Raw Wounds

by Matt Hilton

  ‘That’s OK by me,’ Pinky announced. ‘She don’t need to see my ugly mug, will only set her back in her recovery.’

  Po smiled at the lame joke, but he was also saddened by it. ‘There’s no chance of recovery. I need you to stay outside and watch for any of those a-holes turning up unannounced. Don’t want to cause a scene at my mother’s bedside.’

  ‘I’m there for you, Nicolas.’

  Po clapped his friend on the shoulder.

  Trepidation flooded through Tess as she followed Po along the spartan corridors. She was curious about Clara Chatard: she wanted to look at the face of the woman who’d picked a new family over her first, to a point where she had chosen sides in the battle between the Villeres and the Chatards. She’d already decided she didn’t like the woman – for what she was and what she’d done, but really she had no right to make such a judgement. Po had answered the dying woman’s summons, and it seemed with an open mind if not an open heart yet, so she should reserve her own opinion. In fact, Tess had been dreading this moment. She hoped that Clara would greet her son fondly, that she was looking for closure, and perhaps forgiveness, but doubt burned in the back of her mind. This brief visit to his mother’s deathbed might be Po’s mental undoing, but, like Pinky had just pledged, Tess would be there to help pick him up. She reached for his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze of reassurance.

  The hospital offered acute care, and Clara was certainly in need of it. She was in a private room, hooked up to all manner of equipment and drips. She had the look of a skeleton wired to hold all her flimsy constituent parts together. She was aged beyond her sixty-five years, her skin loose and translucent, dotted with darker pigmentation on her hands and cheeks. In contrast her hair was thick and lustrous, though it was ice-white. If it weren’t for the steady bleeping of a nearby ECG monitor, Tess would have sworn the woman had already given up the ghost.

  Po didn’t proceed beyond the door. He simply stared at the patient lying in the bed as if she was a stranger. Perhaps she was to him: the last time he had set eyes on her was almost a quarter of a century ago. Back then she’d have been young, still in her full bloom, vital. This woman was an empty husk by comparison.

  Tess had to give him a nudge to prompt him over the threshold, and he almost tripped into the room. He steadied himself, and leaned backwards into Tess. She gently pressed him forward. She could understand his reluctance, but he was there now: no going back. ‘Go on, Po. Go see your mom.’

  He tilted his eyes to her, and she didn’t recognize the look. He was normally fearless, meeting danger head on, but in the face of greeting his mother for the first time in decades he was afraid.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Tess said.

  He exhaled, but nodded and moved alongside the bed.

  Over the sounds of bleeping machinery, and the ambient noises of the hospital Clara shouldn’t have heard his approach. Yet she stirred, and her eyelids flickered open. Her eyes were a similar shade of turquoise as Po’s, but dulled. As she looked up at him it took a moment for recognition to filter through her mind, and suddenly her gaze sparked into clarity. Her lips opened but she made no sound. Her right hand lifted, trailing tubes from a cannula, and her fingers twitched.

  Tess waited. Po had stopped, looking down at the frail woman but his hands hung loosely at his sides.

  ‘Take her hand,’ Tess whispered.

  But he didn’t. If anything he moved back a few inches.

  ‘He … llo, Nicolas.’ Clara’s voice was whisper-thin.

  Still Po remained silent.

  ‘Thank you for coming … son,’ Clara went on, and again her fingers fluttered.

  ‘I got your message. I came as you asked.’

  Clara’s eyelids slid shut. Her lips twitched, and Tess thought she was fighting uncommon emotions. But when she looked up at her son again it was with dry eyes. ‘I knew you would.’

  Po shrugged. Stirred awkwardly, stuck for words. Clara glanced at Tess, and they both squeezed out the tiniest of smiles.

  ‘Who … are you?’ Clara asked.

  ‘I’m Tess. I’m a friend of Nicolas.’

  Clara returned her attention to her son. Her voice was a tad stronger. ‘You aren’t married yet?’

  Po didn’t answer.

  ‘Haven’t given me any grandchildren yet?’ When Clara’s gaze settled on Tess again it held disappointment. Now it was Tess that stirred uncomfortably.

  ‘You didn’t want to know me,’ Po said, ‘if I had kids would there be any difference?’

  Clara shuffled herself up the bed a few inches. It was an unnecessary effort, and Tess was first to reach for her, trying to stop her. But Clara had something to say, and didn’t want it to be delivered while flat on her back. The heart-rate monitor picked up pace. ‘If things could have been different …’

  ‘They couldn’t. You chose your side, and it wasn’t mine.’ Now Po stepped forward, but it wasn’t to comfort the old woman.

  Clara’s jaw firmed.

  ‘I was placed in the worst situation imaginable. Whose side could I take when everything was out of my control?’

  ‘You put yourself in that situation,’ Po said, and Tess was surprised at his snarky tone. Usually he reserved sarcasm for when he was poking fun at her; but this was different than when he was cajoling her. He was bitter, but it was hardly unexpected.

  ‘You don’t know what kind of life I had with your father,’ Clara said, but Po’s palm shot out, stalling her.

  ‘You don’t get to insult my dad,’ he warned. ‘He wasn’t the one in the wrong. It was all on you, Ma.’ It was the first time he’d referred to her by the title he must have used as a child. ‘You were the one to have an affair with his friend. You chose Darius Chatard over him, even after his son kicked my dad to death. You stuck by that sumbitch and his family when I needed you most.’

  ‘What could I do when you took everything outta my hands going after Lucas like that?’

  Lucas was the first of the Chatard brothers to die at Po’s hands, and it had been swift retaliation. He hadn’t hidden from the law, turning himself in within minutes of beating the life out of his father’s killer. Tess had heard from him that Clara had never shown at his court appearances and hadn’t once visited him while he was locked up in Angola. She had certainly taken the side of his enemies, but Tess could understand how difficult it must have been for her. Maybe she had no option but stand by Darius, because what was the alternative when her husband was in his grave and her only son imprisoned?

  Po of course wouldn’t see things Clara’s way. And he was growing angrier by the second. Tess touched his forearm. This wasn’t the time or place for recrimination. ‘Take it easy,’ she whispered.

  He snorted, but relented. He rubbed a hand over his face.

  ‘You wanted to tell me something, Ma. I came all this way, so what is it?’

  ‘Maybe I only wanted to see you one last time,’ Clara said.

  ‘Nope. You didn’t have me come here just to lay eyes on me. If you’ve something to say, do it now. Otherwise I’m leaving.’

  ‘You always were a stubborn child.’

  ‘I’m not a child anymore.’

  For the first time there was crinkle of fondness around Clara’s eyes. ‘You always were Jacques’s boy, and you haven’t changed one bit. I’m so glad.’

  Po only stared at her, and even Tess wondered what the hell she meant. Throughout his childhood she’d only ever shown Po’s father disrespect and disloyalty: how could she claim to have any fondness for her son if he reminded her so much of his dad? Perhaps she was casting her mind further back to a time when she did still love Jacques Villere, before her inherent selfishness had taken its unrelenting hold on her and their stormy relationship.

  ‘There is something I gotta tell you, Nicolas.’ Clara again tried to shuffle up the bed, but didn’t have the required strength. Tess was tempted to help her, but Po didn’t move. She took her example from him. Clara sank back into the sheets, exhalin
g wearily. ‘Don’t know how you’re gonna take this, but I’m gonna say it.’

  ‘Just say it and have done,’ Po said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Clara worked her mouth. White froth had collected at the corners of her lips. There was a jug of water, a plastic beaker and drinking straw on a bedside cabinet. Po finally reached for the beaker and fed the straw to his mother’s mouth. She sipped. Then nodded gratefully.

  ‘I’m dying,’ she said. ‘No two ways about it. The doctors want to do an angi-somethin’-or-other, but they’re only wasting their time and mine. Want to put stents into my veins and blow them up with little balloons. But they already told me that there’s too much damage to my heart and lungs, and that the angi-thing will only alleviate the problem for a short while. Me … well, I’ve had enough. I don’t want to prolong things. If I’m going, I’d rather do it now before things get much worse.’

  Tess glanced at Po and saw his eyes narrow. She couldn’t read him, wasn’t sure if he was happy with Clara’s decision to forgo treatment or not.

  ‘But I didn’t bring you all the way here to tell you my time is up. You already know that, and I’m betting you don’t much care.’ She fluttered a hand towards him. ‘I can’t blame you, son: can’t say as I’ve been the best of mothers to you.’

  When Po didn’t challenge the point, Clara again exhaled. Her next inhalation was a struggle. Phlegm crackled in her throat and her chest heaved beneath the sheets. Tess again glimpsed at Po, but this time he didn’t need any urging. He offered the water again and Clara sipped gratefully. As her look of mild panic subsided, Clara again shuffled further up the bed. ‘My damn lungs are giving out on me,’ she said. ‘You still smoking, Nicolas? If I can do one good thing in my life for you it’s to advise you to throw them away. Lookit what they’ve done to me.’

  Po didn’t reply. He wasn’t there for a lecture on his bad habits, or hers.

  ‘I shouldn’t put it off any longer,’ said Clara, and now she wasn’t preaching. ‘After me and your dad split, you know I had another child.’

  ‘Yeah.’ His mother had given birth to a girl after she’d switched her affections to the Chatard family.

  ‘She wasn’t Darius’s child.’ Clara peered up at Po, her eyes surprisingly brighter than they had been earlier; they shone with tears. ‘Despite what you might have heard, and what even my husband Darius might believe, that baby girl wasn’t his.’

  ‘What are you saying, Ma?’

  ‘I think you’re wise enough to figure things out for yourself, Nicolas.’

  ‘I’ve got a sister?’

  ‘She was Jacques’s baby, and full blood kin to you.’

  Tess felt the admission like a punch to her gut. God only knew how Po had taken the news because he showed no hint of surprise beyond a brief pinching of his mouth. Perhaps he’d suspected all along, because he knew about the girl, and it wouldn’t have taken much figuring out if anyone had taken the time to tally the dates between Clara leaving Jacques and the birth of the girl. But then, Tess was under the impression that Clara had been having an affair with Darius Chatard beforehand, and so everyone had assumed that the girl was his.

  ‘You’ve never met her,’ Clara went on. ‘But she’s your spitting double, son. There’s no denying who her father is.’ She reached for the bedside cabinet. Po followed her gaze and noted a couple of ‘Get well soon’-type greetings cards collapsed on top of it. ‘Could you pass me those?’

  Po reached for the cards and picked them up. He opened and discarded the first, then opened the next. Inside it was a photograph. Po made a sound in his chest as he peered intently at the face smiling back at him.

  ‘That’s Emilia, your sister,’ Clara confirmed.

  Intrigued, Tess wanted to take a look, but the door opened behind her.

  Pinky made a brief perusal of Clara Chatard, and his brow puckered. Then he snapped his gaze from the still, silent form of Po onto Tess. ‘Maybe you should see this, pretty Tess,’ he announced sotto voce, as if by speaking aloud he’d shatter whatever scene he’d just stumbled into.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, equally as quiet.

  ‘Not so much what as who,’ Pinky said.

  Tess nodded briefly at Clara, who was too intent on gauging Po’s reaction to give them any notice.

  Pinky again frowned at Clara. ‘No, it ain’t one of her brood. It’s that creep again; the one strutting roun’ like he’s Chuck Norris’s tougher brother.’

  EIGHT

  Visiting a hospital with the intention of strong-arming a patient into offering up the location of her wayward daughter probably wasn’t the best idea that Zeke Menon had ever come up with. He had drawn the curiosity of too many people – nurses, doctors, patients, and visitors alike – for him to get down and ugly on the old Chatard bitch now. He wondered if any of those whose attention had lingered on him for longer than a fraction of a beat, and who’d formed an impression of him based on their base instincts, had already tipped off the hospital security personnel. For all he knew his movements were being tracked via CCTV: for one he’d appear on plenty of footage should anyone care to check the recordings later. He’d originally intended slipping into Clara Chatard’s private room, asking her about Emilia, and if she wasn’t forthcoming with the information he needed, pushing her into telling him. Such action was unadvisable now. Particularly since he’d stared down that fat-assed black guy who had barred his way as he’d approached her room.

  ‘You is in the wrong place, bra,’ the black man had told him.

  ‘I choose my own path, nigger,’ Zeke had replied.

  The black man had flapped a skinny hand back the way Zeke had come from. ‘Then choose it that way, you.’

  Zeke had hooked a thumb in his belt, enough to tug down the top of his jeans to show the handle of a knife beneath the tail of his shirt. ‘Prefer to blaze my own trails.’

  The black man slipped aside the front of his jacket and showed the butt of a semi-automatic pistol nestled under his left armpit. ‘I’m also in the blazing business, me.’

  Zeke had eyed the black man, and the guy had stood his ground, wearing the faintest of smiles on his wide mouth. To look at the weirdly shaped guy appeared soft: but his expression said otherwise. Zeke thought he could gut the fat man before he got a hand on his gun, but he’d have to cut him deep and long to cause any lasting impression on all that blubber. Any other time Zeke would have welcomed the challenge, because for one he had no liking of niggers, but a busy location like a hospital ward probably wasn’t the best place to butcher him. But neither was he about to back down without regaining face.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you again, negra.’

  ‘You got a date, cracker.’

  Zeke snorted, but allowed his gaze to slip. There were slats on the blinds of Clara’s room, but they were tilted to allow in some light from the hall. Through the gaps Zeke made out two figures inside. A good-looking fair-haired woman was nearest the door. But it was the other person who caught and held his attention. It was fifteen years since last he’d seen that aquiline visage, and it had aged a little, the lines about his eyes and mouth deeper, but Zeke was under no illusion. What the fuck was Nicolas Villere doing standing over the bed of Clara Chatard?

  The black man moved a few inches, effectively blocking any view that Zeke had of the man he’d once known, but Zeke had seen enough anyway. He spat between his boots in a show of disdain and then turned slowly on his heel to walk away. It was a struggle not to pick up his pace, but he didn’t want the nigger to know he was in a hurry to leave. His recent conversation with Al Keane was dancing in his mind as he turned around a corner in the corridor, where Zeke had told him he wasn’t afraid of any man.

  Keane had replied with his words of caution: ‘… you should be.’

  Now, he was full certain that his employer hadn’t been talking about Nicolas Villere in person, for how could he know that Villere was back in town? But his warning was apt. If ever there was a man who’d pla
ced something approaching fear into Zeke Menon’s heart then it was the bad ass currently standing guard over Emilia’s mother. Villere’s attendance in New Iberia couldn’t be a coincidence either.

  But what was he doing there, and what was his interest in Clara Chatard?

  It took him a moment to remember the details, because it had been many years since he’d thought about any of the gossip that swirled around the exercise yard at the Farm. Villere was jailed for killing a Chatard, and had later stuck a shiv into another who tried to blind him. That was the connection. But why visit the mother of the men he’d slain? There was a part of that story he wasn’t familiar with, and now he wanted to know it. He came to a halt, turned, and looked back the way he’d just come. Clara’s room and the man standing guard before it were out of sight, but he still peered back that way as if it would help him recall something else. That goddamn nigger. He recognized him too. Porky, or Pricky, or some other damn stupid name he’d gone by in Angola. He was a skinny kid back then with a tight butt; a sweet ass on which Zeke and some other good ol’ boys had taken their turn before Villere had appeared like the damn queer’s knight in shining armour and laid about them with the business end of a lug wrench smuggled out of the tractor maintenance shop. Zeke still wore a scar on his left shoulder, from where Villere had broken his collarbone with a smack from that wrench. He’d gotten off lightly on that occasion, because Villere had concentrated his cold rage on some of the older guys, almost ignoring Zeke for a misguided kid carried along by the dirty tide he’d got caught up in. Villere had sent two more of them to hospital, one with a broken arm, the other with a shattered jaw. The other two were bloodied, knocked cold, but all right after a few days of nursing their aching heads. After that nobody fucked with Villere, or by virtue of his protection with … Pinky! That was the nigger’s name. Fucking Pinky Leclerc. Although Zeke had seethed for vengeance, as had the others Villere had beaten to within an inch of their lives, none of them moved on him, and they’d all been punished for it. Villere had become known as ‘the Man’ and only those with suicidal tendencies would have gone at him. Even Zeke, who had never understood the concept of fear before, was suddenly cautious of trying anything against the most fearsome animal in the zoo: if only Cleary was inside with him things would have been different. But Cleary was locked up in another institute back then, one with rubber walls.