The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (43 page)

Dolly’s fingertips were still touched to Rodney’s chest. He looked up at her, then looked down and swatted her fingers away. She went back to the couch and he stood. He grabbed the belt loops and handed Lunch his Levi’s. Then he handed him his shirt.

“Here’s your shirt,” he said.

Lunch started dressing.

Dolly was curled up in a yellow ball on the couch, her legs tucked beneath her, her head bowed. She said, “It’s time to face up to it—I have a problem. A
serious
problem.”

“So where is he?” Lunch asked.

Storm clouds had mobbed up out over the Gulf and were quickly rumbling toward shore.

Once again seated and moist in the eyes, Rodney said, “I don’t really know. He’s from over there in bayou country. The town is called, I think, St. Bruno. Upriver from N’Awlins. Some distance. When he said home, that’s where he meant.”

“I’ve heard of that place,” Lunch said. “Reckon that’s where he’d go?”

“It’s a
serious
problem,” Dolly said, “and the very first step is admitting that I have it.”

“Who knows?” Rodney said. “It’s all I can tell you.” He looked at Dolly but spoke to Lunch. “I guess you just had to do this. You just had to ruin my life.”

“Looky here now,” Lunch said. Lunch had his pants on and his black shirt hung down unbuttoned. He was bent over, zipping up his half-boots, his black hat bobbing. “It’s like the dyin’ old men all over the world will tell you, Rodney—when you get aged and rackety and think back across your entire life span, why, it ain’t the ones you do you regret, it’s the ones you don’t.”

“Is that so?” Rodney said.

“It sure is.” Lunch brushed lint from his pants leg as he stood up. “I mean, a piece of tail is a piece of tail, and your wife is purty cute, and she’d be one I’d sure ’nough regret someday if I didn’t. You
could
take that as a compliment, you know.”

“Honey?”
Dolly said. “
Baby?
You know I love you, don’t you? You know I love you, but I don’t know if
you
love
me
, love me enough to help me fight this awful thing, my addiction.”

Rodney turned to stare at her.

“That’s what my problem is,” she said. “My
serious
problem. I’m an addict—I couldn’t face up to it before. But a thing like this, here, today, why, it’s only my addiction that could bring me this low, bringing me to betray the love we have, honey, all ’cause of my sick, sick, sick addiction to nose candy.”

Lunch got his cigarettes and coke from the table, pausing to grin a huge one down at Dolly.

Rodney kept staring at her.

“Drug troubles are tough to lick, but with you by my side I
could
fight this thing. Drugs
can
be beat, baby. Will you stand by me while I fight this thing?”

Rodney said, “You’ve just lain with Lunch, here, in
my
house, and you want to know if I’ll stand by you?”

“It’s a
disease
,” she said plaintively. “What has happened here proves how
sick
I am from it. Sick, sick, sick.” She brought her hands up to her face and began unleashing tears behind them. “I’m
addicted—
I
need
you, I
need
you, I
need
you, to help me fight it.”

Rodney wiped a stubby finger at a tear on his cheek.

“We’d cut out all the
co
-caine?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“No more toot and brandy breakfasts?”

“Huh-uh.”

“We’ll stay away socially from bad influences?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Dolly was still sending forth tears from behind her hands.

“We’d have to do all those things,” he said, “to have a chance. Any chance at all. And might as well kick beer, too. It’s just a stepping stone. And French wines and pot—they’ll have to go.”

Dolly let her hands fall away from her damp sour face.

“French wines and pot aren’t hurting anything much, honey,” she said in an instructive tone. “The surest way is to
ease
out from under an addiction, not go cold turkey.”

Real sharp laughter came from Lunch.

“Hoo, hoo, hoo!” he went. “Rodney, ol’ son, I don’t believe you can handle a gal like this one here. Hoo, hoo! She’s from places like where
I
come from. She’s fixin’ to make herself seem codefendant with good blow, man—like she wouldn’t’ve shook hands with me otherwise.” Lunch adjusted the snap-brim hat on his head. “She’s from the level I know well, which is one where you’ve got to be hard on her, or she’ll just cook your ass down to mush, ol’ buddy. You’ve got to whomp a gal like her to get any respect. Make her lips swell up tight for a spell.” Rodney kept looking down, so Lunch cupped a hand beneath his pudgy chin and raised his face until their eyes met. “You’ve got to be a man, son—you can’t let her bullshit you like this.” He pinched Rodney’s cheek to a red glow. “Be a
man
.”

The storm clouds above the Gulf cut loose, and over on the couch Dolly clamped her jaws and looked fierce.

The condom Lunch had used was on the floor beside the couch and she picked it up, then twirled it like a slingshot.

“Hey, Lunch,” she said, “Eat scum and die.”

Lunch sensed something en route toward his head and turned enough that the projectile merely skimmed his hat brim, then swirled down to land on Rodney’s shoe.

The contents oozed across the imported leather on his toes.

Rodney began to weep instantly. Ingrained manners caused him to promptly ease a white hankie from his breast pocket and clumsily wipe at his shoe.

Lunch stared down at Rodney, whose sobbing reaction displayed how little manly advice he’d absorbed, then shook his head in disgust, and threw his hands up in a gesture of defeat. He started stomping toward the door, saying, “Son, you are fuckin’
hope-
less!”

The parking lot at Enoch’s Ribs and Lounge was empty except for a few beer cans and paper litter. A sign in the window of the dark restaurant said Closed For Remodeling.

Lunch parked his VW Bug in the shade of a large oak tree so the late afternoon sun wouldn’t cook his bucket seats, then let himself into Enoch’s through the front door. The front room was shadowy, with a musty odor in the air. Chairs were upturned and stacked on tables, and vast cobweb empires were expanding in the upper reaches of the room.

About halfway across the room Lunch heard the sound of cooking, and then the smell became distinct also. The grill was on in the kitchen. Lunch bent down to his left boot and came up with a two-shot derringer. He quietly crossed the lounge to the kitchen and slowly pushed the swinging doors aside, and there at the grill stood Short Paul of Tampa, spatula in hand, tending to a brace of T-bone steaks.

Short Paul looked at Lunch and said, “No potatoes? I searched all over and couldn’t find none nowhere. Not even frozen.”

“Huh,” went Lunch.

“I’m a person who keeps it simple, you know—with meat, why, you have potatoes. Maybe peas or a salad or somethin’, too, but those’re extras.” Short Paul was of a regular size but many times in his youth he’d come up short on his bar tab, hence the nickname. He had abundant gray hair brushed straight back from a jolly face that got him fast, friendly service from café waitresses with marital woes. A big-city growl snapped at the heels of his words, and he had the skin-tone of a beachfront condo owner. “But potatoes ain’t an extra with meat—they’re a must.”

Lunch put the derringer in his front pocket, then calmly lit Salem number four.

“You here to lean on me?”

“I would never try to
lean
on
you
.”

“You should make that never, never, never.”

“Hey, now, be cool,” Short Paul said with a quick grin. “Angelo and me, we just want our money.”

Lunch looked at the T-bones cooking on the grill, then stared quizzically at Short Paul.

“No p’taters, huh?”

“None nowhere.”

“That meat come out of my freezer?”

“Mm-hmm. You don’t mind, do you?”

Lunch shook his head, smoke curling from his nostrils.

“Course not—help yourself.”

After flipping the meat, Short Paul said, “That dude sure jacked your face up, Lunch. When will it be back to normal?”

“He japped me with a bottle, Short. Doctor said I was lucky nothin’ broke.”

“I guess,” Short Paul said. “But, let me tell you, it don’t look good, what he done.”

Lunch eased over next to Short Paul, then flicked cigarette ashes on Short’s yellow shirt.

“I need a ashtray,” he said. “You’ll do.”

“Hey, hey,” Short Paul said, backing away, swatting at the ashes. “Don’t forget who I’m
with
, Lunch! Don’t forget the people I’m with, pal.”

Lunch wagged his head and smiled. “I’m only with my lonesome,” he said. “But I still consider
me
to be the majority in most
any
argument.”

“Yeah. That’s what you’re famous for.” Short Paul downshifted in mood, allowing his composure to catch back up to him. The T-bones were sizzling so he raised the spatula and dished the meat onto a white plate. “So, Lunch,” he said, “you still number your smokes?”

“Yup.” Lunch was savoring the last puff of number four, leaning against the wall, letting the smoke float from his mouth only to be
reinhaled through his nostrils. “Us smaller fellas has to keep our bad habits on short leashes. We can’t run wild with ’em and still stack up in a pinch the way your moose-type of fella can.” Lunch spit on the end of the cigarette, then dropped the butt. “Plus, seriously, there’s nature, which I don’t feel we should smoke all up just out of habit. Really, seven cigarettes a day is all you want, except out of habit.”

Short Paul nodded, then pointed with the plate, gesturing toward the lounge.

“Let’s grab a seat,” he said, “while I have a bite. I gotta drive back to Tampa yet.”

“Where’s your Caddy?” Lunch asked as they sat at a table.

“In the alley.”

“How’d you get in here?”

“Well, you have a window to fix, back there, by the alley.”

Short Paul carved the meat from both T-bones into little mouthfuls, then started spearing them and eating them like he was being timed for speed.

“I found where the man might’ve gone,” Lunch said. “His hometown was this place, you know, over in the bog country there, swamps and all that. I heard of it before, they call it St. Bruno.”

Nodding and chewing in concert, Short Paul spat out, “Sure. Gamblin’ town. Used to play cards up there.”

“You what?” Lunch asked.

Short Paul, within sight of victory over his steaks, dropped his fork, then breathed deeply.

“I used to go there for the Hold ’Em games, years ago, when the snow pigeons had flown back to Ohio and stuff. I got to know this guy, dangerous sort of a wise guy over there, name of Ledoux. Pete Ledoux.” Short Paul put both hands over his belly, then made a sour face. “If he wasn’t dead I could call him, ask him if he knows this old man—Shade, ain’t it?”

“John X. Shade.”

“Pete was well connected up there.” Sweat began to pour down Short Paul’s forehead. His facial skin began to tune in to a less healthy color. “But a cop whacked him. Oh, man.” He lifted the plate and
sniffed what was left of the meat. His face bore a concerned and slightly green expression. “This smell right?”

Lunch leaned across the table and sniffed.

“Not exactly,” he said. “A tad ripe, I’d say.”

“It was in
your
freezer. Frozen solid.”

“Yeah, well.” Lunch shrugged. “The freezer was out for near a week. I just turned it on again last night.”

“A week!” Short Paul raised the plate up high and hurled it across the room. He mopped his brow with a napkin. His pale green cheeks trembled. “You let me eat
rotten meat
?”

A smile played across Lunch’s face. He turned his small shoulders inward in an almost coy manner.

“I couldn’t be
sure
it was rotten,” he said. “Course
now
I
am
sure, or purty close to it, from the look on you.”

“You let me eat it!”

“I said, help yourself, that’s all. And I meant it, like—eat at your own risk.”

A very leery quality had taken over from Short Paul’s normal jolly expression. He watched Lunch from the corners of his eyes.

“The meat was my mistake,” he said softly. “Just get us our money. That’s all we want.”

“You’ll get it, plus ol’ Paw-Paw’s head on a stick.”

“Uhhh, forget the head on a stick. Angelo can get heads on sticks all day long, at wholesale.” Short Paul choked something back down in his throat. “What he wants is his money, forty-seven K. When’ll you be off to get it?”

Lunch touched a finger to his nose as if imagining his journey, then sprang from his seat, put both hands next to Short Paul’s ears, snapped his fingers, and said,
“Poof!”

With the sun sinking orange and fantastic directly in his path, Lunch cruised down two-lane blacktop, headed toward the big river that split the nation. He stayed well within the double-nickel speed limit, partly because it was a point of pride to never seem in a hurry, for any reason
at any time, but also because he didn’t like to put strain on his VW Bug. The Bug was red with a black interior, and he’d been driving it since his seventeenth year back in the Appalachian hills, when he’d been given it by a neighbor who didn’t want any more of his hogs disappearing and figured that if the Pumphrey kid had some wheels he just might take to snatching shoats a little farther down the road.

The Bug had previously been in a smash-up, a one-car deal where a tourist from the low country refused to believe that the mountain lane he was on could possibly curve any more times in succession than it already had, and thereby missed one, shooting the Bug into a tree. Over a period of months Lunch lavished himself on the car, and tinkered it back into smooth-running shape. He polished it up ’til it glowed, and if his family had ever had anything that could by some stretch be called a
jewel
, then the Bug was it. The car fit him in every way; it was just his size, it cornered like a snake on those hillbilly highways, the colors of it spoke to him, and naturewise it was gentle on the world, with good mileage per gallon and clean exhaust.