“How about that fish sandwich?” he said.
She followed him to McDonald’s in her car. They ate in a booth. Heat lightning flared in the clouds and died somewhere over the Gulf. She said little. He wondered about the images she had seen through the telescopic sight on a sniper’s rifle, images she had created with the slow squeeze of a trigger.
“You go somewhere in your own head sometimes?” she said.
“On occasion.”
“You know what they say.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Don’t go into a bad neighborhood by yourself.”
“It’s the only neighborhood I have,” he replied.
She finished her sandwich and wiped her mouth. There was lipstick on the paper napkin when she crumpled it in her hand.
“There’s a lady who stays over with Homer when I go out of town,” he said.
“It’s your call,” she said.
He cupped his cell phone. “I’ll be outside.”
The motel was halfway to Opelousas on the four-lane. There was a piney woods behind it and a fountain in front that glittered with pink and blue lights. She followed him there and went into the lobby by his side.
* * *
DURING THE NIGHT he dreamed of a ville burning, the sparks spinning into the sky. Then t
he dream changed and he heard the 105s coming in short on his position, a whistling sound like truck tires on a wet highway. When he woke, the ceiling was shaking with thunder. He went into the bathroom in his skivvies and opened the window. The only sound he heard was the wind in the pines, their needles orange with drought and blight.
When he went back to bed, he took his snub-nose out of its holster and slipped it under his pillow for reasons he didn’t understand. Audie Murphy did it. And probably thousands of other guys who never told anybody about it. Why not Clete Purcel? He lay awake most of the night, trying to provide himself explanations that had eluded him all his life.
* * *
ON A SATURDAY morning, Alafair came back early from filming outside St. Martinville. She went into the kitchen and took one of my diet Dr Peppers out of the icebox and drank it from the can.
“Something happen with the Hollywood crowd?” I said.
“They’re midlevel pond scum. Neither good nor bad. Just run-of-the-mill scum.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Levon Broussard.”
“What’s wrong with Levon?”
“He’s a closet elitist. Rather than work with conventional film people, he signed on with a bunch of simian throwbacks who hide behind sunglasses and are afraid to talk at the table because they sound like they have throat cancer and a vocabulary of fewer than a dozen words. In the meantime, he pretends.”
“Pretends what?”
“That he’s on a mission. He insists on hiring only union people. The food has to be of a certain organic quality. The actors should be included in our script meetings. The black actors have to be given more lines. I think this is all a cover-up for what’s really in his head.”
“What’s in his head?”
“Guilt. Hatred of the truth about his ancestors.”
“You knew this, Alf,” I said.