Blood Memory (19 page)

Pearlie Washington is sitting on her porch reading the newspaper when I drive into the lot behind the slave quarters. Aunt Ann’s Acura hasn’t returned—or else it’s come and gone—but my grandfather’s Lincoln is back. I see no sign of Billy Neal, though, and I’m glad for it.

“Where you been?” Pearlie asks, not looking up from her copy of the
Natchez Examiner
. She’s wearing street clothes and a pair of reading glasses. They look expensive, unlike the Wal-Mart specials my mother wears.

“Driving.”

“
Driving?
That sounds like what you used to tell me when you was a teenager out chasing boys.”

“I never chased boys. They chased me.” There are two rockers on Pearlie’s porch. I sit in the empty one.

“Don’t bother asking,” she says. “I done told you all I know.”

“About what?”

“Whatever it is you gonna ask me about.”

I look over at the rows of blooming rosebushes. “Pearlie, I think you could talk from now until next week and not finish telling me everything you know about this family.”

“I ain’t paid to talk. I’m paid to clean.” She licks her finger and turns a page. “Dr. Overton’s wife died yesterday. She was a cranky old so-and-so.”

“Tell me about Jesse Billups.”

Pearlie goes still, like a deer sensing threat.

“Don’t even try to pretend you don’t know who he is.”

She looks up from her newspaper at last. “Who you been talking to?”

“A guy who served in Vietnam. Jesse Billups knew Daddy, Pearlie. I want you to tell me who and where he is. You know I’ll find out one way or the other. I can’t believe you never told me about him before.”

Pearlie closes her eyes as though in pain. “Jesse is my sister’s child. Half sister, really. We had the same mama but different daddies.”

“Your sister from DeSalle Island?”

Pearlie nods. “Ivy the only sister I got.”

I see an image of a small, strong black woman with her hair pulled back in a bun. With this image comes the smell of alcohol and a memory of pain. Ivy gave me a painful tetanus injection once, after I stepped on a nail in the pond.

“Where is she now?”

“Ivy done passed, baby. Don’t you remember? Been almost four years now.”

I don’t remember hearing that Ivy died, but I remember the woman well—not by name, but by occupation. She worked as my grandfather’s assistant in the little building known on DeSalle Island as the clinic. Grandpapa maintains the clinic to treat the island’s black population whenever he stays there, or when emergencies arise. At times, more than a hundred people have lived and worked on the island, many of them using chain saws and dangerous farm equipment daily. I saw Grandpapa stitch up so many lacerations there that by twelve I could do it myself if the need arose. He charged nothing for his services, so most islanders waited for his visits rather than seeking medical care on the “mainland” across the river. Ivy had no formal medical training, but she was smart, silent, and had deft hands. Grandpapa taught her enough to do a good deal of “doctoring” in his absence. Their most famous exploit was removing my aunt Ann’s appendix by lantern light during a storm that cut off the island from the mainland in 1958.

“What about Jesse Billups?” I ask. “Is he still around?”

Pearlie sighs and rubs her forehead. “Baby, what you digging into all this old business for?”

I refuse to be sidetracked. “Is Jesse still alive?”

“Jesse’s the foreman on the island now. Or caretaker, or overseer, whatever they call it now.”

“Jesse Billups is caretaker on the island now? He runs the hunting camp, all of that?”

“Sho’ do.”

“How old is he?”

“Fiftysomething, I guess.”

“If he was Ivy’s son, why don’t I remember him?”

Pearlie shrugs again. “He took his daddy’s last name, for one thing, even though he was an outside child. Plus, he was gone a lot back in your day. Went off to the city with some big plan, but all he got was big trouble. Did him a hitch in Angola, right across from the island. Funny, when you think about it.”

I’ve never seen much funny about Angola Penitentiary. “You don’t sound like you care for him much.”

“Jesse’s all right, I reckon. I told you the other day. Some good boys went over to that war and came back different. Not their fault.”

“What happened to him in the war?”

“Different things, I guess. Some inside, some out. He never talked about it. Same as Mr. Luke.”

“Did you ever see Jesse talking to Daddy?”

“I seen ’em together some. Thick as thieves for a while. Mr. Luke spent a lot of time down on the island. Said he liked the quiet down there.”

“What did they do together?”

“Smoked that dope, probably.” Pearlie’s voice is bitter. “That’s about all Jesse done after he got back.”

“And Daddy?”

“Mr. Luke did some of that, too. Not as bad as Jesse, though. Your daddy had a lot of pain from his wound…in his mind, too. I think he used that weed to help. No hard stuff, though.”

“When was the last time you saw Jesse?”

“Been a long time, now. He stay on the island, and I don’t go down there.”

“Never?”

Pearlie shakes her head. “I don’t like it. Don’t like the peoples, and they don’t like me.”

“Why not? You were born on that island.”

She snorts. “I’m a house nigger, girl.”

“You’re kidding me. That kind of stuff is ancient history.”

She peers at me over the rims of her reading glasses. “Not on DeSalle Island it ain’t. They never joined the modern world down there. Dr. Kirkland likes it that way, and I think the black peoples down there like it all right, too. Change is something they can’t abide.”

“Well, I’m going down there.”

Pearlie’s eyes widen. “When?”

“Today. I’m going to see Jesse.”

“Child, don’t you go messing round down there. Can’t no good come of that.”

“You think something bad will come of it?”

Pearlie folds her newspaper and lays it beside her chair. “You go poking a stick in a hole, you best be ready for a snake to crawl out of it.”

I’m about to ask her what’s she’s afraid of when my cell phone beeps. The screen shows a text message waiting. I flip open the phone and hit a button. The message reads,
I’m going to call you in a second. Don’t even think about not answering. It’s about Malik. Sean.

“Somebody trying to call you?” Pearlie asks. “I hate them phones.”

“Someone’s about to.”

The phone rings on cue.

“Tell me,” I answer.

“The shit’s hit the fan,” says Sean. “A little after eleven, we got an anonymous call telling us to check an apartment in Kenner. The caller said Malik rented it under an alias. We got a warrant and went there with some Jefferson Parish detectives. The landlord ID’d Malik from a photo, and we went in.”

“What did you find?”

“A lot of video equipment, for one thing. Pro quality stuff, and a computer rigged for digital film production.”

Video equipment?
“What else?”

“We found the murder weapon, Cat.”

My throat tightens. “What?”

“Thirty-two-caliber Charter Arms revolver. The handgun that killed our five victims. It had the serial number filed off. We’re going to try to bring it out with acid, but we don’t know anything yet.”

“Did you arrest Malik for murder?”

“Yeah. Got him at his home.”

“He resist?”

“No. Went like a lamb. And no Hollywood Walk this time. We booked him and took him to the CLU through the garage.”

“Jesus. Who do you think the tipper was?”

“We don’t know. Maybe one of Malik’s patients? A girl he took to that apartment?”

“Or a guy,” I suggest.

“The caller was female. Anyway, Malik was already so high profile because of the contempt story that we had to go ahead with his arraignment. The DA argued for no bail, but the judge set one anyway. A million bucks.”

“Can he pay that?”

“Probably. He’s got a house across the lake he could put up as surety. He was in Central Lockup, but they just moved him to the parish prison.”

The anonymous tip about the location of the murder weapon bothers me. It was too easy. “Sean, do you really think Malik is the killer?”

“I’m a lot more convinced than I was yesterday. I just found out that ten days after Malik got back from Vietnam, his father was badly beaten. Spent two months in the hospital, and he never looked the same again.”

“Did Malik’s father ID his assailant?”

“Said he didn’t see anything. It happened in his home, but nothing was stolen.”

“Did Malik have an alibi?”

“Nobody even asked him for one. This was Columbus, Mississippi, not Berkeley, California. Malik was a hero, just home from the war. What did he have to be pissed about?”

As I consider this, Billy Neal walks into my field of vision, just below Pearlie’s porch. “Dr. Kirkland wants to see you,” he says, though I’m obviously using the phone. “He told me to bring you to the study.”

“Tell him I’ll see him later. I have somewhere to go first.”

“What?” says Sean.

A strange smile distorts Billy Neal’s mouth. “The island, you mean?”

“Sean, let me call you back.” I put the phone in my pocket and address the driver. “Have you been eavesdropping here?”

Neal ignores the question. “He’s waiting for you now. He doesn’t like to wait.”

I turn to Pearlie. “What’s going on? What is it about the island that nobody wants me to know?”

Pearlie gets up from her rocker and gives me a hug. “It’s not my place, baby. Go talk to your granddaddy. If you still want to go down to the island after that, maybe I’ll go with you.” She steps to the porch rail and gives Billy Neal a withering glare. “Get out of my sight, trash.”

The driver laughs, a brittle sound that makes me think of a boy I once saw torturing a cat in a sandbox.

Pearlie turns and goes into her house without another word.

“Your grandfather’s waiting,” Neal says again.

“Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”

“He said I should bring you.”

“Listen, asshole, you keep standing there, you’ll be waiting all day.”

Billy Neal gives me his crooked smile. “I wouldn’t mind that. You ain’t half bad to look at.”

The door behind me bangs open, and Pearlie walks out carrying a rifle. Her eyes are squinted nearly shut and her jaw is set tight. “Get away from here, trash,” she says in a menacing voice.

“That’s a pellet gun,” says Neal, his smile broadening. “An air rifle.”

“That’s right.” Pearlie raises the rifle until it’s pointed at his midsection. “I use it to kill the possums that tear up the garbage. But if I shoot you in the balls with it, they gonna swell up like a watermelon, and you ain’t gonna be bothering no womens for a long time.” To emphasize her point, Pearlie puts her eye to the sight and aims the barrel at Neal’s genitals.

The smile vanishes from the driver’s face. “Your day’s coming, nigger.”

“If I tell Dr. Kirkland you bothering his grandbaby, your day’s come and gone, cracker. Get out of here!”

Billy Neal laughs again, then walks slowly back toward Malmaison.

“Why did you do that?” I ask. “I can take care of myself.”

“He’s a bad apple. I don’t know why Dr. Kirkland keeps him around here.”

“He’s a bodyguard, you said the other day.”

Pearlie spits over the rail. “That boy got a law degree, too, from somewhere. You believe that?”

This revelation makes me think of Sean and his night-school law degree. He told me tales of con men and criminals taking the same courses and earning the same degree he did. “I believe it.”

“I think he got something over Dr. Kirkland,” Pearlie says softly.

“What do you mean? Something
on
him?”

She nods once, firmly.

“What could he have on Grandpapa?”

Pearlie shakes her head, her eyes still on the retreating figure. “His mama used to work for your granddaddy. Secretary or bookkeeper, something. She knew things.”

“What could she know about? Something illegal?”

Pearlie turns to me, her eyes hard. “I don’t know. Dr. Kirkland’s careful with the family business. But it’s got to be something. Your granddaddy wouldn’t let that trash tie his shoes, otherwise.”

Her comment reminds me that my grandfather—a man who places such value on integrity that he closes million-dollar deals with a handshake—has destroyed the careers of several men who crossed him, or who lied to him in business deals. “I wouldn’t want to try to blackmail Grandpapa.”

“Lord knows that’s right. Be like climbing into a bear pit with the bear in it.”

“You stay away from that driver, Pearlie.”

She reaches out and squeezes my wrist. “You, too, baby. Things have changed around here.”

“Have they?” I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I think things were always this way. I was just too young to see it.”

Grandpapa is waiting for me in his study. He’s sitting in the same leather executive chair he sat in two days ago, when he told me the same old lie about my father’s death. What does he want to tell me now?

He doesn’t speak when I enter. He sits erect in his chair, his left hand cradling a glass of Scotch, his blue eyes looking strangely wet. He’s still wearing his suit and tie, and his tanned skin and silver hair give him the appearance of a veteran Hollywood actor awaiting a scene—not a character actor, but an aging leading man.

“Your driver said you want to talk to me.”

“That’s right,” he says, his voice a commanding blend of baritone and bass. “I need to ask you a question, Catherine. Please sit down.”

Something makes me want to take the initiative away from him. “Why do you keep that lowlife around?”

Grandpapa appears taken off guard. “Who? Billy?”

“Yes. He doesn’t belong here, and you know it.”

Grandpapa looks at the floor and purses his lips, as though reluctant to discuss this with me. Then he speaks in a tone of regret. “The casino business isn’t like our other family businesses, Catherine. Las Vegas wears a corporate image nowadays, but the old unsavory practices are still around. The big Nevada boys don’t like competition, and they have quite a stake in Mississippi. I need someone who knows that world inside and out. Billy worked in Las Vegas for twelve years, and he spent three working for an Indian casino in New Mexico. The exact nature of his experience is something into which I don’t delve too deeply. I’m not proud of that, but sometimes to accomplish something good, you have to rub elbows with the devil. That’s the nature of the gambling business.”

“It surprises me to hear you talk that way.”

He shrugs in the chair. “This town is desperate. We can’t afford our high ideals any longer. Please take a seat, dear.”

I sit in a club chair and face him across a Bokhara rug.

“Still off the alcohol?” he asks, motioning toward the sideboard.

“So far, so good.”

“I wish I had your willpower. Must be the diving that gives you the discipline.”

“You said you needed to ask me a question.”

“Yes. This morning you mentioned hiring a professional forensic team to search your old bedroom. For blood and other evidence, you said.”

I nod but say nothing.

“Have you shelved that plan, given what I told you this morning about Luke’s death?”

“No.”

Grandpapa doesn’t react at first. Then he raises his glass and takes a long drink of Scotch, closing his eyes as he swallows. After a few moments, he opens them again and sets the glass on a table beside his chair.

“I can’t let you do that,” he says.

What do you mean?
I ask silently. But aloud, I say, “Why not?”

“Because I killed your father, Catherine. I shot Luke.”

The words don’t really register at first. I mean, I
hear
them. I recognize the order in which they were spoken. But their actual significance doesn’t really sink in.

“I know this is a shock to you,” Grandpapa goes on. “I wish there were some other way to deal with this. That you’d never have to know. But you found that blood, and now there’s no other way to put an end to this. I know you. You’re just like me. You won’t stop until you know the truth. So, I’m going to give it to you.”

“I thought you gave it to me this morning.”

He shifts in his chair. “I lied to you before, darling. We both know that, and you’re probably wondering why you should believe me now. All I can tell you is this: when you hear what I’m about to tell you, you’ll know it’s true. You’ll know it in your bones. And I wish to God it was a different truth.”

“What are you talking about? What is this?”

Grandpapa rubs his tanned face with his right hand, squeezing his jaw. “Catherine, someday you will get old, and you’ll hear from some doctor that you’re going to die. But what you’re about to hear will be worse than that. Part of you is going to die today. I want you to brace yourself.”

My extremities are going cold. I felt a little like this when I saw my home pregnancy test turn pink. A temporary paralysis set in while my mind tried to adapt to the total transformation of my life. I feel that paralysis now, but with it comes a terrible foreboding. A fear that my whole world is about to be sucked inside out by something that’s been kept from me my whole life. And the funny thing is, I’m not surprised at all. It’s like I’ve known this moment was coming since I was a little girl. That one day I would find myself in this room, or a room like it, while someone gave me the terrible secret of why I am the way I am.

“There was no prowler here on the night Luke died,” Grandpapa says. “You already suspect that. That’s why you asked me if Luke committed suicide.”

“Did he?” asks a faint voice that comes from my throat.

“No. I told you, I killed him.”

“But why? Did you argue with him? Was it an accident?”

“No.” Grandpapa squares his shoulders and looks me in the eye. “Two days ago you asked me why I didn’t like Luke. I didn’t tell you the complete truth. Yes, his reaction to his war service bothered me, and the fact that he couldn’t provide for you and your mother didn’t help matters. But from the very beginning, I had a bad feeling about that boy. Something wasn’t right about him. Your mother didn’t see it because she was in love. But I saw it. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. I just sensed something, as a man, that made me recoil.”

“I can’t stand this. Please just tell me whatever it is.”

“Do you remember that when Luke was having his bad periods—his spells, Pearlie called them—you were the only person he’d let near him? The only one he’d let into the barn while he worked?”

“Of course.”

“He spent a lot of time with you, Catherine. You were his connection to the real world. You two had a very unusual relationship. And as time went on, I started to feel that it wasn’t an appropriate relationship.”

The numbness is spreading to my heart. “How do you mean?”

“That night Luke died, I wasn’t reading downstairs. I had turned off all the lights downstairs and pretended to go up to bed, but I didn’t. I’d done this several nights in a row. Luke was supposedly leaving for the island. That night, instead of watching from the window, I went out into the yard with a flashlight and sat on the grass.” Another swig of Scotch. “After about an hour, I saw Luke coming up the hill from the barn. He wasn’t walking like himself. In the dark I actually thought he was a different person. I thought he
was
a prowler. But it was Luke. He went through the door of your house without making a sound. I circled the house and went to your window. I saw a crack of light as he opened your door. I thought he might be checking on you…but he wasn’t. The door opened and closed quickly, and I knew he’d gone into your room and stayed there.”

I’m dreaming. If I can wake myself up, I won’t have to hear this. But I can’t wake up. I keep sitting motionless, and my grandfather keeps talking.

“I slipped inside the house. Gwen’s door was open, but she was sound asleep. Then I opened your door and clicked on my flashlight.”

“No,” I whisper. “Don’t.”

“Luke was in the bed with you, Catherine. I hoped it was some kind of psychological dependency, something like that. That he needed to get into bed with you to be able to sleep. But it wasn’t that. When I yanked back the covers—”

“Don’t!”

“He wasn’t wearing pants, Catherine. And your gown was pushed up to your chest.”

I’m shaking my head like a child trying to reverse time: to bring back a dog that was run over by a car or a parent who was just lowered into the earth. But it does no good.

Grandpapa stands and looks at the French windows, his voice rising with emotion. “He was molesting you, Catherine. Before I could say anything, he jumped up and started trying to explain himself. That it wasn’t what it looked like. But there was no denying the state he was in. I grabbed his arm and yanked him toward the door. He went crazy. He started hitting me.” Grandpapa turns to me, his eyes bright. “Luke was so passive most of the time, it took me completely by surprise. But he could be savage when he wanted to be. He wouldn’t have survived the war without that capacity for violence.”

Grandpapa stops three feet away from me, looking down from what seems an enormous height. “I wanted to get you out of there, but he’d hit me several times and showed no sign of stopping. I remembered the rifle that hung over the fireplace in the den. I ran out and grabbed it, chambered a round, and went back in to get you.

“Luke was in the corner by the closet, down on his knees. Your bed was empty. I knew you must be terrified, and I figured you’d tried to escape through that closet. Back then it didn’t have a back wall. It was like the old country places, where adjoining bedroom closets are actually the same space. Anyway, I told Luke to get away from you and stand up. When he didn’t, I walked over with the rifle and told him to get the hell off my property and never come back.”

Grandpapa shakes his head, his eyes cloudy with memory. “Maybe it was the sight of the gun that did it. Or maybe he couldn’t deal with the idea that he was going to be exposed. But he attacked me again. He came up out of that corner like a wild animal. I pulled the trigger out of pure reflex.” Grandpapa’s hand actually jerks when he says this. “You know the rest. The round hit Luke in the chest, and he died quickly.”

The silence in the study is absolute. Then, out of the vacuum that is me at this moment, a question rises. “Did I see it happen?”

“I don’t know, baby. When I got to the closet, you weren’t there. You must have crawled through to your mother’s bedroom. I suspect you tried to wake her up but couldn’t do it. Do you remember any of this?”

“Maybe that,” I whisper. “Trying to wake Mom up. But maybe it wasn’t that night, I don’t know. I think that happened a lot back then.”

“But you remember nothing of the abuse?”

I shake my head with robotic precision.

“I thought not. But you’ve never recovered from it, just the same. It’s haunted you your whole life. I’ve watched you all these years, wishing I could do something for you. But I couldn’t see
what
. I didn’t see how telling you this about your father could help you. They say the truth shall set you free, but I’m not so sure. If you hadn’t found that blood in your room, I doubt I’d ever have told this thing.”

He goes to the sideboard, pours a nearly full glass of vodka, and holds it out to me. The vodka might as well be water. I’m so anesthetized by shock that even my craving for alcohol is gone.

“Take it,” he says. “Do you good.”

No, it won’t,
I say silently.
It’ll hurt me. It’ll poison my baby
.

“What are you thinking, Catherine?”

I don’t speak. I’m not sharing my only pure secret with anyone.

“I’m not sure what to do now,” he says. “You’ve had problems with depression in the past, and I was damn little help to you. I was from the old school. If I couldn’t palpate it, irradiate it, amputate it, or resect it, it wasn’t a problem. I know different now. I worry that telling you this could trigger a major depressive episode. Are you still taking SSRIs for that?”

I don’t reply. My silence must remind him of the wordless year that followed my father’s death, because it spooks him.

“Catherine?” he says in an anxious voice. “Can you speak?”

I don’t know. Am I speaking now?

“Surely you have some questions. You always do.”

But I’m not me anymore.

“Well, after you’ve had time to absorb this, I think you’ll see why I don’t want you bringing outsiders here to search that room for more blood. No possible good can come from anybody learning what I just told you. None at all. But great harm could result.”

“Who else knows?” I whisper.

“No one.”

“Not Pearlie?”

A solemn shake of the head. “She might suspect, but she doesn’t know.”

“Mother?”

“No one, Catherine.”

“Did you really examine me that night? After the police left?”

He nods sadly.

“What did you find?”

A deep sigh. “Vaginal and anal irritation. Old scarring. Your hymen wasn’t intact. That’s not conclusive in itself, but I knew what I’d seen. If I’d waited ten minutes to go into that room, I’d have found more evidence. And if a forensic team had tested your bedsheets back then—”

“Please stop.”

“All right, darling. Just tell me what I can do.”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. Now that you know the truth about your past, it might be helpful to speak to someone. I can get you access to the top people in the country.”

“I have to go.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

“Why don’t you stay here for a while? I’ll have Pearlie fix a room upstairs. You don’t ever have to go back into that slave quarters again. You’d have never lived there in the first place if it had been up to me. It was Luke who refused to move in here. I offered him a whole damn wing. I guess now you know why. Anyway, you take a few days and start trying to get your mind around this. It could take a long while to really deal with it.”

I can’t believe this is my grandfather talking. His philosophy was always unequivocal:
When life throws you a curveball, you knock that son of a bitch right down the pitcher’s throat.
I actually heard him say that many times. Yet here he stands, talking like he’s been watching
Dr. Phil
with my mother.

“I have to go now, Grandpapa.”

I turn and walk quickly to the French doors that lead out onto the lawn. His footsteps follow me, then stop. In a moment I’m standing in bright sunlight on an endless plain of freshly mown grass.

And there the tears come. Great racking sobs that make my ribs hurt. I fall to my knees and bend over the grass the way I would if I were puking drunk. But I’m not drunk. I am desolate. What I want most is out of my skin. I want to take a knife, slash myself from my pubic bone to my neck, and crawl out of this disgusting body.