Man in the Blue Moon (32 page)

Harlan raised his wobbling head and managed to grin before spitting a stream of green phlegm straight into Lanier’s face.

A nun screamed orders. Two volunteer medics rushed forward with leather straps. While they tied Harlan’s arms to the sides of the cot, he laughed and gagged all at the same time. None of the rest of them could make out what Harlan was saying, but Lanier understood him perfectly. “Wylie, I reckon to see you in hell.”

It was Macon who found the note that Keaton left on Samuel’s bed. He ran into Ella’s room and jostled Samuel, who sat sleeping, slumped to the side of the rocking chair. Rubbing his eyes, Samuel read the note, silently mouthing each word.
I’ve gone to find Lanier so he can help us. Be back soon.
Samuel looked at Macon, cursed Lanier Stillis, and then balled the note into his fist. He propped both hands on Macon’s shoulders and led him out into the hallway, feet away from where Neva Clarkson slept in a state of exhaustion on the living room sofa. Squatting before Macon, Samuel looked him straight in the eye and whispered, “Don’t you worry about Keaton. I’ll let the law know tomorrow. He’s big enough to fend for himself until they find him. We got enough to worry about with Mama. And I want you to promise me you won’t tell Mama a word about this. Now is the time we got to be strong. We got to get Mama better. She can’t get better if she’s worrying about Keaton.”

Macon nodded, and tears welled up in his eyes.

“No matter what happens, I won’t leave you,” Samuel whispered. “You understand? I’ll never leave you.”

Nodding faster, Macon reached to hug Samuel, but he had already slipped back into Ella’s room. Running back into the bedroom, Macon threw himself on the bed that Samuel had not occupied for two days and landed facedown on the spot where the note had rested. He buried his face deeper into the covers and cried harder than he had the day his playmate died.

The next morning, an hour after the sun rose, Neva stood over Ella and pressed the moist rag against her friend’s forehead. Macon sat cross-legged at the doorway of Ella’s bedroom. When he saw his mother stir in the bed, Macon ran and grabbed the big wicker fan shaped like a palmetto leaf and began waving it across her. Samuel moved from the edge of Ella’s dresser where the postcard from Lanier had been hidden and grabbed the top of the fan. He slowly shook his head at Macon and motioned for him to move back to the door. Macon took a few steps and then settled against the dresser with his arm propped on top of the crocheted doily that his great-aunt had made.

A cool breeze drifted in through the open window. The sheer curtains twisted and turned like dancing ghosts.

Ella opened her eyes. As if they were connected, the boys and Neva moved closer to the bed as one unit. “You’re better now,” Samuel said. It was more of a command than a question. “You’re better. I can tell. Listen to me, I can tell.” Neva draped her long fingers over his shoulder and squeezed and then patted.

Ella stared at the swirls of yellow in the curtains that twisted against the wind that came in through the bedroom windows. Swimming in the fever that cooked her body, Ella’s mind dreamed in bursts of illuminating color. Color as bright as the kaleidoscope that her aunt Katherine had allowed her to look through on Sunday afternoons. Indeed, her aunt had come to her through the window last evening and told her that colors abound and beauty would never fade with the sun. Ella pretended to know what she meant, but before she could ask any questions, her aunt moved behind the curtain that bowed out of the room with the current of the breeze. The curtain fell back against the window, and there was nothing there but the high-backed chair with the seat made of black-and-white cowhide that Ella used as a place to lay out her robe each night.

Ella rolled her head against the pillow and looked toward the door. She tried to reach out for Macon, but the weight of the sheet locked her down like restraints. She tried to smile.

Samuel nudged Neva. “See, I told you she was better.”

The attempt was lost on Macon. He peeked through the gap between Neva and Samuel. His eyes were as frightened as they had been when the thrush had nearly killed him.

Come here, son,
Ella wanted to say, but the words hung in her throat, blocked by the walls of secretions that Neva constantly wiped out of her mouth. When she tried to reach her arm out to him again, Macon slid his shoulder against the wall and stepped backward out of the room.

At the door she saw Lanier and tried to sit up. Lanier’s hair was as bright as the curtains, and his eyes were stronger than she remembered. He held his hands up over Macon’s head and ran his fingers over the boy’s shoulders as if he were playing a game with him. Macon turned away and slipped down the hall. His departure didn’t seem to bother Lanier. He just stood there, dressed in a white linen shirt that dangled at the waist of his denim pants. Ella recognized the tenderness in his eyes that caused her to trust him when common sense dictated otherwise. She tried to rise and greet him. In her mind she beckoned Lanier to stay, but Neva pushed her back against the bed that was contoured and damp from her suffering. “Rest now, Ella,” Neva whispered. “You belong to rest.”

The curtain swept up in the air again, and when Ella looked out the window, she saw Harlan standing in front of the sunflowers. He was wearing a derby hat and a gold chain that dangled from his vest pocket. His shoulders were as broad as they had been before the addiction ravaged him. He moved toward the house with the same purpose Ella had seen when she first met him. The deep-gutted laugh that rolled out like carpet announcing his celebrated arrival caused Ella to shake. Neva replaced the damp rag with a fresh one and then placed a chip of ice on her broken lips. The cool sensation tickled Ella’s senses, and she tried to open her mouth wide enough to take in all of the relief.

Ella jerked her head back toward the door, wanting to warn Lanier that Harlan was coming back for his possessions. But this time when she looked at the doorway, all Ella saw was the chalk mark, shaped like an apple, that Macon had drawn on the door when no one was watching.

Silverton and the other men who worked in the engine room of the steamboat were drunk by the time the last passenger disembarked at the pier in New Orleans. Captain Marcum never told Keaton not to follow them. He just lit a pipe and told Keaton to use the big-handled brush that was lying on the nightstand in his cabin to clean off his black suit coat. Wood covered the walls, floor, and ceiling. It reminded Keaton of a box, and he thought how Lanier must have felt trapped in an even smaller version.

“The beams,” the captain said and pointed to the wood molding that lined the ceiling. “You dusted them, did you?” The brass lanterns on the wall had been cleaned too, but Keaton decided not to point them out.

“I’m going to have me a steak dinner and paint the town red,” the captain announced and slipped on the coat Keaton had prepared. Captain Marcum looked at Keaton and laughed in a way that made him feel ashamed. “Boy, you know what ‘paint the town red’ means?”

“Yes, sir,” Keaton said and fidgeted with the torn place on his shirtsleeve.

Before leaving the cabin, Captain Marcum turned the photograph of a doughy-faced, ringlet-haired woman in a pewter frame facedown on the nightstand. “Well, then. I reckon I don’t need to caution you about wayward women on the streets who are eager to take your wages.” The captain paused at the door of the cabin and pulled at the ends of his beard as if he might be pulling off a disguise. “I’ll tell you like I tell all the others. Don’t get so tight that you can’t work tomorrow.”

Standing on the deck of the boat, Keaton watched the captain disappear into the wave of people that flowed around the pier. Rows of crates lined the dock that stretched longer and wider than the one he knew back in Apalachicola. Sounds of breaking glass, exotic accented words, shouts of anger, and peaceful chimes from the cathedral intoxicated the air. Above a warehouse painted with the words
United Fruit Company
, Keaton saw Venus shimmering in the sky, the same way he knew it was doing over their barn in Dead Lakes.

Loneliness wrapped around Keaton until he couldn’t move. He pictured himself being swept up in the crowd and drowning, tossed about the foreign land, never to be heard of again by his family. He thought about the Bible story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale and thrown up in a distant place because he didn’t do the job that God intended for him to accomplish.

Stepping forward and walking down the plank that was tied to the pier with knotted ropes frayed at the ends, Keaton wobbled on the wood that shifted with the weight of the men who exited in front of him. He tried not to grip the side of the plank and look vulnerable.

Out in the street that was sectioned off by warehouses on each corner and a bar where the sound of trumpets echoed, Keaton put his hands in his pockets and forced himself to stand up straight. If he could pretend that he knew where he was and what he was doing, then maybe everyone else would believe it.

He circled the square three times and looked the other way when he saw a man and a woman locked together and pressed against the wall inside an alley. The money he’d put in his shoe caused him to walk like a pebble was lodged under his sock. Tripping over a missing cobblestone in the street, Keaton landed just shy of a car that passed by, honking its horn at him. A group of young men not much older than him laughed and passed around a bottle of whiskey underneath a building where a woman’s feet dangled outside a second-story window. A ruby-colored shoe covered one of them; the other one was streaked with dirt.

By the bar, crumpled newspaper and empty bottles littered the foot of a scrub oak. A woman with bushy auburn hair parted on the side had her arm propped against the tree. Her elbow pressed against the trunk like she was part of the natural growth. A jade ring, too big for her index finger, caught Keaton’s attention. The woman flicked it with her thumb, and the cut glass that lined the ring glistened against the gas streetlight. Two men wearing sailor uniforms vied for her attention by pounding their chests and fanning money between their fingers. “This here ain’t cheap,” the woman said in a laugh. Giving up, the men went inside the bar. They circled around a young girl who was sitting on a stool wearing ripped black stockings.

When the woman by the tree looked toward Keaton, he quickly turned his head. Just as he was about to cross the street, the woman tapped him on the shoulder with the ringed finger. “You with Captain Marcum’s boat?”

Keaton looked back at the bar. Now the sailor with pants too short for him was leaning down over the young girl as if consuming her. “I, uhh . . . yeah . . . yes, ma’am.”

“There ain’t no ma’am around here. I work for myself.” The woman laughed and then coughed. Keaton stepped backward.

“Ain’t nothing but cigarettes. Don’t you go thinking I got the influenza or nothing. I’m clean.”

Keaton dug his hands deeper into his pockets and wondered if she thought he was fiddling with his money.

The woman brushed her hand across his brow, and the ring pulled against his hair. She smelled of damp cigarettes that had long been stomped out.

“You’re a cutie pie. Just a regular little cutie pie.”

“I’m not that little,” Keaton said.

The woman laughed and then coughed again. “This your first time? First time in New Orleans, I mean.”

The young girl at the bar shrieked and threw her head back. The sailor bit her strand of pearls and the trumpet inside hit a shrill note.

“Well, anyway,” the woman said. She pulled a cigarette out from the top of her low-cut dress. Her chest was blotchy and more freckled than her face. Like a magician she pulled a match out of the bushiest side of her hair. Keaton went flush when she put her hand on his shoulder, balanced herself, and struck the match on the sole of her shoe. She blew smoke from the corner of her red-lipped mouth and held his glance when he found the courage to look her directly in the eye. “You know, if I wasn’t a good woman, I could take advantage of you.”

Excitement and fear lit Keaton the same way her cigarette gave light to the night that was settling over the street. A car rattled past them. Exhaust caused Keaton to cough. This time the woman moved away. “There’s some around here who’d take you to service and then knock you in the head. They’d take everything you had, and you’d wind up not knowing where you was . . . or who you was for that matter.”

“I’m here on business.”

“Ain’t we all,” the woman said in a graveled laugh.

“I’m looking for somebody.”

“Uh-huh.” The woman took a draw on the cigarette and stuck the hand with the ring out to him. “I’m Ivey,” she said with the formality of a business owner.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Keaton Wallace from over in Dead Lakes, Florida.”

“Hey, I mean it. Knock it off with the
ma’am
.” She tried to laugh but it lazily turned into a cough. “I figure I ain’t much older than you.”

Keaton felt his face grow warm with embarrassment and glanced back at the bar. The young girl and men were now gone. The bartender was wiping a dingy towel across the table where they’d been. He was looking out at the street where Ivey and Keaton stood.

She blew smoke from the other side of her mouth and talked all at the same time. “What sort of business you got here anyway? Fresh-off-the-farm boy like you ain’t got no business here, if you ask me.”

Keaton pulled from his pocket the postcard he had found in his mother’s dresser drawer. He smoothed out the spot where he had folded it before showing the picture of the streetcar to Ivey. She flipped it over and studied the words. “A streetcar. Boy, you come all this way to ride a streetcar?”

When she handed the postcard back to Keaton he pushed it back into her hand. “No, not the streetcar. The address on the back. That’s where I need to go.”

Ivey pushed the card back at him. “The light ain’t too good. I can’t make out what them words is saying.”

Keaton studied the card with Lanier’s swirled penmanship. He could make the words out perfectly fine and wondered if he would insult her by reading them aloud. “It’s right here,” he said, pointing to the top corner of the card and handing it back to Ivey.

She fanned the postcard away with her cigarette and wouldn’t even look at him. “Look, I need to get going. It’s prime time and . . .”

Before she could walk away, Keaton read the words on the card as fast as he could. By the time Ivey got to the corner of the bar she turned around. “What was that last part again?”

“Lanier. Love, Lanier.” Keaton felt burdened inside, like he was carrying the sin of his mother and betraying her secrets.

“Baby, I ain’t interested in no love. I’m talking about the street number. What was that street you was saying?”

Keaton held the postcard up to catch a sliver of light from the street post. “209 North Burgundy Street.” He repeated the address once more, only slower.

Ivey ran her tongue around the edge of her mouth. “If I was to take you there, you reckon somebody will pay me for my time?”

“You know where Lanier . . . where this man’s staying at?”

“I know the gal who claims she owns the place. Letticia Prideaux. Nothing but trash. Cheapest whore in the Quarter.”