by James Sallis
“If her father doesn’t know by now, he will soon enough. I’m expecting lawyers to swoop down on her like a pack of crows.”
“I’ll have to check to be sure. Laws could be different there; a lot of them are, since everything here is based on the Napoleonic Code. But there’s no formal charge as far as the courts are concerned, right? No talk of sanity hearings, anything like that?”
“None.”
“That would probably be the way he’d want to go. Claim that the girl was financially dependent, stress her runaway status, abandonment of the baby and its subsequent death. That’s all public record. The lawyers could lean hard on her overdose as a suicide attempt. After that, mostly it would depend on the judge. Down here, I could pretty much call it according to whose court it was set for. There, I just don’t know. But they’d probably get some kind of exclusionary ruling. Commitment to one of the diagnostic centers for observation, possibly, or mandatory court-monitored therapy.”
“Is there anything we could do to counter it?”
“This isn’t science we’re talking, Lew. Not even law, really—and law itself is unpredictable enough. More like magic where the correspondences are skewed and whatever rules there are, keep changing. Let me do some checking. I’ll get on the network and see what I can turn up. I have some contacts scattered around up there. I’ll get back to you. May be a while. The girl able to sit up straight and say what she wants?”
“Yes. Once she decides.”
“She look okay?”
“Yeah. A little shopworn.”
“Good. That counts for a lot. Okay, let me fire up the circuits and read some smoke. Where you gonna be?”
I gave him my phone number and said if I missed him, which was likely under the circumstances, I’d check back with him sometime tomorrow.
I hung up and sat remembering light gouging at my eyes.
Once years ago, surfacing briefly in a diner during a week-long drunk, I found Mephistopheles himself sitting across from me in the booth, pouring Tabasco sauce into his coffee. At the time it seemed the most natural thing in the world. We talked a while (I remember the waitress coming by to ask if I needed anything, and a couple of times to ask if I was all right, and some other people staring over at us), I declined his offers, and he left, telling me to keep up the good work.
Naturally, I later used the whole thing in a novel.
Tomorrow morning, too, I would call the university, try to mend that tattered sail as best I could, if it were mendable at all. Then Clare. Hoping for wind and calm seas.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I FOUND HER STANDING AT THE SIDE OF the two-lane highway near a gas-station-and-foodstore crossroad, wearing the cotton dress and navy pumps.
My phone had chirred that morning at eight. Crickets were devouring the Superdome, then there were incoming missiles. The door to my elevator wouldn’t close despite a formless something lurking out there in shadow. When my beeper went off, the thing tracking me turned its head suddenly, tipped by the sound—then the sound was only a phone.
Someone’s hand went out and got it.
“Mr. Griffin?”
I admitted it.
“Doris Brown, at the hospital. I’m one of the nurses on Three East. We were wondering if you’d seen Alouette.”
I came suddenly awake.
“Not since last night. I brought her back about nine-thirty.”
“The nurse on duty remembers her coming back, but somehow she never logged back in. And when Trudy made a bed check about two A.M., Alouette was gone.” She turned her head away, coughed. “I’m sorry we’ve been so long getting in touch with you, but we had trouble locating a number for you. You have no idea where Alouette is, then?”
“No.”
“Will she contact you, do you think? Or is there someone else she might get in touch with? Her hospitalization became voluntary upon release from the jail ward, of course, but we’re concerned.”
“I understand.”
“You’ll let us know if you hear from her?”
“I will.”
I hung up and stood in the shower a long time, turning the water ever hotter as I adjusted. I’d been awake much of last night, finally falling into agitated sleep just as dawn’s fingers tugged at the sill. A sleep in which restless dreams billowed soft and soundless as silk parachutes and dropped away.
I’d spent those hours preceding my shabby, ragged symphonie fantastique remembering an incident, itself almost dreamlike, from years ago.
Every teacher has stories of students who suddenly give way under pressure. They start coming in during office hours all the time for no discernible reason, they just one day vanish and are never seen again, they disrupt class with objections and urgent queries or sit in the back and never speak, the essays they turn in have little to do with the subject and everything to do with themselves.
Oddly enough, in all these on-again, off-again years, I’d really had only one instance.
The young man’s name was Robert. He dressed neatly, chinos and oxford cloth shirts mostly, and when he spoke, it was with a demure, softly southern accent; he had the deferential look of men raised by women. His French was extraordinarily good. He easily followed everything that was said, evidenced fine vocabulary and grammar on all written work, but had trouble whenever things shifted over to speech, as though words and phrases caught in his throat like some kind of phlegm and only with great effort could he expel them.
During conversation one afternoon—we were discussing Montaigne, as I recall—Robert passed twice, and when it came around to him again, simply sat there watching me blankly until I directed a question elsewhere. When I glanced back at him moments later, he leapt from his desk and stood in a crouch beside it.
“Ça va?” I asked him.
Whereupon he straightened, announcing in a loud voice, and in perfect French: “There is a conspiracy against me, Mr. Griffin. Surely you know that.”
“No, I wasn’t aware of that, Robert. But can you tell me just who is involved in this conspiracy?”
He looked around him wildly, but said no more. The room was absolutely quiet. No one moved.
I said: “I’d like for everyone who is not directly involved in this conspiracy to leave the room, please.”
The others quickly gathered their things and slipped from the room. I walked over to Robert, who remained standing stock still by the desk.
“So it’s down to just us now,” he said.
And looking into his eyes, I realized that he wasn’t talking to me. I don’t think he even knew I was there any longer.
Security came, and Robert let them lead him away without protest. A few weeks later, at a department meeting, Dean Vidale told us that Robert had got up one night at the state hospital, gone into the shower stall, and hung himself with a strip of ticking torn from his mattress.
I was thinking about it again that morning as I climbed back into the car with a huge cup of coffee and a bag of doughnuts and pulled out onto Highway 61. I’m not at all sure why this came to mind. I hadn’t thought about it in years. But now that I had, I couldn’t seem to shake it.
There was only one place for Alouette to go. And only two reasons for going there, the first of these, and far the least likely, her grandmother.
I’d driven less than an hour, coffee long gone, half a doughnut left in the bag, when, ahead, I saw a semi pull onto the opposite shoulder to let someone off, then pull back into traffic without looking, sending a panicked Camry into the oncoming lane. A panel truck in front of me hit its brakes and swerved onto the shoulder. It fishtailed and came to a stop nose-down in a shallow ditch at roadside, one wheel hanging free. I worked my own brakes, slowing by increments, and at the end of the curve, after the Camry had retaken its lane and shot by me, fell into an easy U.
I watched her face change as I approached and pulled off beside her.
“Thought you might need a ride.”
“Guess so. Last one’s price was one I d
idn’t want to pay. Man, you get straight and people start smelling bad, you know what I mean?”
She got in, crossing her legs beneath her on the car seat.
“He wasn’t even going the right direction. I hitched him at a truck stop down the highway and he told me he was bound for Vicksburg. But then we get to the highway and he turns north. And when I say something, he just says, ‘What difference does it make, little girl? Places is all alike.’ ”
“So how’d you persuade him to let you out?”
“I told him I just couldn’t go back toward Memphis, cause my daddy the sheriff had all-point bulletins out on me up there.”
I sat with motor idling. The panel truck backed out, wheels spinning, throwing up dust and stray gravel. A piece flew across the road and banged into the Mazda with a strangely nonmetallic thunk.
“Anytime now,” she said. “I’m in. We can go.”
“Okay. Which way?”
“You mean you didn’t come out here to haul me back?”
“Why? You don’t want to be there, you’d just leave again. Not much I can do about that. Not much anyone can do about it.”
“But me, you mean.”
I shrugged.
After a moment I said, “Something I used to do a lot was, I’d line everything up against myself so I had to get slapped back down. Work myself half to death sometimes, just getting it set up that way.”
“When you were drinking, you mean?”
“I still drink.”
“When you were a drunk, then.”
I nodded.
“And you’re saying that’s what I’m doing.”
“No. I’m only saying that I try not to do that anymore. If you want to go back to Clarksville and whatever’s there, I’m not going to try to stop you.”
“But you came after me.”
“Only to talk. You don’t want that, we’ll shut up, both of us. You don’t want to come back up to Memphis, you just open the door and get out. Or you can ask me and I’ll drive you to Clarksville myself.”
“That’s it, that’s where I want to go,” she said.
“Okay.” I waited for a couple of cars to pass, pulled the Mazda back onto the highway and started gaining speed.
“Lewis?” she said.
“Yes.”
“You don’t preach to me, tell me what’s right, what I need to do, like all the rest.”
“No.”
“Why is that?”
“I figure you know what’s right, as much as any of us do. You’ll either listen to that, or you won’t listen to anything—me, least of all. And you’re the only one who can say what you need. Whatever it is, you have to go after that. Everybody does. But needs change, and you don’t always notice. Besides,” I added, “who’d be fool enough to take advice from me?”
“Let he who is without sin …”
I smiled, remembering the last time that came up: when I was hospitalized for DT’s, back when I first met Vicky.
“Something like that. But look who’s preaching now.”
We rode on in silence.
After a while she said, “Lewis, I think you took a wrong turn back there.”
There weren’t any turns, only farm roads stretching out like dry tongues to the horizon.
I looked at her.
“Memphis is back that way.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Memphis it is, then.” I pulled off to the shoulder. “And on the way, maybe some lunch?”
“Why thank you, sir,” she said in a broad Hollywood-southern accent, “I’d mightily admire to have lunch with a fine, strong man like yourself. One that’s paying.” She sighed dramatically. “A lady carries no money, you know.”
As we rode back, I told her about Bob, how he’d suddenly caved in during class that day.
She sat quietly for a while when I was finished, then said: “Why’d you tell me that?”
“I don’t know.”
A tractor pulled over to let us pass, rocked back onto the road behind us.
“I think I do.”
“I’m listening.”
“Because you feel responsible somehow. You think there’s something you could have done, that you should have noticed something was wrong. But none of us can be responsible for other people and their lives, Lewis. At your advanced age, you should know that.”
She was right.
I should.
I looked over at her, noticing now that her dress was torn under the arm. Her eyes were amazingly clear, and she was smiling. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen her smile before.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THE CROWS SWEPT IN THAT NEXT DAY, dropping onto us out of a bright, clear sky.
I sat looking out on that day from an alcove tucked away at the end of the hall. Even the clouds shone with what seemed their own internal white light.
Two were older, one of them about my age, another sixtyish with silver hair and eyebrows like frosted hedges. With them was a lank man in his midtwenties whose law degree from Tulane had gained him the enviable position of carrying their briefcase. He was dressed like the others in dark three-piece suit and rep tie, but had a haircut reminiscent of old British films. A forelock kept falling into his face; he kept brushing it away with two fingers.
They came off the elevator in V formation and marched almost in step to the nurses’ station, where Eyebrows announced that they were here to see Miss Alouette Guidry, presently going under the name of (he glanced at Haircut, who fed it to him) McTell.
Jane asked if they were relatives.
“We are attorneys retained by the girl’s father to represent her.” He made a slight hand motion over his shoulder and Haircut dealt her a business card.
“Hmmm,” Jane said. She picked up the phone, spoke into it briefly, hung up. “Alouette doesn’t wish to see you,” she said.
“I’m afraid that is not satisfactory, young lady.”
“Probably not, but unless you gentlemen have further business, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“What is your name, young lady?”
She pointed to the nametag prominently displayed on her uniform front.
“Then I suppose we must ask to speak with your superior. A supervisor? The physician legally responsible for this unit, perhaps?”
It played out from there, the ball rolling on to a head nurse, an intern and then his resident, and finally to the walleyed young man I’d seen in the administrative offices, who came off the elevator blinking.
“We’re here—” Eyebrows began as he disembarked.
“I know why you’re here, Mr. Eason.”
He patiently explained to them, as had all the others, that Alouette was in her majority; that she, not her father, was the patient here, and the only one whose medical or other needs concerned them at this time; and that, should they wish to pursue the matter, they might best proceed in appropriate fashion through proper channels, as they undoubtedly knew, and stop badgering the hospital’s employees, taking them away from what could well be urgent duties elsewhere.
“I don’t know about Louisiana, gentlemen, but we take our patients’ rights seriously here in Tennessee. And now, you will please leave.”
As though on cue, the elevator doors opened and two security guards stepped off. They stood at either side of the doors as the lawyer trio climbed aboard, then got in with them. The doors shut.
“Jane, let me know at once if there’s any further problem,” the administrator said, then, turning, saw me sitting in the alcove and came over.
“Mr. Griffin.” He held out his hand. I stood, and we shook. “I know about yesterday, of course. We’re all rather glad you are here.”
“Right now, we’re all rather glad you’re here.”
He looked puzzled a moment, then said, “Oh, that. We’re used to it. They’re serious, or have half a leg to stand on, they’ve already been to a judge and have paper. O
therwise, it’s just a pissing contest.”
“Still, it’s appreciated.”
“What I do.”
“Think they’ll be back?”
“Up here? No. But we’ll be seeing more of them downstairs, I expect. I wouldn’t worry about it. Meanwhile, if there’s anything I can do to help Alouette, or you, please let me know.”
We shook hands again. He took out a key and pushed it into the control plate beside the elevator doors; within moments, a car was there. He nodded to me as the door closed.
I sat watching pigeons strut along the sill outside, past locked windows. One was an albino, wings and tail so ragged it was hard to believe the bird could still fly.
A moment later Jane answered the phone and said to me, “They’re ready, Mr. Griffin.” I thanked her and walked down the hall to a conference room. Sitting at the table inside were Alouette and Mickey Francis. The social worker held a styrofoam cup, rim well chewed.
“Thanks for coming, Mr. Griffin. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“No thanks.”
“I called you to come in because Alouette asked me to. I hope it’s not an inconvenience.”
“Not at all. Nothing much going on at the motel this time of day.”
Uncertain whether or not that was a joke, she settled on a smile. Waited two beats. I thought of other such interviews, in rooms much like this one, when I myself was on the home team.
“She and I have talked a lot about what happened yesterday. And over the past several months. I know the two of you have discussed her plans once she’s released. Treatment programs, halfway houses, that sort of thing. We all feel it’s imperative that she get follow-up care.”
“I think she agrees.”
“She does. And the time for us to shape these decisions is fast approaching.”
“Not us, Miss Francis. It’s her decision all the way.”
“You’re right, of course.” She looked down at the stack of folders on the table before her. “Alouette has expressed to me a desire to go back to New Orleans. Not to remain here.”
