Life and Death of Bayou Billy

by Bevill, C. L.

  With that justification, Nemo said a hasty goodbye and turned to Ophelia with a partially fulfilled look on his sullen face. “He said who are you? And also some other stuff that my mama told me never to say in public. So I guess that ain’t gonna frost the cake, lady.”

  “You can call me Ms. Rector,” Ophelia said frostily. “I didn’t mean the man who holds your leash.” She paused and very calculatingly added the crème de la crème, “I meant Joe.”

  “Joe,” Nemo repeated cautiously.

  Ophelia’s lips curved in a way that caused Nemo’s balls to withdrawal hastily into his body cavity, fleeing for their little sperm-producing lives so that they would continue to live to impregnate unsuspecting drunken college co-eds. “Yes,” she said precisely. “Joe. Of course, I think you know him better as Joseph. Perhaps even Joseph Donald Douay. I believe that’s what Joe uses when he signs his name. Last weekend when I played golf with him and Lester Ingham, you know, the mayor of Shreveport? No, I suppose you don’t know the mayor. Perhaps you’ve heard of him, however. Well, Joe mentioned that he was thinking about selling several of his properties. For example, he’s not particularly thrilled with the financial output of a specific hospital. I rather suspect that poor customer service is to blame, but that’s just my opinion.”

  Nemo stared. “Joe,” he said again, his voice achieving a pitch equal to a ten year old girl screaming because she has just stepped on a large, rusty nail at the same time she has been creamed with a snot ball thrown by an exasperating brother. “Joe Douay. The man who owns Good Parish Hospital.”

  “Ah, yes,” Ophelia said calmly. “That’s the one. Joe. Why don’t you call him?”

  “I-um-I don’t think I have-”

  “His number?” Ophelia produced her cell phone and presented it to the young man. Nemo’s expression had gone from haughty and complacent to uneasy and disturbed. “It’s on speed dial,” she informed him. “Just say Joe into the phone.”

  Nemo took the phone as if he were touching a live electrical wire. He gave a last wary look to Ophelia and then opened the cell phone with a sigh that sounded like the last gasp of life. “Maybe I should call Chloe Legay,” he proposed.

  “And Chloe Legay is who?” Ophelia enquired politely.

  “She’s the lady in charge of the morgue,” Nemo said. “Do you really know Joe Douay, Ms. Rector?”

  Ophelia leaned in for the kill. “For some asinine reason, he’s got a tattoo on his tushie of PeeWee Herman. How do you suppose I know that?”

  Nemo whimpered audibly. “Here’s your cell phone, lady. I’ll call Chloe.”

  •

  Chloe Legay wasn’t any more pleased to be at the hospital on a Friday night than was Ophelia. After an all-consuming forty-five minute wait, Nemo finally pointed the woman out to Ophelia and she very nearly snorted. The abrupt and nearly frenzied bemusement came from the inequity of Chloe’s appearance in relationship to the brief reins of power that she held over Ophelia for the moment.

  The hospital’s front doors had slid open to reveal a four foot tall woman with another full foot of poofed auburn hair. She wore a sparkling silver sequined dress and tottered on four inch silver heels. Her little arms swayed unsteadily as she marched determinedly toward the information desk. Ophelia was positive that at any second the dwarf was going to trip and fall over on her derriere. It wasn’t going to be pretty and Ophelia was going to have to bite the side of her mouth in order to keep from laughing uncontrollably.

  “Nemo,” the dwarf said. “Do you know what I was doing?”

  Nemo peered over the desk and shrugged. “Drag queen festival?”

  “Ha-ha,” Chloe chortled unkindly. “Do you want to work at 7-Eleven? I hear they get robbed by drugged out freaks at least twice a week. Sometimes the clerks only get wounded. With any luck we’d see you back in the emergency room within a few days.”

  Nemo rose up, leaned over the counter as far as he could, and whispered, “She said she knew Joe Douay. She says she’s got his number on her cell. On speed dial. She knows about the tattoo on his ass.”

  Chloe turned to look at Ophelia. Ophelia was sitting in a chair with one leg crossed over the other, wondering why she hadn’t simply called her twin sons to pick up the body. The Rector Mortuary had its Shreveport branch, of course. Oh, yes. I did call Oliver and Obadiah. They didn’t answer their home phone, cell phones, or office phones. I left messages but they haven’t returned them yet. What kind of manner is that to run a Rector Mortuary?

  In the meantime the dwarf was staring at Ophelia as if the older woman had grown a second head.

  “Who cares?” Chloe finally said. “He owns the hospital. He doesn’t tell me how to run my department. And everyone, I repeat, everyone, knows about the tattoo on his caboose. This is why you dragged me down here, you little palooka?”

  Nemo whimpered again. It seemed as though he was caught between a rock, Ophelia, and a hard place, Chloe.

  Chloe glanced at him and sighed. Then she looked back at Ophelia. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Okay, lady, I don’t care who you are. I don’t care whose ass you’ve been kissing. I don’t care if you’ve got your thumb wiggling up the President’s butt and he likes it like it was a fudgecicle on a hundred degree day. This isn’t a democracy where you get to decide when we’re open. You’ll have to wait until Monday like every other freaking body does.” She cast a derisive look at Nemo and turned away.

  Ophelia produced her cell phone and said, “Joe.” The phone chirped, clicked and began to dial. Chloe had taken two steps but abruptly halted. Ophelia put the phone on speaker and waited while the phone on the other end began to ring. It picked up on the third ring.

  “Joe Douay,” a man’s harsh voice growled.

  “Joe, darling,” Ophelia said. “It’s Ophelia Rector.”

  “Ophelia,” he said warmly, his voice turning from roughened bark to flowing honey. “You’ve got to stop calling me,” he said teasingly. “I might get the wrong idea. Besides I’m having dinner with the governor in Baton Rouge so I can’t talk for long.”

  “The governor?” Ophelia said. “Oh, do tell her I said hello and that any time she wants to stop by our part of the state we’ll cook her up a fine meal. My pork chops have been known to melt in a soul’s mouth.”

  “Certainly,” he said. “What can I do for you, sweetums?”

  “I’ve got a little problem,” she said, her eyes focused on the dwarf’s face. Chloe had been a pleasing shade of pink but now was about the color of a sun-bleached skull. She began to wave her itty-bitty arms in a fashion that might have indicated that she was drowning in a large and very violent body of water. Then she slashed her hand across her throat and put her hands together as if praying to Ophelia. “Just a little miniscule problem that you can help me with,” Ophelia added with wicked pleasure.

  “Of course,” Joe said promptly. “You name it.”

  “I’m at Good Parish, dearest,” she said. “You know the place. I believe it belongs to you.”

  “Tell them to give you anything you want,” he replied instantly. The statement was heard clearly by both Chloe and Nemo as they both cringed.

  “Oh, thank you,” Ophelia drawled. “Toodle-oo, Joe. Enjoy the étouffée. And don’t forget to try the chef’s pecan pie. The governor’s chef has the best recipe for pecan pie. I can’t even describe it.” Then she very controllingly pushed the end button before Joe Douay could even reply.

  Chloe and Nemo stared as if their eyes were glued into place.

  Ophelia positively savored the moment. “It really is the best pecan pie I’ve ever tasted.” She smacked her lips once and thought how hungry she had become over the course of the last several hours. Satisfaction provided a wonderful appetite. “And I would love to have the recipe. But you know chefs. Always guarding their recipes as if they were made from gold.”

  “Maybe you could threaten to break his wife’s kneecaps,” Nemo suggested helpfully.

  Gazing at her chipped fingernails,
Ophelia thought that perhaps she needed to stop at the manicurist the following day. “The chef is gay and very temperamental, dear,” she said. “And apparently his boyfriends only last days so that’s a moot point.”

  Chloe fought to find her voice. “What is it that you want, Ms. Rector?” she choked out.

  Ophelia looked up. “What else would I want from the morgue? The final remainder of a vanished essence, of course.”

  “Any final remainder of a vanished…essence in particular?”

  With a social smile pasted across her icy face, Ophelia rose up. “William Douglas McCall is the poor soul for whom I have to come to take away to his eternal resting locality, among the most prestigious members of Albie’s history.”

  “What’s Albie?” Nemo said and then the sound withered away as Chloe shot him a warning glare.

  “Albie is a town,” Ophelia said graciously, composure and civility returned to her along with the overwhelming shift of power. “Albie is also going to be the Arlington Cemetery of the South. People will flock to admire its genuine southernism and a certain, gentile burial ground je ne sais quoi.”

  Chloe turned toward the elevators and toddled about halfway there before her little figure froze in place. “William Douglas McCall, you say?” The strangled question barely escaped Chloe’s throat. Slowly, she turned to look at Ophelia.

  Ophelia brushed off her bashfully pink and rumpled Ralph Lauren linen jacket and realized that the dwarf was gazing at her with the helplessly frustrated expression of an individual about to die in a blazing inferno of destruction. There’s not a damn thing that can be done about it except to say, “Oh, fucking shit on me,” which was exactly what Chloe said as she prepared for the inevitable assault of definite and horrifying disaster.

  Precisely ten seconds later and down one long hallway, twenty-six people in the emergency room, to include six somewhat anxious gang members, four annoyed police officers, three perturbed licensed practical nurses, six bored registered nurses, one sleepy medical doctor, an irritated toddler with whooping cough, his beleaguered parents, an impatient elderly man who had cut off one of his fingers with a chainsaw and two jaded receptionists all heard the following words as if they had been right standing next to Ophelia Rector: “WHAT DO MEAN YOU GAVE HIS BODY TO SOME FUCKING BODY ELSE!?!”

  •

  Oliver and Obadiah Rector entered the hospital with a similar feeling of unavoidable doom. If Chloe had taken a moment to explain her feelings to them, they would have surely nodded understandingly. Instead Chloe was wringing her little hands with a thick file tucked under her arm, watching as their mother, Ophelia, paced unevenly on a broken shoe back and forth in front of the receptionist desk, while a young man with pink tipped hair and several nurses watched from a respectable distance. A security guard was standing in the corner with one hand on the tip of his nightstick as if Ophelia would soon need to be pounded into submission.

  “Mama,” Oliver said. He was the older twin by ten minutes and had lorded it over Obadiah for the entirety of their lives. “God, I’m sorry. We were at a football game.” He flinched as Ophelia stopped pacing to stare daggers at him. “A soccer game? Ice cream social? Friday church services? Helping paraplegic orphans from Guatemala?” he added lamely and then his voice trailed off.

  “Obadiah,” Ophelia said intently.

  “Hot date,” Obadiah said succinctly. “Major league ta-tas. Twins, too. Boobs bigger than Mount Everest.”

  “Big mouth,” Oliver muttered. “Kiss ass. Suck up. Couldn’t you stick with the football game story?”

  “Blow me,” Obadiah muttered back. “Mama,” he said pseudo-warmly, approaching the woman who had him in her uterus for nine months as if she were a deadly and hungry animal. “We’ve got the hearse. The one with the 18K gold embellishments. We’ve got an Ultratron Deluxe casket with silk lining and gilded oak trim. We’re ready to go. Let’s pick up the dead guy and uh-oh.”

  Ophelia was on him like stink on a rabid skunk. “Bayou Billy is NOT a dead guy!” She caught him by the tiny gold hoop that adorned his right ear lobe and tugged dangerously. Obadiah yelped and everyone within the room cowered. He pushed his ear closer to her but she kept the pull at steady strength.

  “Oh, Lord Almighty,” Obadiah prayed stridently. “Please don’t do that, Mama! It took six months for it to heal the last time you pulled it out!”

  Chloe said loudly, “She’s done it more than once? What are you, twelve or twenty-something?”

  “Okay, Billy’s not a dead guy. He’s passed into the great unknown. He’s moved to the next realm. He’s gone to be with the angels. He’s not just deeeeaaaddddd!” He wailed the last part as Ophelia yanked so hard that something began to rip. Then she abruptly let go.

  “And don’t you ever forget it,” Ophelia hissed at Obadiah.

  “God, no,” Obadiah promised feelingly.

  “However, his mortal remains are no longer here,” Ophelia said with emphasis.

  The immediate change of topics floored both Oliver and Obadiah. Chloe began to wring her hands together once again.

  “This little demented chipmunk,” she added, indicating Chloe Legay, who said, “Hey!” “Won’t give me the name of the person who claimed William Douglas McCall’s bodily remnants.”

  “I can’t do that,” Chloe protested. “It would be unethical.”

  “I have a power of attorney for William Douglas McCall’s estate,” Ophelia said and brandished the papers like a cross before a hungry vampire. “I have the right to ask you that and I have the right to know.”

  “It was over three days.” Chloe violently waved her diminutive arms up and down, taking a moment to stop the thick file from falling on the floor. “His wife was dead. His children are dead. His step-daughter wouldn’t talk to our clerk other than to say that she hoped he was rotting in purgatory. No one knew anything about next of kin. Jesus God, no one visited him in the hospital the entire month he was here. And the nursing home didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Someone came in, claimed the body, paid the bills, and off they went. Otherwise the state was going to bury him in a pauper’s grave. I didn’t do a Goddamn thing wrong. I went by the hospital’s book. I went by the parish’s book. And I damned well went by the state’s book.”

  Ophelia wielded her cell phone at the dwarf.

  “Ha!” Chloe yelled. “Call Joe Douay again. Tell him that the governor’s chef pissed in his vinegar and oil salad for all I give a fuck. I don’t care about the chef’s freaking recipe for pecan pie. Go ahead, threaten all you want.” She placed her tiny arms akimbo while keeping the file propped under one, braced her legs wide apart, as if she would be fighting a fierce battle soon, and waited for it. “Bring it, bee-ootch,” Chloe added defiantly.

  There were several audible gasps. Ophelia considered Chloe Legay carefully and lowered the cell phone. One hand went up to the side of her face and she tapped her nose thoughtfully. She stared at Chloe for a full, endless, relentless, forty-five seconds before she said, “Chloe Legay? Is that right?”

  “Hell, yes,” Chloe said. “You want me to spell it for you? Because if I lose my job over this big pile of kaka, you can be sure I’m going to sue Joe Douay and anyone else I can think to sue. If you want the name of the persons who claimed Mr. McCall’s body, you’ll have to get a court order. And you can kiss my little, teensy-weensy butt cheeks, while you’re at it.”

  “Persons,” Ophelia repeated attentively. “More than one person came to collect Mr. McCall. Uh-huh.”

  Chloe sniffed rebelliously.

  “Chloe, dear,” Ophelia said presently. “You wouldn’t be related to…Jane Legay, would you?”

  The mutinous expression on Chloe’s face abruptly began to fade. She didn’t say anything.

  “Jane Legay,” Ophelia said. “In Shreveport’s History Society. Big fundraiser. She’s somewhat taller than you are, though.”

  Chloe’s mouth opened and then promptly shut.

  Ophelia went on, “I’
ve met her on a dozen occasions. Quite the forceful lady. Doesn’t give an inch to anyone. I know that she has adult children, but she didn’t mention any…shall we say? little adults.”

  “Don’t tell me you have her on your speed dial, too?” Nemo interrupted.

  “Shut up, monkey-boy,” Chloe snarled.

  “Oh, no,” Ophelia said politely, pushing a button on her cell phone. “But she is in my address book.”

  “You’re going to call my mother?” Chloe asked incredulously. “You’re a real piece of work, lady. What makes you think that my mother is going to change my mind?”

  Ophelia pressed buttons efficiently. With a determined push of her finger she found the correct name and dialed. Then she put the call on speaker phone. The phone rang twice before a woman said, “Hello?”

  Chloe said flatly, “Hang up the phone.”

  Ophelia waited until the woman on the other end said, “What? Hello?” before she disconnected the call.

  Chloe marched over to Ophelia and abruptly thrust the entire file at the other woman. Ophelia dropped her cell phone in the process but managed to grab the armful of shifting papers. Then Chloe pulled back a small leg and kicked the other woman in the ankle just as hard as she could.

  This time the people outside the hospital heard the scream, too.

  •

  Albie, Louisiana

  With a throbbing ankle and information she hadn’t had before, Ophelia was so angry that when she drove back to Albie, she was ticketed twice for speeding. Furthermore, she could not persuade either police officer to downgrade the tickets to warnings and it certainly enraged her even more. But when she pulled up to her front door, two more of her sons were waiting for her and neither of them looked pleased.

  Oscar Rector leaned into her BMW’s window and said, “Your cell phone must be turned off.”

  Pulling the little device out, Ophelia flipped it open and discovered that the sound had been turned all the way down. Furthermore, she had five missed calls, all from Oscar. “What’s the problem now?” she growled gutturally.