In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead Part 33

"By the way, do you know why Goldman might be with a bunch of attorneys?"

"Who knows why these Hollywood sonsofb.i.t.c.hes do anything? You're lucky, Dave. I wish I was still a real cop. I do miss it."

He brushed with the backs of his fingers at the starch-white scar on his throat.

A HALF HOUR LATER, AS RAIN CLOUDS CHURNED THICK ANDblack overhead, like curds of smoke from an oil fire, I parked my truck by the baseball diamond of my old high school, now deserted for the summer, where Baby Feet and I had played ball as boys. He stood at home plate, wearing only a pair of spikes and purple gym shorts, the black hair on his enormous body glistening with sweat, his muscles rippling each time he belted a ball deep into the outfield with a shiny blue aluminum bat.

I walked past the oak trees that were carved with the games of high school lovers, past the sagging, paintless bleachers, across the worn infield gra.s.s toward the chicken-wire backstop and the powerful swing of his bat, which arched b.a.l.l.s like tiny white dots high over the heads of Cholo and a handsome shirtless man whose rhythmic movements and smooth body tone reminded me of undulating water. A canvas bag filled with baseb.a.l.l.s spilled out at Julie's feet. There were drops of moisture in his thick brows, and I could see the concentrated, hot lights in his eyes. He bent over effortlessly, in spite of his great weight, picked up a ball with his fingers, and tossed it in the air; then I saw his eyes flick at me, his left foot step forward in the batter's box, just as he swung the aluminum bat and ripped a grounder like a rocket past my ankles.

I watched it bounce between the oak trees and roll into the street.

"Pretty good shot for a foul ball," I said.

"It looked right down the line to me."

"You were never big on rules and boundaries, Feet."

"What counts is the final score, my man."

Another ball rang off his metal bat and arched high into the outfield. Cholo wandered around in a circle, trying to get his glove under it, his reddish-gray curls glued to his head, his glove outstretched like an amphibian's flipper. The ball dropped two feet behind him.

"I hear you've been busy out at the movie set," I said.

"How's that?"

"Tearing up a young guy who didn't do anything to you."

"There's two sides to every story."

"This kid hurt you in some way, Julie?"

"Maybe he keeps bad company."

"Oh, I see. Elrod Sykes gave you a bad time? He's the bad company? You're bothered by a guy who's either drunk or hungover twenty-four hours a day?"

"Read it like you want." He flipped a ball into the air and lined it over second base. "What's your stake in it, Dave?"

"It seems Elrod felt he had to come to my defense with you. I wish he hadn't done that."

"So everybody's sorry."

"Except it bothers me that you seriously hurt a man, maybe because of me."

"Maybe you flatter yourself." He balanced himself on one foot and began tapping the dirt out of his spikes with his bat.

"I don't think so. You've got a big problem with pride, Julie. You always did."

"Because of you? If my memory hasn't failed me, some years ago a colored shoe-shine man was about to pull real hard on your light chain. I don't remember you minding when I pulled your b.u.t.t out of the fire that night."

"Yesterday's box score, Feet."

"So don't take everything so serious. There's another glove in the bag."

"The stunt man left town. He's not going to file charges. I guess you already know that."

He rubbed his palm up and down the tapered shank of the bat.

"It was a chicken-s.h.i.t thing to do," I said.

"Maybe it was. Maybe I got my point of view, too. Maybe like I was with a broad when this f.u.c.king wild man starts beating on the side of my trailer."

"He's staying at my house now, Julie. I want you to leave him alone. I don't care if he gets in your face or not."

He flipped another ball in the air and whanged it to the shirtless man deep in left field. Then he took a hard breath through his nostrils.

"All right, I got no plans to bother the guy," he said. "But not because you're out here, Dave. Why would I want to have trouble with the guy who's the star of my picture? You think I like headaches with these people, you think I like losing money? . . . We clear on this now? . . . Why you keep staring at me?"

"A cop over in Lafayette thinks you set me up."

"You mean that shooting in front of Red's Bar? Get serious, will you?" He splintered a shot all the way to the street, then leaned over and picked up another ball, his stomach creasing like elephant hide.

"It's not your style, huh?" I said.

"No, it's not."

"Come on, Julie, fair and square-look back over your own record. Even when we were kids, you always had to get even, you could never let an insult or an injury pa.s.s. Remember the time you came down on that kid's ankle with your spikes?"

"Yeah, I remember it. I remember him trying to take my eyes out with his."

The sky had turned almost black now, and the wind was blowing dust across the diamond.

"You're a powerful and wealthy man. Why don't you give it up?"

"Give what up? What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?"

"Carrying around all that anger, trying to prove you're big s.h.i.t, fighting with your old man, whatever it is that drives you."

"Where do you think you get off talking to me like this?"

"Come on, Julie. We grew up together. Save the hand job for somebody else."

"That's right. That's why maybe I overlook things from you that I don't take from n.o.body else."

"What's to take? Your father used to beat you with a garden hose. I didn't make that up. You burned down his nightclub."

"It's starting to rain. I think it's time for you to go." He picked up another ball and bounced it in his palm.

"I tried, partner."

"Oh, yeah? What's that mean?"

"Nothing."

"No, you mean you came out here and gave me a warning."

"Why do you think every pitch is a slider, Julie?"

He looked away at the outfield, then back at me.

"You've made remarks about my family. I don't like that," he said. "I'm proud to be Italian. I was even proud of my old man. The people who ran this town back then weren't worth the sweat off his b.a.l.l.s. In New Iberia we were always 'wops,' 'dagos,' and 'guineas' because you c.o.o.na.s.ses were too f.u.c.king stupid to know what the Roman Empire was. So you get your nose out of the air when you talk about my family, or about my problems, or anything about my life, you understand what I'm saying, Dave?"

"Somebody made you become a dope dealer? That's what you're telling me?"

"I'm telling you to stay the f.u.c.k away from me."

"You don't make a convincing victim, Julie. I'll see you around. Tell your man out there not to spit on the ball."

"What?"

"Isn't that your p.o.r.no star? I'd be careful. I think AIDS is a lot more easily transmitted than people think."

I saw the rain pattering in the dust as I walked away from him toward the bleachers behind first base. Then I heard a ball ring off the aluminum bat and crash through the tree limbs overhead. I turned around in time to see Julie toss another ball into the air and swing again, his legs wide spread, his torso twisting, his wrists snapping as the bat bit into the ball and laced it in a straight white line toward my face.

WHEN I OPENED MY EYES I COULD SEE A THICK LAYER OF BLACK clouds stretched across the sky from the southern horizon toa silken stretch of blue in the north. The rain had the warm amber color of whiskey, but it made no sound and it struck against my skin as dryly as flower petals in a windstorm.

The general sat on the bottom bench in the bleachers, coatless, the wind flowing through his shirt, a holstered cap-and-ball revolver hanging loosely from his right shoulder. The polished bra.s.s letters CSA gleamed softly on the crown of his gray hat. I could smell horses and hear teamsters shouting and wagons creaking in the street. Two enlisted men separated themselves from a group in the oak trees, lifted me to my feet, and sat me down on the wood plank next to the general.

He pointed toward first base with his crutch. My body lay on its side in the dirt, my eyes partially rolled. Cholo and the p.o.r.nographic actor were running toward home plate from the outfield while Julie was fitting the aluminum bat back in the canvas ball bag. But they were all moving in slow motion, like creatures that were trying to burst free from an invisible gelatinous presence that encased their bodies.

The general took a gold watch as thick as a b.u.t.termilk biscuit from his pants pocket, snapped open the cover, glanced at the time, then twisted around in his seat and looked at the soldiers forming into ranks in the street. They were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g their bayonets on the ends of their rifles, sliding their pouches of paper cartridges and minie" b.a.l.l.s to the centers of their belts, tying their haversacks and rolled blankets across their backs so their arms would be unenc.u.mbered. I saw a man put rolls of socks inside his coat and over his heart. I saw another man put a Bible in the same place. A boy not over sixteen, his cap crimped tightly on his small head, unfurled the Stars and Bars from its wooden staff and lifted it popping into the wind.

Then in the north, where the sky was still blue and not sealed by storm clouds, I saw bursts of black smoke, like birds with ragged wings, and I heard thunder echoing in the trees and between the wooden buildings across the street.

"What's that?" I asked him.

"You've never heard that sound, the electric snap, before ? "

"They're air bursts, aren't they?"

"It's General Banks's artillery firing from down the Teche. He's targeted the wrong area, though. There's a community of darkies under those sh.e.l.ls. Did you see things like that in your war?"

"Yes, up the Mekong. Some villagers tried to run away from a barrage. They got caught out in the rice field. When we buried them, their faces all looked like they had been inside a terrible wind."

"Then you know it's the innocent about whom we need to be most concerned?"

Before I could answer I saw Cholo and the man without a shirt staring down at my body, their faces beaded with rain. Julie pulled the drawstring tight on the ball bag and heaved it over his shoulder.

"Get in the Caddy, you guys," he said.

"What happened, Julie?" Cholo said. He wore tennis shoes without socks, a tie-dyed undershirt, and a urine-yellow bikini knotted up tightly around his s.c.r.o.t.u.m. Hair grew around the edges of his bikini like tiny pieces of copper wire.

"He got in the way of the ball," Julie said.

"The guy's got a real goose egg in his hair," the shirtless man said. "Maybe we ought to take him to a hospital or something."

"Leave him alone," Julie said.

"We just gonna leave him here?" Cholo said.

"Unless you want to sit around out here in the rain," Julie said.

"Hey, come on, Feet," Cholo said.

"What's the problem?" Julie said.

"He's not a bad guy for a cop. Y'all go back, right?"

"He's got diarrhea of the mouth. Maybe he learned a lesson this time," Julie said.

"Yeah, but that don't mean we can't drop the guy off at the hospital. I mean, it ain't right to leave him in the f.u.c.king rain, Julie."

"You want to start signing your own paychecks? Is that what you're telling me, Cholo?"

"No, I didn't say that. I was just trying to act reasonable. Ain't that what you're always saying? Why p.i.s.s off the locals?"

"We're not p.i.s.sing off anybody. Even his own department thinks he's a drunk and a pain in the a.s.s. He got what he deserved. Are you guys coming or not?" Julie said.

He opened the trunk of the purple Cadillac limousine and threw the ball bag clattering inside. The p.o.r.n actor followed him, wiping his chest and handsome face with his balled-up shirt. Cholo hesitated, stared after them, then pulled the first-base pad loose from its anchor pins and rested it across the side of my face to protect it from the rain. Then he ran after the others.

The blue strip of sky in the north was now filled with torn pieces of smoke. I could hear a loud snap each time a sh.e.l.l burst over the distant line of trees.

"What were you going to tell me?" I said to the general.

"That it's the innocent we need to worry about. And when it comes to their protection, we shouldn't hesitate to do it under a black flag."

"I don't understand."

"I feel perhaps I've deceived you."

"How?"

"Perhaps I gave you the indication that you had been chosen as part of some chivalric cause."

"I didn't think that, general."

His face was troubled, as though his vocabulary was inadequate to explain what he was thinking. Then he looked out into the rain and his eyes became melancholy.

"My real loss wasn't in the war," he said. "It came later."He turned slowly and looked into my face. "Yellowjack took not only my life but also the lives of my wife and daughter, Mr. Robicheaux."