DR09 - Cadillac Jukebox (38 page)

    
 
"The nigger says, 'You gonna tell
somebody you seen a man poaching gators? Because if you do, you a goddamn
liar.'

     
"Fat Daddy goes,
'We don't know nothing about no gators. So you leave us alone. We ain't give
you no truck.'"

     
"The nigger
smiles then. He says, 'You a nice fat man. You know why I bust up my pirogue?
'Cause it got leaks in it.' All the time he was squeezing his hand on his
privates, like he got an itch, like he didn't care there was a woman there. Fat
Daddy said when you looked into that nigger's face, you didn't have no doubt
what was on his mind. He wanted you to say just one t'ing wrong so he could let
out all his meanness on you.

     
"Fat Daddy's
wife got in the car, not moving an inch, not hardly breathing she was so
scared, praying all the time Fat Daddy would just come on and get them out of
there.

     
"Then the nigger
takes Fat Daddy's pole and his bucket out of his hand and puts them in the
backseat and opens the front door and heps Fat Daddy get behind the wheel. He
says, 'I'm gonna show y'all somet'ing I ain't sure I can still do. Y'all watch,
now.'

     
"He hooked his
hands under the front bumper and Started straining, like all the veins in his
face was gonna pop out of his skin, grinning with them gold teet', snuff running
out of his mout'. Then the car come up in the air, and the back wheels started
rolling off the levee, just befo' he let it crash on the ground again.

     
"He come around
to the window, still grinning, like he done somet'ing great, and let spit drip
out of his mout' on his finger. He took Fat Daddy's sun helmet off his head and
put his finger in Fat Daddy's ear and then dropped his hat back on his head
again. Didn't say one word. Just rubbed spit in po' Fat Daddy's ear and walked
off.

     
"What kind of
man do t'ings like that, Dave? It makes me feel real bad. I wish I'd done
somet'ing to stop that man when he come in our shop. Lawd God, I do."

     
Batist shook his
head, his spoon forgotten by the side of his soup bowl.

A
therapist once told me that dreams are not a mystery. They simply
represent our hopes and fears, he said. But unfortunately I was never good at
distinguishing between the two.

     
I see an arbor atop
the grassy slope of Bayou Teche. The tree trunks look hard and white under the
moon, stonelike yet filled with power, as though the coldness in the light has
trapped a trembling energy inside the bark. Inside the arbor is a wicker picnic
basket filled with grapes and bananas, a corked green bottle of burgundy, a
bottle of black label Jack Daniel's wrapped in a soft towel, a bucket of shaved
ice with two chrome cups chilling inside it.

     
I can taste the
charcoal and the oak in the whiskey, as weightless as liquid smoke on the back
of the tongue. I can feel its heat spread from my stomach into my chest and my
loins. But my system is dry, as though my glands have become dust, and the real
rush doesn't come until the second hit, a long deep swallow of sugar and shaved
ice and mint leaves and bourbon, then it reaches every nerve in my body, just
as if someone had struck a sulfurous match across the base of the brain.

     
But this time
the dream is not just about the charcoal-filtered product of Lynchburg,
Tennessee. She's on her knees inside the arbor, her bottom resting on her heels,
eating a sandwich with both hands, somehow vulnerable and reminiscent of a
wartime photo of a frightened and starving child. She smiles when she sees me,
as she would greet an old friend, and she gathers her dress in her hands and
works it over her head. Her tan body seems glazed with moonglow, her breasts
swollen and hard, her face innocent of any agenda except the welcoming press of
her thighs around mine. In the dream I know it's wrong, that I've reached a
place where I can't turn it around, just like the whiskey that lights old fires
and once again claims a landscape inside me I'd long forgotten. Her mouth is on
mine, her fingers on my hips, then kneading the small of my back, and I feel
something break inside me, like water bursting through the bottom of a paper
bag, and when I look into her face, my body trembling with the moment, I see a
tangle of platinum hair and eyes like black glass and a self-indulgent lazy
smile that ends in a kiss of contempt upon the cheek.

I
woke and sat on the side of the bed, my fingers clenched on my
knees, my loins aching like those of an adolescent boy trapped inside the
unrelieved fantasies of his masturbation.

     
Outside, I heard
Tripod running on his chain and wind coursing through the trees and dead leaves
swirling across the yard. When the wind dropped, the night was silent for only
a moment, then I heard leaves again, this time breaking under someone's foot.

     
I looked out the
window and saw Tripod sitting on top of his hutch, motionless, his face pointed
toward the backyard.

     
I slipped on a pair
of blue jeans and my tennis shoes, took my .45 out of the dresser and the
flashlight from the nightstand, and checked the lock on the front door. Bootsie
was asleep on the couch, her arm across her eyes, a magazine splayed on the
floor by her. I turned on the flood lamp in the mimosa tree and stepped out
into the yard.

     
The wind blew plumes
of ash out of my neighbor's field and ruffled the starlight's reflection on the
duck pond by my fence line. I searched the side yard, the horse lot and stable,
the aluminum tool-shed where we still kept my father's old tractor, then I
walked along the edge of the coulee toward the duck pond.

     
The batteries
in my flashlight grew weaker and I turned them off and started back toward the
house. I heard the shrill, hysterical-like cry of a nutria out in the swamp.

     
A man with the sinewy
proportions of an atavistic throwback moved out quickly from behind a stand of
banana trees and shoved the blunt, round end of a hard object into the center
of my back.

     
"I could have
used a telephone. I come here in trust. Don't mess it up," he said.

     
"What do you
want, Aaron?"

     
"Give me your
pistol. . . I'll give it back. I promise. I ain't gonna harm nobody,
either."

 
    
His hand moved down my arm and slipped the .45 free from my
fingers. He smelled like humus and wool clothes full of wood smoke
and dried sweat.

     
"I got you!
Sonofabitch if I didn't! Slickered you good!" he said. He squatted and
roared at his own humor, slapped his thigh with one hand. "Didn't have
nothing but this old corncob pipe I got out of a garbage can! How you like
that!"

     
"Why don't you
act your age?"

     
"Did y'all use
the same kind of smarts against them Viet Cong?" He danced like an ape
under the overhang of withered banana leaves.

     
"You going to
give me my piece back?" I said.

     
"Cain't do
that."
Then his face went as blank and stark as a sheet of tin under the
starlight. "I want you to set up my surrender to Buford LaRose."

     
When I didn't reply,
he said, "You deaf? Just set it up. Out in the country somewheres. He'll
go for it. It'll make him a big man."

     
"I don't know if
I trust what you've got in mind, partner."

     
"They sent a
little pisspot Eye-talian after me. Man I was in jail with and knowed where my
camp was at. Some people is cursed by their knowledge."

     
"What are you
saying?"

     
His eyes were wide,
lidless, burning with certainty about the adversarial nature of the world.

     
"You might say I
talked to his conscience. He said me and you are the shit on somebody's nose
and it's suppose to get wiped off before a certain governor gets sworn in. He
was at a point in his life he didn't want to keep no secrets."

     
"I don't like
what you're telling me, Aaron."

     
"They treated me
worsen they would a nigger rapist. You think I give a fuck about what you don't
like? . . . We got a mutual interest here."

     
"No, we
don't."

     
He put the .45 under
my jaw. "Then you walk to the shed."

     
"You're starting
to seriously piss me off, Aaron."

     
He pushed the barrel
harder into my throat. "LaRose used my daughter and throwed her away. Then
he sent me to the penitentiary. You side with them, then you're my enemy."

     
His face was
bloodless, his dilated nostrils radiating gray hair. He
wasn't a bizarre old man anymore, or even a pitiful and ignorant
victim. For some reason, as I stared into the vacuity of his eyes, I was
absolutely convinced he would have found reason to wage war against Buford
LaRose's world even if Buford LaRose had never
existed.

     
"I'm not going
in that shed, Aaron. It ends here," I said.

     
He breathed loudly in
the darkness. His tongue looked like a gray biscuit inside his mouth.

     
"I done cut your
phone line already. I'll give you back this later.
But don't come after me," he said.

     
"You're a
foolish man, sir."

     
"No, I'm a dead
one. That's what they call people in the Death House, the Dead Men. Wait till
you feel that big nigger's hand on you. Or one of yourn up at the house. See
how goddamn liberal you are
then."

     
"What did you
say?"

     
But he was gone,
running like a crab through the trees, his prison
work boots crashing
in the leaves.

I
sat on the floor by the couch where Bootsie slept. Her eyes
opened into mine.

     
"What is
it?" she said.

     
"Aaron Crown was
outside . . ." I placed my hand on her arm before she could get up.
"It's all right. He's gone now. But he cut the phone line."

     
"Crown
was—"

     
"I'm giving it
up, Boots. Aaron, the LaRose family, whatever they're into, it's somebody
else's responsibility now."

     
She raised herself on
one elbow.

     
"What happened
out there?" she asked.

     
"Nothing. That's
the point. Nothing I do will ever change the forces these people
represent."

     
Her eyes steadied on
mine and seemed to look inside me.

     
"You want to fix
something to eat?" she said.

     
"That'd be
swell. I'll use the phone in the bait shop to call the
department."

     
When I locked the
front door behind me, I could see her in the
kitchen, shredding a
raw potato on a grater to make hash browns, her robe cinched around her hips,
just as though we were waking to an ordinary dawn and the life we'd had before
I'd allowed the fortunes of Aaron Crown and the LaRose family to grow like a
tentacle into our own.

     
In the morning Batist
found my .45 wrapped in a Kentucky Fried Chicken bag under the doormat on his
gallery.

"
w
e've got a real
prize in the
holding
cell," Helen said.
      

 
    
I followed her down the corridor to the
lockup area and waited for the deputy to open the cell. The biker inside had a
gold beard and head of hair like a lion's mane. His eyes reminded me of red
Lifesavers, pushed deep into folds of skin that were raw from wind-burn or
alcohol or blood pressure that could probably blow an automobile gasket.

     
His name was Jody
Hatcher. A year and a half ago the court had released him to the Marine Corps,
in hopes, perhaps, that the whole Hatcher family would simply disappear from
Iberia Parish. His twin sister achieved a brief national notoriety when she was
arrested for murdering seven men who picked her up hitchhiking on the Florida
Turnpike. The mother, an obese, choleric woman with heavy facial hair, was
interviewed by CBS on the porch of the shack where the Hatcher children were
raised. I'll never forget her words: "It ain't my fault. She was born that
way. I whipped her every day when she was little. It didn't do no good."