“For reasons that escape me now, but I’m pretty sure had something to do with a young tart named Milly, I made it out to Pennsylvania the moment I was old enough to hit the road on my own,” the old man said.
“The trumpet got hocked, and I’ve grieved about that ever since—but I’d switched over to the guitar when my aunts died, because I didn’t have regular access to a piano anymore. I played in bars and on street corners. Milly ran off with a carnival showman who passed through. I took to drinking and moping—I think I slept in a kindling box one summer. But there was work to be had around those parts then, if you didn’t mind the thought of getting killed for it. When I got too skinny for my clothes I decided I better make some money. I got a job in the mines and started singing folk songs at worker’s rallies . . . got involved in the labor movement, became a socialist and then a communist . . . got my head kicked in a few times. Those affiliations and my eyesight, which wasn’t so good even back then, kept me out of the War—and in some ways I feel cheated about that—that might’ve been the last war fought in good conscience.
“But it didn’t take me long to work out that singing about coal mines was a lot better than working in ‘em. You start to hear timbers creaking and get a whiff of tunnel gas in your sleep—wake up in a cold sweat. So I left the pits and began a life as a folk singer. Didn’t turn out half-bad at first. I lived in the Village in New York. Played with Pete Seeger and Josh White. I wanted to meet Woody Guthrie, but he’d been institutionalized by then. Got married—had two kids.
“Then the communist connections got me for real, just when things were looking good. Ruined my career, and I crawled into a bottle for a decade and lost my family. I dropped my bundle, son. Shameful. Spent ten blank years as a bum in a drunk tank or in a psych ward. Ten years I could’ve been making music. I’m afraid it’s the music I missed the most. I was never much good as a father.”
Casper somehow doubted that. “What happened to your family,” he asked.
“No idea about my wife. She left us all. My daughter I fear went the same way as young Missy. Lost all contact ages ago. My son went the other way and became a proud, cruel version of my father—just without the love of music or anything other than himself. Still, I have to admit he at least tracked me down. He was the one who got me into that fishbowl where you found me. I’d bought a place in Ardmore years ago when I had some money—a bolt hole. Played there once in a band and liked the town—although it’s a real good place for not ever mentioning Karl Marx. When things fell apart, I went back and taught music there for years—never played again professionally. Trouble was I outlived two more wives and all my friends. Then I fell for this mail sting—some con artists. Lost my house, started mumbling and kite flying and my son put me in the home. Home! The money went faster than the time though. Then he had a heart attack at his big desk. I think they’d have put me out on the street if that twister and you hadn’t happened by.”
“What twister?” Casper asked.
“You’re learning, son,” the old man winked through his cataracts.
Just then Merrit blundered out of the trailer huffing and ribbiting as if the place was on fire. “Scweehd gunna harvit! Schwoon! Aswayby! Thawayby!”
22
If I Don’t Come Back
They were finally made to understand that Angelikes’s contractions had started. Ananda had dispatched Merrit to borrow Delanor Berube’s fast power boat (which had been impounded in a drug raid and bought by the crawfisherman at auction with money he’d made drug smuggling). Casper found the young girl cursing, “Feels like I gotta shit a basketball!”
Ananda wheeled Mrs. Nedd over to talk to the boar head. Hoptree they left in the care of Odessa. Then Merrit churned the water into froth as live oak, boscoyo and ibis flew past—so fast none of them noticed the other boat that had slipped out from behind Woodpecker Island just in time to see them leaving the dock. A familiar boat, but with a stranger on board. A strange looking stranger at that.
Angelike was breathing erratically, in a lot of pain. Casper and Ananda were busy trying to reassure her—so they didn’t see the old moss-slick crawdadder with a Johnson 20 bolted on the back, which Luiz Ramirez kept tied up beside his mud dauber shack. Naturally they didn’t see the man in it—who’d just scared the bejesus out of a sodden Link Duquette—and who before that had left Luiz Ramirez lying in a pile of yellow-tailed shad with a large knot on his head. But he saw them. Their wake was easy to trace and there were only so many channels the bigger craft could navigate. Enrique squeezed his right hand white on the throttle—his mind a jungle.
Emily Dickinson’s clinic was an overgrown motel built back in 1969 for oil and gas workers of the Evolution Oil Company. The highlight was the ruin of a four-lane bowling alley now festooned with lewd orchids. An entire wing had been smothered in kudzu and wild grape. But the rooms where Ananda led Angelike, with the help of Casper, were as clean and white as Emily Dickinson could make them, with a table laid out in waiting, with an extension for stirrups.
Dish-faced, carob-skinned and petite, the former Crescent City R.N. had been born on the bayou and was unstintingly pragmatic, whether examining a prostate, irrigating a wound or landing a largemouth bass. Ananda was relieved to find her in residence, as emergencies often called her away.
Hooker Barr, who’d lost four fingers to a drill rig and had turned to drinking a kind of moonshine you could burn in a Coleman stove, sat waiting to be tested for diabetes, while Altana Celine paced, waiting for a boil on her butt the size of a crab shell to be lanced. Emily Dickinson took one look at Angelike and put her two other patients on hold. “Good Lord, girl—you cain’t hide that! Come on in here where I can lookatchya.”
Angelike seemed calmed by the quick hands of the light skinned black woman, who began easing her out of her clothes, and mopping her face. “You the father?” she asked Casper, who was at a loss for words. It didn’t matter. Emily Dickinson was one of those women who believed that when it comes to giving birth, men only get in the way—and she scooted him out the door so she could deal with the situation in the sacred company of her own sex.
Father? He felt like a child again. This may have been an eerily similar version of his own arrival into the world. Young desperate mother . . . fear . . .
Casper waited outside with Merrit (who thankfully had gone quiet), catching occasional yeaks of pain from Angie and remonstrances from Ananda and Emily Dickinson to keep breathing and push, push! The sky was metallic, the wind rising, carrying the distinctive smell of southern Louisiana where it’s never certain where the Gulf ends and the so-called land begins.
Enrique pulled in above the motel, hidden by trees, hallucinating a slithering mass of liquid green reptiles between him and his money. He shoved the barrel of the Luger down his pants and felt his sweaty little penis begin to stiffen. An egret creaked from a branch into the chalk air.
Casper heard a terrible cry from Angelike—then a series of distressed exclamations from Ananda—followed by one from Emily Dickinson. She emerged wearing latex gloves coated with blood, hollering for her son Myron, who banged out of the manager’s residence like a muscular 13 year-old version of Cameron Blanchard’s son Goodricke. Despite his thick glasses, he gave the impression of being a good shot with a .410. His mother gave him some instructions Casper couldn’t hear and the boy ran back to the office.
“Gawdd! Gimme some fuckin’ druggs!” the young mother screamed.
There was more yelling. Angelike yowled in agony and the door was shut again. Then opened. The sense of panic seemed to grow. Casper’s heart pounded. Emily Dickinson made a phone call to the hospital in Lafayette. Something had gone wrong. Casper heard Angelike crying. He was paralyzed, listening to a scared young girl trying to give birth to a baby that he suspected was already dead.
“It’s a boy!” he heard Ananda say—but there was nothing from Emily Dickinson—and then muffled panting from the distressed mother. Casper had a bad feeling. Angelike called out. He could tell Anan
da was holding her down, shushing her.
“Wanna see ma baby!” she grunted. “Wanna see my son!”
“Quiet, honey. You gotta rest easy,” Casper heard Emily Dickinson say.
A moment later she emerged with a look on her face he hoped to never see again. It was there for just an eye blink—a radiance of such sorrow and compassion. She handed him a bundle, her gloved hands glistening with gore. Angelike was hemorrhaging. The baby was dead. She wasn’t to know just yet.
Merrit had gone off by the boat. Casper appreciated that. He couldn’t have opened the thin sopping blanket with anyone else looking on. Even so it was almost a minute before he had the courage to look—the baby some Lonely Room part of himself wished had been his—and what also seemed to be a broken mirror reflection of his own life.
But it wasn’t. He was born whiter than white—alive. This child was black, and stillborn. A tiny face like an alien Buddha. The bump. He thought back to Suzanne’s bizarre doll in Indianapolis and stowed the bundle out of sight, trying to wipe his hands.
The door opened again and Emily Dickinson came out and called for Myron. A moment later, Ananda and Myron emerged carrying Angelike on a stretcher. The girl was wrapped up like a mummy, just her head poking out. She looked so small and tired—worse than tired.
“Lissen . . . I—I give ‘im a name,” she choked. “Casper.”
“That’s a good name,” Casper said, trying hard to smile, wondering what she suspected, what she knew.
“Could—could he have—yore lass name—too?” she whispered, her breath like dead leaves. “If—if I doan come back—?”
“You’ll come back.”
“You lie. You’ll look—take care of ‘im?”
“He’ll be fine here until you come back.”
“But you’ll look after ‘im?” she choked.
“Yes,” Casper answered. “You have faith, all right?”
“You look after ‘im . . . an’ you—you give ‘em that belt I got—that snakeskin belt—you—that belt . . . ”
“Yes,” Casper said.
“Remember me.”
Emily Dickinson had called on the bayou telegraph to get Odessa’s son to fly out in a pontoon helicopter to take Angelike into the hospital in Lafayette. Emily Dickinson knew when to fold and cut her losses. The girl had major complications—but there was still a chance seeing that she was young and tough. Just a chance. “But she needs the hope of that chile,” Emily Dickinson warned Casper as the copter appeared. “And I doan want you to worry ‘bout the money. I got a favor to call in in a big pinch—and this is a pinch.”
Casper tried to nod as an emotional Ananda patted his hand. “Personne sait ce que demain amène, pas meme demain lui-même.” He didn’t understand what she said, but he knew what she meant.
The helicopter’s rotary drone stirred the birds and trees—and churned up the water, attracting the attention of something big that had been swimming in the bayou close by. It solved the problem of Enrique Cruz—who didn’t end up killing Angelike and regaining his money.
Resigning any hope of his diabetes test that day, Hooker Barr and the 300 pound Seminole woman he’d met when he was gatoring in Ft. Myers set off to lay some new trap lines, just as the matador was sneaking around the back of the old motel to break into the clinic and accost poor Angelike. The sight of the hefty Indian and the man with the mangled hand put Enrique in mind to steal back to where he’d hidden Luiz’s boat and wait until they were gone. Then, just as he was cursing himself purple, the helicopter came and he had no choice but to slip into the water to hide until they’d taken off.
Over the whizzing thud of the blades he didn’t hear the swoosh in the slow stream, and was never seen again. Perhaps the Murker, not having been satisfied with the meal of the chicken executive, needed to feed once more. Perhaps something else happened. But Enrique Cruz disappeared from Louisiana without anyone ever knowing he was there or why (for his Caddy was boosted later that day by a couple of kids from St. Martinville), leaving behind only the unsolved attack on Luiz. So it often happens in life. Sometimes great calamities are averted without us even knowing they were a threat—our attention always focused on the apparent crisis at hand, innocents on the periphery taking a blow meant for us.
23
Making Your Way To The Moment
Emily Dickinson shouted to her son over the copter, “Myron! You keep an eye on things.” To Casper she just glanced, as she stepped into the helicopter with Angelike. He wondered if he’d ever see the girl again. Didn’t she have doubts why the baby had been left behind? Didn’t she know? Of course she did. She’d all but said so. You can’t fool people really. She was allowing herself to be taken and hoped for. As young and alone as she might feel, she was being looked after as best as could be arranged—and she knew it. She knew they were counting on her to fight for her life. They were all in her care, in truth.
It was several minutes after the helicopter had taken off before the bayou recovered—as if a miniature hurricane had come and gone. When the air grew still again he smelled the stormy ozone once more—and stared down at the bundle he’d hidden in what was a kind of bulrushes. He knew the job had to be done fast or he wouldn’t be able to do it. Another body.
Angelike had mentioned a belt—a snakeskin belt, which he found among the things Ananda had brought. He wanted to bury the child with something of hers and there wasn’t much to choose from. He took a pack of Black Jack gum and the little Troll Doll off the key ring. He hadn’t seen the belt before. Little did he know what was inside. He didn’t even think to look for the amount of money that she thought it contained—let alone the total. It was a Medicine thing to him—something important to her.
And so it often is, too—that just like the horrors that skirt our path without our knowing . . . there are many blessings that never find us . . . good news we don’t hear because of more pressing things on our minds. Perhaps the real blessing is that we aren’t aware of how much life, for both great advantage and dark consequence, passes within a hot breath without us suspecting.
He took the belt, the gum and the doll, borrowed one of Emily Dickinson’s boats and a shovel, and made for Woodpecker Island once again. The sky looked as thin as paper, sunless and without time. He beached the boat among the mangroves where the crawfish burrow, tiny bubbles rising in the brown water, and made his way with his tragic cargo to where they’d laid Hermione. The cypress cross and the cement frog stood as if they’d been there for a while. Only the different shadings of the sandy soil gave a clue as to the freshness of the grave. He began to dig.
He’d never had the chance to say goodbye to Poppy and Rose—only to Berina and Joe. At least he’d buried Joe himself.
There’s something therapeutic about digging a grave. He could feel his hands begin to blister a little. Hard work—right down in the mud and the sand with the bugs and the roots. Down to earth. That expression takes on a new meaning when you’re digging a grave for a child who never saw the light of day.
Made him think of his villains—and all his nights of healing. Hapless Rick James, and the boy and the driver back in Indianapolis—how easily he’d killed them. Yes, it had been self-defense. Just as it had been mercy to put Joe Meadow out of his misery, with no doctor within miles. But it had still been killing. It’s never easy to dig a grave. Poor Summer—like a dog in the street.
He put his back into it and when the damp hole was deep enough, he laid the little body in, wrapped in what passed for swaddling clothes—the Black Jack, the doll and the snakeskin belt, which to him was filled with a magical power, because she’d asked for it. Then he did weep . . . for all the people he’d met—all the travelers, the hopers and the nohopers. For Poppy and Rose, Berina and Summer, for Hogerty and Joe, Dev Neon and Hercules, Rip and Daphne, Sharee and Utensil, Walt, Hoss . . . Betsy, Linda—Suzanne. For all those he’d hurt and those he’d tried to help—for those who’d helped him. And most especially for the too-young mother who’d . .
. .
He started shoveling the earth back into the hole, remembering back to what Angelike had seemed like when he first met her. So proud, even though destitute. The calamities and inconveniences he’d been afraid she was going to cause. Like a barrel bomb in a toilet bowl. Now he missed that pocket rocket bit of jailbait more than he could say. She’d turned out to be a Rinder true.
He finished filling in the grave and went back to the motel covered in vines. Emily Dickinson had yet to return. Myron offered to make him a shrimp sandwich, which he gratefully accepted. Then the boy showed him to one of the motel rooms. Merrit pulled up to the dock later with his knapsack that had been left at Roy’s—along with Hoptree. Casper went out to talk to his silver-haired comrade at the edge of the water.
“She’ll do fine,” the old man gruffly insisted. “That little girl’s as rough as bags and twice as tough. She’ll pull through.”
“The baby didn’t,” Casper said.
“I heard,” Hoptree answered. “She’d had a bit of a bleed before. Didn’t want anyone to know, I guess. Child lived hard.”
“She named it—him—after me.”
“Onto a better life!” the oldster sighed.
“You getting churchy now?”
“Odessa heppin’ me to see the light,” Hoptree smiled. “She makes the best banana marshmallow pudding I’ve ever et!”
“She’s sweet on you,” Casper said.
“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’,” Hoptree grinned—and Casper realized that if he’d had his eyes closed, he would’ve thought the silver fox was black. Whether it was something he’d learned through his music or a life of beginnings, suffering and being saved—Hoptree had a knack for mingling with whatever environment he found himself in. Even a tornado.
The old man stared out over the breeze-wrinkled water. “So, what do you think ‘bout this Dickinson gal—the nurse?”
“She’s good,” Casper affirmed. “Just was more wrong than she could handle. I should’ve made Angie go see a doctor the moment I met her.”
Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption Page 23