I’ve read that certain stroke victims see a ferocious white light, a light that comes from inside their brains.
That’s how I would describe the brightness in these empty rooms.
All day I wait for them. Every time a car door slams I grip the knife in my overalls, and when the day is done I circle the Knight’s Arms, scouting for the black Jaguar, then I unload the paint supplies, give Cecil back his keys, and climb up to my apartment.
As always it’s a small struggle to get my overalls off because my left knee doesn’t like to bend. I smoke the second half of my day’s joint, then I slip on a windbreaker and leave to take Sage to the beach.
I stop halfway down the stairs and go back for the hunting knife.
Only a few people are out on the sand, what with these skies. A couple of them glance toward me, then turn away. I toss Sage’s giraffe into the breakers and she leaps after it. Some kids laugh and follow her as she runs back up the shore to my feet. The children stop running when they see me. The sun is behind us now, and the air has lost its burn. The three kids stare up from the bottom of a dune, watching Sage and glancing at me. I suppose they’re trying to decide if Sage is worth having to talk to me.
The smallest, a straw-colored boy, calls up, “What’s your dog’s name?”
“Sage.”
“Does he bite?”
“It’s a girl,” I say. “Sometimes she bites. Sometimes she doesn’t.”
He looks at his friends and starts up the dune. The other two, a boy and girl, both taller and older than him, follow warily. People are leaving the beach, packing bags and dumping their children’s sand-castle molds. The children crouch around Sage, who spins from one to the other while they all try to pet her at the same time. I watch the children laugh and grip the knife in my pocket, squeeze the handle so it won’t slip out my jacket. The blond boy says, “What happened to your eye?”
“Sutton!” The girl says. “That’s so rude.”
I grin at her, thinking of another child. “It’s all right,” I say. “It was an accident. A long time ago.”
“Is that what happened to your face?”
“Sutton!” The girl starts trying to capture Sage in a hug, but the dog wriggles out beneath her.
“It was the same accident, yes.”
“Did it hurt?” the boy asks.
I tell him, “I don’t remember.”
I complete two circuits around the Knight’s Arms, starting three blocks away and moving closer in concentric circles, checking the street and parking lots for the Jaguar, for men in luxury cars, men wearing sunglasses, anybody watching the place. The hotel has walls of beige stucco, the bottom floors raised on a brick foundation. In the apartment I untie the canvas sack in the sink, dump that morning’s crabs into boiling water, and the trapped air of their shells shrieks like tiny human voices.
When they’re done I turn off the stove, but I’m not hungry. I eat less and less these days. I just don’t seem to need it.
I roll another joint and pick up a novel about mountain climbers. When it worked, reading could take away the burden of time.
This reading habit I picked up over the last twenty years doesn’t make me a different person. It just became the best way for me to spend time, since I couldn’t drink.
But it doesn’t work tonight. Tonight the book makes me remember more, not less. I recall the feel of Rocky’s back as we danced at that cowboy joint in Angleton, the lights on the dance floor. I finish my joint and throw one of the crabs into Sage’s bowl. I can hear the hot wind blowing hard outside, the ocean growling.
I think of the man in the Jaguar and with all my heart I hope for the worst. I put on my jacket, slip the hunting knife into my boot.
The Seahorse keeps regulars who mostly work trade jobs, belong to unions, and some old fishermen too, salt-red shrimpers and net haulers and their women hunch around tables made of cable spools, nets hung from rafters, an alligator’s skull wearing sunglasses, and a giant garfish monstrosity stretched about nine feet along the back wall. People drop peanuts or crawfish heads for the blond Labrador that rouses from under the pool tables to circle their stools when someone orders food. It smells like red pepper and fish and beer, like sawdust and too much perfume. The lamps in the Seahorse are behind prism-cut portholes that portion the light into stained fragments that lie over things. The boys from Finest Donuts don’t come in so as not to invite temptation, but it’s only a block away and I sometimes enjoy getting high and coming to sit at the end of the bar with a glass of milk and my Camels. Everyone who comes here is poor and a liar.
“Skim or whole?” Sara asks.
“Whole. Come on.”
She makes a face like I think I’m hoity-toity. She’s here six nights a week, moving those thick arms between the cooler and bar, pinching her lips at the stories people tell, picking on the old men who sit here all day drinking.
The faces along the rail turn to shadow or become oddly poignant, gazing up into the pale blue light of the television that sits behind the bar. The television shows a computerized weather map, and just beyond the Texas coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, a bright swirl of red and purple revolves, like the thumbprint of God, come to lay His finger down. Everyone’s talking about it.
“Could be real bad.”
“It won’t come here.”
“It might.”
“Nowhere near. I got a hundred bucks. Put a hundred on it.”
“Fuck you. ‘A hundred.’ What a thing to say to me.”
The storm’s closer than anyone wants to admit, though. Ike, they’re calling this one. The screws in my bones tingle, and pretty soon the pressure behind my eyes is too much, so I’m ready to leave.
I pause at the door. I can see him through the barred window.
A black Jaguar, the windows lightless, sits between a Ford truck and a little Jap model, facing the bar. A man in a suit climbs out. He’s big, and I guess he’s not going to wait for me to come out this time.
So I trudge backward and down the hall where the bathrooms are, to the back exit. I push through and walk east for two blocks, circle back, and position myself behind an old phone booth, and I watch the car in the Seahorse’s lot. A truck enters the lot and when its lights pass over I see that the Jaguar is empty.
I crouch, slip the knife out my boot and hide it under the front of my jacket.
I start to turn to take the long way around to the Knight’s Arms. I could throw together a bag and grab Sage and get us both on a bus to Carson City, Eureka Springs, Billings. But watching the car, I know that won’t happen. I feel a kind of impatience well up, and my sense of offense starts riling.
Well, let it come down. Let’s get it all out in the open. All at once I become pretty jacked at the idea of a quick death earned in a final stand. I start walking back to the car.
I approach from the rear, creeping up to its trunk. My nerves jangle, heart like a paint mixer, and I crouch beside the back door on the driver’s side. I try the door, and when the handle gives I open it quick and throw myself in. I scan for some clue, but the car’s clean except for the queasy stench of cologne. So I lie down and watch. It’s not long before the man exits the bar, looks around the lot. When he comes back and sits down, I’ve got the tip of my knife at the back of his neck as he sticks in the key.
“Jesus—”
“Turn around. Put your hands up on the steering wheel.”
He does, wrapping meaty paws around the wheel, a couple gold rings gilding his knuckles, and the hair at the back of his head is trimmed in a straight line. He’s got some size to him, and the ripe, oversweet smell of his cologne fills the cabin. I snort. “You guidos and your beauty supplies.”
The car is well kept, lit only by the green glow of the instrument panel, sleek leather, and the radio is broadcasting an exhibition game. I lean toward his face, examining it by the dash lights. A plump, square face, a natural kind of arrogance in its snarl. He’s no one I recognize.
“You�
�re looking for someone,” I say. “Don’t turn around.”
“Roy Cady?”
“Shut up.” I press the knife at his neck and he yelps. “I have a message for you. Tell them to come get me.”
“Wait a minute.”
“Shut up.” He winces and a teardrop of blood pools beneath the knife’s tip. “Don’t talk, bagman. All you have to do is take a message. You tell them to come on. I’m right here, and I will burn their fucking lives to the ground.” I don’t think he can hear the tremble in my voice, and I squeeze the knife handle to keep from shaking.
“Tell them I’m waiting. Tell them to get the show on the road.”
“Wait—”
I don’t want to hear it, and press the knife so that he shuts up. I’m suffocating in this rich vehicle and its cloud of cologne. “Tell them what I said.” My other hand releases the door handle. “If I see you again I’m going to blow your teeth out the back of your head and claim self-defense.”
I jump out the car and hobble as quick as I can into the shadows, and the man in the car calls out to me, but whatever he says is lost on the wind. My ribs ache from my heart’s kicking, and the metal in my eye socket throbs. I stick to the shadows and alleys, moving quickly through the light, and when I reach the Knight’s Arms the Jaguar hasn’t gotten there yet.
I shudder up the stairs and slam the door behind me. Decimated crab shell covers the floor in the kitchenette and the place smells like the docks. I dump my jacket and fall on the couch, keeping the lights off. Sage looks up from her bed and whines. She assumes I’m upset about the mess she made, and I scratch her ear to reassure her.
The only light comes from above the oven in the kitchenette, and I sit on my couch, staring at the dead gray face of the TV and the wall of stacked books, my thumb running back and forth over the edge of the knife, each time cutting a little deeper. I didn’t hear what the man shouted at me.
I take out my bridges and set the teeth floating in a glass of mint mouthwash. I watch them for a while, and they are like the intrusion of a ghost.
I sit rigid on the couch, idly scrape the bottom of my jaw with the knife.
I watch the door. They’ll kick open the door, when they come.
My thumb is bleeding.
FIVE
I arrived back to the island on a Thursday, a little past noon, three days after I’d left. The police tape had been taken off the door to number 2, and a cleaning woman’s cart stood on the walkway between rooms. The station wagon was gone and the kid’s motorcycle still perched in front his room. Some seagulls strutted the parking lot with a kind of haughty entitlement that made me think of clergy.
Nobody answered the door to Rocky and Tiffany’s room.
My stomach had the heavy, sickly feeling that made my back grow hot and my thoughts speed up. I walked across the parking lot and when I opened the door to the office I heard a trilling sort of song. Around the corner cartoon animals sang on the television while building a dress, little birds looping ribbons around a princess. Nonie and Dehra and Nancy were there, and Tiffany sat on the floor eating a bowl of cereal and giggling.
All the women looked up at me.
“Hi there,” said Nancy, without warmth.
“Hello,” said Dehra, and her sister nodded.
They didn’t turn back to the television, just watched me. Tiffany saw me and waved her hand, went back to the cartoon. Her clothes looked new, a bright white jumpsuit.
“We’ve watched this about ten times,” said Dehra. The sisters chuckled, but it sounded manufactured and that made the sense of wrong hang in the air. I guess I didn’t look too good, red eyes, a sapped complexion.
I asked Nancy, “Where’s Rocky?”
The sisters returned their attention to the TV. Nancy’s eyes narrowed on me like blades.
“She said she’s at work. She hasn’t been around much the last couple days. Thought you knew.”
I held myself up with the counter, shook my head. “I was visiting old friends. She got a job?”
She turned away and took some time to answer. “I think there was some confusion about whether you’d be back.”
“Of course I would. I’m paid up for more days. How’s the kid?”
“A doll,” said Dehra.
Nancy said, “She’s precious. She’s a darling. And she deserves better than this.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Nancy stopped herself from saying more just then, and we both watched Tiffany wipe her mouth and rise sleepily, crawl into Nonie’s lap and yawn. Nancy rose off the couch and moved around the counter. She spoke low and sharply. “Come here.”
I followed her outside and we stood under the carport’s shade. I glanced at Tray’s room; the curtains were closed behind the squares of mashed foil.
Nancy’s jaw flexed. She scrutinized my face as if I might have robbed her. “Just to say,” she said, “what that girl’s up to? I don’t need none of that around here. Don’t need it. Won’t abide it.”
“I don’t follow.”
“She had a man in her room. Night you left. Okay. No big deal. Her business.” She stroked the inside of her elbow with her nails. “But yesterday, Lance comes to me apologizing. Tells me she offered him a good rate. Says he’s apologizing because he loves me and didn’t mean to, but he’s weak. All that bullshit.” Her lips had become a bloodless slash and her eyes probed hard at mine.
“Nancy, I don’t know about any of this.”
“Really? ’Cause if you don’t know about it, then who does? I mean, I can’t exactly understand what kind of arrangement you got with that girl—don’t want to understand it, frankly—but I do know she’s not your niece. And that little one inside there? That’s a special little person. And she deserves way better than this here, Mr. Robicheaux.”
She jerked her head toward the office. “That little one don’t need to turn out like the other.”
“What happened? After you talked to Lance?”
“We’re not doing it for her, you understand. Or you either. Normally I’d toss her ass out. Called the sheriff’s, too, maybe. But I didn’t. And the reason I didn’t is for that little one in there.”
“But what happened? After?”
She tugged one of her earrings. “Well, I go to talk to her. She’s angry and yelling, storms into her room. Comes out in a little dress, with her hair kind of done up, and she brings the little one out and knocks on Nonie and Dee’s door, asks them to watch her because she has to go to work. Got a job. I’m watching all this, ’cause I’m also watching Lance pack up his things.”
“Where does she work?”
“Supposedly, this restaurant on the Strand. Pirandello’s. Italian place. Says she’s a hostess. I seen her hanging around the Jones man in number eight, too. Seen them drinking. He gave her the ride to work. You know, that girl can’t wear heels at all—somebody ought tell her not to wear them. She tried to give me a mean stare on her way out, but mine was bigger. Off she goes. We haven’t seen her since. Nonie and Dee, you understand, they’re happy as can be to watch the little one. I think they’re hoping they can just keep watching her. But after what happened with that family in number two—? Well. I’m more inclined to take an interest in what’s going on around here.”
“Shit.” I fumbled with how to convince her I wasn’t the sort of man who’d go along with this type of thing. My throat was dry and my eyeballs cramped.
“Shit is right, Mr. Robicheaux. Now. You know I could call social service? I could tell them this little one’s been abandoned. I could say her sister or whoever was tricking, and they’d lock that girl up. I could say, that one there, the big mean-looking drunkard, he’s her pimp.”
“That’s not true.”
“Which part? What do I know? I’m just telling you I could of done it. Called somebody. You know why I didn’t.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. That little one in there.”
“I didn’t know about any of this. I swear.”
>
She stretched to my face. “Who are you?”
I pulled a cigarette and she refused one. I lit mine and leaned against the wall, and the glare was giving me a headache.
“She’s a girl I helped out a bad spot. We were both in a bad spot, tell you the truth. I didn’t know her. She wanted a ride to Texas for her and her little sister. I ended up sticking around kind of, don’t know why. I guess I wanted to keep an eye on them for a while. I don’t know.”
“Good job doing that.”
“Well, listen. However bad you think that baby’s got it here, I guarantee you where she was from—the situation she was in? That was way worse. I seen the house she came from.”
“Mm. I can believe that.” She looked down at my boots and rubbed her arms. “She flinches if you move too fast around her. You seen that? She’s jumpy.”
“Yeah. I saw it when we played on the beach.”
“Look here in my eyes, Mr. Robicheaux.” I did. “Are you that girl’s pimp or something like it?”
“No. No, ma’am, I’m not. Nothing like it. I just tried to help her out a little and it’s brought me here.”
“Mm.” She fixed that icy judgment on me, the creased breakage of her face, recriminating. My headache had started pulsing and I reminded myself that I didn’t allow people to talk to me this way.
“What’d you like me to do? Huh? How about I jump in my truck and leave them both here? They’re not my problem. You understand? Hell—I’ll call social services for you. Let me do it. They’ll take the little one away. They’d get her a foster. Then I don’t have to think about any of this shit anymore. How about I say there’s this crazy kid I gave a ride to and she abandoned her little sister with me?”
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