“I told you. He was murdered.”
“Start telling the truth, Truman, this instant, or I’ll leave and not come back. Delia and I were planning on coming back tomorrow, but you can change that with one more lie.”
“I don’t con my family.”
“Truman, you do.” My plan to keep up a front the first day was eroding. Another Gaylen was taking over.
A guard heard us and walked toward us. “Is there a problem?”
“We’re cool,” said Truman. When the guard walked away, he said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but if Judge Cuvier is behind this, you’ll be used and then thrown away like refuse. Stay away from him. He’s a murderer and a pimp. He’ll suck you into his campaigns, and then you’ll end up like my father.”
“Tell me how you think your father was murdered,” I said.
He talked for over a half hour about the corrupt judge and the plot to kill his father and take his family’s land. While he talked, another memory bobbed up. Mother was telling me that Truman was not capable of telling the truth. I could see her plain as life, resurrected and standing in the kitchen, responding in her strange codes to one of my many questions about the boy erased from our lives.
He talked until a guard told him his time was up. “Are you coming back tomorrow?” he asked me.
“Same time,” I said.
Delia bustled to meet me. She hugged Truman good-bye. “Virgie’s got a brother-in-law, and she said he’s just my type.”
“Breathing,” I said.
Truman laughed. “I’m glad you two came. You’re a gas.”
Delia talked about the prospect of a new man all the way back to New Orleans.
“What about Avery?” I asked.
“The thing about Avery you have to understand is that I think he was after my inheritance. He was one of those types that once he sniffed out money in the till, the next thing you know, he’d tell me anything.”
“Good to leave him behind then,” I said.
“Truman is a sweet man. I guess we had him all wrong,” she said. She talked until the afternoon lull overtook her, and she fell asleep.
I fueled up in Baker and connected using I-10. On the trip home, Noleen called from Garland. She bought a Christmas ham, the honey-baked kind, she gushed. I assured her that we had to return to Garland and hoped Delia’s car was not a bother. She reminded me that Christmas was only a week away. I felt melancholy hearing her talk about the holidays and her grandchildren. Her children would arrive, and Delia and I would be the spare relatives.
Braden would join his family down in Florida, and they would wrap lights around the thirty-foot-tall palm tree in the front yard. Then the boat parade and flotilla would float past on the canal behind the Boatwright’s deep-water lot. Braden’s daddy, Clemson, would wave at Braden and his mother, Daurie, from his boat, red-faced from vodka, wearing a Santa hat and a Jimmy Buffet shirt.
Mother had established no Christmas traditions. She blamed my father, saying that he put a damper on the holidays. Daddy seemed to sleep through Christmas, guarding the football games with one eye. His stomach packed full of beans and cornbread, only the hope of a beer roused him from his sofa.
New Orleans traffic was picking up by midafternoon. I pulled up to the courthouse and left Delia asleep. The courthouse assistant retrieved the transcript for me. I carried it to a concrete bench and opened it up.
Delia came in an hour later, the side of her face red and damp with drool.
The transcript was beside me on the bench. I could not think of what to say.
Reading Truman’s trial transcript left me feeling weak. I was breathing like a guppy out of the bowl. I could only think to call Jackson, who was not at home. Delia took the transcript from me and read it while I drove back to the hotel. She kept turning the pages and saying, “He’s awful,” and “He should be shot.” Finally she laid the transcript in her lap. “Truman sure can fool you. He must have fooled Mama and Daddy until they found him out. Then poor Mr. Savage and his wife had no idea.” That was when she slammed the passengers door with her fist. “He could have been stopped a long time ago. Why would Mama hide it?”
I pulled into the Windsor Court circle drive. A valet checked the car and helped Delia out. She slid the transcript back into the manila envelope and carried it up the hotel steps.
I accepted an offer of room service and ordered scones and tea. Windsor Court’s tearoom was full, and it was impossible to get reservations that late in the day. Some of the patrons seated at the linen-covered tables were dressed in winter business attire, while others had come in from tennis. The tea hostesses served high tea from antique tea services. “We’ll take ours in our room,” I told the desk clerk.
“Tonight, one more time, some more of those beignets,” said Delia.
“We can do that again,” I said.
My phone rang just as I took a seat at the rooms desk overlooking the street. Jackson sounded lively. He talked of Noleen’s cooking and the fact that we would have to come or else he would never be able to eat it all. He was glad to have reunited with our side of the family and even happier that Delia and I agreed to return in time for Christmas.
I waited for the lull in the conversation that said he was waiting to hear why I had called him. I told him, “We met Truman, my half brother.”
“Is he what you expected?”
“Nothing at all like that,” I said. “He’s a charmer.” Deceptively so, I thought.
“Did he tell you what you wanted to hear?”
“No.”
“Nothing at all?” he asked.
“I got the court transcript, the one transcribed at Truman’s trial.”
“That’s got to be interesting reading.”
“He’s a beast, Jackson. He was planning on murdering the little girls that he had attacked. As a matter of fact, he fantasized about returning to all of his victims and burning them all in a bonfire.” I had not thought until that moment whether or not he had counted me in that number.
“You need to get out of there, Gaylen. Don’t go back to see him.”
“Once more. I told him I’d be back tomorrow.”
“It’s a promise you don’t have to keep.”
“It’s a promise I’ve made to myself, Jackson. I’m going to tell him I’ve talked to his father recently.”
“Don’t. Drop it. Men like Truman Savage can’t handle confrontation.”
“I just want to see,” I said. I promised to see him in a few days.
Someone knocked on the door. I thought it was room service, but when I opened the door, I found two plainclothes policemen waiting instead. “Delia Cheatham,” they said.
Delia screamed, “No, please, no!”
They walked past me and straight toward Delia. One of the cops read my sister her rights.
“Please, it’s almost Christmas!” said Delia. “Let me be with my family in Texas.” She explained to the cops, detectives calling themselves Turner and Murphy, about Noleen and Jackson, as if the policemen would care about her surrogate family in Garland, Texas. Delia sobbed. She began to shove her new clothes into a shopping bag, but the young cop took her wrist and stopped her.
“You can’t take your belongings anyway, ma’am. Let your sister bring your things home for you.” Turner, the young guy, was kind to her, as if someone had told him about her vulnerabilities. Or it could have been Delia’s naive manner that softened him.
“Who ratted me out?” she asked.
I did not know what to say. I had never been good at consoling my sister. I held my arms out to her, and she let me hold her. I cried with her, and it felt strange. I had scarcely cried over my own father’s funeral. “Could you dispense with the cuffs?” I asked. “Please don’t lead my sister out of here in handcuffs. I’ll walk her all the way to your car. Delia, tell them you w
on’t run,” I said.
It was as if I had given Delia her cue. She bolted for the door. Turner grabbed her and cuffed her wrists behind her back.
“You watch yourself, mister! My sister and me, we got us plenty of money and a lawyer!” she said, agitated with the way he pressed her against the wall.
“I’ll post your bail,” I promised. Her cheeks were devoid of any color, and it was the first time that I saw the reality of her crime show up in her eyes.
The young cop led her down the plush hallway as the curious hotel host wheeled our tea service around them and up the hall to our room.
Delia stared after me. She looked six years old. “I won’t be able to get you a Christmas present. I was going to, you know. I swear, Gaylen! I know what you like now.”
“I’m sorry, Delia,” I whispered. I meant I was sorry that until now she did not know me.
“You go to that café and eat beignets, Gaylen, for us! You eat some for me! You promise me!” She was desperate, and her face shone wet under the hall lamps.
I nodded although I couldn’t get out another word to her. She disappeared into the elevator with Turner. While the doors closed, a slight whimper, and then the hallway fell stone silent.
Murphy, Turner’s older partner, said, “Your husband, Braden Boatwright, arranged a plea bargain. He told us where to find your sister if we would let you go. But you have to testify about the day of the shooting. The victim told us you saw the whole thing.”
I pictured Delia’s face looking up from the defendant’s table. I could not form the words to agree with him.
“Otherwise, I got to book you too,” he said. The plainclothes officer stood between me and the door, as if he did not know whether I might, like Delia, bolt.
“I’ll testify.” I numbly agreed. I imagined Daddy glaring at me for not looking after her more carefully.
Murphy handed me his card. “You’ll need to return to Boiling Waters. Call me as soon as you get into town.”
“We were supposed to be with family Christmas day.” I stated it faintly, as if I was too paralyzed to talk. I was worried he might change his mind and drag me down the hallway behind Delia.
“The arraignment will be pushed up into January because of the holidays. You won’t do her any good this week anyway. Just be back home the week of New Year’s.”
“Officer Murphy, please be careful with my sister. She doesn’t always say the right things, but it’s because she’s not right in the head.”
“Your attorney will have to sort through mental defense issues, Mrs. Boatwright. Happy Christmas.”
After he left, I sat down to the teacart left quickly behind by the hotel host. I pushed aside the hot teapot.
A mother and father in the grave, a brother and sister behind bars—my family managed to end up on the dead end of the street no matter how much I fought to keep each one on the path of life and sanity.
I sat in the room until the sun went down on New Orleans and covered the city darkly enough that I could venture out without being noticed at least by the staff who I was certain were beginning to whisper about the arrest. Then I returned to Café Du Monde and sat down holding a cup of café au lait and beignets again, some for me and some on behalf of Delia. I figured that I would scarcely taste them. But the taste was heightened, and it was as if I were tasting them for the first time. It was good to know that I would not lie down on a cold jail cot that night. I had imagined it many times as Delia slept next to me in a hotel bed. But I worried over her and how the other inmates would treat her.
An older man in a dark suit seated across from me sipped coffee and waited for his wife to join him. There seemed to be a lot of older people in the square, but it was only Thursday, and not all of the party revelers turned out until after rush hour on Fridays. He was bored enough to talk to me, and he told me about the jazz band that played every night for eight dollars right down the block in Preservation Hall. I finished my coffee and the crisp hot pastries that were exceptionally dusted and walked down to find a line forming into the jazz hall. I called Braden and left a phone message and waited in line.
Meredith had not called me back. I imagined her leaving for Germany, trying to intercept the calls from Renni and the rest of the Syler clan.
Then I turned around and saw a man walking straight for me. The streetlights were dim as an old London street, but as he neared, I could see his face. “Braden, is that you?” I asked.
I felt his arms come around me. I had grown so alone in my grief over Delia, so pent up, that it came spilling out when he held me close. “I know you have your reasons, Braden, but how could you?”
“They were threatening to throw you in jail. I’m sorry about Delia,” he said just into my ear and turning me away from the prying eyes of those standing around me.
“She was helpless. I couldn’t do anything to help her or to keep them from taking her away. I tried to tell them about her, that she can’t help what she does, or it seems she can’t. Can she?” I asked.
He wiped powdered sugar from my mouth. “Beignets. Save any for me?”
“We can go back,” I said. It seemed like a dream that he was standing wiping sugar from my lips and even more of a fantasy that I liked the attention he was giving me.
“Let’s stay here. Where does this line go?”
“Preservation Hall.”
“Oh yes! You’ll like that music.” He spoke quietly. “Did Delia kick up a fuss, I mean, fight them when they arrested her?”
“What do you think?”
“I wanted to get here in time to try and help, you know, maybe talk to her and prepare her, but they got here so fast. I was afraid to call you. If she bolted again, they were going to come after both of you. They threatened me over and over until I agreed or, they told me, no deal.”
“You couldn’t have helped her. I didn’t.”
“Do you want me to take you back to Garland tomorrow? I can. I’ve taken off,” he said.
“For how long?”
“Through Christmas. You want to stay here a few days, maybe fly into Dallas, see a Christmas show?”
“Can you take off that long?” Christmas was a big season for Braden, people wanting to fly private planes up to ski resorts and down to Florida.
“I just took off, that’s all.”
“Tomorrow I go back to Angola. One last time.”
The line was moving, and we were just inside the door, handing one of the money collectors our cash, when Braden said, “I’ll go with you to the prison.”
“You can’t.” But I was surprised that he offered to accompany me. “They make the prisoners declare all visitors’ names on a list. They have to preapprove you, and there’s no time.”
“What’s he like?”
“Truman? He’s nice to meet. But it’s not real.”
“What’s so important about tomorrow?”
“I’m going to tell him I know that his father wasn’t murdered.”
“Did he think that he was?”
“No, he wanted me to believe that he was a victim of a conspiracy.”
“To extort money, I guess. Why tell him anything?”
“The day he left our house is a complete blank. I remember days up to it, past it, but that one day is gone.”
“Are you sure you want to trust him to help you remember? How will you know if he’s telling you the truth?”
“I know enough. He can’t lie. I’ve got him over a barrel.”
We filed into the jazz hall and took our seats. I took off my sweater.
“What’s this?” Braden saw the daisy tattoo.
“Just a tattoo,” I said, as if I had gotten a new pair of earrings.
He laughed until he saw I was not laughing with him.
“Delia has this thing for daisies.”
By now Delia was
flying out of Louisiana with two cops and no idea of what lay ahead. I had tried to help her see ahead from the time we left Boiling Waters, but it had not done a bit of good. No matter how much I warned and goaded her, she could never see ten minutes into the future. That is when I prayed for her. It was not a big prayer.
The trombone player was warming up. He shook his spit out on the sneaker of a young boy who rolled with laughter. We turned our attention on the band in front of us. They were playing a standard. “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
18
BRADEN’S LAST WORDS to me before I left for Angola prison were, “If he so much as utters a hint of threat, you make for the door, Gaylen. Don’t you take anything off him.”
He had checked into an airport hotel, not certain that he would find me as he did, standing out on the sidewalk in front of Preservation Hall. Braden had his easy side, and he was exercising it well, in spite of the fact that he had aided the police in arresting my sister. Or maybe ratting her out had softened him.
“There’s no need to drive all the way back into New Orleans. I’m flying into Baton Rouge, so you let me know when you’re headed back, and I’ll have the plane ready for takeoff,” he said.
I wanted to know what to do next regarding Braden. But he made it easy to do nothing, so I accepted the three twenty-dollar bills that he slipped into my hand for gas money and hugged him. When the time was right, I would explain about the money I had come into, but for now accepting money from him was a way to appease the tension between us. I used it to buy a new pair of jeans as my old ones could be stood up in a corner. I checked out of the Windsor Court and sent for the rental car.
The drive to Angola passed more quickly the second time, and I ate fast food along the way and sipped a diet drink.
The line into Angola was long as before, but I did not see Delia’s friend, Virgie. I met up with the same female guard as before who recognized me. She passed me through without a hitch, and that was a relief as I had hidden the photo of my mother and me inside my bra. It was one of the three that I had carried pinned to the netting of the suitcase on my road trip with Delia. I had seen smuggled items thrown into the trash in the security line. But I risked it for no reason other than it was the only memento that would bring back the woman we both knew. That, and I thought seeing me at the age he remembered me might trigger an honest response. It was my only plan, and I had no other in mind and could form no words for the conversation awaiting me. My whole life, I had rehearsed in advance the conversations that I deemed especially difficult. When I told my father that I was leaving Boiling Waters, I had prepared perfectly for the explosion of emotion I heard when I told Daddy and he yelled through the phone, “You’ll starve without me looking after you, Gaylen!”
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