Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

But Max Coll had hung up. Father Jimmie leaned his head down on his hand, the stink of the jail still on his clothes, Snuggs the cat pacing back and forth on the table his tail dragging across Father Jimmie's face. He felt more tired than he had ever been in his life, vain and used up, now sullied by the accusation of molester, even though it was a lie.

He knew the rumor would always follow him, regardless of where he went or what he did. A wave of revulsion and anger washed through him and made him clench his fists. Is this what all the years in the seminary, the struggles with celibacy and bigots and dictatorial and obtuse superiors had been about? To end up with his name and life's work soiled by an accusation that made his skin crawl?

Why didn't he quit running a game on himself? He posed as the altruist, but other people constantly had to get him out of trouble. If he had wanted to be a true missionary and take real risks, why hadn't he joined the Maryknolls? He disdained the role of the traditional priest, but in his self-imposed piety he had become little more than a noisy gadfly dedicated to causes Carrie Nation might have supported.

He had just lectured a tormented man on his violence, although he, Jimmie Dolan, had just profited from it, and if truth be known he was glad he was on the street and perhaps secretly glad his false accusers had gotten their just deserts.

Better to marry than to burn, St. Paul had said. Better to be a bourbon priest or a diocesan sycophant than a self-canonized fool, Father Jimmie thought.

"What do you think, Snuggs?" he said.

Snuggs answered by nudging his head into Father Jimmie's chin.

Father Jimmie went into the bedroom, flung his clothes in the corner, and got under the shower. The water coughed in the pipes, then seemed to whisper the word hypocrite in his ear.

The South has changed dramatically since the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Anyone who says otherwise has either not been there or wishes to keep old wounds green and tender as part of a personal agenda. And nowhere has the change been more visible than in the once recalcitrant states of the Deep South.

But that evening, when I took Clotile Arceneaux to supper on East Main, I tried to convince myself otherwise. I told myself the furtive glances at our table, the awkwardness of friends who felt they should stop by and say hello, were expressions of narrowness and latent racism to be expected in our culture.

The truth was no one took exception to Clotile's race. But they did take exception to my being out with another woman in less than a year of Bootsie's death.

It had turned cold again when we left the restaurant. Stars were spread across the sky, the horizon flaring with stubble fires, smoke boiling out of the electric lights at the sugar mills.

"You a little uncomfortable in there about something?" Clotile asked.

"Not me," I replied.

She opened the door to my pickup by herself and got in and closed it behind her, although I had tried to help her in. "You're really out of the past, aren't you?" she said.

"Probably," I said.

She smiled and didn't say anything. We drove toward the drawbridge and the theater complex on the other side of Bayou Teche. She had checked in to a motel out by the four-lane that afternoon.

We crossed the bayou and turned in to the theater parking lot. It was filled with teenagers, long lines of them extending out from the ticket windows.

"Friday night is a bad night for the movies here," I said.

"We don't need to go," she said, looking straight ahead.

I turned around in the parking lot, recrossed the bayou, and drove up East Main, without destination. The street seemed strangely empty, the stars shut out by the canopy of oaks overhead, my rented shotgun house dark and blown with un raked leaves. I hesitated, then pulled into my driveway and cut the engine. The ground fog in the trees and bamboo glistened in the lights from City Park across the bayou.

"Where's Father Dolan?" she asked.

"Staying with friends in Lafayette."

"You have a lot of regr

ets in your life, Robicheaux?" she said.

"All drunks do," I replied.

"How do you deal with them?"

"I don't labor over them anymore."

She still looked straight ahead. "I don't want to be a regret in somebody's life," she said.

"Want to meet my cat?" I said.