DR09 - Cadillac Jukebox (6 page)

     
"Some people
think he might be an innocent man," I said.
      

     
"You one of
them?" He grinned.
      

     
"Your humor's
lost on me, sir."

     
"It took almost
thirty years to put him in Angola. He should have got the needle. Now the white
folks is worried about injustice."

     
"A kid in my
platoon waited two days at a stream crossing to take out a VC who killed his
friend. He used a blooker to do it. Splattered him all over the trees," I
said.

     
"Something I
ain't picking up on?"

     
"You have to
dedicate yourself to hating somebody before you can lay in wait for him. I just
never made Aaron Crown for that kind of

guy," I said.

     
"Let me tell you
what I think of Vietnam and memory lane, Jack.

I got this"—he tapped his hook on his desk
blotter—"clearing toe-poppers from a rice paddy six klicks out of
Pinkville. You want to tell war stories, the DAV's downtown. You want to spring
that cracker, that's your bidness. Just don't come around here to do it. You
with me on this?"

     
Clete looked at me,
then lit a cigarette.

     
"Hey, don't
smoke in here, man," Jimmy Ray said.

     
"Adios"
Clete
said to me and went out the door and closed it behind him.

     
"Have any of
these documentary movie people been to see you?" I asked.

     
"Yeah, I told
them the right man's in jail. I told them that was his rifle lying out under
the tree. I told them Crown was in the KKK. They turned the camera off while I
was still talking." He glanced at the dial on his watch, which was turned
around on the bottom of his wrist. "I don't mean you no rudeness, but I
got a bidness to run."

     
"Thanks for your
help."

     
"I ain't give
you no help. Hey, man, me and my brother Ely wasn't nothing alike. He believed
in y'all. Thought a great day was coming. You know what make us all
equal?" He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, splayed it open with
his thumb, and picked a fifty-dollar bill out of it with his metal hook.
"Right here, man," he said, wagging the bill on the desk blotter.

L
ate the next day, after we ate supper, I helped Bootsie wash and
put away the dishes. The sun had burned into a red ember inside a bank of
maroon-colored clouds above the treeline that bordered my neighbor's cane
field, and through the screen I could smell rain and ozone in the south.
Alafair called from the bait shop, where she was helping Batist close up.

     
"Dave, there's a
man in a boat who keeps coming back by the dock," she said.

     
"What's he
doing?"

     
"It's like he's
trying to see through the windows."

     
"Is Batist
there?"

     
"Yes."

     
"Put him on,
would you?"

     
When Batist came on
the line, I said, "Who's the man in the boat?"

     
"A guy puts
earrings."

     
As was Batist's way,
he translated French literally into English, in this case using the word
put
for
wear.

     
"Is he bothering
y'all?" I said.

     
"He ain't gonna
bother
me.
I'm fixing to lock up."

     
"What's the
problem, then?"

     
"They ain't one,
long as he's gone when I go out the do'."

     
"I'll be
down."

     
The air was heavy and
wet-smelling and crisscrossed with birds when I walked down the slope toward
the dock, the sky over the swamp the color of scorched tin. Batist and Alafair
had collapsed the Cinzano umbrellas set in the center of the spool tables and
turned on the string of overhead lights. The surface of the bayou was ruffling
in the wind, and against the cypress and willows on the far side I could see a
man sitting in an outboard, dressed in a dark blue shirt and a white straw hat.

     
I walked to the end
of the dock and leaned against the railing.
      

     
"Can I help you
with something?" I asked.
      

     
He didn't reply. His
face was shadowed, but I could see the glint of his gold earrings in the light
from the dock. I went inside the bait
shop.

     
"Turn on the
flood lamps, Alf," I said.

     
When she hit the
toggle switch, the light bloomed across the water with the brilliance of a
pistol flare. That's when I saw his eyes.

     
"Go on up to the
house, Alafair," I said.

     
"You know
him?" she said.

     
"No, but we're
going to send him on his way just the same. Now, do what I ask you, okay?"

     
"I don't see why
I—"

     
"Come on,
Alf."

     
She lifted her face,
her best pout in place, and went out the screen door and let it slam behind
her.

     
Batist was heating a
pot of coffee on the small butane stove behind the counter. He bent down and
looked out the window at the bayou again, a cigar in the center of his mouth.

     
"What you want
to do with that fella, Dave?" he said.

     
"See who he
is."

     
I went outside again
and propped my hands on the dock railing. The flood lamps mounted on the roof
of the bait shop burned away the shadows from around the man in the boat. His
hair was long, like a nineteenth-century Indian's, his cheeks unshaved, the
skin dark and grained as though it had been rubbed with black pepper. His arms were
wrapped with scarlet tattoos, but like none I had ever seen before. Unlike
jailhouse art, the ink ran in strings down the arms, webbed in bright fantails,
as though all of his veins had been superimposed on the skin's surface.

     
But it was the eyes
that caught and impaled you. They were hunter's eyes, chemical green, rimmed
with a quivering energy, as though he heard the sounds of hidden adversaries in
the wind.

     
"What's your
business here, podna?" I asked.

     
He seemed to think on
it. One hand opened and closed on an oar.

     
"I ain't eat
today," he said. The accent was vaguely Spanish, the tone flat,
disconnected from the primitive set of the jaw.

     
Batist joined me at
the rail with a cup of coffee in his hand.

     
"Come
inside," I said.

     
Batist's eyes fixed
on mine.

     
The man didn't start
his engine. Instead, he used one oar to row across the bayou to the concrete
ramp. He stepped into the water, ankle-deep, lifted the bow with one hand and
pulled the boat up until it was snug on the ramp. Then he reached behind him
and lifted out a stiff bedroll that was tied tightly with leather thongs.

     
His work boots were
loud on the dock as he walked toward us, his Levi's high on his hips, notched
under his rib cage with a wide leather belt and brass buckle.

     
"You oughtn't to
ax him in, Dave. This is our place," Batist said.

     
"It's all
right."

     
"No, it surely
ain't."

     
The man let his eyes
slide over our faces as he entered the bait shop. I followed him inside and for
the first time smelled his odor, like charcoal and kerosene, unwashed hair, mud
gone sour with stagnant water. He waited expectantly at the counter, his
bedroll tucked under his arm. His back was as straight as a sword.

     
I fixed him two chili
dogs on a paper plate and set them in front of
him with a glass of
water. He sat on the stool and ate with a spoon, gripping the handle with his
fist, mopping the beans and sauce and ground meat with a slice of bread. Batist
came inside and began loading the beer cooler behind the counter.

     
"Where you
from?" I said.

     
"El Paso."

     
"Where'd you get
the boat?"

     
He thought about it.
"I found it two weeks back. It was sunk. I cleaned it up pretty
good." He stopped eating and watched me.

     
"It's a nice
boat," I said.

     
His face twitched and
his eyes were empty again, the jawbones

chewing.

     
"You got a rest
room?" he asked.

     
"It's in the
back, behind those empty pop cases."

     
"How much your
razor blades?" he said to Batist.

  
   
"This ain't no drug sto'. What you
after, man?" Batist said.

     
The man wiped his
mouth with the flats of his fingers. The lines around his eyes were stretched
flat.

     
Batist leaned on his
arms, his biceps flexing like rolls of metal
washers.

  
   
"Don't be giving me no truck," he
said.

     
I eased along the
counter until the man's eyes left Batist and fixed
on me.

     
"I'm a police
officer. Do you need directions to get somewhere?"
I said.

     
"I got a camp
out there. That's where I come from. I can find it
even in the dark," he said.

     
With one hand he
clenched his bedroll, which seemed to have tent sticks inside it, and walked
past the lunch meat coolers to the small rest room in back.

     
"Dave, let me ax
you somet'ing. You got to bring a 'gator in your hog lot to learn 'gators eat
pigs?" Batist said.

     
Ten minutes passed. I
could hear the man splashing water behind the rest room door. Batist had gone
back out on the dock and was chaining up the rental boats for the night. I walked
past the cooler and tapped with one knuckle on the bolted door.

     
"We're closing
up, podna. You have to come out," I said.

     
He jerked open the
door, his face streaming water. His dark blue

shirt was unbuttoned, and on his chest I could see the same
scarlet network of lines that was tattooed on his arms. The pupils in his eyes
looked broken, like India ink dropped on green silk.

     
"I'd appreciate
your cleaning up the water and paper towels you've left on the floor. Then I'd
like to have a talk with you," I said.

     
He didn't answer. I
turned and walked back up front.

     
I went behind the
counter and started to stock the candy shelves for tomorrow, then I stopped and
called the dispatcher at the department.

     
"I think I've
got a meltdown in the shop. He might have a stolen boat, too," I said.

     
"The governor in
town?"

     
"Lose the
routine, Wally."

     
"You hurt my
feelings . . . You want a cruiser, Dave?"

     
I didn't have the
chance to answer. The man in the white straw hat came from behind me, his hand
inserted in the end of his bedroll. I looked at his face and dropped the phone
and fell clattering against the shelves and butane stove as he flung the
bedroll and the sheath loose from the machete and ripped it through the air, an
inch from my chest.

     
The honed blade
sliced through the telephone cord and sunk into the counter's hardwood edge. He
leaned over and swung again, the blade whanging off the shelves, dissecting
cartons of worms and dirt, exploding a jar of pickled sausage.

     
Batist's coffee pot
was scorched black and boiling on the butane fire. The handle felt like a
heated wire across my bare palm. I threw the coffee, the top, and the grinds in
the man's face, saw the shock in his eyes, his mouth drop open, the pain rise
out of his throat like a broken bubble.