The Levee: A Novel of Baton Rouge

by Malcolm Shuman

  Toby swallowed. “We didn’t do anything …”

  “Don’t tell me what you didn’t do. I know all about you city kids from rich families, coming down here with girls, drinking, raising hell …”

  Toby started to say something but I nudged him with my knee.

  “I ought to teach you all a lesson,” Sikes said. “But I’ll let you go this time. You’re lucky it was me, though: If it was Mr. Drood caught you, you’d wish you’d never come.”

  The evil visage vanished from the window and I heard him calling to the cows, shooing them out of the way. As he stumped toward them, the herd parted and Toby popped the clutch. The car shot forward, skidding and then straightening as we reached the open gate that marked the end of Windsong property.

  Behind us the herd had reformed in the center of the levee and Toby slowed, leaning his head out of the window.

  “You red-necked mother fucker!” he yelled back in Sikes’ direction. “Fuck you and your fucking cows!”

  “You stupid bastard,” I cried. “What the hell are you trying to do?”

  “He can’t catch us now,” Toby said, wiping what looked suspiciously like sweat off his forehead. “I’m damned if some white trash piece of shit’s gonna run me off public property.”

  “Let’s just go home,” Blaize said quietly.

  Toby found the road that led down the levee toward Bergeron’s store and a few seconds later we were back on the gravel and headed for town.

  He didn’t say another word until we reached my house.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I sit in front of the house where I grew up, on Cherokee Street, in the shade of the water oaks, and try to remember how it was. My parents bought the house when I was five and I lived there until I went away to college. It is a bungalow with brick pillars and a screened-in front porch with a swing, but the swing is gone and I have the urge to get out, knock on the door, and demand where it is. There is a light in the front bedroom window but since it is mid-morning, I think it unlikely anyone is at home. Maybe if I went up the walk, knocked on the door, it would magically open, and when I looked inside everything would be the same as it was then, but, of course, I know better,

  I close my eyes and try to see myself as a six-year-old, running across the lawn to get the afternoon paper for my father, so it will be on the coffee table when he comes in from the university. I smell cookies baking and hear my mother humming in the kitchen. It is an idyllic scene, something I have fixed on over and over throughout the years but now, for the first time, I begin to wonder if it ever really happened, or whether it is just the way I wanted things to be.

  Then I think about when I was seven and playing in the shed behind the house and my mother called me to come in, and how I listened to the sound of her voice, the change in tone from merely questioning, then the rising note of aggravation and finally the high pitch of fear, and I recall the pleasure at knowing that I could stay here as long as I wanted, and that when I came out, it would be a relief to her and she would love me all the more, because she would see I was all right. And so I stayed in the cobwebs, surrounded by the dank smell of earth, huddling among the garden tools, and saw the door open, a brief square of light, and heard her call my name, and still I said nothing. By that time I realized it was too late, that soon my father would be home and if I came out now he would be called on to discipline me, though the fear was worse than anything he had ever actually done.

  So I stayed, by now thoroughly frightened, until I decided that if I ran away, maybe I could escape, but I’d only gotten halfway down the alley behind the house, that served as a route for the garbage trucks, when a neighbor saw me, and seconds later, as I reached the cross street, my father’s blue car was stopping, blocking the alley and the door was opening, and he was jerking me inside.

  But I needn’t have worried, because they were so glad to see me that all was forgiven, and afterwards I felt guilty. Later my mother explained that before I was born I’d almost had a brother or sister, but she’d miscarried, and she and my father had grieved over the miscarriage, and that they couldn’t stand the thought of losing a child again, and though I was not sure until much later what a miscarriage was, I knew that they loved me very much.

  Maybe that was why I decided I could get away with things.

  Her name was Leslie, and she was a year younger than I was and lived next door, and one day I invited her into the shed while we were playing in the backyard and I convinced her to undress and she let me look between her legs and then I showed her my own organ and we did that several more times until one day I called for her to come play and found out that she couldn’t come any more. That day my mother told me about how boys and girls were different, which was something I’d realized long before Leslie, though I hadn’t been entirely certain just how, and she explained how there were some things people didn’t do, and she told me that Leslie wouldn’t be coming again, but that she knew I hadn’t realized I was doing anything wrong, but not to do it again.

  I wondered where Leslie was now, the little straw-haired girl whose face I barely remembered, who so unselfconsciously spread herself for me and let me look into the folds of her six-year-old flesh. Did she even remember? Did she laugh about it with her husband? Her own daughters? Was she even still alive? How many lovers had she had, and would she even still remember my name?

  When I was eight my parents planned a vacation. Now, we’d had vacations before. In 1950 we went to Florida, where we took a glass-bottomed boat and saw nature gardens and swam in the Gulf. But this was to be a super vacation, all the way to Michigan, which was where my father’s family lived. There’d been much discussion over whether he could afford to not teach summer school and finally he’d convinced my mother that it was something he had to do, because though they’d married during the war, many of his family had never met her and none of them had seen me, and when would they ever get another chance?

  I think she, as a girl from Louisiana, was afraid of what they would think of her, because ours was a backward state, which, until Huey Long, had barely had any paved roads or bridges, and people in the north thought of it as almost another country. I remember that they argued bitterly because he said that it was a long way to drive and went out and bought a new car.

  It was the only time I could remember their arguing, but the ferocity of it stayed in my mind forever afterwards.

  It started when he brought it home, a new blue Pontiac. I remember staring at it, excited. As long as I’d been alive the family had limped along in a ’39 Ford, and Mr. Ruggles, the mechanic at the Esso Station, on Dufroq Street, had almost been a member of the family. My father even kept a bicycle for those days when the car was out of commission and he had no other means to get to work. Dad said Mr. Ruggles had a drinking problem, and sometimes he didn’t show up for a couple of days, but when he did, he could fix anything with wheels. But now, he proudly explained, as I stood wonderingly on the lawn, Mr. Ruggles and the bike could be consigned to the past. The new car was dark blue, sleek, with an Indian head ornament on the hood, and my father said proudly that it would go a hundred miles an hour.

  Then Mother came out.

  “Look!” I told her, sharing my father’s happiness, but as soon as I saw her face I knew things were about to crash.

  I’ll never forget the stricken look.

  “Charles, you didn’t …” The words choked in her throat and my father’s sudden ebullience seemed to fragment.

  “We’re going to spend every cent we ever saved to go on this jaunt this summer and you turn around and buy a new car?”

  “We’ve never had one,” he said, his voice weak in a way I’d never heard it before. “I didn’t have to put much money down and the payments …”

  “We can barely afford the payments on the house now,” Mother said. “My God, Charles …”

  “Evelyn, we were spending more on the old car than we’ll pay in notes on this one. It was in the garage every week.”

&n
bsp; “But a Pontiac? You couldn’t even get a Chevrolet. You had to get the most expensive car they make.”

  “The most expensive is a Cadillac,” he said quietly.

  She didn’t answer, just ran into the house. For a tortured second his eyes met mine and I saw the disappointment. Then he rushed after her.

  I stood on the lawn, paralyzed. I’d never known them to argue before. Sure, sometimes she’d complained about one thing or another and he’d get a pained tone in his voice, but it always seemed to die away. But now I heard their raised voices, from inside.

  She was yelling at him, and I heard words like “bills” and “poor house,” and “expensive toy.” I put my hands against my ears, but then I felt foolish and I thought the neighbors might see and wonder what I was doing, so I crept around the side of the house, out of sight of the street. I was just outside their bedroom and I heard the door slam and the springs of the bed squeak, as if someone had landed on it, and then I heard his voice, muffled, as if coming from the hallway outside:

  “… just wanted us to be safe … don’t want to break down on some road in Mississippi …”

  His words were blotted out by her crying and I realized she was lying on the bed.

  Maybe, I thought, if I hadn’t been standing there when he’d driven up, hadn’t shown delight at the new vehicle, maybe then he’d have had a chance to explain to her and this wouldn’t have happened. For a long time I waited, trying to make up my mind whether to go inside, try to explain, tell them it was my fault. Or whether I should just leave, for good this time, go somewhere they’d never find me again, where I wouldn’t make any more trouble. Maybe, I thought, if I ran into the street and let a car run over me, or went to the river and jumped off the ferry. But after what seemed forever her sobbing grew more muffled, so that I could barely hear it, and I wondered if she was all right, and I guess my father wondered, too, because after a while I heard the door open and footsteps and then I heard his voice, low and soothing, and she gave out a few more sobs, and the only words I could make out were his saying something about taking the car back, but she said she didn’t want that, and after a time I heard the bed squeak again, and then they were talking in low voices and she said something about locking the door, and I heard his footsteps, padding this time, as if he’d taken off his shoes, and a while later I heard the bed start to squeak rhythmically and heard her gasping and I thought he must be doing something to her but I wasn’t sure what.

  That night, at dinner, they were quieter than usual but there was no mention of the car or of vacation and I didn’t know what had been decided because two days later she was dead.

  Years later, when I thought about it, I realized I’d never really known what had happened, only what I’d been told by people who’d wanted to shield me. What they said was that she’d been downtown shopping, had stepped off a curb, and been hit by a car. A freak thing, something that happened every day, and because I was young, people wanted to protect me from the hurt. But because they said as little as possible, in later years it came to be imbued with a mysterious quality. Why had she been downtown that Tuesday morning? Her usual shopping day was Saturday. She’d had to take a bus downtown because Father had the car. Of course, she might have been shopping for our trip. But I never heard what she’d had with her when she’d been found. All I remembered was my father’s ashen face and the way he’d sleepwalked through the next few weeks and months. We didn’t take the vacation, of course, and six months after it happened he sold the Pontiac and got a second-hand Dodge. For a long time her clothes stayed in their bedroom, and nothing was changed. It was as if she were still living there and one day would walk in the door. Five years after she died, when I was in junior high, he dated a couple of times, women whom he’d met at the university, but nothing ever came of it. Years later, when I’d finished college and was on my own, he remarried, but I’d long since made my own life. Maybe it was the memory of that fight they’d had so soon before she’d died, and the thought that my father must have carried that with him for the rest of his life, like a millstone.

  But then, I tell myself, seated in front of the old house, my parents weren’t the only ones who had disagreements. Stan’s parents had had a hell of a fight the afternoon Toby and Blaize and I came back from the confrontation with Sikes on the levee.

  Toby dropped us at my house and I helped Blaize for a while with his homework, though neither of us had our minds on it after what had happened with Sikes.

  “Do you think he really did it?” Blaize asked.

  “I dunno. But he sure had Toby shitting in his drawers.”

  I walked Blaize home and his mother jerked open the apartment door before he was halfway up the steps.

  “Are you all right?” She reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West, tall, angular and dark, but, unlike the witch, she was always festooned with jewelry and exuded a perfume that made me want to sneeze. My father said she came from old family and had married a man who hadn’t acted responsibly—those were his words. Toby said Blaize’s father had been a drunk and wrote bad checks, and that they divorced because he’d spent all her money. The only product of the marriage was Blaize, sickly and diffident. Two years ago, Blaize had come to our school, and the rumor was that Blanche St. Martin had badgered politicians and university administrators until they’d made room for her son at the laboratory school, which was a protected environment catering to the affluent, well-connected, and the children of university faculty.

  “Colin, would you come in for a moment?” she asked, and hustled me inside, as if she didn’t want anyone to see us together. I followed slowly, eyes peeled for flying monkeys.

  She shut the door behind us. It was stuffy in the room, but I don’t know whether it was the lack of air conditioning or just the fact that the room smelled like mothballs and Lysol.

  “Sit down,” she said. She pointed to a straight-backed chair to insure that I wouldn’t choose one of the antique, stuffed monstrosities that, so far as I could tell, nobody was allowed to sit in.

  I took my seat and caught a look of sympathy from Blaize.

  “Blaize, darling, go into the kitchen and get the cookies off the stove, will you?” she asked.

  A few seconds later Blaize shuffled back in with a plate of blackened objects.

  “They got a little overdone,” Blanche said. “But it doesn’t hurt to be too careful.” She nodded at Blaize. “Pass some to Colin, dear.”

  I took one. It felt like a rock and I held it, unsure what to do.

  “You know, I called your father’s home,” Blanche said, her voice kindly but accusing. “There was no answer.”

  “We must have been outside,” I said quickly.

  “Studying outside?” she asked, penciled brows arching.

  “We went down to the drugstore, too,” I lied.

  “I see.”

  I raised the stone-like cookie to my mouth, pretended to eat some, but it tasted like charcoal.

  “It’s good,” I mumbled.

  “You know, Colin, this is not a very nice world that we live in.” She sighed and touched her hair bun. “It’s not the world I remember when I was growing up. In those days, you could hitch hike a ride and never have to worry. Tramps came to the door and you always fed them. Things just didn’t happen.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “But these days …” Another sigh. “You understand why I don’t encourage Blaize going down to the levee.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’s not you boys. You’re good boys. I know you come from good stock. But you’re so young. None of you really understand what it’s like in this world today.”

  There isn’t anything much you can say to something like that. She took the plate from the coffee table and thrust it at me.

  “Aren’t you going to eat another one? Oh, well, I guess it is close to supper. I wouldn’t want your father to be upset with me. Such a sweet man. I hope you appreciate what a wonderful father you have,
Colin. To do such a splendid job rearing a boy like you, all by himself. A Negro maid is no substitute for a mother. I know he misses her. I’m sure you do, too.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I suppose I missed her, but in kids’ years it had been a long time and all I had were the jumbled images.

  “You’ve been so kind to Blaize. I know that’s your rearing showing, it always does, you know. Blaize was so mistreated at the public school. Children can be so cruel.”

  Blaize looked down at the rug and I knew he wished he could blend into it.

  “Some of those boys were just toughs. Common. And some of the girls, well …” She shook her head: “I thought it would be better at the Catholic school, but the nuns just give no individual attention at all. I told them, ‘You can’t use religion as an excuse. I expect something for my money.’”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Still, I know it’s been hard for Blaize at the Lab School. He didn’t start out there, and I know that means a lot. That’s why I’m so grateful for the way you’ve befriended him.”

  “Mom …” Blaize said, like he was choking on a hot poker.

  “He’s really a musical prodigy, you know,” she went on, oblivious to her son’s discomfort. “He belongs with a group that can appreciate that, not with a bunch of football players.”

  I tried to conceal the stone-like cookie in my fist. “I really have to go now, Mrs. St. Martin.”

  “Of course. I’ll take you home. I wouldn’t want your father to think I’d just let you walk the streets.”

  “Really …” I tried to protest but Blaize rolled his eyes and I knew I didn’t have a chance. She ushered us out to the old yellow Chrysler and managed to back up onto the curb before she got it straightened out and into the street. Inside the closed car, the smell was overpowering and I realized it was the odor of lilies, as if we were part of a funeral cortege.

  “You know, you’re very lucky,” she said, jamming the brakes suddenly as we reached the middle of the intersection with Park Boulevard, as if she’d only now noticed the stop sign. “There’s no telling what could have happened to you boys on the levee that night. Not that I worry very much about that Toby. He is not the kind I like to see Blaize associate with, and I frankly am a little surprised you would go with him, Colin, but Stanley is a nice boy, from good parents, well-bred. You can always tell quality.”