by Lon Frank
“Oh, now, that is SO not true! I got the grade because I faced death and danger and stayed with the old geezers while you went to take a leak in the bushes, for all we knew. And Doris Haggarty does not have a ‘thing’ for female agents.”
Robert made up the slight distance between them and hurried past the spindly young woman as he approached the door of the hovel. “Oh yeah, then why does she have a better mustache than Salvadore Dali, answer me that? And did you ever notice the forearms? I tell you, she’s Popeye’s love child, that’s what. And can we PLEASE get in the shade; I’m turnin’ into a lobster here, okay?”
The withered crone opened the door with neither introduction nor greeting. The two agents stepped silently inside, into a small room which smelled of sage and marijuana. Only one tiny window allowed a stream of light to pierce the coolness and on the deep-set windowsill sat a small pottery jar of purest white with black desert birds flying around its rim. She motioned them to sit on the floor on the far side of the little patch of sunlight and disappeared through a low and darkened doorway.
Agent Redford dropped easily to the stone floor, just barely four feet below his head. “Great, just great! Now we’re probably gonna get busted for smokin’ pot with the old babe. What is she anyway, a poster girl for California Prunes?”
“Will you shut up already?” Agnes was having more difficulty managing to take her seat. Her extraordinarily long legs, while a constant source of ingratiating stares from strange men, were somewhat unmanageable when it came to sitting cross-legged on the floor. Finally, she jerked her tailored and tight-fitting skirt to the upper limits of her thighs and dropped with all the grace and appearance of a pile of children’s pickup sticks. Robert watched closely, his eyes growing wider and his mouth subconsciously falling open at the sight of so much unprotected female flesh. “Just one word, just one, you little weasel, and I’ll leave you here for the old woman to experiment on, I swear.”
But her lecherous minion was jerked back to reality when the old woman suddenly placed a wide bowl of water in the circle of light and settled on the other side as silently as the desert dust. Agent-in-Charge Maggart took a breath and meant to tell the old woman of their mission, but the psychic lifted a roughened hand before she could speak.
“Still Water Woman knows what it is you seek. You wish to find one of your own, one who has traveled far, one who hides.” Motionless, the old woman stared into the glowing water. She made a face of slight repulsion. “Still Water Woman sees his skin. She smells his stench. You seek the White Shaman, the flying man.”
Two days later the agents were sitting at a conference table in a protected room at FACT headquarters with Doris Haggarty. On the table in front of her, Doris opened the report Agnes had forwarded ahead of their meeting. She seemed to be deep in thought at the moment. A moment which was shattered by Agent Redford.
“That’s right, Miz Haggarty, I’m tellin’ ya’ she KNEW. That dusty old broad knew all about us an’ LeMaire and everything. We didn’t say a word—she just knew.”
Doris Haggarty narrowed her eyes and gazed at Robert as though he were an obnoxious nephew at a tea party. She pursed her thin lips and pointedly looked at Agnes before she spoke.
“This is all she said, this old Indian woman; just what you put in your report?”
Agnes had never met the head of the agency in person, and was a little nervous, especially now that her uncouth partner had evidently pee-peed in the Post Toasties. “That’s right Director Haggarty, she said only that and then just disappeared as if into thin air. She said we needed to find another man before we could prevail. She said we must find the Painted Man, and he would lead us.”
* * *
The spring rains came early and the meadow along the bayou was more water than soil. It was just perfect for the snowy egrets as they strolled along on their stilts, occasionally poking long beaks into the wet grass for waterlogged bugs.
The old man stood hunched over the tiny two-burner stove as he heated a pan of leftover dirty rice and listened to the incessant rain drumming on the roof of the forlorn little trailer. He shoved aside a grimy curtain and peered out through the cracked window pane at the growing mounds of crawfish scattered over the wettest areas.
“Hot damn, we sure gonna have us a beaucoup of mud-bugs this year, I betcha.”
When the rain stopped for three days, the southern Louisiana sun began to give the little road a topping of fine dust. The old man again wore the ancient clothes that he was most accustomed to; a threadbare yellowish plaid coat, striped and hugely baggy red pants and size 47, lime-green clown shoes. Wisps of shaggy orange hair stuck out from under his tattered and flower-bedecked straw hat. As he walked, his pace was marked by the distinctive waddle necessitated by the big shoes and ingrained into his character by years of service under the now-vanished big top. When he reached the end of the little bayou lane, he sat on his old blue suitcase and waited for the vehicle he hoped was coming to take him on his newest adventure.
It was early spring and the backwater communities along the bayou country would be celebrating the maturity of a most unlikely regional delicacy. Muddy little towns all along the upper Gulf coast were soon to stage annual ‘crawfish boils’. The Cajun equivalent of county fairs, crawfish boils are part carnival, part civic fundraiser and part family reunion. They are a swirling midway of aging Tilt-a-Whirls and cheap, stuffed blue doggies. Trailer park urchins stand in line beside the local banker and the high school principal. Clutching their requisite tickets, they wait at the battered gate of the bumper car arena with equal anticipation at the thought of bashing the bejeebers out of each other. Preteen girls giggle and run through the crowd, wearing leftover green and purple Mardi Gras beads and stick-on tattoos. Their older sisters stride along with newly discovered sensuality, showing off navel rings shining on their bare midriffs and watching for teenage boys out of the corners of their eyes.
But the real driving force of it all is the food. Along with the commercial booths offering hot dogs and red candy apples are the local Lions and Elks and school band boosters. They will be hawking bowls of steaming rice and beans, shrimp-on-a-stick and, of course, paper plates heaped with boiled crawfish. Toddling grandmothers are seen wearing baseball caps adorned with red lobster-like claws, and various village idiots can be found wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the thin statement “SUCK THE HEAD”.
But most important to the old clown, there are the children. Herded by soccer moms, screaming and screamed at, squealing, laughing and generally running amok, the kids are what call to him. Strollers are filled with fat, grinning babies drooling pink, cotton candy liqueur. Shy little boys reach into his cavernous pockets to abscond with the ever-present piece of penny candy. Unpretentious flirtations of gangs of teenage girls not quite old enough to resist his grease painted smile; these are the images that haunt the winter dreams of the forgotten old man. These are the memories which call him out upon the road once again, waddling towards an unforeseen reunion of his own.
* * *
Miss Chlorine Washington was a large woman, the kind referred to in personal ads as “BBW,” a ‘big, beautiful woman’. Never obese, but at 5’10”, she still tipped the scales at a shade over 200 pounds. She wore an ankle-length dress with a red, African-print motif and white, thick-soled SAS shoes. Her ebony face glowed with a healthiness born of good humor and maintained by self confidence. Her jet black hair was exquisite with woven (and wove-in) braids, pulled back and knotted with two ivory chopsticks.
Her mother had been a sharecropper’s daughter, uneducated and pregnant at fourteen, when she overheard two white men talking in the drug store on a trip to Abbeville. She named her new daughter ‘Chlorine’, without knowing the meaning, just because it had a fairy quality to it which seemed to suit her tiny newborn. By the time she reached junior high school, the girl learned to pronounce her name “Cloe-REEN”, and grew into a near-Amazon.
Although continually an Honor Roll student, her real
claim to fame was her athletic ability. Two days after graduation from high school, she gathered her seven younger siblings together, tearfully kissing them in turn before she boarded the Greyhound west to Prairie View A&M. The traditionally all-black Texas school offered her a partial scholarship to play basketball and pursue an education, which was still sadly elusive to many girls in Vermillion Parish at that time.
She spent much of the past twenty years working in city hospitals, but now, at 44, or as she put it, ‘39 and a little’, she returned to the low country under the cypress and Spanish moss to practice as a traveling home-care nurse. She told everyone it was a good position with higher pay. But truthfully, she took the job mostly to be once again near her sisters and their children; the pay was nearly 40% less than in the city. But the one-on-one relationship she enjoyed with her mostly elderly patients gave her an unsuspected satisfaction and filled her with a new sense of usefulness which the routine of the big hospital had slowly eroded.
She became, on the outside at least, comfortable with the fact that she never married. She found herself often laughing with unconscious ease at her youngest sister’s brood of five rambunctious boys.
Chlorine Washington happened to be driving the fated vehicle that morning, and was the first to see the clown waiting beside the highway. Her ‘city ways’ were obviously waning because she would never have stopped a year ago, but something about the old gent’s eyes seemed to say he was waiting just for her. She stopped beside him and when Lucky opened the door she was laughing so hard she could hardly speak.
“Lawsy mister, you look like you just got run over by a paint truck! Get yourself in and tell me where we goin’ now that we’s dressed up.”
* * *
It was once an excellent example of Navajo artistry, a classic ‘Yei dancer’ pattern blanket. The tension of its warp threads and tightness of the woven yarn gave it an almost-waterproof durability. But the old woman particularly liked the muted colors of the plant dyes and the thin characterizations of the figures as they danced around the single stalk of corn.
But now, the subtle colors were almost faded out entirely from the harsh West Texas sun. It had been ten years since Still Water Woman used the blanket to cover the worn seat of her 1949 Ford pickup truck. The original color of the truck itself was faded into oblivion and a coating of leftover, green house paint currently flaked from the fenders and hood.
It took her three days to coax the decrepit truck eastward into the bayou country of Louisiana; three days since she had seen the vision in the water. It was little more than a puddle held in a rock hollow beneath a small hidden mesa, but it called to her, made her seek it out by the fading light of a desert moon. It was just at moonset that the water gave up its secret to her. The reflection of the stars became the lights of a carnival midway, then swirling night-clouds melded into the face of a man with a grease paint smile and wisps of orange hair. Finally, in the darkest hour before dawn, the water showed a misty yellow sun rising behind moss-draped cypress, and the wind whispered to her a maiden’s lilting name–Jeanerette.
The story of the White Shaman and the Painted Man had been passed down through the women in her family, solitary and gifted with the water’s magic, one in each uncounted generation. She knew the story well and recognized the role she must now play. She would find the Painted Man and prevent him from bringing back the evil the two government agents were hunting for. She would do what she was called to do by the lingering spirit of Running Rabbit; the spirit of a young girl on a midsummer’s eve, when the white man with eyes the color of summer grass went up into the sky.
As she pulled the old truck into the Jeanerette Crawfish Celebration, a black and gleaming obsidian blade, made by some forgotten ancestor, was nestled in the folds of the faded blanket on the seat beside her.
* * *
The doctor who delivered the baby boy explained to Mrs. Williams that it had something to do with how the baby laid in her womb while it developed. Of course, it would not affect the child’s mental capacity or growth in any way, but she should realize that any physical deformity carried a price for a kid. He recommended she should prepare him, and herself as well, for the teasing that would soon come. It was good and necessary advice, because the boy’s overly large ears stuck out at 90 degree angles from his slightly smallish head. He was only three days old when his uncle, who was the mechanic down at LeDues Service Station, started telling people that the baby looked just like a wingnut. But as often happens, a childhood handicap turned into an adult strength, and ‘Wingnut’ Williams parlayed his notable nickname and famous good humor into a landslide victory in the last election for city judge.
He was strolling the midway of the local crawfish festival, pressing the flesh and joking with his constituents for half an hour when he spotted the old man clowning for the kids over by the ring toss booth. The judge recalled all the years he had seen him there, but never knew who the old guy was or where he came from. He motioned towards the man with orange hair and said to his companion of the moment, “Lookie there; I swear he’s even more dependable than the damn crawfish. Ever’ spring without fail, he comes back to Jeanerette.”
* * *
A small, dark, wet spot was spreading on the seat of the tan government-issue sedan where a thin trickle of drool escaped from the open mouth of Robert Redford. As Agent-in-Charge, Agnes Maggart opted to drive, even though it meant a long night trip into the low country of Louisiana from their operations center in San Antonio. As usual, Agent Redford whined about the inconvenience of their departure time, but the late afternoon call from Director Haggarty left no doubt as to the urgency of their mission. Two days before, a local informant reported the hasty departure of the old Indian fortuneteller and that she had asked directions to a town in Louisiana while buying gas. Doris Haggarty was beginning to understand who the Painted Man was, and where he could be found.
Redford swallowed in his sleep and began making tiny mewing noises as his lips puckered repeatedly against the soft fabric of the seat cover. Agnes glanced over at the sleeping little man and suddenly felt a twinge of tenderness for her partner of the past two years. She knew that life had been neither easy nor kind for him and she silently acknowledged an endearing admiration for the pluckiness and courage of the diminutive agent. She started to reach out and smooth the shaggy hair of his eyebrows, but abruptly checked herself and clenched the steering wheel. Looking again at the wet spot on the seat, she inhaled to give her voice all the volume she could.
“HEY!”
Agent Redford bounced on the seat like a furry beach ball as his sudden awakening propelled him against the shoulder harness, which in turn jerked him back into the newly damp recesses of upholstery.
“Wha ...WHAT?”
Agnes barely managed to suppress a smile, but returned immediately to her professional demeanor.
“Just because I said I would drive, doesn’t mean you can gnaw holes in the car.”
“Aw geeze, Agnes, I was only resting my eyes, that’s all.”
“Yeah, sure. And what disgusting little dream were you slobbering over this time? Not the one where you’re the official taster at the Betty Crocker Open, I hope. Or was it more like the one where you are shipwrecked with all the contestants of the Miss Nude Universe Pageant, again?”
“Actually, this time, I was the official taster AT the Miss Nude Universe Pageant, if you just gotta know. Wanta make something of it?”
“You really are disgusting. We’re on duty, you know.”
“Yeah, like you never take a little snooze, Miss Always-on-Duty. How about that stakeout last week where your snoring tipped off the bad guys a block away, huh? How about that?
“I do NOT snore!”
“Yeah, well, then there musta been somebody in the next room, cuttin’ up a car with a chainsaw. Wonder how I coulda missed THAT!”
“Just shut up and stay awake. It’s already nine o’clock, and we better get to Jeanerette soon and find that old gee
zer again, or Doris Haggarty will send someone to cut US up with a chainsaw.”
* * *
It was almost noon when they finally located the fairgrounds outside Jeanerette where the annual crawfish festival was in full swing. They pulled the government sedan into a parking place just vacated by an ancient rusting pickup with faded green fenders and a Navajo blanket seat cover. As they walked towards the main gate, they could hear sirens in the distance.
A crowd was gathering at one end of the midway, and people were running in every direction, as if they each were on some urgent errand. As a young boy who was possibly 19, but looked 14, ran by wearing the blue uniform and badge of a rent-a-cop, Agnes grabbed him by the arm and flashed her FACT identification card.
“Federal agents, Officer. Can you tell us what is going on?”
The boy hardly glanced at the offered ID, which was good, because like most everyone else, he had never heard of FACT and knew nothing of the secret agency. But the calm authority in her voice told him that Agnes was somehow in charge.
“Yes sir, er, ma’am, I mean. It’s Judge Williams; he’s been stabbed and I gotta go lead the ambulance in!”
He was gone before he finished the sentence and the two agents looked at one another. They had never heard of Judge Williams, but somehow they just knew this concerned the old clown and their mission. Agent Redford had to trot to keep up with the long strides of Agnes Maggart as she made for the fallen judge.
As they elbowed their way through the group of rubberneckers, Agnes could see a man sitting on the ground, leaning back against a concession trailer which advertised ‘Cajun D-Light Crawfish Tacos’. As strange as crawfish tacos seemed to her, it could hardly prepare her for the man himself. Although he was holding a roll of paper towels against a spreading blood stain on his left shoulder, his ears were what caught her immediate attention. Somewhat oversized, and standing out at 90 degree angles, they reminded her of twin handles on a head-shaped pottery vase, like those hawked in flea-market stalls.