In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead Part 5

"You promise you're going to eat your supper?" I said.

"Of course. What difference does it make if you eat ice cream before supper instead of after? You're silly sometimes, Dave."

"Oh, I see."

"You have funny ideas sometimes."

"You're growing up on me."

"What?"

"Never mind."

She brought Tripod's pan in from the porch and put a scoop of ice cream in it. The rain had slackened, and I could see the late sun breaking through the mist, like a pink wafer, above the sugarcane at the back of my property.

"Oh, I forgot, a man called," she said. "That's his number."

"Who was it?"

"He said he was a friend of yours. I couldn't hear because it was real noisy."

"Next time have the person spell his name and write it on the blackboard with his number, Alf."

"He said he wanted to talk with you about some man with one arm and one leg."

"What?"

"He said a soldier. He was mixing up his words. I couldn't understand him."

"What kind of soldier? That doesn't make too much sense, Alf."

"He kept burping while he talked. He said his grandfather was a Texas ranger. What's a Texas ranger?"

Oh, boy, I thought.

"How about Elrod T. Sykes?" I said.

"Yeah, that's it."

Time for an unlisted number, I thought.

"What was he talking about, Dave?"

"He was probably drunk. Don't pay attention to what drunk people say. If he calls again like that when Bootsie and I aren't here, tell him I'll call him and then hang up."

"Don't you like him?"

"When a person is drunk, he's sick, Alafair. If you talk to that person while he's drunk, in a funny way you become like him. Don't worry, I'll have a talk with him later."

"He didn't say anything bad, Dave."

"But he shouldn't be calling here and bothering little people," I said, and winked at her. I watched the concern in her face. The corners of her mouth were turned down, and her eyes looked into an empty s.p.a.ce above her ice-cream dish. "You're right, little guy. We shouldn't be mad at people. I think Elrod Sykes is probably an all-right guy. He probably just opens too many bottles in one day sometimes."

She was smiling again. She had big, wide-set white teeth, and there was a smear of ice cream on her tan cheek. I hugged her shoulders and kissed her on the top of her head.

"I'm going to run now. Watch the shrimp, okay?" I said. "And no more horseback rides for Tripod. Got it, Alf?"

"Got it, big guy."

I put on my tennis shoes and running shorts and started down the dirt road toward the drawbridge over the bayou. The rain looked like flecks of spun gla.s.s in the air now, and the reflection of the dying sun was blood-red in the water. After a mile I was sweating heavily in the damp air, but I could feel the day's fatigue rise from my body, and I sprang across the puddles and hit it hard all the way to the bridge.

I did leg stretches against the rusted girders and watched the fireflies lighting in the trees and alligator gars turningin the shadows of a flooded canebrake. The sound of the tree frogs and cicadas in the marsh was almost deafening now.

At this time of day, particularly in summer, I always felt a sense of mortality that I could never adequately describe to another person. Sometimes it was like the late sun was about to burn itself into a dead cinder on the earth's rim, never to rise again. It made sweat ran down my sides like snakes. Maybe it was because I wanted to believe that summer was an eternal song, that living in your fifty-third year was of no more significance than entering the sixth inning when your sidearm was still like a resilient whip and the prospect of your fork-ball made a batter swallow and step back from the plate.

And if it all ended tomorrow, I should have no complaint, I thought. I could have caught the bus any number of times years ago. To be reminded of that fact I only had to touch the punji-stick scar, coiled like a flattened, gray worm, on my stomach; the s.h.i.+ny, arrow-shaped welts from a bouncing Betty on my thigh; the puckered indentation below my collarbone where a .38 round had cored through my shoulder.

They were not wounds received in a heroic fas.h.i.+on, either. In each case I got them because I did something that was careless or impetuous. I also had tried to destroy myself in increments, a jigger at a time.

Get outside your thoughts, partner, I told myself. I waved to the bridge tender in his tiny house at the far end of the bridge and headed for home.

I poured it on the last half mile, then stopped at the dock and did fifty pushups and stomach crunches on the wood planks that still glowed with the day's heat and smelled of dried fish scales.

I walked up the incline through the trees and the layer of moldy leaves and pecan husks toward the lighted gallery of my house. Then I heard a car behind me on the dirt road and I turned and saw a taxicab stop by my mailbox. A man andwoman got out, then the man paid the driver and sent him back toward town.

I rubbed the salt out of my eyes with my forearm and stared through the gloom. The man drained the foam out of a long-necked beer bottle and set the empty behind a tree trunk. Then the woman touched him on the shoulder and pointed toward me.

"Hey, there you are," Elrod Sykes said. "How you doin', Mr. Rob.i.+.c.heaux? You don't mind us coming out, do you? Wow, you've got a great place."

He swayed slightly. The woman, Kelly Drummond, caught him by the arm. I walked back down the slope.

"I'm afraid I was just going in to take a shower and eat supper," I said.

"We want to take y'all to dinner," he said. "There's this place called Mulate's in Breaux Bridge. They make gumbo you could start a new religion with."

"Thanks, anyway. My wife's already fixed supper."

"Bad time of day to knock on doors, El," Kelly Drummond said, but she looked at me when she said it, her eyes fixed directly on mine. She wore tan slacks, flats, and a yellow blouse with a b.u.t.ton open that exposed her bra. When she raised her hand to move a blond ringlet off her forehead, you could see a half-moon sweat stain under her arm.

"We didn't mean to cause a problem," Elrod said. "I'm afraid a drunk-front blew through the area this afternoon. Hey, we're all right, though. We took a cab. Did you notice that? How about that? Look, I tell you what, we'll just get us some liquids to go down at the bait shop yonder and call us a cab."

"Tell him why you came out, El," Kelly Drummond said.

"That's all right. We stumbled in at a bad time. I'm real sorry, Mr. Rob.i.+.c.heaux."

"Call me Dave. Would you mind waiting for me at the bait shop a few minutes, then I'll shower and drive y'all home."

"You sure know how to avoid the stereotypes, don't you?" the woman said.

"I beg your pardon?" I said.

"n.o.body can ever beat up on you for showing off your southern hospitality," she said.

"Hey, it's okay," Elrod said, turning her by the arm toward the bait shop.

I had gone only a short distance up the slope when I heard the woman's footsteps behind me.

"Just hold on a minute, d.i.c.k Tracy," she said.

Behind her I could see Elrod walking down the dock to the shop, where Batist, the black man who worked for me, was drawing back the canvas awning over the tables for the night.

"Look, Ms. Drummond-"

"You don't have to invite us into your house, you don't have to believe the stuff he says about what he sees and hears, but you ought to know that it took guts for him to come out here. He f.u.c.ks up with Mikey, he f.u.c.ks up with this film, maybe he blows it for good this time."

"You'll have to excuse me, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department."

She carried a doeskin drawstring bag in her hand. She propped her hand on her hip. She looked up at me and ran her tongue over her bottom lip.

"Are you that dumb?" she asked.

"You're telling me a mob guy, maybe Baby Feet Balboni, is involved with your movie?"

"A mob guy? That's good. I bet y'all really send a lot of them up the road."

"Where are you from, Ms. Drummond?"

"East Kentucky."

"Have you thought about making your next movie there?"

I started toward the house again.

"Wait a minute, Mr. Smart a.s.s," she said. "Elrod respectsyou. Did you ever hear of the Chicken Ranch in LaGrange, Texas?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it was?"

"It was a hot-pillow joint."

"His mother was a prost.i.tute there. That's why he never talks about anyone in his family except his gran'daddy, the Texas ranger. That's why he likes you, and you'd d.a.m.n well better be aware of it."

She turned on her heel, her doeskin bag hitting her rump, and walked erectly down the slope toward the bait shop, where I could see Elrod opening a beer with his pocket knife under the light bulb above the screen door.

Well, you could do a lot worse than have one like her on your side, Elrod, I thought.

I TOOK A SHOWER, DRIED OFF, AND WAS b.u.t.tONING ON A FRESH s.h.i.+rt in the kitchen when the telephone rang on the counter. Bootsie put down a pan on the stove and answered it.

"It's Batist," she said, and handed it to me: "Qui t'as pr'estfaire?" I said into the receiver.

"Some drunk white man down here done fell in the bayou," he said.

"What's he doing now?"

"Sittin' in the middle of the shop, drippin' water on my flo'."

"I'll be there in a minute," I said.

"Dave, a lady wit' him was smokin' a cigarette out on the dock didn't smell like no tobacco, no."

"All right, podna. Thanks," I said, and hung up the phone.

Bootsie was looking at me with a question mark in the middle of her face. Her auburn hair, which she had pinned up in swirls on her head, was full of tiny lights.

"A man fell in the bayou. I have to drive him and his girlfriend home," I said.

"Where's their car?"

"They came out in a cab."

"A cab? Who comes fis.h.i.+ng in a cab?"

"He's a weird guy."

"Dave-" she said, drawing my name out in exasperation.

"He's one of those actors working out at Spanish Lake. I guess he came out here to tell me about something."

"Which actor?"

"Elrod Sykes."

"Elrod Sykes is out at the bait shop?"

"Yep."

"Who's the woman with him?"

"Kelly Drummond."

"Dave, I don't believe it. You left Kelly Drummond and Elrod Sykes in the bait shop? You didn't invite them in?"

"He's bombed, Boots."

"I don't care. They came out to see you and you left them in the shop while you took a shower?"

"Bootsie, this guy's head glows in the dark, even when he's not on chemicals."