by Lon Frank
“...Uh, that is fried, uh, fried catfish and potatoes.”
All agreed that the gumbo would be the ticket, and as she walked back to the kitchen, Sheryl couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder twice again at a still-smiling Lucky.
Elmo shook his head and grinned at his mate. “I swear, Olive, we got us a ding-dang lady killer here. First the girl on the street and now this good lookin’ waitress. Maybe we should be takin’ him to Hollywood instead.”
Lucky’s smile grew across his rubbery face.
“Yeah, well, I can certainly understand how the womenfolk would become lightheaded at the very exposure to this magnificent countenance, but still...” His smile drooped slightly and became more a look of pleased confusion. “There was somethin’ in her voice.”
He whispered, mostly to himself, “Somethin’ familiar.”
* * *
“Pick it up Michelin boy, I want to be there by breakfast.”
Somehow her voice seemed perfectly suited to the sterile interior of the government-issue Chevrolet. And both held a slightly unnerving, sexual appeal to Robert. In order for him to drive, he moved the bench seat forward as far as possible, which had the effect of forcing his female accomplice to juxtapose her 6’3”‘ frame into a series of awkward and uncomfortable positions.
As she shifted in her seat once again, her knees came to point straight upwards, her thighs nearly vertical and reaching to the level of Robert’s chin. As she tilted her head back to relax slightly on the seat’s headrest, the hem of her expensive and executive-styled, navy blue, silk dress slipped over her upraised knees and slid towards her lap, exposing the lacy top of her left thigh-high stocking, and a quarter inch of naked, unblemished skin.
Robert meant to only glance, but as the wheels of the car crunched through the loose gravel on the side of the highway, he realized his lapse and jerked his attention—and the tires—back to the road ahead. The woman looked up, suddenly startled, then noticed her exposed limb. With an evil smile, half disgust and half pleasure, she fixed her stare on Robert as she reached down, and with both hands, slowly smoothed her stocking from ankle to top, before lifting her skirt slightly and throwing it back over her knees.
The car swerved slightly as Robert reached to turn up the air conditioner controls.
“Geeze, Agnes!”
* * *
As Olive and Lucky walked out to the car, Elmo fished in his pocket for the correct change to pay their bill. The alluring waitress slightly craned her neck to watch Lucky through the window.
“You folks, uh, aren’t from around here, are you? I mean you don’t exactly look like bayou people.”
“Nah, darlin’, we got us a little place over in West Texas. Near Marfa?”
Sheryl’s face did not register any recognition at the name of the town.
“You know, the Marfa Lights? UFOs and all that?”
The waitress gave him a slight smile of apology.
“Well, at least me and the missus are from out there. Our friend isn’t too sure where home is. That reminds me, how do we get to Jeanerette from here? We’re lookin’ for a goldarned plantation called Mason Jet, or Fountain House, or somethin’ like that.”
Sheryl pointed back towards the crossroads where they stopped earlier.
“Well, Jeanerette is right back the way you came in on. Just go all the way to 182 and turn right. I never heard of a Fountain Plantation, but you ought to check with the public library in Jeanerette; they have a lot of records on the old places.”
“Thanks, darlin’, and thanks for the lunch too, it was a goldanged feast.” Elmo burped slightly, “Just kinda spicy.”
He turned and opened the door to leave. Sheryl looked again out at the man in the back seat of the little car and raised her voice slightly.
“You say your friend isn’t sure if he might be from here?”
“Well, to tell the truth, he ain’t too sure about nothin’ but time to eat. We think he’s from up in Canada someplace; maybe worked fer a circus or carnival or something like that and got the amnesia.”
As Olive accelerated rapidly past Doiron’s Boarding House, the restaurateur was lost in thought as she jotted down a single word on the back of her order pad: “Amnesia”.
* * *
They stopped for a breakfast of eggs with Tabasco, little bland sausages and the omnipresent southern side dish of corn grits. Agnes looked at the grainy white glop on her plate and scowled.
“How exactly is one supposed to eat this, this, library paste?”
Robert paused in his attack on his meal, with a mouthful of yet-to-be-chewed eggs, and excitedly looked at his companion. “That’s it, Agnes!”
He sprayed little yellow bits across the table, causing the thin woman to lift her hands in self-defense.
“That’s where they will go! To the library. I mean, they will be hunting for this mayonnaise fountain place, too, won’t they? And everybody knows, when you need information, you either go to the barber or the library!”
Agnes tilted her head and looked at Agent Redford as if looking at his famous namesake.
“As unbelievably incomprehensible as it may appear, I do think you may be correct.”
* * *
The librarian assured the trio of visitors that she was indeed familiar with the site of an old plantation house known as the House of The Fountain, or Maison du Jet D’eau. All that was now left of it was a small cemetery and an empty meadow down on the banks of the bayou, close to where they had eaten lunch. As the three friends started for the door, the librarian whispered to her young assistant.
“That’s strange. That’s the second time this morning someone’s inquired about that old ruin. I wonder what’s going on out there?”
As Lucky held the library door open for Olive, she paused and placed a hand on Elmo’s forearm.
“Elmo, dear, I think I’ll see if they have a ladies room here, before we get on the road again.”
“That’s a ding-blasted good idea, darlin’. I think I’ll join you. That little car of yours sure seems to ride rougher than it did when we was kids.”
As Lucky walked the half-block to the little car to await his friends, a small, round man darted out on the sidewalk in front of him.
“Hey mister! Help! It’s my wife. She’s uh, she’s...having a baby. Yeah, that’s it, she’s having a baby, in the car, right now!”
He opened the rear door of the nondescript Chevy with government tags, and as our hero leaned in to help the damsel in distress, he was reunited with a tall and obviously un-pregnant Agnes Maggart.
“Hey, wade a minute, ain’t you the girl from the mus...”
She held a handkerchief to her face, pointed a small aerosol can at him and sprayed. As Lucky’s face hit the rear floorboard, Robert lifted his heels, pushed him into the car and slammed the door.
Directly across the street was a small shaded bench on which sat a wide-eyed young woman. She had been curiously watching the strange couple, when the older man waddled up and suddenly collapsed into the back of the Chevy sedan. She now watched in bewilderment as they sped out of sight. Around her neck she wore a silver chain necklace, adorned with a small silver medallion. It was a gift from her favorite aunt who lived out in the Pueblo country of the Southwest. The medallion was a simple gleaming circle with an etched fetish symbol; a small stylized desert bird.
Elmo and Olive emerged from the glass doors, holding hands and smiling. Olive was commenting on how nice it was that a small town still could maintain such a large religious section in its library, but Elmo was scanning the empty street.
“Now, I wonder where that doggone Lucky has got himself off to this time?”
The young woman from the bench walked across the street and pointed to her left. “They went that way, if you’re looking for your friends.”
Elmo stammered and tried to ask any question which might occur to him as sensible, but Olive’s eyes were on the little necklace medallion. “What is your name,
dear?”
“Why, it’s Ellie, ma’am. Ellie Eden.”
* * *
The darkness swirled around him with dreams of grease paint faces and tattered canvas. Somewhere in the void of memory, a calliope played its discordant march, and grinning pachyderms took turns standing on his head as they twirled their great gray posteriors before silent and empty grandstands.
Suddenly the empty circus dream was populated with small, laughing children; children with huge, unblinking dark eyes, children who reached out to touch him.
Lucky opened his eyes and wondered at the scent impregnated into the grimy linoleum beneath his face.
* * *
“Well, now, Agent Agnes Maggart, I’d say we make a pretty good team.”
Robert was feeling jubilant at the successful completion of their first covert mission, but his enthusiasm hid a nagging twinge of guilt. Agnes was more candid in her suspicions.
“Yeah, but I don’t know. I mean, who was that old guy, and what does Arthur Lemaire want with him? And what’s with this place? Don’t you think it a little strange that instead of taking him to a detention center, we’re told to dump him in a rotten old trailer out in a meadow. I mean, we’re a hundred miles from nowhere; how did Lemaire know about this place, anyway?”
Perhaps it was her preoccupation with the result of their strange assignment or perhaps the uneasy feeling she got from the lengthening shadows under the ancient trees along the bayou, but Agent Maggart failed to realize her speed, and the approaching curve in the crumbling single-lane road. Actually, she was well trained in pursuit driving and would have made the curve under control if it hadn’t been for the red Mustang that was speeding around it from the other direction.
The more nimble sports car went into a power slide which kept its front tires in the lane as the rear ones dug black gravel from the ditch. The heavier, Government-Issue Chevrolet sedan simply dove for the outside of its arc, and leapt through an old rickety wooden fence before wrapping itself awkwardly around the girth of a huge, moss-draped oak.
The oak stood in its place since before men had come to roam the bayou country. It sheltered the red men who came to fish in the nearby dark and fertile water. Its rings recorded the ending of their seasons as they were replaced by paler men, those with skin of moonless nights. It witnessed the plowing of the meadows and mourned the felling of more manageable trees.
It now reigned over abandoned fields, given to wild dewberry and swamp lilac, to the aimless sulfur butterflies of summer, and the great white geese of northern winters. But once, it stood in a place of prominence to men.
Once, it marked the wagon trace into a great plantation. A plantation forgotten by the world of asphalt and steel, bypassed by all but the lost or the cast away. A plantation whose ruined and sagging walls continued to dutifully throw evening shadows over a small courtyard, in the center of which still stood a whimsical statue of a little white elephant, dancing in the imaginary waters of its long-silent fountain.
* * *
“Shoot fire, boy. You’re bleedin’ like a gol-durn stuck hog.”
Actually, Agent Redford was not badly hurt, but as he was helped out of the wrecked auto by Elmo, blood streamed down his face from the one-inch cut on his scalp. Agnes Maggart sat very still and stared quizzically at the great oak, her hands clutching the steering wheel. Her nose bled slightly and her eyes were turning purplish, thanks to the now-deflated airbag lying across her lap.
An hour later, both driver and passenger recovered quite well as they sat under the venerable tree and were tended to by the old ranch couple, who assured them that they had seen worse injuries at West Texas church socials. It was Olive who brought things into glaring perspective as she stood in front of the little group lounging in the grass and put her hands on her hips, which Elmo knew always meant business.
“Well, now it looks like the good Lord smiled down upon you two. I think you both are gonna be just fine. That is, unless Elmo has to use that tire iron on you.”
This brought a startled look from the still-shaken Redford, but Agnes only looked darkly at the older woman as she guessed what was coming next.
“You see, what’s botherin’ me is, just why is a lady from the circus museum driving like old Lucifer is after her down this particular road? And why is our friend missing, and what do the two have to do with each other?”
As she talked, Olive reached into the open trunk of the twisted car and brought out a large lug wrench and handed it to Elmo. She smiled sweetly and patted his shoulder as if he were a deranged homicidal lunatic in some old horror film.
“Now, my dear Elmo, here is truly as blessed and gentle a man as our Maker ever set on this earth. But he does rile easy, so maybe you ought to start with your names and who you work for, really.”
Miss Ellie Eden, who reluctantly agreed to show the sweet old couple the way out to the ruined plantation, wondered suddenly what she had become caught up in.
* * *
As Lucky’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he realized he was on the floor of what appeared to be a small old-style travel trailer. It was obviously abandoned for many years, as his nose made a little pattern in the dust on the stained and torn linoleum. Grime and vegetation completely covered the windows and the whole dilapidated contraption tilted on its two blown out tires and rusted suspension.
A small hole in the roof, where a fallen limb had gone through, sent a tiny spotlight of grimy illumination upon a weathered old poster hanging sadly on the front wall. It was a small advertising broadside, printed with an illustration of three large rings under an open, big-top circus tent.
Two of the large rings were filled with pictures of performing elephants and horses, with their scantly clad female handlers prominently featured. In the center ring was a collection of the gaudily attired circus troupe.
There was a ringmaster in a double-breasted coat, muscular trapeze artists, lion tamers, a magnificent Godiva riding a white stallion and an old and shabby clown with orange wisps of hair and a large red rubber nose.
The little impromptu spotlight drifted across the poster, across the lions and horses and geeks, and paused on the sad face of the old clown. Quite surprisingly, a tear suddenly slid down Lucky’s cheek, as if called out by a soft memory of childhood.
As the dot of fading light continued its journey, Lucky’s eyes, being at floor level, caught the glint of good fortune, long forgotten and left by the trailer’s last occupant.
A small paring knife once escaped its duties and hidden itself beneath the tiny couch, just within the reach of his bound hands.
* * *
The two operatives of Arthur Lemaire’s secret agency clung to each other in a desperate jumble of magnificent long legs and inflexibly stubby fingers as they glimpsed what they could from the rear seat of the red Mustang hurtling once again down the overgrown little road. It only took Olive a few questions to get the whole sordid story of their mission in the Louisiana backwaters.
Once crammed in the rear seat of the little speedster with Ellie, they began to volunteer their own doubts as to the legitimacy of their actions. Maybe it was a conscience their clandestine training had not quite deadened, or perhaps the acknowledgment of facing their mortality at every curve, but Agnes and Robert each felt a new allegiance. And a new determination to discover the truth about the old man who wandered out of the burro mountains, wearing nothing but yellow longjohns.
When Olive screeched to a stop in front of the little circle of molding trailers, Elmo jumped out and Robert simply fell from the rear floorboard into the meadow grass and pointed at one standing somewhat aside from the others. The remnants of a threadbare canvas awning hung in tatters over its dark windows like a burial shroud and the tiny curved door stood slightly ajar.
Before Elmo even jerked the door open enough to see the freshly cut pieces of rope and the wadded up square of silver duct tape, he noticed the footprints leading off across a corner of the grassy meadow. The mark
s disappeared in the gathering twilight, over a low and crumbling stone wall and towards a thicket of water elms and ancient cypress; towards the bayou, back to where the old oak stood faithful watch over the forgotten trail—to a ruined mansion and its courtyard fountain.
* * *
Olive took the hands of the younger girl in hers and guided her towards the low stone fence as they neared the tree and the path to the plantation house.
“I really don’t know just what part you play in all this, Ellie, but I think maybe you should stay here until Elmo and me find out just what’s going on.”
As the strange foursome disappeared beyond the first of the cypress trees, Ellie Eden was startled by a smiling, shaggy head emerging from behind the huge trunk of the old oak.
“Hi there, missy! You don’t know me, but now that some of my memories are coming back, I think I know who you are, and I’ve got something to show you. Bring that necklace along and let’s go give Olive and Elmo a little surprise.”
* * *
Mason was one of those men who seemed invisible in a crowd, with a dark suit and darker glasses. He was Arthur Lemaire’s personal assistant, and as he piloted the helicopter near the meadow, Lemaire reached into his pocket and brought out the small metal disc. When he received the report from Agent Maggart showing the bird emblems and the accidental alignment of the old photographs by Lucky, he quietly came to the bayou country below New Orleans. Once here, he did some personal reconnaissance on the ruined plantation house named Maison du Jet D’eau.
Following a hunch, he ordered a search of the agency’s computer database for artifacts or illustrations bearing similar images to the stylized bird emblems used to line up the images on the four separate pages.
