“I’m sorry your wife is dead. She come at me. I didn’t do nothing wrong. If you won’t accept that, go fuck yourself.”
“You had your warning,” I said.
“My family heard that. What’s the sheriff gonna say if I call him and tell him that? Answer me that. Yeah, I didn’t think so. Fuck you twice.”
I walked away, the sugarcane fields and the horizon tilting, my long-sleeve white shirt peppered with sweat, a war taking place in my chest that I knew I would never win.
* * *
CLETE HAD TWO offices, one in New Orleans, one in New Iberia. When he worked out of his New Iberia office, he rented a cottage at the Teche Motel on East Main, down the bayou from my house. When I woke Sunday morning, there were clouds of thick white fog bumping against the tree trunks in the backyard, like cotton on the floor of a gin. I saw a raccoon on top of Tripod’s hutch, its coat shiny with dew. I went to the back door and looked through the screen. The coon had climbed into an oak tree and was looking at me from atop a limb. I pushed open the screen. “Tripod?”
Then he was gone. I went outside in my pajamas and slippers and looked up at the branches but saw no sign of him. I went back inside and dressed and ate breakfast and went to M
ass at St. Edward’s. When I returned home, Clete’s metallic-purple Cadillac was parked in the driveway, the top up, his stocking feet sticking out the back window. He was asleep on the backseat with a pillow over his face. He smelled like a beer truck.
I went inside and made coffee and warmed a pan of milk and put four cinnamon rolls in the oven, then went into the backyard again and looked for the coon. Tripod had died years ago, but I often dreamed of him in my sleep, as I did my other pets, and I wondered if animals, like people I’ve known, have ways of contacting us again. A half hour later, Clete came through the back door, his face wrinkled on one side by the pillow, his eyes bleary.
“You just hit town?” I said.
“I’m not sure what I did. I was drinking Jack with a beer back in Morgan City, then my lights went out. You got a beer?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll drink kerosene if you’ve got it.” He sat down at the breakfast table. He was wearing his porkpie hat and the long-sleeve tropical shirt he had bought in Miami. “You got any uppers?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“You want me to go?”
“No, I fixed you some breakfast. Just don’t get sick on the floor.”
“Something weird happened yesterday. I was trying to think my way through it. That’s why I was drinking depth charges. You know, when you’re arguing with yourself and wondering if you’re letting somebody work your crank. My head feels like a basketball.”
“What are we talking about, Clete?”
“That douchebag called me.”
“Which douchebag?”
“The one who tried to evict me—Jimmy Nightingale. He says we can work out my problem on the reverse mortgage. I can refinance and let his company have a quarter-acre lot I own in Biloxi. He’ll also introduce me to a stockbroker who’ll let me buy some surefire winners on the margin. I asked him why he was doing all this. He says because you talked to him.”
“I did.”
“You don’t think he’s trying to shaft me?”
“He wants me to introduce him to Levon Broussard.”
Clete looked blank for a moment. “The writer who’s got the wife with outstanding bongos? She jogged by my office a couple of times. I hear she’s nuts.”
“Has anyone ever used the term ‘arrested development’ to you?”
“Yeah, the marriage counselor who was screwing my ex while he was counseling us. You think I should take the deal?”
“What’ll happen if you don’t?”
“The guys I owe in Vegas and Reno are real shitheads. Guys I used to work with. Use your imagination.”
“I have thirty thousand at Vanguard. You can have it.”