“Where did you go?”
“St. Francisville. I fixed hair over there for a while.”
“Why did you come back?”
“I got in some trouble over there. Got caught with some weed in my car. I didn’t even like smoking that stuff, but it was better than drinking. Didn’t make me fat. And it took away some of the pain of grieving. Luke taught me that.”
“Were you arrested?”
Bitterness comes into her face. “Oh, yeah. They was gonna put me in jail. But Dr. Kirkland told me that if I’d come back to the island and get clean, he’d vouch for me. And that’s what happened.”
Of course, I think, with a strange feeling of resentment. With a single phone call, the feudal baron restores order to his universe. “When did you come back?”
“Nineteen eighty-three.”
“You haven’t left here since then?”
“Not to stay. This island’s kind of like a prison, I think. People get out of Angola sometimes, and you’d think they’d be happy. But they’re just lost. After all them years behind bars, they don’t know what to do without ’em. So they do some crime to get put back inside again. This island’s kind of like that. Lots of folks leave, but sooner or later, most of ’em come back.”
Like me? Do all roads lead back here?
“You’ve got pretty hair,” Louise says. “Even that reminds me of your daddy.”
“Did Daddy talk to anybody else about the war besides Jesse?”
“I think he talked to Dr. Cage some, over in Natchez. That’s who gave him his medication. Dr. Cage is a good man. I saw him a couple times. He likes to listen to people talk.”
I remember Pearlie mentioning Dr. Cage.
“About the only thing I can think of that might help you is his diary.”
My pulse quickens. “Diary?”
“It wasn’t really a diary. It was a drawing pad. Luke used to carry it around, making sketches. Lots of times he would sit by the river and write in that pad. He talked about maybe writing a book one day. I think some of that writing was about the war.”
My palms are tingling. “Do you have this sketch pad?”
“No. I wish I did.”
“What did it look like?
“It was just a sketch pad, like they used to sell in the dime stores. A thick one. He drew all kinds of pictures in it. He drew me once. I do have that picture.”
She goes to a fiberboard cabinet, kneels, and brings out a photo album. Opening the large book, she brings out a piece of paper and holds it up for me to see. It’s a charcoal sketch of a girl of no more than twenty, with stunning bone structure and shy eyes.
“You were beautiful.”
“Were?” Louise snaps. Then she laughs with loud good humor. “Lord knows I’ve changed. But I was pretty then, and I’m glad. I brought some happiness into his life by being pretty.” She shakes her head sadly. “Lord, I loved that boy. You know, he was only thirty when he died. You ever think about that?”
My father was a year younger than I am now when he died? “I don’t usually. I guess I think about him the way I saw him as a little girl.”
She nods knowingly. “God made a mistake on that day, taking Luke out of this world. Taking him, and leaving thousands of men who ain’t worth spit.”
My eyes have focused on one of the cabinet shelves. There’s a line of books there. Dispatches by Michael Herr. Bernard Fall’s book on Dien Bien Phu. Graham Greene. Tim O’Brien. Koko and The Throat by Peter Straub. Siddhartha. The Bell Jar. Four or five books on the My Lai massacre.
“It looks like Daddy put a lot into this house,” I say, gesturing toward the dining table. I’m really trying to stall while my mind works out just what it wants to know from this woman, but Louise smiles with pride.
“This old house was falling down back then, but it sat apart from the others, and I liked that. So Luke fixed it up for me. He said he was fixing it up for himself, so Dr. Kirkland wouldn’t pay no mind. But then I started using it when Luke was gone. After a while, we’d stay in here together. Everybody knew, but nobody said nothing, since Dr. Kirkland didn’t. Some of these women round here called me a ho, but I didn’t pay no mind. Narrow-minded and mean, most of them.”
“My grandfather knew about the affair?”
“He’d have to have been blind not to. And that’s one thing Dr. Kirkland ain’t.”
“What do you think about my grandfather, Louise?”
She takes her time answering. “Dr. Kirkland’s a hard man, in some ways. But soft in others. He’s tough on dogs and horses. He’s good at taking care of people, though. Saved a lot of lives out here over the years. Saved my uncle after a chain saw accident. Lost his arm at the shoulder and damn near bled to death, but Dr. Kirkland pulled him through. The doctor’s got a temper, now. If he gets mad, there’s hell to pay. Luke’s the only man I ever saw defy him and get away with it.”
“When was this?” I’m sure I never saw anything like that. In my experience, Grandpapa’s word was always law.
“Dr. Kirkland and a cousin of mine was breaking some horses one spring. One of those broncs was stubborn, and Dr. Kirkland lost his head. He tied that horse to a fence and started beating it with a hoe. That animal was screaming something terrible. Dr. Kirkland was using the handle end at first, but the more he beat that horse, the madder he got. I think he was about to flip that hoe around and start chopping that poor creature to pieces when Luke grabbed his arm.”
“No,” I whisper, unable to imagine such a scene.
She nods once with an exaggerated motion. “Dr. Kirkland’s a big man, you know that. And strong as an ox back then. But Luke knew things he never showed nobody. He caught ahold of Dr. Kirkland’s arm some way that he couldn’t move it. Dr. Kirkland was yelling he was gonna kill Luke when he got loose. He tried to beat Luke with his other hand, but Luke did something to that arm he was holding, and Dr. Kirkland turned white and dropped down to his knees.”
“My God. What happened?”
“Luke kept squeezing until Dr. Kirkland let go of that hoe. Then Luke patted that horse, turned, and walked off into the woods.”
“Did my grandfather do anything to get back at Luke?”
Louise shakes her head. “I reckon he did. He shot that horse five minutes later.”
“Jesus.”
“It don’t pay to cross Dr. Kirkland. He don’t play.”
A strange current of emotion wells up from my soul. “Louise, what would you say if I told you Grandpapa killed Luke that night? Not a prowler?”
She stares at me for several moments, then begins shaking her head like a superstitious native confronted by a ghost. “Don’t tell me nothing like that. I don’t even want to think that.”
“If it scares you that much,” I say softly, “you must think it could be true.”
She finally stops shaking her head. “What are you saying, Cat?”
“Nothing. Crazy thoughts.” I want to tell her what I know, but something stops me. Is it my lack of proof of Grandpapa’s motive or just common decency? Louise has precious memories of my father. What good could it do for me to smudge them with accusations of child molestation? “May I see your bedroom, Louise?”
A knowing expression comes into her face. “You want to see if Luke built the bed.”
“Yes.”
“Come look.”
She leads me to a door set in the back wall and opens it. In the small bedroom beyond stands a bed that looks as if it belongs in a Manhattan loft. Four brushed-steel posts support an oval-shaped canopy frame, and within the headboard and footboard are ornate patterns rendered in different metals, some of them reminiscent of the mandala on Dr. Malik’s office wall. It’s one of the most detailed pieces my father ever did.
“My God,” I whisper. “Do you know what that bed is worth?”
Louise laughs. “I got an idea. I guess this bed is what I’ve got instead of retirement.”
“Please don’t let anybody steal it. And if you ever want
to sell it, give me a call.”
“I may take you up on that one day.”
She leads me back into the front room, and we stand in a suddenly awkward silence. The economic gulf between us could scarcely be greater than it is.
“How old are you, Louise?”
“Forty-six.”
Older than I thought, but still only fifteen years older than I am. “What do you do for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She looks at the floor. “I got a man here takes care of me. I just keep up this house for…well, you know why.”
This wasn’t what I was hoping to hear. “Is the man Jesse Billups?”
Louise sighs, and for a moment I dread her answer. “Not Jesse,” she says. “Henry. The man who drove you onto the island. He ain’t pretty like Luke, but he’s got a good heart.”
“Are you married?”
“I ain’t interested in getting married. I dreamed of it for a long time, but…the man I wanted to marry got killed. That was the end of that dream for me.”
I reach out and take hold of her hand. I never met this woman before today, yet I feel more intimately bound to her than to people I’ve known my whole life. When I think about what Grandpapa told me about my father’s death, it makes no sense. How could the man this woman loved so profoundly commit unspeakable acts with a child? With his own child. And yet…the professional in me knows that such things happen.
“Sounds like the rain’s slacked up,” Louise says.
“You’re right. I should go now, while I can. Do you have a car?”
She shakes her head. “No, and Henry’s gone to Lafayette to see his kids. They stay with his ex-wife.”
“What about Jesse?”
She opens a kitchen drawer and takes out a cell phone. After dialing, she listens, then says, “Jesse, this is Louise. I still got Miss Ferry with me at my place. She needs to get back to Natchez. You carry your narrow ass back here and take her to her car. Call me back and tell me you’re on your way.”
She hangs up and looks at me helplessly.
“Does anybody else have a car we can borrow?” I ask.
“Lots of people here own cars, but they keep them on the mainland, by the ferry dock.”
“What do they use for transportation here?”
“There’s five pickups on the island, and Jesse got the keys to all of them. Use to be, lots of people had keys. But Dr. Kirkland started complaining about the gas they were using, so Jesse keeps all the keys now.”
“What do you do in an emergency?”
“Make do. But Jesse’ll call back in a minute. He’s probably just checking that everything’s tied down tight for the storm. The fishing boat on the south end, maybe.”
“No, he left the island. He said he had to get some supplies on the mainland.”
Louise looks bewildered. “That’s funny. Jesse don’t leave the island too often. And never at the same time Henry’s gone.”
“Somebody called his cell phone, and he said he had to leave right then.”
“He say who it was?”
“No.”
“That don’t sound right.” She shrugs, then goes to the front window and looks out. The sky is darker, if anything. “If Jesse doesn’t call back, you can stay the night with me. I know it’s not what you’re used to, but I can sleep on the sofa. You can sleep in the bed your daddy made.”
I stand motionless in the close air of the shack, listening to the rain drumming over the drone of the air conditioner. My skin is crawling. “There’s no guarantee the bridge will be there tomorrow, is there?”
“Depends on the rain. But if it’s flooded out, somebody can take you back to your car by boat.”
“I appreciate it, but I think I’d rather get back to my car now, if you think I can make it.”
She turns from the window and looks at me. “Oh, you can make it, if you don’t mind getting wet. You can use my bike. Ain’t much lightning out there. And if you cut through the woods, the rain won’t be as bad, ’cause the trees make a tunnel over the road. Cut down through the hunting camp, then—when you hit the road to the boat ramp—turn back up along the shore till you come to the bridge.”
“I can do that.”
“Sure you can. It ain’t even dark yet, really. Just cloudy. And I got a light on the front of my bike. I’ve ridden around this island in the middle of the night when I needed to. It’s safe. Just watch you don’t slide off the gravel into a ditch or something. Lots of snakes this year on the back side.”
I shiver, recalling the hallucinatory snakes I saw in my apartment as the d.t.’s began. “How fast can the water rise? Could the bridge be covered up already?”
“I doubt it. If the river wasn’t already so high, you wouldn’t have nothing to worry about. But you’ll be at the bridge in ten minutes. If you do have a problem, call my cell phone. Stay where you are, and I’ll come get you.”
“How will you come?”
“On my two feet.” She takes my cell phone from me and programs her number into its memory. “If I need to, I can get there in no time. And if Jesse calls back, I’ll send him after you. He can drive you across and bring my bike back both.”
I move to the door, then turn back and hug Louise.
She squeezes me tightly. “You going through some tough times, girl. You come back and see me sometime.”
I promise that I will, though I suspect I won’t ever be here again. Then I walk onto the porch and carry her bicycle down to the path.
“Hey!” Louise calls through the rain. “Wait!”
I stand in the rain while she disappears inside for a minute. The air out here has a greenish tinge, like the look the sky gets before a tornado. The wind is blowing hard from the south, and the raindrops sting my face. I hope she’s getting me a raincoat, but when she returns, she’s carrying what looks like a Ziploc sandwich bag.
“For your cell phone!” she says over the wind.
Taking the Baggie, I slip my phone and car keys inside it, crush the bag to get the air out, then zip it shut and stuff it into the front pocket of my jeans. I start to pedal away, but Louise grabs my arm, her eyes desperate.
“I know you didn’t tell me everything,” she says. “I know you got something bad on your back. All I know is this: ain’t no man all good or all bad. And if you find out something bad about Luke, I don’t want to know. Okay?”
I wipe the rain from my eyes and nod.
“Time will heal you,” Louise says. “Won’t nothing else do any good at all.”
I feel an eerie certainty that if I don’t start for the bridge now, I won’t make it to my car. Pushing down hard on the right pedal, I struggle toward the road that cuts through the woods toward the hunting camp.
The wind slaps the rain against my right cheek and ear, but soon I’m passing the shacks by the lake. The porches that were full of people an hour ago hold only dogs now. I’m alone again.
When I turn south on the camp road, the wind hits me full in the face, pushing against my body like a sail, trying to drive me back toward the lake. I lean low over the handlebars to cut my resistance and bear down hard on the pedals. The shoulder is so muddy in places that I almost take a spill, but the farther down the island I ride, the sandier the soil gets, and soon I’m making good time despite the weather.
Beneath the black storm clouds, the world has gone gray. Everything ahead looks as flat as a black-and-white photograph. The gray cabins of the hunting camp are almost invisible in the shadows beneath the trees. Even the grass has lost its color. Only a slight brightness low in the sky to the west lets me know the sun is there at all.
There should be a left turn soon. If not, I’ll come to the southern tip of the island, a rolling, mosquito-infested hell of scrub-covered dunes and muddy slews that I always avoided when possible.
Out of the grayness ahead, the old channel of the river appears, and relief washes through me. A mile up the road that runs along this channel is the bridge that leads to my car
. I’m about to turn onto it when two bright beams of light swing across me from behind. I look back over my shoulder.
Headlights.
They look high enough to belong to a truck like the one Henry was driving. Louise told me she would send Jesse after me if he called her back.
I stop the bike at the turn and wait.
To my right, a blue-white beam much larger than those cast by the headlights illuminates the far shore, then sweeps south again. For a moment this puzzles me. Then I realize it’s the spotlight on a push boat. A quarter mile south of where I stand, the old channel runs back into the main channel of the Mississippi River. A push-boat captain driving a string of barges upstream is checking his course.
The driver of the pickup has spotted me. Forty yards away, he flicks his lights to high beam. The rain is blowing almost horizontally through their glare. I raise my hand to wave, then freeze.
The truck hasn’t slowed at all.
As the hair on my neck stands up, something Sean told me before we were lovers sounds in my head: That hair standing up on the back of your neck is two hundred million years of evolution telling you to get the hell out of wherever you are—
The truck engine roars with acceleration in the same moment that I dive into the ditch on the left side of the road. I regain my feet as the truck crushes Louise’s bicycle beneath its bumper and bounces after me across the ditch. My only hope is the trees, but I can’t outsprint a truck, not even for thirty yards.
An unholy grinding of gears gives me hope. The bike must have been caught in the truck’s linkage. As the driver tries to manhandle his vehicle off the twisted wreckage beneath it, I reach the first giant willow and dart behind it.
Looking back, I see headlights bouncing up and down. Then suddenly the truck’s motor dies. The headlights remain on though, and the interior light flicks on behind them. There’s a figure inside the cab—a man—but his face is obscured by distance and rain. He leans into the space between the door and the body of the truck. I’m squinting my eyes to try to see his face when a flash blooms in the dark and splinters pierce my left cheek. Only then does the super-sonic crack of the rifle bullet reach me.
I run.