When he pulled back onto Delaware a carload of girls in a momma’s Cadillac moved alongside him and he kept their speed. They were singing along with the radio, sweet highpitched voices that were careless and off-key. He looked over and there were three in the front and three in the back. They didn’t notice him at first but in the middle of a long note the driver looked over at him and screamed oh my God. She gave a wild laugh and the other girls stopped and saw him watching and they ducked and their squeals replaced the strained melody. Russell laughed back and the light turned green and the driver, cheeks sharp and eyes squinted, looked at him and called him a pervert and they all laughed harder and she gunned the Cadillac and it leaped like some prehistoric animal into the intersection.
That did it for the joyride.
He drove to his dad’s place where he found his father and Consuela in the kitchen. Mitchell was dipping the fish in a bowl of milk and then into a bowl of flour and she stood next to him chopping cabbage and carrots.
Mitchell looked at his son’s forehead. “What happened?”
Russell reached up and pulled off the Band-Aid and dropped it in the garbage can and said nothing.
A wooden table for four in the middle. A dishrag draped over the edge of the sink. A row of brown coffee mugs hanging from hooks underneath the cabinet. The black and white tiles of the floor. The Coca-Cola bottle magnet stuck on the refrigerator. The framed picture hanging above the doorway of a handsome Jesus with His hands folded on His lap and wearing a white robe and the light of heaven shining behind His head. Only Consuela was different. She was still barefoot.
“Come on a second,” Mitchell said. He washed his hands and wiped them on a towel and moved toward the back door.
“What is it?” Russell asked.
“Just come on. Need a hand.”
They walked out and across the yard toward the barn. Mitchell’s truck was parked in front of the barn and he walked around and let down the tailgate.
“Couldn’t get this out of here by myself.”
In the truck bed lay a concrete statue of the Virgin Mary with arms open and ready to catch anything that might fall from the sky.
“Jesus,” Russell said.
“It ain’t Jesus. It’s His momma.”
Mitchell grabbed the round bottom of the statue.
“Grab on. And be careful.”
They pulled the end off the tailgate until the Virgin tipped upright and when she did Russell barely ducked in time to dodge her left arm. She was eight feet tall with a sharp, pointed nose and a look of empathy.
“I figured it might make Consuela feel more at home,” Mitchell said as he looked at the Virgin with a sense of pride. “You know how on TV you see those plazas and squares in other countries and there’s always a statue in the middle? I know they got them in Mexico. Clive told me about it the first time he went down there. Said there were plazas with red dirt streets and Virgin Marys all over.”
“Where’d you find this thing?”
“Guy out on the highway with all those concrete angels and dogs. Had it put away for himself but I got it out of him. We were out riding around. Hitting junk stores here and there. She saw it and grinned and nodded and I took that for her wanting it, so here it is.”
“Here it is.”
“Or here she is.”
“Yes. It’s a she.”
“Think I should move it closer to the house?”
The men looked toward the house and Consuela was standing at the edge of the yard watching them. She was wearing one of Liza’s aprons.
Mitchell got a dolly from the barn. Russell got behind the Virgin and wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled back and Mitchell slid the dolly under her. She weighed as much as them together and her weight helped her roll across the slightly downward slope toward the house. Mitchell directed them to stop when they got to the middle of the yard where a blooming vine had run up and around an old metal post that was once the anchor of a clothesline. They wrestled her off the dolly and faced her toward the kitchen window. Mitchell looked at Consuela and she said something that he didn’t understand and then she went back into the kitchen. Russell stepped back from her and admired her strong arms, her caring eyes, her open hands, as if news of the Christ child would flow from her lips any second.
“I ain’t even gonna ask what you paid for her.”
“Good,” Mitchell said. “Let’s go eat.”
Back in the kitchen Mitchell put his hands back into the fish. The deep fryer sat on the porch just outside the kitchen door and he went back and forth from the fryer to the counter. Dropping fish in the fryer. Preparing more. Russell moved along with him, sipping at a beer, getting hungry. Soon there was a plate sitting in the middle of the table stacked high with crisp, golden fillets. While the men went back and forth Consuela had mixed the cabbage and carrots with some mayonnaise and oil and vinegar and pepper and a bowl of coleslaw sat next to the fish. When it was all ready Mitchell told Russell to open the fridge and get beers for everyone. He got the beers and then the ketchup and the hot sauce and then the three of them sat down around the table.
Russell reached for a piece of fish and Consuela folded her hands and bowed her head. Russell stopped and he and Mitchell waited while Consuela said her grace and then there was no more waiting.
Russell wanted to talk about his mother. About her last months and about the funeral but it didn’t seem like the right time. So instead he talked about how hot it was and how good the place looked. When they were done Consuela cleaned up and Mitchell and Russell went outside and smoked cigarettes. When Consuela finished she met the men outside. Father and son sat down in rockers and Consuela stepped out into the yard and began walking toward the statue. She stopped in front and paused. Gazed at the concrete face. Then she began walking around again with her eyes toward the ground as if she were looking for something.
“What’s she doing?” Russell asked.
“Walking around. Does it every night. Sometimes you can hear her singing to herself. Pretty songs. Sad sounding songs. Reminds me of your momma humming to herself when she was in the kitchen or working around in her flowers.”
The twilight surrounded them now. The first crickets chirped. An evening breeze. They watched Consuela. Her arms behind her back like a schoolchild in line. And then she started to sing and her voice blended with the coming night.
“Still think it’d be best if you stayed out here with us,” Mitchell said.
“Still think it’s best I don’t,” Russell said and he thought of Larry and Walt being there. Promising to come back. He knew they’d follow him wherever he went.
“What’d you do with the gun?”
“Sold it at the pawn shop.”
“Damn you, Russell.”
“Got thirty bucks.”
“Thirty bucks?”
“I’m kidding, old man.”
Consuela reached the pond and began making her way around it and she was only a silhouette in whatever light was left.
“How long does she do this for?” Russell asked.
“Don’t know. Sometimes I’m back inside before she’s done.”
Russell got them two more beers and they sat and rocked. Russell started to say something about finding a house to paint but he liked it better with nothing to say. Consuela finally came back and she went into the house and got a beer for herself and she sat down with the men.
“You know it. Don’t you?” Mitchell said.
“Know what?”
His father drank. Paused.
“It’s a pretty night,” he said.
“That ain’t what you were about to say.”
“No. It ain’t.”
“Then what?”
“Just that he’s gonna come for you, Russell.”
“He already has.”
“He ain’t all there. Never has been.”
“I’m aware.”
Mitchell raised from the chair and stood at the edge of the porch. He spit into
the yard and looked out at the deepening night and said he’s gonna come and keep on coming. Until he thinks he’s done.
22
LARRY SAT IN THE TRUCK WITH HIS ARM HANGING OUT THE OPEN window. The truck was parked on the street in front of Russell’s house and the windows were down and the radio was turned low. A crowbar and empty beer cans rested on the seat beside him. He started out simply riding. After a few he’d kept on riding. Now he was parked and trying to figure out the best way to put another scare into the man who killed his brother.
Larry was known as the tall one because he stood a head taller than any man in the Tisdale family, all of whom lined up nearly identical at six feet. Grandfathers, uncles, brothers, all of them. Six years separated him and his brothers, the youngest to the oldest. All of them had square foreheads and chins and kept their black hair cut short and parted on the left and their mouths were small and serious. He was the oldest. And the youngest had been in the dirt for eleven years.
His problem was that he was as loyal as a dog and he thought everyone else should be the same way. Over the years that had kept him in parking lot fights over girls and then later in bar fights over women. And it had kept him thinking about the day that Russell Gaines was going to be set free.
For his second wife he had married a woman who was ten years younger. Heather was Corvette curvy and she liked to dance until she was sweaty and she didn’t seem scared of him in the moments when his temper revealed itself. He had met her at a bar in the Quarter after a Saints game. She was the daughter of a banker and she had that carefree swagger of the beautiful and the rich. She never went out into the night without being detailed from head to toe and she drank like a man. Her natural hair color had long been forgotten and she was well versed in using what she had to get whoever or whatever she wanted. She’d been surprised when Larry asked her to marry him and he’d been surprised she said yes. She shined on his arm when he walked into a room and he had at one time liked the envious and lusty stare that she commanded.
In the first years they had been sustained by a rough, physical energy, like two rival prizefighters. Heather had always liked that Larry could find something to hate. Liked it when he talked about his dead brother and how one day he was going to settle the score. Liked it when he talked about somebody who had screwed him on a job or tried to get the best of him in a barroom. Liked that he was raw, the fierceness that came into his eyes when he was rushing toward the edge. She stoked his temper and picked fights with him just to get the blood up so that they could tear into one another like starving animals. But like those prizefighters, they were also driven by wins and losses and their relationship was more like a competition and recently Heather seemed to be winning.
Larry had always known that sooner or later she would grow restless and drift toward the stares that followed her. Knew she’d look for something else to do. And though he had known it was coming, when it began he ignored it. Told himself that her excuses were legit. No I don’t care if you spend the weekend shopping with your friends and no I don’t care if you go down to the Panhandle with your friends and no I don’t care if you go and gamble with your friends. And as she caroused he sat at home and raged. He drove around and raged. And then he recruited Walt, who had lost a marriage of his own, to ride around and rage with him. And he drank more and more and walked around with unfocused eyes, the same unfocused eyes that looked out the truck window now at the house where the man lived who had killed Jason.
The clouds had been gathering in him for a long time now and the storm had arrived. Snuck up on him the way that they sneak up in the summertime with the heavy gray clouds appearing in the western sky and then moving in like vultures and bringing lightning and wind and sometimes there isn’t even time to close the windows. The clouds had been gathering and somebody was going to fucking pay.
He was there to do something but he hadn’t decided what. It didn’t look like anyone was home. Not a light on. Nothing parked in the driveway. He had taken a box of matches from the glove compartment and thought about a fire but instead he had lit a cigarette. He took the beer from between his legs and finished it and tossed the can into the yard.
He reached over to the glove compartment again and this time he pulled out an envelope. He opened it and took out a handful of photographs of Heather and a blond man sitting in a restaurant in the Quarter. They sat at a long table covered with a white tablecloth and the wineglasses glimmered in the light of the low chandelier. She smiled in every photograph. And so did he. The people leaning around the table with them all smiled. Even the goddamn waiter was smiling. Her dress was cut low and she wore a necklace he had given her two birthdays ago. Larry thumped the face of the blond man and knew the motherfucker wasn’t smiling right now. There were more photographs of them leaving the restaurant. Going into the lobby of Hotel Monteleone. Sitting at the Carousel Bar with her hand between his legs. Holding hands as they waited on the elevator that had taken them up and into the room where the blond man had done thrilling things to Larry’s wife. Or she had done thrilling things to the blond man, which is the way Larry figured it.
Copies of these photographs had been stuck into the blond man’s pants as he lay halfconscious on the hood of the car. Larry held on to this set to take to his lawyer who had told him that if you don’t want her to get your money you’d better get some proof. He’d been meaning to take them to the lawyer for a week but hadn’t. His hate had been redirected with Russell’s homecoming and he was pretty sure he was about to goddamn explode. He stuffed the photos back into the envelope and the envelope back into the glove compartment and he slammed it shut.
He grabbed the crowbar and got out of the truck. He walked to the front of the house and attacked the windows, spraying the glass and wood into the house and onto the ground and he felt the sting of shards on his arms and face as he moved from window to window, each one suffering a more violent death than the one before as his blood roared with the destruction. When he was done he walked back to the sidewalk and turned and admired his work as he breathed heavily and swung the crowbar at his side as if he were getting ready to go again. He caught his breath and lit another cigarette and waited to see if Russell might poke his head out of one of the holes but he didn’t. He was for the moment satisfied and he tossed the crowbar over into the truck bed and climbed in the truck. He eased along the street at a walker’s pace, hoping that the racket would rise the neighbors to look out their windows or come out of their doors to fear what he had done.
23
WHEN RUSSELL TURNED THE CORNER OF HIS STREET HE SAW THE red taillights of the truck moving away from his house. Moving at a crawl. So he quickly turned off his headlights and waited for the truck to go away. Then he drove two blocks down and parked and walked to the house, leaving the shotgun in the truck. Passing someone’s garbage he noticed a metal pipe in a pile of stripped plumbing and he picked it up and walked with it on his shoulder like a batter walking toward home plate.
He eased around the side of the house and went in the back door. He didn’t turn on any lights and he walked into the living room, the glass crunching beneath his feet on the hardwood floor. He propped the metal pipe against the fireplace mantel. Put his hands on his hips. There was nothing to do but wait until the morning. He didn’t want to turn on the lights. Didn’t want the truck to come back and know he was inside. Didn’t want to be there.
He sat down on the sofa but got up again when a piece of glass stuck into the back of his leg. He looked out the broken windows into the front yard and he felt a headache settling in. Figured it was too early in the night to give up on them coming back. It was sit and wait or get the hell out.
He got back in the truck and stopped and bought a Coke and a couple of airplane bottles of Jim Beam and then he drove out to the lake. Boats filled the marina bays and lights gleamed on the slapping water at the boat ramp. He crossed over the dam and then there was only the dark and then the road led into forest that surrounded the back s
ide of the lake, side roads here and there branching off into camping areas and another that led to the Bottom. It was unofficially accepted by the park rangers that the Bottom was the one spot where the kids could sit and do what they wanted as long as nobody was murdered and the trash was picked up. Russell drove into the Bottom and there they were. A circle of cars and a gathering of boys and girls standing around a fire, not too close, holding cans and cigarettes, the water behind them still and black. They watched him with firelit faces as he backed up and left.
Farther around the lake he found what he had been looking for. A dirt road that didn’t stop until it hit water. Barely wide enough for the truck to squeeze between the trees. His headlights shot across the water and he watched for a moment and checked for alligators but saw no knobby heads and bulging eyes. He then carefully backed between the trees and maneuvered the truck until he was able to get the tailgate toward the water and he stopped close to the edge. He took the Coke and tiny bottles of liquor and dropped the tailgate and sat down with his feet dangling at the water’s edge. Across the lake cabin lights spotted the bank.
The lake was always busiest leading up to the Fourth of July and then little by little the boats thinned out as the summer dragged on and the heat became tiresome. He remembered the Fourth of July two years ago when he had watched a gang of men stomp another man to death and call it fireworks. And then last year he had watched them do the same thing. The same men. He had watched because he needed to mark their faces. He had to know who they were and that was the best way to do it. To watch the evil so that you could stay away from the evil. As much as you could. Fireworks, they called it. It was an old man both times. Someone whose death wouldn’t call for revenge. He wondered how they picked who it was going to be. He wondered how long they had known who would be their fireworks. Or if they thought that far ahead. You had to watch. You had to know. You couldn’t look the other way.
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