The Missing (30 page)

With a dash of Irish too.

The sheriff was smiling broadly as if he’d heard the tune many times and thought it the best thing ever written. The child paced up the aisle and kept singing, stepping out of her captivity into her gift, no longer in the aisle of a sooty train but onstage in her mind, the one she’d been born to.

When she strolled with bold Mark Anthony

On Egypt’s yellow sands

You could see that she was Jewish

By the motion of her hands

She would shake her hands and shoulders off—

Lily gave her shoulders a shimmy, and an old farmer down the aisle guffawed and clapped his hands.

“All right, all right,” the sheriff said. “Who taught you that Jolson song, little girl?”

She stopped and pointed dramatically at August. “Gussie. My brother there.”

* * *

THE CONDUCTOR allowed the train to back the rest of the way to Woodgulch. The Whites were taken off the coach against their loud, wailing protests and threats, and many townspeople turned out to see the splendidly dressed couple led through the streets in handcuffs.

Before the train left again, a sheriff’s deputy boarded the coach and walked up to where the three of them were seated. “Sheriff said he’s calling for warrants in New Orleans and Kentucky both, that whoever wants ’em most can have ’em. After he gets through with ’em, of course. He’ll get in touch so’s y’all can be deposed down the line.”

Sam relaxed against a window and said, “Good news.”

The deputy leaned down, smelling of Old Spice and sweet chew. “Did that crazy woman really take a shot at our high sheriff?”

“That’s a fact, yeah.”

“Damn. That’ll be a lively trial.”

The whistle blasted a farewell to Woodgulch, and the deputy lumbered down to the vestibule. In seconds the coach jerked forward and Sam glanced over at August and then down at Lily, who was sitting between them eating a sandwich the agent had given her out of his lunchbox. He gazed out the window glad for each foot of travel the train was making toward home. The longer he looked, the more he imagined that he could see his wife and child, and past them Elsie Weller and, all the way downtown, Krine’s vast store. He relaxed for the first time in months, but as the engine pulled into the inter-change at Gashouse, where they would switch trains, Lily sat up straight, looked at August, and asked, “Why didn’t Father come to get me?”

Her brother turned his head toward the aisle, the finality of the gesture proof that the news would not come from him.

Sam bent over and said, “Your mother will explain that, darling.”

“But why did you come, and Gussie, but not my daddy?”

He gave her shoulder a squeeze, surprised by how small it was. He’d been looking for her for so long he expected her to be larger than life. She was just a baby. “Hey, we’ll travel down to New Orleans and your mother will tell you everything you need to know. We’ll go down to the Café du Monde and eat some of those square doughnuts buried in confection sugar. You’ll like that.” He kept talking to keep her mind on the future, but he and August had been so busy in the act of finding her that they’d forgotten what she didn’t know. He hoped she was too young to take it as hard as August had. He hoped she was like him, with no memory whatsoever of a father, but he knew that wasn’t true. Lily would see an empty chair at her mother’s table for the rest of her life, a space lacking words and songs that were her birthright.

They changed trains at the junction, riding to Baton Rouge, then catching another for New Orleans. It was dark on this last leg, and Sam slept with Lily in his lap, the smell of soft coal blowing through the windows and a scrim of cypresses sailing by. In his dream, he himself was in someone’s lap, a man, judging from the smell of kerosene and wood smoke and a little gale of beer breathed over his head; his stomach felt full, and a callused hand pressed down on it as though holding a jewel secure.

When he woke up, the conductor was walking the aisle announcing New Orleans. August looked at him closely.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“Your eyes are wet. Smoke bother you that much?”

THEY WALKED IN the heat down to the ferry landing, taking the boat to Algiers, where the Ambassador was having work done to the rudders. The three of them found Elsie, down on her knees, recoating the café floor, her hair half-unpinned, her washed-out blue dress wrinkled. She had the good sense not to charge at Lily all at once, but got up calmly, wiping her hands on a rag. Bending in front of the child, she hugged her, and Lily received her light kisses, but studied this tired woman wearing a dusty housedress sticky with varnish and smelling of turpentine. Sam could tell she was confused about who Elsie was.

Elsie stared into her eyes. “Lily, I love you.”

“I know.”

“Have you forgotten me?” Elsie’s voice faltered and her eyes grew wide, waiting for the answer, which was slow in coming.

“They told me you went to heaven. I didn’t know you could come back.”

“No, no, I didn’t go anywhere. I know you don’t understand, but you were stolen, and we’re so happy to have you back.”

“Did Father go anywhere?”

Elsie stood up and looked at August, who shook his head. She sighed. “You boys give me some time with her.”

The men sidestepped along a strip of unvarnished floor and got into the kitchen, where they fixed sandwiches. August seemed tired to the bone and worried, the kind of worry that tattoos the face.

“Well, she’s back,” Sam said.

August looked at him. “Is she?”

Sam took a bite and worked his brain along with his jaws, thinking of all the time that was lost to everybody, but especially to Lily. The life of a young child is compressed existence, and a month is like a year. He tried to call up one day from his own childhood and remembered a time when he was eight, after cane-grinding season, when his uncle Claude took him on his first rabbit hunt. He still knew every detail, from loading the little shotgun he was allowed to use, to his uncle’s hunting jokes in French, to the first shot and kill, to the opening with a pocketknife of the bright red world inside the animal as he was taught to clean it for the table and, that night, the rabbit stew itself. One day was intact and as long as a whole book in his recollection. If it was like that for Lily, then she’d been gone for years.

* * *

HE CAUGHT a streetcar home with the last seven cents in his pocket, and when he walked in at ten o’clock his wife sat him down in the kitchen and began to warm some meatless potato stew, moving quietly so as not to wake the baby. He summarized the events of the past few days, and she touched his forehead and kissed him there.

“You found her,” she said, her breath a current in his hair. “It’s finally over.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“We can go back to like we were before, Sam.”

She was as thin as a pretty ghost. He wasn’t at all sure that the months of searching could be ignored and written off, that time would gradually diminish everything like a sad town passed through on a speeding train, the glimpse of it fading into insignificance. “That would be nice,” he said.

She brought him his plate and put her arms around him where he sat. “I can’t believe it.”

The next day he got up with Christopher, changed him, and held him in his lap for a long time. They ate breakfast together, his son sitting on his legs and grabbing at everything. At eight o’clock he said to the baby, “Time to go start making some money so I can feed that hungry mouth.” He put on his good suit and took a quarter from his wife’s purse and rode the car down to Canal Street. Inside Krine’s main entrance, he stopped dead and looked around at the ceilings and plasterwork, smelled the dye in the new clothes and the light, polished smell of the glossy counters, inhaling it all like medicine. He waved at Gladys over in the men’s department and took the elevator up to the main office.

A new receptionist was in Krine’s anteroom. She greeted Sam with a neutral expression and asked him to take a seat while she went in to announce him. He sat there patiently, ready for the main floor.

The receptionist motioned him into the inner office and closed the door.

The owner was behind his desk, leaning back in his chair, one hand fisted on a stack of papers. “Hello, Mr. Simoneaux.”

“Mr. Krine.” Sam waited to be asked to sit down. After a long moment, it was obvious that he wouldn’t be asked to.

“It’s been a while. I’m surprised to see you, in fact.”

“I just came by to say I found the little girl and returned her to her mother.”

Krine looked at him but said nothing. They both seemed to be listening to the regulator clock on the wall next to the window. “I’m glad for her,” he finally said.

Sam grinned. “I was wondering if I could get my old job back.” He thought it odd that he had to explain what he wanted. They had an agreement.

Krine didn’t blink, and that frightened him.

“You’ve taken your own sweet time solving this problem. I thought you might take a month, at most. When you didn’t come back, I hired a good man to take your place. As a matter of fact I hired two, and they’ve worked out very well for us.”

Sam swallowed several times, feeling a chill in the center of his chest. “I thought we had a deal,” he said faintly.

“You know, I found out recently that that child’s father was killed as a result of trying to rescue her. Is that right?”

He looked at the clock, wondering how many minutes he had left in the office. A drop of sweat ran down from behind an ear. “More or less.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. And I’m sorry to say we don’t need you as a floorwalker.”

He swallowed again and looked at the carpet, trying to make sense of the design. “Do you have any positions at all?”

“The big stores in town are cutting back a little. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing?” He held out a hand, palm up.

Krine picked up a folder of paperwork and stood. “Nothing,” he said, like a shot, and the meeting was over. “We have your number. If we ever need a floorwalker, we’ll call you.”

He took the elevator down and walked around the first floor as if he were shopping, touching the bright ties, the glossy shoes. He was tempted to straighten a rack of shoe-polish tins but pulled his hand back at the last moment. Across the store, one of the new floorwalkers was chatting with a well-dressed woman who’d come out of the café. Sam wanted a cup of the wonderful coffee the café brewed, but it was free only for employees. He turned around once in an aisle, taking a last look, then headed for the main doors. On the street he felt vaguely like an exile, glanced back once at the store’s Italianate façade, and began walking home. Three blocks off Canal Street, he remembered the Ambassador was leaving port in two days, and he changed direction down to the ferry landing. He wouldn’t play piano in a gangster’s bar or carry a gun for a bank or the city, so second mate, if he could get it, would suit him fine.

* * *

HIS WIFE’S FACE fell, and she sat down hard on the sagging mahogany settee in the front room. “You’ll be gone months at a time. I need you here.”

“You need the rent paid. The grocery bill.”

“I can get a little from Mom.”

“Hey, sometimes the boat lays over and I can take a train home for a couple days. Lots of the schedule’s down South.”

“And you’ll eat up your salary on train tickets and meals. Lucky, why can’t you just play music in town?”

He looked at the bright spot against the wall where his piano had been, a fine, booming instrument he’d bought with his mustering out pay. “I can’t get a good piano spot. This is New Orleans, darling. Everybody plays better than I do.”

She turned away, then leaned back against him. “What’ll they pay?”

“More than the last trip.”

“Put your arms around me.”

He kissed her nape, the backs of her pale ears.

“Lucky, when I walk up the street I see these nice houses with porches and big backyards. Sometimes I ask myself how anybody can afford to own a house, you know? To keep it up? Everybody I know rents.”

He took in a slow breath. “There’s a lot of businessmen in town, I guess. Store owners. Superintendents.” Out on the sidewalk someone passed by bouncing a basketball, the pneumatic pings rising for a time and then diminishing up the street. “I thought I could work my way up at Krine’s,” he said absently.

“This kidnapping dragged us down, baby.”

“I know.”

“I thought it would be over, but it isn’t.”

“I know that, too.”

She took in a sudden breath. “When do you leave?”

“Probably day after tomorrow.”

“Do you still have your nice Hamilton watch? The one Uncle Claude gave you for a wedding present?”

“Sure.”

She turned to face him. He thought she might want a kiss, but when she gave him a sad, complicated smile instead, he knew what she would say, and he looked away. “You have to sell it.”

* * *

THE AMBASSADOR wasn’t ready to steam for a week. The day before he was to leave, Sam received a call from a New Orleans assistant district attorney summoning him downtown to be deposed for an upcoming trial of the Whites in Kentucky. In an office of the federal building he met a slim young lawyer who asked him to write out a statement. He labored over four pages for an hour, signed off on them, and waited for the lawyer to step back into the room. Trying to imagine what would happen to the Whites was beyond him, but he had a dim notion that such people never saw the inside of a jail. He hoped, however, they could be fined enough to keep them away from anyone else’s children.

The glass in a mahogany door rattled, and the lawyer came in and reached for the deposition as he walked by.

Sam looked up at him. “Has the boy been in yet?”

“We took his statement yesterday. How’s the little girl doing?”

“I haven’t seen her again. I go to work tomorrow, and I guess she’ll be on board.” Sam stood and shook his pants legs loose. “They trying those people in Kentucky?”

The lawyer, who wore a thin mustache, turned it up on one side. “Well, I don’t know. The jurisdiction’s rather confused.”

“I figured they’d get out of it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. They’re still in a county jail in Mississippi. The sheriff there’s got his own juice, as they say, and the Whites threatened him in several ways, then offered to bribe him, so there are two or three new local charges against them. Mrs. White’s in the regional female prison wearing denim clothes along with the whores and lady pickpockets. Not doing too well, I hear. Mr. White’s still in the Woodgulch pokey.”

Sam thought about this while the lawyer examined his handwriting. “I guess it might bother them more than it would some other folks.”

“Let’s just say they’re not used to such accommodations. I got a telegram from Graysoner, Kentucky, that said the local paper has the story all over the front page, and the reporter didn’t gild the lily, if you know what I mean.”

“I’d have guessed the local paper would’ve taken their side.”

“Me too. But the reporter has a young brother on the police force who gave him some interesting details.”

Sam grinned. “Sometimes a criminal gets his justice just because of bad luck?”

The lawyer opened the door into the marble hallway. Down the broad stairs Sam heard people talking and quick footsteps, and someone dropped what sounded like an armload of file folders. Throughout the building people were trying to propel the lumbering steamroller of justice forward in a straight line, but it seemed to him a complex business, both noble and imprecise.

The lawyer clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “As for bad luck, I think the Whites have rolled snake eyes.”

* * *

THE AMBASSADOR ran three trips on a Saturday in New Orleans, breaking in the new band, the repaired machinery, and a revolutionary speaker system mounted on the roof and dance floor. On Sunday, Sam went to Mass at the cathedral with his wife, and at noon the boat departed, banners flying, bunting set, and twin clouds of coal smoke rising skyward. It would run a meet-the-boat trip, carrying excursionists upriver about forty miles and then exchanging the whole crowd with that from the Buckeye Deluxe, a big sidewheel excursion boat tramping south. The Ambassador would then paddle upriver to Donaldsonville and drop off the sidewheeler’s tired load.

Sam caught a glimpse of Elsie through the crowd boiling around the decks, but the captain caught his arm as he was making his way to her.

“Lucky, we’ve got a new generator in the engine room, and Bit says he can’t watch it all the time, so you’re elected to learn how to operate the thing and just check its meters every couple hours. It runs all the new bulbs on the rails, plus the loudspeaker thing.”

He made a face. “A generator?”

“Go on. It’s not like learning piano, for gosh sake.”

He went down to the engine room and sat amid the hissing machines and worried through the manual, testing the circuits and learning the Bakelite control board and its tangle of fuses, rotary controls, and knife-blade switches. It was impossible to learn the manual because all he could think of was Lily and her mother. He gave up and walked forward to the main deck. After the boats tied up side by side and exchanged passengers, the purser discovered that the Deluxe had overbooked, and excursionists were stacked on the Ambassador’s forecastle trying to get up to the good music. The deck speakers were meant for colorful commentary on things the boat passed by, but the captain found Sam and directed him to figure how to connect the stage microphones to the on-deck speakers so he could forestall a riot. The Donaldsonville crowd had been floating south all morning listening to a dull hotel orchestra while sipping radiator-made shine and were primed to try the hot tempos of this New Orleans band. An hour upriver Sam figured out the crossovers, and people began to dance up on the hurricane deck and in the lower lounge. He walked up to the Texas roof and looked down on hundreds of dancers, feeling the thin lumber of the old boat rumble under him like a wooden bridge bearing a cattle drive. When he turned to look aft, Elsie was standing next to him, her little waitress crown sunken down into her sweaty hair.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “The crowd’s going to bunch into the café in a minute, so they sent me out on a break. It’s been a crazy house since noon. I was almost killed over a ham sandwich.”