DR03 - Black Cherry Blues

by James Lee Burke

  "Dave-" But I was already walking up toward the house in the light, sun-spangled rain, in the purple shadows, in the breeze that smelled . of wet moss and blooming four-o'clocks.

  It was cool and still light when I stopped on the outskirts of Lafayette and called Dixie Lee at the hospital from a pay phone. I asked him where Vidrine and Mapes were staying.

  "What for?" he said.

  "It doesn't matter what for. Where are they?"

  "It matters to me."

  "Listen, Dixie, you brought me into this. It's gotten real serious in the last two days. Don't start being clever with me."

  "All right, the Magnolia. It's off Pinhook, down toward the river. Look, Dave, don't mess with them. I'm about to go bond and get out of here. It's time to ease off."

  "You sound like you've found a new confidence."

  "So I got friends. So I got alternatives. Fuck Vidrine and Mapes."

  The sun was red and swollen on the western horizon. Far to the south I could see rain falling.

  "How far out are these guys willing to go?" I said.

  He was quiet a moment.

  "What are you talking about?" he said.

  "You heard me."

  "Yeah, I did. They burn a girl to death and you ask me a question like that? These guys got no bottom, if that's what you mean. They'll go down where it's so dark the lizards don't have eyes."

  I drove down Pinhook Road toward the Vermilion River and parked under a spreading oak tree by the motel, a rambling white stucco building with a blue tile roof. Rainwater dripped from the tree onto my truck cab, and the bamboo and palm trees planted along the walks bent in the wind off the river and the flagstones in the courtyard were wet and red in the sun's last light. A white and blue neon sign in the shape of a flower glowed against the sky over the entrance of the motel, an electrical short in it buzzing as loud as the cicadas in the trees. I stared at the front of the motel a moment, clicking my keys on the steering wheel, then I opened the truck door and started inside.

  Just as I did the glass door of a motel room slid open and two men and women in bathing suits with drinks in their hands walked out on the flagstones and sat at a table by the pool. Vidrine and Mapes were both laughing at something one of the women had said. I stepped back in the shadows and watched Mapes signal a Negro waiter. A moment later the waiter brought them big silver shrimp-cocktail bowls and a platter of fried crawfish. Mapes wore sandals and a bikini swimming suit, and his body was as lean and tan as a long-distance runner's. But Vidrine wasn't as confident of his physique; he wore a Hawaiian shirt with his trunks, the top button undone to show his chest hair, but he kept crossing and recrossing his legs as though he could reshape the protruding contour of his stomach. The two women looked like hookers. One had a braying laugh; the other wore her hair pulled back on her head like copper wire, and she squeezed Mapes's thigh under the table whenever she leaned forward to say something.

  I got back in the truck, took my World War II Japanese field glasses out of the glove box, and watched them out of the shadows for an hour. The underwater lights in the swimming pool were smoky green, and a thin slick of suntan oil floated on the surface. The waiter took away their dishes, brought them more rounds of tropical drinks, and their gaiety seemed unrelenting. They left the table periodically and went back through the sliding glass door into the motel room, and at first I thought they were simply using the bathroom, but then one of the women came back out touching one nostril with her knuckle, sniffing as though a grain of sand were caught in her breathing passage. At ten o'clock the waiter began dipping leaves out of the pool with a long-handled screen, and I saw Mapes signal for more drinks and the waiter look at his watch and shake his head negatively. They sat outside for another half hour, smoking cigarettes, laughing more quietly now, sucking on pieces of ice from the bottoms of their glasses, the women's faces pleasant with a nocturnal lassitude.

  Then a sudden rain shower rattled across the motel's tile roof, clattered on the bamboo and palm fronds, and danced in the swimming pool's underwater lights. Vidrine, Mapes, and the women ran laughing for the sliding door of the room. I waited until midnight, and they still had not come back out.

  I put on my rain hat and went into the motel bar. It was almost deserted, and raindrops ran down the windows. Outside, I could see the white and blue neon flower against the dark sky. The bartertder smiled at me. He wore black trousers, a white shirt that glowed almost purple in the bar light, and a black string tie sprinkled with sequins. He was a strange-looking man. His eyes were close-set and small as dimes, and he smoked a Pall Mall with three fingers along the barrel of the cigarette. I sat at the corner of the bar, where I could see the front door of Vidrine and Mapes's rooms, and ordered a 7-Up.

  "It's pretty empty tonight," I said.

  "It sure is. You by yourself tonight?" he said.

  "Right now I am. I was sort of looking for some company." I smiled at him.

  He nodded good-naturedly and began rinsing glasses in a tin sink. Finally he said, "You staying at the motel?"

  "Yeah, for a couple of days. Boy, I tell you I got one." I blew out my breath and touched my forehead with my fingertips.

  "I met this lady last night, a schoolteacher, would you believe it, and she came up to my room and we started hitting the JD pretty hard. But I'm not kidding you, before we got serious about anything she drank me under the table and I woke up at noon like a ball of fire." I laughed.

  "And with another problem, too. You know what I mean?"

  He ducked his head and grinned.

  "Yeah, that can be a tough problem," he said.

  "You want another 7-Up?"

  "Sure."

  He went back to his work in the sink, his small eyes masked, and a moment later he dried his hands absently on a towel, turned on a radio that was set among the liquor bottles on the counter, and walked into a back hallway, where he picked up a house phone. He spoke into the receiver with his back turned toward me so that I could not hear him above the music on the radio. Outside the window, the trees were black against the sky and the blue tile of the motel roof glistened in the rain.

  The girl came through the side door ten minutes later and sat one stool down from me. She wore spiked heels, Levi's, a backless brown sweater, and hoop earrings. She shook her wet hair loose, lit a cigarette, ordered a drink, then had another, and didn't pay for either of them. She talked as though she and I and the bartender were somehow old friends. In the neon glow she was pretty in a rough way. I wondered where she came from, what kind of trade-off was worth her present situation.

  I wasn't making it easy for her, either. I hadn't offered to pay for either of her drinks, and I had made no overture toward her. I saw her look at her watch, then glance directly into the bartender's eyes. He lit a cigarette and stepped out the door as though he were getting a breath of fresh air.

  "I hate lounges, don't you? They're all dull," she said.

  "It's a pretty slow place, all right."

  "I'd rather have drinks with a friend in my room."

  "What if I buy a bottle?"

  "I think that would be just wonderful," she said, and smiled as much to herself as to me. Then she bit down on her lip, leaned toward me, and touched my thigh.

  "I've got a little trouble with Don, though. Like a seventy-five-dollar bar tab. Could you lend it to me so they don't eighty-six me out of this place?"

  "It's time to take off, kiddo."

  "What?"

  I took my sheriff's deputy badge out of my back pocket and opened it in front of her. It was just an honorary one, and I kept it only because it got me free parking at Evangeline Downs and the Fairgrounds in New Orleans, but she didn't know that.

  "Don's in deep shit. Go home and watch television," I said.

  "You bastard."

  "I told you you're not busted. You want to hang around and have some of his problems?"

  Her eyes went from my face to the bartender, who was coming back through the side door. Her
decision didn't take long. She took her car keys out of her purse, threw her cigarettes inside, snapped it shut, and walked quickly on her spiked heels out the opposite door into the rain. I held up the badge in front of the bartender's smalj, close-set eyes.

  "It's Iberia Parish, but what do you care?" I said.

  "You're going to do something for me, right? Because you don't want Lafayette vice down here, do you? You're a reasonable guy, Don."

  He bit down on the corner of his lip and looked away from my face.

  "I got a. number I can call," he said.. "Not tonight you don't."

  I could see his lip discolor where his tooth continued to chew on it. He blew air out his nose as though he had a cold.

  "I don't want trouble."

  "You shouldn't pimp."

  "How about lightening up a bit?" He looked at the two remaining customers in the bar. They were young and they sat at a table in the far corner. Behind them, through the opened blinds, headlights passed on the wet street.

  "Two of your girls are in room six. You need to get them out," I said.

  "Wait a minute ..."

  "Let's get it done, Don. No more messing around."

  "That's Mr. Mapes. I can't do that."

  "Time's running out, partner."

  "Look, you got a beef here or something, that's your business. I can't get mixed up in this. Those broads don't listen to me, anyway."

  "Well, I guess you're a stand-up guy. Your boss won't mind you getting busted, will he? Or having heat all over the place? You think one of those girls might have some flake up her nose? Maybe it's just sinus trouble."

  "All right," he said, and held his palms upward.

  "I got to tell these people I'm closing. Then I'll call the room. Then I'm gone, out of it, right?"

  I didn't answer.

  "Hey, I'm out of it, right?" he said.

  "I'm already having trouble remembering your face."

  Five minutes after the bartender phoned Mapes's room the two prostitutes came out the front door, a man's angry voice resounding out of the room behind them, and got into a convertible and drove away. I opened the wooden toolbox in the bed of my pickup truck and took out a five-foot length of chain that I sometimes used to pull stumps. I folded it in half and wrapped the two loose ends around my hand. The links were rusted and made an orange smear across my palm. I walked across the gravel under the dripping trees toward the door of room 6. The chain clinked against my leg; the heat lightning jumped in white spiderwebs all over the black sky.

  Vidrine must have thought the women had come back because he was smiling when he opened the door in his boxer undershorts. Behind him Mapes was eating a sandwich in his robe at a wet bar. The linen and covers on the king-sized bed were in disarray, and the hallway that led into another bedroom was littered with towels, wet bathing suits, and beer cups.

  Vidrine's smile collapsed, and his face suddenly looked rigid and glazed. Mapes set his sandwich in his plate, wet the scar on his lower lip as though he were contemplating an abstract equation, and moved toward a suitcase that was opened on a folding luggage holder.

  I heard the chain clink and sing through the air, felt it come back over my head again and again, felt their hands rake against the side of my face; my ears roared with sound a rumble deep under the Gulf, the drilling-rig floor trembling and clattering violently, the drill pipe exploding out of the wellhead in a red-black fireball. My hand was bitten and streaked with rust; it was the color of dried blood inside a hypodermic needle used to threaten a six-year-old child; it was like the patterns that I streaked across the walls, the bedclothes, the sliding glass doors that gave onto the courtyard where azalea (petals floated on the surface of a lighted turquoise pool.

  CHAPTER 4

  Alafair woke up with an upset stomach the next morning, and I kept her home from school. I fixed her soft-boiled eggs and weak tea, I then took her down to work with me in the bait shop. The sun had | come up in a clear sky that morning, and the trees along the dirt road were bright green from the rain. The myrtle bushes were filled with purple bloom in the sunlight.

  "Why you keep looking down the road, Dave?" Alafair asked.

  She sat on one of the phone-cable spools on the dock, watching me unscrew a fouled spark plug from an outboard engine. The canvas umbrella in the center of the spool was folded, and her Indian-black | hair was shiny in the bright light.

  "I'm just admiring the day," I said. I felt her looking at the side of my face.

  "You don't feel good?" she said.

  "I'm fine, little guy. I tell you what, let's take a ride down to the store and see if they have any kites. You think you can put a kite up f today?"

  "There ain't no wind."

  "Don't say 'ain't.' "

  "Okay."

  "Let's go get some apples for Tex. You want to feed him some apples?"

  "Sure." She looked at me curiously.

  We walked up to the truck, which was parked under the pecan I trees, got in, and drove down the road toward the old store at the four-corners. Alafair looked at the floor.

  "What's that, Dave?"

  "Don't mess with that."

  Her eyes blinked at my tone.

  "It's just a chain. Kick it under the seat," I said.

  She leaned down toward the floor.

  "Don't touch it," I said.

  "It's dirty."

  "What's wrong, Dave?"

  "Nothing. I just don't want your hands dirty."

  I took a breath, stopped the truck, and went around to Alafair's side. I opened her door and lifted the loops of chain off the floor. They felt as though they were coated with paint that had not quite dried.

  "I'll be right back," I said.

  I walked down on the bank of the bayou and sailed the chain out into the middle of the current. Then I stooped by the cattails in the shallows and scrubbed my palms with water and sand. Dragonflies hovered over the cattails, and I saw a cottonmouth slide off a log and swim into the lily pads. I pushed my hands into the sand, and water , clouded around my wrists. I walked back up onto the bank with my hands dripping at my sides and wiped them on the grass, then I took a cloth out of the toolbox and wiped them again.

  The ramshackle general store at the four corners was dark and cool inside, the wood-bladed ceiling fan turning over the counter. I bought a sack of apples for Alafair's horse, some sliced ham, cheese, and French bread for our lunch, and two soda pops to drink out on the gallery. The sun was brilliant on the white shale parking lot, and through the trees across the road I could see a Negro man cane fishing in a pirogue close in to the cypress roots.

  We went back to the house, and Alafair helped me weed my hydrangea and rose beds. Our knees were wet and dirty, our arms covered with fine grains of black dirt. My flower beds were thick with night crawlers, all of them close to the surface after the rain, and when we ripped weeds from the soil, they writhed pale and fat in the hard light. I knew almost nothing of Alafair's life before she came to Annie and me, but work must have been a natural part of it, because she treated almost any task that I gave her as a game and did it enthusiastically in a happy and innocent way. She worked her way through the rosebushes on all fours, pinging the weeds and Johnsongrass loudly in the bucket, a smear of dirt above one eye brow. The smell of the hydrangeas and the wet earth was so strong and fecund it was almost like a drug. Then the breeze came up and blew through the pecan trees in the front yard; out on the edge of the trees' shade my neighbor's water sprinkler spun in the sunlight and floated across my fence in a rainbow mist.

  They came just before noon. The two Lafayette plainclothes detectives were in an unmarked car, followed by the Iberia Parish sheriff, who drove a patrol car. They parked next to my truck and walked across the dead pecan leaves toward me. Both of the plain-clothes were big men who left their coats in the car and wore their badges on their belts. Each carried a chrome-plated revolver in a clip-on holster. I rose to my feet, brushing the dirt off my knees. Alafair had stopped weeding and
was staring at the men with her mouth parted.

  "You've got a warrant?" I said.

  One of the plainclothes had a matchstick in his mouth. He nodded without speaking.

  "Okay, no problem. I'll need a few minutes, all right?"

  "You got somebody to take care of the little girl?" his partner said. A Marine Corps emblem was tattooed on one of his forearms and a dagger with a bleeding heart impaled upon it on the other.

  "Yes. That's why I need a minute or so," I said. I took Alafair by the hand and turned toward the house.

  "You want to come in with me?"