The Traiteur's Ring (29 page)

“Aren’t we going up to your grandmother’s – house?” Ben sensed she had started to say shack and changed her mind. Her voice in his head confirmed his suspicion.

“It is more of a shack, actually,” he said, and she looked at him confused.

Oh right – I’m not supposed to hear people’s private thoughts, am I?

“I thought we could go in here and grab a coffee and talk for a few minutes,” he said quickly before she thought about his slip too much.

“Okay,” she said.

I’m along for the ride. I love him so much. Just be here for him whatever he needs.

Clear as a bell in her soft voice in his head. He smiled.

They chose one of the small round tables instead of the picnic tables and sat down with their fresh steaming coffee. No lattes or cappuccinos on the menu, but fresh heavy cream and real sugar tasted perfect in the strong, dark brew. He took her hands.

“Baby,” he started and her eyes held his with no judgment or demands. “I want you to know how much it means to me that you are here with me.” He pressed her hands to his lips. “I don’t think I could have come up here without you. I needed you – needed us – to make me face my past here and move on. Thank you so much.”

She looked at him, and her eyes rimmed with tears.

“I love you,” she said simply, as if that should explain everything. He realized that perhaps it did.

“Now,” he continued, “I think I really need to go up to the shack in the woods by myself.” He watched her eyes, but they gave up nothing.

I want whatever you need. I just want you to be okay.

He stopped himself from thanking her out loud for the thought he heard.

“I won’t take long, I just want to say goodbye, I think, and maybe let some old feelings work through me. Then,” he squeezed both of her hands in his this time and nearly spilled his coffee, “when I get back we’ll sample some gumbo and Boudin, and then we’ll get the hell out of here forever.”

“Okay,” was all she could manage, but he knew it really was okay.

“You’ll be okay here?” he asked. “It’ll take about a half-hour each way and not too long when I get there – could be as long as a couple of hours.” He felt bad about that part.

Christy nodded and smiled her unconditional loving acceptance.

“Of course, I’ll wander around a little bit and see what else this metropolis is trying to unload on tourists. You do what you need to do and come back to me.”

He nodded and felt his throat tighten again at how much he loved this woman.
Now more than ever.

“I’ll be right back,” and rose and kissed her cheek.

“I’ll call the resort in Destin and see if we can check in a day early,” she pulled out her cell phone, looked at it, then frowned. “One bar,” she said and looked up with a tense face. “What if you need to call me?”

Ben touched the side of her face.

“One bar is enough.  The reception is probably better outside. And anyway, I’ll be right back.”

Christy nodded and sipped her coffee. He could see she tried to hide her worry, but the brown eyes and her furrowed brow hid nothing.

“Can’t promise I won’t need more space in the trunk by the time you get back,” she forced smile. “I saw some crafty looking shops back there. We may even need to check bags on the way back.”

He kissed her mouth this time.

“No problem, love.”

Then, he walked out and forced himself not to look back. He slipped into the Charger and headed west on the main drag and out of town. A half mile out he turned onto a nearly invisible dirt road with weeds that reached the tops of his wheels.

Welcome home, Ben.

He thought the voice in his head was just his own.

*   *   *

The shack (their shack – Gammy’s and his) still stood where he remembered, and he realized he knew it would be there. He had no idea whether the raging fire from his memory was the illusion or the sagging building he pulled up to. One or the other had to be illusion he supposed. He realized it also didn’t matter. Not anymore.

Just go for a ride and clear the attic.

Only this wasn’t a dream. Now he could be certain of that. This was real – whether supernatural, definitely real. Thirty-five minutes away (the road had been remarkably dry) his beautiful wife and best friend sat and sipped coffee, no doubt with the furrowed brow he felt pretty certain was reserved exclusively for the way he complicated her life.

Today was real.

Dreams are the reality that hides from us.

The Elder’s voice in his head felt like a memory, not a new message.

He pulled the Charger, now more grey than black with a thick covering of dust from the twenty-five minutes on the dirt road, up beside the back of his childhood home and turned off the ignition. He couldn’t quite get out of the car – not right away – and sat in the growing heat of the driver’s seat and stared at the remnants and his past as images flooded through his head. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of familiar home. When he opened them, nothing had changed except his powerful sense of nostalgia. He slid out of the driver’s seat and closed the door with a satisfying thunk.

The tall grass that climbed several feet up the side of the shack didn’t look to him like neglect – it had always looked just like this. The roof sagged a little to the left of middle, but again, that was just as he remembered it the day he had last left it – only a few weeks before the fire (if that had even happened).

He walked around to the front and carefully stepped up the three rickety wood steps onto the badly warped porch. From there, he looked out over the yard – more of a clearing in the woods he realized – and for a moment could almost see his Gammy, brightly-colored dresses and bare feet, as she stirred dirty clothes in a giant steel tub over a fire. He felt tears well up in his eyes and realized how much he loved her and missed her.

Past the clearing and the imaginary laundry pot, he saw a short moss-covered trail he knew led in short order to the homemade rope hammock. Beyond were the woods – his woods – the woods he had both embraced and conquered as a kid. Those woods had been at times a refuge for his imagination and, at others, dark and frightening. His woods had been castles he had conquered, forts he had defended from Indians, and his sitting room where he poured through the books Gammy had gotten for him every month from “Dat busy lady in town wit all dem ole books.”  He sighed and for a moment just let the childhood nostalgia sweep over him in images and feelings. He opened his eyes, and the clearing looked small, so different from six and half feet up instead of through his little boy eyes.

He turned slowly, a part of him reluctant to let go of the warm, bittersweet trip his heart took him on. He knew that Christy, alone and worried back in Chackbay, might think these were the thoughts and feelings that brought him here. He knew that no purging of childhood memories would let him shake off the shackle of this place. He had ghosts to bury, that for sure was part of it.
Sho’ ‘neff true dat
, he thought, and chuckled, but he also had present day demons to slay. Those demons had to die, whether only in his mind or not real, if he wanted to start his life with his new wife. Ben reached out and grasped the knotted rope that served (and always had) as a makeshift door knob.

The only difference was the cold. He walked slowly across the creaky wood floor of the large room he remembered as always being warm, even too hot at times. He knew the frigid air could be easily explained by the now unused large, black pot-bellied stove that had served as stove and central heat (causin’ it in da center of da room) that had always glowed with wood fire when he was young, even on sweltering hot summer days. Today the stove looked dark and cold.

Cold here’s comin’ from more than a lack of heat.

The chill was that of a cave, the wet, cool that breathed out of the dark. He tried to check his imagination and walked to the thick wood table in the corner of the big room. He drew a finger across the surface and shuddered in surprise when it came back without a lick of dust. Except for the chilling air, it was like they had been here, the two of them living their backwoods life, only hours ago. The shudder turned to a shiver, and he rubbed his hands up and down on his arms for warmth.

The ceiling hovered only three or four feet above him, now that he had grown to a strapping SEAL of a man. He felt a little claustrophobic at the nearness that seemed not quite right. The drop ceiling of his little bedroom loft would be a tight fit these days, maybe only a few feet from the real ceiling, but it had never felt small to him back then. He walked over to the homemade ladder he had climbed every day of his child life and grasped the top rung which sat now at eye level. Back then it had seemed an exciting climb, sometimes even a daunting climb when he was young. He could peer now into his little loft without even tipping up on his toes.

The loft looked filled mostly with shadows now – no light from hanging hurricane lanterns today. To his surprise the grey sheet and heavy homemade comforter were there, pulled only partially over his lumpy pillow, the little boy in a hurry to chase dragons through his woods.

Why the surprise? The entire house can’t really even be here, and it’s the blankets that seem unbelievable to you?

For a moment he was a boy again, rocking back and forth, arms hugged around knees, as he watched his home dissolve in the lapping flames and smoke. And, then he was grown again (all grow’d up) and cold, and he shivered anew as the memory floated away in a smoke of its own.

This time tears spilled onto his cheeks, and he wiped them away in confusion. What the hell was he crying about? As a boy he had dreamed about getting away from here – about getting to the real world. He had wanted to have adventures like the characters in the books he read, to see faraway places around the world. He had found that, hadn’t he?

After Gammy died and he had bounced around a few foster homes – first in Chackbay and later in the suburbs of Baton Rouge – he had slowly found his way out. He had discovered television and, through it, stories of soldiers and the famous Navy SEALs. He had escaped like he always wanted to, so what the shit? He never told anyone of the fire or Gammy walking him out of those woods that night – impossible of course since she had been hours long dead by then. He had forced his mind away – to faraway places and the Navy – his own personal life raft.

Ben sniffled as the tears on his cheeks also found their way to the back of his throat. Was this what Christy imagined he would find here? Were these the feeling that would give him the fabled closure? He had no reason to feel angry, but he did. Angry at Gammy for leaving him alone in the night while the demons hunted him down, angry at Christy for wanting him to come here (though she had not even suggested it his mind reminded him, jumping to her defense), angry mostly at himself for feeling like this.

The resonating creaking felt, at first, warm and familiar. It was the sound of childhood and meant safety. It meant he was not alone tonight, that Gammy would be home with him.

Creak –Creak – Creak

The sound of Gammy rocking in her chair on the porch.

The realization that the noise meant Ben was not alone now melted away the warmth and replaced it with an eerie chill that made him shiver again. He could almost smell the venison stew on the pot-bellied cook stove, but when he looked the stove remained dark and cold.

Creak – Creak – Creak

Ben walked slowly across the once large and now tiny one-room shack that had been home. It felt more like a tomb and despite the frigid air that raised goose flesh on his skin, he felt sweat pop out on his forehead and temples. One drop tickled its way down his neck.

Creak – Creak – Creak

He reached the door with its rope knob and opened it slowly, the old worn hinges adding their own slow creak, a caricature of a ghost story, he realized. He stepped through the doorway onto the sagging and warped porch with no fear of what he would find. He knew exactly what he would see.

Sho’ ‘neff true, dat.

Creak – Creak – Creak

Gammy sat in the rocker in her “night time” clothes, the ones that used to mean she would not be home all night, that for a while he would be alone in his loft, alone in their shack in the forest bayou. The grey dress stretched down to her ankles and nearly covered her dirty, bare feet. Her grey hair went every which way, like always, but her face looked like a grandma from an old book, or maybe Mrs. Claus. She smiled at him over stemless glasses that she pulled off her nose and dropped in her lap. She reached out her pale arms towards him.

“My big ‘ole boy. Jess look ‘atcha now. Come on now ‘n givin ole Gammy kisses.”

Chapter 26

Christy stood outside the Chackbay Market and Gumbo Café and Boudin Joint in front of a bin full of leathery alligators with shiny marble eyes and a sign to would-be buyers that these were AUTHENTIC bayou alligator heads and could be yours for only $9.99. She flipped open her phone which intermittently flashed back and forth between one and two bars. She bit her lip, checked to be sure her ringer was on, closed the cover, and slipped it in her back pocket. That way, even if she set it wrong, she would feel if it vibrated. She took two steps towards the street, stopped and turned back. She crossed her arms across her chest and tapped a nervous foot, then looked at her watch. It had barely been an hour.

Shit. You best calm down, girlfriend, or you’ll have a nervous breakdown. He’s fine – this is the right thing for him, and he is fine.

Her mind wandered against her will to the doorway on Dumaine Street in the Quarter and the strange little Cajun man who grinned his scattered-tooth grin and jived to the saxophone. She thought of those strange eyes and the stranger language her husband had fallen so easily into with him and then walked on like nothing unusual had happened. The thought that more was at work here than just Ben’s need to say goodbye to the memory of his grandmother tugged at her.