The Clearing: A Novel

by Tim Gautreaux

  Byron folded his hands where he sat by the bed and put his darkened face on the spire of his fingers. “I know,” he said softly. “I’ve seen them.”

  She squeezed her hands together hard. “Where have you seen such people? In the war?”

  Byron slipped a finger into Walter’s hand, and the unconscious child sensed it and closed on it. “I’ve seen them in the hardware store,” he said. “I’ve seen them standing on the steps of a church.”

  She bit a thumb and leaned against the bare wall, then put down her hand. “I wish you’d never shot that man.” She was not looking at her husband when she said it, but she didn’t have to. He stood up and left the room.

  Byron wiggled the boy’s fingers. “He didn’t start it.”

  She narrowed her eyes at the door. “He seems sorry to have killed him, but not all that sorry.”

  “I guess he’s just glad to be alive,” the constable said dully. “That’s a good thing, to be glad to be alive.”

  The hands on the cheap Waterbury mantel clock, which had been May’s, dragged as if moving through glue. But that evening, when the temperature of the room dropped below ninety, the boy’s breathing evened out and the doctor shook his head. “Look at him. He’s trying to come back.” He palpated the swollen leg, which was hot to the touch, then changed the bandage and applied fresh salt meat. Lillian gave the boy a bottle with water in it, and for the first time he sucked.

  Randolph and Byron went out on the porch into the dusk, where ash from the furnaces floated like mosquitoes. The mill manager expected to begin to feel relief, but as his fright left him, it was replaced with anger. “By, do you feel thankful?”

  “Yes.” He looked across the compound toward his house, where a light came on in the front room. “Thankful as a gun barrel.”

  “If he was going to send someone, why not a cutthroat? Someone who’d just be done with it?” Randolph slapped the porch support. “A snake, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s to make us suffer. Nothing pays like suffering.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” Byron said, his face half in shadow. “But can’t you feel it working?”

  The marshal did not leave town through the Tiger Island station but walked over the wharf and caught the paddle-wheel ferry, riding out of sight in the steamy engine room where he visited the engineer, a middle-aged man he’d saved from drowning years before. On the other side of the broad river he made his way to the tiny station at Beewick and told the operator to flag the westbound local as it trundled across the bridge. In forty minutes he was at the parish seat in Moreau, again struggling through the heat, this time to the sheriff’s office.

  Octave LaBat was wearing a white starched shirt rolled up above his elbows. He pushed his cast-iron mustache out of his mouth with two swipes of a forefinger, and didn’t offer a chair to Merville, who was sweating and leaning against the door frame, holding his stained straw hat in his hand.

  “Can I close the door?” Merville looked behind him to where a surly deputy in a wrinkled uniform was sharpening a box of pencils, turning the crank of the sharpener slowly. After every few turns, he pulled out the pencil to inspect his progress.

  “Hell, no,” LaBat said. “It’s too damned hot.”

  “It’s kind of confidential, you know?”

  “I got no secrets.”

  “Alors, allons parler français.”

  The sheriff looked offended. “I got no use for that talk anymore. Tell me in English.”

  Merville put his hat on his head, kicked the door shut, and sat down. “We got to talk about Buzetti.”

  LaBat sat up and looked at his door, then back at Merville’s expression. “So talk.”

  The marshal knew that LaBat treated everyone like insects flying in his vision. “Look, I worked under you, I worked for the worm that was here before you, and I worked for Dorsieu in the old days, and I don’t enjoy being treated like a dog turd.”

  LaBat pointed. “I let you close the damn door.”

  “I know you don’t talk to nobody unless they bring you something. So I brought something that’s gonna make you look good. Even in New Orleans.”

  The sheriff swiveled his chair sideways. He lowered his voice. “You said you wanted to talk about Buzetti.”

  Merville crossed his corky legs at the ankles and told the sheriff about the whiskey pickup at Cypress Bend. “It’s enough to get them federal boys involved. You set an ambush and round ’em up, then the big courts take over and you don’t even have to jail them here. You’d be famous, yeah.”

  LaBat looked up at the tall ceiling and shook his head, then leaned forward out of his chair and stood up. He was all gut, a washpot on stilts, and his pleated pants hung like a skirt. He walked close to Merville’s chair. “I can’t hardly enjoy being famous if I’m worried about some honky-tonk dago burning my house down, or siccing a ghoul on one of my daughters.”

  “Mais, get your deputies out there the night before. By the time them bootleggers show up, they won’t know what hit ’em.”

  The sheriff thought a moment and sniffed at his mustache. “He hires these war veterans. They already killed more people than anybody can count. What you think they’ll do to my cane field deputies if the shooting starts?”

  “You got to get the jump on him.”

  LaBat spread his hands apart, as if showing the size of a fish. “Merville, all he does is sell booze and a few pieces of ass.”

  In the marshal’s mind a picture formed of the extra mouth sliced into Ada Bergeron’s neck, and he jerked his head to the side. He thought of how easy it would be to go home, lie in the bed, and the next morning get up, go to Breaux’s Café for a big breakfast, and sit around afterward, picking his dentures. He could get round and lazy, like his sheriff. He could stop playing cards with a solicitous priest and try to win money at Buzetti’s back-room games. Suddenly, he said, “He’s giving them Aldridges hell out at Nimbus.”

  LaBat walked back to his chair. “You want me to get the same kind of hell? For Yankees who gonna take their money and blow out of here in a few years? Let me tell you, that Buzetti is one mean son of a bitch. And the people he knows in Chicago will come down here and play marbles with your eyeballs.”

  Merville picked up his head and resettled his hat, as though he’d made a decision. “Okay. Then commission me for the parish.”

  The sheriff laughed. “Old man, you—”

  “I want a parish star.” He pointed at the desk. “Write me up some authority to make arrests at Cypress Bend. And I want ten other stars so I can deputize people myself.”

  LaBat looked out his window at the traffic in the dusty street. His voice gentled. “Don’t be a fool,” he said softly. “They probably know where you are right now.”

  “No they don’t. I made sure of that.”

  LaBat seemed not to hear. “They probably know what time you walk out of your office down on River Street every day. I’m telling you, you mess with them, they’ll break your legs and leave you in a ditch somewhere.” He looked at Merville over his shoulder. “If you lucky.”

  “Then that’s my business.”

  “But I ain’t letting you go out and get a bunch of people hurt just because you got the big head in your old age and want to be some kind of son-of-a-bitching hero.”

  “You don’t deputize me, I’ll get on the train and go down to New Orleans. I’ll tell the people at the Picayune how much you like whorehouses and slot machines.”

  LaBat turned from the window. “They won’t listen. You’re a little Cajun. What did they used to call your type, petites habitants?”

  “At least I’m not lint in Buzetti’s pocket.”

  The sheriff’s eyes flashed wide, and he stared at Merville hard, as if trying to read his face for the first time in his life.

  “Times are changing,” the old marshal told him, wagging a crooked finger. “I can pick up a telephone and let people know what you doin’. Things ain’t a
ll hid away no more. Maybe Buzetti is watching me, but somebody else sure as hell can watch you.”

  “You can climb on a stool and kiss my ass.”

  “Deputize me and write it up.”

  LaBat jerked one of the desk drawers open so hard that his lamp nearly tipped over. Merville tensed in the chair, wondering if he was about to pull out an enormous pistol. Instead, he picked up and threw a small canvas bag that rattled against the marshal’s chest as he caught it. It was a sack of nickel-plated badges. “Pin those on somebody you can live without.”

  “I want the authority wrote down.”

  The sheriff raised an eyebrow. “I’ll have Jeansomme type it up for you.”

  “No, you write it. And don’t tell nobody.”

  LaBat scowled and pulled out a pad. “You don’t trust my deputies?”

  Merville stood up and began stuffing the cheap stars into his coat pockets. “If you do, that’s your business.”

  The sheriff adjusted a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, bent over, and began writing slowly, a forearm holding the top of the paper. “This is a bad idea.”

  The marshal reached out for the document. “C’est pas que mauvais que des autres, non.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On Saturday morning Randolph watched the boy open his eyes, and in them he saw something wronged. The swelling was down, but the child was crying and pulling at his heel, and always in his gaze was the big question.

  Standing in Byron’s side yard, he listened to the soaring sound of the Victrola playing a song he had not heard, something slow and raspy.

  She’s taken the steamboat to Memphis,

  Leaving me and our two little girls.

  She told us that she couldn’t take this,

  And left us alone in the world.

  She pinned on her hat at the door

  And told us we’d see her no more

  So we’ve blown out the light, put an end to our night . . .

  The locomotive’s whistle roared out a crossing signal, and the rest of the song was lost. Again, Randolph mulled over why his brother listened to such music in the first place. If a man felt strong and comfortable in his life, he might find a little manufactured sadness to be a change of pace. But for someone steeped in profound melancholy to seek out such misery was beyond his understanding.

  He went in and found his brother sitting in the Morris chair, one hand gripping the mildewed wood as the Victrola ground out another dollar ballad, the other holding a whiskey glass raised in greeting.

  “That breakfast?”

  Byron studied his glass the way a chemist might. “Isn’t it funny, Rando, that I’m the one hired to arrest the folks who drink too much of this stuff?” He threw back his head and guffawed. “To bring sanity to the great city-state of Nimbus, Louisiana. A pillar of moderation, I am—and a bulwark against vengeance.”

  Randolph put a hand on his brother’s forearm. “I will never understand how Buzetti could hire someone—”

  “And I will never understand why I was given carte blanche by the United States government to put thirty-caliber slugs into patriotic German kids, when the law, or guilt, or fate won’t let me hunt down and send to hell a one-eyed snake-wielding baby-killer.”

  Randolph drew back and shuddered, suddenly aware of hell as a real possibility, for he had finally been touched by someone who might be deserving of it. “We have no witnesses and don’t know for sure who did it.”

  Byron raised his glass again. “There you’re wrong. The agent just sent down a boy with a note. That Cyclops bastard was spotted in Tiger Island again.” He got up and wound the instrument, sleeved a record, and drew another from the cabinet below the turntable. “I just wish he’d come into my little kingdom one more time.”

  The song began with the tinkle of a mandolin and a man singing through the roof of his mouth about a golden-haired girl riding the train to get a pardon for her father, who’d gone blind in prison. She’d lost her fare, but the conductor started to weep and said she could ride his car anytime for free. In spite of the fact that he’d never known a soft-hearted railroad conductor in his life, Randolph was touched by the song, and then ashamed of himself, for the lyrics made him happy not to be a blind prisoner or penniless child.

  “By, if this music makes you sad, why do you listen to it?”

  “Maybe I’m waiting for the words to change.”

  “What?”

  “I might be listening one day and the song will change for the better. The little golden-haired girl’s father will regain his sight. Maybe he’ll never have done something to get put in prison to begin with.”

  Randolph frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s true,” his brother said sadly, “the record can’t change. Just like me or you. We’re stamped to play out our song, and that’s it.” Off in the woods, the skidder whistle shrieked like a woman stepping on a rat, and Byron put his head down. “I know the songs are sappy lies, Rando. I guess I listen to them for the same reason a doctor gives you a little poison to make you well. You know—mercury for syphilis, that sort of thing.” He lifted his eyes and looked toward the Victrola. “But it’s still poison. Like those patriotic songs about war being sweet and glorious. Listening to those got many a volunteer killed, I’ll tell you. All that sentimentality, it just leads to oblivion.” He placed his empty glass on the floor.

  The sound of footsteps on the porch drew their attention to the screen, where a black child stood hooding his face with his hands, looking in. His feet were gray with dust and his short overalls were held up by one strap. “Mr. Julius say you gots a phone call.”

  Randolph stood. “Someone’s waiting on the line?”

  “He say to tell you it the direct line. To the outside.” The boy waved his arm in an arc, to indicate the outside, the world, and the motion conveyed how trapped they all were, how separated from everything by mud and trees.

  In the office he found the receiver lying on his desk. “Hello?” he yelled. Below him the band saw was cutting twelve-by-twelves.

  “Mr. Aldridge? This is Merville.”

  Randolph was annoyed that he’d had to trek across the mill yard, but the old lawman’s voice made him forget that he was sweating. “What can I do for you, Marshal?” He listened a long time without speaking, without feeling the floor vibrate, without hearing the safety valve roar its daily test. After a while he said only, “Yes, of course,” followed by, “Come on the train. It’s safer than the road.” He hung up, fought the door, which had swollen into its frame, and bounced down the steps, heading home to look in on the child. When he came into the room, his wife stood up and gave him a kiss in front of the doctor.

  “The swelling’s way down,” she said. “He actually sat up for a moment or two.” He looked at her kinked hair, smelled her blouse in which the starch had soured, and thought he had never admired her more. He walked over to the bed, where Byron’s wife was changing the pillowcase, said the child’s name, and Walter looked up, blinking and exhausted.

  “He’s worn out, the little bugger.” He took off his fedora and ran his finger round the sweatband, looking down at the child.

  Ella watched him replace the hat. “Going out again?”

  “Back to Byron’s. We have some preparations to make.”

  “I’ll walk over with you,” she said.

  He put his arms around his wife. “I know,” Lillian said. “It’s a relief.”

  “Have you moved that accordion?”

  She gave him a look. “It’s behind our bed. Why?”

  He found it and removed it from its case. It banged against his calf as he and Ella walked over, and on Byron’s porch he put his arms through the straps and walked in. His brother looked up, expressionless with drink.

  “Oh,” Ella said, reaching for his shoulder.

  Randolph caught her eye. “Can you make us some coffee?” He set the instrument’s stops.

  “Sure. Say, can you really play that thing?” She smi
led at the accordion, and Randolph struck a pose.

  “We’ll see.” He started into “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” missing a few notes. The reeds, like everything in camp, had begun to corrode, and dead bugs were caught under the reed flaps, but the instrument just sounded silly and jolly as it exhaled its mildewed breath into his face. “This is some real music,” he called over the notes. Taking a few steps forward, he stood in front of the Victrola, facing his brother, and squeezed harder, until Byron cautiously began patting his foot. He played “Moonlight Bay” all the way through, ending with a wheezy arpeggio that made Byron laugh, and when he began playing “My Indiana Home” both men started to sing; it was a song their mother had bribed them to learn as children. Ella brought in a pot of coffee and ironware mugs, sugar and fresh cream, and they sat and drank in the heat, and Byron—coming around from wherever he’d been—told Ella a story about their Polish music teacher, an earnest gentleman who drove to their father’s house in a lopsided buggy and taught them to count time by tapping on the backs of their hands with a pair of chopsticks while they played piano. Randolph stood and tried a polka, playing too slowly, with the left hand a flash behind the right, but it was still good enough, he told them, for a sawmill.

  After an hour and two pots of coffee, he pulled out of the accordion’s straps and bent over to take his brother’s face in his hands for a second, then told him about Merville’s phone call.

  By two o’clock that afternoon, they had made their plans. The mill manager had drawn a map at his brother’s desk, a series of pencil strikes that showed where the Cypress Bend switch left the main line, three miles west of Poachum. Merville would show up with his authority and deputize enough men to carry out the arrests.

  Byron examined a railroad timetable and noted that since there were no trains scheduled through Poachum until 9:30, they could take the mill locomotive out on the main line, stop before the curve at Cypress Bend switch, and hike down to get into position before daylight. He stared at the map, trying to focus, rubbing his eyes, then drawing his palms down the stubble on his face. “I don’t know. I remember good cover in there, but it’s a risk.”