by Parrish, PJ
Ethel nodded dully. “I still can’t believe it. We were married twenty-eight years ago tomorrow. Twenty-eight years.” She paused, shaking her head. “You know, that man went hunting for twenty years and never shot anything. Our boy bought him that rifle last year for his birthday…told him maybe it would help him finally get something.” Ethel began to cry. “I just don’t understand how this could happen.”
Louis shifted, disquieted by the woman’s tears. “Mrs. Mulcahey,” he said gently, “did your husband know anyone who would want to hurt him?”
“No, no one. Earl was a good man.”
“That’s true, Louis,” Junior said. “Everybody liked Earl.”
“I just wish someone would come forward, even if it was accidental. I just would like to know,” Ethel said, wiping her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief.
Louis used the time to study the room. There was a cluster of framed pictures on an end table, the largest showing Earl and Ethel smiling, their arms around a pretty young woman and a handsome young man. The daughter and son, had to be. He looked around. There were more family pictures scattered about, on the mantel and on the walls. A needlepoint of a pond and a duck hung near the door and an afghan was spread over the back of the sofa. He was sure Ethel Mulcahey had done both with her own hands.
“Ma’am,” Louis began, “is there anyone here with you, to stay with you?”
“The kids will be back shortly. They’ve gone into town.” She continued to dab at her eyes. Louis glanced at Junior, who looked ready to cry himself.
“Junior, go out to the truck and tell the sheriff weTl be heading back soon,” Louis said.
Without a word. Junior quickly left the house. Louis heard the screen door bang shut and moved to the sofa where Ethel sat, tentatively reaching for her hand. He wasn’t sure she would let him take it, but she seemed to welcome the touch. She continued to cry, and after a few seconds, she leaned against him, holding the handkerchief to her face, sobbing openly. He held her silently, rocking gently back and forth, listening to the music from the radio, staring out her front window at the barren oak trees.
The scene with Ethel Mulcahey had left Louis depressed. Back on the force in Michigan, when he was a rookie, he had been given the assignment of “breaking the news” to loved ones. They had called him the Messenger. He hated the job. As often as he had done it, he had never gotten used to it.
It wasn’t right, he thought as he pulled out of the Mulcaheys’ drive. Even if poor old Earl had been accidentally shot by another hunter, it wasn’t right that his death just be brushed off. Louis had considered asking Ethel Mulcahey more questions, but she had been too upset. Besides, a part of him was glad to put the Mulcahey death out of his mind so he could concentrate on the bones. And frankly, Dodie wouldn’t have appreciated him bothering Ethel any more than necessary, and the last thing he needed from Dodie was another ass-chewing.
What he did need was a drink. It was seven o’clock, he was off duty and it had been a pretty shitty day. And though he didn’t want to think about it, he felt very alone.
Louis dropped Junior off at the station and then drove back through town. He had seen a bar out on Highway 19, and that’s where he headed now, suddenly determined to at least get a healthy beer buzz going.
He pulled into the lot of Big AFs, between two dusty pickups. It was a low-slung nondescript box of a building, with Budweiser signs sending out reassuring red neon glows into the dark night. He had already cut the engine when he noticed the brown Blazer parked near the door.
Shit, it was Dodie’s.
Louis debated whether or not to go in, then decided that going back to his room with a six-pack from PhiFs Fast Trip would make him even more depressed. He pulled himself out of the Mustang and into the crisp night air.
The smell of smoke, stale beer, and frying grease engulfed him as he walked into the bar. It was dark as a cave, but he could see the heads of the men turn toward him. He felt himself stiffen. From off in the corner came the ping-ping of a pinball game.
For a moment, Louis didn’t move. Then, slowly, the men turned back to their drinks. Louis spotted Dodie’s broad red-flannel-clad back, and went slowly up to the bar. Dodie didn’t turn around, but his eyes followed Louis in the mirror behind the bar.
“Heineken, please,” Louis said to the skinny man behind the bar.
“What?”
Louis started to repeat his order but changed his mind. “Beck’s, then.”
“Huh?”
“Bud,” Louis said with a sigh.
The bartender slapped a napkin and the brown bottle down on the bar. Louis watched as the foam bubbled out and trickled down the long-necked bottle. He took a drink. It was ice-cold and tasted great. He took three more drinks before he finally looked around at his surroundings. Two burly men in parkas sat hunched over drinks at the bar staring at him, and four others were huddled at a table. A man was slouched by the pool table, eyeing Louis as he chalked his cue. In the corner, a sweaty young man wearing a Skoal cap was thrusting against the pinball machine with an almost sexual ferocity, cursing under his breath. Louis’s gaze went to the back of the bar where a hand-lettered sign announced fresh BOILED CRAWFISH. Another smaller one hung over the cash register that he had to squint to make out. It showed the cross of the Confederate flag and the words You Got Your X, I Got Mine.
Louis took another sip of beer. His eyes drifted up into the forlorn gaze of the deer head above the bar, and he raised his glass in a subtle toast. There were blinking Christmas lights strung across its antlers. When he looked down, he met Dodie’s eyes in the mirror. With a sigh, Louis picked up his beer and went over to stand next to Dodie.
“Can I buy you a beer?” he asked.
Dodie poured the last of his Dixie into a glass. “Sure, why not,” he said, without looking up.
Louis motioned to the bartender, who set another bottle before the sheriff and then slunk off, his eyes glued on Louis.
“So, that’s Big Al?” Louis asked, nodding toward the emaciated bartender.
“Never been any Al that I known of,” Dodie said flatly. “That there is Dwayne.”
A moment passed. Louis watched as Dodie reached into a bowl of steaming crablike things and picked one up, shaking off the juice before he brought it to his mouth. With his thumb, he popped off the head and tossed it aside. Then he put the open neck to his lips and sucked out the juice.
“What in the hell are you eating?” Louis asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Boiled crawfish.”
“Bald crawfish?” Louis repeated.
“Yeah, boiled crawfish.”
Louis looked back at the sign over the bar. Boiled…not bald. Jesus.
“Ain’t you never had crawfish?” Dodie asked.
Louis shook his head.
“Try one.”
“No thanks.”
Dodie plucked out another crawfish, peeled off the soggy shell, then popped the small piece into his mouth. He pushed the bowl at Louis. “Try one,” he said firmly.
Louis hesitated, and out of the corner of his eye caught Dwayne looking at him. Hell, why not? He grabbed one and looked into the bug-eyes, curling his lip. “I can’t do this.”
“It’s dead.”
Louis positioned his thumb at the neck and tried to pop the head off. It didn’t budge.
Dodie leaned closer. “A real man bites off his first head.”
Louis heard the bartender snickering and glanced around. A few others were watching him and he felt suddenly like he was onstage. It was a test, some sort of Southern ritual, probably.
Louis bit off the head and removed it from his mouth, laying it on the bar. It was spicy, Cajun-flavored. Closing his eyes, he sucked out the juice. Goddamnl It felt like his mouth was on fire. His throat constricted and he reached for his beer so quickly, he knocked it over. It rolled off the bar and he gasped for air to cool his burning mouth.
“Jesus Christ, what’s in that?” he whispered hoarsely.
Another Bud suddenly appeared in front of him and he drank nearly half of it before he set it down. Then he heard the chuckling.
“Straight Tabasco and Cajun Joe’s hot sauce. They simmer for two days in that,” Dodie said.
Louis wiped his watering eyes and gulped down more beer. The laughter had softened and he met Dodie’s eyes.
“So,” Dodie said. “What did you think?”
Louis smiled slowly. “I think I’ll stick to lobster, thanks.”
Dodie’s smile faded. “They ain’t all that hot. Depends on how you cook ’em.”
Louis nodded, noticing the other men had turned back to their business. He wasn’t sure if their laughter had been cruel or friendly. It made him uncomfortable and he looked down at his bottle, thinking about his argument with Dodie earlier about Grace.
“Look, Sheriff, about Mrs.—”
“We don’t need to be talking about this no more, Kincaid,” Dodie interrupted. “You hearing what I’m saying?”
Louis held up a hand. “Okay, okay,” he said. As he took a swig of beer, he caught sight in the mirror of the men at the table. The pinball freak had finished his game and had joined his buddies at the table. They were all staring at him. It was getting on his nerves. He could feel his muscles clenching.
“Kincaid.”
He met the sheriff’s gaze in the mirror.
“Sit down,” Dodie said quietly.
Louis slid onto the stool next to the sheriff. “What? Am I the first black man to come in here?” Louis said under his breath.
“Nah, it’s cuz you asked for that foreign shit beer,” Dodie muttered.
Louis stared at the sheriff’s profile for a moment, then smiled. “Yeah, forgot where I was for a second.”
“You seem to do that a lot.”
Louis waited, but Dodie just stared straight ahead, somberly slugging down his beer. “This place is the only bar around for fifty miles, ‘cept for the joint out near Cotton Town,” Dodie said finally. “They don’t get many blacks coming in here. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t even been allowed in here.”
Louis took a quick drink. “The laws changed.”
“Yeah, well, laws change. But sometimes people don’t. That’s all I’ve been trying to tell ya.”
The pinball freak got up and went to the jukebox. A second later, Johnny Paycheck’s twangy voice filled the dank room. “Take this job and shove it. I ain’t working here no more…”
Louis watched the men in the mirror. They seemed to be sizing up Louis in a new light now that he was drinking alongside the sheriff.
“You see Ethel?” Dodie asked.
“Yeah…she’s in bad shape.”
Dodie finished his beer. “Never did have the stomach for doing that part of the job,” he said, shaking his head.
Louis was debating whether to mention his experiences back in Michigan when a woman came up to the bar on the other side of Dodie. As she put a five on the bar, she glanced over at Louis. Her heavily mascaraed eyes lingered longer than necessary before she turned away. Louis stared back. She was probably twenty-five or so, and pretty in a hard sort of way. Too much makeup, but a nice smile. She paid for two beers and Louis watched her as she sauntered back to the pool table, her tight black skirt riding up slightly over her shapely butt.
“Pick your tongue up off the floor.”
Louis looked back at Dodie. “Was it that obvious?” he asked.
“Forget it,” Dodie said. “She’s a whore.”
Louis snuck another look back at the pool table. She leaned over to make her shot and wiggled her ass. “I knew that,” Louis said finally.
“Like hell you did,” Dodie said with a grin.
Louis took another drink. He felt the knots slowly starting to unloosen in his neck and shoulders as the alcohol worked its way into his bloodstream. His body felt as if it had been coiled like a spring for weeks now.
“Relax,” Dodie said. “Have another beer.”
Any other time, any other place, he wouldn’t have. But he did now. And the first sip of the second icy-cold Bud tasted even better than the first bottle had. The music stopped and started again, this time Kenny Rogers, and Louis found himself mouthing the words to “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille.”
“‘…Four hungry children and a crop in the field…’”
Dodie sang softly.
Louis smiled. “You’ve got a good voice,” he said.
“Yeah, I can hum a tune or two.”
“I always wished I could,” Louis said.
“What?”
“Sing.” Louis took a deep drink. “When I was younger, my mother—my foster mother—used to tell me that I ought to be able to sing. She told me it should have come natural, like dancing or basketball.”
Dodie gave him an odd look.
Louis smiled. “My foster mother was white.”
“That didn’t bother you?”
Louis smiled. “We have a unique relationship. We can kid about anything. Anyway, I can’t do any of the three.”
Dodie smiled. His eyes wandered over the Christmas lights as he sipped his beer. “You ever been married, Kincaid?” he asked.
“No.” Louis set his empty bottle out and signaled for another.
“My wife’s name is Margaret,” Dodie said. “She’s the only woman I ever had. We’ve been married twenty-nine years.”
“Quite a feat, one woman in your whole life,” Louis said. “Ever wonder if you missed anything?”
“Sure. Every night,” Dodie said. But then he chuckled.
Louis took a long, cold drink of the fresh Bud, thinking back to high school and college. From the age of thirteen he had been aware that he could draw looks from the girls. As he grew older, the girlish glances turned into seductive come-ons from women of all kinds, and he found himself with no shortage of companionship.
“But I don’t have no regrets,” Dodie added.
“Wish I could say that,” Louis said softly. It had to be the beer. He never talked to anyone like this.
Dodie glanced at him. “At your age? Hell, if I was your age, Vd be grabbing all I could. It don’t last long, believe me.”
Louis ran his fingers down the wet bottle. He closed his eyes.
She had been nineteen. She had fallen in love with him, she said, but all he had really wanted from her was the sex. Hell, he had been just twenty. That’s all any kid wanted at that age. Two months into the relationship she told him she was pregnant. Frightened and selfish, he denied it was his. But he knew it was.
Louis took a drink, letting the cold beer slide down his throat. A week later, he heard she had aborted the baby and dropped out of college. He never saw her again.
Louis shook his head. “I was twenty,” he said, “and very stupid.”
Dodie nodded. “Who isn’t at that age? The point is, did you stay stupid?”
Louis sighed. “Somewhere out there, there is a woman who hates my guts. I made a mistake and I only cared about how it would affect my life, like hers didn’t matter. I don’t ever want to make anyone feel that way again.”
“She turned you cold,” Dodie said.
“Not cold. Just cautious,” Louis said.
Dodie poured the last of his beer into the glass. “What was her name?”
“Kyla.”
Dodie looked at Louis’s bottle. “Buy you another?”
Louis nodded and Dodie motioned to Dwayne. Louis heard Dodie grunt. “Jesus Christ, there’s Max.”
Louis looked around, his eyes not really focusing. “Who?”
“Max Lillihouse,” Dodie said, looking away.
Like everyone in the bar, Louis turned to the door. The man was just standing there in the open doorway, like a king surveying his realm. The cold blew in around him, standing his sparse dark hair on end. It was illuminated by the streetlight outside like a gaudy crown around his otherwise bald shiny head. He wasn’t very tall, but with his barrel chest and commanding posture, he seemed to fill
the room. As he came closer, Louis could see his ruddy face and his dark beady eyes, unnaturally bright even in the dim light. Louis found himself smiling at the absurd sight. Christ, the man was wearing a burgundy velvet dinner jacket with black satin lapels and a bow tie. He was carrying a white shopping bag with the distinctive blue Gayfer’s department-store logo. This was too bizarre. He didn’t look like the kind of man who came into a joint like this, but he had the distinct look of belonging.
Max Lillihouse came up to the bar, several feet from where Louis and the sheriff sat. “Give me a Chivas and water.”
Max cheerfully acknowledged the two men in the parkas by first names, then turned, recognizing Dodie. “Sheriff, good to see you,” he said with a broad grin. He slapped a fifty down on the bar. “Couple bottles of Chivas and a fifth of Bacardi,” he told the bartender.
“Having a party. Max?” Dodie muttered.
“Just the annual thing. You know.”
Louis watched the exchange. He had a hunch that the sheriff didn’t know. He somehow couldn’t see Dodie being invited to the Lillihouse mansion.
Max came over to stand next to Louis. “Sam, why don’t you introduce me to your new man here?”
Dodie introduced Louis. When Max held out his hand to shake, Louis saw the flash of gold on his wrist and fingers. “Welcome to Black Pool,” Max said.
Louis nodded politely. The man was like his handshake, overly hard with not a touch of sincerity. He thought suddenly of Grace Lillihouse. The same steeliness, covered with a veneer of gentility, was in the wife as the husband.
“Interesting time for you to be in our little town,” Max said.
“How so?” Louis asked.
“The bones, of course.”
“Yeah.”
Dwayne brought the three bottles of booze and Max put them in the shopping bag. Max’s gaze moved to Dodie. “Sam, why don’t you come by the house tonight?”
Dodie looked up. “What?”
“It’s been a long time since you’ve been there,” Max said, smiling. He had big white teeth. Louis suddenly had a vision of Max Lillihouse as a young man, handsome, probably a football player. Louis realized that Dodie hadn’t answered and was just staring into his beer.
