"Yes, I live there. But my parents came from Waterford, in the south of Ireland."
But he didn't seem to take note of her parents' origins. His eyes were so green, his stare so invasive, she found herself averting his gaze.
"Would you be knowing a Father James Dolan in New Orleans?" the man asked.
"Why, yes, he's a friend of mine."
"I understand he's a lovely man. Works in a parish where they still say a traditional Mass, does he?"
"Yes, but he's "
"He's what?"
"He's not a traditional man. Excuse me, but you're staring at me."
"I am? Oh, I beg your pardon, Sister. But you remind me of a mother superior who ran the orphanage where I once lived. What a darling' sack of potatoes she was. She used to make me fold my hands like I was about to pray, then whack the shite out of me with a ruler. She was good at pulling hair and giving us the Indian burn, too. Have you done the same to a few tykes?"
He drank from his glass of ice and soda and lime, an innocuous light in his eyes. "Not running off, are you? You forgot your book. Here, I'll bring it to you," he said.
But she rushed through the vestibule into the next car, the big wood beads of her fifteen-decade rosary clattering on her hip, the whoosh of the doors like wind howling in a tunnel.
On Saturday afternoon Father Jimmie and I went together to the Flannigan lawn party at Fox Run, down Bayou Teche, in St. Mary Parish. The home had been constructed during the early Victorian era to resemble a steamboat, with porches shaped like the fantail and captain's bridge on a ship and cupolas and balconies on the upper stories that gave a spectacular view of the grounds, the antebellum homes on the opposite side of the bayou, and the sugarcane fields that seemed to recede over the rim of the earth.
Live oaks draped with moss arched over the roof of the house, and palm trees grew in their shade to the second-story windows. A visitor to the lawn part
y could ride either western or English saddle around a white-fenced track by the horse stables, or play tennis on either a grass or red-clay court. The buffet tables groaned with food that had been prepared at Galatoire's and Antoine's in New Orleans. The drink table was a drunkard's dream.
The guests included the state insurance commissioner, who was under a federal grand jury indictment and would later become the third state insurance commissioner in a row to go to prison; petrochemical executives from Oklahoma and Texas whose wives' voices rose above all others; two New York book editors and a film director from Home Box Office; an ex-player from the National Football League who rented himself out as a professional celebrity; career military officers and their wives who had retired to the Sunbelt; the former governor's mistress whose evening gown looked like pink champagne poured on her skin; and state legislators who had once been barbers and plumbers and who genuinely believed they shared a common bond with their host and his friends.
Father Jimmie had worn his Roman collar, and the consequence was that he and I stood like an island in the middle of the lawn party while people swirled around us, deferential and polite, touching us affectionately if need be but avoiding the eye contact that would take them away from all the rewards a gathering at Castille Lejeune's could offer.
After a half hour I wished I had not come. I went inside the house to use the bathroom, but someone was already inside. A black drink waiter in the kitchen directed me to another bathroom, deeper in the house, one I had to find by cutting through a small library and den filled with fine guns and Korean War-era memorabilia.
A steel airplane propeller was mounted on the wall, and under it was a framed color photograph of Castille Lejeune and a famous American baseball player, both of them dressed in Marine Corps tropicals, standing in front of two vintage Grumman Hellcat fighter planes parked on a runway flanged by Quonset huts and palm trees. In another photo Lejeune stood at attention in his dress uniform while President Harry Truman pinned the Distinguished Flying Cross on his coat.
But the photos that caught my eye were not those of Castille Lejeune's career as a Marine Corps pilot. A picture taken at his wedding showed him and his young wife, in her bridal gown, standing on the steps of a church. She was tall, dark featured, and absolutely beautiful. She also looked like the twin of her daughter, Theodosha.
When I went back outside the sun was setting beyond the trees on the bayou, the sugarcane fields purple in the dusk, the air cool and damp, thick with cigarette smoke and smelling of alcohol that had soaked into tablecloths or had been spilled by the guests on their clothes.
In my absence Father Jimmie had cornered both Castille Lejeune and Merchie Flannigan and was talking heatedly with them, his coat separating on his chest when he raised his arms to make a point, one foot at a slight angle behind the other, in the classic position of a martial artist.
"Let me finish if you would," he said when Merchie Flannigan tried to speak. "You say you're cleaning up the Crudups' property? The place is floating in sludge."
"I'm sure Merchie is doing his best. Why don't you help yourself to the food, Father?" Castille Lejeune said.
He was a trim, nice-looking man, with a lean face and steel gray hair that he combed straight back. He wore a white sports coat and dark blue shirt and a gold and onyx Mason's ring on his marriage finger.
"No, thanks," Father Jimmie said, wagging two fingers as though brushing Castille Lejeune's words from the air. "So let me see if I understand correctly. In 1951 you took a friend to Angola Prison to record Junior Crudup, but you have no idea what happened to Junior later?"
"I was doing a favor for my wife. She was fond of folk music. That was a long time ago," Lejeune answered, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his gaze wandering among his guests.
"But a retired guard, a man named Strunk, says you got Junior pulled off the levee gang."
"I don't remember that. I wouldn't have had that kind of influence," Lejeune said.
"Really? " Father Jimmie said. "You wouldn't throw a fellow a slider, would you?"
The insult to a man of his age and position seemed not to register in Lejeune's face. Instead, his eyes crinkled again. "Have a good time," he said. He placed his hand warmly on Father Jimmie's arm and walked away.