The Traiteur's Ring (25 page)

Christy’s face exploded with happiness. “Oh, Ben. Are you sure? I mean, I’m sure, but are you sure? Ever since you told me about the little girl in Africa” she stole a look around the room and covered her mouth like she had just given away the missile codes. “Ooohh, sorry,” she bounced right back. “Anyway, ever since then, and then when you wanted to get married right away – I just can’t stop thinking about it. I mean, God, Ben, you would be such a great dad.”

Ben chuckled and waited for her to breathe. She finally gasped inhaled a sharp breath and then sipped her wine again.

“You’re sure?” she said.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything – at least not in the last two weeks, since I asked you to marry me. And, look how great that worked out,” he winked.

Christy leaped out of her chair, nearly sending her plate flying off the edge and to the floor, and wrapped her arms around his neck tightly.

“Oh, God, I love you, Ben,” she wept sporadic tears across his neck.

Ben realized his eyes felt a little moisture seeping in as well. He touched her cheek and then kissed her again, exploring her open-mouth.

“I love you, too,” he said.

They finished their dinner with excited chatter about babies and names and nurseries (the office, they decided, would become the baby’s room – she would put a desk in the kitchen). The excitement he felt and saw in her completely drowned out the worries and fears that had haunted him only an hour earlier. He considered just packing up their stuff and running away from Louisiana tonight. They could leave the nightmares of his past far behind and sprint full-force into their exciting future. But he knew he would wonder forever about this place, these feelings, and the dreams that sent him here.

She’s right. I need closure.

He smiled at his use of such a girly word as “closure.”  An old married man already – and barely a day and half into it.

They paid their bill. After a few minutes to consult the magic “Guide to The French Quarter,” they decided to walk the ten blocks or so past Esplanade and down to Decatur Street where the guide promised Snug Harbor would offer the best contemporary jazz in the city.  The atmosphere presented a concert-like atmosphere instead of what the reviewer called the “messy nightclub backdrop of other jazz venues in the area.” That sounded about right to them, and if they kept the stroll brisk they could easily make the ten o’clock set.

They held hands, Christy’s other arm wrapped tightly and happily around Ben’s. The voice didn’t really register at first, drowned out by his happiness, but he heard it clearly when it repeated itself.

Kin be keep dis short. ‘Neff bin sayin’ and in dat head no how way. Close to dat find out time, Bennie boy.

Ben slowed but didn’t stop. He looked around Dumaine Street, the much quieter path they had turned south on to find their way to Decatur Street. A handful of people walked along, but none looked anything like the old Cajun who had haunted him all night. He scanned the small groups of pedestrians for the dirty and beat up “Purple Haze” ball cap, but didn’t see it.

He heard the insistent riffs of someone beating on a saxophone and from a doorway up ahead he saw the owner, squatted in front of an open case in which change and a few bills had been tossed.  Beside him sat the old man, cross-legged, his thin and frail body swaying with the music.

Ben realized he had stopped breathing and felt Christy’s hand tighten on his arm. As he stared the old man nodded to him, then grasped the bill of his cap and mouthed a salute. He felt himself carried toward the doorway, nearly floated really, in a dreamlike way that for a moment made him wonder if this was perhaps a dream. He heard Christy ask something, but the words sounded jumbled and unrecognizable to him. Like the staccato sounds from the saxophone, they also sounded faded and distant.

He stood and glared down at the old man, who made no effort to get up but looked at him with jaundiced eyes and then coughed a deep and rattling cough.

“Lil’ days lef me here, boy,” he said, and his smile saddened. “Be goin’ to dat udder far way place, yo bet dat sho’ ‘neff.”

“What do you want?” Ben asked. He realized he was done with this game. Real or not, he had become tired of the riddle.

“Jes’ need be mindin’ yo,” the man said. “Go time ‘e here soon ‘neff and yo needin’ to hear dat eater of dem dead ones now.”

Ben stared at the sunken face that still rocked back and forth to the music beside the man with the saxophone. The musician ignored him, and Ben realized he most probably held a conversation with a hallucination.

That ought to make Christy rethink my passing on my genes.

“Do you know this man?”

Ben realized Christy’s words didn’t just sound clear, they cleared up something critical.

“You see him?” he looked over at his wife who screwed up her face in confusion.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. He didn’t hear any fear, just confusion. “I can’t understand a word he says, but I hear him.” He felt her hand tighten more on his arm and then slip down to hold firmly onto his hand. “Do you know this man?”

“Yes,” he said simply but offered nothing else. He looked again at the Cajun, who grinned back his Cheshire cat smile. “What do you want?” he asked again.

“Hep yo git to dat knowin’ place,” the man said. “You be mindin’ how findin’ dat place we be visitin’ both us dere? Yo needin’ dat place find soon more now, sho’ ‘neff true dat. Dat dead eater wait no fo’ yo dere, but not ever time be dere, know yo dat sho now. Waitin’ down way dat bottom. But you be seein’ friend long dat hole and also nudder one, sho ‘neff true dat. Dey hep’n yo dere and keep yo on dat trail. Mindin’ where to go?”

“I remember,” Ben said. He realized he would go, if only to prove to himself that the bunny hole had just been a dream. He no longer really believed that lie, he supposed, but either way he would go and then it would be over.

Closure.

The old man coughed again, his frail body shaking hard. He wiped dark blood that spilled over his chin with the back of his hand, and then looked at it and laughed his shrieking laugh from the dream.

“Git down dat hole, Bennie boy. Scaredy sho ‘neff dat, but mos portent tings down dere. Needin’ dat yo be short time dat now.” He spit dark blood onto the sidewalk and sighed. “Git down dey now,” he said and then closed his eyes and rocked back and forth again to the sax music, which had moved to a slower and softer tune. The way he moved his head, eyes closed, reminded Ben of the video of Ray Charles, swaying at his piano and singing “Ebony and Ivory.”

Ben took Christy by the elbow and guided her away and down the street. She didn’t resist; he felt her concerned eyes on him, but didn’t look at her – not yet. He stopped suddenly and turned around.

“Will I see you again?” he asked.

The Cajun no longer sat beside the musician, and Ben darted his eyes and head around. He caught a short glimpse, or at least he thought he did, of the small old man in his dirty ball cap just as he turned into an alleyway.

Caint dat be knowin’ now. None of us.

The man was gone.

Ben turned and looked at his wife.

“How did you know that man?” Christy didn’t looked frightened or worried, just terribly confused.

“He knew my Gammy,” he said. He wanted to say more, but had no idea what he could say that wouldn’t tip his hand and show how crazy he felt. He watched her instead in silence.

“What did he tell you? What did you talk about?” she asked. “I couldn’t understand a word either of you said. It sounded like a different language, but with a French accent. What language was that?”

“He told me that I should visit home before we leave here,” Ben said. That didn’t seem too much of a lie actually. Ben stopped and considered something. “You couldn’t understand me either?”  he asked.

Christy shook her head. “You both used that crazy language,” she said.

“Cajun talk.”

She nodded but seemed uneasy. “That was really weird.”

“Yeah,” and he tried to sound light. “Totally bizarre. I never expected to see someone from there in the city. Times change, I guess.”

Christy said nothing, and they walked on towards the Esplanade, hand-in-hand. Ben actually felt great. Christy had seen him – had heard him even. That meant the Cajun was real. As frightening as what that meant was, Ben realized it felt way less scary than believing you had lost your mind.

Tonight they would enjoy the Quarter. They would drink and listen to jazz, hold hands and make love later. They would talk about the beach and babies.

Tomorrow they would drive up past Chackbay and into the bayou. He would go alone down that fuckin’ bunny hole, he knew, and whatever he found there, they would leave it all behind and head to Destin Beach. Then, they would head for home and their new life. 

Chapter 22

Christy had a lot of questions, but had no idea how to ask them or really even how to put them into words. She sat beside Ben, her hand on his arm and head against his shoulder and listened to the music (which was everything the guide promised). How could she find out if he was okay without making him worry? Whenever she asked about dreams or other things that disturbed him, he always seemed so defensive and upset. She had gotten pretty good over the years at reading him and knowing when to ask for more – which meant rarely at best. Everything inside her told her to let him be and ride it out. The last thing she wanted to do was ruin his night on this very special trip.

Who the hell was that strange man?

No doubt in her mind the bizarre language added to the impression the Cajun had left on her. The fact she could understand almost nothing her husband said made the entire experience even more surreal. But what made it impossible to swallow, she realized, was the circumstances surrounding it.

An old man who knew Ben’s grandmother happened to be sitting beside a street musician in the French Quarter, right along their path to Snug Harbor. He and her husband had a short (and apparently heated) conversation, and then they just moved on. Yeah – okay, that could really happen. It bothered her that he didn’t tell her more, but she knew asking more would not help either of them in any way. She had asked, and he had likely given her all he was prepared to give right now.

This is not my first day with this complicated man.

Ben looked over with those gorgeous eyes and smiled.

“You need another drink?” he asked.

“I’m good for a bit,” she held up her half-full glass. “I love you, baby,” she added.

Ben leaned over and kissed her deeply. She breathed in the scent of him and felt her pulse quicken. She loved this man so much, more than she had ever believed possible. What she wanted more than anything, especially any satisfaction of her curiosity, was for him to be happy. Happy and at peace, and while she hoped her husband may have found happiness in her, he still searched for answers. It seemed so much worse after Africa, and she wondered if his deployment and the things that had happened there had opened old wounds or if he now had brand new ones to heal. She knew the story he told her of the village in Africa deeply affected him.

“You like this place?” he asked and pressed her hand to his lips. Just like Ben. He had so much pain inside him and wanted only to be sure she was having a good time.

“It’s great,” she said. “I love the music so much.”

Ben nodded and tugged on his beer. “Yeah, you found the perfect retreat, sweetheart.” He kissed her cheek which made her feel warm and safe. “As usual,” he added. He went back to watching the five-piece group on a large stage as they completely dominated the piece they pounded out. His eyes still had a storm brewing inside them, however.

Maybe it was just this area. Obviously that didn’t really explain the encounter with the old man, but maybe it explained his reaction to it. Maybe it explained how distracted he was and the way he seemed to drift away from her periodically over the evening. She knew his past troubled him, and she suspected there had been at least one particularly bad event that still haunted him. She also knew it involved his Grandmother somehow. She realized it was not in any way important that he tell her what had happened to him as a child – only that he somehow find a way to leave it behind them, to say goodbye to it when they left here. It was why she had so eagerly agreed to this trip and why she still held so much hope for it. She had suspected it might be weird (though the old man encounter way surpassed her expectation), but she felt very strongly it had been the right thing.

Did she have some morbid curiosity about where he had come from? She looked up at his strong face, those sometime hard eyes, and thought about the childlike cries she periodically heard from him at night. Hell, yeah, she was curious about his home. He had told her so little, but enough that she knew he grew up dirt poor (literally, she suspected) and in squalor in the bayou somewhere. He had talked about his home, which he always described as their shack in the woods, only rarely, but she knew it had been hard and always felt impressed he had made it out. He had found his way to her, as she liked to think of it. She thought for a moment of the Rascal Flatts song she loved and thought of as sort of their song. She certainly felt blessed by the road that had brought them together.

Christy suspected that when she saw it, Ben’s childhood home would not seem nearly as bad as he suggested. A part of her wanted to just drag him away from here, to pack the car like he suggested earlier and to lose themselves in honeymoon sex, drinks, and sunshine in Destin Beach. But she knew he needed to find closure, to put this in perspective, and to leave it behind. Running away would get them no closer to that.

She gazed at him again. Though he looked straight ahead, she could see he focused on something far away and in no way related to the stage where the group now brought new life to a song that seemed familiar and brand new at the same time. She wondered where he was right now. She wanted to just hold him and make it better. Christy squeezed his arm, and he startled a little and then looked over. He raised an eyebrow. Christy raised her own eyebrow, tried to look alluring, and hoped she didn’t just look silly.