In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead Part 36

He didn't answer. There was a pained light in his eyes like someone had twisted barbed wire around his forehead.

"You don't have to talk, just listen to what these guys have to say about their own experience," I said.

"I'd rather pa.s.s tonight."

"Suit yourself," I said.

I told Bootsie where I was going and walked out to the truck. The cicadas droned from horizon to horizon under the vault of plum-colored sky. Then I heard Elrod walking through the leaves and pecan husks behind me.

"If I sit around here, I'll end up in the beer joint," he said, and opened the pa.s.senger door to the truck. Then he raised his finger at me. "But I'm going to ask you one thing, Dave. Don't ever accuse me of using Kelly again. If you do, I'm going to knock your teeth down your G.o.dd.a.m.n throat."

There were probably a number of things I could have said in reply; but you don't deny a momentary mental opiate tosomebody who has made an appointment in the Garden of Gethsemane.

THE BLACK JUKEJOINT IN ST. MARTINVILLE WAS SET BACK IN a grove of trees off a yellow dirt road not far from Bayou Teche. It was one of those places that could be dropped by a tornado in the middle of an Iowa cornfield and you would instantly know that its origins were in the Deep South. The plank walls and taped windows vibrated with noise from Friday afternoon until late Sunday night. Strings of Christmas-tree lights rimmed the doors and windows year round; somebody was barbecuing ribs on top of a tin barrel, only a few feet from a pair of dilapidated privies that were caked under the eaves with yellow jacket and mud-dauber nests; people copulated back in the woods against tree trunks and fought in the parking lot with knives, bottles, and razors. Inside, the air was always thick with the smell of muscatel, smoke, cracklings, draft beer and busthead whiskey, expectorated snuff, pickled hogs' feet, perfume, body powder, sweat, and home-grown reefer.

Sam Patin sat on a small stage with a canopy over it hung with red ta.s.sels and miniature whiskey bottles that clinked in the backdraft from a huge ventilator fan. His white suit gleamed with an electric purple glow from the floor lamps, and the waxed black surfaces of his twelve-string guitar winked with tiny lights. The floor in front of him was packed with dancers. When he blew into the harmonica attached to a wire brace on his neck and began rolling the steel picks on his fingers across an E-major blues run, the crowd moaned in unison. They yelled at the stage as though they were confirming a Biblical statement he had made at a revival, pressed their loins together with no consciousness of other people around them, and roared with laughter even though Hogman sang of a man who had sold his soul for an ox-blood Stetson hat he had just lost in a c.r.a.p game: Stagolee went runnin'

In the red-hot boilin' sun, Say look in my chiffro drawer, woman, Get me my smokeless .41.

Stagolee tole Miz Billy, You don't believe your man is dead, Come down to the barroom, See the .41 hole in his head.

That li'l judge found Stagolee guilty And that li'l clerk wrote it down, On a cold winter morning, Stagolee was Angola bound.

Forty-dollar coffin, Eighty-dollar hack, Carried that po' man to the burying ground, Ain't never comin' back.

Two feet away from me the bartender filled a tray with draft beers without ever looking at me. He was bald and had thick gray muttonchop sideburns that looked like they were pasted on his cheeks. Then he wiped his hands on his ap.r.o.n and lit a cigar.

"You sho' you in the right place?" he said.

"I'm a friend of Hogman's," I said.

"So this is where you come to see him?"

"Why not?"

"What you havin', chief?"

"A 7 Up."

He opened a bottle, placed it in front of me without a gla.s.s, and walked away. The sides of the bottle were warm and filmed with dust. Twenty minutes later Hogman had not taken a break and was still playing.

"You want another one?" the bartender said.

"Yeah, I would. How about some ice or a cold one this time?" I said.

"The gentleman wants a cold one," he said to no one inparticular. Then he filled a tall gla.s.s with cracked ice and set it on the bar with another dusty bottle of 7 Up. "Why cain't y'all leave him alone? He done his time, ain't he?"

"I look like the heat?" I said.

"You are the heat, chief. You and that other one out yonder."

"What other one? What are you talking about, partner?"

"The white man that was out yonder in that blue Mercury."

I got off the stool and looked into the parking lot through the Venetian blinds and the scrolled neon tubing of a Dixie beer sign.

"I don't see any blue Merc," I said.

" 'Cause he gone now, chief. Like it's a black people's club, like he figured that out, you understand what I'm sayin'?"

"What'd this guy look like?" I said.

"White. He look white. That he'p you out?" he said, tossed a towel into the tin sink, and walked down the duck-boards toward the far end of the bar.

Finally Hogman slipped his harmonica brace and guitar strap off his neck, looked directly at me, and went through a curtained door into a back storage room. I followed him inside. He sat on a wood chair, among stacks of beer cases, and had already started eating a dinner of pork chops, greens, and cornbread from a tin plate that rested on another chair.

"I ain't had a chance to eat today. This movie-star life is gettin' rough on my time. You want some?" he said.

"No, thanks." I leaned against a stack of beer cartons.

"The lady fix me these chops don't know how to season, but they ain't too bad."

"You want to get to it, Sam?"

"You t'ink I just messin' with you, huh? All right, this is how it play. A long time ago up at Angola I got into trouble over a punk. Not my punk, you understand, I didn't do noneof that unnatural kind of stuff, a punk that belong to a guy name Big Melon. Big Melon was growin' and sellin' dope for a couple of the hacks. Him and his punk had a whole truck patch of it behind the cornfield."

"Hogman, I'm afraid this sounds a little remote."

"You always know, you always got somet'ing smart to say. That's why you runnin' around in circles, that's why them men laughin' at you."

"Which men?"

"The ones who killed that n.i.g.g.e.r you dug up in the Atchafalaya. You gonna be patient now, or you want to go back to doin' it your way?"

"I'm looking forward to hearing your story, Hogman."

"See, these two hacks had them a good bidness. Big Melon and the punk growed the dope, cured it, bagged it all up, and the hacks sold it in Lafayette. They carried it down there themselves sometimes, or the executioner and another cop picked it up for them. They didn't let n.o.body get back there by that cornfield. But I was half-trusty then, livin' in Camp I, and I used to cut across the field to get to the hog lot. That's how come I found out they was growin' dope back there. So Big Melon tole the hack I knowed what they was doin', that I was gonna snitch them off, and then the punk planted a jar of julep under my bunk so I'd lose my trusty job and my good-time.

"I tole the hack it ain't right, I earn my job. He say, 'Hogman, you f.u.c.k with the wrong people in here, you goin' in the box and you goin' stay in there till you come out a white man.' That's what the bossman say. I tole him it don't matter how long they keep me in there, it still ain't right. They wrote me up for sa.s.sin' and put me to pickin' cotton. When I get down in a thin patch and come up short, they make me stand up all night on an oil barrel, dirty and smellin' bad and without no supper.

"I went to the bossman in the field, say I don't care what Big Melon do, what them hacks do, it ain't my bidness, I justwant my job back on the hog lot. He say, 'You better keep shut, boy, you better fill that bag, you better not put no dirt clods in it when you weigh in, neither, like you tried to do yesterday.' I say, 'Boss, what's I gonna do? I ain't put no dirt clods in my bag, I ain't give n.o.body trouble, I don't be carin' Big Melon want to grow dope for the hacks.' He knock me down with a horse quirt and put me in the sweat-box on Camp A for three days, in August, with the sun boilin' off them iron sides, with a bucket between my knees to go to the bat'room in."

He had stopped eating now and his face looked solitary and bemused, as though his own experience had become strange and unfamiliar in his recounting of it.

"You were a standup guy, Hogman. I always admired your courage," I said.

"No, I was scared of them people, 'cause when I come out of the box I knowed the gunbulls was gonna kill me. I seen them do it befo', up on the levee, where they work them Red Hat boys double-time from cain't-see to cain't-see. They shot and buried them po' boys without never missin' a beat, just the way somebody run over a dog with a truck and keep right on goin'.

"I had me a big Stella twelve-string guitar, bought it off a Mexican on Congress Street in Houston. I used to keep it in the count-man's cage so n.o.body wouldn't be foolin' with it while I was workin' or sleepin'. When I come out of the box and taken a shower and eat a big plate of rice and beans, I ax the count-man first thing for my guitar. He say, 'I'm sorry, Sam, but the bossman let Big Melon take it while you was in the box.'

"I waited till that night and went to Big Melon's 'hunk,' that's what we call the place where a wolf stay with his punk. There's that big fat n.i.g.g.e.r sittin' naked on his mattress, like a big pile of black inner tubes, while the punk is playin' my guitar on the floor, lipstick and rouge all over his face and pink panties on his li'l a.s.s.

"I say, 'Melon, you or your punk f.u.c.k wit' my guitar again and I gone cut that black d.i.c.k off. It don't matter if I go to the electric chair for it or not. I'm gonna joog you in the shower, in the chow line, or while you pumpin' your poke chops here. They's gonna be one fat n.i.g.g.e.r they gonna have to haul in a piano crate down to the graveyard.'

"Melon smile at me and say, 'We just borrowed it, Hogman. We was gonna give it back. Here, you want Pookie to rub your back for you?'

"But I knowed they was comin'. Two nights later, right befo' lockup, I was goin' to the toilet and I turn around and his punk is standin' in the do'. I say, 'What you want, Pookie?' He say, 'I'm sorry I was playin' your guitar, Hogman. I wants be yo' friend, maybe come stay up at your hunk some nights.'

"When I reached down to pull up my britches, he come outta his back pocket with a dirk and aim it right at my heart. I catched him around the neck and bent him backwards, then I kept bendin' him backwards and squeezin' acrost his windpipe, and he was floppin' real hard, shakin' all over, he s.h.i.+t in his pants, 'cause I could smell it, then it went snap, just like you bust a real dry piece of firewood acrost your knee.

"I look up and there's one of the hacks who's selling the dope. He say, 'Hogman, we ain't gonna let this be a problem. We'll just stuff this li'l b.i.t.c.h out yonder in the levee with them others. Won't n.o.body care, won't make no difference to n.o.body, not even to Big Melon. It'll just be our secret.'

"All that time they'd been smarter than me. They sent Pookie to joog me, but they didn't care if he killed me or if I killed him. It worked out for them just fine. They knew I'd never cause them no trouble. They was right, too. I didn't sa.s.s, I done what they tole me, I even he'ped hoe them dope plants a couple of times."

"I don't understand, Sam. You're telling me that the lynched black man was killed by one of these guards?"

"I ain't said that. I said they was a bunch of them sellin' that dope. They was takin' it out of the pen in a police car. What was the name of that n.i.g.g.e.r you dug out of the sandbar?"

"DeWitt Prejean."

"I'll tell you this. He was f.u.c.kin' a white man's wife. Start axin' what he done for a livin', you'll find the people been causin' you all this grief."

"Who's the guy I'm looking for?"

"I said all I can say."

"Look, Sam, don't be afraid of these gunbulls or cops from years ago. They can't harm you now."

He put a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, then took a pint bottle of rum from his coat pocket and unscrewed the cap with his thumb. He held the bottle below his mouth. His long fingers were glistening with grease from the pork chops he had eaten.

"This still the state of Lou'sana, or are we livin' somewhere else these days?" he said.

I COULDN'T SLEEP THAT NIGHT. I POURED A GLa.s.s OF MILK ANDwalked down by the duck pond in the starlight. A pair of mudhens spooked out of the flooded reeds and skittered across the water's surface toward the far bank. The pieces of the case wouldn't come together. Were we looking for a serial killer who had operated all over the state, a local psychopath, a pimp, or perhaps even a hit man from the mob? Were cops involved? Hogman thought so, and even believed there was someone out there with the power to send him back to prison. But his perspective was colored by his own experience as a career recidivist. And what about the lynched black man, DeWitt Prejean? Would the solution to his murder in 1957 lead us to the deviate who had mutilated Cherry LeBlanc?

No, the case was not as simple as Hogman had wanted me to think, even though he was obviously sincere and his fears about retribution were real. But I had no answers, either.

Unfortunately, they would come in a way that I never antic.i.p.ated. I saw Elrod come out of the lighted kitchen and walk down the slope toward the pond. He was s.h.i.+rtless and barefoot and his slacks were unb.u.t.toned over his skivvies. He clutched a sheet of lined notebook paper in his right hand. He looked at me uncertainly, and his lips started to form words that obviously he didn't want to speak.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"The phone rang while I was in the kitchen. I answered it so y'all wouldn't get woke up."

"Who was it? What's that in your hand?"

"The sheriff. . ." He straightened the piece of paper in his fingers and read the words to himself, then looked up into my face. "It's a friend of yours, Lou Girard, Dave. The sheriff says maybe you should go over to Lafayette. He says, I'm sorry, man, he says your friend got drunk and killed himself."

Elrod held the sheet of paper out toward me, his eyes looking askance at the duck pond. The moonlight was white on his hand.

CHAPTER 16.

He did it with a dogleg twenty-gauge in his little garage apartment, whose windows were overgrown with bamboo and banana trees. Or at least that's what the investigative officer, Doobie Patout, was telling me when I got there at 4 A.M., just as the photographer was finis.h.i.+ng and the paramedics were about to lift Lou's body out of a wide pool of blood and zipper it inside a black bag.

"There's a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey on the drain-board and a spilled bottle of Valium on the coffee table," Doobie said. "I think maybe Lou just got real down and decided to do it."

The single-shot twenty-gauge lay at the foot of a beige-colored stuffed chair. The top of the chair, the wall behind it, and the ceiling were streaked with blood. One side of Lou's face looked perfectly normal, the eye staring straight ahead like a blue marble pressed into dough. The opposite side of his face, where the jawbone should have been, had sunk into the rug like a broken pomegranate. Lou's right arm was pointed straight out onto the wood floor. At the end of his fingers, painted in red, were the letters SI.

"You guys are writing it off as suicide?" I said.

"That's the way it looks to me," Doobie said. The tops of his jug ears were scaled with sunburn. "He was in bad shape. The mattress is covered with p.i.s.s stains, the sink's full of raw garbage. Go in the bedroom and take a whiff."

"Why would a suicide try to write a note in his own blood?"

"I think they change their minds when they know it's too late. Then they want to hold on any way they can. They're not any different from anybody else. It was probably for his ex-wife. Her name's Silvia."

"Where's his piece?"

"On his dresser in the bedroom."

"If Lou wanted to buy it, why wouldn't he use his .357?" I said. I scratched at a lead BB that had scoured upward along the wallpaper. "Why would he do it with twenty-gauge birdshot, then botch it?"

"Because he was drunk on his a.s.s. It wasn't an unusual condition for him."

"He was helping me on a case, Doobie."

"And?"

"Maybe he found out something that somebody didn't want him to pa.s.s along."

The paramedics lifted Lou's body off the rug, then lowered it inside the plastic bag, straightened his arms by his sides, and zipped the bag over his face.

"Look, his career was on third base," Doobie said, as the medics worked the gurney past him. "His wife dumped him for another d.y.k.e, he was getting freebies from a couple of wh.o.r.es down at the Underpa.s.s, he was trembling and eating pills in front of the whole department every morning. You might believe otherwise, but there's no big mystery to what happened here tonight."

"Lou had trouble with booze, but I think you're lying about his being on a pad with hookers. He was a good cop."

"Think whatever you want. He was a drunk. That fact's not going to go away. I'm going to seal the place now. You want to look at anything else?"

"Is it true you were an executioner up at Angola?"

"None of your G.o.ddam business what I was."