Cajun Waltz
Page 11
Delly gathered her wits. Clearly he didn’t recognize her behind her curly red hair, sunglasses, and extra pounds. When he asked her to let him and his friend make amends for their ill manners by buying her a drink, curiosity trumped fear and she said okay. She gave her name as Ethel, after Lucy’s sidekick. We’re Richard and Alvin, they said.
R.J.’s eyes were electric blue. It was a detail she’d worked hard to forget. The image of his downturned mouth likewise returned despite the beard now concealing it. Sitting at the table across from him, she forced herself to look square at his face. He’d hit her that night to shut her up, a rap on the temple that had seemed to burst her eardrum like a jabbed stick. Letting the memory wash through her and keeping calm in its wake emboldened her to press on. “How was the hunting?” she asked.
“Fair,” R.J. said. “Do you hunt, Ethel?”
“I wouldn’t care to kill living things.”
He laughed. “Me neither, come to think of it. I shoulda stayed home and got a normal job.”
His friend shot him a look.
Delly asked, “Where’s home?”
“Wherever anybody else is buyin’,” Alvin cut in. “Another round?”
Delly knew she should get out of there for the good of her soul. R.J. tapped a cigarette out of his pack and offered it to her. She shook her head more to clear her mind than decline a smoke. He lit up and laid his Ronson on the table, its chrome shiniest where his thumb touched. He wagged his empty bottle and asked her to get him another beer. She did.
Returning, she joked about getting tipped as a waitress, drawing a smile from R.J. that cut lines around his eyes, gratifying her with the promise that even he would get old and die someday. She threw her head back and drained her drink. R.J.’s friend Alvin used the moment to put his hand inside her thigh.
R.J.’s conversation turned to babble at once. His smile turned leering and foul, a jack-o’-lantern let rot on a doorstep. She glanced down sluggishly to check if the table was glass-topped and therefore could let him see this pig feeling her up below the ashtray and coasters. His seeing would make it worse. The violation. The way she didn’t react when Alvin’s hand moved higher.
The table was cloth-covered. R.J. couldn’t see. Seconds passed while the room spun. Alvin’s hand caressed her, its try at seduction more repulsive than had he just clamped her flesh like a starfish engulfing a clam. Did R.J. detect what was happening from her frozen expression, a glaze of stunned submission that he’d observed before on this girl whose face he’d forgotten? I’m yours, did it mean? Come ahead? Please stop? He’d been the mature one that night on Heather Lane, the one with strength and experience. She’d depended on him to tell her what she wanted. She’d depended on him to be kind.
Disgust welled up in her. She stood, said incoherent good-byes, and stumbled in a daze out of the pool area and down the hall to her room. She was shaken but not tearful. She’d pushed the game to its limit, by choice. That made all the difference.
* * *
SHE COLLAPSED ON her bed in her bathing suit. A sort of sleep came. She woke in panic over Marjorie’s whereabouts. The room’s walls were painted dark brown to help guests fall asleep early. There were twin beds side by side, and for a doorstop a heavy kiln-fired jug that probably once held homemade liquor. She heard her stepdaughter singing in the bathroom and fell back with a groan on the mattress. “Fiona, time please?”
“Almost cocktail hour. Live it up.”
“Not funny. Um, did you see Marjorie anywhere?”
“She’s fine.” Fiona poked her head around the door. “I never saw you drunk before. You were goofy.”
“I had two drinks.”
“You wobbled.”
“Possibly.”
“Better get ready if you’re comin’ to eat. The dining room has a jukebox and it’s not all square either. It has Elvis Presley. Joey loves Elvis.”
“The devil’s music.”
“Don’t be a spaz,” Fiona said. “Everyone knows you love it.”
Delly had wine with dinner but couldn’t face her food. It was just her and the youngsters tonight. Corinne and Donald stopped by the table. They’d come in from the marsh at two, slept till sundown, now would skip dinner in favor of a local gin joint. “Behave,” Corinne told her kids. “Delly needs to relax this weekend.”
The menu was hand-printed on little cards. Fiona complained about the selections and Joey razzed her, their banter grating on Delly with its pretend bickering and cutesy gibes. At least Fiona wasn’t dressed like a whore tonight. And Joey? Delly studied him through the candlelight. Eyes avid, head cocked intently to the pretty girl beside him—for an instant he resembled R. J. Bainard the night she’d first met him. The vision incensed her. She leaped to her feet but quickly reoriented herself as a spinster nanny, forlornly soused, dining with adorable children.
“You okay, Miz Franklin?”
“A little seasick, Joey.”
“We’re on land,” Fiona said.
“Barely.” Delly’s chair creaked under her weight as she sat back down, more cause to feel just great.
Someone cued up the jukebox and “The Great Pretender” came on. The dance floor filled. Fiona and Joey got up and soon were whispering mouth to ear as they swayed. His hand rode low on Fiona’s back, fingers tapping her rump in rhythm. Delly’s husband, the few times she’d straddled him, used to press down on her tailbone like a jockey pressing a horse’s withers to drive it to peak performance. She’d told him it felt good after the first time he did it. It became his foremost sex technique, wheeled out like a reliable casserole, making her wish she’d never mentioned it.
She reached for her wineglass. She’d drunk more today than in years. Tipsy in the afternoon, passed out at sundown, tipsy again at night. “Me and you, what say?” She froze at the voice at her ear, knowing at once it was R.J.’s friend. The man turned to Marjorie. “Help me out. Tell your mama don’t be shy.”
“She’s not my mama.”
“Don’t talk to him!”
“Dog,” he said. “Gimme a chance. My own children think the world of me.”
“And your wife?”
“In heaven, poor thing.”
“Still with the ring.”
“Sentimental. Woman was dear to me.”
“Don’t Be Cruel” came on the jukebox. Marjorie urged Delly to dance with the man.
“All three of us,” Alvin proposed. “We’ll start a conga line.” Somehow Delly wound up on the dance floor with him while Marjorie bopped in reassuring proximity. “Don’t be mad, Ethel,” he said to her over the music. Ethel? The alias threw her briefly. “Only way I know is head-on.” He towered over her, moving to the music like a football lineman, swaybacked and muscle-bound.
“You were disgusting this afternoon,” she said.
“You gave me fever.”
“I’m gonna sit down now.”
“Please. I’m a nice man. Don’t know a soul around here, is all.”
“What about your guide?” She gathered her nerve. “He’s a friend, looked like.”
“He’s nobody’s friend.” The song ended. “Good-bye, Ethel.” Alvin bowed to her. “I leave tomorrow.”
“A pity.” The words popped out like a goose bump. Delly saw Marjorie return to their table and Fiona and Joey slip out of the dining room. Little registered beyond the heat in her face. She managed a question. “Whatsa matter, hunting no good?”
“It’s all right for mallard and pintail. No canvasback, though.”
“How is killing one bird different from killing another?”
“Canvasbacks are rare. Rare makes it special.” Her focus retracted from distant points to the curious figure before her. He seemed more gnomish than apelike now, a lackey whose cardboard gentility was a clue to the company he kept. “Special,” he said, “means I’ll cherish it forever.”
They were alone on the dance floor. The clatter of busboys created an insulation in which the couple lingered unguardedly. S
he thought to herself that this man was a widower doomed to pick-up lines and lame come-ons. Yet he knew things about R. J. Bainard that Delly wanted also to know. Nobody’s friend? It was music to her ears. She said to him, “A man oughta take time if he’s after special birds.”
“I got time. Till tomorrow mornin’, anyway.”
“Lucky me,” she said. “Lucky you.”
* * *
THE SCARIEST PART about what followed was that she saw it coming and still couldn’t stop it. If anything, the apprehension of danger sharpened the shock when it hit, a faint foreboding preceding the blow like a whisper preceding a scythe.
The kids had gone to their rooms. Delly and Alvin strolled to the pool enclosure to get a drink at the bar. Its moisture-smeared windows framed a night view of the marsh, a soupy blackness under a sky riddled with icy stars. She felt as if she were with an uncle she didn’t know well, a fellow black sheep with whom she shared a dislike of the rest of the family. There were some empty chairs outside the sauna. He pulled two close together. “You’re pretty.”
“Don’t start.”
“You’re my ideal, I can’t help it.”
“Oh?” That syllable sealed it. A sliver of need.
“’Cause I do like a plump girl. Smooth’n round, and all that softness everywhere.” He reached down and took hold of her wrist. “So relax.”
When you touch a flame, the reflex to pull away precedes the sensation of pain. That was the effect of Alvin’s hand on her wrist. She wrenched it free before any parallel memory of the time with R.J. came back. She strode toward the exit until what felt like steel bands seized her in a bear-trap embrace.
Alvin kicked open the sauna door and shoved her to the wooden bench inside. Her mind screamed. He squatted on her chest and pinned her arms under his knees, his crotch inches from her face. When she tried to buck away he pressed his thumbs into the glands under her jaw. “I thought we was friends here.” The ceiling spun overhead. The sauna door swung shut like a coffin lid.
She inhaled through her nose, preparing a mighty scream.
As if reading her thoughts, he reached inside his blazer and withdrew a ring of keys clipped to a jackknife. He unclasped the blade and displayed it between his face and hers, turning it to catch the light from the bulb in the sauna room ceiling. “I never cut nothin’ but a toenail with this before, but I will cut you if you interrupt me here.”
She nodded. His face was a blur beyond the glinting blade.
“Don’t wanna hurt you. Don’t wanna fuck you neither, not now, even if it did fire my mind the second I seen you today.” Sweat from his face dripped onto hers. He touched the knife to her windpipe. “You put that idea in my head, Ethel.”
The knife’s point was like a bee sting or a sharp pencil. The pulse in her neck fluttered beneath it.
“Teasy cunt like you, what I’m s’posed to think? Tell me you sorry at least.”
Silence.
“Talk to me, girl.”
“Sorry.”
There was a pause as he gauged her sincerity. He tapped the knife against her throat like a pointer against a bulletin board. “I forgive you.” He climbed off her, closed the jackknife, brushed his pants clean. He warned her not to call the police. “I get hauled outta bed for this, I’ll see to it you watch your pretty daughter die.” His tone was genial. “Go back to your room, go to bed, sleep late. I’ll be long gone time you wake up.”
Silence.
“Let’s hear it, Ethel. Say you’ll be good.”
“I’ll be good.”
When he delayed in responding, she thought for a moment she’d done something wrong. “That’s nice,” he said. “No chance we can start over here, is there?”
She tensed as if electrocuted.
“Ah.” He sounded disappointed. “Got it.”
She tried to keep as still as roadside litter until he left, but a sob broke from her that to her horror made him turn around in the sauna doorway. Clamping shut her eyes, she felt him lean over her, his face looming close, his exhalations in her nostrils. With supreme courage no one was there to applaud she opened her eyes to confront what she expected would be his knife coming down in a scorpion strike. But instead he said gently, “I lied before, Ethel. I would never hurt you or your child. And my bad language before was plain gross. Just talked outta upset, you know?” His jaw muscles throbbed and he looked about to cry.
She nodded, more terrified now than ever. Please go, she prayed over and over.
He went. In the doorway his silhouette slumped at the shoulders as he gave a last heavy sigh. “Dog.”
* * *
FIONA. SHE HAD to find Fiona.
Alvin’s threat propelled Delly down the hallway. The room numbers blurred as she ran. Outside her door she got her key and turned the lock with iron calm. Fiona’s bed was empty.
She went to the Meerses’ suite. Their door was unlocked and the interior pitch dark. She entered. The felt presence of the room’s unfamiliar furniture gave a sense of trip wires and booby traps.
She heard voices in the bedroom. A man’s voice in low tones—then Fiona’s voice giving timid replies to questions Delly barely heard but understood perfectly.
“You said.”
“I know.”
“At least do that, come on.”
A zipper unzipped. “I don’t know.”
“You said no stopping.”
“Ssh.”
“Not gonna stop.”
“No. No stopping.”
“No?”
“No. I said no.”
Delly’s foot grazed one of the lodge’s kiln-fired jug doorstops. She knelt and took hold of its neck. A natural weapon, heavy as a log. She raised it over her head and went at Fiona’s assailant with vengeance years in the making.
She slammed the jug down with all her power. It didn’t shatter. It hit his skull with a thunk that dropped him to the floor like a dead man. The jug broke apart on her second swing, but its neck stayed intact in her grip. She swung down again, the damage done this time by a ceramic edge jagged as flint. And finally once more, when the last of it shattered and left only her fist to strike over and over.
Fiona was screaming somewhere. The man lay limp on the floor, his slime warm around Delly’s fingers.
Voices sounded. Lights came on. Donald and Corinne, returning from their night out, ran to their son. Joey was curled in a ball with his arms over his face like a child found under a cave-in. Roused from bed in the adjacent room, Marjorie stumbled in with drowsy whimpers that turned to a screech. Fiona crawled across the room and huddled against the far wall. Blood streaked her face like war paint. She glared at her stepmother with hate in her eyes.
Delly realized whom she’d attacked by now, but didn’t yet grasp that she’d made a terrible mistake. She’d distinctly heard Fiona say no. She was sure she’d heard Fiona say no.
* * *
CHIEF HOLLIS JENKS of the Lake Charles Police Department had coordinated the search after R.J. jumped bail ahead of his trial in 1953. Failure to catch him hadn’t hurt the Chief’s reputation; people were satisfied that Richie Bainard’s agony over the death of his wife was ample retribution for any crimes of his son. Chief Jenks took early retirement three years later with an engraved plaque and a surprisingly comfortable pension. He bought a big house in Lake Charles’s tony Charpentier District and a bass boat for the lake. He always had cash for his grandchildren’s birthdays and for the collection plate at church.
This good life was disturbed by a telephone call in January 1957. Jenks recognized the voice, its theatrical drawl, but couldn’t match it to a face. As he and the man spoke, an image formed of the waddling fop who’d been R. J. Bainard’s attorney. Like Jenks, Abe Percy had retired soon after R.J. fled, though without the nest egg Jenks had accumulated. He asked to meet Jenks somewhere out of the way. “My house no good?” the Chief asked.
“If that’s an invitation, why thank you. But it’s a little too posh for me.”
“I do not. It was all I could do to mobilize and drive here today. Coffee, Miss,” Abe said to the waitress. “And the brisket barbecue, greens on the side, with cornbread and a Coca-Cola.”
“It’s ten o’clock in the mornin’,” Jenks said.
“I rise at four. This is lunch.”
“Big meal, even so.”
“Eating brings me solace. My gluttony is a cry to heaven.”
The food arrived. Jenks sipped black coffee while Abe ate. In the weeks before R.J.’s trial they’d communicated regularly. Now they sat in separate silence like an old couple on New Year’s Eve. “An early riser, you say?” Jenks asked.
“Devils hound my sleep. I’m sure you sympathize.” The lawyer wiped his mouth. “I had a visitor yesterday. Miss Adele Billodeau.”
“There’s one from way back.”
“She came to my home. Which is to say, my one-room garret above Alderson’s Bait Shop. You see,” Abe said, “I’ve yet to secure a retirement situation as pleasant as yours.” His eyes narrowed in their pouches. “And she had, did Miss Adele, the most extraordinary news.”
Jenks was impassive. This fruit is waltzing me, he thought.
Abe explained that Adele had encountered R. J. Bainard recently. “Our own dear boy, discovered at last.”
“Where?”
“Not far, not far. Yet off the beaten path.”
“Where?”
“I’m not going to tell you, Hollis. May I call you Hollis?”
“Fine.”
“Fine. But no, I’ll not be telling you where.”
Chief Jenks sighed. His plan for today had been to buy a set of wrenches at Block’s Home Supply, let his wife fix him lunch, assemble the tricycle he’d bought for his grandson—then dinner, TV, and bedtime with no lovelier dream than that tomorrow pass the same way.