried again to take my arm. I jerked it away and sullenly followed him.

We stood silently by the car, a sea of people flowing around us, back to their everyday concerns. Someone yelled for Hutch to give them a hand.

“Stay here,” Hutch said, as he went over to the men. He took my numbness for acquiescence.

Where was I going to go? I thought. Then I realized, anywhere but where I was going, back to the confines of Ranson’s place. I didn’t run or try to hide, but just walked away. If Ranson noticed I was gone and caught up with me, she would. I no longer cared to try to influence events.

I heard a car behind me. It could be just a car driving on this road, or Ranson coming to get me, or men with guns intent on killing me. I turned my head to watch the car as it passed, half-expecting to see a gun barrel pointing at me.

It drove on by without slowing. I kept on walking.

The sky was an unbroken gray from horizon to horizon, changing the river’s usually muddy brown to colorless ashen water. When the road veered away from the river, I followed a rutted path down to the levee. I kept walking, letting the river lead me.

I remembered the black of the night when the truck finally stopped burning. I remained on the dark road for…I had no idea how long. That night was so long, so long ago. I wondered if the day hadn’t deserted me, too. Several times I tried to get close enough to the truck, hoping, as only a child can hope, that maybe the flames hadn’t touched them, but the heat drove me away. I finally risked jumping up on the blackened runner, using the gun to balance on, not able to touch the still-hot metal.

It must have been on the edge of dawn, because there was a rim of gray about the black outlines of what remained in that truck. Or maybe what was in that truck was so black it made the night look only gray.

I hoped that he had died when the truck first crashed, that he hadn’t been consumed by the flames. It was the only mercy left me.

After I saw what was in the truck, I left. I knew my father wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t look back, just as I didn’t look back at Ben. What I saw would never leave me.

I walked the two miles back to the shipyard. I buried the shotgun, because I couldn’t bear seeing it again. It hadn’t fired quickly enough to save my father. I hadn’t fired it quickly enough. I had no thought of hiding it from the police, though that’s what happened. They never found it. I still know exactly where it’s buried.

Then I sat on the porch watching the silent dawn. I didn’t let myself sleep. It would be too horrible to go to sleep and think this was all a dream and then wake up and find it was still real.

Some time later, with the sun glistening through the trees, Mrs. Decheaux, a neighbor, came and got me. She told me there had been an accident and that I was to come with her.

“I know,” I replied. “My dad’s dead.”

She was taken aback, but she was a kind and honest woman and knew better than to lie to a child. She led me by the hand to her shack down the bayou and kept me with her until the next day, when Uncle Claude and Aunt Greta came and got me. Uncle Claude waited in the car. Aunt Greta didn’t bother to thank Mrs. Decheaux because she was black.

“The first thing we do is give her a bath,” Aunt Greta said as we got into the car. “Staying in a filthy shack like that with colored people. Lemoyne didn’t raise this child right.” She was sitting up front with Uncle Claude and I was alone in the back seat.

She didn’t let me into the house, but made me go into their tiny backyard and take off my clothes in that close and claustrophobic neighborhood. Then she hosed me down on that bright and cold day. I stood shivering and shuddering in the chill, but she wouldn’t let me into the house until she had gone in and gotten a towel, so that I wouldn’t drip on anything in the house.

After I was dry enough to suit her, she let me in, taking me directly to the bathroom. She scrubbed me down like I was a flea-bitten dog, leaving my skin red and scratchy. Then she left me in a corner of Mary Theresa’s room, huddled in a blanket while she washed my clothes.

After a while, she came back in and sat down. She told me to pray for my father’s soul that he might get into heaven and to offer thanks that I was being taken care of and that the Lord was good to me. When Aunt Greta finished her long litany of things that I should pray for and give thanks for, I shook my wet hair like a dog, spraying her.

Then I said, “I don’t pray.”

“Lemoyne did not raise you to be like that,” she answered. “Now, you’d better pray, like a good girl, or God won’t take care of you.”

I refused to bow my head. I had nothing to pray for.

Aunt Greta finally gave up trying to make me pray. “Always obey either myself or your Uncle Claude or your cousin Bayard, he’s older and wiser. Just remember, cleanliness is next to godliness,” she said as she got up and left. It was a long time before she brought my clothes back. I wondered if she washed them twice or if she just let me sit there with that blanket wrapped around me as punishment.

Through the years Aunt Greta tried to teach me all about cleanliness and godliness. The lesson stuck, but not in the way she intended. I could never be as pious or immaculate as she wanted me to be. She used to tell me that she prayed for my immortal soul, in the tight voice of the righteous. I didn’t understand why she had taken me in. Admittedly, my other cousins and uncles weren’t jumping at the chance to raise a ten-year-old swamp hellion. Aunt Harriet would have, but she was really a great-aunt and had been seventy-nine when my father died. My other relatives had gotten together and vetoed a woman her age trying to raise me. I ended up with Aunt Greta and Uncle Claude by default. Or so I thought.

From the day I arrived, I heard of Aunt Greta’s duty as a Christian and the gratitude I should show her because of the sacrifices she made for me. From that day on we hated each other. The rules, the unnecessary order, I could adjust to none of it. She wouldn’t tolerate disobedience.