Light of the World

by James Lee Burke

  “He sent them men who attacked me and Miss Bertha. I don’t know why, but he done it.”

  Younger put one sandaled foot up on the redwood bench. “Let’s talk another time. It’s such a fine day. Why cloud the sky when you don’t have to?”

  “The name Irma Jean don’t mean nothing to you?”

  “Afraid not.” Younger took a sip from his glass and set it down on the table. He scratched at the edge of his eye with his fingertip. “It’s rude to stare in another man’s face.”

  “I can always tell when a man’s lying.”

  “No man calls me a liar, Mr. Dixon.”

  “It’s the other way around.”

  “You’ll have to explain that.”

  “The name Irma Jean didn’t ring no bells for you. If you’d known my mother, her memory would have been tattooed inside your pecker. Tell your son and Jack Shit here to forget they ever heard my name.”

  Wyatt began walking back toward his truck, his day a little more intact. When he walked through the border of bougainvillea and ornamental trees, he heard either Boyd or Younger laugh behind him. He wasn’t sure at what. What he heard was not the laugh but its undisguised level of irreverence and ridicule. When he turned and looked through the branches of the trees, Younger was leaning toward Boyd like a man who had come down from the heights to share a private joke with one of his minions.

  Because the two men were upwind from Wyatt, they obviously assumed he could not hear their words. Unfortunately for them, he didn’t have to.

  I even told Jack Shit yonder I could read lips, he thought. Mr. Younger, if you’re so goddamn smart, how come you surround yourself with people who cain’t blow their noses for fear of losing a couple of brain cells?

  He read each of Younger’s words like a bubble rising in the air, popping softly in the breeze. Then the words became a sentence, and the sentence continued into another sentence, and the sentences became a paragraph, and the paragraph became a knife blade that seemed to work its way through Wyatt’s abdomen into his scrotum.

  I lived three months in a motel when we were drilling in East Texas, Younger said. Every third night, I fucked this cleaning girl named Josie something. An ass on her as big as a bed pillow. About a year later, I got a card from her saying I’d fathered her child. I tore it up and figured any number of men could have knocked her up, but from time to time it would bother me. I’d always carried my own water and paid my debts, including taking care of a woods colt or two. Finally, I had some private detectives look into it, and I thought Dixon might have been the product of my misplaced seed. But he’s not, thank God. He’s just run-of-the-mill rodeo trash and probably psychotic to boot.

  What happened to the cleaning gal? Jack Boyd asked.

  I’m not sure, really. One of the detectives said she and her husband may have been murdered. I wasn’t interested in the details. One of the detectives thought Dixon could have been Josie’s kid. Who knows? Nits all look alike. Anyway, Dixon’s mother was named Irma Jean. Case closed.

  Too bad about the girl.

  You’re right about that. She was the best piece of ass I ever had.

  AT NOON ON Sunday, Clete told me he was going to the sheriff’s home, then to Love Younger’s compound. I didn’t argue. Felicity was in the hands of a bestial man, and Clete was powerless to do anything about it. I believe the strongest, most suffering people on earth are those whose family members are abducted by monsters, and who never see their loved ones again. If there is any worse fate that can be visited upon human beings, I don’t know what it could be.

  I was up on the hillside when Clete returned at 3:17 P.M. and parked by the garage. His face looked thinner somehow, as though he hadn’t eaten in a couple of days. I walked down the hill to meet him. “How’d it go?” I said.

  “Younger was half-sloshed and cooking out,” he replied. “There were three or four other guys drinking in the backyard with him. I asked him what kind of day he thought his daughter-in-law was having. You know what that arrogant cocksucker said? ‘She’s in the Lord’s hands.’ ”

  “When did you eat last?”

  “I don’t remember. What were you doing up on the hill?”

  “Trying to figure out how Surrette came and went with such ease on Albert’s property.”

  “If Felicity dies, I’m going to smoke Love Younger. I’m going to smoke his son, too.”

  “What else did Younger say?”

  “Nothing. He’s an ice cube. Here’s what’s crazy: On the way up to his house, I thought I passed Wyatt Dixon.”

  “Why would Dixon be at Younger’s place?”

  “Maybe he knows something we don’t. I went to the sheriff’s home and asked why Felicity’s abduction wasn’t on the news. He says he and the feds want to force Surrette to make contact with the media.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “I think it sucks. You know why Love Younger is so relaxed? Surrette is getting rid of a big problem for him. Felicity knows Caspian was behind Angel Deer Heart’s homicide. Surrette is going to wipe the slate clean. I need a drink.”

  Before I could answer, I saw a compact car coming up the road. The female driver looked too large for the vehicle. She turned under the arch and came up the driveway, braking at the last moment, almost running over Clete’s foot. She got out of the car, looking around as though not sure where she was. The density of her perfume made me think of magnolia blossoms opening on a hot night in the confines of a courtyard.

  “You’re the fat one who gave Wyatt trouble,” she said to Clete.

  “How you doin’, Miss Bertha?” I said. “Can I help you?”

  “You can. He can’t,” she replied, pointing to Clete.

  “Is something going on with Wyatt?” I asked.

  “Yes, and I’m very frightened about it. I need to talk with you, Mr. Robicheaux. Does this man have to be here?”

  “Yes, he does,” I said.

  “I’ll be at the cabin,” Clete said.

  “No, stay here,” I said. “Miss Bertha, Clete is on our side. The good guys need to stick together. Did Wyatt go see Love Younger today?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Clete was out there, too.”

  “Wyatt reads lips. Love Younger was telling an ugly story to an ex–county detective, a man who worked with my brother. It was about Wyatt’s mother. Mr. Younger was bragging on seducing a cleaning girl in a motel years ago. Earlier he had asked Wyatt for the name of his mother. Wyatt told her it was Irma Jean. Mr. Younger told the detective that wasn’t the same woman he seduced.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying, Miss Bertha,” I said.

  “Mr. Younger said the cleaning girl’s name was Josie, so that meant she wasn’t Wyatt’s mother, and Wyatt couldn’t possibly be his son. What Mr. Younger didn’t know was that Wyatt’s mother was Josie Irma Jean Holliday. She used the name Josie at work, but to her family, she was always Irma Jean.”

  “Love Younger is Wyatt’s father?” I said incredulously.

  “His mother was working in the motel when Younger’s company was drilling not far from Wyatt’s home.”

  “You’re saying Wyatt feels betrayed or rejected?”

  “Have you seen his back? That’s what his stepfather did to him. He was punished every day of his life for his mother’s infidelity. Rejected? Where did you get such a stupid word?”

  “Can I talk with him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know where he’s gone. I thought he might be here.”

  “Why here?” I said.

  “He respects you.”

  “What for?”

  “He says you two are alike, that you see things that aren’t there. He also says you have blood on your hands that no one knows about. That isn’t true, is it?”

  “No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

  Clete leaned against his Caddy and lit a cigarette with his Zippo, the smoke breaking apart in the wind, his green eyes dulled over, locked on mine. He removed a piece
of tobacco from his tongue and flicked it off his fingertip. I could see his shoulder holster and snub-nosed .38 under his seersucker coat. How many times had he and I operated under a black flag?

  “Wyatt left the house with his bowie knife,” she said. “He has that old rifle in his truck, too. I have to find him.”

  “If you see him, tell him to keep his mouth shut about the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide,” Clete said.

  “I don’t like your tone,” Bertha said.

  “Few people do,” Clete replied.

  She turned back to me. “You have to help him, Mr. Robicheaux. He’s tortured by what Love Younger has done to his life. He also has uninformed religious attitudes that were taught to him as a child. Wyatt has both too little and too much knowledge about certain things. And he’s confused by the name this killer may have been using.”

  “You mean Asa Surrette?” I said.

  “Who else would I be talking about? Wyatt did his own investigation into the disappearance of the waitress. He said the killer was using the name of a Roman emperor.”

  “As an alias?” I said.

  “He was calling himself Reverend Geta Noonen.”

  I had heard the name Geta in a historical context, but I couldn’t place it offhand.

  “He was the brother of Caracalla,” she said. “He was a cruel man, just like his brother. The two of them gave the Christians a terrible time.”

  Clete was staring at me, the connections coming together in his eyes. “This has to be bullshit, Dave. Right? It’s bullshit, and she knows it. I’m not buying into this. These people need to pack their heads in dry ice and ship them somewhere.”

  “Mr. Purcel, how would you like a punch in the face?” Bertha Phelps said. “You just take your big rear end down to the cabin and stay there, because you are starting to make me angry.”

  “Do you know who Saint Felicity was, Miss Bertha?” I said.

  “No,” she replied. “Who was she?”

  “She died at the hands of the emperor Geta in a Carthaginian arena.”

  “I’m not up to this,” Clete said. He got into his Caddy and backed down the driveway and onto the dirt road, then continued to back up until he was at the vehicle gate on the north pasture, as though eating the road and the entire world’s irrationality with the rear bumper of his car.

  A moment later, an electric-blue SUV with smoked windows and dealer’s tags passed by the arch over Albert’s driveway, headed toward the end of the hollow, the sun’s reflection wobbling like a pool of yellow fire on the rear window.

  “If something happens to my man, you two are to blame,” Bertha Phelps said. “I may have to take care of this situation myself. Then I’ll be back.”

  ASA SURRETTE PARKED his newly purchased SUV in front of the house at the end of the hollow, then went inside, his overnight bag on his shoulder. The nostalgia he’d experienced at moving into a home reminiscent of rural Kansas had been replaced by a growing irritability that he couldn’t compartmentalize. Maybe it was the dusty baseboards and the bare lightbulbs and the dirt ingrained in the floors and thread-worn carpets; they were not only realistic reminders of his natal home, they conjured up other images for him as well: treeless horizons, winds that blew at forty knots in twenty-below weather, Titan missiles sleeping in their silos under the wheat, the nightly mold-spore report on the local news.

  His landlady didn’t help matters. She was Dutch or Swedish and had a loud voice and a North Dakota accent that hurt his ears. Her chirping evangelical rhetoric caused him to flutter his eyelids uncontrollably, not unlike a survivor of an artillery barrage.

  He entered the house by way of the back steps, hoping to avoid her. Before he could make it to his bedroom, he heard a toilet flush and her feet pounding up the stairs. “Oh, there you are!” she said.

  He stopped in the hallway. “Yes, here is where I am,” he replied.

  She didn’t catch his annoyance. “Oh, my, what happened to your face?” she said, her fingers rising to her mouth.

  “I walked into a nail.”

  “My heavens. I hope you got a tetanus shot,” she said. Her hair was bleached and frizzed and resembled a wig. She wore bright coral-red lipstick and foundation that stiffened the fuzz on her cheeks and caused it to glow like whiskers against the light. “If you get lockjaw, you’ll have to take your food through a straw. Did you already get a shot? If you haven’t, you should.”

  “I heard you. I’m fine.”

  She looked past him into the driveway. “It looks like someone got himself a new SUV. You bought it in Polson?”

  “What makes you think I got it there?”

  “The dealer’s tag,” she said. “When I was a little girl, I’d memorize license numbers. That’s how I learned math. Did you say you got a shot?”

  “I bought it from somebody who bought it in Polson.”

  “Not to worry,” she said. “Geta, next time would you call?”

  “Call about what?”

  “You didn’t come home yesterday. We were worried.”

  “I had to tie up a problem or two. That’s the nature of my work.”

  “I see. Well, next time I’m sure you’ll remember to call. You look tired. Maybe you should take a nap.”

  “I don’t need a nap.”

  “Like Scripture says, we must always be alert. But as a minister, you already know that. You ran into a nail? How awful.”

  “I’m going into my room now.”

  “By the way, we’re going to be painting the upstairs. We’ll need to move you into the cubby for a few days.”

  “What’s the cubby?”

  “It’s in the basement. It’s only temporary. There’s a window and a toilet. You can come upstairs to bathe.”

  “That’s not convenient for me.”

  “Beg your pardon?” she said.

  “I don’t live in basements. I’m not a bat.”

  She sniffed the air and made a face. “What’s that smell?” she said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t smell anything.”

  “It’s very strong. Check the bottom of your shoes.”

  He could hear himself breathing, his irritability climbing like a tarantula up his spinal cord. Her mouth made him think of a plumber’s helper, one smeared with lipstick. “Who’s home?” he said.

  “Ralph’s splitting wood. The girls went to the movies. Why do you want to know?”

  “I thought we’d have a meeting of the minds.”

  “You’re acting strangely. I think I should have a look at your cheek. You may already have an infection. Are you running a fever?”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Well, I never.”

  “Do you have some baling wire?”

  “Ralph probably has some in the shed.”

  “Yes, folksy hinterland people would always have some baling wire lying around, wouldn’t they? Ralphie splinters the wood, and then you cord it up for the winter. That’s what folksy salt-of-the-earth people do.”

  “What has gotten into you?” she said.

  “A little of this, a little of that,” he said, dipping his hand into his overnight bag. “Mostly, I just don’t like the way you look. Or the way you talk. Or your stupid expression.”

  He lifted up a .22 auto outfitted with a suppressor and popped a solitary round through the middle of her forehead, the hole no bigger than the circumference of an eraser on a wood pencil. She went straight down on the floor in a heap, like a puppet whose strings had been released by the puppeteer. That was how they always went down when they weren’t expecting it. Not like in the movies, when the shooting victim flew backward through a glass window.

  He studied her surprised expression and the pool of blood forming on the floor, then put away the semi-auto and picked up the brass and stepped out on the landing. “Hey, Ralph!” he called down. “Can you bring some baling wire up here? The wife wants you to help hang something.”

  The husband snicked his ax into the stump and gazed up at the land
ing, squinting against the sunlight. “Be there in a jiff, Geta. We wondered where you were,” he said. “I told the wife not to worry, you were doing the Lord’s work. Glad you’re back home safe and sound.”

  AFTER BERTHA PHELPS drove away, Clete went down to the cabin, and I went back up on the hill, trying to retrace the route Asa Surrette used to get on and off Albert’s property. It was 3:48 P.M. and shady and cool inside the trees, but on the opposite side of the valley, I could see harebells and asters and paintbrush and mock orange and sunflowers and bee balm on the hillsides, where the grass was green and tall and the trees were few because of the thin soil layer. Then I saw Clete laboring up the grade toward me, his porkpie hat on, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his right hand, his shoulders as heavy-looking as a bag of rocks.

  “I thought you could use some company,” he said, sweating, his breath coming hard. He sat down on a boulder and wiped his brow. “I guess I still haven’t acclimated to the thin air.”

  “Maybe you ought to put the hooch away today,” I said.

  Mistake.

  He pulled the cork and upended the bottle, one eye fixed on my face. “See, no problem. The world hasn’t ended,” he said. “Marse Daniel never lets me down.”

  “Who are you kidding?”

  “I told you, I needed a drink. So I took one. I think my liver is shot. I take one hit and it’s like mainlining. That means I drink less.” He waited for me to argue with him, but I didn’t. “What do you think you’re going to find up here?” he asked.

  “The last time Surrette was on the hill, he tried to lead Gretchen into a bear trap,” I said. “I followed his trail over the crest to the far side. His tracks led to a rock outcropping, then disappeared. He had to go south to get to the highway. There are two or three deer trails that would have taken him there, but his tracks weren’t on them. I don’t get it.”

  “What if he headed north?”

  “He’d end up in a blind canyon. It was night. He would have to climb out of it in the dark. Where would his vehicle be?”

  “What’s in the canyon?”

  “Three or four houses. People Albert knows,” I replied.

  Clete took another hit off the bottle. I could see a chain of tiny air bubbles sliding up the neck as he drank. He set the bottle on his leg. “I shouldn’t do this in front of you. But I’m not doing too good today, and I need it.”