“Well, I know you went to get Mr. McCall,” Oscar said. “And I know you didn’t get him.”
“How in the name of St. Gabriel do you know that?” Ophelia said irately.
“Because someone dropped his body off at the funeral home about an hour ago,” Oren said from behind Oscar. “Security guard found him, all wrapped him in tablecloths. With a note pinned on the tablecloths.”
Ophelia blinked. All the way home on her return drive, she had thought about varied and increasingly vicious ways of getting William Douglas McCall’s earthly residues back to where it belonged. “What did the note say?” she asked faintly.
“To go ahead and embalm the last remains of Bayou Billy and the mayor of Sawdust City would give us a call to settle up about the bill,” Oscar said calmly, as if bodies were dropped off at the business’s front stoop every day of the week.
Ophelia laughed hysterically.
Chapter Ten
From a transcript of an interview dated June 16th, 1997 with Mrs. Martha Louise Rogers. It is noted that the interview was for background material for a magazine article on Bayou Billy AKA William Douglas McCall.
The interviewer was Stillman Floyd, a biographer interested in William Douglas McCall, and who consequently published a tome on Mr. McCall’s life through a university press in limited edition.
Mr. Floyd’s notes indicate that Mrs. Rogers was eighty-five years old at the time and was living with her granddaughter in the small town of Terrebonne, Oregon. She has since passed away due to a massive coronary and Mr. Floyd’s papers were donated to the University of Arizona’s library and historical archive:
Floyd: As I’ve stated before, I’m interested in your relationship with William Douglas McCall, otherwise known as Bayou Billy.
Rogers: I’ve had a few folks ask about Billy. Sure enough. I met him when I was in my twenties. I don’t recall the exact year. I can’t even recall what I had for breakfast.
Carolyn Druthers (Mrs. Roger’s granddaughter): You had eggs and bacon, Granny, just like every other damn day of the week.
Rogers: Perhaps it was French toast. With that lovely maple syrup. Real butter. My mouth waters at the thought.
Floyd: About Bayou Billy, Mrs. Rogers.
Rogers: Oh, yes. It was a few years after he robbed the Northern Belle, you know the riverboat he cleaned out. I don’t really believe the nasty little story about the captain’s wife, by the by. She probably offered herself to him like a common whore and he turned her down. I suppose she became inflamed with spiteful jealousy and spread vicious lies like an ordinary tart. Oh, I guess it could have been nineteen and thirty-two or nineteen and thirty-three. I don’t rightly recollect. We were living in Grand Isle, Louisiana and my father owned a small grocery store there. Barely staying aboveboard by the skin of his teeth. It was the Great Depression, you understand. Goodness Lord, banks were failing like rain drops out of the sky. You couldn’t turn around but for to run into some poor unemployed banker. More as not, they would look like hell, as homeless as a river rat and twice as dirty. My papa owned the store outright and thus he did not get caught up in all that nonsense. I will tell you that my sister and I wore skirts sewn from potato and onion sacks for that entire summer. Mama tilled the garden herself until she had hard muscles on her arms. My sister and I plucked peas and tomatoes until we were right sick of vegetables. But we ate. We ate but good. And Mama and Papa both encouraged my sister and me to get married to any man we could in order to get out of their house. Oh, Lord Above, they did love us, but Papa did not love his bills that year. Too many folks wanting credit at the grocery store like typical varmints. More apt than not to forget they owed Papa a single, solitary Mercury-headed dime.
Druthers: Oh, for Jesus’s sake, Granny. He wants to know about Billy, not you.
Rogers: They stole from us. It was one and the very same thing, you know. Papa did not complain, although he should have done that thing. It wasn’t until nineteen and thirty-eight that I married Mr. Hoyt Rogers. I was particular about what kind of man I would accompany. Unlike some people I care to discuss.
Druthers: Granny, please do not bring up my boyfriend.
Rogers: The child does not brush his teeth. And he has pimples on his nose. And he does not open the door for Carolyn, like most people with manners do.
Floyd: (Clearing throat loudly.) About Bayou Billy.
Rogers: (Sigh.) Oh, yes. Well, Billy was a hero. He stole from those dreadful government folks. He didn’t hurt the ordinary folk. He lived in Grand Isle for a bit of time during that terrible summer. Worked on a shrimping boat as I recall. Not every day, because many a man hoped to work the boats, just to fill their pockets with excess fish to put in their stewpots at night. They lined up to get to cut their fingers and hands to ribbons. I think the life didn’t suit Billy proper. Oftentimes, he came into the store to spend his pay on a co-cola and a MoonPie. He stopped to talk to my sister and me quite frequently. I think he would have set his hat for me, but I wouldn’t have him on account he was so old. Thirty-two at the time. Mighty old for a twenty year old girl.
Druthers: I thought you said he tried to get into Great Aunt Simone’s panties.
Rogers: These young women today. Do you know Carolyn takes little white pills that prevent her from becoming with child? And she certainly isn’t married yet.
Druthers: Granny!
Rogers: A young woman in my day did not spread her legs before marriage. That would make her a shameless hussy.
Druthers: Then why was Mama born seven months after the wedding?
Rogers: Shush, Carolyn. I am certain Mr. Floyd does not want to hear about that.
Druthers: (Expletive deleted.)
Rogers: Goodness, Carolyn, I am not too old to wash out your mouth with soap.
Druthers: I’m thirty years old, Granny. I know about the birds and bees.
Floyd: (Clearing throat loudly, again.) Back to Bayou Billy, if you don’t mind.
Rogers: Well. I suppose you really do not want to hear about all of that trash. Let’s see. Billy worked the shrimpers upon occasion. Hard, awful, smelly work. Men came and went because the work made them like old men long before their times. I ‘spect Billy cottoned to what it would do to a soul and went back to robbing trains and such. Easier in the long run, but not if a body got caught by the authorities.
Druthers: Granny, tell Mr. Floyd what you know about how Bayou Billy got his name.
Floyd: I would like to hear about that, Mrs. Rogers. I haven’t spoken to many people on that subject and it’s almost a mystery.
Rogers: Carolyn, you have no panache. Let an old woman tell the story as I would. Billy, you see, Mr. Floyd, did not like to get his hands dirty. The shrimping business is a foul, fish smelling, disagreeable employment and the hours are long. Some poor people oft got caught up in hurricanes and never came back. Mr. Nologee was a man who had managed to stay aboveboard. He had three shrimpers and it was said that he could squeeze change out of a penny. As I recall Mr. Nologee used to pay his day crew a dime a day for twelve hours of work. Mr. Nologee was a black scabbard, of course. Catholic, too. The shame of it. How that man held his head up in church I have not an idea. Billy asked for a raise from Mr. Nologee and Mr. Nologee reputedly said that he’d see Billy dead in the bayou first. And that was how his name came about.
Floyd: This was in 1932 or 1933?
Rogers: Thereabouts.
Druthers: I thought they were calling him Bayou Billy before that. When he robbed the riverboat.
Rogers: Not at all, dear. Stuff of nonsense. It was Mr. Nologee who laid that insipid moniker upon Billy. No one ever called him anything else after that.
Floyd: I do have some articles from 1931 that refer to William Douglas McCall as Bayou Billy.
Rogers: Then you sir, are misinformed. That’s the real story about how Billy got his nickname.
The Present
Saturday, July 15th
Sawdust City, Texas
Gibby Ross woke up
in her bed surrounded by stuffed toy animals and wondered how she’d gotten to the age of thirty-eight with such a collection of idiotic goggle-eyed child’s toys. Because they’re cute, she thought defiantly. Who doesn’t like a teddy bear? Who doesn’t like the mayor in a red silk thong?
Whoa, Nellie. Where did that thought come from? Furthermore, why am I suddenly thinking about Pascal Waterford in a new light? I didn’t like him Thursday morning. I wanted to see him docked for being late. But something changed.
Oh, hell and damnation, Gibby cursed silently using a phrase recently obtained from the janitor at City Hall. It seemed people were cursing a lot at City Hall lately and Gibby was picking up all kinds of interesting new swear words in interesting new combinations. But she wasn’t using them for the sake of having heard them. She knew exactly what it was that had changed in her view of the mayor.
He’s nice. Gibby groaned. God help me from nice men. Pascal Waterford hid his niceness under his public alcoholism, drunken debauchery, and lewd flirting, which all combined into a real kind of Texas fellow that the people seemed to eat up with a spoon. If Pascal could do anything right, he could charm the snake right out of the basket despite the snake charmer playing his flute. Then he could make everyone think that what he had done was A-1-okee-dokee-fine-and-dandy. Not only could he do that, but he could even make them think that it was their idea and that they really liked it, too.
Then His Honor went and did something out of character for him. He told the accountant to take his own money to pay for other people’s paychecks. He’d also told the accountant to take money from his own account. Selfish, egocentric, butt-smelling, lecherous, doufus politicians didn’t do things like that. It made Gibby wonder what else Pascal had been up to in his years as mayor. What other good things had he slid under the rug, pretending to be a savvy but bawdy, ass-sniffing elected official?
Pascal Waterford indisputably cared about what happened to Sawdust City? And what was more, he cared about what happened to the people of the town. He was willing to go out of his way to see that the town had a future. If it had only been the latter, then Gibby would have chalked it up as self-preservation. But it was most definitely the former that caused that damnable change in Gibby’s feelings toward him. Rotten, dirty, no-good, puppy-dog smelling politicians DO NOT do things that were good for other people with no direct benefit for their selves.
But Pascal had. And he hadn’t bragged about it, or broadcasted it to the media, or made sure all the right gossips in City Hall knew about it. He had done without expectation. Like a decent, good, nice person.
Ugg.
Gibby shoved stuffed toys away from her and didn’t even flinch when half of them fell ungallantly on the floor. So what if Pascal talked to himself in the mirror sometimes. So what if half the time he smelled like the sewage end of a refinery. So what if he pinched the asses of ninety percent of the female population of Sawdust City, not including those under the age of consent.
Hasn’t pinched my ass, Gibby thought resentfully. She threw herself out of bed and brushed her teeth, wondering exactly where His Honor had gone after he’d dropped her off at City Hall. She had tooth paste foam dribbling down her chin and the brush half way into her back molars when it occurred to her that he didn’t have anywhere to take the body.
Doesn’t it need…like…refrigeration? Something? Or it’s going to start to smell. Gibby winced and spat foam at her drain. Had Pascal simply parked the dog catcher’s van in front of his house? It seemed like something he was inclined to do.
Gibby hurried as she pulled on the nearest clothes she could find. All she could think of was Thaddeus and Thomasina Worth, Pascal’s camcorder-happy neighbors and dangerously devout anti-Pascalians. They would videotape the van outside Pascal’s house all night and draw an obvious conclusion or make up some of their own. Pascal was having an affair with the dog-catcher, who was, by the by, a hulking, happily married man named Yardley Hudsmith with a fat, happy wife and six bouncing children. Pascal was using the dog catcher’s van for nefarious purposes, obviously something vile and definitively illegal. Pascal was being evicted from his house and sleeping in the dog catcher’s van. Pascal was having sexual relations with the dogs in the dog catcher’s van.
Gibby shuddered. Any of the rumors would be enough to put a big dent in Pascal’s campaign. East Texans didn’t care if he was three-quarters gone on his trip to full-blown alcoholism. They didn’t care if he’d snapped the Governor’s garters when she had visited in ’95 and he had merely been a local businessman. They didn’t care if he was a charter member of the woman of the week club, as long as it was, in fact, women that were in his bed. But God forbid that the suggestion of something icky came to light. It had been the downfall of the last major contender to the mayoral seat.
Shuddering again, Gibby would have rolled her eyes if she wasn’t trying to untie a knot in her bra that threatened to strangle her. An overweight, balding man in his fifties dressed in ladies’ lingerie three sizes too small for him on the front page of the only local paper around was enough to unsettle anyone at any time of the day.
As she yanked on a T-shirt, Gibby grabbed the phone and dialed. She didn’t call the mayor at his home often, but upon occasion she was required to know the number. It rang four times and went to the answering machine.
Twenty minutes later, Gibby was cruising past Pascal’s house. The dog catcher’s van was absent. So was Pascal’s car. At nine AM, Thomasina Worth was standing around the side of the house feeding what appeared to be boxes of Wheaties to a dozen assorted caterwauling felines. In the front, Thaddeus Worth was watering his azaleas and giving Gibby’s battered Jetta the stinky eye. Thaddeus drove a Ford F-150 and anyone else who didn’t drive American was an inhuman, commie-loving radical.
Gibby ignored Thaddeus and thought, If I were a hung-over mayor with a dead body in a dog catcher’s van, where would I go? She drove to City Hall next and saw his Ford Expedition parked in his spot. See, Pascal drives American. And Ford, too. Go stick that in your craw and smoke it, Thaddeus. She immediately regretted the thought. Her mother had been a devout Christian and that thought was distinctly un-Christian. It wasn’t very nice, either.
I’m not nice, Gibby thought mutinously. Her Jetta gurgled behind Pascal’s Expedition and she looked around her. What does an alcoholic civil servant do with a dead guy? Then there was clarity, mind numbing clarity that made her cringe in realization. He took Billy to a bar. Not just any bar. He took Billy to the Gray Goose.
And lo and behold, there was the dog catcher’s van parked in the street in front of the Gray Goose. However, neither the mayor nor the casket was in the van. Gibby looked consternated until she thought that perhaps Pascal had taken the casket with its precious contents inside for safe keeping. She nodded to herself. After all, we don’t want kids stealing it or something.
The front door to the Gray Goose Inn had been left ajar and Gibby let herself in without a qualm. It took a moment to adjust to the interior. It didn’t look the same in the revealing, brilliant light of midmorning. The walls were dingy. The goose was bedraggled and its feathers ruffled by a piece of well-fingered black lingerie. The bar was dirty. Used glasses and full ashtrays lay everywhere. A large silver casket with an inebriated politician sitting in it sat across three tables that had been half-hazardously pulled together. The floor looked like the inside of the sole Porta-Potty left standing after a concert with free beer.
Gibby’s gaze shot back to the politician in the casket. She almost choked. “Good Lord,” she muttered.
Pascal lifted his head and saw Gibby. Red-rimmed eyes looked her over and then he said, “Did you get the number of the truck that hit me, lady?”
“Coffee,” Gibby said inanely. “There’s got to be a coffee machine in here. If we can get about a gallon down you, maybe you’ll be all right. Then we have to hide the casket. It’s Saturday, for Christ’s sake, Pascal. A Saturday in July, you dork. Tourists come to stop at the Goose for lunch
on their way to an afternoon of fishing at Toledo Bend. They stop here on the way back, too, but I figure that’s okay. BECAUSE Billy will be gone by then!”
Pascal winced and held his head gingerly. “I think that’s the first time you’ve called me by my first name, Gibby.”
Gibby paused in her search for caffeine and caffeine related paraphernalia. It doesn’t mean anything. Stealing corpses made people a little closer. It’s much easier to call a man by his first name after you’ve committed a felony with him. That’s all. Then it actually dawned on her that Pascal was sitting inside the half open casket. He was sitting inside the casket. Logic seemed to dictate that a six foot tall man who weighed about two hundred pounds could not sit inside a casket unless the casket was otherwise unoccupied.
Her head methodically and unhurriedly scanned the room. Other than a stuffed goose on the wall, cadavers were sadly lacking inside the bar. “What have you done?” she all but shrieked after she had ascertained that the unthinkable was true. The corpse of a 110 year old felonious outlaw ominously was not present.
Pascal moaned. “God, don’t yell.”
Gibby couldn’t find her voice for a second. “Don’t yell? Don’t yell? You’re in the freaking coffin! Where’s the body?”
“Yeah,” Pascal said slowly. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that. There was drinking. A lot of drinking. Lots and lots and lots of drinking.”
“Coffee, coffee, coffee,” Gibby muttered, near to hysterics. She had seen the morgue attendants load the body into the casket in one of the black bags that they used. It had looked like a giant Hefty bag if one had to know, but Gibby had disregarded that little notion as vaguely blasphemous and definitively disrespectful. But the body had been in the casket when they had left Shreveport. Then Pascal had shut the double doors of the van and ensured that the doors were secured. He’d even made an asinine joke about leaving the remains on the road halfway to Sawdust City, and then he had deliberately rechecked the van’s back doors.
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 12
