Death by the Riverside

by J. M. Redmann; Jean M. Redmann

  I didn’t head into town, the whole block and a half of it, but instead took the turn out to the shipyard. Just to make sure everything was all right, I told myself.

  I saw a figure walking beside the dirt road. He wore a Navy peacoat and black pants. Then I realized there was something familiar in the way he walked. He was going to the shipyard; he had to be if he was traveling down this road. I had to know if I had recognized something or if I was seeing ghosts from my past.

  I caught up to him, then passed with a seemingly casual glance in his direction. If he wasn’t who I thought he was, I would drive on by.

  “Ben,” I called, slowing the car as I caught up with him.

  He turned to see who it was, looking for a moment like he might run, a man unsure of his welcome.

  I stopped and got out. I hadn’t seen him in twenty years. It looked like forty had passed for him. His hair, once a thick black, was now thinning and streaked with iron gray. The lines I remembered as softly etched on his face were deep, wide channels; his eyes were uncertain, almost haunted.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know you,” he said, starting to walk away.

  “Ben,” I repeated. I was shocked to notice that I was taller and stronger. To the child it had never seemed possible that I would look down on those broad shoulders that used to carry me around my dad’s shipyard. “It’s me. Michele. Little Micky.”

  His eyes seemed to cloud in thought, then catch focus, his face breaking out in the wide grin that hadn’t changed. “Micky! Damn, girl, you bigger ’n I am now. You look great.”

  I had known that he was in prison. I had visited him there after I had turned eighteen and Aunt Greta could no longer control my life. But we lost track of each other after I had left for college and he had gotten out.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in the soft accents of the bayou.

  Visiting the same graves that you are, Ben. But I didn’t say that. Instead I replied, “My car needs to be looked at. I trust the mechanics out here more than I do the ones in the city. Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”

  I got back in, reached over and unlocked the door. He got in, stowing a small satchel between his legs. There was an awkward silence.

  “You still keep up with folks out here?” he finally asked.

  “Some. Not that much,” I answered. “I live in the city now,” I continued, to avoid another awkward silence. The truth was that I did my best to see as few people out here as possible, always imagining their pointing fingers and hushed whispers of “illegitimate” and “accident” behind my back. “I kept up with the Decheauxes for a while until Mrs. Decheaux died. Her son runs a garage and is a good mechanic. And the Claytons,” I rambled on. “Do you know them?”

  “They new?” Ben asked.

  “Naw,” I said, letting my accent broaden to match his. “They own the bait shop down the bayou.”

  “Oh, them Claytons,” Ben said. “The nigras.”

  “Yes, them,” I said carefully. I knew I would have to say some-thing, but I was caught, an unsure child about to criticize an adult. “I went to college with their oldest daughter, Danielle. She’s one of my best friends,” I answered, indirectly confronting him.

  “Yeah, well, that’s nice. I don’t know ’em too well,” Ben replied.

  I turned into the shipyard. Ben got out and opened the gate, like he had so many times for my dad. The action, the face seemed so familiar, yet so out of place. How many years had it been since I had watched Ben Beaugez open that gate? He got back in and I drove to the cleared area near the dock.

  “I could look at your car, you know. I know a few things ’bout engines,” Ben said as he opened his door.

  “You don’t have to,” I answered, getting out.

  “Naw, it’s okay. I’m real used to fixin’ things ’round this place.”

  I propped open the hood for him, and he started looking at the motor.

  “I used to fix my bike, but that’s as far as I ever got mechanically,” I said. I was talking to fill time and space, to fill the emptiness made by all the people who should have been here with us, but weren’t.

  “I might fix this if I had some tools,” he said.

  “I can get some. I still have all of Dad’s tools. I’ll be back in a second.” I was glad of a task, glad not to have to think of something to say that didn’t have anything to do with the real reasons we were here.

  I walked purposefully over to what had been Dad’s workshop. Indoor junkyard, he had called it, since he only worked there during major thunderstorms, hurricanes, and other irascible acts of nature. Again his words. I had kept all his tools; I didn’t even know what some of them were for. But they had been his, he had touched them.

  I found the tool chest I wanted, the one Dad had always carried with him when he worked on engines. I hefted it up and carried it back to the car. Ben had walked down to the dock and was surveying the bayou and marsh on the other side.

  “Hey, that skiff’s still as tight as a drum,” I called out to him.

  “’Course. When Ben Beaugez makes a boat, he makes it right,” he grinned proudly at me.

  “Remember teaching me to catch crabs?” I asked him, walking down to the dock. “Right here on this very pier.” I pointed to a particular plank, as if I could remember the exact spot.

  “I remember you wailin’ and screamin’ the first time you missed and that ol’ crab got a finger in his claws. But you was a tough kid, you went and got a Band-aid and was back here to catch a few more.”

  “I still catch crabs that way, to the consternation of my friends. They all use tongs,” I quickly explained, not sure that he would know what consternation meant.

  “Yeah, you was the tough kid ’round here. Two days after your dad bought that bike, you come in and announce it’s time to take the trainin’ wheels off. He shook his head, took ’em off, and said they’d be on again the next day. The next day comes and you show up with scrapes and bruises, but them trainin’ wheels never got put back on.”

  “With that bike I could go down to the ice cream stand whenever I wanted. I kept getting back on because I bribed myself with a banana split.”

  “I remember your dad and me sneakin’ into the workshop to put it together for you. It was so bright and shiny new. You give it away?”

  “It got stolen,” I replied.

  “That’s too bad. It was a real nice bike.”

  “I was too tall anyway,” I said, pretending that losing the bike didn’t matter.

  “Yeah, you sure got real tall, like your mom was. I can’t believe you’re the same little Micky I used to know.” There was a pause; the bike used up, there was nowhere else to go. “Well, let me go look at that foreign car of yours,” Ben finished. We started back to the my car.

  “Several times secondhand,” I responded, “but it gets me where I want to go.”

  “Yeah, that’s what counts, I guess,” he said, looking under the hood.

  He seemed intent on what he was doing and I didn’t know what to say. I watched Ben, wondering what twisted path had brought us here today. I wanted to talk to him, to say, Tell me everything, everything you know about my father, my mother, fill all the gaps. Give me the man complete; he was taken before I had time to know him.

  But I wasn’t a child of ten, instead a woman of almost thirty with too many nameless lovers and cheap bottles of Scotch in my past to ask for an honesty I couldn’t return.

  “You married?” He broke into my thoughts.

  “No, I’m not married. I did change my last name,” I answered. “Didn’t want the same name as Aunt Greta,” I finished lamely.

  “Yeah, I thought ’bout looking you up, but I figured you had to be married by now. You got to be almost thirty, right?”

  “Some things work out and some things don’t,” I evaded.

  “You never been married?” he asked.

  “No, never,” I answered, trying to think of a way to change the subject.

  “Gue
ss it’s just as well. Don’t know if ol’ Ben could take seein’ little Micky Robedeaux so growed up as to be divorced. So you went to college, huh? ’Round here?”

  “No, up in New York.”

  “That far, huh? Your dad always wanted you to go to college. You was smart enough. But New York’s real far away.”

  “I was getting away from Aunt Greta,” I said. “Besides, I kind of hoped I might find my mom there. Do you remember much about her?”

  “Naw, sorry, Micky, not really.”

  “Do we look alike?” I persisted. Ben was the only connection I had to my past.

  “Yeah, some. She was tall, too, like I said,” he answered hesitantly. “But don’t you worry ’bout her. She had some problems. Had no business trying to raise a kid,” he suddenly burst out. “She should’ve stayed here and been a good wife and mother, not running ’round like she did.”

  “But, Ben,” I said, discovering a need to defend her, “she was only sixteen when I was born.”

  “Me and Alma was married when she was sixteen. She had David a year later. No excuse.”

  “I wouldn’t want to have a child at sixteen,” I replied.

  “No, maybe not. But if you did, you would’ve taken care of that baby and done right by it. She even thought of not havin’ you,” he said angrily.

  “Can you blame her?”

  “Yeah. She did what she wanted and she should’ve been takin’ care of you. What’d they teach you at that New York college, anyway?”

  “To think for myself,” I answered.

  “Now, you see,” Ben said, grinning a bit, backing away from the argument we were about to have, “That’s why you ain’t married yet. You just got too smart for most of the fellas ’round here.”

  “Yes, I guess so,” I responded. But I knew if I had been sixteen and pregnant, I would have had an abortion. Of course that wasn’t very likely because by the time I was sixteen I was sleeping with women. I couldn’t say that. I remembered Ben, Alma, and David going off to Mass every Sunday.

  “Guess we ain’t got much in common no more,” Ben said.

  “A lot of good memories, Ben,” I answered.

  “Yeah, that counts for somethin’, I guess. That’s all we end up with, a bunch of memories,” he replied, a sad look crossing his eyes.

  “Things change. They always do. Us kids have to grow up and sometimes it seems we grow away. But…but I still have that little wooden horse you carved for me. It reminds me of you and my dad. I’ll never grow so far away as to forget that.”

  “Thanks, Micky. Little Micky. What your dad always wanted for you, more ’n anything was for you to be happy.”

  “I am, Ben,” I said, knowing it wasn’t really true, but also afraid that we were too far apart for me to admit my uncertainty.

  “I hope so. I guess me and your dad was so happy with our families, wife and kids and all. Well, it’s hard to see someone bein’ happy without them connections. I hope you are,” he finished.

  “I am, Ben,” I repeated. “At least as close as I can get,” I added, touching the truth.

  “I guess I pictured that seein’ as ol’ Ben failed havin’ a family, that little Micky would succeed. Life’s never what you figure it to be,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I think it’s fixed. Try it,” he added.

  I got in, leaving my door open, and turned the ignition. The engine hummed smoothly, all the usual clanking sounds gone.

  “It’s great, Ben. Sounds better than it ever did. Thanks.” I turned off the ignition and got out. He flashed me a grin and gave his thumbs-up sign. A memory of the younger man in bright sunshine, flashing that same smile and same gesture to a novice crab catcher caught me by surprise. “You didn’t fail,” I said. “You had it taken from you. You loved Alma and you loved David and you were the best friend a tomboy growing up could ever have had. You didn’t fail. Don’t ever say that.”

  “Thanks, Mick,” he said, then turned to look over the unchanging marsh. “It weren’t your Dad’s fault. I didn’t know to tell you or not what really happened. Not your Dad’s doin’. There was someone else on the road that night. His fault.” His voice broke. “That son-of-a-bitch. That son-of-a-bitch drunken driver. Why did he leave me behind?”

  “I don’t know, Ben,” I tried to answer.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t of told you.”

  “It’s okay. I knew.”

  “Ol’ Jones Johnson tell you?” he asked.

  “Who?” Then I started to remember Jones. The town drunk with whiskey breath and old clothes that always scared away kids like me. “I remember him.”

  “He found the wreck and called the cops. He told me ’bout the other driver there. Jonesy saw him lyin’ on the road ’fore they took him away. A tragic mistake, they said. Four people die and other people alive but with no lives left and it was jus’ a tragic mistake. The other driver was from a rich family. Money buys a lot of things, don’t it? Murder turns into a mistake.”

  “I’m sorry.” Holloway money. Cordelia’s father. I could again hear Thoreau’s words from the dinner party. The cracks were widening on my shaky ground.

  “That son-of-a-bitch didn’t go to jail. I did. I didn’t have no reason to go home, no wife and kids there, so I stayed out, drinkin’, and angry. A fight here and there. It didn’t matter. Nothin’ mattered.”

  “Ben, I’m sorry,” I repeated still aware of how hollow and inadequate the words sounded. I stepped toward Ben and put a hand on his shoulder, unsure of how to comfort a man who had always before comforted me.

  He glanced at me, quickly wiping his eyes again. “At night, lots of time, I lie awake,” he said. “Thinkin’ how it might be. Alma and me with four or five kids. David in high school, maybe college. Sometimes he’s a football star. Sometimes the real smart one, glasses and good at science. Robert, or Paula if she was a girl, our next kid, oh, all sorts of things. I was so proud of them kids.” He paused, clumsily brushing at his eyes. “Them kids that ain’t here. You must think ol’ Ben’s crazy, dreamin’ like that.” He glanced at me, quickly wiping his eyes again.

  “No, I don’t,” I replied. “I sometimes wonder…wonder what it would be like if Dad were still here. If he were here for me to visit, not just this…shipyard.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he sobbed. “They should all of ’em be here.” He covered his face with his hands to hide the tears he didn’t think he should shed.

  “Go ahead and cry, Ben. It’s all we can do now,” I told him. Tentatively, I put my hand on his other shoulder and held him in an awkward embrace. I was too aware of the barriers between us to completely reach out to him. How can a promiscuous lesbian hold a Catholic family man? If he really knew me, knew who I had become, he would hate me, I found myself thinking. No, he wouldn’t. Ben is better than that, I countered. But the uncertainty lingered, stiffening my embrace of him, scaring me away.

  Ben rested his head on my shoulder, harsh sobs racking his body.

  I felt a tremendous emptiness, not only for those who weren’t here, but for the distance between Ben and me. We were inexorably linked by memory and tragedy, but it was an intersection we had both traveled beyond; I wondered if any road could ever take us back.

  Ben returned my hug, as shy and stiff as I was. We stood, no longer a young man and a child, but as an uncertain woman with an older man, trying to connect. Then his hand moved, not much, really just a change in pressure. Meaning shifted. His arms tightened about me. I tensed.

  Ben broke away, probably as startled and embarrassed as I was. He hastily wiped his eyes, then shoved his hands in his pockets, and walked a few yards away from me. There was a deep, heavy awkwardness in the air, secrets best buried floating about.

  “Yeah, I really admired your dad,” Ben said to remind us both who I was. “Honest as the day was long. And a real hard worker. Yeah, he was a good man.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, getting over the shock. Desire doesn’t fit into a neat compartment. It looms unexpected and messy an
d had caught me unaware and unprepared at times. Now Ben. That was all, I told myself. But it wasn’t the simple act of desire that had taken us so aback. That Ben could think of wanting me, however fleetingly, meant that I had grown from a girl into a woman, irrevocably beyond innocence. Who were we now? And could those people connect or would we be left with only the tag ends of recollection?

  “I’m not really offended,” I added, though still unsure of my feelings.

  He looked at me, discomfited with my mentioning what had happened. “Certain things a man and a woman ought not to talk about,” he finally replied, retreating into the man talking to his partner’s child. “Like I said, I got a lot of admiration for your dad and I won’t do nothin’ that would upset him.”

  “It’s okay,” I repeated, “we’re all adults here,” a line my father used at times.

  He kept his hands resolutely in his pockets. “I may not be real good at keepin’ out of fights in bars, but I ain’t gonna start pawin’ Lee Robedeaux’s daughter. God can take me right now before I do that.”

  “I know. I trust you, Ben,” I said.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” he answered, walking still farther away. “You’re a nice girl. There’s certain kind of low-life you better stay away from.”

  I could accept that statement and we would both walk away from each other. But maybe if I could break this barrier, the others wouldn’t be so hard. Let’s talk about who we are now, I thought. If we can do that, perhaps we can talk about death and black nights of the past. Maybe I could finally have a friend from there meet me here in my present.

  “You’re not low-life. Besides, I’m almost thirty. Don’t think of me as some blushing little sixteen-year-old.” Not that I ever blushed at sixteen.

  “Don’t tell me nothin’ that’d make your dad shamed of you,” he broke in, trying to cling to the past.

  “I’m not a virgin,” I stated.