The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (54 page)

“This hurts,” John X. said as he counted the money. “Kid, it really hurts—do you like her more than me?” His fingers snapped each bill onto the cushion beside him with a flourish, the flourishes becoming broader as the count went higher. “Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

“No,” she said.

“Ah, ha—there’s nine hundred and fifty bucks here, darlin’!” He began to laugh. He slapped his thigh. “This calls for a drink, angel—where’s my bot—”

Steps creaked on the porch, and John X. anxiously looked toward the door. He placed a finger to his lips, motioning for silence. A footstep sounded, and as it did he raised a cushion from the couch, dropped the money in, and brought Enoch’s Bulldog .38 out.

“Get in Tip’s room,” he whispered. “Hide. Don’t come out no matter what you hear.” His blue eyes were wide. “You’ve been a great kid.” His daughter hadn’t moved yet, and in a harsher voice he said, “Now!”

Then she was gone in a light rush of pattering feet. John X. cocked the pistol, his hand wavering, and slid to the dark screen door. When
the steps came closer he aimed, then said in a low, confident voice, “Do you believe in miracles?” He shoved the screen door open, the pistol raised for a point-blank shot. “ ’Cause it’d be a fuckin’ miracle if I missed you from here.”

The figure on the porch was dressed in white, carrying a shotgun. Stew Lassein said, “I don’t know why I brought this.” He held the shotgun with one hand on the barrel. “I s’pose I’ve been considerin’ killin’ you, Johnny.”

“You ain’t got a chance, Stew. Set that duck gun down right there. Drop it.”

The shotgun clattered to the deck. Stew calmly looked at the pistol barrel trained on his face, smiling as if it were an ice cream cone or a strange carnation. John X. backed into the house, the .38 held high, and Stew followed him into the dimly lit front room.

“Criminentlies, but did you give me a start, buddy. I thought you might be somebody else.” The light cast by the one lamp illuminated a ruined Stew Lassein. His attire of apparitional white was now soiled, and blood had dried into dark streaks on the shirtfront. He was very pale, and black circles had formed under his eyes. His upper lip was swollen to thumb size. A strong fetid smell wafted from his clothes and body. “Oh, man,” John X. said, “have a seat. You look like shit warmed over, buddy.”

Stew fell to the couch in sections, like a cargo carelessly unpacked, and sprawled across the cushions.

“Go on and shoot me, Johnny,” he said. His chin touched his chest. “My life was finished last winter, the day that ice storm hit.”

“I don’t want to shoot you. That’s a sad fuckin’ statement for a man to make, anyhow, ain’t it? ‘Shoot me,’ I mean.”

“I just don’t care. I ain’t been to sleep since the night before last. Since the poker game.”

“Well, no wonder.”

“I can’t. I can’t sleep.”

John X. took a seat beside Stew on the couch. The pistol sagged in his hand.

“I know you hate me,” John X. said, “but I don’t know why.”

“You know why.”

“Sure, there’s water under the bridge, but we ain’t in it, face down. That’s the main thing, right?”

Stew snorted. “That’s nowhere
near
bein’ the main thing.”

“I see. I’m full of shit?”

“Just shallow. So damned shallow. Life is about nothin’ but creature comforts to you, and the many like you.”

“That’s shallow?”

“It’s damned shallow.”

“Are fuckin’ and drinkin’ and gamblin’ creature comforts?”

“Oh, yes. Yes.”

“Then you’re right—I’m one shallow S.O.B.”

For a moment Stew was quiet, his eyes open but his mind lost in potent remembrance. A Glenn Miller medley sounded from the radio. When he came out of the past and turned to John X., he made eye contact for the first time since sitting down.

“So, tell me,” Stew said, “was Della a good piece of ass?” John X. merely looked at him, unmoving. “I mean it—was Della a good roll in the hay, by your standards?”

“Aw, please, shut up. Don’t speak that way about the dead.”

“She was my wife, and I thought she was so pretty.”

“She was, Stew. A gorgeous kid.”

“I never had your gift with the gals, Johnny. I never bowled ’em over the way you did. In high school I screwed a few yaller gals over at Reena Lovett’s place, the one she had in that big ol’ house by the park.”

“A splendid whore house,” John X. said. “Reasonable prices.”

“And one night I walked home from Uncle Dot’s Café with this girl from around here—Olive Thiebault—did you know her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She invited me in, and we sat in the kitchen for a while, then we smooched for a while, then she told me it was that time of the month and she couldn’t screw, so right there at the table, with her daddy
snorin’ in the next room, she pulled my thing out and sucked it. I groaned so loud I expected to be murdered before I could get out of there.”

John X. laughed, then lit a cigarette.

“How about a drink?” he asked.

“Maybe a week after that I asked Della to go dancin’ with me.” Stew sighed. “And that’s it. That’s all the women I ever knew that way.”

“Really? Criminentlies—you’re gonna make me cry, Stew.”

“So you see, I can’t make comparisons the way you can. Huh-uh. That’s why I have to ask this to know for sure—was my wife a good fuck?”

“Aw, Stew.”

“If you said she was, compared to the many, many gals you’ve humped, Johnny, why, I think it’d cheer me up. I could say, Hey, Stew, you spent most of your life rollin’ in the arms of a special piece of tail.” Stew slowly stood up from the couch. His weak legs sagged. “That’d be good to know, uplifting.” He loomed over John X., his white arms fluttering up and crossing over his chest. “Just the thought of you ruined my marriage. You put a shadow over every kiss I ever got from my own wife.”

John X. couldn’t raise his eyes. He nervously tapped his cigarette and squirmed on the couch.

“So, Johnny, please, tell me—was Della a special bit of poontang?” His voice raised, cracking. “Was she a nice hump? Good piece of tail?”

“Aw, shut the fuck up!”

“Or just a little on the side, somethin’ to pass an hour with while her husband busted his ass at work?”

Stew uncrossed his white arms, placed his hands on John X.’s shoulders, then began to slide them toward his neck.

John X. sat perfectly still, his pistol hanging down, limply, between his knees. He softly said, “Keep it up, and I’ll
give
you an answer, buddy.”

“Please, tell me.”

The hands of Stew Lassein began to slowly close.

“She was really put together,” John X. said. “You know that. Nice figure.”

“Yes?”

“She smelled good, great kisser, and if you rubbed her titties she’d…”

“Oh! Oh!”

Stew fell over backward, his body thumping hard to the floor, not getting even a hand down to break his fall. He sprawled on his back, lips sputtering, eyes closed, his fingers digging frantically at his chest, breath wheezing. Then, with foreboding swiftness, he was still, and a long, long, long breath of air rushed from his body, whistling an acute, sad song past his false teeth.

John X. stayed on the couch, not bothering to look at Stew. He sat in stunned silence, smoking, then lit another cigarette from the butt of the last, and smoked it down. He dropped this butt into the ashtray, then slid off the couch, and bent over Stew. He looked down at the dead man’s face and nodded.

He squatted on the floor, touched the back of his hand to Stew’s cheek, and said, “You wanted to know.”

When the voices in the front room had quieted, and stayed quiet for what seemed like a long time, Etta cracked the door open and peered out. She could see her dad’s head above the couch back, tilted down and unmoving. There’d been some hot voices audible through the door, and one loud thump, so she didn’t know what on earth might have happened. She slowly began to move toward her dad, in the lamplight, stealthily stepping in bare feet, her fingers pinched to her boxer shorts and pulling out the slack to avoid telltale rustling.

The man in white, the man who’d cried during poker and claimed to have a scarred heart at the bar, was on his back. Not breathing. And there was Dad, squatting beside the corpse, squatting still as a stone.

Etta came closer and looked at the dead man’s face. His mouth was yawned wide, his eyes were narrowly open.

“Oh, Dad,” she said, her voice sounding strangely mature and disappointed. “You killed him.”

John X. did not raise his head, but he shook it.

Quick confident footsteps came up the stairs, across the deck, and to the door.

Tip’s voice sounded, saying, “It’s not a bad place, Gretel. The river floods, but there’s a good feeling here. I call it home. I like it. Mainly, I guess, because it’s paid for.”

The screen door jerked open. Tip and Gretel came in and immediately stopped.

“No, not here!” Tip said. “You had to kill him in
my
house?”

John X. looked up.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said.

The Bulldog .38 was in plain view.

“You shot him, didn’t you?”

“He had a shotgun, son, but I didn’t shoot him. It’s out there in the dark.”

Gretel looked suddenly weak and weary. “I’ve got to sit down,” she said. She sat on the couch.

Tip knelt beside the body, then rolled the corpse over twice, searching for blood.

“He ain’t shot. You didn’t shoot him.”

“I told you that,” John X. said. “Heart attack.”

“Mrs. Carter is gonna take a switch to me.”

Etta took a seat on the couch beside Gretel.

“I can’t stand this,” she said.

“Dad,” Tip said, “we’ve got to get him out of here. You and him were known enemies after that fight today. There could be a stink if we call the law.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“We could take him into the swamp…”

“No! No way.” John X. shook his head, then raised his hands and rubbed his eyes. “Let’s just take him home—do you know where he lived, son?”

*     *     *

Tip lugged Stew out to the orange truck in a fireman’s carry.

“Whew!” he said. “This guy smells.”

John X. trailed his son.

“It’s been rough times for him, lately,” he said. “But they got worse.”

Tip laid the body in the bed of the truck. A light rain was falling, and the night wind was whistling off the river in a creepy falsetto.

John X. got behind the wheel, Gretel slid into the middle, Tip took the window with Etta on his lap. Enoch’s truck was slow to start, but finally the engine rolled over and the pistons began to make bickering noises.

“Dad,” Etta asked, “what is it you want me to do again?”

“Just knock on her door and tell her who you are. Tell her I’m drunk or something and you need a place to sleep.”

“She’ll let you in,” Tip said. “Ma’s okay.”

The orange truck rolled through the rainy streets of Frogtown to the corner of Lafitte and Perry. John X. pulled to the curb and Etta hopped out, Joan Jett suitcase in her hand.

“I’ll be down to get you tomorrow,” John X. said. “Be good.”

“Tomorrow’s Ma’s birthday,” Tip said.

“That’s strange,” John X. said, then drove on, following Tip’s directions to Stew’s place.

The Lassein house was all lit up. When Tip lifted Stew from the truck bed he was sopping, inert and heavy with rain. He quickly carried him to the porch.

John X. tried the door.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“Try his pockets,” Gretel said.

With Tip holding Stew upright, John X. rummaged through the dead man’s pockets. He found the key in the front pocket of Stew’s wet white pants, and opened the door. A large stuffed chair was in the corner of the front room, surrounded by newspapers, a pair of slippers on the floor beside it.

“That looks like it could be his favorite chair,” John X. said. “Let’s
put him in it. That way whoever finds him’ll think he died kind of happier than he really did.”

“Whatever,” Tip said.

He hoisted Stew into the chair with the body slumped sideways. The corpse looked freshly showered, cleansed, white hairs boyishly slicked down its forehead.

“Try to set him up with dignity,” Gretel said. She grabbed Stew’s shirtfront and pulled the body upright. “We’ve got our own Karma to consider here.”

Tip said, “He was just talkin’ to you, then crashed over dead, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“What’d you say to him?”

John X. lit a cigarette and looked around the house. Could I have lived like this? Could I? Would it have been better, richer, in any way finer to be a solid citizen like this? Was it for him? Criminentlies.

“History,” John X. said. “My history, mainly, a lot of which is lies.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Oh, son, see, a fella gets out in the world and things will happen, and naturally you
will
react, and pretty soon another thing happens and you react again, and after that you got a history you are known by. A bunch of shit concernin’ your reactions to things that happen that follows you around by word of mouth. People who don’t really know you know what they think is your history, and in my case that ain’t so good.”

Gretel had Stew’s palms turned up to study them. She said, “Yellow nails—that’s no good. Plus, his heart line is crossing his head line with a deeper rut. That won’t get it for a happy life.”

“Uh-huh,” Tip said. Then he turned to John X. His brown eyes were bright. “What was it—did you have a thing with his wife?”

John X., the cigarette slanting from his mouth, took a long look at Stew. He could remember when he’d first married Monique, and as darkness fell he had to call her in from the street out front where she’d be playing with other fourteen-year-olds, smacking a tether ball, or dealing old maid, or shaking up soda bottles and squirting root beer
into the air. He would stand on the concrete stoop and call for his young pregnant wife, calling her to come in from play and fix her husband supper, and so often Monique would call back, Come-ing, then show up with one or two of her little friends, saying they would help her cook this special dish or that, some dish he would enjoy, and more often than any other her apprentice wife would be Della, Della Rondeau, the cute, cute dark kid who’d lived in these rooms for forty years, with a man who loved and feared her.