Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

He tilted the bottle up again, one hand on his hip, and emptied it.

“A mellow start, but it don’t keep the snakes in their basket very long, do it?”

“Nope.”

“What we’re talking about here is the need for more serious fluids. You got any JD or Beam lying around?”

“I’m afraid not, Dixie.” I rang up his sale and put his change on the counter.

“These babies will have to do, then.” He opened another Jax, took a long pull, and blew out his breath. “A preacher once asked me, ‘Son, can you take two drinks and walk away from it?’ I said, ‘I can’t tell you the answer to that, sir, ’cause I never tried.’ That ought to be funny, but I guess it’s downright pathetic, ain’t it?”

“What’s up, partner?”

He looked around the empty bait shop.

“How about taking me for a boat ride?” he said.

“I’m kind of tied up right now.”

“I’ll pay you for your time. It’s important, man.”

His green eyes looked directly into mine. I walked to the bait-shop door.

“I’ll be back in a half hour,” I called to Batist, who was still eating his lunch under the umbrella.

“I appreciate it, Dave. You’re righteous people.” Dixie Lee popped open a paper bag and put four bottles of Jax inside.

I took him in an outboard down the bayou, past the four-corners, where the old flaking general store with its wide gallery sat in the shade of an enormous oak tree. Some old men and several Negroes from a road-maintenance crew were drinking soda pop on the gallery.

The wake from the outboard swelled up through the lily pads and cattails and slapped against the cypress roots along the bank. Dixie Lee lay back against the bow, the beer bottle in his hand filled with amber sunlight, his eyes narrowing wistfully in the sun’s refraction off the brown water. I cut the engine and let us float on our own wake into an overhang of willow trees. In the sudden quiet we could hear a car radio playing an old Hank Williams song in the shell parking lot of the general store.

“Good God Almighty, is that inside my head or outside it?” he asked.

“It’s from the four-corners,” I said, and smiled at him. I took out my Puma pocketknife and shaved the bark off a wet willow stick.

“Boy, it takes me back, though. When I started out, they said if you don’t play it like Hank or Lefty, it ain’t worth diddly-squat on a rock. They were right, too. Hey, you know the biggest moment I ever had in my career? It wasn’t them two gold records, and it sure wasn’t marrying some movie actress with douche water for brains. It was when I got to cut a live album with the Fat Man down in New Orleans. I was the only white artist he ever recorded with. Man, he was beautiful. He looked like a little fat baby pig up on that piano bench, with a silver shirt on and rhinestone coat and rings all over his fingers. He was grinning and rocking and pounding the keys with those little sausage fingers, sweat flying off his face, and the whole auditorium going apeshit. I mean with white broads trying to climb on the stage and people doing the dirty boogie in front of the cops. I mean it was his show, he owned them, man, but each time he finished a ride he’d point at me so the spotlight would swing over on my guitar and I’d get half of all that yelling out there. That cat had a generous heart, man.”

Dixie Lee shook his head and opened another Jax with his pocketknife. I looked at my watch.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a problem

I got, getting wrapped up in yesterday’s scrapbook. Look, I got something bad on my mind. In fact, it’s crazy. I don’t even know how to explain it. Maybe there’s nothing to it. Hell, I don’t know.”

“How about just telling me?”

“Star Drilling sent me and a couple of other leasemen up to Montana. On the eastern slope of the Rockies, what they call the East Front up there. Big gas domes, son. Virgin country. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Except there’s a problem with some wilderness areas and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

“But that don’t concern me. I’m just a leaseman, right? Fooling around with the Forest Service or Indians or these crazy bastards spiking trees—”

“Doing what?”

“A bunch of cult people or something don’t want anybody cutting down trees, so they hammer nails and railroad spikes way down in the trunk. Then some lumberjack comes along with a McCullough and almost rips his face off. But I don’t have any beef with these people. Everybody’s got their own scene, right? Let Star Drilling take care of the PR and the politics, and Dixie Lee will get through the day with a little JD and God’s good grace.

“But we came back for six weeks of deals and meetings at the Oil Center in Lafayette. So I’m staying at the motel with these two other lease guys. The company picks up all the bills, the bar’s always open, and a black guy serves us Bloody Marys and chilled shrimp by the pool every morning. It should have been a nice vacation before I go back to wheeling and dealing among the Indians and the crazies.

“Except two nights ago one of the other lease guys has a party in his rooms. Actually it’s more like a geek show. Broads ripping off their bras, people spitting ice and tonic on each other. Then I guess I got romantic and went into the bedroom with this big blond gal that looked like she could throw a hog over a fence.”

His eyes shifted away from me, and his cheeks colored slightly. He drank again from the Jax without looking back at me.