“It’s impressive, sir. I’ll have to get a copy,” I said, returning the book to him.
“Will you tell me the purpose of your visit?”
“I’m trying to exclude some possibilities in an investigation.”
“Seems like you’re an expert in vagueness, Mr. Robicheaux. Have you considered a career in politics?”
I had sat down in one of his rattan chairs. The bamboo creaked under me in the silence. It is difficult to describe the accent and diction of the class of people represented by Mr. Abelard. Their dialect is called plantation English and was influenced largely by British tutors hired to teach the children of plantation society. Unlike the speech of yeomen, it does not vary through the states of the Old Confederacy. If you have heard the recorded voice of William Faulkner or Robert Penn Warren, you have heard the same pronunciations and linguistic cadence characteristic of Mr. Abelard’s generation in Louisiana. They could read from a phone book and you would swear you were listening to the cadences found inside a Shakespearean sonnet.
But well-spoken elderly gentleman or not, he had asked for it, I told myself. “In one way or another, my visit is related to your house guest, Robert Weingart. What kind of fellow would you say he is?”
“His prison background, that kind of thing?”
“For openers.”
“The man’s a mess. What else do you want to know?”
“Do you think it’s good for Kermit to be hanging around with a fellow like that?”
“That’s a bit personal, isn’t it?”
“Have you checked out Weingart’s criminal history?”
“You don’t have to convince me of the evil that’s in this world, Mr. Robicheaux. I’ve dealt with it in every form for a lifetime. Do you have a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Jewel!” he called.
Immediately, the black woman was at the door, waiting, her eyes not quite meeting his, her muscular body held straight and motionless, as though the virtue of patience had been ironed into the starch of her uniform.
“Get me a cigarette. Don’t argue about it, either. Just bring me the cigarette and a match before Kermit comes back and starts fussing at me,” Mr. Abelard said. He turned to me. “Don’t get old, Mr. Robicheaux. Age is an insatiable thief. It steals the pleasures of your youth, then locks you inside your own body with your desires still glowing. Worse, it makes you dependent upon people who are a half century younger than you. Don’t let anyone tell you tha
t it brings you peace, either, because that’s the biggest lie of all.”
Jewel returned and placed a single cigarette in his hand, then lit it for him with a paper match. He puffed on it, wetting the filter, seemingly more pleased by the acquisition of the cigarette than his smoking of it. He continued talking about almost every subject imaginable except the presence of a career criminal like Robert Weingart in his house. I looked at my watch. “Where’s your grandson, sir?”
“Out yonder, almost to the salt. They’ll be back momentarily,” Mr. Abelard said.
“They?” I said.
“Jewel, will you bring me an ashtray?” he called out.
“Sir, who is ‘they’?”
But he turned his attention away from me to acquiring the ashtray, then began fumbling with it until he had positioned it in his lap. “You’d think by this time the woman could figure out that a man in a wheelchair can’t smoke a cigarette without something to put the ashes in.”
I had given up trying to find out who was in the boat with Kermit. Or maybe I didn’t want to know. “Miss Jewel seems like a devoted caretaker,” I said.
“I wish Jewel had a better life than the one she was given. But how many of us see the consequences when we step over forbidden lines?”
“Pardon?” I said.
“The racial situation of the South is one we inherited, and for good or bad we did the best we could with it. I just wish I had shown more personal restraint when I was in my middle years.”
“I’m not following you, sir.”
“The woman is my daughter. What did you think I was talking about?”