Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

When I got home Dixie showed me the business card a Missoula city detective had left in the mailbox. The detective had penciled a note on the back to the effect that he wanted me to call him, since he had missed me twice at the house. I suspected this had to do with Dan Nygurski’s calling the local police about Charlie Dodds’s visit to my house. I dropped the card on top of the icebox, put Alafair to bed, and watched a late show with Dixie Lee.

I slept through until morning without dreaming or once getting up in the night. When I woke and stepped out on the porch with a cup of coffee, the river was green and running fast in the shadows of the bridge, riffling over the boulders in the deepest part of the current, and the sunlight through the maples in the yard looked like spun glass.

CHAPTER

11

It was Sunday morning. I took Alafair to nine o’clock mass, then we fixed cush-cush and ate breakfast with Dixie Lee. He had shaved, pressed his slacks, and put on a white shirt.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“Some Holy Rollers asked me to play piano at their church. I hope the plaster don’t fall out of the ceiling when I walk in.”

“That’s good.”

He looked down at his coffee cup, then played with the big synthetic diamond ring on his finger.

“I got something bothering me,” he said.

“What is it?”

He looked at Alafair.

“Alafair, why don’t you start on the dishes while Dixie helps me with something outside?” I said.

We went out to the truck, and I took the small whisk broom from behind the seat and began sweeping out the floor.

“I’m afraid I’m going to drink. I woke up scared about it this morning,” he said.

“Just do it a day at a time. Do it five minutes at a time if you have to.”

“Why the fuck am I scared, man?”

“Because it’s fear that makes us drink.”

“I don’t understand. It don’t make sense. I felt real good yesterday. Today I’m shaking inside. Look at my hands. I feel like I just got off a jag.”

“Dixie, I’m not a psychologist, but you’re going into a church today that’s like the one you grew up in. Maybe you’re dealing with some memories that bring back some bad moments. Who knows? Just let it go, partner. You’re sober this morning. That’s all that counts.”

“Maybe some people ain’t supposed to make it.”

“You’re not one of them.”

“You’d really throw me out if I went back on the juice?”

“Yep.”

“Somehow that just made a cold wind blow through my soul.”

“You work the steps, and I promise all that fear, all those weird mechanisms in your head, will go away.”

“What mechanisms?”

“Strange thoughts and images, things that don’t make any sense, stuff that you won’t talk about with anybody. If you work the program, all those things will gradually disappear.”

The morning was cool, and there was a breeze off the river, but there were drops of perspiration on his forehead and in his eyebrows.

“Dave, I just feel downright sick inside. I can’t explain it.”