Louisiana Breakdown

by Lucius Shepard

  “This place,” he said, just to hear a voice, “is seriously fucking me up.”

  He rested his head against the door and had a Creature Feature moment, imagining an enormous elephant-colored hand splayed across the windshield. He switched on the ignition, gunned the engine, and sent the pickup rolling toward Grail, keeping it under twenty because of the mist. He pictured the gray figure gripping the tailgate, being dragged along, hauling itself up onto the bed. He dismissed the image and tried to align all the similarities between Madeleine and Vida, to create a coherent structure of them, one that would allow him to determine exactly what was wrong and what might be done; but it was as if the materials of the past hours were themselves made of mist, swirling and ungraspable. He felt rattled. Like a loose shutter was banging back and forth in his brain. He had no need to inquire of Nedra Hawes for a remedy. A cocktail was definitely required.

  12

  Happy Hour

  AT QUARTER TO FOUR LE BON CHANCE WAS QUIET AND dim and all but empty. A couple of farmers in jeans and baseball caps were playing pinochle at a corner table, and nearby a pear-shaped white woman in a green coverall was lazily pushing a mop across what might have been a bloodstain. An old man wearing a seersucker suit nursed a beer at one end of the bar; at the opposite end, Sedele, Nedra, and Arlise were drinking Cryptoverdes. Earl the bartender, a skinny glum Elvis impersonator, was rinsing off glassware. When he spotted Mustaine he adopted an inquiring look and held up a Cryptoverde glass.

  “Jack Black double and a beer back,” said Mustaine, stationing himself midway between the women and the old man. Once Earl had poured, Mustaine threw down the double and ordered another. The bite of the whiskey steadied him, but he was still flustered. Sedele peered at him over Nedra’s shoulder. He blew her a mean-spirited kiss and felt better.

  “Gettin’ us a little weather today,” Earl said, refilling his glass. “But it’ll clear off by tonight. It don’t never rain on St. John’s Eve.”

  Earl went back to rinsing and shortly thereafter Arlise came up and sat beside him, Faded jeans, a light brown Tipatina’s T-shirt, and a gold bracelet whose antique delicacy seemed more redolent of old-money Newport than of Grail.

  A psychic love gift, Mustaine figured.

  “Nedra ast’ me to be friendly with you,” Arlise said, shaking back braids from her face, “so’s I can find out what you know.”

  “What I know.” Mustaine had a swallow of beer. “Yeah.”

  “You go to the swamp like I told you?”

  He nodded. “Uh-huh. I had big fun.”

  She studied him, then put a hand to her mouth in apparent alarm. “You saw him!”

  “Saw who?”

  “The Good Gray Man. Don’t tell me you didn’t! I’m readin’ it in your face.”

  “Is everybody in this goddamn town a psychic?”

  “’Bout everybody born here is,” she said. “Though I been told of Miz Gammage over at the Smart Mart done lost the power. And Vida, she been away so long, her gift whittled away some.”

  He waited for her to declare what she had said to be a joke, but she continued to study him.

  “I know you seen him,” she said. “And he seen you.”

  “I saw something. Or maybe I didn’t. Might have been a tree.”

  “Tree put no marks on a person like the ones you carryin’.”

  Mustaine recalled what Vida had said about the Good Gray Man. How he had guaranteed luck for the town in exchange for…what had she said? So long as they kept the tradition of the Midsummer Queen? He thought of the figure he’d seen. The drawing in Madeleine’s scrapbook. It was possible, he supposed, to accept that the Good Gray Man was an ancient spirit who used the various Midsummer Queens for its own purposes. But he wasn’t ready to buy it. Not on the basis of a local legend, a crayon drawing, and a shaky moment in the mist.

  “What you know about the Good Gray Man?” he asked Arlise.

  “You the one seen him.” She flipped her braids to the side and looked at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar; she practiced a smile.

  “I thought you were on my side…Vida’s side.”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. Some say he’s a spirit ’scaped from Hell. Some say he used to be a man and he’s lookin’ for his lost love.” Still gazing into the mirror, she tried a pouty look and appeared pleased with the result.

  Sedele and Nedra were staring daggers at Mustaine.

  “What’s up with them?” he asked.

  “They know you been to the swamp,” Arlise said.

  “Did you tell them?”

  “And mess up my good thing? Hell no!” She frowned at him. “They seen it on you, man. They got sharper sight than me. They read you plain the second you pass the door. Took me gettin’ close to see it.”

  “Then what’d they want you to find out from me?”

  “Just what you seen. They curious about the Good Gray Man theyselves. Don’t nobody know nothin’ ’bout him for sure. ’Cept he out there somewhere. But everybody want to learn what they can.”

  “You buy all this crap?”

  “’Bout the Good Gray Man?” She gave a vigorous nod. “Oh, yeah. I be feelin’ him from time to time.”

  Sedele crossed the bar to the woman wielding the mop and spoke to her in harsh tones. The woman bent to her work with renewed energy.

  “Arlise!” Nedra called. “I’ve got to be going!”

  Arlise hopped down from the stool. “You want to help Vida, you take her ’way from here. Else she gon’ wind up like that poor ol’ Madeleine LeCleuse.”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  “You don’t believe me, jus’ hang ’round and watch.” She turned, then glanced back at him. “You the one sent to help Vida. Do what you s’posed to, things’ll work out.”

  “Nobody sent me,” he said.

  “Big fool, you, for thinkin’ that,” she said. “Everybody sent by somethin’.”

  She hurried over to Nedra, who was standing by the door, and followed her out.

  Do what you supposed to.

  Mustaine knew he should do something, but that was a long walk from knowing what exactly he was supposed to do.

  A Springsteen tune blurted from the jukebox, the people’s millionaire complaining about the hard times he’d been having, and Sedele, who had punched up the song, stationed herself at the bar three stools down from Mustaine. Her pale features were drawn. She had on a white silk dress sheathed in lace, with a tight, low-cut bodice. It was too young for her. A costume, Mustaine thought; a party outfit.

  “Rough night?” he asked.

  She stared at her cocktail napkin.

  “Me, too,” he said with relish. “I hardly slept at all.”

  “Don’t start,” she said without lifting her eyes.

  Earl set a Cryptoverde on the cocktail napkin. Sedele closed her hand about the glass and told Earl to buy the old man in the seersucker suit a beer. “I don’t need attitude from you,” she said to Mustaine. “I’m not a happy soul.”

  “I didn’t steal Vida. She came and got me.”

  “That don’t mean I gotta listen to you gloat.” Sedele picked up the glass; her pink tongue licked at the crust of foam atop the drink, making a neat half-circuit of the rim. “I won’t wish you luck, but I can’t wish you ill, neither. Vida gets her life back, maybe it’s worth this town goin’ to hell.”

  “Those are the options?”

  “So it would appear.” She had a sip and her eyelids drooped.

  He had an itch to argue, to probe; but then he realized he had all the information he needed on what the people of Grail believed was happening—or going to happen—to Vida.

  “I wasn’t really gloating,” he said.

  “I know. You were playing. Like we did last night. But…” She took another sip and, affecting a fey Southern-belle delivery, said, “I have put all that behind me.”

  The unsteadiness of her voice told him that she was half in the bag. He envied her fuz
ziness of focus. “This town is nuts,” he said.

  Sedele gave an amused sniff, but did not speak.

  “What?” he said.

  Her green eyes swung toward him, as if she were picking up a signal and checking him out. She asked Earl for a cigarette. He offered her one from an open pack, lit it for her; she exhaled a thin stream of smoke from between pursed lips and spoke to Mustaine’s reflection in the mirror. “I got a thing for weak men with brains. They’re intriguing, but not dangerous. So I’ve decided to like you.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  She held up a hand to hush him. “Reason I trust men like that, they can know somethin’, but they not strong enough to believe what their mind’s tellin’ ’em. Whatever it is they think they know, they truly don’t know it, ’cause belief is most of knowledge. So when you say, ‘This town is nuts,’ what I’m hearin’ is, ‘This town confuses me.’ It’s what any weak man with brains would say when he’s confronted by a mystery.”

  “If Grail’s a mystery,” he said, “so’s inbreeding.”

  Sedele took another hit from her cigarette and blew smoke down into her glass, making the green liquid appear to seethe like a magic potion. “New York, Los Angeles…Omaha, you look beneath the surface, it’s nuts everywhere. Difference ’tween the rest of the world and Grail, our surface been peeled away for a couple hundred years. We in what’cha might call plain fuckin’ view.”

  The Springsteen song had ended and Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” began to play.

  “Two hundred years,” Sedele went on. “Grail’s been through depression and disaster, and it’s maintained. It hasn’t thrived, but it hasn’t declined. We been lucky. And the reason we lucky, we cut a deal to guarantee our luck. It might be we cut a deal with the Devil. Nobody knows for sure. But it’s done. We hafta live with it.” She studied her reflection, patted down her hair. “You better learn to believe in it, too, or you ain’t gonna have the strength to do what’s necessary.”

  “And what you figure that is?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Oh, yeah. I might take Vida with me when I go. But this thing some of you got like you’ve known all about it, like I’m walking around with a mystic sign on my brow…if that’s the case, why hasn’t anyone tried to stop me?”

  “You think people in this town like what’s happenin’ with Madeleine and Vida? They don’t. They ’fraid of losin’ what they got, but they don’t admire what they hafta do to keep it. Might be a few put roadblocks in your way, but when it comes down to it, nobody’s gonna stop you. Nobody ’cept you…and maybe Vida. ’Cause she will not want to go with you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know Vida better’n you.”

  “Maybe we just know different things,” he said.

  Do what’s necessary. What you supposed to do.

  What if Sedele was right? About everything. What if Grail was merely typical, and the world with its surface peeled away would reveal itself to be a place where shabby magic was intertwined with the laws of physics? The idea of a bargain with the supernatural, a consensus bargain made every single day by billions of prayers and devout accommodations, it would explain a lot of what appeared inexplicable.

  Sedele lifted her drink and sang along with Chris Isaak, putting her heart into it.

  “Vida.” Mustaine said it under his breath.

  The sound of the name sent ripples stirring across his deep waters. That a woman he’d known for less than twenty-four hours could affect him so; that she could draw him with such apparent ease into the thicket of her life; that he could drive into town and an hour later fall in love with someone who needed him to be a man and take responsibility: He was tempted to chalk it up to circumstance and adrenaline, but that didn’t fit the facts. The most surprising thing, the troubling thing, because he worried he might be conning himself, was that he wanted to do it.

  He stared at his glass until the Isaak song was replaced by Dr. John doing “Walk on Guilded Splinters.” The eerie chorus of female voices caught on in his head and stalled his thoughts, emptied him, as if he were tweaking on crystal meth. He had a snapshot memory of Vida from the night before, her face in shadow above him, moonlight gleaming on her breasts.

  A rag swished across the counter at the edge of his vision, and Earl said, “You nursin’ that shot of whiskey like it’s the last thing you own. If you low on cash, I’ll buy the next one.”

  Mustaine considered whether he wanted more to drink. He pointed to the rack of Cryptoverde glasses. “Let me have one of those evil things.”

  Earl beamed and said, “I figgered you’d come around.”

  13

  Twilight Time

  VIDA CLOSED THE DINER AT SIX SHARP. WASN’T MUCH point keeping it open—people started drinking early on St. John’s Eve. She left Anson to lock up and walked briskly along the shoulder of the road toward Le Bon Chance. Marsh had backed off her, or else his spells were weakening like he said. Worn down by her resistance, she told herself. She was calmer than she had been all day. Her thoughts joined the hours ahead and the promise of Jack into a mental dance of anticipation. She pictured herself lying on the bed with her knees drawn up and him lowering atop her. The image provoked an immediate physical reaction that, in turn, caused her step to grow loose in the hips. Oh, she was ready for this! She’d had to net him, haul him into the boat, too busy at the task to understand completely how she was feeling, but she could feel it now, yes she could. Half in heaven, half in heat, all in the arms of Jesus. A flush warmed her cheeks; a bead of sweat trickled between her breasts, laying a cool track. She angled across the parking lot, spotted the pickup rusting at the far end of the building. The next thing she saw, flaring up and fading like the pop and afterimage of a flashcube, lasting no longer, was her hands on a pair of milky breasts, the face above them sharp in the way of cut glass, gemmy green eyes pulling her in for a kiss. Her feelings tangled with the vision and she had to stop short to untangle them. That bitch Sedele, sometimes she was worse than Marsh. Though her sendings never offered degradation as a pleasure. Vida refused to let that acid shot of Sedele’s thoughts steal her joy. She grabbed a deep breath and went forward again.

  Jack and Sedele were sitting at the bar, their backs to the door, two stools between them—the kind of distance people keep, Vida thought, when they’re acting bristly. That pleased her. She came brightly up, leaned close to Sedele and said, “Hi there, Sedele! I was just thinkin’ ’bout you.” Then she turned to Jack, blocking Sedele’s view and gave him a soft kiss. “How you doin’, baby? You not too drunk, are you?”

  “What you got in mind?” His arm went around her waist and gathered her in.

  “I can’t tell you. I gotta show you.”

  Getting to his feet, he pretended to be weary. “Oh…okay.” He dropped a twenty onto the bar and put his arm around her. “See ya,” he said to Sedele who was watching herself, frozen-faced, in the mirror.

  Vida waggled her fingers in a wave as Jack drew her away. “’Bye now!”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Sedele said distractedly, her eyes never straying from the puzzle of her reflection. “Catch ya later.”

  Jack drove. Vida rested her elbow out the window and let the warm Gulf wind close her eyes and saltify her skin. The sky was clearing out over the water, washing to pale blue. They still had better than two hours until dark. “Feel like a swim?” she asked, and pointed up the road. “Pull on past the cabin…where the brush starts. I’ll show you my pond.”

  She took a rolled-up blanket from behind the seat and led Jack through the bushes and the bamboo. Once they reached the pond she shucked off her dress and panties. She dived straight into that dark bedeviled water, swimming nearly a length beneath the surface, shooting up into the air in time to see Jack dive. He came up spouting. Caught her waist and dragged her under in a slippery embrace. His hands molded her into a new figure of desire, squeezing her waist narrow, reshaping her breasts to fit the hollows of his palms. They pl
ayed that way a while, then clambered onto the bank, fell onto the spread blanket and made love. It was so sweet and normal, so devoid of strangeness, Vida was made paranoid. Afraid it wasn’t real, then afraid it was. So accustomed was she to the imposition of the perverse, deliverance from it seemed abnormal. But soon she gave herself over to the union of Forms and the magic of a single flesh. Jack moaned and the same song went sighing out from her. Knowing what he knew, she moved to turn onto her side an instant before he signaled her to. Feeling what he felt, as he thrust feverishly into her, her own urgency spiked, spilled all through her and floated her soul off on an explosive tide as her hips convulsed. A white darkness concealed her from herself and she came. It was like, she thought afterward, they had vanished into one another, beamed into each other’s bodies like on Star Trek. She drifted in and out for a time. Her vision blurred, transforming leaves and patches of sky overhead into a dome tiled with a mosaic of dark green and lavender gray. The concatenation of silence that had engulfed her gradually was eroded by rustles, chirps, gurgles. She could not recall if she had blurted out that she loved him. She wanted to tell him that very second; she knew it was right. But she was so tired. Heat faded from her skin and she slept.

  Mustaine watched her sleep until her eyelids began to flutter. “What you doing?” he asked, and that woke her completely.

  The sky was going purple and stars were out, burning holes in the canopy; the moon was hidden somewhere off behind the thickets, but she felt its presence. She rubbed her eyes. He was half a shadow sitting beside her. His knees drawn up. Wearing a T-shirt and briefs. Giving her a serious look. The Form almost fully seated inside him.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said, sitting up and stretching.

  His eyes fell to her breasts, to the pouches of muscle supporting their weight. “Christ,” he said. “You are so beautiful.”