Wayfaring Stranger

  “That’s your truck on the street?”

  “That’s it. Give me your arm, will you?”

  “Suh, don’t do this.”

  “You know how to count cadence? Tell you what. I’ll count it and you march it, and the two of us will get me over to the truck.”

  Lawrence backed away, shaking his head, his eyes on the ground, his hands clenched on the broom handle. “Suh, I need this job. I cain’t be getting in other people’s business.”

  “I cain’t blame you,” Hershel said. “Take care.”

  “You, too, suh.”

  Hershel walked past the soda cooler and the ice chute into the darkness. There seemed to be bottle caps everywhere, crunching like glass under his feet. The sensation reminded him of walking barefoot as a boy on a gravel road in rural Louisiana, when his father worked all day for a dollar-and-a-half WPA grocery order.

  The wind was colder, blowing through the trees on the unlit street where his truck was parked in the shadows. Behind him, he heard Lawrence stacking crates and pushing the broom along the concrete walkway by the side of the icehouse. An unmarked prewar Ford was parked by a fire hydrant, its hood pointed toward West Alabama, giving the occupants a clear view of the icehouse, the plank tables under the canopy, and Hershel’s truck. When Hershel stepped off the curb, he felt as though he had set his foot down on the deck of a ship just after it had pitched into a trough. He heard both doors of the Ford squeak open and two men get out on the asphalt. He removed his truck keys from the pocket of his leather jacket and opened the truck and dropped the keys on the back floor. When he turned around, he was facing the two men, who wore suits and hats with wilted felt brims.

  “I was fixing to take a nap, not drive,” he said.

  One man was duck-footed and had short, thick legs and a chest like an upended beer keg. The other man was tall and lean all over, his posture as stiff as a coat hanger. “I’m Detective Hubert Slakely, Houston PD,” he said. “Are you carrying a firearm?”

  “I own one. It’s at my house. So I cain’t say as I’m carrying it.”

  “Your name is Hershel Pine?”

  “Yes, sir, it is. I’m not aiming to drive this truck anywhere, if that’s the issue.”

  “There’s a report you’re suicidal.”

  “I don’t figure I’m worth shooting. So why would I want to waste money buying a bullet to shoot a person I consider worthless?”

  The detective took off his hat and drew a comb through his hair. The moon was shining through the live oak over the street. Hershel could see a peculiar luminosity in the detective’s eyes, one he had seen in the eyes of Klansmen and redneck sheriff’s deputies and gunbulls who worked in Angola and cashed their checks at Margaret’s whorehouse in Opelousas. All of them sought a badge, a flag, a banner; it didn’t matter what kind. Their enemy was the human race.

  The detective clipped his comb inside his shirt pocket and replaced his hat on his head. “Would you mind putting your hands on the side of the vehicle?”

  “I’m too tired. I think I need my nap now.”

  “It beats a night in jail.”

  “I cain’t say. I’ve never been in a jail. I know you, don’t I? Or at least your name.”

  “Lean against the truck and spread your feet.”

  “I not only know who you are, I know why you’re here and who you work for,” Hershel said. He could feel a fish bone in his throat. He coughed and started over. “Your name gets around. You’re the one who arrested Rosita Holland.”

  “Now I’m arresting you.” Slakely removed a pair of handcuffs from a leather pouch on his belt. “Turn around, please.”

  “If my father was here, he’d tell y’all to kiss his butt. Or he might give you a whipping. I ain’t going to no damn jail. The man who thinks he can put me there had better—”

  That was as far as he got. The blackjack had been handmade by a convict and was tapered like a darning sock, the lead ball on the heavy end wrapped in rawhide, the lower end mounted on a spring and wood handle that doubled the velocity of the blow. Hershel bounced off the side of the truck and struck the concrete on his face. Slakely leaned over and beat him in the back and shoulders as though breaking up ice in a washtub. Then he began kicking Hershel with the point of his shoe, holding on to the truck for purchase, kicking every exposed place on his body he could target.

  “Captains,” said the black man named Lawrence. “He’s just drunk. He didn’t mean no harm.”

  Slakely turned around. “You better get out of here, Sambo.”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “You tell anybody about what you saw here, we’ll be back.”

  “Yes, suh, I know that.”

  “Glad we agree.”

  For seconds or perhaps minutes, the only sound Hershel could hear was the wind in the oak limbs and the easy drift and sweep of leaves across the asphalt. The voices of the two police officers sounded as though they were resonating off the walls of a well that had no bottom.

  “Is he—?”

  “No, he’s all right. When you cain’t see the blood is when you got a problem.”

  “You kind of lost control, Hubert. Jesus Christ.”

  “He was resisting. He had it coming. There’s no problem here.”

  “Want me to call it in?”

  “Maybe he learned his lesson. Can you hear me, Pine? Did you learn something tonight?”

  “The guy’s a mess, Hubert. I think we’ve got a problem.”

  “You got a point. He’p me lift him up.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Cleaning up the street.”

  Hershel landed hard in the trunk of the prewar Ford. His head was jammed against the spare tire, his knees against a box of tools, his face half buried by a tarp stiff with paint. For an instant he saw Slakely staring down at him, his hand balanced on the open hatch.

  Don’t do it, he thought he heard himself say. Please.

  The hatch slammed down an inch from Hershel’s face, the stars in the sky gone in a wink.

  ROY WISEHEART CALLED Linda Gail early in the morning, before the sun was up. The receiver felt cold against her ear. She stared through the back window at the blueness of the dawn and the bareness of a tree that was wet and gnarled and looked scraped of leaves. She wanted to be back in California, wrapped inside the fog that rolled off the ocean on mornings like these.

  “Jack called late last night. He wants me at a meeting in the morning,” Roy said.

  “Jack who?”

  “Jack Warner. Who else would I be talking about?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Jack Valentine. Except he’s dead, isn’t he? Killed in South Central L.A.”

  There was a beat. “I’d like to see you before I go.”

  “You want to see me? After you lied?”

  “Lied about what?”

  “You said you checked on Hershel. Your friend Mr. Green said you never left his house, that you were playing tennis all day.”

  “It’s fifteen minutes to your house from mine. Green was on a business call for almost an hour. It was about noon. I’d gone over to your house already, but I went a second time. I also called the police. Why do you always think the worst of me, Linda Gail?”

  “Because I don’t know what to believe. Never. Not on one occasion.”

  “Believe that I love you. Let’s have breakfast and talk. I don’t want to fly out of here and leave things in the state they’re in. You’re going to drive me to the grave. That’s not an exaggeration.”

  “Roy, you have to let me alone. I can’t think straight.”

  “That’s why I want to be with you. We’ll face these things together.”

  “You know what bothers me most, Roy? You know what bothers me right now, more than anything else in the world?”

  “I have no idea.”

>   “You haven’t asked about Hershel,” she replied. “Not once. He could be dead or out working on his truck. You didn’t ask or show the least curiosity. How do you explain that?”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the phone rang again. “Hershel?” she said.

  “No, my name is Albert,” a man’s voice said. “I help out at the relief center here. Who’s this?”

  “I think you have the wrong number.”

  “You said Hershel. That’s the name of the man I’m calling for. Hershel Pine. I got your number out of his wallet.”

  “I can’t understand what you’re saying. Don’t hang up. Please. Are you saying you found my husband’s wallet?”

  “I found him. He was inside some cardboard boxes behind the center. He looks like somebody beat him up. I thought maybe he wandered in from the highway.”

  “How bad is he hurt?”

  “The way people get hurt in a fight.”

  “Can you put him on the phone?”

  “He’s sleeping now. It got pretty cold last night. His teeth were clicking. I covered him up on a cot.”

  “What are his injuries? Please tell me. My husband doesn’t get in fights. How bad is it?”

  “There was a pint of wine in the pocket of his jacket. It was broken. I don’t think it cut him. Lady, this neighborhood is mostly colored. Ask yourself why he was down here, because I don’t know. He’s no stew-bum. That’s why I called. I think somebody put the boots to him and dumped him here.”

  She followed his directions to a rural neighborhood on the two-lane highway to Galveston, a neighborhood with dirt streets and shotgun and paintless frame houses that had peaked tin roofs and neat yards and coffee cans planted with flowers on the galleries. It reminded her of the sugarcane and rice-mill towns of southern Louisiana, trapped between the softly focused culture of the agrarian South and the petrochemical industries that chained the Gulf Coast. She pulled up to a clapboard church set among cedar and pine trees and parked in back by a rain ditch. The man named Albert helped her put Hershel in her car. Albert was dressed in an off-color, ill-­fitting suit and unshined dress shoes with white socks; his hair looked like paint poured on a rock.

  “You’re a minister?” she asked.

  “No, just a drunk trying to get well. Fine car,” he said.

  “I want to make a donation to your church,” she said.

  “You can if you want. You don’t have to. Can I tell you something, lady?”

  “Yes.”

  “You shouldn’t cry. He’s gonna be all right.”

  “No, he’s not. But you’ve been very kind.” She opened her purse and took out a fifty-dollar bill. “Take this. Don’t argue.”

  “Ma’am, if you’re in some kind of trouble, maybe you should call the police. I don’t like to see you drive out of here crying like that. You could have an accident. Let me call the cops for you. They’ll know what to do.”

  Chapter

  26

  CHRISTMAS MORNING I received a person-to-person call at the motor court outside Morgan City. I heard the operator tell the caller to deposit two dollars in coins. “Weldon?” Linda Gail’s voice said.

  “What’s happened?” I said, fearing the worst.

  She told me everything she knew about the beating Hershel had taken, then had to deposit more coins. My stomach felt sick. I looked across the room at Rosita. I knew the target was not Hershel; it was us, and our choices were starting to run out.

  “What are you going to do?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I’ve put him to bed,” Linda Gail said. “Our doctor says he may have had a psychotic break.”

  “It was Hubert Slakely who beat him?”

  “That’s the name Hershel gave me. I called the police. Somebody is supposed to call me back.”

  “Where’s Roy?”

  “I don’t know. I left a message at his office.”

  “Did you call his house?”

  “No.”

  “I see.”

  “Don’t take that attitude with me, Weldon.”

  “I didn’t mean to. We’re heading back to Houston.”

  “I’ve closed my eyes to what’s going on. Dalton Wiseheart plans to take over y’all’s company. That’s what all this is about.”

  “There’s a lot more involved than our company.”

  “Is Roy mixed up in any of it?”

  “If you don’t know, how would I?”

  I didn’t intend to hurt her. But when you deal with those who have chosen to inflict great harm on themselves and their loved ones on a daily basis, whatever you say to them about the reality of their lives will either prove inadequate or offend them deeply, and leave you with feelings of guilt and depression. It’s not unlike walking through cobweb.

  “I sometimes think you hate me,” she said. “What bothers me is that I feel I deserve your contempt.”

  “If I gave you that perception, it was unintentional.” I looked through the window. The day was blue and gold, the palm fronds in front of the motor court lifting in the breeze off the Gulf. It was Christmas, a day when the rest of the world seemed at peace. “Where are you calling from?”

  “A pay phone,” she replied.

  “Which pay phone?”

  “Outside the drugstore. The one by the River Oaks police station.”

  “Have you used it often?”

  Again, I probably assaulted her sensibilities in asking a question that indicated surreptitiousness was a natural part of her life.

  “Several times,” she replied.

  “I’ll call you at your home later and see how Hershel is doing,” I said. “In the meantime, I want you to hear me on this: I think you’re a good person, Linda Gail. You read me?”

  I don’t know if she replied. The operator asked for more coins, then the connection was broken.

  ROSITA AND I checked out of the motor court and began the long two-lane drive down the Old Spanish Trail through the bayou country to Lake Charles and the Texas border. Back then, Christmas morning in the southern United States seemed to produce a strange environmental and cultural phenomenon that I could never quite explain. The weather was always mild, the sky more like spring than winter, the grass a pale green, sometimes with clover in it. The streets would be almost empty, except for a few children playing on the sidewalk with their new roller skates or Western Flyer wagons. The celebration of Saturnalia on the previous night would fade into the quiet predictability of a sunlit morning and a sense of abeyance that allowed us to step out of time for a short while and be safe from one another.

  That was the mood in which we drove over the high bridge that spanned the Calcasieu River west of Lake Charles and dropped down into a complex of chemical plants where a few years ago there had been only gum and cypress and willow trees that used to remain red and gold all the way to the salt until at least mid-November. On this particular stretch of highway, the toxicity in the air was nauseating and so thick and palpable, it was impossible to keep out of the automobile. But the people who lived in the small town by the chemical plants seemed to give little heed to the degradation of their environment and were thankful to have the jobs and the homes they did. I wondered again about the sacrificial nature of life, the collective triage we performed with regularity on our fellow man, and the wars and human attrition we accepted as the cost of our survival.

  Would that The Song of Roland defined our experience and not this gloomy projection of our future, I told myself. I couldn’t afford to lose myself in abstractions. Rosita and I were on our own. Or that’s what I thought at the time.

  We crossed into Texas and entered a coastal area where hundreds of United States Navy ships had been mothballed after the war. They were anchored in bayous, canals, and brackish bays, their guns plugged, their scuppers bleeding rust, their decks and hulls scrolled with the shadows of giant
cypress trees that had lost their leaves. It was a strange sight, as though our greatest creations had become refuse for which there was neither purpose nor means of disposal.

  East of Beaumont, I could see traffic slowing down and stopping, as it does where there’s an accident. I pulled up to a café next to an outdoor fruit stand that sold pecans and pralines during winter. We sat in a booth close to the counter. Through the front window, I could see several of the mothballed ships inside a black-water swamp, the sunlight dying behind the clouds, the juxtaposed images like a still life of death on a massive scale, but for reasons that made no sense to me.

  “This place is great for Mexican food,” I said.

  Rosita looked at a calendar on the wall. “Merry Christmas,” she said. She rested one foot on top of mine under the table.

  “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” I said.

  She shaped the words “I love you” with her mouth.

  A trucker came in, not happy with the traffic situation. “What’s the deal up there?” he asked.

  “They put up a barricade,” the counterman replied.

  “For what?”

  The counterman shook his head and didn’t answer.

  “Well, what the hell is it?” the trucker asked. “I thought your brother-in-law was a deputy sheriff.”

  The counterman leaned over and lowered his voice. He was a huge man, his hair jet-black, his forehead ridged like a washboard. “They’re looking for a couple of Communists that tried to kill a Houston police officer.”

  “Communists? What the hell are Communists doing around here?” the trucker replied.

  I kept my eyes fixed on Rosita’s.

  “Be with y’all in just a minute,” the counterman said.

  The directions and the key to Lloyd Fincher’s duck-hunting camp were still in my wallet.

  “Just coffee,” I said.

  WE DROVE ONE mile back toward the state line and turned south on a dirt road that followed a bayou through pine woods and gum trees and pastureland dotted with palmettos. I could smell the salt in the air, and through the water oaks and persimmons, I could see the sunlight glittering on the Gulf of Mexico like thousands of bronze razor blades. Something else was occurring in the passage of the sun and the shifting of the light and the way the wind scudded across the algae that resembled green lace around the base of the cypress. The air was colder and damper, the shade alive with the smell of stagnant water and animal dung and carrion, the shadows of the plugged guns on the mothball fleet lengthening across a skeletal woods.