“Boy, you’re a careful one. A woman once told me my face looked like soil erosion. I think it was my wife. Watch out for Dixie Pugh, Robicheaux. He’ll sell you a bowl of rat turds and call it chocolate chip.”
“I changed my mind. I’ll share one thought with you, Mr. Nygurski. You didn’t come all the way down here to follow a guy like Dixie Lee around. No matter how you cut it, he’s not a long-ball hitter.”
“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.”
“What’s really going on up there?”
“Everything that’s going on in the rest of the country, except accelerated. It’s a real zoo story. All the big players are there, nosing up to the trough. Keep fooling around with that rock ’n’ roller and you’ll meet some of them.”
He walked off through the trees, his feet loud on the dead leaves and dried pecan husks.
The moon was down that night, the sky black, and trees of lightning trembled on the southern horizon. At four in the morning I was awakened by the rumble of dry thunder and the flickering patterns of light on the wall. A tuning fork was vibrating in my chest, but I couldn’t explain why, and my skin was hot and dry to the touch even though the breeze was cool through the window. I heard sounds that were not there: a car engine dying on the road, the footsteps of two men coming through the trees, a board squeaking on the porch, the scrape of a prizing bar being inserted between the front door and the jamb. They were the sounds of ghosts, because one man had been electrocuted in his bathtub with his radio in his lap and the other had died in an attic off St. Charles when five hollow-point rounds from my .45 had exploded up through the floor into the middle of his life.
But fear is an irrational emotion that floats from object to object like a helium balloon that you touch with your fingertips. I opened my dresser drawer, took my .45 from under my work shirts, slipped the heavy clip into the magazine, and lay back down in the dark. The flat of the barrel felt hot against my thigh. I put my arm across my eyes and tried to fall asleep again. It was no use.
I put on my sandals and khakis and walked through the dark trunks of the pecan trees in the front yard, across the road and down to the dock and the bait shop. Then the moon rose from behind a cloud and turned the willow trees to silver and illuminated the black shape of a nutria swimming across the bayou toward the cattails. What was I doing here? I told myself that I would get a head start on the day. Yes, yes, certainly that was it.
I opened the cooler in which I kept the soda pop and the long-necked bottles of Jax, Dixie, and Pearl beer. Yesterday’s ice had melted, and some of the beer labels floated in the water. I propped my arms on the lip of the cooler and shut my eyes. In the marsh I heard a nutria cry out to its mate, which always sounds like the hysterical scream of a woman. I plunged my hands into the water, dipped it into my face, and breathed deeply with the shock of the cold. Then I wiped my face on a towel and flung it across the counter onto the duckboards.
I went back up to the house, sat at the kitchen table in the dark, and put my head on my forearms.
Annie, Annie.
I heard bare feet shuffle on the linoleum behind me. I raised my head and looked up at Alafair, who was standing in a square of moonlight, dressed in her pajamas that were covered with smiling clocks. Her face was filled with sleep and puzzlement. She kept blinking at me as though she were waking from a dream, then she walked to me, put her arms around my neck, and pressed her head against my chest. I could smell baby shampoo in her hair. Her hand touched my eyes.
“Why your face wet, Dave?” she said.
“I just washed it, little guy.”
“Oh.” Then, “Something ain’t wrong?”
“Not ‘ain’t.’ Don’t say ‘ain’t.’”
She didn’t answer. She just held me more tightly. I stroked her hair and kissed her, then picked her up and carried her back into her bedroom. I laid her down on the bed and pulled the sheet over her feet. Her stuffed animals were scattered on the floor. The yard and the trees were turning gray, and I could hear Tripod running up and down on his clothesline.
She looked up at me from the pillow. Her face was round, and I could see the spaces between her teeth.
“Dave, is bad people coming back?”
“No. They’ll never be back. I promise.”
And I had to look away from her lest she see my eyes.
One week later I took Alafair for breakfast in New Iberia, and when I unfolded a discarded copy of the Daily Iberian I saw Dixie Lee’s picture on the front page. It was a file photo, many years old, and it showed him onstage in boatlike suede shoes, pegged and pleated slacks, a sequined white sport coat, a sunburst guitar hanging from his neck.
He had been burned in a fire in a fish camp out in Henderson swamp. A twenty-two-year-old waitress, his “female companion,” as the story called her, had died in the flames. Dixie Lee had been pulled from the water when the cabin, built on stilts, had exploded in a fireball and crashed into the bayou. He was listed in serious condition at Our Lady of Lourdes in Lafayette.
He was also under arrest. The St. Martin Parish sheriff’s department had found a dental floss container of cocaine under the front seat of his Cadillac convertible.
I am not going to get involved with his troubles, I told myself. When you use, you lose. A mean lesson, but when you become involved with an addict or a drunk, you simply become an actor in a script that they’ve written for you as well as themselves.
That afternoon Alafair and I made two bird feeders out of coffee cans and hung them in the mimosa tree in the backyard, then we restrung Tripod’s clothesline out in the pecan trees so he wouldn’t have access to Clarise’s wash. We moved his doghouse to the base of a tree, put bricks under it to keep it dry and free of mud, and set his food bowl and water pans in front of the door. Alafair always beamed with fascination while Tripod washed his food be
fore eating, then washed his muzzle and paws afterward.
I fixed étouffée for our supper, and we had just started to eat on the picnic table in the backyard when the phone rang in the kitchen. It was a nun who worked on Dixie Lee’s floor at Lourdes. She said he wanted to see me.
“I can’t come, Sister. I’m sorry,” I said.