DR08 - Burning Angel (23 page)

Patsy worked a thumbnail between his teeth and stared at me.

”Put some of this stuff on those mosquito bites,“ I said.

He surprised me. He filled both palms with white cream and rubbed it into his forearms and on his face and neck, his round chin pointed up in the air.

I unfolded the towel on the table. His eyes dropped to the pistols, then looked up at me.

”What, you got cold pieces for sale?“ he said.

I released the magazine from the butt of each automatic so he could see the top round, inserted it again, chambered the round, set the safety, and placed both weapons butt to butt in the center of the table. Then I sat down across from him, my eyes stinging with salt. Up the slope, I could see Bootsie under the light on the gallery.

”If you want to square what I did to you, now's the time,“ I said.

”Otherwise, I'm going to mop up the dock with you.“

He smiled and screwed a fresh cigarette in his mouth, crumpled up the empty pack. ”I always heard you were a drunk. That ain't your problem. You're fucking stupid, man,“ he said.

”Oh?“

”I want to make somebody dead, I don't even have to get out of bed.

Don't try to shine me off, worm man. Tell Johnny and those military as swipes they piece me off or I leave hair on the walls.“

He walked on the balls of his feet toward his automobile, lifting his arm to smell himself again.

Sometimes they don't wince.

Chapter 2O

INSIDE THE dream I know I'm experiencing what a psychologist once told me is a world destruction fantasy. But my knowledge that it is only a dream does no good; I cannot extricate myself from it. As a child I saw the sun turn black against a cobalt sky and sink forever beyond the earth's rim. Years later the images would change and I'd revisit my brief time as a new colonial, see Victor Charles, in black pajamas, sliding on his stomach through a rice paddy, a French bolt-action rifle strapped across his back; two GI's eating C-rations in the shade of banyan trees after machine-gunning a farmer's water buffalo just for meanness' sake; three of our wounded after they'd been skinned and hung in trees like sides of meat by NVA. In my dream tonight i can see the Louisiana coastline from a great height, as alluvial and new as it must have been after Jehovah hung the archer's bow in the sky and drew the waters back over the earth's edges, the rivers and bayous and wetlands shimmering like foil under the moon. But it's a view that will not hold at the center, because now I realize the cold light of the moon is actually the fire from chemical plants and oil refineries along the Mississippi, the shook foil of a dead Jesuit poet nothing more than industrial mercury systemically injected into the earth's veins. The roadways and ditches are blown with litter, the canals a depository for rubber tires, beer cans, vinyl sacks of raw garbage thrown from pickup trucks. A fish's gills are orange with fungus.

I wake from the dream and sit alone in the kitchen. I can hear thunder out of the Gulf and Tripod pulling his chain along the clothesline.

Through the window my neighbor's freshly cut lawn smells like corn silk and milk. I sit on the back steps until the trees turn gray with the false dawn, then I go back inside and fall asleep just as the first raindrops ping against the blades of the window fan.

At noon Bootsie and I were eating lunch in the kitchen when Ruthie Jean Fontenot called.

”Moleen's at Dot's in St. Martinville. You know where that's at, I'm talking about in the black section?“ she said.

”I'm not his keeper, Ruthie Jean.“

”You can get him out.“

”Get him out yourself.“

”Some secrets suppose to stay secret. You know the rules about certain things that go on between white and black people.“

”Wrong man to call,“ I said.

”The man owns the place is a friend of Luke's. He said Moleen's got a li'l pistol stuck down inside his coat. The man doesn't want to call the police unless he has to.“

”Forget Moleen and take care of yourself, Ruthie Jean. He's not worth-“

She hung up. I sat down at the table and started eating again. Bootsie watched my face.

”Moleen's a grown man,“ I said. ”He's also a hypocritical sonofabitch.“

”He got her out of jail,“ Bootsie said.

”He paid somebody else to do it. Which is Moleen's style. Three cushion shots.“

”Too harsh, Streak,“ she said.

I drank out of my iced tea, sucked on a sprig of mint, finally squeezed my temples between my fingers.

”See you before five,“ I said.

”Watch your ass, kiddo,“ she said.

I took the old road into St. Martinville, along Bayou Teche and through cane fields and pastureland where egrets stood like spectators on the backs of grazing cows. Dot's was a ramshackle bar toward the end of the main artery that traversed the black district and eventually bled into the square where Evangeline was buried with her lover behind the old French church. Ironically, the bar's geographical location, set like a way station between two worlds, was similar to the peculiar mix of blood and genes in the clientele-octoroons and quadroons, red bones and people who were coal black but whose children sometimes had straw-colored curly hair.

Moleen sat in the gloom, at the far end of the bar, on a patched, fingernail-polish-red vinyl stool, his seersucker coat tight across his hunched shoulders, one oxblood loafer twisted indifferently inside an aluminum rung on the stool. I could smell his unwashed odor three feet away.

”She's worried about you,“ I said, and sat down next to him.

He drank from a glass of bourbon and melted ice, pushed two one-dollar bills out of his change toward the bartender.

”You want a drink?“ he said.

I didn't answer. I peeled back the edge of his coat with one finger.

He glared at me.

”A .2,5 caliber derringer. That's dumb, Moleen,“ I said. ”One of those is like bird shit hitting a brick.“

He pointed at his empty glass for the bartender. A deformed mulatto man with a shoe-shine box came through the front door in a burst of hot sunlight, let the door slam hard behind him, vibrating the glass and Venetian blinds. His face was moronic, his mouth a wet drool, his arms like gnarled oak roots that were half the length they should have been.

I looked away from him.

”You want your shoes shined?“ Moleen said, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

”I think a remark like that is unworthy of you,“ I said.

”I wasn't being humorous. His great-grandfather and mine were the same gentleman. If you think he's an eyeful, you should meet his mother.

Hang around. She comes in about seven.“

”I can't stop you from fucking up your life, Moleen, but as a law officer, I want you to hand over your piece.“

”Take it. I've never fired a shot in anger, anyway.“

I slipped it from inside his belt, cracked open the breech below the lip of the bar.

”It's empty,“ I said,

”Oh, yeah,“ he said absently, and took two steel-jacketed rounds from his coat pocket and dropped them in my palm. ”They're going to take your friend Marsallus out.“

”Who?“

He tilted the glass to his mouth. His eyes were red along the rims, his face unshaved and shiny with a damp sweat.

”What's the worst thing you saw in Vietnam, Dave?“ he asked.

”It's yesterday's box score.“

”You ever leave your own people behind, sell them out, scratch their names off a list at a peace conference, lie to their families?“

”Quit sticking thumbtacks in your head. Go public with it.“

”It is public, for God's sakes. Nobody cares.“

”Why do these guys want to kill Sonny?“

”He's a one-man firing squad. He gets them in his sights and they tend to dissolve in a red mist.“

”A good woman cares for you, Moleen. A guy could have worse problems,“

I said.

”Which woman?“

”See you around, partner. Don't let them get behind you.“ I started to get up.

”You're always the wise guy Dave. Try this. Ruthie Jean got her Aunt Bertie to file suit against the plantation. They retained a little sawed-off ACLU lawyer from New Orleans who can tie us up in court for years.“

”Sounds like a smart move.“

”Glad you think so. I know some gentlemen who probably won't agree with you. After they take Marsallus off the board, you may get to meet a few of them.“

”I already have. They're just not that impressive a crowd,“ I said, got up off the stool, and collided into the deformed man. His wood shoe-shine box tumbled out of his hands; brushes, cans of wax and saddle soap, bottles of liquid polish clattered and rolled across the floor. His eyes had the panicked, veined intensity of hard-boiled eggs. He slobbered and made a moaning sound in his throat as he tried to pick up a cracked bottle of liquid polish that was bleeding into a black pool in the wood. But his torso was top-heavy, his arms too short and uncoordinated, and he stared helplessly at the dripping polish on his fingers as the bottle rolled farther from his grasp and left a trail of black curlicues across the floor.

I got down on my knees and began putting his things back in the box.

”I'm sorry, partner. We'll go down to the store and replace whatever I broke here. It's going to be okay,“ I said.

His expression was opaque, his tongue thick as a wet biscuit on his teeth. He tried to make words, but they had no more definition than a man clearing a phlegmy obstruction from his throat.

I saw Moleen grinning at me.

”Racial empathy can be a sticky business, can't it, laddie?“ he said.

I wanted to wipe him off the stool.

The anger, the inability to accept, would not go out of Bootsie's words. There were pale discolorations like melted pieces of ice in her cheeks. I couldn't blame her.

”Dave, she's only thirteen years old. She could have killed someone,“

she said.

”But she didn't. She didn't chamber the round, either,“ I said.

”That seems poor consolation.“

”I'll lock up all the guns,“ I said.

It was eleven Friday night and we were in the kitchen. I had turned on the floodlight in the mimosa tree in the backyard. Alafair was in her room with the door closed.

I took another run at it.

”I know it's my fault. I left the Beretta where she could find it,“ I said. ”But what if this guy had tried to come through the door or window?“

She washed a cup in hot water with her hands. Her skin was red under the tap. Her back looked stiff and hard against her shirt.

”You want to install a burglar alarm system?“ I said.

”Yes!“

”I'll call somebody in the morning,“ I said, and went into the backyard, where I sat for a long time at the picnic table and stared listlessly at the shadows of the mimosa tree shifting back and forth on the grass. It was not a good night to be locked up with your own thoughts, but I knew of nowhere else to take them.

In the morning I drove to New Iberia with Alafair to pick up an outboard engine from the freight agent at the train depot.

”You shouldn't have messed with the gun, Alf,“ I said.

”I'd already called 911. What was I supposed to do next? Wait for him to kick the door in?“ She looked straight ahead, her eyes dancing.

”I couldn't find any footprints.“

”I don't care. I saw him. He was out there in the trees. Tripod got scared and started running on his chain.“

”It wasn't the guy who got Tripod out of the coulee?“

”He was thinner. A car went by and his skin looked real white.“

”Did he have red hair?“

”I don't know. It was only a second.“

”Maybe it's time we learn how to use a pistol properly,“ I said.

”Why's everybody mad at me? It's not fair, Dave.“

”I'm not mad at you, little guy .. . Sorry .. . Bootsie isn't, either.

It's just-“

”Yes, she is. Don't lie about it. It makes it worse.“

”That's pretty strong, Alf.“

”Why'd y'all leave me alone, then? What am I supposed to do if bad people come around the house?“ Her voice grew in intensity, then it broke like a stick snapping and she began to cry.

We were on East Main in front of the Shadows. I pulled into the shade of the oaks, behind a charter bus full of elderly tourists. The bus's diesel engine throbbed off the cement.

”I screwed up. I won't do it again,“ I said.

But she kept crying, with both of her hands over her face.

”Look, maybe I won't go back with the department. I'm tired of being a punching bag for other people. I'm tired of the family taking my fall, too.“

She took her hands from her face and looked out the side window for a long time. She kept sniffing and touching at her eyes with the backs of her wrists. When she turned straight in the seat again, her eyes were round and dry, as though someone had popped a flashbulb in front of them.

”It's not true,“ she said.

”What isn't?“

”You'll always be a cop, Dave. Always.“

Her voice was older than her years, removed from both of us, prescient with a joyless knowledge about the nature of adult promises.

By Sunday morning I still hadn't put the matter to rest. I woke early and tapped on Alafair's door.

”Yes?“

”It's Dave. You got a second?“

”Wait.“ I heard her bare feet on the floor. ”Okay.“

Her shelves were filled with stuffed animals, the walls covered with posters featuring cats of all kinds. Alafair had propped a pillow behind her head and pulled up her knees so that they made a tent under the sheet. The curtains puffed in the breeze and the screen hung loose from the latch.

I sat in the chair by her homework desk.

”I was upset for another reason yesterday, one that's hard to explain,“

I said. ”You didn't do anything wrong, Alf. I did.“

”You already said that.“

”Listen. When you kill another human being, no matter how necessary it might seem at the time, something goes out of your life forever. I never want that to happen to you. I still have dreams about the war, I have them about men I ran up against as a police officer. Their faces don't go underground with them.“ Her eyes blinked and went away from mine. I saw the sheet ruffle and hump at the foot of the bed. It should have been a humorous moment, but it wasn't. ”Let's get this guy out of here so we can talk,“ I said, and lifted Tripod from under the sheet. He hung heavily from my hands and churned his paws in the air as I walked to the window. ”He'll run down to the dock again,“ she said, as if she could open a door out of our conversation. ”Batist can handle it,“ I said, and dropped Tripod into the yard. I sat back down.