DR07 - Dixie City Jam (29 page)

'I'm not going to lose you, Boots,' I said, wrapped her
terry-cloth robe around her, and walked her to our bed.

We sat down on the side of the mattress together, and I
blotted her hair with a towel, then laid her back on the pillow. Her
face looked pale and fatigued in the gloom. I remained in a sitting
position and picked up one of her hands in mine.

'The sheriff told me about your almost getting a DWI,' I said.
'If a person commits himself to an alcoholic life, he or she is going
to drive drunk. Then eventually that person gets a DWI or maybe he
kills somebody. It's that simple.'

Her eyes started to water; she looked sideways at the window
and the curtains that were lifting in the breeze.

'The sheriff's a good guy,' I said. 'He knows we're having
problems. He wants to help. Everybody does, Boots. That's why I want
you to go to a meeting with me in the morning.'

Her eyes tried to avoid mine. Then she said, 'It's gone that
far?'

'An AA meeting isn't the worst fate in the world.'

'Do you think I'm an alcoholic?'

'Booze is starting to hurt you. That fact's not going to go
away.'

She turned her head sideways on the pillow and rested the back
of her wrist on her temple.

'Why did this come into our lives?' she said.

'Because I let Hippo Bimstine take me over the hurdles.'

'It goes deeper than that, though, doesn't it? This
man… Buchalter… he's evil in a way I don't know how
to describe. It's as if he has the power to steal the air out of a
room. If I think about him, I can't breathe. It's like I'm drowning.',

'The only power he has is what we allow our fear to give to
him.'

But I was falling prey to that old self-serving notion that
well-intended rhetoric can remove a stone bruise from the soul.

I pulled the sheet over her and didn't say anything for what
seemed a long time. Then I said, to change the subject, 'Who was the
woman with you when you got stopped?'

'Sister Marie.'

'Who?'

'Marie Guilbeaux, the nun from Lafayette.'

'What were you doing with
her?'

'She was bringing some potted chrysanthemums out to the house.
Then she saw me coming out of the convenience store, and I asked her to
go with me to the drive-in for a beer. She's a nice person, Dave. She
felt bad about her last visit here. What's wrong?'

'I don't want her around here anymore.'

'I don't understand your attitude.'

'She keeps showing up at peculiar times.'

'I don't think you should blame Sister Marie for my behavior,
Dave.'

'We'll address our own problems, Boots. We don't need anybody
else aboard. That's not an unreasonable attitude, is it?'

'I guess not. But she is nice.'

'I'll fix supper now. Why don't you take a short nap?'

'All right,' she said, and touched my forearm. 'I'm sorry
about all this. I want to go to a meeting with you. First thing
tomorrow morning. I won't break my promise, either.'

'You're the best.'

'You too, kiddo.'

Later, I strung an entire spool of baling wire, six inches off
the ground, hung with tin cans, through the oak and pecan trees in the
front and side yards, around the back of the house, across the trunk of
the chinaberry tree and the back wall of the tractor shed, over the
coulee, and back to Tripod's hutch, where I notched it tightly around
an oak trunk. Then I put the sheriffs AR-15 on the top shelf of the
bedroom closet, my .45 under the mattress, and got under the sheet
next to Bootsie. Her body was warm with sleep, her mouth parted on the
pillow with her breathing. The muscles in her back and shoulders and
the curve of her hip were as smooth as water sliding over stone. Deep
inside a troubling dream she began to speak incoherently, and I pressed
myself against her, pulled the contours of her body into mine, breathed
the strawberry smell of her hair, and, like a bent atavistic creature
from an earlier time, his loins caught between desire and fear, waited
for the tinkling of cans on a wire or the soft, milky glow of a
predictable dawn.

After work the next afternoon, just as
I pulled into the
drive, I saw Zoot Bergeron sitting on top of a piling at the end of my
dock, flipping pea gravel at the water. I parked my truck under the
trees and walked back down the slope toward him. He jumped from the
piling, straightened his back, and flung the rest of the gravel into
the canebrake. His skin was dusty and his pullover sweater stained with
food. In the lobe of his left ear was a tiny green stone, like a bright
insect, on a gold pin.

'What's happening, Zoot?' I said.

'I need a job. I thought maybe you could put me on here. I
done this kind of boat work before. Lot of it.'

'How'd you get here?'

'Rode the bus to New Iberia. Then walked.'

'You walked fifteen miles?'

'That man yonder give me a ride the last two miles.' He
pointed up the road to a parked, mud-caked van where a man in coveralls
was working under the front end with a wrench. 'I'll work hard for you,
Mr. Dave. I won't get in no trouble, either.'

'What about school, partner?'

'I ain't going back there. I need to train, get in shape,
maybe get on a card. You don't need school for that. Mr. Tommy tole me
he quit school when he was sixteen.'

'That's part of the reason he's a moral imbecile, Zoot.'

'A wha—'

'What's your mom say about all this?'

He didn't answer.

'Does she know where you are?' I said.

'What she care? She told me this morning I ain't gonna be no
better than my daddy. How can I be like my daddy when I never even seen
my daddy? I want to join the Marine Corps but she won't sign for me.
She say all they'll use me for is cleaning their toilets. She called up
the sergeant at the recruiting center and tole him that. That's what
she done.'

'Let me be up-front with you, partner. I've got a mess of
grief around here right now. I can't help you out, at least not in the
way you want me to.'

'Mr. Dave—'

'Sorry, Zoot.'

The air was cool, and red and gold leaves tumbled out of the
sunlight into the water. He looked down the road at the shadows among
the oak trees, as though they held an answer to his situation.

'I'll find you a place to stay tonight, then I'll drive you to
the bus depot in the morning,' I said.

I saw the flicker of injury in his face.

'There've been some bad people around my house, Zoot. I don't
want you getting mixed up in it,' I said. 'Look, maybe you should give
your mom another chance. Maybe she's scared. In her mind, you're all
she's got. That makes her possessive and probably a little selfish. But
it's not because she doesn't respect you.'

'It don't make what she say right. You ain't got to find a
place for me. That fellow yonder's from New Orleans. He say when he get
his van fixed, I can ride back wit' him.'

'You want me to call your mom for you?'

'I ain't going back home. Mr. Tommy'll he'p me out. Y'all can
say what you want about him, he ain't a bad white man. He don't get on
my case and run me down, he don't tell me he got a mess of grief and
don't got time for his friends.'

'I'm sorry you feel that way.'

'You a cop, Mr. Dave.'

'What's that mean?'

'You talk different, you ain't mean like Mr. Baxter, you're
smart and educated, too, but you a cop, just like my mama. When it come
down to it, you ain't gonna go against the rule, you're on the side got
the power. Don't tell me it ain't so, neither.'

He walked down the road through the tunnel of oak trees. His
tennis shoes and the bottoms of his jeans were gray with dust, and one
elbow poked through the sleeve of his sweater. He squatted in a clump
of four-o'clocks and watched the man in coveralls work on his van. In
the waning afternoon light his black skin seemed lit with an almost
purple sheen.

I went in the house, and Bootsie, Alafair, and I had supper at
the kitchen table. Later, Alafair and I fed Tripod and put him in his
hutch so he wouldn't make noise in the dead leaves during the night,
then I checked the baling wire and tin cans that I had strung the day
before and locked up the house. Just after Bootsie and Alafair went to
bed, someone knocked on the front screen door.

It was Zoot. He was yawning when I opened the door, and his
hair was mussed with pieces of leaves under the yellow porch light.

'Can you come he'p the man wit' the van?' he said.

'I thought you didn't want any favors, Zoot.'

'I didn't ax for one. The man did. He got the tire rod fixed.
His batt'ry dead, though.'

'Oh, I see, that's different. Zoot, you're becoming a pain in
the butt.'

'He tole me to ax. You don't want to he'p, I can walk down to
the fo' corners.'

I locked the door behind me, and we got in my truck. Zoot
rubbed the sleep out of his face. Then he said, 'I ain't meant to be
rude, Mr. Dave. I just had a lot of stuff on my mind today. I don't see
no answer for it, either.'

'You really want to join the Corps?'

'Sure.'

'Let me talk to your mom about it.'

'You'll do that?'

'Why not, partner?'

We drove down the road toward the parked van. The moon was
yellow, veiled with a rain ring, low over the cypress trees in the
marsh. A few raindrops began hitting on the bayou's surface. In the
headlights I could see the man in coveralls bent down into the van's
engine, his back pocket swollen with chrome wrenches. But behind the
van's shadow I also saw a parked pickup truck, its lights off.

'It looks like your friend's already found some help,' I said.

'That guy come by earlier but he don't have no cables,' Zoot
said.

I left my lights and engine on, got out in the road, and
unlocked the lid of the equipment box that was welded to the floor of
my truck bed. I looped the jumper cables over my shoulder and walked
toward the man in coveralls. His face was as pointed as an ax blade,
his jaws covered with a fine silver beard that grew to a point on his
chin. His smile was like a wrinkled red line inside his beard.

'Thanks for coming out, Mr. Robicheaux,' he said.

'I don't think I know you,' I said.

'You don't. The boy told me your name.'

'I see.' I glanced at his face again in the slanting rain. His
eyes were as bright as a pixie's. 'Well, clamp the red cable on your
positive terminal and the black on your negative and we'll get you
started.' I handed him the ends of the cables and turned to pop my
hood. As I did I saw Zoot step backwards toward my truck, his mouth
open, his stare suddenly disjointed.

I turned back toward the man in coveralls and saw the Luger in
his hand. His smile was wet, his eyes dancing with light.

'That's the way it goes,' he said. 'I wouldn't feel bad about
it. It took me a half day and Son of Sambo here to work this scam.'

'What's going on, Mr. Dave?' Zoot said.

'Who you working for, podjo?' I said.

'Podjo? I dig it. I heard you were a cute motherfucker,' he
said, still smiling, and moved past me to my open truck door, the Luger
aimed at my chest, and switched off the ignition and headlights.

'Cut the kid loose. He's not a player,' I said.

'Nits makes lice. Stamp 'em out when you get the chance.
That's what some people say.'

'I think you're standing in your own shit, buddy,' I said.
'You pop a cap on this road and you won't get back across the
drawbridge.'

But even while I was talking I saw a shadow, a large one,
moving from the parked pickup truck, along the side of the van, and I
knew that I had not yet confronted my real adversary that night.

A scorched-black bank of thunderclouds over the marsh pulsed
and flickered with veins of lightning, and in the white glow through
the canopy of trees I saw Will Buchalter step out in front of the van,
his Panama hat pushed back on his head, his lopsided Will Rogers grin
as affectionate as that of an old friend.

He reached out with his hand to feel my face, just as a blind
man might. My head jerked back from the sour smell of his palm.

'I'm sorry to do this to you, Dave, but you don't ride the
beef easy,' he said, stepped close to me, his thighs widening, and
clamped both his forearms on each side of my neck.

'Yeah, ride the beef„ man. Ride that motherfucker
down,' the other man said, and began giggling.

Then Buchalter's forearms flexed as tight as iron and squeezed
into the sides of my neck like machinery breaking bird bone. I could
feel his body trembling with strain, his breath quivering like a
feather against my ear, then I felt the arteries to the brain shut
down, and my knees buckled as though the tendons had been severed. A
wave of nausea and red-black color slid across my eyes, and I was
tumbling into a dark, cool place where the rain bounced off the skin as
dryly as paper flowers and the distant thunder over the gulf was only
the harmless echo of ships' guns that had long since been muted with
moss and the lazy, dull drift of sand and time.

Pain can be a bucket of
gasoline-smelling water
hurled into the face, the concrete floor that bites into the knees, the
hemp knotted into the wrists behind the squared wood post, the wrenched
muscles in the arms, the Nazi flag coming back into focus against a
urine yellow cinder-block wall, then once again the gears turning dully
on a hand-crank generator, gaining speed now, starting to hum now,
whining louder through the metal casing as the current strikes my
genitals just like an iron fist, soaring upward into the loins, mashing
the kidneys, seizing an area deep in the colon like electric pliers.

I was sure the voice coming out of my mouth was not my own. It
was a savage sound, ripped out of the viscera, loud as cymbals clapped
on the ears, degrading, eventually weak and plaintive, the descending
tremolo like that of an animal with its leg in a steel trap.