Beau could not stop laughing during the walk to my doctor’s office. He kept stopping and in a high-pitched voice repeated, “Asshole with an ugly baby.”
“Shut up Beau. I’m going to be late.”
We finally made it to the orthopedist’s office. I had at least ten pages of forms to fill out. We sat with the clipboard going over all of the details of my injury and then waited for my records to be sent from New York.
Once all of the paperwork was in order, we went to meet my new doctor. The exam room was small and white with just a blue exam table and a small nook with a sink and cupboards. Beau said he thought I should sit on the exam table. He bent, put his arms around my back and lifted me with my chest to him. He moved me with ease from the chair to the table. Beau had more muscle then I expected. He may have been jobless most of the years I had known him, but when people had something heavy to move he was always there to help. The time spent moving engines, cinder blocks and boats certainly had kept him strong. After he got me on the table he lingered with his arms around me. He looked down and smiled while he held my chest to his.
“What, Beau?” I said.
“Nothing,” he smiled. “I’m just makin’ sure you’re steady.”
The doctor came in while he was backing away. She was young and small with blonde hair. She had a tag on that said Michelle. She said to call her Dr. Michelle and held out her hand. I had no idea if Michelle was her first or last name. Michelle was a common last name on the bayou and a common first name in the city.
She was holding a folder that she leafed through before saying much. Then she sat it on the table and turned to me.
“Well, I imagine you know that is a real nasty break you got there,” she said. “Go ahead and lie down.”
I did and then watched her walk over to a drawer. She pulled out a small silver handsaw. The look of it made me nauseous.
“I’m going to have to take a look at this, and we will re-dress it when I am done,” she said, waiving the tiny saw as she spoke. I watched her touch it to the edge of the plaster, just a few centimeters from my leg and didn’t have the stomach to watch her cut anymore. I was not sure I trusted anybody with a saw that close to my body parts. I turned my head to the white wall and stared at it trying to block out the whir of the saw. Little bits of white dust floated in the air and left a chalky smell as she cut.
After a few minutes of quiet whirring and a small amount of pressure I felt air on my leg. It felt good. She started to touch it. I did not feel as much as I thought I would; there were numb spots. As she moved her hands up and down her breathing changed and became shallow. She was pushing on the bottom of my foot, and I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t seen it. She walked over to the drawer and pulled something out, then walked back to me. She did something by my feet.
“Did you feel that?” she asked.
“I didn’t feel anything,” I told her.
“I thought as much,” she said.
Beau was standing next to Dr. Michelle and biting the side of his thumb as she worked her fingers up and down my leg. I did not have the heart to look down. I knew it was bad. I could tell from the look on Beau’s face that it was worse than I’d anticipated.
She turned her attention to my face and asked me to lie there a minute while she spoke.
“Well, you have a more than fair amount of damage in that leg. You have got a pulse in your foot still, Fanchon, and that’s a good thing. You lose that pulse then there is nothing we can do to save your leg.” She said it so plainly it took me by surprise. She continued. “I poked the bottom of your foot with a pin, and you did not feel it.
I shook my head.
“It does not mean that all is lost. There is a chance it will heal and you will just walk a little more slowly and your leg will be a bit tender. There is also the possibility that you will not regain enough use of the leg to ever walk right again. If it’s too bad a below the knee amputation may be the better option. We can do a lot with prosthetic legs these days…”
Those were the last words I heard before I checked out. I went through the rest of the appointment numb. I did not ask more questions. I did not listen to her talk of figures and percentages. I simply heard the word amputate, and I could not process another thing.
Beau wanted to take me to lunch after the appointment, but my stomach was too sick for food. Instead he bought gas station beef jerky. He tore at it as he drove me back. I checked the bag he threw on the seat and found he had purchased a second bag of jerky, presumably for me, and a bunch of Moonpies, for Clem. He was talking during the ride, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy pitying myself. After all I had been through I couldn’t believe that the injury delivered by Jason Stepwald would the one that would keep me from being whole.
Beau was trying to make me feel better.
“It ain’t so bad. You can still play your music, and I know that’s important to you,” he said. His understanding took me by surprise.
The house was empty by the time we got back. It was a Sunday, and Clem and Abolina might have been at church or up to the shooting range. It was a place they liked to go to after church. I always thought that was odd, but Clem said it was only natural as the gun range was between their house and the church.
Beau carried me through the empty house on his back. Navigating the narrow hallways of the little house was tough, so Beau and Clem had taken to giving me rides on their backs when we went room to room.
“I’ve got to get to work, Fanchon,” Beau said. “Make sure you got your cell phone on you. I am going to get you a glass of water and let J.B. know you are here by yourself in case you need anything.”
I pulled my phone out of my bag and set it next to me on the bed. Beau went over to the dresser and grabbed a book for me. It was an old Judy Blume. I took it from him and thanked him.
“I’m at work ‘til about eight tonight. I’ll come by after dinner. You want to go down to Jori’s house for cards tonight? Me and some of the old guys still get together from time to time.”
“Yeah, I’ll go,” I said.
I sat in the house reading for an hour before Clem and Abolina came back. Abolina had a wide smile on her face when she came to check on me. She had a rifle hung over her shoulder and a floral print dress on, confirming my suspicions that they were out shooting after church.
“I’ll tell you what. Clem selling all those guns made the range a mighty fine place to be today. Seemed like the whole town was down at the range gettin’ in some practice. It was quite something to see everybody in their Sunday best shootin’ and cleanin’ their weapons. The mayor was lying on the ground in a suit with his rifle. It was a sight.”
I was giggling as she told me the story. I think I was laughing extra because Abolina did not find it strange at all that everybody went shooting after church in their dress clothes.
“Well that ain’t the half of why I am happy, Fanchon. I found something in Josephine’s papers that I think might be a blessing and a half.”
She pulled a piece of paper out of a pocket in her rifle bag and set it next to me. When I opened it I saw it was a credit card statement, with a $120 balance.
“I am sorry I forgot about that, Abolina. I will pay that tonight,” I said.
“I am not worried about the bill, sugar. Look what it says at the bottom of the bill. She handed it over to me, and I read, “You have been automatically enrolled in our life insurance policy program for three months. Please call at the conclusion of your three-month trial to cancel. If you like your service, do nothing and you will be charged $5 a month and continue to receive great coverage.” It said she was insured for $100,000. The bill was dated two days before Josephine’s murder.
“Banyan gave us the mail out of your box, and that was in there. Can you believe it? I already called the credit card company. They stammered a little, and the manager is going to give me a call. They sounded a might taken aback, so I think it might be legitimate.”
I told h
er that was great news, and I hoped it worked out. Then she asked what the doctor said about my leg.
I heard an excited shout from the other room. “Moonpies!” and knew Clem had come across Beau’s bag.
“It didn’t go well,” I said. “She said she might have to…” I put my hand out straight and made a motion like the chopping off of my leg. Abolina did not seem surprised.
“Well now they did say that might happen,” she said to me.
Nobody had told me it might happen, I thought. She and Beau forgot that they talked to the doctor without me.
I did not want to talk about losing my leg so I shouted to Clem, “Bring me a Moonpie.” Abolina told me to check my manners, and I added a please to my request.
He walked to the door, and I could see he was wearing a button down red flannel and blue jeans topped with two shotguns slung over each shoulder. He stood in the doorway with heavy weaponry on his back and the giddy grin of a fat kid on his face as he dug through his marshmallow pie. He tossed one to me and gave me thumbs up.
That night Abolina cooked a big dinner complete with my favorite, corn on the cob. I told them I was going out later with Beau to play cards. A look passed between them, and I was about to ask about it when the phone rang.
Abolina jumped up to answer it and Clem sat there looking at me with that silly smile still on his face.
“Oh my,” she said, putting her hand to her face. We both turned our attention to her. “Well now what does this mean?”
Then she nodded her head as if the person on the other end of the phone could see her. “I will tell them, but you know I did not realize when I gave you permission that we were only a few months out from All Saints’ Day. She needs to be back by then, you hear?” She waited a moment, and the person on the other end of the line said something that made her nod her head in agreement.
She hung up the phone turned to us and said, “Now here’s a to do. Clem, I need you to stay calm ‘cause they don’t know what all this business is about just yet.”
He looked like he was getting antsy already. He started shifting in his chair. “Now, really, Clem. You keep calm. You can’t go havin’ a fit with Fanchon and her leg like that. If I need to wait for Beau to tell you, I will.”
His breathing was labored for a moment and then he steadied himself. “What is it, Lina?”
“Well there ain’t no good way to say it so I will say it plain. They found another body in Lisette’s tomb.”
Clem closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross on his chest. He started fidgeting with his hands and stood up and sat down over and over again, like he was trying to decide if he should get worked up.
I asked, “When you say another body, you mean not her body or an extra body?”
“They found her body, fine and intact just as it should have been. But they found another body in there. On top of her.”
“Who the hell’s body is it?” Clem shouted. “Ain’t nobody missin’.”
“They don’t know, Clem. Said it looks like a man, with man clothes and a tweed jacket. But they won’t know for sure ‘till they let some doctors look at it.”
He pushed away from the table and stomped off to his room, slamming the door.
We heard screaming and things breaking in the bedroom.
Abolina looked at me after he stomped off and put her hand on mine. Then she smiled and said, “Let’s get you some more sweet corn.”
Abolina and I chose to sit out on the porch and wait out Clem’s episode. Abolina said she thought he was just upset because it brought back his memories of the girls’ deaths.
We sat on the porch until Clem was quiet and there was only the sound of trickling water and bugs in the air. Beau’s boat motor broke the silence. He pulled up to the porch and jumped off before he docked because he was so antsy to tell us what had been going on down at the station. He said they had been going through reports of missing persons, but there was nobody reported missing in our parish that fit the description of the body. He said Sergeant Sherry spent the night on the phone with the state investigators who were going to start checking their databases and see if they could figure out who the man was.
“What about Lisette?” Abolina said.
“Yeah, the state medical examiner is coming out to take a look. He has to send stuff to a lab so it’s going to be a while.”
“I’m ready to get out of here and get a beer,” I said to him. What I really wanted to say was, “I am bored to tears. Get me the hell out of here.”
He bent over in front of me in the rocking chair, and I held on tight while he carried me to the boat and sat me on the floor of it. He ran back to the dock and grabbed my crutches. Then he grabbed a roll of screen out of the boat and handed it to Abolina.
“I got you screen mesh like you wanted,” Beau said. “I’ll stick around and help Clem put it up tomorrow.”
Another Warning
We rode deep into the swamp on that dark night. There was hardly any moon to light our way and we were getting into the rural section of the bayou. The further we got out the thicker the foliage was and the more space there was between neighbors. Beau was using a floodlight to make sure we didn’t hit anything as we navigated the water. We came to a narrow passage, and I felt goose bumps all of a sudden. It wasn’t cold. But they were popping up on my arms and legs anyway. Beau slowed the boat as we navigated the narrow passage and out of the corner of my eye I saw something. For a moment I thought it was an animal, but then I noticed the outline of a person and chills ran up and down my body.
“Beau,” I said. “Somebody is over there.”
He slowed the boat almost to a stop and looked where I was pointing.
He cut the engine and startled me when he shouted, “Hey, anybody over there?”
It was dead silent.
“Ain’t nobody over there, Fanchon,” Beau said.
“Shine your light.” As soon as I said it we heard rustling, running and a ringing sound, like a bell. “Shine it, Beau! Shine it!” I yelled. He whirled the light to the right and caught nothing but the movement of branches left in somebody’s wake.
“Oh my God, Beau,” I said. “I felt like we were being watched. I sensed it.”
“Come on, Fanchon. They probably wasn’t lookin’ at us. Maybe they were moonshiners or teenagers or something. Didn’t you hear the dinging? They were carrying their jugs with them.”
“They were watching us Beau, I know it.”
“Nah,” he said and started the boat engine again.
We rode down to Jori’s mom’s house. Jori and I had dated in high school. He was my date to the senior prom. Jori moved on to other girls after me, but never moved out of his momma’s house. He was the most serious boyfriend I ever had, but I had no feelings for him anymore. Jori and two of his buddies were standing on the dock slamming back beers while they waited for us.
“Bon jou,” he shouted and leapt on the boat before it was fully stopped.
I was still sitting on the bottom of the boat and it tipped more than I was comfortable with. Beau almost pushed Jori into the water, telling him I couldn’t get my leg wet. Once we were docked Jori got off the boat, giving Beau the room he needed to pick me up.
“Leg’s that bad?” Jori asked.
“She’s a gimp. Gotta carry her everywhere,” Beau said.
He bent down and tried to get me on his back, but I was too low and there was not enough room for that to work. He picked me up like a hero in an old movie and carried me off the boat. It was starting to dawn on me just how dependent I was on other people to help me, and I didn’t like it. Beau sat me down on the dock, and Jori passed my crutches back.
“We playin’ in the barn out back,” Jori told us. I hobbled back behind the house and saw that Jori’s parents’ barn was lit up with old Christmas lights and lanterns. It looked inviting and the gentle country song playing in the background set the mood perfectly. I was surprised that Jori had strung lights up around the barn for card
night. It did not seem like him to create ambience.
In addition to Jori, Beau and I, two other guys from school were there, and one of them brought his pregnant wife, Claudia. She and I sat next to each other, and I learned that Claudia was from the town of Thibodeax, a little bigger than Lafourche for sure, but not as big as New Orleans. She told me that she met her husband on the Internet. I did not bother to tell her that the one time I dated somebody from the Internet he tried to kill me and feed me to his pet alligator. I thought that would be showing off.
We ate peanuts and played a few hands of Bourre, then switched over to Spades. Claudia proved to be an outstanding card player. I couldn’t figure out if she was that good or if everybody else was that drunk. After she had relieved everybody of their pocket change we sat around shooting the breeze. The guys asked Beau what he thought of New York. He hated it. He told them about how we walked all over town and nobody even said hey. Everybody thought that was a damn shame and told us that’s what they expect from Yankees.
Jori said, “You weren’t in the North very long, cher. Why is it dat you talk like a Yankee now?”
I did not know how to answer that. I took a class when I got to New York to try to hide my accent, because I knew people there thought poorly of it. Though I was back, I kept the Yankee accent, for the most part. I did not know why. It just felt natural to talk a little cleaner. I decided to deflect the question. “I don’t know, Jori. I guess I just like sounding like the people on the news.”
“Eske ou pale Franse?” he asked, insinuating I had forgotten my Cajun language.
“Non,” I replied.
We continued for the rest of the night in our mother language of modified French. I was out of practice, but after a while I loosened up and the words came back to me. I had a great feeling that night, warm and home-like. This was just the type of night Josephine and I lived for back in high school. We sat playing cards, drinking beers and listening to music until Jori’s mother kicked us out. She had said she didn’t mind us being around but she had work in the morning. Beau carried me back to the boat, stumbling into the side of the barn along the way. We were both drunk and giddy. When we got to the boat we decided Beau was too drunk to drive. We lay on the bottom of the boat for a while watching the moon through the trees. We could see fireflies blinking in the Spanish moss that hung over the water. It was beautiful. It would have been quiet and peaceful if it weren’t for our laughing and Doritos crunching to break up the silence.
All Saints' Secrets (Saints Mystery Series Book 2) Page 5
