”The grease balls think you know something you shouldn't. Or you're trying to queer their action over here.“
”They're wrong.“
”One of them said, “Let the Rambo fucks take care of it.” They laughed, and another guy said, “Yeah, let 'em send in Charlie.” Does that mean something to you?“
”Yeah, it does. I was fired. Y'all clean up your own mess.“
”I don't think anger will help us, Dave.“
”When a drunk gets eighty-sixed out of a bar, he's not supposed to buy drinks for the people still inside. You want a cup of coffee, Sheriff?“
Clete came by at noon, drank a beer under the awning on the dock, then insisted I drive into New Iberia with him.
”I've got to work,“ I said.
”That's my point,“ he said, crushing his beer can, his porkpie hat cocked over his scarred eyebrow, his face full of fun.
We drove down East Main, past the old Burke home and the Steamboat House, into the shade of live oaks, past the city library and the stone grotto dedicated to Christ's mother, which was the only remnant of the old Catholic elementary school and which in antebellum days had been the home of George Washington Cable, past the law offices of Moleen Bertrand and the Shadows into the full sunlight and practicality of the business district.
Clete parked by the side of a small office on the corner. The backs of the buildings were old, redbrick, still marked with nineteenth-century lettering. Fifty yards away a tugboat moved down Bayou Teche toward the drawbridge.
Two men in tennis shoes who were too slight to be professional movers were carrying furniture from a U-Haul van into the office.
”Clete?“ I said.
”Your licenses will be a breeze. Till we get the paperwork done, I'll put you down as my associate or some bullshit like that.“
”You should have asked before you did this.“
”I did. You weren't listening,“ he said.
”Who're these guys?“
”Uh, a package deal from Nig Rosewater Bail Bonds. Nig owes me for a couple of skips I ran down, in fact, it was these two guys right here, and the guys owe Nig for their bonds, so Nig threw in some furniture and everybody wins.“
”Clete, I really appreciate this but-“
”It's a done deal, big mon. Tell the guys where you want your desk and file cabinets. Make sure they don't walk out of here with any keys, either.“ He looked at his watch, then glanced up the street. ”Here she comes. Look, take my car back to your house when you get finished, okay? Helen's taking me to lunch.“
He saw the look in my eyes.
”So she bats from both sides of the plate. Who's perfect?“ he said.
The two of them drove away, waving out the windows as I stood on the sidewalk between Clete's junker Caddy and an office window that had already been lettered with the words ROBICHEAUX, PURCEL,
AND ASSOCIATES INVESTIGATIVE AGENCY.
At twilight I drove out to the Bertrand plantation and parked by the grove of gum trees. I didn't have permission to be there, and didn't care. I had wanted to believe my involvement with Sonny Boy, Julia and Moleen, Luke and Ruthie Jean and Bertie Fontenot was over. But I knew better. Even Sweet Pea Chaisson did.
This piece of land was our original sin, except we had found no baptismal rite to expunge it from our lives. That green-purple field of new cane was rooted in rib cage and eye socket. But what of the others whose lives had begun here and ended in other places? The ones who became prostitutes in cribs on Hopkins Street in New Iberia and Jane's Alley in New Orleans, sliced their hands open with oyster knives, laid bare their shin bones with the cane sickle, learned the twelve-string blues on the Red Hat gang and in the camps at Angola with Leadbelly and Hogman Matthew Maxey, were virtually cooked alive in the cast-iron sweat boxes of Camp A, and rode Jim Crow trains North, as in a biblical exodus, to southside Chicago and the magic of 1925 Harlem, where they filled the air with the music of the South and the smell of cornbread and greens and pork chops fixed in sweet potatoes, as though they were still willing to forgive if we would only acknowledge their capacity for forgiveness.
Tolstoy asked how much land did a man need.
Just enough to let him feel the pull of the earth on his ankles and the claim it lays on the quick as well as the dead.
Chapter 23
THOUGH MY name was on the window, I didn't go to the office and, in fact, didn't formally accept the partnership, even though Bootsie and I needed the income.