The White Road-CP-4 (43 page)

I could see the water gleaming through the trees, could hear it flowing. Lying about thirty feet to my left was a boat: it wasn’t my boat, but at least two of the men who had brought it here were already dead and the third was somewhere behind me, running for his life. I stepped into a clearing dominated by cypress knees, the strange, vaguely conical shapes bursting from the soil like some miniature landscape from another world. I threaded my way through them and was almost at the boat when the dark-haired man emerged from the trees to my left. He no longer had his rifle, but he did have a knife, and he was already springing for me when I raised my gun and fired. I was off balance and the shot struck him in the side, breaking his stride but not stopping him. Before I could get off a second shot he was on top of me, his left arm forcing my gun hand away from him while I tried to arrest the progress of the knife. I aimed my knee at his injured side, but he anticipated the movement and used it against me, spinning me around and striking out at my left foot. I toppled as his boot connected with my hand, knocking the gun painfully from my fingers. I kicked out at him again as he descended on me, this time connecting with his wounded side. Spittle shot from his mouth and his eyes opened wide in surprise and pain, but by then his knee was on my chest and I was once again trying to keep that knife away from me. Still, I could see that he was dazed, and the wound in his side was bleeding freely. I suddenly eased some of the pressure on his arms and, as he fell forward, my head came up hard and connected with his nose. He cried out and I forced him off me, then rose up, knocked his feet out from under him, and slammed him back to the ground with all of the force that I could muster. There was a wet crunching sound when he hit the earth and something exploded from his chest, as if one of his ribs had broken free and blasted through the skin. I stepped back and watched the blood running off the cypress knee as the man pinned upon it struggled to rise. He reached out and touched the wood, his fingers coming back red. He held them up to me, as if to show me what I had done, and then his head fell back and he died.

I wiped my sleeve against my face. It came back damp with sweat and filth. I turned to get my gun and saw the shrouded figure watching me from the trees.

It was a woman. I could see the shape of her breasts beneath the material, although her face remained covered. I called her name.

“Melia,” I said. “Don’t be afraid.”

I advanced toward her just as the shadow fell over me. I looked behind me. Tereus had a hook in his left hand. I just had time to register the crude sap in his right as it flew at me through the air, and then all was dark.

25

I T WAS THE smell that brought me back, the smell of the medicinal herbs that had been used to make the unguent for the woman’s skin. I was lying in the kitchen area of the cottage, my hands and legs bound tightly with rope. I raised my head and the back of my skull nudged the wall. The pain was bad. My shoulders and back ached, and my jacket was gone. I guessed that I had lost it as Tereus dragged me back to the cabin. I had vague memories of passing beneath tall trees, the sunlight spearing me through the canopy. My cell phone and gun were both missing. I lay on the floor for what seemed like hours.

In time, there was movement from the doorway and Tereus appeared, surrounded by fading sunlight. He had a spade in his hands, which he rested against the doorjamb before entering the cabin and squatting down before me. I could see no trace of the woman, but I sensed her nearby and guessed that she was back in her own darkened room, surrounded by images of a physical beauty she would never again be able to claim as her own.

“Welcome back, brother,” said Tereus. He removed his dark glasses. Up close, the membrane that coated his eyes was clearer. It reminded me of tapetum, the reflective surface that some nocturnal animals develop to magnify low light and improve their night vision. He filled a water bottle from the faucet, then brought it to me and tilted it to my mouth. I drank until the water ran down my chin. I coughed, and winced at the pain it caused in my head.

“I’m not your brother.”

“You weren’t my brother, you’d be dead by now.”

“You killed them all, didn’t you?”

He leaned in close to me. “These people got to learn. This is a world of balances. They took a life, destroyed another. They got to learn about the White Road, got to see what’s waiting for them there, got to pass over and become part of it.”

I looked away from him toward the window, and saw that the light was failing. Soon, it would be dark.

“You rescued her,” I said.

He nodded. “I couldn’t save her sister, but I could save her.”

I saw regret, and more: I saw love.

“She was burned bad—even now, I don’t know how she survived—but I guess she stayed under the surface and the underground streams carried her out. I found her stretched over a rock, then I took her home and me and my momma, we took care of her. And when my momma died, she took care of herself for a year until I got released from jail. Now I’m back.”

“Why didn’t you just go to the police, tell them what happened?”

“That ain’t the way these things is done. Anyhow, her sister’s body was gone. It was a dark night. How would she know who these men were? She can’t even talk no more, could barely write their names down to tell me who they were, and even so who would believe it of young, rich white men like that? I ain’t even sure what she thinks no more. The pain drove her crazy.”

But that didn’t answer it. That wasn’t enough to explain what had happened, what he had endured and what he had forced others to endure.

“It was Addy, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t reply.

“You loved her, maybe before Davis Smoot ever appeared. Was he your child, Tereus? Was Atys Jones your child? Was she afraid to tell others because of what you were, because even the blacks looked down on you, because you were an outcast from the swamps? That’s why you went looking for Smoot, why you didn’t tell Atys what landed you in jail: you didn’t tell him you’d killed Smoot because it wasn’t important. You didn’t believe Smoot was his father, and you were right. The dates didn’t match. You killed Smoot for what he did to Addy, then fled back here in time to discover another violation being visited on the woman you loved. But before you could avenge yourself on Larousse and his friends the cops came for you and sent you back to Alabama for trial, and you were lucky just to get twenty years because there were enough witnesses to back up your claim of self-defense. I reckon that once old Davis caught sight of you he went straight for the nearest weapon, and you had an excuse to kill him. Now you’re back, making up for lost time.”

Tereus did not respond. There would be no confirmation from him, and no denial. One of his big hands gripped my shoulder and dragged me to my feet. “That time is now, brother. Rise up, rise up.”

A blade cut the ropes at my feet. I felt the pain begin as the blood began to circulate properly at last.

“Where are we going?”

He looked surprised, and I knew then just how crazy he was, crazy even before they chained him to a post in the blazing sun, crazy enough to keep an injured woman out here for years, protected by an old woman, in order to serve some strange messianic purpose of his own.

“Back to the pit,” he said. “We going back to the pit. It’s time.”

“Time for what?”

He drew me gently toward him.

“Time to show them the White Road.”

* * *

Although his small boat had an engine, he untied my hands and made me row. He was afraid: afraid that the noise might draw the men to him before he was ready, afraid that I might turn on him if he did not find some way to occupy me. Once or twice I considered striking out at him, but the revolver he now carried was unwavering in his grip. He would nod and smile at me in warning if I even paused in my strokes, as if we were two old friends on a boating trip together as the day descended softly into night and the dark gathered around us. I didn’t know where the woman was. I knew only that she had left the house shortly before us.

“You didn’t kill Marianne Larousse,” I said, as we came in sight of a house set back from the bank and a dog barked at our passing, his chain jangling softly in the evening air. A light went on in the porch of the house, and I saw the form of a man emerge and heard him hush the dog. His voice was not angry, and I felt a rush of affection for him. I saw him tousle the dog’s fur, and the silhouette of its dark tail flicked back and forth in response. I was tired. I felt as if I were approaching the very end of things, as if this river was a kind of Styx across which I was being forced to row myself in the absence of the boatman, and as soon as the boat struck the bank I would descend into the underworld and become lost in the honeycomb. I repeated the comment.

“What does it matter?” he replied.

“It matters to me. It probably mattered to Marianne while she was dying. But you didn’t kill her. You were still in jail.”

“They say the boy killed her, and he ain’t about to contradict them now.”

I stopped rowing, and heard the click of the hammer cocking a moment later.

“Don’t make me shoot you, Mr. Parker.”

I rested the oars and raised my hands.

“She did it, didn’t she? Melia killed Marianne Larousse, and her own nephew, your son, died as a result.”

He regarded me silently for a time before he spoke.

“She knows this river,” he said. “Knows the swamps. She wanders in them. Sometimes, she likes to watch the folks drinkin’ and whorin’. I guess it reminds her of what she lost, of what they took away from her. It was just pure dumb luck that she saw Marianne Larousse running among the trees that night, nothing more. She recognized her face from the society pages of the newspapers—she likes to look at the pictures of the beautiful ladies—and she took her chance.

“Dumb luck,” he intoned again. “That’s all it was.”

But it wasn’t, of course. The history of these two families, the Larousses and the Joneses, the blood spilled and lives destroyed, meant that it could never be anything as pure as luck or coincidence that drew them together. Over more than two centuries they had bound themselves, each to the other, in a pact of mutual destructiveness only partly acknowledged on either side, fueled by a past that allowed one man to own and abuse another and fanned into continuous flame by remembered injuries and violent responses. Their paths through this world were interwoven, crisscrossing at crucial moments in the history of this state and in the lives of their families.

“Did she know that the boy with Marianne was her own nephew?”

“She didn’t see him until the girl was dead. I—”

He stopped.

“Like I said, I don’t know what she thinks, but she can read some. She saw the newspapers, and I think she used to watch the jailhouse some, late at night.”

“You could have saved him,” I said. “By coming forward with her, you could have saved Atys. No court would convict her of murder. She’s insane.”

“No, I couldn’t do that.”

He couldn’t do it because then he would not have been able to continue punishing the rapists and killers of the woman he had loved. Ultimately, he was prepared to sacrifice his own son for revenge.

“You killed the others?”

“We did, the two of us together.”

He had rescued her and kept her safe, then killed for her and the memory of her sister. In a way, he had given up his life for them.

“It was how it had to be,” he said, as if guessing the direction of my thoughts. “And that’s all I got to say.”

I started to row again, drawing deep arcs through the water, the droplets falling back to the river in what seemed like impossibly languid descents, as if somehow I were slowing down the passage of time, drawing each moment out, longer and longer again, until at last the world would stop, the oars frozen at the moment they broke the water, the birds trapped in midflight, the insects caught like motes of dust in a picture frame, and we would never have to go forward again, we would never have to find ourselves by the lip of that dark pit, with its smells of engine oil and effluent, and the memory of the burning marked with black tongues along the grooves of its stone.

“There’s just two left,” said Tereus at one point. “Just two more, and it will all be over.”

And I could not tell if he was talking to himself, or to me, or to some unseen other. I looked to the bank and half-expected to see her shadowing our progress, a figure consumed by pain. Or to see her sister, her jaw hanging loose, her head ruined but her eyes wild and bright, burning with a rage fierce as the flames that had engulfed her sister.

But there was only tree shade and the darkening sky, and waters glittering with the fragmented ghosts of early moonlight.

“This is where we get off,” he whispered.

I steered the boat toward the left bank. When it struck land I heard a soft splash behind me and saw that Tereus was already out of the boat. He gestured for me to move toward the trees, and I began to walk. My trousers were wet and swamp water squelched in my shoes. I was covered in bites; my face felt swollen from them, and the exposed skin of my back and chest itched furiously.

“How do you know that they’ll be here?” I asked.

“Oh, they’ll be here,” he said. “I promised them the two things they wanted the most: the answer to who killed Marianne Larousse.”

“And?”

“And you, Mr. Parker. They’ve decided that you’ve outlived your usefulness. That Mr. Kittim, I reckon he’s gonna bury you.”

I knew that it was true, that the part Kittim was to play represented the last act in the drama they had planned. Elliot had brought me down here, ostensibly to find out about the circumstances of Marianne Larousse’s murder in an effort to clear Atys Jones, but in reality, and in collusion with Larousse, to find out if her murder was linked to what was happening to the six men who had raped the Jones sisters, then killed one of them and left the other to burn. Mobley had worked for Bowen and I guessed that at some point Bowen had learned through him of what he and the others had done, which gave him the leverage he required to use Elliot and probably Earl Jr. too. Elliot would draw me down, and Kittim would destroy me. If I discovered the truth about who was behind the killings before I died, then so much the better. If I didn’t, then I still wasn’t going to live long enough to collect my fee.