In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead Part 15

"Did you ever read the pa.s.sage in the Bible about what happens to people who corrupt children?" I said.

He looked at me with a stupefied expression on his face.

"Start thinking about millstones or get into another line of work," I said.

I had seventeen dollars in my billfold. I gave twelve to the two runaway girls and the address of an AA street priest who ran a shelter and wouldn't report them.

CHAPTER 9.

Outside, the air tasted like pennies and felt like it had been superheated in an electric oven. Even the wind blew off the pavement like heat rising from a wood stove. I started my truck, unb.u.t.toned my shirt to my waist, and headed toward I-10 and home.

When I pa.s.sed Lake Pontchartrain, the moon was up and small waves were breaking against the rim of gray sandy beach by the highway. I wanted to stop the truck, strip to my skivvies, wade out to the drop-off, then dive down through the descending layers of temperature until I struck a cold, dark current at the bottom that would wash the last five hours out of my pores.

But Lake Pontchartrain, like the city of New Orleans, was deceptive. Under its slate-green, capping waves, its moon-glazed surfaces, its twenty-four-mile causeway glowingwith electric light, waste of every kind lay trapped in the dark sediment, and the level of toxicity was so high that it was now against the law to swim in the lake.

I kept the truck wide open, the plastic ball on the floor stick shaking under my palm, all the way to the Mississippi bridge at Baton Rouge. Then I rolled down the elevated causeway through the Atchafalaya marsh and the warm night air that smelled of sour mud and hyacinths blooming back in the trees. Out over the pewter-colored bays, the dead cypress trunks were silhouetted against burning gas flares and the vast black-green expanse of sawgra.s.s and flooded willow islands. Huge thunderclouds tumbled one upon another like curds of black smoke from an old fire, and networks of lightning were bursting silently all over the southern sky. I thought I could smell raindrops on the wind, as cool and clean and bright as the taste of white alcohol on the tip of the tongue.

Outside our bedroom window the pecan trees were motionless and gray, soaked with humidity, in the false dawn. Then the early red sun broke above the treeline in the marsh like a Lucifer match being scratched against the sky.

Bootsie slept on her side in her nightgown, the sheet molded against her thigh, her face cool, her auburn hair ruffled on the pillow by the window fan. In the early morning her skin always had a glow to it, like the pale pink light inside a rose. I moved her body against mine and kissed her mouth lightly. Without opening her eyes she smiled sleepily, slipped her arms around my back, widened her thighs, and pressed her stomach against me.

Out on the bayou, I thought I heard a ba.s.s leap from the water in a wet arc and then reenter the surface, slapping his tail, as he slid deep into the roots of the floating hyacinths.

Bootsie put her legs in mine, her breath warm against my cheek, one hand in the small of my back, her soft rump rolling against the bed; then I felt that heart-twisting moment begin to grow inside me, past any point of control, like a log dam in a canyon resisting a flooded streambed, then cracking and bursting loose in a rush of white water and uprooted boulders.

I lay beside her and held one of her hands and kissed the thin film of perspiration on her shoulders.

She felt my face with her fingers and touched the white patch in my hair as though she were exploring a physical curiosity in me for the first time.

"Ole Streak," she said, and smiled.

"Cops get worse names."

She was quiet a moment, then she said my name with a question mark beside it the way she always did when she was about to broach a difficult subject.

"Yes?" I said.

"Elrod Sykes called while you were in New Orleans. He wanted to apologize for coming to our house drunk."

"Okay."

"He wants to go to an AA meeting with you."

"All right, I'll talk to him about it."

She looked at the revolving shadows the window fan made on the wall.

"He's rented a big boat," she said. "He wants to go fishing out on the salt."

"When?"

"Day after tomorrow."

"What'd you tell him?"

"That I'd have to check with you."

"You don't think we should go?"

"He troubles me, Dave."

"Maybe the guy is psychic. That doesn't mean he's bad news."

"I have a strange feeling about him. Like he's going to do something to us."

"He's a practicing alcoholic, Boots. He's a sick man. How's he going to harm us?"

"I don't know. It's just the way I feel. I can't explain it."

"Do you think he's trying to manipulate me?"

"How do you mean?"

I raised up on one elbow and looked into her face. I tried to smile.

"I have an obligation to help other alcoholics," I said.

"Maybe it looks like Elrod's trying to pull some strings on me, that maybe instead of helping him I'll end up back on the dirty-boogie again."

"Let him find his own help, Dave."

"I think he's harmless."

"I should have listened to you. I shouldn't have invited them into the house."

"It's not good to do this, Boots. You're worrying about a problem that doesn't exist."

"He's too interested in you. There's a reason for it. I know it."

"I'll invite him to go to a meeting. We'll forget about the fishing trip."

"Promise me that, Dave."

"I do."

"You mean it, no going back on it?"

"You've got my word."

She cupped my fingers in her hand and put her head under my chin. In the shadowy light I could see her heart tripping against her breast.

I PARKED IN THE LOT BEHIND THE OFFICE AND WALKED TOWARDthe back door. Two uniformed deputies had just taken a black man in handcuffs into the building, and four others were drinking coffee out of foam cups and smoking cigarettes in the shade against the wall. I heard one of them use my name, then a couple of them laugh when I walked by.

I stopped and walked back to them.

"How y'all doing today?" I said.

"What's going on, Dave?" Rufus Arceneaux said. He had been a tech sergeant in the Marine Corps and he still wore his sun-bleached hair in a military crewcut. He took off his shades and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I'd better get back on it," one deputy said, flipped away his cigarette, and walked toward his cruiser.

"What's the joke about, Rufus?" I said.

"It's nothing I said, Dave. I was just quoting the boss man," Rufus said. His green eyes were full of humor as he looked at the other deputies.

"What did the sheriff have to say?"

"Hey, Dave, fair is fair. Don't lay this off on me," he said.

"Do you want to take the mashed potatoes out of your mouth and tell me what you're talking about?"

"Hey, come on, man," he said, chuckling.

"What the f.u.c.k, it's no big deal. Tell him," the deputy next to him said.

"The sheriff said if the governor of Lou'sana invited the whole department to dinner, Dave would be the one guy who'd manage to spit in the punch bowl."

Then the three of them were silent, suppressing their grins, their eyes roving around the parking lot.

"Drop by my office sometime today, Rufus," I said. "Anytime before five o'clock. You think you can work it in?"

"It's just a joke, Dave. I'm not the guy who said it, either."

"That's right. So it's nothing personal. I'd just like to go through your jacket with you."

"What for?"

"You've been here eight or nine years, haven't you?"

"That's right."

"Why is it that I always have the feeling you'd like to be an NCO again, that maybe you have some ambitions you're not quite telling us about?"

His lips became a tight, st.i.tched line, and I saw a slit of yellow light in his eye.

"Think about it and I'll talk to you later, Rufus," I said, and went inside the building, into the air-conditioned odor of cigar b.u.t.ts and tobacco spittle, and closed the door behind me.

Ten minutes later the sheriff walked into my office and sat down in front of my desk with his arms propped stiffly on his thighs. In his red-faced concentration he reminded me of a football coach sitting on the edge of a bench.

"Where do you think we should begin?" he said.

"You got me."

"From what I hear about that scene in the restaurant, you tried to tear that fellow apart."

"Those guys think they're in the provinces and they can do what they want. Sometimes you have to turn them around."

"It looks like you got your message across. Balboni had to take the guy to the hospital. You broke his tooth off inside his gums."

"It was a bad morning. I let things get out of control. It won't happen again."

He didn't answer. I could hear him breathing through his nose.

"You want some coffee?" I said.

"No."

I got up and filled my cup from my coffee maker in the corner.

"I've had two phone calls already about your trip to New Orleans last night," he said.

"What about it?"

He took a folded-back notebook out of his shirt pocket and looked at the first page.

"Did you ever hear of a black guy named Robert Brown?" he asked.

"Yep, that's Downtown Bobby Brown."

"He's trying to file charges against you. He says you smashed his face into a men's-room door at the bus depot."

"I see."

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Dave?"

"He's a pimp and a convicted child molester. When I found him, he was scamming two girls who couldn't have been over sixteen years old. I wonder if he pa.s.sed on that information when he filed his complaint."

"I don't give a d.a.m.n what this guy did. I'm worried about a member of my department who might have confused himself with Wyatt Earp."

"This guy's charges aren't going anywhere and you know it."