Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (19 page)

Prof put his coffee on his desk, thumped the picture with the back of his hand. “See here? This here is the man we’re up against. This is the man who took my family’s land, and who’s still taking prime land from good hardworking folks.”

Kevin’s fair skin turned apoplexy pale.
This was the man? His own grandfather?
Nathan Larouchette, his daddy’s daddy, had disappeared from his life long ago, just after Kevin’s own father died. He’d only seen him a few times, and what little he knew about the man he had gleaned from his father’s silent stares and the hard burn in his eyes when anyone in his family mentioned the name Nathan Larouchette.

At the end of class, Kevin went up to the professor. “I was shaking, tears in my eyes. Prof was quiet a minute after I told him. But then he said, ‘Son, if you want to back out of this, I’ll understand.’”

Kevin hadn’t hesitated. “I told him, hell, no. I was in. Truth is, I wouldn’tna cared if the old bastard went to prison for the rest of his life.”

Looking from Julian to Vel, Kevin scraped his feet against the wood floor and sat back. “He just didn’t give a damn about people, you know?”

Kevin looked Julian in the eye, then lowered his gaze, nervously fidgeting with the sleeve of his shirt.

Julian rubbed his temples. “So the accident. Mr. Parette. You think it was your grandfather.”

“Oh, I know it was him. He killed that old man. Oh, I don’t think he meant it to turn out how it did. Probably just was trying to scare him, but…” He looked toward the window as his words trailed off.

Julian’s brows furrowed. “Kevin, really, man, why are you doing this? Why’re you putting yourself in jeopardy?”

Velmyra crossed her arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair. “Yeah, Kevin. Why would you do this if you don’t have to?”

Kevin arched his shoulders up, then let them down again as if the weight of soul-baring was something he needed to shrug off. “Prof was my idol, like a daddy to me or something, especially after my old man passed. One thing he taught me was that once you know what’s right and what’s not right, you stand up and say so. No question, you just do it. Now if you don’t know any better, then you can slide. But once you know, you can’t pretend like you don’t. You got to stand up.”

“When Prof got real sick last year, I went to see him. He had that look, like he was about done. He looked at me, didn’t say anything. Too weak. But it was like his eyes were talking to me, and I could almost hear him. So I said, ‘Yeah, Prof, I know. I’m hearing you. You don’t have to worry. I’ll keep it going.’”

“That was the last time I saw him.”

Kevin’s eyes shifted from Julian to Vel, and back. “And I’m not gonna lie and say it ain’t a little bit personal. Folks like Nathan need to be brought down. Blood or no blood.”

The light in the room dimmed as the sun shifted to the western sky. From outdoors came the sound of chirping birds, and the dim rustle of a breeze through the live oak branches. They talked on for more than an hour, Kevin transforming before Julian and Vel’s eyes from simple stranger to complex, vulnerable friend.

When Vel’s cell phone broke the quiet, they all jerked, as if jolted out of a reverie.

“Hello?”

It was Sylvia. Julian could tell by Vel’s expression, starting with a lift of her eyebrows, then blossoming into a full smile, that there was good news. His heart raced.

“Really? Oh, that’s great!” she said, her face breaking into a smile.

Lucille Tuffins, an elderly neighbor of Velmyra’s who’d had open heart surgery after being evacuated to Houston, had pulled through in good shape. It was good news, but not the news Julian wanted to hear.

“Thank you so much, Sylvia. Thanks for calling and telling me. Julian? Oh, sure. He’s right here.”

She handed the phone to Julian.

“Hi, baby.” Sylvia’s soft, low voice and motherly tone always set him at ease.

“Sylvia. How you doing?”

“Oh, you know. One day at a time. Every day is different. I guess there’s no news about Simon or you would have called.”

“We’re at Silver Creek. He’s not here. I was hoping you had some news.”

Sylvia told him she had talked to Parmenter. He’d made good on his promise to help; he called an NOPD sergeant, an old friend. The department was stretched thin, but the sergeant made inquiries anyway, with no luck.

Simon was an old man, the officer said, living alone. More than a month had passed, and his chances of being found alive decreased with each passing day. They had so many cases of older folks trapped in neighborhoods or trying to make it through the water. Unless he was rescued, the officer said, Simon’s chances were slim to none.

Julian fell silent.

Sylvia went on. “Julian, there is something I do want to talk to you about.”

“What’s that?”

Julian’s head went light when she told him. She allowed that he was the son, the next of kin to Simon, and it was all up to him. But since so much time had passed without a word, without a sign, maybe it was time start thinking about doing something. Not a funeral, but some kind of memorial, maybe. It might do them both good. Free them from what they could not control, set the rest of their lives in some sort of forward motion.

He knew what she was really saying. Her nerves were shattered. She wanted to put an end to the frustration of searching and hoping, and move on.

Julian felt his sore jaw tighten, and for a moment couldn’t speak. “Sylvia, I just can’t—”

“Baby, I know, it’s really up to you…”

“I appreciate what you’re saying, but I’m just not ready to give up on him yet.”

Silence. “I understand. It’s just that…it’s so hard.”

“I know. But I have some other ideas. We could still find him. It’s not impossible.”

His words felt hollow, even to him—he had no other ideas. He thought of telling her about the land, but decided this was no time to dish out more bad news. The sigh she breathed was thick with fatigue and ragged at its edges, and for the first time, he considered what she must have been going through. Day in and day out, she had been closer to Simon than anyone, including him.

Sylvia’s tone lightened, her voice lifting half an octave. “Maybe you’re right. They’re still finding people, you know. Remember old Mr. Davidson, used to be the janitor at Tubman High?”

“I remember. What happened?”

“Child, they found him! He got on one of those buses and ended up in Salt Lake City! Up there with all those Mormons!”

“Wow.”

“Can you imagine what those folks must have thought the first time he went out looking for the nearest casino?”

“Not to mention his taste for, you know—”

“Right! Can’t be too many ladies of pleasure up there in Salt Lake!”

They both laughed—the giddy, nervous laughter meant to loosen the grip of grief—and when their conversation ended, Julian tried to savor the tickle of the laughter on his skin, to wrap his mind in it. Mr. Davidson. Crazy old Mr. Davidson, up in Salt Lake City. A salty tongue that could shame Miles Davis. He tried to imagine the old rascal walking the streets in the citadel of Mormon faith, as out of place as a whore in the Sistine Chapel. Funny.

But he could only think of Simon.

By the time Kevin left, evening light had paled the sky to lavender, the slanting sun elongating the shadows of the oaks. The three of them would meet again the next day. Julian and Velmyra both stood on the porch, waving goodbye to Kevin as he tooled his truck toward the road, the oversized tires spinning up spirals of brown dust in its wake. When they went back inside, Julian sat on the plaid sofa, his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands.

He’d been sitting only a minute or so when it happened. From deep in the pit of his gut, a storm churned and spiraled up to his neck. He tried to gather a breath, but his throat tightened and his windpipes felt choked and nothing came. His chest burned. He heaved and panted and gasped, and finally got up and staggered to the bathroom, where he leaned over the toilet and retched.

Hearing him in the bathroom, Velmyra rushed in and found him kneeling on the floor, his head near the toilet bowl.

“I’m OK, I’m OK,” he said. But when he tried to get up, the room whirled before his eyes like an off-kilter merry-go-round, and the taste of bile bubbled again in his throat.

“It’s all right.” Velmyra knelt beside him, her voice calm. “Just stay here, stay quiet a minute.” With one hand on his arm, she smoothed his back with wide circles as he gave over to violent spasms of nausea.

“I’m OK now.” He got up and made his way past her to the living room and sat again on the sofa. The room tilted again, moved in circles, and felt close, airless. He felt a chill. Sweat beads sprouted on his forehead as tiny quakes exploded beneath his skin. Velmyra sat next to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

She spoke quietly. “Julian, it’s all right. It’s all right if you want to just let it out.”

He looked at her as tears filled his eyes. Then he leaned forward and looked straight ahead, holding himself, rocking.

“I think…” he said in a whisper. “I think he’s really gone.”

He felt himself go limp in her arms as the flood of tears came, first quietly, then in shuddering sobs. As grief breached his wall of strength, she put both arms around him and held his head to her chest. And they sat like that, quietly, as Julian rocked and cried, until night darkened the room.

Neither would remember how the next thing happened, or even whose idea it had been. Whether he’d led her or she’d led him to the small, cramped feather bed framed by rusted brass where Velmyra had slept that first night, and where now they both lay knotted into each other, a welter of angles and curves beneath the raw, floursack cotton backing of Genevieve’s handmade quilt.

It had been years, but their bodies remembered the details of the dance. There had been no words—only the smooth step and glide of old partners, the entwining and uncoiling, the shifting from one side, quietly, gently, to the other, his arm just beneath her neck, her head buried in the crook of his shoulder. His tongue dipping into the small well at the base of her throat, her back arching as his arm circled the slim world of her waist. Remembering, rediscovering, as forgotten passageways opened and memory guided them through.

They moved carefully, delicately, because the fragile balance of air and light between them could be so easily tipped with a misplaced word, a gesture. As she offered herself without restraint, he folded her into the space where his pain dwelt, and breathed softly as she filled it up.
Easy now,
he told himself, and felt, for the first time in a long time, at home.

Before the morning light, she’d awakened to find him gone. Walking out onto the porch in her T-shirt, she heard the sound coming from the direction of the creek and followed the muted, high-pitched wail.

Standing in the pale glow of the early morning moon, he was shirtless, shoeless, his unbelted jeans sagging slightly below his waist, the trumpet pressed to his lips and its bell lifted out over the bank of the creek. The thin brassy moan thickened in the damp air, floating between the rustle of leaves and grasses, and the shrill whir of cicadas and crickets.

He was playing something familiar, no doubt something she’d heard him play years ago. A simple melody, childlike, pure, but with an underpinning of old-time blues. A love song, maybe, for two people adrift in different worlds. She stepped on a branch and the sharp breaking sound startled him.

He looked up. “Sorry, I guess I woke you.”

“I reached over and you were gone.” She folded her arms against her chest. “Sounds beautiful. You OK?”

“Yeah.” He held up his horn, shiny in the moon’s light, and touched his jaw. “Feels a little better now and I messed around with my embouchure. I think I’m on the right track.”

“Great.”

He nodded to her, then looked across the dark creek, its rippling surface dimly illumined by the shine of the moon.

“Daddy used to bring me down here. We used to sit right over there on that bank.” He pointed across the water to where an oak branch dripped gray fingers of Spanish moss over the water, and where, when he was five, his father had tossed him into the creek to get him to swim. He had splashed about violently thinking he would surely drown, until his feet touched bottom and he realized the water was only waist high.