Louisiana Lament

by Julie Smith

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Well, why she kill Allyson, then?”

  “Good point,” Talba answered absently. She had spotted a picture of an older woman on the mantel. She seized on it as a lead-in to what she really wanted to know—where Rashad was hiding out. “Excuse me, is that your mother on the mantel?”

  Silence for a moment. Finally, Marlon spoke. “Tha’s my mother. Mine and Rashad’s.”

  “I was just wondering if she lives in New Orleans.”

  Marlon’s eyes squinched up like that didn’t compute. “Mama been gone a long, long time.”

  “Oh. Is she… uh… did she… ?” Talba couldn’t get herself to say the “D” word. “Would Rashad know where she is?”

  This time the silence was even longer, and once again Marlon broke it. “Rashad ain’t with her. She gone.”

  Talba could feel him closing down. She tried changing the subject again, “Well, both you guys live here. Bet you grew up in New Orleans.”

  “Chippewa Street.” Marlon smiled at the memory.

  “In that case, might Rashad be with relatives?”

  Marlon shrugged, a possible “yes” in Talba’s opinion. Suddenly she realized she hadn’t asked the obvious question. “By the way, have you seen him?”

  Demetrice snorted.

  Marlon was getting angry. “Hell, no, we ain’t seen him! Don’t you think we’d have him out here talkin’ to ya, we had him stashed somewhere? Like we told the po-lice, we ain’ know where he is.”

  “Okay, look, I understand. I’m just worried about him, that’s all. I was hoping you could tell me a little about him.”

  Marlon waited awhile before he spoke, but this wasn’t like his other hesitations, which had seemed to Talba more like decision-making. This was more like gathering his thoughts. He sat forward on his chair and set down his coffee cup before he spoke. “I’m real proud of Rashad,” he said, speaking very deliberately, like a man being careful not to make a mistake. “He mighta messed up some when he was too young to know no better, but he real deep. Rashad ain’ nothin’ like me, nothin’ like our mama and daddy—he put himself through UNO, and he a published poet. Now he ’bout to go get a master’s degree. Very unusual young man. He love to read, love to study. He makin’ a real good life for himself. Ain’t no way he’d kill Allyson Brower, and he sure wouldn’t kill Cassie. Rashad ain’ got a mean bone in his body.

  “And he love those women. Both of ’em. Really love ’em.”

  Demetrice said, “Humph.”

  Talba smiled at her, unsure how to take that. “You have a different opinion?”

  “Not about Rashad,” Demetrice said. “He move out so I could move in when I found out I’m pregnant. He do anything for the family. Real, real fine young man. What I got a different opinion about’s Allyson Brower—different from Rashad, I mean. I know she help him, I know he like her, but that woman’s a bitcharama! She don’t like the way a room look, she make Marlon do it over, tell him it’s his fault, she never approve that color. Then she only pay him for one time. And she make him pay for the paint she pick and then turn against. She got all the money in the world, but she try to cheat folks just tryin’ to make a honest livin’. Marlon need the job. Ain’t nothin’ we can do about it.”

  Talba turned back to Marlon. “Made you pretty mad, I bet.”

  “Now wait a minute here! You tryin’ to say I kill that bitch? Ain’ worth my time, Miz Baroness. Demetrice and me, we Christians. We know how to live with folks like that. You just gotta turn the other cheek, keep goin’. Hurtin’ nobody ain’ worth my time.”

  “I’m sorry,” Talba said. “I didn’t mean that at all. I was just thinking that if she made you mad, she might have upset a lot of people.”

  Marlon picked up his cup again, through with heavy emotion. He leaned back in his chair and opened his legs wide, the picture of relaxation. “She mighta’. She sure mighta’. But that little Cassie, she sweet as pie; wouldn’t no one harm Cassie.”

  “ ’Cept maybe that bitch of a mother,” Demetrice muttered.

  “Uh-oh. Sounds like they didn’t get along.”

  “Allyson just as mean to Cassie as everybody else.”

  Talba thought briefly of asking how Rashad had “messed up” when he was young. But she couldn’t risk making Marlon angry—not until she had more information.

  “Well, I’m going to try to find your brother and do what I can for him.”

  “We sure appreciate that,” Marlon said.

  “Got any ideas about where to look for him? Maybe I could ask his close friends. Y’all mind giving me a few names?”

  “Cassie was a good friend. Lotta poets, but I don’t know ’em. Funny thing about Rashad—” Marlon smiled to himself, apparently trying to comprehend his mysterious brother. “He hang with white folks.”

  “What white folks?”

  “Writers, I guess. He want to be a writer, people he’p him, he stay friends with ’em. Hunt and Wayne probably his closest friends.”

  “Hunt Montjoy, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Him and his wife. Wayne was his teacher at UNO—Wayne Taylor. They real tight, too.”

  Talba had heard of Taylor. He was the author of two or three historical novels and a cop movie—not the sort of writer considered “literary” by the likes of Hunt Montjoy. Neither was Rashad, for that matter, but he might have raw talent—and he was young. Montjoy probably enjoyed playing the mentor.

  “Did y’all know Allyson’s son, Austin?”

  “No’m. Sure didn’t. Know her second daughter, though—I done some work for Miz Arnelle. Now she a nice lady.”

  “Did Rashad know her?”

  “Oh yeah. He work for her, too. But not like he knew Allyson and Cassie.”

  “Well, thanks, y’all. I’ve got a few places to look, so I’ll go do it. Just one more question—any other relatives I should know about?”

  Marlon spoke quickly. “We got a grandfather in a nursing home. Humph. Like to see Rashad hide in a nursing home.”

  “That all?”

  He shrugged. “All I can think of right now.”

  She had been meaning to ask about Rashad’s messing up as a kind of Colombo exit, but at the last minute, she changed her mind. There was probably another way to find out, and she didn’t want to alienate these people. Besides, something else occurred to her that she hadn’t asked.

  She was on her feet and heading for the door when she said over her shoulder, “I almost forgot—does Rashad have a girlfriend?”

  She couldn’t see if the couple exchanged glances again, but once more, no one spoke for a moment. “Don’t know of nobody,” Marlon said.

  “Don’t think so,” said Demetrice.

  Suddenly Talba saw something she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen before. The close friendships with women that didn’t seem to be sexual, the helpful older woman in his life. She wondered if she dared, and decided, Why not?

  “Is he gay, by any chance?”

  Big mistake. Marlon flipped out. “You callin’ my brother a faggot? Who the hell ya think ya are, comin’ here, saying crazy things? You get on outta here! Just get out, now.”

  On the whole, Talba thought, it might have been better to inquire into his brother’s youthful indiscretions.

  She sighed as she got back in her car, feeling slightly defeated, but wondering if she’d hit a nerve. Maybe Rashad was gay—which might open up a whole new realm of people he could be staying with.

  But that was for later.

  The name Hunt Montjoy had come up twice, so she’d have to go see him. But somehow the idea of bearding such a personage at seven-thirty A.M. was too daunting to contemplate. She decided to go back to the office, have another cup of coffee, and tackle Rashad’s book of poems.

  Chapter Six

  Eileen Fisher had put the Times-Picayune on her desk, and Talba read the murder story first. In black and white, Cassie’s murder, with details of Cassie’s life, seemed more horrifying
as Cassie began to be real to her. Yes, she’d worked for a caterer, but she was pursuing her dream of acting as well. She’d majored in drama at Tulane, taken part in student productions, and played minor roles in various productions at Le Chat Noir, the city’s current hot venue for local playwrights and directors. The picture of her that ran in the paper—probably one of her publicity photos—was heart-stopping. She looked almost ethereal—blond and delicate, with the kind of crinkly hair that managed to be thick and gauzy at the same time.

  She hadn’t been shot like her mother. She’d died of multiple stab wounds. Talba shuddered and thought: Enough.

  She set the paper aside and examined the book, which was none too originally titled Laments. It was a booklet, really, rather crudely self-published, meaning it was made up of half-size computer pages bound in a red cover. The title wasn’t particularly promising, but looking through it, she saw that it was fairly apt. It was obvious immediately that Rashad, unlike many of the city’s African American poets, wasn’t especially political. As she wasn’t either, she took that as an encouraging sign. Many of the poems were indeed laments, as are so many poems and stories, she thought. She turned to the one entitled “Parents.”

  Parents

  Mama so beautiful, Mother so scary,

  Mother with the silver flash,

  Mother with a need to bash—

  And Daddy so gone.

  Which one o’you

  Gon’ tell me what to do?

  Which one o’you keep me off the streets

  Keep me little-boy-sweets

  Keep me out of jail

  Keep me out of hell?

  How many parents does it take

  To make me straight?

  How many parents does it take

  To seal my fate?

  I’d like to know where my candy is.

  I’d like to know where Santy is

  Hell, I’d like to know where Sanity is;

  Sanitation is;

  Sometimes even

  Where habitation is

  Hope it ain’t where

  Degradation is.

  I’d like to know

  Where my parent is

  Who my parent is

  What my parent is

  I’d like to know

  Where my childhood is

  What my vilehood is

  Where the wildwood is

  I’d like to know

  If I did right

  By all

  Of y’all.

  That’s what

  My fascination is.

  Talba didn’t care for it—too easy, too many rhymes, too obsessed with being clever and sounding like a rapper. But it had something—she had to give it that. Maybe an overweening self-involvement, but then whose poetry wasn’t self-involved? It made her look at her own work and wonder if that was how a reader saw it. She couldn’t tell how honest the poem was, what it really said about his parents, or what his “fascination” really was. Was he just rhyming for the sake of rhyme, or was this a central theme in his life?

  And then there was the “Mama” figure. The mother in Marlon’s photograph wasn’t beautiful at all. Truthfully, she was plain at best and she looked mad at the world. But what-the-hell, she thought, every kid gets to idealize his mother.

  Talba paged through the book. There was a poem about Rashad’s grandfather, which she skipped, and one entitled “Cassie.” That one she wanted to come back to, but she looked first to see if there was one titled “Janessa.”

  She didn’t. If there was one, it might be disguised, but at the moment she didn’t have the patience to read them all trying to find out. She turned back to the one called “Cassie”:

  Cassie

  Fairy princess girl who work in the kitchen

  Fairy girl got all the men itchin’

  To take off that white dress

  Take hold of them white breasts.

  They don’t see the heart

  Underneath them cantaloupes

  Can’t take part

  In nothin’

  Underneath their gropes.

  Wake up, girl,

  And get you some glasses.

  Write your own world

  And give your own classes.

  Get out of the kitchen,

  Get out of the bed,

  Get your own thing goin’

  Or you gon’ be dead.

  She had to wonder what the gang at the Second District made of that one—yet surely even a cop couldn’t construe it as a threat. Unless, of course, the poet imagined that he was the only one who could see through to the princess’s true heart; that he was the prince who deserved her, and if he didn’t get her no one would. Talba figured a clever D.A. could make that argument. But from the two poems she’d read, it seemed to her that Rashad didn’t go in for a lot of metaphor; to her mind, the two poems were basically prose in rhyme.

  But she could be wrong. Did he mean literally dead or figuratively dead? Figuratively, she thought, since there were no references to drugs or guns. And if that was the case, he was capable of figures of speech; it was just hard to tell when he was using them.

  That “fairy princess” thing, for instance—did it mean Cassie was an other-worldly beauty or was he using the term “fairy” to mean homosexual? Maybe Cassie had been a lesbian; or possibly a fag hag.

  This train of thought, she decided, was better suited to the classroom than a murder investigation. When you got down to it, the words didn’t really tell her much about Rashad’s impression of Cassie, but the poem had a feel to it. To Talba it felt like a lecture; from a friend, maybe, or a brother.

  She checked the time, thinking perhaps it was time to clear her head with a little computer research. It was nearly a decent hour. She was about to background the Montjoys and head to their house when Janessa called.

  “Talba?” her sister said. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want y’all to take the case.”

  Talba sighed. She had an extremely high-maintenance client on her hands. “Why not?”

  “Y’all get me off, they jus’ gon’ blame Rashad.”

  “I’m not even going there, Janessa. You wanted help, you’ve got it.”

  “You can’t do that; I know what I want. I’m firin’ ya.”

  Talba wondered briefly what was going on. Maybe Rashad had come to her to hide him.

  “You heard from Rashad?”

  “Rashad? No, you?”

  “He doesn’t even know us—we couldn’t have heard from him. I just thought you might have.”

  “Oh, man, don’t I wish.”

  She certainly sounded believable. All the same, a little surveillance work on Mystery Street might be a good idea. “Look, Janessa, in that book you gave me—did you read the poem about Cassie?”

  “I read all the poems.”

  “What did it mean to you?”

  “Meant what it said. Cassie wanted to be an actress. Rashad thought she was throwing herself away, working for that caterer.”

  “Just wondering. Did he ever write a poem about you?”

  “Me? Why would he write a poem about me?”

  “A lot of the poems are about women.”

  “He musta’ wrote ’em before he knew me.”

  “Yeah, that must be it.” In fact, it might be. “Listen, you can’t fire us, so don’t even try, okay? And by the way, Janessa, you can call me on my cell phone but not at my home.” She hung up before her sister had a chance to answer.

  Her mind had switched back to Rashad. She rummaged through the book again, still trying to get a handle on him—who he was, what his poetic goals were, how he saw the world. When Talba wrote poetry, she tried to tell stories, which interested her at least as much as images. Wordplay she cared for not nearly as much, finding it shallow. Rashad seemed to live for it, and mostly he seemed to like rhyme.

  She turned to the poem about his parents, noted again that, in it, he claimed to have told her exactly what he was all about:

  I�
�d like to know

  If I did right

  By all

  Of y’all.

  That’s what

  My fascination is.

  The earlier words in the poem tugged at her memory: sanitation, habitation, degradation.

  Was the last verse just an easy rhyme or did it mean something? She looked to see if Rashad’s mother was mentioned in any more poems, and saw that she’d missed one, entitled “Mama.”

  Mama

  I’d do anything for you.

  And I did.

  You kept me sane

  When life was a bane

  You made up for

  The other one.

  What’s done

  Is done—

  But for your beauty

  And your love

  I did my duty

  And maybe above.

  Because you were there

  I came to care

  Because you care,

  And that is so rare

  I had to dare.

  It was only fair.

  That one made Talba wince. She wondered if it was an example of his early work. She looked to see if there was a comparable poem about his father, but didn’t find one. Okay, the boy loved his mother. She wondered if Marlon was lying—if Mama really was out of the picture.

  Sighing, she put the book away, backgrounded the Montjoys, and went out to beard them.

  The background check had turned up little new material besides their address. Like Allyson Brower, they lived in the elegant Garden District. For a guy who’d grown up in the backwoods of Alabama, Hunt Montjoy evidently had grandiose tastes—or maybe Lynne did. She was his fourth wife and the one he’d been with longest. Their relationship was in its twelfth year, but if Montjoy was living up to his reputation, she was by no means his only woman.

  Everything Talba’d ever read about the poet made her dislike him, and meeting him hadn’t helped. He struck her as your classic Ph.D.-totin’ Bubba, with grammar as bad as Janessa’s, drinking prowess on a par with Hunter Thompson’s, and feminist sensibility resembling that of Norman Mailer, on whom he probably patterned himself, consciously or not. (Though if questioned on the subject, he’d probably call Mailer a “Yankee Jew pansy.”)

  A lot of his poems were about nature and hunting and guns and sex. She’d never read his novel.