by James Sallis
“So now you’re trying to do exactly that.”
“Do something for her, you mean. Yeah. I guess. What the hell else is there? If it’s money you’re thinking about, how I’m gonna pay you, don’t worry. I’ll get it. I always manage.”
I’d been looking through the contents of the envelope as he spoke. There wasn’t much, but it proved enough to wash this reluctant Sinbad up, days later, on the foreign shores of the Mississippi. Nigger Lew looking around, and no raft or Huck anywhere in sight.
“I don’t want your money,” I told him.
“What, then?”
“How about a sandwich and a beer or two, for a start. On me.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Griffin.”
“Okay, I’m flexible. You buy.”
Chapter Three
THE NOVEL’S TRUE PROTAGONIST, I TELL my students, is always time. With the years, it’s gotten somewhat easier to say things like that without immediately looking over my shoulder or down at the floor. And then, of course, you go on and talk about the flow of time in Proust, about Faulkner’s sequestrations of history, about the abrogation of time and history in Beckett.
So by commodious vicus (you all know the tune: feel free to sing along) we arrive now at a point one week before Chip Landrieu showed up like an orphan at my doorstep, this being three weeks before I stood watching someone repast on chips and cola from a trashcan in Mississippi.
Everybody with me so far?
Nine in the morning, then. I was sitting in that same white rocker with a bottle of Courvoisier on the floor alongside and an espresso cup in hand. I’d gone from beer to scotch to the strongest thing I had. I hadn’t been able to find anything like a proper glass but figured the cup would do.
Some people have aquariums, into which they stare for hours. Here in New Orleans, we have patios. And in those patios, likely as not, we have banana trees. Lots of banana trees if we’re not careful, because they grow almost while you watch. The parts you see are shoots off the real tree underground, and there’s not much to them: just an awful lot of water bound in honeycombs of thin tissue, topped by enormous leaves the wind shreds to green fringe. They’ll go down with a single hard swipe from a machete (looking in cross section much like celery stalks), but a week later there’ll be two more already shooting up, two or three feet high.
Squirrels here seem virtually to live off these trees. They hang upside down like bats (or, for that matter, like the fruit itself) and dine from bunches of ripe bananas; then when those are gone, smaller, green ones; and finally the bright red blooms. Littering the patio floor with a continuous fall of shredded banana, peel, leaf, bloom. The squirrels are scrawny gray ones with tattered, sketchy tails, not at all like the plume-tailed red squirrels of my Arkansas childhood.
Life’s not anything here if it’s not adaptable. And relentless. A year or so after I first came to New Orleans, I took a snapshot of the old camelback shotgun on Dryades where I was living with four or five other guys and a couple of families, and was surprised to see how green everything was. Not just trees and grass, but wooden stairs, the edges of beveled glass in doors and windows, cracks in painted walls, balcony railings, sidewalks where air conditioners dripped—as though a fine film of green had settled over the entire world. And I had gotten so used to it that I didn’t see it anymore, until that snapshot saw it again for me.
I was still sitting there sipping Courvoisier, thinking about life’s adaptability and musing further upon the fact that “seeing again” is finally what art’s all about, when my doorbell chirred. Almost before it stopped, there was a pounding at the door. And then before I could get to it, the door opened.
“Lock your fucking door, Lew,” Walsh said, closing it behind him. “Where the hell you think you live?”
I sat back down. “Don’t you have criminals you ought to be out there catching or something?”
“They’ll still be there. Always have been. So’s the goddamn paperwork. You got any coffee?”
“I can make you some.”
“Don’t bother. Probably had too much already.”
He went out to the kitchen for a Diet Coke, came back and sank into the wingback’s tired embrace, looking for a hard moment at the bottle on the floor, the cup in my hand.
“Goddamn it, Lew, what the fuck are you doing here, anyway? You oughta be at the church already. You got people up there waiting for you. You just sitting here getting drunk, that it? Business as usual?”
“Nope. He’s definitely not getting drunk, Don old friend. Not that he hasn’t tried. Valiantly.”
“So, what then? You’re just gonna pretend it didn’t happen? You gonna just blow off the whole thing, after all she meant to you? And after all the crap she put up with from you for all those years? Cause you didn’t give her shit when she was alive, man, you know? You know that, I know you do. And it’s damn little enough you can do now.”
He leaned back, breathed deeply. Held up his empty can in a mock salut. “I’m sorry. I coulda said that better, I guess. Most things I could, these days.”
“You scored the point, Don. It’s okay.”
He shook his head, looked out to the patio. “I don’t know, Lew. Ever since Josie and the girls left, everything looks different. I don’t know; I’m one hell of a guy to be giving advice. But sometimes it seems to me like you spend half your life doing everything you can to avoid things and the rest trying to make up for it. I have trouble understanding that. Always have.”
“So you got another point to make?”
“Well, I got this point that you better get up off your butt and haul that same sorry thing on over to Verne’s goddamn funeral. That’s the only other point I got. For now, anyway.”
“I’m not going, Don. I can’t.”
“Lew.” He sat back again, exhaled deeply. “Listen to me. I swear it, Lew: you’re going. If I have to get a squad down here and have ‘em help me drag you into that church, you’re going. You hear what I’m telling you?”
“Such devotion and friendship’s a rare thing.”
“Yeah, Lew, it is. It sure as hell is. But what the fuck would you know about that?”
I looked at him then and felt tears force their way out onto my face.
Stones in my passway, as Robert Johnson said. And my road seem dark as night.
Surely the funeral could not have been conducted in silence—surely (to whatever recondite end) I’ve invented this—but in memory that is how I always see it: several dozen people sitting straight as fences on the hardwood pews, not a sound anywhere, even traffic sounds from outside curiously hushed and transformed as though broadcast from somewhere else, from another world or time, and people moving, when at last they began to do so, as though that silence were substantial, something that resisted, something they had to push through, slowing and drawing out their movements. As though we all had slipped unaware into some timeless deep.
I remembered James Baldwin’s funeral a few years back. The solemn slow progress of cross and chasuble, and then, breaking over it, tearing that long European sentence apart, the sudden leap and skitter of African drums.
And that was just how the world came back, sudden, staccato, as Don and I stood on the steps outside the church.
“Where can I drop you, Lew?”
“I think I’ll walk back. Maybe swing by the school.”
“C’mon. It’s five, six miles at least.”
“I’ll be fine, Don.”
“No you won’t. You haven’t been fine more than ten minutes in all the years I’ve known you. But if you’re saying you’ll get through this, yeah, I guess you will. You always do. Take care, friend. Buy you dinner some night?”
“Sounds good. I’ll call you.”
“No you won’t, Lew. You’ll mean to, but you won’t do it. And then eventually I’ll just come on over there and pry you out of the house and haul you off somewhere. Just like always.”
He started away, shaking his head.
�
��Don …”
“Yeah?” Turning back. I had never noticed before this just how deeply the web of fine lines had sunk everywhere into his face, or that flesh now hung slack beneath chin and cheekbones. Even his eyes had a grayish cast to them.
“Thanks.”
“Hey, don’t embarrass me in front of Verne’s friends. I hate it when you get all teary-eyed, I ever tell you that?”
“I mean it.”
“Yeah. I know you do. I know that.”
“You hear much from Josie?”
“Not so long as the checks keep coming. Shit, I don’t mean that. She sends me pictures of the kids every few months. She’s real good about doing that.”
“She still loves you, Don.”
“Yeah. Well. Guess I better go shut down a few crack houses, huh? Got a few hours left in the day. You sure you don’t want a ride?”
“I’m sure.”
He climbed into the Regal, his own, that he’d been driving at least ten years, waved to me in the rearview and hauled it into a lumbering U back toward down-town. The department kept offering him new official cars and he kept telling them his was fine, he was used to it.
I walked down State to Freret and turned right. Kids on bicycles heading to and from classes at Tulane or Loyola shot past me. I hadn’t had a car since Vicky left. At first I’d planned to buy one, but I kept putting it off for one reason or another, and after a while it just stopped being important. I’d got used to walking and liked it, and if I had to get somewhere I couldn’t walk, well, cabs in New Orleans are plentiful as roaches.
I crossed Napoleon and, one street over, turned onto General Pershing. Blackjack Pershing, they called him. Most of his mounted troops were “buffalo soldiers.” Black men. They performed so well that Pershing suggested only blacks should be taken into the armed services. Except for officers, of course.
Squirrels ran along power lines with blue jays screaming and swooping about them. It was garbage pickup day for this part of town; emptied plastic bins sat inverted or on their sides before most houses. This stretch was pure New Orleans, a jumble of wrought iron, balconies, leaded glass, gingerbread, Corinthian columns. Grand old homes well preserved, decaying ones once every bit as grand and now carved into multiple dwellings, simple raised cottages and bungalows.
I walked along thinking hard about Verne, and about something I’d read in an art journal, unable to sleep, at two or three that morning. The lives we lead, it said, the art or artifacts we produce, all these are but scrims, one layer over countless other layers, some that reveal, some that conceal.
Twenty-six years ago I killed a man. I was playing detective in those days, and I was pretty crazy back then too, so I guess I must have been trying on some half-imagined role as avenging angel. Like other roles I’ve tried, before and since, it didn’t fit.
The thing is, I rarely think about it. Though from time to time, walking these shabby streets (especially at night, it seems), I’ll glance into a stranger’s face and something there, in his eye, takes me back. Dostoyevsky said that we’re all guilty of everything. And while I never could bring myself to accept Christian notions of sin and atonement, there’s definitely something to karma. The things we do pile up on us, weigh us down. Or hold us in place, at very least.
Chapter Four
I TRIED TO CALL BOUDLEAUX AFTER READING through the report, but his machine told me he was in Lafayette on business and would be away “indeterminately.” I could have tried motels up there, but he was almost certainly staying with family. And that spread it pretty thin, since one way or another he seemed to be related to just about everyone in Lafayette and Evangeline parishes.
Six months old now, the report was, like all his reports, thorough, concise and poorly spelled, typed on a Royal portable he’d had since college and to every appearance never once cleaned in all that time, e’s and o’s indistinguishable, a’s little blobs of ink atop frail curved spines. And valuable, like most documents, as much for what it did not say as for what it did.
The map is not the territory. The limits of your language are the limits of your world. Catchphrases from the fifties and from circa 1921.
Apparently Alouette, as Boudleaux discovered (hard upon stone-walling from Guidry and a pride of lawyers, and a call from that same judge, who casually inquired concerning the status of his PI license), had not been in her father’s home for some time.
Early spring of last year, one of her teachers, Mr. Sacher, homeroom and American history, began reporting her as nonattendant. Per procedure, he notified his supervisor and principal and attempted, on his own, to reach Alouette or her parents at the phone number listed in school files. Repeatedly, there was no answer at this number. Nor does any record of administrative response exist, though the principal is certain that he and Mr. Sacher “discussed the matter.”
Parents were listed in Alouette’s file as Horace and L. Guidry, and above Occupation (the forms were filled out by the students themselves) was entered Fuzzician. Sacher checked the phone book and found no home number (assuming it was unlisted) but in the yellow pages a Horace Guidry, Internist, with offices in the Touro area. When he called and finally talked his way past the receptionist and a nurse, Dr. Guidry listened a moment and told him he would have to get back to him. And when, later that afternoon, he did, it was by way of a conference call, their two phones looped into an intercom phone at the downtown offices of Bordelon, Bordelon and Schmidt.
Stating his concern, Sacher was informed by one of the lawyers that Alouette had upon her own volition and without notice, some weeks previously, departed her father’s board and care. Her present whereabouts were unknown, though efforts were still under way to locate her.
Had there been family difficulties? Sacher asked. Was Alouette under any unusual pressures?
You are her teacher, am I correct? a third voice inquired. And upon Sacher’s assent, went on: Then I’m afraid I see no compelling or appropriate reason for us to answer such an inquiry.
Boudleaux had found his way to Mr. Sacher within three hours of being engaged by Chip Landrieu. As it happened, he had a couple of cousins who worked in the mailroom at Bordelon, Bordelon and Schmidt. And so, not long after closing that same day, a Friday, Boudleaux knew what there was in B, B&S’s file concerning Alouette. Which wasn’t much.
Following a couple of practice runs, absences of two or three days the first time, then several weeks, from both of which she returned properly sorrowful and acquiescent, one Tuesday morning she headed off to school and to all appearances fell through a rabbit hole. Police were properly notified. Friends interviewed. Malls, clubs and other teenage water holes scouted. All to no avail.
The Guidrys had themselves engaged a local agency, South-East Investigations, to conduct a search for the girl. Clyde South and Michelle East were married, and Boudleaux knew them both. They were running into stone walls too.
To his report Boudleaux had appended a list of others he’d interviewed and (before being taken off the case) planned to.
On second or third reading, one of the attributions caught my eye. Counselor, it gave as occupation, then: Foucher Women’s Shelter. Where Verne had been working the last few years. The name above was Juan Garces.
I called to be sure he was in, then walked over to Tchoupitoulas and grabbed a White Fleet cab. An elderly woman behind a minuscule desk in the lobby (it had once been the foyer where residents had mailboxes, and I hope there weren’t too many of them) directed me upstairs.
He was sitting before a computer monitor and swiveled partway around, hands staying on the keys, when, in the absence of a door, I knocked at the frame. He swung back to the keyboard, hit Save and Exit, came all the way back and got up. We shook hands.
“Sorry,” he said. “But you have to do what they want you to. You must be Mr. Griffin.” He waved me into a chair.
Uneven stacks of folders and stapled papers all but covered the table space around keyboard and computer. To the right at shoulder level,
beside a narrow window, a plastic board was lined with yellow Post-It notes in a tiny blue script. Garces reached over and peeled off the top one, dropped it into the trashcan under the desk. The other wall was taken over, above, by a reproduction of Matisse’s Blue Frog/Yellow Nude (or is it the other way around? I can never remember) and, below, by a shelf of books running to Robert Pirsig, Genet, Laing and Szasz. I took note of Delany’s Dhalgren and The Motion of Light in Water.
Garces was fair-skinned with light blue eyes, and somehow gave the impression of being short and gangly at the same time. His dark hair was close-cropped. He wore a black T-shirt, pressed slacks, a linen sportcoat with the sleeves turned up a couple of times, cordovan loafers without socks. Fortyish.
“So what is it that I can help you with, Mr. Griffin? Something to do with a friend, you said on the phone.”
“LaVerne Landrieu.”
“Of course,” he said after a moment. “You’re Lewis: that Griffin. I didn’t connect, when you gave me your name earlier. I’m sorry, Mr. Griffin—”
“Lew.”
“Lew. It’s a loss to us all, you know. She made a difference in a lot of lives around here. But you must know that.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Oh. But whenever she spoke of you … You two haven’t been in touch, then?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Do you mind my asking if there was any particular reason for that?”
“What I keep telling myself is that I didn’t think her marriage needed ghosts like me showing up on the stairs.”
“Did you meet Chip Landrieu?”
“Afterwards, yes.”
He nodded. “Things so often happen in the wrong order in our lives.”
“How well did you know Verne, Mr. Garces?”
“Richard.”
I pointed inquiringly back toward the doorframe, the name plaque beside it.