Not One of Us

by Debbie Herbert

  “It’s not like I knew Jackson,” I said defensively. “He was my second cousin, and I was only two when he died.”

  “Still. Family is family. My folks? They’d have rallied all of us together and devised sneaky schemes to make Ray’s free life as miserable as possible.”

  “Good for y’all.” I couldn’t quite keep the sour note from my voice. Nobody had to lecture me on family loyalty. If it hadn’t been instilled in me since childhood, I’d never have returned to Bayou Enigma two weeks ago.

  Dana patted my hand. “That wasn’t a criticism. You never knew your cousin. And from what everyone says about Jackson Ensley . . .”

  I frowned, not liking her implication. “You saying he deserved to die? I’ve heard all the tales about what a low-life piece of trash Jackson was. But c’mon, Dana—we’re talking about a sixteen-year-old kid.”

  She held up a hand. “You’re right. Sorry. The older I get, the younger sixteen sounds. Who knows? He could have just been going through a troubled adolescent stage and would have turned his life around. Become a respectable, upstanding citizen.”

  I chose to ignore the doubtful tone as she uttered those words. It was hard to get worked up about such an old crime involving a relative I never knew. Call me heartless, but I had enough on my plate dealing with present circumstances.

  I’d been cruising along just fine with my mostly solitary life in Mobile. Since leaving government employment and striking out on my own as an event coordinator, I’d stayed holed up in my apartment, glued to the computer and dedicated to making a go of my new business. On the few occasions I’d come home to visit my grandmother and younger brother, Zach, I’d tamped down my feelings of uneasiness. Yes, Mimi had grown a tad too forgetful for my liking. But didn’t most people become that way as they aged? Trouble was, Mimi was Zach’s sole caretaker, and his autism was on the severe end of the spectrum.

  Last week’s call from Social Services had jolted me from my false complacency. Zach hadn’t showed at his regular day program, and the concerned director had driven to Mimi’s house. Zach was home alone, unharmed and watching TV. Mimi drifted in a good twenty minutes later, a dazed expression on her face. Turns out she’d walked to the end of the driveway to set out the trash can that morning, talked to a neighbor for several minutes, then apparently become confused and wandered up and down the road until she remembered which house was hers.

  So here I was. Back in the bayou. Trying to figure out what the hell I needed to do to understand Mimi’s medical condition and get her help and at the same time ensure that Zach was safe.

  I shook off my worries as best I could. Tonight was supposed to be a fun evening with an old friend. Last thing I needed was more problems. Still, I couldn’t help sneaking a glance at the thin, tatted man drinking his beer alone. His head was bent, his full attention on the glass in his hands. His hair was heavily streaked with gray and pulled severely into a ponytail. He wore a clean but faded T-shirt and jeans. “Surprised he came back to the bayou when they let him out,” I observed.

  “He didn’t. He only came for his mom’s funeral a few days ago. I expect he’ll be moving along soon. There’s nothing to keep him here.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t want Aunt Tressie running into him. Not that there’s much chance of that. She only leaves assisted living once a month to get her hair done.”

  Now that Dana had pointed him out, I noticed other patrons eyeing him with covert sideways glances. Ray appeared oblivious—or was deliberately avoiding everyone by keeping his head down.

  “He appears older than he must be,” I said, signaling to the waitress for another bloody mary. The noise of patrons mixed with speakers blaring music on the dock and the clink of pool balls in the back room formed a steady drumbeat of colors that swirled and morphed into blackish splatters of ugly blobs. Hence the multiple bloody marys to cope with the cacophony. “My cousin would have been fortyish if Strickland hadn’t murdered him.”

  “Ray was only a couple years older than Jackson. Prison life must really age you,” Dana agreed.

  “Geez. I would have guessed he was at least in his midfifties.” My temples began to throb with the overload of sound, and I rubbed them.

  “You hurting?” Dana asked.

  Close as we were, Dana didn’t understand the half of it, only that I had a sensitivity to sound that could result in headaches.

  “I thought you’d be okay since there’s no live band tonight.”

  “Music is fine. It’s all the background buzz of people talking.”

  “You want a pain pill?” Dana rummaged through her purse and produced a bottle. “I always keep some handy. My scoliosis aches kick in when I least expect it.”

  I raised a brow, remembering her reputation in high school for experimenting with drugs—not that she ever did anything in front of me. She knew my position on the matter. I’d heard talk that she’d gone through rehab a couple of years ago, but since she’d never confided in me, I didn’t bring the subject up. My philosophy was that if someone wanted you to know anything personal, they’d tell you themselves.

  “No thanks. I took some over-the-counter pills about twenty minutes ago. They’ll kick in soon enough.”

  Dana shrugged and dropped the medicine back into her purse. “If you say so.”

  I returned my attention to Ray Strickland, imagining the long, thin fingers now wrapped around his beer as the same hands that had held a gun and pulled the trigger to shoot Jackson. I thought of my aunt and her early descent into assisted living. It’s like her mind and body slowly checked out of reality with her son’s death. Her husband left, and she sat alone in her small house, day after day after day, immersed in her grief. By the time I was old enough to remember weekly visits to her place with Mimi, Aunt Tressie had been a fragile shell, distant and confused, eyes permanently reddened from crying.

  Once, I made the mistake of drifting into Jackson’s old bedroom, where all his possessions had been left untouched. But instead of being stale and dusty, the room smelled of lemon polish, and every surface gleamed with an unnatural, unlived-in cleanliness. A shrine to her dead son. Aunt Tressie had roused from her vague, passive manner and run screeching through the house to grab me roughly by the shoulders, screaming at me to get out and stay out of Jackson’s room. As a child, I’d had a secret terror of the woman after that, always imagining her rousing from a stupor and turning wild with grief, ready to lash out at me. Of course, as I’d grown older, I’d realized she was a tragic woman who meant no harm.

  My mouth hardened into a thin line. This man was the one who had done that to her. The waitress brought my cocktail, and I downed a large gulp before setting the glass down hard on the scarred wooden table. “He shouldn’t be here,” I said darkly. I rose up and slid out of the booth, glaring at Ray.

  Dana grabbed the front hem of my T-shirt. “What are you doing? Sit back down,” she demanded with a hiss of breath.

  But I was pumped with liquid courage and a self-righteous resolve to tell this man how much he’d hurt my family. I easily shrugged from Dana’s grasp and made my way around several tables jammed in the middle of the bar.

  “Jori!” she called after me several times. People looked up from their drinks or bowls of gumbo, sniffing out trouble. But not Ray. The man appeared impervious to the brewing shitstorm. I slipped into the booth, and his head jerked up with a start.

  “What you want?” he asked sourly. His tone was a bruising purple-black, the color of storm clouds accompanied by a howling wind. The shade wasn’t particularly vivid since I’d never met him before. The longer I knew someone, the more vivid and distinctive the color and shapes of their voices became.

  He scowled, emphasizing the lines around his mouth that betrayed a serious tobacco habit. His eyes narrowed at me with suspicion. “I been drinkin’ and mindin’ my own bizness. I ain’t botherin’ nobody.”

  “Your very presence bothers me,” I retorted.

  “Who the hell are you?”
/>   “Jori Trahern.”

  His hard gaze didn’t flicker. My name meant nothing to him.

  “Jackson Ensley’s cousin.”

  His right eye twitched, and he raised an arm, breaking eye contact. “Waitress!” he called out with a wave, searching through the crowd.

  “That’s right,” I scoffed. “Ignore me, you coward.”

  “I ain’t no coward.”

  “A murdering coward,” I reiterated. “You shot my cousin from the back.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  I snorted. I’d have been more impressed if he’d owned up to what he’d done and shown even an iota of remorse. “You’re a liar too.”

  “He was my friend. I didn’t kill him!” His voice rose, crescendos of lime squares. The crowd set down their drinks and openly watched us now. He lowered his voice an octave as he placed his hands on the scarred table and balled his fists. “Guess nobody in this miserable bayou will ever believe me.”

  If he’d thought to intimidate me with his outburst, he was dead wrong. My temper rose at his loud indignation. “The evidence says otherwise,” I pointed out. My voice shook in anger, red heat shimmering across baked concrete.

  “That shit was planted. Jackson was my friend. I had no beef with him.”

  His defense flew in the face of what little my family had told me about the crime. It was one of those quiet tragedies no one liked to talk about but that shadowed us despite our best intentions to forget the past. “A drug buddy who owed you money, is what I hear,” I argued. “You were a small-town dealer peddling to your friends. Cops caught you with bags of pot and pills when they went to question you. They also found your fingerprints all over rolling papers in Jackson’s car. Not to mention your hoodie sweatshirt soaked with Jackson’s fresh blood.”

  Hardness settled on his too-sculpted cheekbones, and he lifted one bony shoulder in a shrug. My eye was drawn to the tattoo of barbed wire encircling his upper-right arm. Judging by the haphazard lines and ashy color, it had been carved in prison by a minimally talented inmate artist. “I was set up,” he insisted, his mouth drawn into a childish, surly pout. “Somebody broke into my car and stole that stuff.”

  “Righhht,” I drawled. “You were framed. Isn’t that what all criminals say?”

  “I didn’t do it. Jackson had all kinds of enemies. Plenty of people weren’t sorry to hear he’d been killed.”

  I shifted in my seat. This might be the first truthful thing Ray had uttered. Even all these years later, I heard the whispers. I’d seen the way Uncle Buddy and Mimi looked at each other when I’d heard rumors about my cousin and asked them if it was true Jackson was a bad person. Over the years, whenever Jackson’s name came up, a shadow had flickered in their eyes, and they’d immediately shifted the conversation to other topics.

  “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Ray insisted. “This town’s dirty as hell. If you’re from the wrong side of the tracks, you ain’t got a chance. You’re the one who gets blamed for everythin’.” He scraped a bitter laugh as he twirled the beer in his glass. “At least I’m alive. Folks have a way of disappearin’ ’round here. Gator feed.”

  My breath drew in sharply, and acute pain knifed my chest. Deacon. Just saying his name in my mind created waves of dark violet with tips of white froth at the crest. I leaned in toward Ray. “What are you saying? Are you talking about the Cormiers?”

  He glanced around the bar with a furtive, feral air, as though he regretted the slip of tongue.

  “Tell me,” I pushed, my voice rising. “Do you know something about their disappearance or not?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Gator feed. The words pounded through me, drumming despair. Not my Deacon. He couldn’t have met such a violent, cruel end. I grabbed Ray’s forearm. “If you know something, tell me.”

  He shook me off and sprawled back into the booth. “Don’t. Touch. Me,” he growled.

  Heat suffused my face. This man knew nothing, hadn’t even lived in the bayou for years. His innuendo about the Cormiers was just another theory, one of dozens I’d heard over the years. They’d vanished without a trace that same night I’d entered their abandoned home. It still haunted me, those empty plates on the table, the chicken left roasting in the oven, the fragments of the forgotten corsage under the couch.

  Everyone had an opinion: The Cormiers were still alive and had fled the country to avoid legal problems. The Cormiers were murdered by the Mafia because Mr. Cormier had dealings with the underworld. The Cormiers were spotted on a Mexican beach, living the high life with stolen money. The tales grew more outlandish with every year.

  At last, I found my voice. “I think your imagination went wild with all the free time you had locked up in prison.”

  “Free time?” He snorted. “They work the shit out of you in prison. I worked eight hours in the kitchen every day and mopped floors at night.”

  “Don’t expect pity from me. You ruined my aunt’s life. After Jackson died she lost her grip on reality, and then her husband abandoned her and left town. Just so you know.”

  Ray lifted his glass and took a long swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “We all got troubles. My life ain’t been no picnic either, missy. I served my time. You done harassing me?”

  I cocked my head to the side, studying his hard features. What had I hoped to gain by speaking with this man? He couldn’t care less that my aunt’s life had been forever scarred. Must be the alcohol that had made me so hell bent on making sure Ray knew the impact of that long-ago murder. I’d said what I’d come to say. There was nothing else to discuss, except: “When do you leave?”

  He raised a thin brow streaked with gray hairs.

  “I’d hate for my aunt to accidentally run into you in town.”

  “Again, none of yer bizness, but I don’t mind tellin’ ya I leave in a day or so. Got some private bizness to take care of that should set me up nicely while I get back on my feet.” His eyes shifted in a crafty way, and a sly grin slid over his wan face. No doubt this business was something highly illegal.

  “Now that Momma’s dead and buried, ain’t no need for me to ever come back to this hellhole,” he continued.

  “Good.” My face suffused with warmth. “Not that your mother died,” I hastened to assure him, even though I had no need to explain myself to this loser. But politeness had been drilled into me all my life, and I couldn’t be a total jerk. “Good that you’re leaving, that is.”

  Message delivered, I started to rise to my feet when a group of four men with pool cues marched deliberatively over to our table. Our raised voices had attracted the attention of the bar bullies. I’d seen them around over the years, always stumbling about half-drunk and taking offense at folks for the least provocation. Luckily, they mostly stuck to the back poolroom and were easily avoided. But tonight, the beasts had been roused. Their eyes were narrowed to mean slits, and one of them slapped his cue menacingly into an open palm.

  “Ray Strickland,” their ringleader groused. His thin mouth tightened into a grim line. “Can’t believe you have the nerve to show your face here.”

  Ray cradled his hands around his beer glass, the calloused knuckles white, emphasizing a row of tatted crosses lining each knuckle joint. “I ain’t botherin’ nobody.”

  Dana hovered by my side. “Let’s go,” she whispered in my ear, her hand on my arm.

  “He botherin’ you?” one of the guys asked me. With a start, I realized I recognized this one. Eddie Yaeger. He’d been several years ahead of me in school and was always being called to the principal’s office for fighting or some other mischief.

  “Nope. Thanks, Eddie. Y’all go on back to your game.” I pushed onto slightly unsteady feet. I despised Strickland for what he’d done to my family, but to be fair, I’d been the one to approach him. Man didn’t know me from Jack. I had no stomach for fistfights, either, especially when it was unfair. Surely Ray had learned a few slick moves protecting himself in prison, but t
onight’s four-to-one odds meant an ass whoopin’ I’d rather not witness.

  “Why you showing your face here, Ray?” the ringleader asked, not willing to retreat just yet. “This is a respectable joint. No convicts allowed.”

  “I ain’t a convict no more.” Ray’s tone was truculent, and the muscles in his arms tensed as though preparing for a fight.

  The men edged closer to the table in a semicircle, blocking his exit. Chairs scuffled all around us, the other patrons sensing trouble and hastening to put distance between themselves and the brawl’s epicenter. Dana’s grip tightened on my arm as she pulled me away. “Come on.”

  I couldn’t abandon Ray to this fate. I should never have approached him. This was all on me.

  “He was just leaving,” I offered, pointing to Ray’s nearly empty glass. “Isn’t that right, Ray?” I asked, beseeching him to gracefully exit the danger.

  He dug in, his jaw hardening even more. “Ain’t going nowhere ’til I’m good and ready.”

  Stubborn jerk. I backed away from the inevitable scene.

  Eddie turned to the ringleader. “Ray ain’t worth our time, Tommy. Let’s go.”

  But the man nearest to him wrapped his hand over Ray’s bicep. “Go now,” he threatened.

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll kick your ass.”

  “I don’t want no trouble. Get yer hands off me. Ain’t warning ya again.”

  Instead of backing off, the man tugged on Ray’s arm.

  Ray picked up his glass and threw what was left of his drink into the guy’s face. The golden, sticky brew trickled down into his eyes and made tracks in the scrubby stubble of his jaw.

  An awful silence descended throughout the room. Everyone recognized the split second of stillness for what it was: a signal of coming disaster.

  One moment Ray was seated at the booth; the next he was on his feet, easily flicking off the man’s hold on his arm. The attacker shoved at Ray’s chest, and Ray shoved back, sending the guy flying into the nearest table. Bowls of gumbo and pints of beer crashed to the concrete floor as the table was upended. A woman screamed somewhere nearby. Hot liquid scorched my right calf, bits of rice and crawfish dotting my jeans.