Sea Lovers (28 page)

On the shore everything is still. The waves are creeping up around the man, prying him loose from the sand. Little water fingers rush in around his legs, his arms, his face. Already the water has washed his blood away. Farther down the beach his fishing gear floats in the rising water. His tackle box has spilled its insides; all his lures and hooks, all the wiles he used to harvest the sea, bob gaily on the waves.

Farther still I am walking on the shore with my lover. We have been dancing at a party. The beach house is behind us, throwing its white light and music out into the night air as if it could fill the void. Inside, it was hot, bright; we couldn't hear the waves or smell the salt air, and so we are feeling lightheaded and pleased with ourselves for having had the good sense to take a walk. We are walking away from the house and away from the dead man, but not away from the sea. I've taken my shoes off so that I can let the water cool my tired feet. My lover follows my example; he sheds his shoes and stops to roll up his pants legs. As I stand looking out into the black water and the blacker sky, it seems to me that I can see tiny lights, like stars, flashing in the waves. When he joins me I ask him, “What are those lights?” and he looks but says he doesn't see any lights.

“Mermaids,” I say. I could almost believe it. I raise my hand and wave at them. “Be careful,” I say. “Stay away from the shore.” My lover is very close to me. His arms encircle me; he draws me close to him. The steady pounding of the waves and the blackness of the night excite us. We would like to make love in the sand at the water's edge.

“I am a man upon the land.”

C
HILD
B
ALLAD NO. 113

Before Felix Kelly's death, my uncle Leonce informed me, there hadn't been a murder in Villedeau in fifteen years. At first the homicide appeared to be little more than a hunting accident; in truth, the grand jury wasn't convinced the affair need go to trial at all. Because the accused, Octave Favrot, was a gentleman of both reputation and wealth, and the victim, Felix Kelly, was an outsider, many of us believed that even if there were a trial, Octave would be speedily acquitted.

At that time I was a student of the law, and the prospect of a trial, and a murder trial at that, going forward in our obscure corner of the great world was a circumstance I considered propitious, though of course for the poor victims—there were two, a grown man and his infant son—it could be understood only as a tragedy.

Octave Favrot didn't deny that he had killed Felix Kelly, but he claimed he had acted in self-defense. While hunting near Baie d'en Haut he spied through the foliage a fierce creature as big as a man, which he took to be a bear. When this apparition charged him, in his terror he fired a single shot. Then he heard a cry and understood that the crazed animal was of the human variety. Not until Octave bent over Felix Kelly's corpse did he discover the child, a babe of perhaps two years, fastened to his father's chest by a rope harness. A sluggish ooze of blood gathered at the hole between his startled dark eyes.

Horrified by what he had done, Octave walked out of the forest and straight to the police office at Villedeau, where he reported the accident.

Felix Kelly had arrived in our parish four years earlier under the most extraordinary circumstances. The steamship
Decla
, having taken on passengers and cargo at New Orleans, was navigating the river channel just west of Reserve, when a shout went up on the upper deck that a passenger had fallen overboard. From his station in the wheelhouse, the captain verified that there was indeed a man in the water. The deck hands, equally vigilant, were quick to throw out a rope, which the swimmer grasped and hung on to while the steam engine groaned and the great paddle wheel slowed. The hands hauled in the rope, drawing him closer and closer until he was able to cling to the rail of the lower deck. The crowd gathered at the upper rail to cheer him on, and the mate stretched his arm out over the water to help him aboard, but the man made no effort to avail himself of assistance. By this time the captain had made his way to the scene. He was so outraged by the stolid resistance of this foolish passenger he had halted his great ship to rescue that he spoke harshly. “For God's sake, sir,” he exclaimed, “put out your hand, or I shall leave you to the fishes.”

The swimmer gazed up, and it was remarked that his eyes were strangely round, black, and placid beneath a thick overhang of brow. “I can't come on board,” he said in a voice not defensive but rather confidential. “I've not a stitch of clothes on and there are ladies present. My dear captain, consider my predicament.”

This protestation was quickly passed among the passengers, who found much to marvel at in both its import and its tenor. Clearly the man had not lost his clothes in a fall from the ship; therefore, it was deduced, he had entered the water in some other manner, either swimming out from the shore or capsized in some lesser craft. His calm delivery, his reluctance to give offense even in direst circumstance, bespoke the courtesy of a gentleman, as well as a certain bravado which could not fail to engage the admiration of both the fair and the forceful sex. It was also noted that he spoke in a lilting accent, not of the region and not easily assigned to any other. From how far had he come to turn up without his clothes in the treacherous currents of the mighty Mississippi? The gentlemen urged the ladies away from the rails as the captain tossed down a bed sheet the bursar had snatched from a drying line. Taking one corner in his teeth, the swimmer managed to wrap it around his torso. Then, bracing his feet against the ship's side and reaching up to the outstretched hands of the mate, he rose from the turbid waters, trailing the sheet like a king's mantle behind him.

Thus it was that Felix Kelly came among us, naked as a babe thrust from the womb. The crew whisked him away and he appeared some hours later in borrowed trousers and a shirt. He explained that he had been camping in the woods near the shore, living on what he could shoot or pull from the river, and having gone down to the water for his morning ablutions, was caught by a treacherous current, of which there are sundry in our great Father of Waters, and couldn't fight his way back to the shore. He promised to leave the ship at the next docking and, as soon as he found employment, to repay the kind sailor who had provided him with clothing as well as the captain who had generously invited him to dine at his own table.

The next docking was Villedeau.

Felix, we soon learned, was a man of many parts. A blacksmith by trade, he was a good builder as well, and he manufactured ingenious first-rate traps such as had never been seen in these parts for birds and small mammals, crabs and shrimp; he even had a unique system for waylaying crayfish in their nightly perambulations. His manner was quiet and polite; he had a wry sense of humor much appreciated by those who were not the butt of his jokes, and much resented by those who were. He rented a room from the blacksmith for a few months, and then, having saved enough to lease a small storefront on the main street with a room and a stove behind it, he set himself up there, selling his traps and various pieces of furniture cobbled together from scraps he bought from the lumberyard. Occasionally he assisted the blacksmith when he had more hooves than ready shoes in his establishment.

Felix was solitary and—some said—a little strange, a bit deep, but that might have been suggested by his wide dark eyes, in which the oversized irises crowded out the white at the edges, so that he seemed always to be looking straight ahead.

He had been among us a little over a year when the rumor that he had attracted the attention and even the affection of Odile Chopin began to surface in the repartee at the dance hall and in more pointed conversations at the Ladies' Society meetings. Odile was a beauty, the daughter of a recently deceased rich man and a prize beyond reckoning to the lucky husband who might someday win her hand. The local swains danced her ragged every Saturday night, and the bouquets that appeared at her door on Sunday morning attested to the charm of her company. She had graces and airs taught to her by the nuns of Mount Carmel, she could play the piano and sing like a lark, her spine was straight and her gaze without guile. That she would so much as glance at a dark-eyed stranger with little money and naught but his wit to recommend him was a thing past understanding. Felix Kelly didn't even dance.

Some claimed he'd cast a spell upon Odile or that he had some magnetic apparatus in his clothing, something he'd fashioned from iron with his cunning for laying traps. But this was jealous talk, and it was probably only Felix's attentive eyes and distant, courteous manner that interested Odile. It seemed nearly every day she found some reason to pass down the street and stop on the banquette in front of his shop, engaging in what she described to her unsuspecting mother as harmless conversation. When the weather turned cold, he invited her inside to warm herself by the stove.

Before long, naturally enough, Odile revealed that she was with child, and Felix Kelly freely acknowledged himself to be the father. The town braced for an unsuitable marriage, but Felix then committed the outrage against all decency that made him a pariah among his previously well-disposed neighbors: He refused to marry Odile and would not agree to provide for her baby.

To the great relief of her family, only a little time passed before Octave Favrot, who was Odile's second cousin, offered to marry her and to adopt the yet unborn child as his own. Sadly, at his birth this infant proved more likely to be a burden to his parents than a joy, for, though healthy and good-natured, Michel, as his unfortunate mother named him, was born blind.

So what we had was the story of an outsider, Felix Kelly, who comes to a civilized place, abuses the trust of a virtuous young woman of a good family, and is subsequently murdered by her rescuer, her husband, and her relative, all three in one man, Octave Favrot. Such a sequence may not be that uncommon in the annals of human affairs but for the detail that Felix Kelly died with his unwanted son wrapped in a fur and strapped to his chest. He was not far from the place where he had first appeared, naked and without resources, flagging down a steamship.

No sooner had Octave confessed to the accident than Odile, wild-eyed and breathless, came clattering down the street on her bay mare to report that her son was missing. In the vestibule of the sheriff's office she saw her husband's rifle propped against a chair, and a fresh terror gripped her heart, for she didn't expect his return for two or three days. She threw open the door to the inner office, where Octave sat, head in hands at the desk, soberly dictating his statement to the secretary, Marie Barrois. Odile cried out, “Octave, Michel is gone.” When her husband lifted his eyes, which were heavy with the death he had administered, she moaned wordlessly and collapsed in a faint on the floor.

The sheriff dispatched a party of deputies to bring in the bodies of the victims. Octave's cooperation was so assured that he was allowed to lead the way without restraint. He knew the terrain, having hunted there for many years, supplying from the bounteous wildlife that teemed in the swampy inlets fish, crustaceans, meat, birds, furs, and hides for his family and friends. Though he was prosperous enough to buy what he needed, his wealth also provided him with ample leisure. Hunting, fishing, stalking by day, camping by night in a canvas tent with a fire and sometimes a dog or two for company, soothed and refreshed his spirit. He was a creature of the place, as at home in the bayou as any nutria, fox, or squirrel.

The bodies of Felix and his son, Michel, were transported back to Villedeau, and the coroner from Edgard, to which news of the accident had quickly spread, arrived in the afternoon to take custody of them. He spent the night absorbed in his grisly work and in the morning filed his report with the proper authorities. The victims' bodies were then transferred to the Dupuy funeral home. It was agreed that the sale of Felix's property would defray the cost of his burial. He had left no will and no next of kin could be located, though the town clerk made some superficial effort. Felix had died, as he had lived, undocumented, a man who came out of a river.

Odile requested that Michel's small corpse be delivered to her house, where he was laid in a child's white casket, loaded into a cart, and interred, after a heartbreaking journey, in her family's cemetery plot. Felix Kelly was buried in the town cemetery, in a far, shady corner reserved for those few with neither money nor family to see to their remains. A flat stone with only his name marked the location of his grave.

The coroner's report was not made public, but rumors about its contents spread like a grass fire, and it wasn't long before everyone knew the details. One bullet, fired at a distance of no more than thirty feet, had pierced both the brain of the child and the heart of the man. Felix's body bore an old scar from his left hip to his knee. The child's blind eyes had a filmy silvery lining behind the retinas, an anomaly never before observed by the attending physician. An interesting detail, not unheard of and clearly the result of inherited tendencies, was that both father and son had thin, translucent webbing between their toes.

“Always knew there was something fishy about Felix,” the town wit remarked on this last revelation. He was corrected at once by his more literal friend: “Something froggy you mean, don't you?”

No weapon was found in the vicinity, nor anything suggesting the intentions of the victim. Felix Kelly had lifted his son from his crib, wrapped him in a soft monk-seal skin, fastened him to his chest with a rope halter, and headed into the forest. The coroner printed his conclusion in square letters on the line indicating cause of death: HOMICIDE.

The trial would be held in Edgard, the parish seat. While the charges were being prepared, Octave was lodged in Villedeau's prison, which was a simple room furnished with a bed, a washstand, and a chamber pot, with bars on the window and a grate in the door. Our sheriff, the portly and self-important Cyrus Petit, called it his hotel, and its guests were usually drunks who had outraged public decency in some way, by fighting or breaking furniture or raving in the street. They slept it off, and in the morning, when they had recovered their senses, they were released to their unwelcoming families. Octave's residence there, which was of some duration, was eased by the sheriff's familiarity with and respect for his prisoner's character and wealth. Odile arrived daily with her husband's dinner, and the sheriff allowed the couple to dine at his desk while he retreated to a rocking chair on the porch, his rifle resting across his paunch. At the window he could hear the conversation between the couple, which, he reported to his wife, was laconic at best.

“Perhaps that's because Odile knows you're out there listening,” this matron remarked.

“I don't know,” her husband replied. “Odile is different now. This business has broken her spirit. She's got a ghostly way about her. It's like she can't hear, or don't understand what she does hear. She can't look him in the eye, or anyone else for that matter.”

“Well,” concluded his wife, “he killed her poor baby, and she may never have another.”

Lyle Sanchez, the defendant's lawyer, maintained that the prosecutor, Cesar Denis, was an ambitious, hotheaded, coldhearted upstart too young for the job. He had no connection to the Favrot clan, no interests in Villedeau, and he'd married a Bohemian girl from Pointe à la Hache. I had met Cesar during my law studies and admired his skill as an orator. Quick-witted and unfailingly lucid, he led a jury along to his inevitable conclusions like a good shepherd dog, his quick eyes alert to any stragglers, his bark sharp and clear, persuasive rather than threatening; he made you want to see things his way.