“Look who it is!” he said too loud with a plastic cup in his hand. He came over to me and hugged me with one arm. From the smell of it, I suspected it was rum and Coke in that cup, and most likely not his first one.
“Hi,” I said, not sure who this was. He picked up on that.
“A! Leigh.” He made an exasperated gesture and his mouth hung open. He instantly struck me as the type of guy who was always the life of the party, too loud and too drunk, but with a very likable quality. “Aw, c’mon! Ya mean you don’t reco’nize me?” His voice was thick and coarse, like he should be older, but he looked about my age. He definitely had a good grasp of the flat Cajun accent. “Aw. Leigh-Leigh. C’mon now. You breaking my heart, yeah, girl. Mais, you don’t remember me?”
I shrugged my shoulders, now embarrassed. Carrie grinned and nudged me in the arm. “We went to school with him a long time ago.”
I looked him up and down and then it hit me. “Billy Joe?”
“Aaaaa! Dere you go!” he rejoiced.
“Sorry,” I said. “But that was like in fourth grade. A really long time ago.”
“I know. You know I was just pickin’ on ya. Mais, come here, chère.” As always, chère in Acadiana sounded like shaa and mais sounded like may. “We gotta get ya hooked up wit some beers. Ya need ta catch up.”
Now it was Billy Joe who led me away by the arm, but he was gentler than Carrie had been. He walked me over to the table with the drinks, and I turned to see if Carrie was behind me. She wasn’t. She had gone back in the house for something, probably more snacks to bring out. I was a little miffed at this.
“Now, we got us some Bud, some Coor’s Light, some rum, Jack, Coke … oh, yeah. An’ we got us a couple a Coronas. Whatcha havin’, boo?” asked Billy Joe.
“Corona’s fine.”
He opened the bottle, salted the rim, and garnished with a lime slice. “A’right. Dere ya go, B.” he said and then handed it to me. He then hugged me again with one arm. “A! Like I said, it’s good to have ya back. I’m goin’ check on da crawfish. You enjoy yourself and come talk to me a lil’ lata, ‘k?”
“Okay. Thanks, Billy Joe.” He tipped his ball cap with his free hand and headed over to the crawfish boilers. I was alone for a minute, lost in thought about when I was in school with Billy Joe. I remembered how he was the class clown and, once on a dare made by Carrie, he dropped his pants and showed us his wee wee. I giggled at this.
“What you laughing at?”
I turned around to see Lucas right behind me, grinning from ear to ear. God, he looked so good. For a second, I forgot what I was laughing at, but remembered. “Just Billy Joe,” I said.
“Yeah. I remember when he went to our school. You remember the time he got sent home because he pulled down his pants in front of some girls?”
I smiled and nodded.
“So,” he continued, “how are you?”
“I’m okay,” I said. And that was true now. “Where’s Jonathan?”
“With the sitter. I wanted to bring him, but he said he wanted to stay with Miss Celia because she was watching Kalie, her little granddaughter. Jon likes playing with her.”
“He’s a very sweet boy.”
“Like his daddy,” he said coyly, sipping from his beer as he looked into my eyes. I felt myself blush slightly. At that moment, a new song started on the stereo. I recognized it as a Keith Frank song. Carrie and I used to dance a lot together at high school victory dances, festivals and wedding receptions we’d crash on the weekends when we had nothing better to do. We loved dancing to Keith Frank the most.
The patio doors slid open, and Carrie stepped out with another tray of food, this one containing chips and salsa as well as cheese cubes. She set it down on one of the snack tables.
“Carrie!” shouted one girl who was by the picnic table. “Go dance!”
Carrie waved that idea away with her hand.
“Come on, dancin’ queen! Show everyone how you earned those trophies!” shouted Billy Joe. Everyone started to cheer her on, encouraging her. Carrie really was a dancing queen. She had a shelf full of trophies from Cajun and Zydeco dance contests to prove it. I, on the other hand, barely had better than two left feet. She was always much better than I was on the floor. Most of the time I would just try to copy what she was doing. “Try” was a good way of putting it. I’m sure I looked very silly back then, but I hadn’t cared. We were too busy having fun, not to mention that we were usually pretty buzzed each time thanks to the lack of authority on underage drinking.
“Okay, okay,” said Carrie. “But only if Leigh joins me!” She looked over at me and held out her hand.
“What?” I asked, shaken out of my memories. Everyone started cheering me on. I had a deer-in-the-headlights look. I shook my head, no.
“Yes!” insisted Carrie.
“Go on,” Lucas whispered in my ear. His soft voice sent shivers through my body.
“That’s okay,” I told Carrie. “I’ll just sit this one out. I’d rather watch.” Everyone cheered louder for me to dance.
She stomped over to me and grabbed me by the arm. Lucas took the beer from my hand and Carrie pulled me towards the concrete patio where a circle of people was already forming, some of them dancing. “I haven’t danced with my best friend in forever!” she said, as she planted me in the center of the circle.
“Exactly!” I groaned. “It’s been so long I don’t remember how to anymore.”
“Bull! It’s in your blood, so start dancing, girly!”
She started to dance. I didn’t budge. She picked up my hands and started swinging my arms in beat to the rhythm of Keith Frank’s accordion. I reluctantly started to get into the dance. Before I knew it, she had me in a full-on Cajun jitterbug. Despite myself, I started to really enjoy it. I only stepped on her feet a couple of times, but she didn’t care. No one cared. Everyone was having a great time and now I was, too.
Before the song was finished, a cute guy wearing a New Orleans Saints cap cut in, taking Carrie away from me. I was prepared to sit out the rest of the dance, but Lucas quickly stepped in and really started to cut a rug with me. He held my waist and hand with the firmness of a man who knows how to move with a woman on the dance floor. He twirled me. I twirled him. Our hands were together and our faces close, bodies barely touching. He looked into my eyes again and the attraction I felt earlier intensified. And with an inner sigh, a little comfort and a great humility, I realized that I was home.
5
Strange Happenings
After the party, Lucas and I stayed behind to help Carrie clean up. Lucas and I handled the trash, while Carrie loaded the dishwasher and put away the leftovers. We got everything done in less than an hour. By then, it was after nine o’clock and Carrie had to get to bed. She worked the front desk at the Lafayette Hilton, and a co-worker called in sick for the morning shift. I was sorry to see the night end. I was having more fun than I’d had in years. Lucas didn’t want it to end, either. He invited me out for a drink, and I happily accepted. Besides, the only drink I had was the one Billy Joe gave me. Same went for Lucas. I could tell he was careful to hold his liquor all night. I never saw him so responsible before.
I followed his 1992 blue Chevy pickup all the way to Snook’s Bar. I couldn’t believe he still had that truck. It was old when he drove it to pick me up for my junior cotillion and that was almost ten years ago. I had to hand it to Lucas. He wasn’t one for putting on airs. It was refreshing to see such practicality after living in L.A. for so long, where status symbols are valued over common sense.
We pulled into the little hole-in-the-wall that was Snook’s, located on the lower west side of Lafayette. I remembered Snook’s well. It was a bar Carrie and I used to frequent when we would get tired of the club scene and, like most local establishments, they were lax about checking IDs. It had a gravel parking lot and neon signs in the windows, advertising popular beer brands. I parked right behind Lucas’ truck and, as I turned off the ignition, he opened
my door for me. This would take some getting used to. He helped me out and closed the door behind me.
We went into Snook’s, where he again held the door for me. Once inside, he bought me a beer and got one for himself, and then we found a booth in the corner. Willie Nelson’s, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” was playing on the old jukebox against the back wall. We sat in silence for awhile, sipping our beer and people-watching. There were a pair of pool tables, and I was soon mesmerized by the clacking of the balls as they crashed into each other.
“Do you think you’re back for good?” His words startled me, breaking my concentration on the billiards game a few feet from us. I looked at him and smiled a little sadly. At Carrie’s, it was nothing but small talk and a lot of reminiscing with everyone. I wasn’t prepared for anything deeper.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
He nodded and sipped from his beer. We were quiet again. I took the opportunity to change the subject. “What time do you have to be back for Jonathan?”
“Eleven. He’ll be sleeping, but Miss Celia told me to stay out late and have a good time.”
“When’s the last time you got to do that?”
He thought long about it and gave a dry laugh. “Not since I was in the Army.”
“Is he still having nightmares?”
Lucas suddenly looked uneasy, and I quickly regretted the question. He nodded slowly and put his beer down. “Not as often, but when he does have them, they’re worse.” He hesitated before continuing. “He says the Dark Man is getting closer. I try to tell him there is no Dark Man, but he just cries and says he’s real and that he’s getting closer. I ask him closer to what, but he just shakes his head and says he doesn’t know.” He smiled, embarrassed. I smiled, too, but it was to hide my fear.
“I know it’s probably just a kid having a recurring nightmare and all. And I know I was probably overreacting when I told you about the night of the accident, but Leigh, I …” he trailed off, trying to find the right words. “It probably wouldn’t bother me so much if …” Now he looked really uncomfortable. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping. It looked like we were oblivious to the rest of the bar patrons. Willie Nelson left for the night and Crystal Gayle took over with, “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.” It seemed as though whoever programmed the jukebox had an affinity for blue eyes. Lucas turned back to me and had a hard time looking me in the eyes. He started to play with the label of his beer bottle and looked like he was chickening out.
“I promise I won’t laugh,” I said, secretly hoping that he wouldn’t tell me at all. I was already starting to shiver with the mention of the Dark Man.
He grinned sheepishly and his hazel eyes looked up at me. “I’d almost rather you laugh than think I was … weird, I guess.”
“Believe me, I’m a running contender for weirdo of the year. You’d have to be pretty special to compete with that.”
He grinned even wider and his eyes smoldered as they pierced me. I felt a blush coming on, and I tried my best to hide it. I took a sip from my beer and hoped he would look away. I was relieved when he glanced down at his bottle, where he was still playing with the label. “I’ve noticed some things at work, certain cases we’ve had in the last few months. Reports of … strange things happening?” He looked at me, gauging my reaction. I nodded once for him to continue. “David and I had to investigate some pretty unusual things in the last year, and they got progressively weirder with every case.”
He sipped from his beer, the label now in shreds, lying on the table. I could see he was waiting for my response. The only question I could think to ask—the only one that could naturally follow a lead in like this—was one I didn’t want to know the answer to. I made myself ask it anyway, if nothing else but to be polite. “What strange things?”
He looked over his shoulder again and then turned back. He gazed toward the pool tables and watched the light-hearted games for a moment, not really paying attention to them. It almost seemed as though he was looking past them. “Ghosts,” he said, softly, looking at me with eyes that were both serious and weary.
I took a longer sip this time. I put the bottle down, trying to compose my thoughts. He had no more label left to peel, so he distracted himself by pulling at the corner of a stack of napkins partially sticking out of the napkin dispenser at the end of the short table. After a moment, he got bored and picked up a bottle of Tabasco sauce and started turning it around in his hand, pretending to read the label, but unable to concentrate. After a minute, he murmured, “You don’t believe me, do you?”
I smiled politely at him and tried my best not to hurt his feelings. “It’s just very hard to believe in that kind of thing.”
We were quiet again and he returned his attention to the Tabasco sauce. I felt as awkward as he looked. He suddenly caught me off guard with his next question. “Do you believe in an afterlife?” He lifted his eyes from the bottle and looked at me with a little hope and caution in his gaze.
I thought for a moment how to phrase my answer so that I wouldn’t offend him. But I decided that the truth was better. “Lots of people believe that when we die, our souls continue on to some other place where we’ll see our loved ones again. It’s a nice thought, but during my time in med school, I’ve never seen some magical transition of a supposed soul leaving the body and moving on to some other plane of existence. I’ve seen a couple of people die on the table and I looked hard, too. I remember staring at their chests and eyes and hearts, looking for any kind of sign, maybe the torso lifting up briefly or some kind of mist or light or anything. Something. But I’ve never seen anything other than the end of a life. That’s all there is.”
He smiled a little sadly then. “I’ve seen people die, too. Once in my arms, in fact. A seventeen-year-old girl who was hit by a drunk driver who sped off after the accident. I was the first one on the scene, before the ambulance even. I could see she wasn’t going to make it, so I just held her and tried to comfort her as best I could. I tried to ask her questions, like her name, where she went to school and all that. She didn’t answer any of them, but she kept looking behind me and pointing. There was nothing behind me except an empty field. Then she said, ‘Lucas.’ I told her that was my name. She said, ‘Robert says he’s proud of you.’”
A rush of chills came over me when I recognized his father’s name. Captain Robert Castille was killed trying to stop a domestic dispute when Lucas was twelve. Lucas looked like he was trying his hardest to fight back a couple of tears. “When she died in my arms,” he continued. “I didn’t see any light, either, but I didn’t really need to at that point.”
The clacking of the balls was suddenly too loud in the new silence between the two of us. The jukebox started to play “Your Picture,” by Johnnie Allan, a Swamp Pop favorite in our area. After a very long moment, I said, “What did you find? After you investigated the strange incidents that were going on?”
He put the bottle back next to the napkin dispenser. “Things that we couldn’t explain,” he said softly, as he looked down at his bottle.
“Specifically?”
He took a deep breath. “Back in October, there was a murder in that apartment complex behind the mall. It was a college girl. Her roommate was just coming home from U.L. When she got to the door, she heard her friend screaming. She hurried to unlock it, and she opened the door in time to witness her friend being thrown across the room by something she couldn’t see. She dropped her book sack and ran up to her friend, who was sprawled out on the kitchen floor. Her head was bashed in and her abdomen was ripped open. When she told us what happened, she couldn’t stop shaking. She had to excuse herself to the bathroom twice to throw up.” He looked away toward the pool tables again, waiting for my reaction.
“What makes you think she didn’t kill her roommate herself?”
He stayed focused on the balls being knocked into the holes. “We couldn’t find a murder weapon, and she had no motive. She had just come fro
m cheerleading practice and there wasn’t a drop of blood on her uniform. And …” he stopped again, trying to find the right words. “And, when I looked into the mirror over the couch, I could have sworn I saw a shadow moving behind me. When I turned around, I didn’t see anything. And it was cold in there, too. Really cold. The central unit wasn’t on at the time, and the weather was still warm outside.” He looked back at me with weary eyes. He began to speak more freely now, faster. “And then in December, about two weeks before Christmas, we got a call about a guy who murdered his wife. When we got there, he was sobbing and still holding the axe. He said he didn’t want to, but … the bird made him do it.”
Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou Page 6
