Louisiana Breakdown

by Lucius Shepard

  10

  The Hour of Prayer

  AT THE REAR OF VIDA’S MOONLIGHT DINER, UNDER the shade of the overhang, facing a thicket of chokecherry, mixed in with shrimp plants and chicory bushes, was a rusting metal lawn chair that showed traces of its original turquoise paint. It was there that Vida sat after the lunch crowd had thinned, taking a break. Ordinarily she might have read a paperback or smoked a cigarette—she was down to a pack a week. But on this occasion she prayed to be free of Clifford Marsh. Vida was a non-discriminatory supplicant. She prayed to Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary; to Shango and Erzulie, the god and goddess who had inspirited her parents’ bodies on the night she was conceived. She prayed as well to Metabalon, a god introduced to her by a street preacher in New Orleans; to Kotay Zaizul, a shapeshifting goddess worshipped by members of a storefront church in Algiers; and to a dozen other deities whom she had brushed against during her sojourn in the Big Easy. But mostly she prayed to the Great Cloud of Being, which was still circling over the town and thus within certain hailing distance. In large part her prayer was wordless, a beam of hope and yearning. But every so often she would whisper the name Zedaial and address herself to the Form whose name it was.

  “Listen, you,” she said. “I know you listenin’, so you keep on tellin’ me what to do. I don’t understand what it is you need from me, but you make it plain, I’ll do it, me.”

  The pendulous pink blossoms of a shrimp plant trembled in a breeze; the blooms had been transformed into two-inch-long erect phalluses, quivering with arousal.

  “Can’t you do somethin’?” she went on. “Somethin’ll stop that man from tormentin’ me?”

  The wind picked up, stirring the crowns of the trees beyond the thicket, and she could have sworn she heard a windy word shaped from the limbs and leaves: “Eeeasst…”

  “East?” she said. “You want me to go east? Fine. I’ll go east. But that don’t help me now.”

  The tops of the thicket shivered, thousands of spiky leaves changing into wicked-looking dark green men with pointy hats. In their eyes were the even tinier shapes of coiled serpents, and in the eyes of the serpents were shapes too small for her to distinguish. She understood the Form was reminding her of the multiplicity of forms, the infinite levels. Marsh only controlled one level, and she needed to look past it, to find a place where she could rest her eyes and be untroubled. For a moment it seemed to help. The leafy faces of the men dissolved into images of the Virgin and she whispered a Hail Mary in gratitude.

  But Marsh, as always, outfoxed her.

  From the faint clatter in the kitchen, the squeak and whir of the ventilator fan, the chatter of Anson’s radio tuned to an all-talk station, from those and a multitude of lesser sounds, Marsh cooked up a conversation. Many voices. A babble like that of a crowded party. Probably one of his special afternoons taking place that very moment. She could hear each voice particularly, and they were all scandalizing her. That Vida, said a man, she ain’t nothin’ but two hips and a hole. Then a refined male voice, sandy and soft, like a whisper with the volume turned high, Marsh’s voice…it said, Don’t be getting on Vida. She runs a lot deeper than that. Oh, yeah, another man said. She’s deep all right. She’s so deep, I hit her G-spot once and my dick come back speaking Chinese. That, too, drew a laugh, followed by a round of similar jokes. But Marsh’s voice compelled the others to silence. Poor Vida, he said. Sitting there all alone. The Midsummer Queen on her rusty throne. The sweetest cooze in Louisianne going dried up and dismal. Your body’s born to bestow blessing and your mind’s been schooled to passion. You can’t live with just one bullfrog humped on your lily pad, sweet Vida. You’re fooling yourself to think you can fly away and be a nice little wife to this loser car thief you’ve taken up with. There’s too much juice in you. You’ve got to let loose. You…

  “He’s not a car thief!” she said. “He’s the gift of Zedaial. He’s…”

  Same difference, Marsh said. Whatever he is, he’s not enough for you. Come back to us. Vida. We’ll love you ’til you die…

  “Why you want me so bad?” she shouted. “What is it? Tell me!”

  But he never would. And maybe, she thought, he didn’t know himself. Maybe his masters were using them both for their own purposes.

  There are many reasons, Vida, he said. Some I can see and some I can’t. The web we’re woven into has so many strands, we can’t know them all. If I picked only one, you’d misunderstand me.

  “Liar!” she said. “You lie…you always lie!”

  Listen to me, he said, and a host of sibilant voices at his back chorused, Listen…

  She sat up straight, conditioned to obey him.

  You’re crumbling, he said. Breaking down. Grail is breaking down. They think you can save them, they think you can ground the charge that’s killing them. The charge their daddies loosed when they made their bargain with the Good Gray Man. Maybe you can save them for a while. But the end is coming. That little island of insanity’s going to be swallowed up again by the chaos that spawned it. You want to be part of that? You will be if you stay. You know what happens to the Midsummer Queen…

  “I don’t know! You keep sayin’ I do, but I don’t know!”

  It’s not my place to tell you, but the answer’s right in front of your face…

  One of the chokecherry bushes had taken on the shape of a leafy vulva, its lips parted to reveal a turbulent dark depth. Within that depth Vida saw herself…yet not herself. Misshapen, somehow. She couldn’t quite make the figure out, but nonetheless it terrified her. The way it stumbled onward, clumsy and aimless.

  Last chance, Vida…

  “Stop!” she cried. “Please…Jesus! Stop!”

  His voice grew fainter, more wind than word, and she had to fill in the gaps where the voice wisped out.

  I can’t ho-o-o-ld out against hiiiiim, Viiiida. He’s too straw-aw-awng. Laaaaaast chaaaaaaaaance…

  She bent her head, pressed the heels of her hands to her ears, stoppering them against Marsh’s voice, and prayed harder than ever to all the gods previously cited and a few more she’d forgotten the first time. She couldn’t feel her body and wondered if her hair was on fire, tresses flying up in the puffs of wind generated by their own burning. Her eyes grew cold as if covered with silver coins. Her lips, she thought, were bleeding. Sliced by the desperately hissed words “please” and “Jesus.”

  A hand fell to her shoulder and she stiffened.

  Vida heard a voice call her name.

  She glanced up and saw Anson, blotting his sweaty brow with the back of his arm. His white T-shirt stained with beef blood.

  “Girl, you okay?” he asked.

  “Oh no, Anson,” she said. “I ain’t okay.” She brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes, and the gesture seemed to weaken her, to take the last of her good energy. “What’s wrong?”

  “We gettin’ us a crowd,” he told her. “Buncha folks up from Shreveport for St. John’s Eve. Must be a shortage of food over there in Shreveport. They orderin’ everything on the damn menu. I can’t handle it my own self.”

  “God!” Vida put her head down again.

  “I know you poorly, but I can’t handle it.”

  She struggled to her feet, as slow and ungainly as the figure in the vision that might have been herself. Feeling too heavy to live.

  Anson paused in the doorway and looked back at her. “You comin’, girl?”

  “Just ease your egg bag. I’ll be along directly,” Vida said.

  11

  The Moment of Truth

  THE PATH TO WHICH ARLISE HAD DIRECTED MUSTAINE was choked with wild indigo and ferns, and led him into a deep green shade. Slants of pale dust-hung light touched the tops of the bushes. Overhead, grackles and jays racketed in the oak crowns; crickets chirred, and frogs loosed a medley of throaty bubbling noises that taken altogether had the sound of an electronically simulated drizzle. The air was thick with the smells of dampness and rot. Whenever Mustaine pushed aside a branch, his arm wa
s drenched with dew from the leaves. After a few minutes he caught sight of a shanty on a point of land extending out into the black water of a cypress swamp, the great trees standing forth like the ruined pillars of a fallen palace whose roof once had spanned miles. Gray clouds were moving in from the Gulf and by the time Mustaine had picked his way through the thickets guarding the point, an overcast had sealed off the sky and wind was driving ripples across the water, swaying the beards of moss on the cypress boughs. Drops of rain produced numb circles on his skin. The temperature was dropping rapidly.

  The shanty had the look of a structure that had been dropped from a low height and as a result was collapsing inward, its gray weathered planks warped to form walls with shallow concavities, and its tarpaper roof sagging. The windows were covered by sheets of soggy cardboard and the three steps that led up to the door were bowed and cracked. The door hung one-hinged. Yet there was an air of habitation about the place. Mustaine called out to whoever might be within. The rain fell harder, cold and drenching. He called out again and when he received no reply, he went cautiously up the steps and pushed in through the door. A reeking darkness rolled over him, a sickly sweet odor of human decay. In the dim light he saw a bed—a nest, really—constructed of heaped moldering blankets and grimy pillows and various other cloth relics that might have been sheets or garments. A wood stove dominated the rear wall and opposite the bed stood a poorly carpentered table and chair. Resting on the table were several newspapers, mildewed paperbacks, and a scrapbook with a red binding. Dishes and pots were stacked on the stove, and the floor was carpeted with scraps of cellophane, candy wrappers, rags, cardboard, and such.

  The rain intensified, seething on the tarpaper roof, big drops splattering off the steps. Mustaine sat gingerly in the chair, wary of its creaking. He stared out at the cypresses, curtained now by the rain, and at the repetitive perspectives they offered of more trees, more black water, wondering who would choose to live in such a dismal place. Before long he turned his attention to the table, picked up a paperback. It was entitled Moon Dreams: An Astrological Guide to the World of Your Dreams. All the paperbacks, he discovered, dealt with the subject of dreams and their interpretation. He recalled Vida’s books and thought it odd, the similarity between the two collections. The scrapbook was a record of newsworthy events in the life of one Madeleine LeCleuse, all the clippings bearing the banner of the Grail Seeker. On the first page was a birth notice and an accompanying photograph showing the infant Madeleine with proud parents John and Nora. Next was an article about a ballet class winning some regional competition—Madeleine had earned an individual award. He flipped past several pages, then stopped, his eye drawn by a headline:

  MADELEINE LECLEUSE CHOSEN

  MIDSUMMER QUEEN

  The dateline of the article was forty years previously. To the day. A photograph showed a pretty prepubescent girl, mature for her age, dressed like a princess in a white gown with a bell skirt and lots of chiffon. On her head, nestled among black curls, was a tiara, and cradled in her left arm was the parody of a bouquet, gathered weeds and withered flowers. A clublike length of cypress root served as her scepter.

  This second similarity between Madeleine and Vida unnerved Mustaine. He skimmed the rest of the pages. For twenty years after being selected Midsummer Queen, Madeleine had lived an ordinary, moderately successful life. Marriage, but no children. A real-estate sales award. Church activities. The death of her husband in a boating accident. Fund-raising for a Democratic congressional candidate. Elected to the parish board. Then, twenty years after she had been anointed Midsummer Queen, she presented the bouquet and tiara to her successor, Vida Dumars. In the photograph, Vida’s hair fell to her butt and her figure was as straight as a stick; but Mustaine could see the woman in the child. Madeleine, who had grown into a beautiful woman, looked aggrieved.

  There were no further clippings, only a picture drawn in gray crayon loose between the next two pages, depicting a featureless anthropomorphic figure.

  A gray shadow.

  The symmetries, implied and overt, between the two women’s lives provoked Mustaine to imagine that they might also share a symmetry of fate, but he dismissed this as fantasy. He did not even know whether the occupant of the cabin was Madeleine herself or a relative…perhaps an old friend. But Arlise said that he would find something to explain what was happening to Vida.

  What else could it be?

  The rain stopped abruptly, but the overcast held. Mustaine reread several of the clippings, but could glean no more pertinent information. A mist was forming close above the water, gradually creating a carpeting like a lumpy field of dirty snow from which the bleached trunks of the cypresses appeared to sprout. All the sounds of the place had subsided. He considered going back to town, but thought there must be something else in the cabin that would shed light on the situation. He poked at the bed, examined the cans on the shelves beside the stove, kicked the litter around. Giving up on a search, he turned yet again to the scrapbook, studying the clippings he had skipped.

  The light dimmed. Dimmed as suddenly as the rain had stopped. Startled, Mustaine looked to the door. A ragged figure stood silhouetted on the top step. He jumped to his feet, expecting an angry confrontation, but the figure neither spoke nor gestured, and after a moment, as if accustomed to such invasions of privacy, she shuffled into the cabin and removed a can of soup from inside her shapeless robe and set it on a shelf. She was heavier by far than the images of Madeleine he had seen in the clippings. Her gray hair stuck out like jackstraws, matted about her shoulders; her sagging face, what he could see of it, was seamed and ravaged, betraying no sign of the woman she had been. It seemed the room was darker for her presence, that she had dragged in a pall of fresh shadow.

  “Madeleine LeCleuse?” he said.

  She crossed to the bed and collapsed upon it with a sigh. “I coulda swore you was him for a second,” she said. “Best you run along. He be finishin’ up with me tonight, him.”

  Her voice, a dry whisper, stirred a rustling from a darkened corner, as if she and her home were in decaying resonance with one another.

  “I’m a friend of Vida Dumars,” Mustaine said.

  “That poor thing. She ain’t nothin’ but ice cream for the Devil.” She made a whimpering noise that, after it kept up for several seconds, he recognized to be humming.

  “Why’s she a poor thing?”

  She shifted about on the nest of blankets. “What you talking at me for, boy? I want to eat my soup and pray.”

  He decided to try a different tack. “Who you pray to?”

  She snuffled, wiped her nose on her collar; her eyes glinted behind the hatchings of hair. “You a Christian boy? You want to convert me?” She grunted. “You too damn late for that.”

  “I just want to know.”

  Something—a bird, perhaps—shrieked from out in the swamp. Mustaine repeated his question.

  “I be prayin’ to most everything these days. Le Gros Bon Ange, He everywhere, Him.” She spat out a noise that he took for a laugh. “Le Gris Bon Ange…Him, too.”

  He started to ask another question, but she was muttering to herself, speaking in a language composed of harsh glottals and chuckling half-swallowed vowels. For a scrap of time he felt her presence intensely, as a man trapped beneath a massive stone would feel—dazed, distant from pain, but sensing a terrible pressure close at hand. Fear crawled inside him. Not the this-shit-isn’t-happening kind he’d experienced when the cop had hassled him, but a wormy, gut-coiling fear of something on the very edge of his perceptions, something dogs might see but he could not. He tried another question: “What’s going to happen to Vida Dumars?”

  The pace of labored, glutinous breathing increased. “Oh, he gon’ come to her tryin’ to get his body born. He gon’ come to her every night, him.”

  “You mean Marsh? That who you talking about?”

  “That his name…Marsh?” she asked. “You know him, too?”

  “I’ve hear
d about him.”

  “Marsh be a good name for that one.” More humming, then she said, “He gon’ come extra hard to Vida.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She gave a sigh that was almost a moan. “You must not know him, boy. Else you never be askin’ that. Now leave me be. I need to do my prayin’ ’fore he comes.”

  After that she spoke no more, though Mustaine continued to question her a while longer. The mist was becoming a problem, thick and swirling, sending tendrils through the shanty door, and finally, fearful that he might lose his way on the path, he left Madeleine to her muttering, her soup, her prayers, and started back toward the road. Except for the sounds of water dripping, the place was silent; but his footsteps seemed abnormally loud as he squashed matted leaves and sodden twigs into the mucky ground. He felt a little out of breath, as if the air—polluted by the mist—was not quite right; he could barely see a yard in any direction. Branches overhanging the path materialized from the gray to pluck wetly at his sleeves and chest. But as he churned up an incline, about a quarter mile from where he’d left Vida’s pickup, an aperture formed in the mist to his right and he thought he saw a figure standing twenty-five or thirty feet from the path. Large and roughly human in shape. Featureless. It could have been a shadow, one a slightly darker gray than its surround.

  In the instant before the aperture closed, Mustaine had the impression he was being watched, that the figure was observing him, taking specific notice. The notion that he might be known to this specter overrode his natural tendency toward disbelief, nourishing the germ of fear that had infected him at the shanty. He pressed faster through the brush, restrained from running by his lack of familiarity with the terrain, and when he caught sight of breaks between the trees, the pale light of uncanopied air and the dark bulk of the pickup looming on the shoulder, then he did run, digging for the highway, his heart seeming to ride higher and hotter in his chest. He threw himself into the passenger side, locked both doors and sat with his head down on the steering wheel until his pulse slowed and his breath had steamed the windows.