Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

“You have a larger agenda, Dave. I think it has something to do with me,” she said.

“Not me. By the way, you play a mean game of racquetball for a woman who smokes.”

“How kind.”

“The other day I noticed your gold and leather cigarette lighter. Did Jim Gable give you that? Y’all must be pretty tight.”

She got up from the table with her club soda in her hand.

“My apologies to Bootsie for saying this, but you’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” she said, and walked toward the dressing room, her pleated skirt swishing across the tops of her thighs.

“You read my mail?” Alafair said. It was evening, the sun deep down in the trees now, and she was grooming Tex, her Appaloosa, in the railed lot by his shed. She stared at me across his back.

“The letter was lying on your bed. Bootsie saw Johnny’s name on it. It was inadvertent,” I replied.

“You didn’t have the right to read it.”

“Maybe not. Maybe you know what you’re doing. But I believe he’s a dangerous man.”

“Not the Johnny O’Roarke I know.”

“You always stood up for your friends, Alafair. But this guy is not a friend. The prison psychologist said he’s a sick man who will probably die by his own hand and take other people with him.”

“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

“How about it on the language?”

“You admit he saved our lives, but

you run him down and take his head apart, a person you don’t know anything about, then you tell me to watch my language. I just don’t expect crap like that from my father.”

“Has he tried to see you?”

“I’m not going to tell you. It’s none of your business.”

“Remeta’s a meltdown, Alf.”

“Don’t call me that stupid name! God!” she said, and threw down the brush she had been using on Tex and stormed inside the house.

That night I dreamed about a sugar harvest in the late fall and mule-drawn wagons loaded with cane moving through the fog toward the mill. The dirt road was frozen hard and littered with stalks of sugarcane, and the fog rolled out of the unharvested cane on each side of the road like colorless cotton candy and coated the mules’ and drivers’ backs with moisture. Up ahead the tin outline of the mill loomed against the grayness of the sky, and inside I could hear the sounds of boilers overheating and iron machines that pulverized the cane into pulp. Immediately behind the mill a stubble fire burned in a field, creeping in serpentine red lines through the mist.

The dream filled me with a fear I could not explain. But I knew, with a terrible sense of urgency, I could not allow myself to go farther down the road, into the mill and the grinding sounds of its machinery and the fire and curds of yellow smoke that rose from the field beyond.

The scene changed, and I was on board my cabin cruiser at dawn, on West Cote Blanche Bay, and the fogbank was heavy and cold on the skin, sliding with the tide into the coastline. To the north I could see Avery Island, like two green humps in the mist, as smooth and firm-looking as a woman’s breasts. The waves burst in strings of foam against the white sleekness of the bow, and I could smell the salt spray inside my head and bait fish in a bucket and the speckled trout that arched out of the waves and left circles like rain rings in the stillness of the swells.

When I woke I went into the kitchen and sat in the dark, my loins aching and my palms tingling on my thighs. I held a damp hand towel to my eyes and tried to think but couldn’t. Even though I was awake now, I did not want to look at the meaning behind the dreams. I went back to bed and felt Bootsie stir, then touch my chest and turn on her hip and mold her body against me.

She was already wet when I entered her, and she widened her thighs and hooked her feet loosely inside my legs, slipping one hand down to the small of my back while she moved in a slow, circular fashion under me, as she always did when she wanted to preserve the moment for both of us as long as she could.

But I felt the heat rise in me, like fire climbing upward along a hard, bare surface, then my mouth opened involuntarily and I closed my eyes and pressed my face between her breasts.

I sat on the edge of the bed, depleted, my face in shadow, one hand still covering the tops of Bootsie’s fingers, ashamed that I had used my wife to hide from the violent act I knew my alcoholic mind was planning.

24

Early Sunday morning I heard a car with a blown muffler pull into the drive and continue to the back of the house before the driver cut the engine. I slipped on my khakis and went into the kitchen and looked into the backyard and saw Clete Purcel sitting alone at the redwood picnic table, his Marine Corps utility cap on his head. He had a take-out cup of coffee between his hands, and he kept looking over his shoulder at the dirt road.

I went outside and eased the screen shut so as not to wake Bootsie and Alafair.