Cajun Waltz

by Robert H. Patton

  Arthur was puzzled. Or wanted to be.

  “See,” Alvin said, “I don’t wanna shoot you. And honestly, you got plenty o’ cause to go peaceful. Plus you’d be doin’ your daughter a favor.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’ll leave her a wealthy woman. Don’t ask me how, but it’s true. So…”

  “Remove?”

  Alvin surveyed the room. “Light cord, over the door, step off that footstool there.”

  “You have to be joking.”

  “How’s work goin’, Arthur?”

  “Fine. Work is fine.”

  “The truth.”

  “I was fired.”

  “Told your daughter yet?”

  Arthur shook his head.

  “A little ashamed?”

  “I want her to be proud of me.”

  “Do you have life insurance?”

  “Not a dime.”

  “You do now. I’m thinkin’ ten thousand dollars.”

  “Who’s got that kind of money?”

  “It’s there.”

  “You’re lying. You could say anything.”

  “Again: it’s a promise.”

  “If I … now?”

  “Lemme show you.”

  Alvin did, and with such tender solicitousness it could only have come from experience. He’d done it before, making the same pitch to Frank Billodeau four years ago, in Frank’s vulnerable hours after he’d confessed to authorities about his affair with Angel Bainard; the bait in that instance had been Alvin’s promise that Mary Billodeau would never be fired from Block’s. Richie, in jealous fury, had originally ordered a straight execution, but Alvin had urged a gentler course and arranged to meet Frank on a country road. Together they’d leaned on Frank’s truck like a pair of old farmers and had a good deep talk about life’s ups and downs that concluded with Frank dead from a shot to the temple, Alvin pulling the trigger while Frank nodded in prayerful acquiescence with his eyes serenely closed. Mary had her job to this day.

  He guided Arthur to the closet door, reminding him in a voice soft as a hypnotist’s of the bounty this would bring to Fiona. Arthur watched with the courage of a queen beholding the block as Alvin strung a lamp cord over the door and looped it around a robe hook on the inside. The footstool made a scaffold. Soon Arthur was teetering on it with the cord around his neck.

  Clamping Arthur’s arms to his sides in a firm embrace, Alvin was like a cowpoke immobilizing a beloved pony prior to putting it down. He used his weight to pull Arthur down and constrict the noose around his neck. “Steady…”

  Arthur thrashed weakly. He tried to make sounds but nothing came out. The men looked like lovers against a wall, having relations for the first time or last.

  “Steady…”

  A scream seized in Arthur’s chest like stripped gears inside a transmission. His body went rigid. His eyes bulged.

  Alvin put his mouth to Arthur’s ear. “What I said about your daughter before?”

  Arthur listened from the edge of consciousness.

  “She’ll have a good life, I swear to God.”

  Alvin kicked the stool clear. Arthur sagged a last inch, the cord disappearing under his jaw. His tongue extruded and his face turned a darker color.

  Alvin backed out of the room. He checked his appearance in the hall mirror. As noted, he’d done this before, and no less humanely.

  He went out through the carport and cut across lawns to his Cadillac. The rain fell in torrents. His clothes clung like wet bandages as he drove down the road toward Georgia Hill and his ladylove. She was working in her upstairs office, not permitting herself even a glance out the window in worry where her man could be on such a night.

  * * *

  R.J. KEPT HIS eyes on the space between Delly’s eyes. She did the same to him, like a contest except for no prize. “I won’t go to prison,” he said.

  “You’ll go.”

  Like fans at a tennis match, Seth and Corinne looked over to catch R.J.’s reply. He shook his head in lament for bad tidings he couldn’t make better.

  Delly asked him, “Have you hurt other girls?”

  “Never.”

  Corinne said, “This is goin’ nowhere.”

  R.J. barely heard this. “Any chance you can let this go?” he asked Delly.

  “I want you to feel crummy as me.”

  “I do.”

  “Why don’t I believe that?”

  “Because I look good.”

  The remark was factual. Face clean-shaven and smooth, white teeth, blue eyes flashy as gemstones—the bastard looked too good. Delly protested weakly, “People who hurt people should pay.”

  “I do. Every day.”

  Corinne scowled. Let her lover be guilty of anything except frailty.

  Seth spoke up. “It’s got to be hard, Delly. Always running, always looking over your shoulder.”

  “I saw it firsthand. Drinks at the hunting lodge? Not exactly Alcatraz.”

  “I’ll beg your forgiveness,” R.J. said. “I will cut off a finger. But I’m walking out of here in about one minute and you’ll just have to trust that I’m finished as a man. I can’t help how it looks from the outside.”

  “It looks great, is how it looks! Meantime I look like a damn dishrag whose life tanked at eighteen, thanks to you.”

  “You look beautiful,” Seth said.

  “How the fuck would you know? You’re blind as a bat.” Delly grabbed a table knife and brandished it wildly as if to stab them all. Stubby and dull, its blade reflected her face in melted distortion.

  Corinne touched her arm. “Give it up, Del. Do you a world of good.”

  A dizzying chasm opened beneath Delly that only R.J., in his first misstep of the evening, could prevent her from falling into. “My brother’s right. You look beautiful.”

  Clarity returned. She presented the knife. “Okay. A finger.”

  “Say again?”

  “There’s many who’d insist on your balls. I’ll do with a finger.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “And we’ll call it square.”

  He accepted the knife and held it to the light from the cafeteria ceiling. “Not sure this’ll cut through bone.”

  “Try.”

  “My finger. You mean it?”

  “You offered.”

  “Enough,” Corinne said. The meeting had lost its appeal. She’d just wanted R.J. pacified so she could call the shots from now on. “It’s way past time—”

  “Please shut up,” Delly said without looking at her.

  R.J. laid down the knife and flattened his hands on the table. “Lady’s choice.”

  The backs of his hands were flecked with dark hair. She indicated the pointer finger on his left hand, her attention drawn there by a scar that curled around it like a pink leech. “Cut it off and I’m good.”

  “Meaning you accept my apology?”

  “Never that.”

  He picked up the knife and hovered it an inch above the knuckle, like a surgeon blanking out.

  Delly’s next words surprised both of them. “Did you kill my father?”

  He focused. “What?”

  “You remember: Coach Billodeau from the high school.”

  “I met him. We had words.”

  “Because of Angel Bainard, I know.”

  Seth, hearing his mother’s name, perked up in a negative way.

  “I was jealous,” R.J. said. Something had changed in his face. Shame makes no one look good. “Over her.”

  “Pathetic,” Delly said.

  “It was. For me and your dad both. I felt bad when I heard he shot himself.”

  “Bullshit. You shot him.”

  “I swear I did not.”

  “Who then?”

  “Maybe my father. Your dad did fuck his wife.”

  Delly took this calmly. Truth was fair.

  “Any man can kill a woman,” R.J. said, “can damn well kill a man.”

  It startled Seth to he
ar his brother ascribe crimes to their father just as Seth had done for years. It made the whole notion sound shaky, made him wonder if any fault is ever one hundred percent. “My mother died by accident,” he declared with finality. The concession felt smaller once spoken, a deep dark secret now sort of pointless. “Richie did plenty wrong, but not that.”

  R.J. put the knife down. “So why try and shoot me to death in a swamp? Make me carry this goddamn thing all day long.” He took out Freddy Baez’s revolver from under his shirt and laid it on the table.

  The words were gibberish to Seth—he had no idea of the web Alvin had spun—and the gun of course was invisible. Delly stared at it in disbelief. Corinne thought it was sexy. She attempted to salvage her plan. “Jesus, people. It’s about fucking in a car, nothin’ more.” Her eyes went big. “R.J.!”

  Knife back in hand, he’d sawed through the base of his pointer finger. Blood speckled the table like ketchup.

  Corinne snatched the knife away. “Jesus Lord!”

  R.J. pondered his wound as if it were someone else’s. “Oops. Cut myself.” His gaze jumped to something across the room. He grabbed the pistol, got up from the table, and headed quickly to the cafeteria kitchen and out the back door to the parking lot.

  Corinne turned around to see what he’d seen. Two policemen had come in and were conferring with a hospital orderly. They approached the table. “Evenin’, officers,” she said with a sugary smile.

  Seth, lagging the others in realizing what had spooked R.J., heard Delly murmur at his ear, “Cops are here, kid. Time to pick sides.”

  The policeman was a looming shadow beside Seth’s chair. “Officer,” he said, “if it’s my brother you’re lookin’ for—”

  “No!” Corinne cried.

  The cop ignored them. “Are you Miz Franklin, ma’am?”

  “Why?”

  “There’s been a incident at your house. With your girl.”

  Delly rocketed out of her chair. Corinne crossed herself.

  “Your husband,” the cop explained, “hung himself in your bedroom. He’s dead.”

  “Arthur?”

  “The girl found him.”

  “Oh no.”

  “We got people with her. She told us where to find you.”

  “What was she doing at my house? She lives with—”

  “She had a young fella there.”

  “Joey?” Corinne said.

  “You know him?”

  “He’s my son!”

  “Gotta say, he sure frigged the scene. Tried to lift the body, knockin’ shit over. Be almos’ impossible to establish what happened.”

  “I thought you said it was suicide,” Seth said.

  “So it appears,” the cop said, with some disappointment.

  * * *

  DONALD MEERS SAT in his Lincoln in the hospital parking lot caressing his pistol like worry beads. He wondered should he charge into the building and gun down his wife and her Mexican lover; rain on his car and wind whipping the trees seemed to urge this course of action. He decided that pumping bullets into the pair would wreck his life almost as much as theirs. Better a clean shot with no witnesses.

  He saw the Mexican scurry out of the building and get into his vehicle after ducking from the squad car nearby. He leaped to two conclusions, both wrong. He thought Corinne and her lover had had a fight and ended their affair, and he thought the cops were in chase and the man was making his getaway. He put his motor in gear and pulled onto the road behind the sports car. The gun in his lap made him feel like he was running the wetback out of town. He would chase him to the city limits, yes he would. He’d shake his fist at the taillights and hurl wrathful curses, then go home and forgive his wife after first making her grovel and crawl.

  * * *

  THE POLICE OFFERED to drive Delly to the station but she chose to follow in her car. She asked Seth to accompany her in hopes that he could comfort Fiona with Bible verses. It felt like a lucky break to him even so.

  From the station they all—Corinne and Joey; Delly, Fiona, and Seth—drove through the downpour to Corinne’s house in the Charpentier District. They went there because Fiona couldn’t bear to stay at her father’s and more especially at her stepmother’s, where she and Joey had found Arthur’s body. Questions about what the kids were doing there in the first place could wait. Everyone knew anyway.

  Corinne, after they got to her place, voiced sorrow over what had happened but mainly wanted to discuss her own issues. Chirping away as if all bitterness between Delly and R.J. was healed, she speculated on her lover’s prospects. “Once R.J. gets his inheritance, I’ll give Donald the boot.”

  Delly assumed her usual role and made tea for Seth and her cousin. A vibrant drift, like caffeine insomnia, gripped her. Hanging himself in her bedroom seemed such a lowdown trick on her husband’s part it left her feeling bewildered more than guilty. This had the helpful effect of overshadowing everything else that had bewildered her tonight.

  Corinne paused in her chatter. Seth asked to use her telephone to ring his sister at home. Rather than return to the hospital at this late hour, he would sleep at Georgia Hill, his distaste for the place just slightly less than asking Corinne to put him up. “I’ll need a lift,” he said to no one.

  Delly offered to take him.

  “You should stay with your daughter.”

  “She’s sleeping.” With Joey upstairs, chastely clothed on the bed like Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers. “And I can’t.”

  * * *

  DONALD MEERS TAILED his rival through empty wet streets to the Bainard estate. After the roadster turned up the driveway, he parked under some wind-blown trees and entered the grounds on foot. Expecting guard dogs and searchlights, he pretended he was a secret commando infiltrating an enemy compound. He carried his gun in his hand because that’s what commandoes do.

  The windows were lighted irregularly, the main floor dim, rooms upstairs glowing yellow through hazy sheers. Donald crouched in the shrubbery and scanned for movement inside. He knew Corinne’s Mexican was in there somewhere. One shot and he’d be on his way, his honor redeemed, a grateful nation indebted.

  Headlights swept the house. A car came up the drive and parked in the courtyard. A man and woman got out, talking loud as people do in the rain. “I’m fine,” the man said. He had a cane.

  “Not in the dark you’re not.” The woman came around from the driver’s side to help him up the front steps.

  Donald stepped out from behind a bush. “Delly?”

  “Donald?”

  The front door opened. “Who’s out there?”

  Donald raised his pistol. “Freeze, Mex!”

  The confusion was slow to dispel even after Donald herded the others inside. Suffice it to say he was now a pivotal figure, though to be candid not for long.

  * * *

  AN OLD DAMP house in southwest Louisiana can get steamy during a summer rainstorm. The thick atmosphere inside Georgia Hill put people more on edge than they might have been in some air-conditioned lobby. And anytime a guest makes wild threats with a loaded handgun you know a household gets tense. Consequently the first moments of everyone gathering in the foyer were neither civil nor informative.

  Donald’s will to vengeance was iffy; there were moments when he wagged his pistol more like a French fry than a Smith & Wesson. Seth and R.J. meanwhile affected competing versions of calm. All men are boys, goes the saying, and it was surely true of this pair. Had Delly not been present, it’s easy to imagine Seth pleading with Donald to calm down and R.J. hightailing it out of there. But Southern manhood has ever measured itself by a lady’s esteem, and the lady here was her.

  Once Donald was persuaded that R.J. wasn’t Mexican, R.J. answered his next question—“Then who the hell are you?”—with weary resignation that suggested he might have preferred to take Donald’s bullet than own up to the fact he was R. J. Bainard and this was his father’s house. But he did own up to it, after which Donald said to Delly, “He the
one? What done you back then?”

  She nodded.

  “Then damn, let’s call the police and end this easy.”

  “Let’s not,” Seth said. He turned in his brother’s direction. “Please go, R.J. It’s the one good thing you can do.”

  Donald cocked his head. “What’s wrong wit’ your eyes?”

  “They don’t work very well.”

  “Neither’s your mouth, judgin’ what it said. Now do it, Del. Call the police and tell ’em we got the fugitive.”

  “She won’t,” R.J. said.

  Delly turned. “No?”

  R.J. rocked slightly on his feet. He gave her a deep look, like a poet through the depths of a lily pond. “You like me some, Adele,” he said. “That night and this night, you like me more than what’s known.”

  Seth laughed in a not normal way. “Tell him, Delly. Finish it.”

  She hadn’t started breathing again, R.J.’s words having impacted only after he spoke them. How had this happened? She’d left with a guy in the middle of a high school basketball game and insanity had somehow resulted, pouring down from outside her and boiling up from within. She tried a last time to suppress it. “That’s just some fantasy. No point to it now, either way.”

  “Was once,” R.J. said.

  “We don’t know. We can’t ever know.” It seemed that she and R.J. were the only ones in the room, the only ones anywhere.

  “At least let me believe it, okay? It got me this far.”

  Bonnie came barreling out of the sewing room. She was enraged at the mass intrusion into her house where a man lay mortally ill. Her father’s nurse was behind her, bursting with dire excitement that Richie’s end was at hand. The ensuing turmoil bonded R.J., Seth, and Bonnie as their father’s children at last. They dropped the disputes of the moment and rushed down the hall. Left behind in the foyer, Delly and Donald eyed each other like guests unsure if the party is over. He stuck his gun in his pants as if not to do so would be gauche. Delly fell silent, her head seething with agonized notions that, oddly or not, included none about her late husband.

  * * *

  RICHIE DID LOOK done for. Brief revivals in recent weeks had made predictions of his demise seem like so much crying wolf, but tonight you could feel Death rubbing its hands together like a cannibal at suppertime. The family was reunited, the twins and their half brother joined around their father’s bed. They formed a triangle, R.J. and Bonnie at each side by his pillow, Seth at the foot. Seth recited the Lord’s Prayer. Bonnie, beyond tears, resented R.J.’s wooden demeanor and asked sarcastically if he’d brought his pistol. He had; since the bloody scene at Finney Pond, he’d kept it always at hand. When he produced it from under his shirt, it was with disgust rather than rancor. He tossed the gun on the bed.