He thought about that for a few minutes. “New York,” he said under his breath. Staring out into the yard, he seemed to focus on something that needed doing, then said, “You want another glass of water?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” The longer she stayed, she figured, the better chance she had of getting him to talk about Madeline.
“Well, hold on. I’ll—” But as Luther turned, a shadow appeared at the door.
“Luther?” The voice was a tremulous soprano.
“Yes’m, Tante Marie.”
“I’ll be needing you to help me soon on the east gallery.”
“Yes’m.”
Sam caught a shadowy glimpse of a tiny little old lady in a long black dress that came to the tips of her shiny black patent shoes. A cameo caught the ruffle at her neck.
Her white hair was a coronet of braids. A pale hand fluttered. Then she disappeared.
“Who’s that?”
“Tante Marie.”
“Villère?”
Luther shrugged, of course.
“She looks so old—old-fashioned.”
Luther laughed. “You can say that again. Tante Marie’s kind of a throwback even for the Villères. Old-maid aunts like her used to live forever with the Creole fam’bly.”
“Creole. That means her family’s—?”
“Don’t mean what you think.” Luther shifted his chewing tobacco, then sat down on the edge of a step. “Don’t mean no café au lait. Ain’t none of us. Means descended from the French and, no, make that or the Spanish settled here before the Americans.”
“When Louisiana was a colony.”
“You got that right. Creoles the best people. The finest. The old blood. My fam’bly, we always worked for Creoles. For Villères, that matter, since before the war.”
“The war?”
“The War Between the States.” Then Luther laughed at the look on her face.
“You think that’s crazy, don’t you? Keep working, generation after generation, for folks had you slaves?”
“I guess I do.”
“That’s ’cause you from Atlanta. Don’t understand ‘bout the way we do things here—these old fam’blies. See, we Fourniers descended from Prosper Fournier.” He shook his head when he could see the name meant nothing to her. “Prosper one of the most famous servants of all time. He my great-great-great-great-uncle. Apprenticed in France when he was a boy, still a slave then, to a famous chef. Was a wonderful cook. Expert on the opera. The French opera being very big in those days. Prosper spoke French and Creole. Never did speak English, didn’t have to. Rode to the opera with the Villères in their carriage. Sat front row center upstairs in the balcony for the colored. White people came up to him after, he such a expert, ask him what he thought of the voices. He tell ’em too. Shore ’nuff. Expert on wine too.”
“Luther, you out here talking trash again?” And around the corner of the house walked a hulking white man. He seemed familiar to Sam, but she couldn’t place him.
He tipped his big straw hat raveling at the edges. Then, squinting at her, he wiped the sweat off his forehead with a red bandanna from his overalls pocket. “Howdy, ma’am. Ain’t I seen you somewhere?” He rocked back on his heels, considering, then pointed a pudgy finger. “G.T. You a friend of G.T Johnson’s.”
“I know G.T.”
“I’m Arkadelphia Lolley. I drive with her sometimes.”
“Of course! Sam Adams.” Sam extended her hand. “You were with G.T. the night of Church Lee’s death.”
“Pore old Mr. Church,” said Luther, shaking his head. “Wuddn’t that something? Turrible.”
“I live over to Baronne,” Arkadelphia said, jerking a thumb in that direction. “Run my machine”—and then he pointed at a giant mower which Sam hadn’t noticed before parked to the side of the yard—“for folks when they need it. My extra job.”
“Sure was unlucky for Church Lee that evening, wasn’t it?” said Sam.
“Sure was.” Ark settled his three hundred pounds on the steps beside Luther. “Luther, you reckon anywhere in that house there might be a glass of iced tea?”
“Might be.” The old man nodded. “’Specially if I go talk some sweet-talk to Ophelia.” He stood. “I’ll be right back. Then we’ll sit out here have ourselves a little party.”
That was fine with Sam.
“So you know the Lees?” she asked Ark.
“Nawh. I wouldn’t say that. G.T. knows ’em though. Knowed ’em her whole life—through her family.” He pushed his hat back and peered at her with pale blue eyes behind smudged glasses that made his eyes look huge. “Didn’t she say something to me ’bout you staying with them? Looking ’round for clues?”
“You might say that.”
“I used to have an aunt did that. Sure did.”
“Looked for clues to things?”
“Unh-huh. She did it on her own, though. I mean, she wuddn’t no police.”
“I’m not either.”
“Didn’t mean to imply you wuz.” One beat passed. Two. Three. “What are you, ma’am? You don’t mind my asking?”
“I write for a newspaper over in Atlanta. But I’m here trying to find out what happened to Church so the Lees can settle the insurance.”
“Uh-huh. Well, he got his head smashed like it was a watermelon wuz what happened looked like to me. By some crazy person wearing a Carnival mask driving a big old car.”
“But who?”
“Oh. I see. You want to know who was driving the car?”
“Well, don’t you think that’d be a good thing to know?” asked Luther, creeping out the screen door, carrying a tray of iced tea, little sandwiches on a plate, and a pile of sugar cookies.
“Lord! Would you look what this man’s done!” Ark’s fat face lit up like a Christmas tree. He reached for the sandwiches and downed two.
Sam watched him chew. Sheer delight was etched on his face. Arkadelphia was one of those people who was fat because he truly loved to eat.
“It’s the sort of thing your aunt who looked for clues might want to know,” she said eventually.
“What?”
“Who was driving the car.”
“Oh, yeah. Kind of thing Aunt Stella would want track to earth all right.” He washed down the sandwiches with a gulp of tea. “She tracked down all kinds of people. Was always good at finding things. Tracked that robbing preacherman, Otis Dew. Find him, could find anything.”
“Could she find water?” asked Luther.
“Hell, anybody couldn’t find water in the state of Louisiana ought to be put in the Home for the Bewildered,” said Ark. “All you gotta do’s look.”
“Get smart with me,” grumbled Luther. “Go on. Tell Miss Sam here ’bout that crazy Otis Dew now that you mentioned him.”
“I don’t see how’s any of us got time,” said Ark.
“I do.” Sam nodded her head, Southern girl recognizing the signs of a story coming on when she saw one. “I sure do.”
Ark reached for another couple of sandwiches. “You never heard of him, you say?”
“Nope.”
“That’s hard to believe. He made some big news ’round here about ten years ago. Wouldn’t you say ten, Luther?”
“’Bout that. But I ’magine we knowed about it ’cause we live in the state. Might not be the kind of news that travels. Kind they put on the ‘Today Show.’” He gave Sam a knowing wink. “And ’course you knew ’cause of your Aunt Stella.”
“Whatever you say. Anyway, this Otis Dew, he was born around Peck.”
“We going way back,” said Luther.
“That’s Catahoula Parish, up in my part of the state. Not too far from Ferriday, where Jerry Lee Lewis was from.”
“And that Jimmy Swaggart,” said Luther.
“Well, hell, throw in Mickey Gilley too,” said Ark. “Everybody knows they all cousins.” Then he scratched under his hat. “Now, Jimmy’s cousin to Jerry Lee and to Mickey, but I’m not so sure if those two’s kin
to each other, but, now, you don’t mind, Uncle Luther, I’ll get on with this.”
Luther threw both hands up in the air, said, “Take it, son.”
“Actually,” Ark said, “Otis was a friend to all them boys. And was better’n all of ’em, in some ways.”
“You’d have to prove that to me,” said Sam.
“Well, he was.” Arkadelphia started counting off the ways on fingers big as sausages. “He could sing like Jerry Lee. Actually he sounded an awful lot like Elvis.”
“Humph,” said Luther.
“Now, wait. Preach like Jimmy. And had the business sense of Mickey. And he was the handsomest man you’d ever hope to see. Kind of had the body of Dennis Quaid in that movie’s made here, without his shirt. Big grin like Dennis too. But a softer face. Looked like that Patrick Swayze. Both of them’s Texas boys, you know that?”
“I did.” Sam made it a point to keep abreast of the best in cinematic male flesh. “Anything like Mel Gibson?”
“That’s that Lethal Weapon? Tequila Sunrise?”
Sam nodded.
“Eyes. Eyes like that Gibson boy.”
“Sweet Jesus,” she sighed.
“Lord don’t like you taking his name in vain,” said Ark.
“Sorry,” she said around a mouthful of sand tart, one of her all-time favorite cookies. “Go on.”
“And when Otis got up to the front of the church, started singing and preaching, tears running down his handsome face, arms and legs in those fancy Eye-talian suits waving around like he was doing the hootchy-kootch, I tell you, those woman would stream up to the front and throw their bodies down. Just throw ’em down on the floor. Men too. Writhing. And then if he sang to ’em, well, you’d think he was Elvis come to life again the way they carried on.”
“So why’s your aunt Stella tracking him down? What’d he do?” she asked.
Arkadelphia sighed a big sigh, then stared off down the street like he was looking for the streetcar to come and take him somewhere people knew how to listen to a story. Didn’t keep interrupting. Let a man tell it in his own time. Not like a passle of Yankees, kept cutting you off before you got to the point, tell you some silliness they thought was related to what you were saying, about their own lives, when you hadn’t even warmed up. Hadn’t even got started good yet. Sam and Luther could see that in Ark’s staring off. They exchanged a look. Time to settle down, it said.
Ark waited. He drank another whole glass of iced tea. When he finished it he said, “Y’all through?”
Uh-huh, yes, indeedy, they nodded.
“Well, anyhow, as I was saying, Otis was from this family of Baptist preachers. His daddy was a preacher. His daddy before him. And Otis was smart. Went off to Baylor, the Baptist college in Texas, on a scholarship. Got himself a doctor of divinity.”
Luther couldn’t help but giggle.
“Ain’t the candy, old man, that’s what you’re thinking. Then got himself a little church over in Shreveport. Worked that into a bigger church, and the next thing you know, he was preaching in the biggest church you ever saw in Houston.”
“Back in the oil days?” asked Sam.
“You bet. Black gold pumping up out of the ground, forty bucks a barrel, and most of them old boys got lucky in the fields was Baptists. And they just couldn’t do enough for the church—once they got through buying diamond rings and watches and stickpins and such, building houses and breeding race horses, fencing in ranches big as some Yankee states. Just dying to help Otis’s church. So him and Mary Sue, that was his wife he met in the church choir in Shreveport, was from a real good family in the pipeline bi’nis, was living like a king and queen.
“Otis driving a white Cadillac. Mary Sue had her a matching white Mercedes. They lived in the biggest house you ever saw out in the River Oaks section.”
“Tall cotton,” said Sam.
“Well, that’s what lots of folks said. Said it wuddn’t seemly for a man of the cloth to be living so high on the hog. But then there’s those that look at it another way. Say you wouldn’t want the man who talks with the Man be driving around town in a raggedy little old Chevy, his wife wearing a Pat Nixon cloth coat looking like something the cat’s drug in. Especially with this crowd. Them boys wear their initials blazing in diamonds on their belt buckles, cattle brands clamped on their alligator boots in solid gold, new young second wives dressed up like something right out of the pages of Vogue, well, they don’t want to be reminded that it wuddn’t too long ago they didn’t have a pot to piss in. ’Scuse my French. Don’t want to be within five miles of anything don’t reek of eau de cologne.”
“So things were going great guns for Otis.”
“Absolutely rooty-tooty, till they caught him.”
“With his hand in the collection plate,” said Sam.
“Naw. Otis wuddn’t that stupid. Besides, they’d already give him so much, to want more he’d have to be just a plain greedy pig.”
“Philandering,” said Luther, throwing his guess in.
“Wait a minute,” said Sam. “I thought you knew this story.”
The old man laughed. “I do. Just got carried away.”
“Philandering?” Sam echoed.
“Well, sort of,” Ark allowed. “You ’member how we started off talking about Jerry Lee?”
“Right.”
“And did I mention Elvis?”
“Wait a minute. You said he affected women like Elvis when he preached. Is Elvis in this too? Elvis has been dead more than ten years.”
“I know that. August 15, 1977. But what did Elvis and Jerry Lee have in common?”
“You mean besides singing?”
“Yeah.”
“And being Southern?”
“Yeah.”
“And growing up near the Mississippi?”
“You’re stretching it. Ferriday’s real close, but Tupelo’s nowhere near the Mississippi.”
“It’s in Mississippi.’
“You meant the river, and you know it.”
Sam had to back down. “I give.”
“White cotton underpants,” Uncle Luther giggled.
“What?” said Sam.
“They did,” said Ark. “Luther’s right. Both had a thing for young girls’ undies.”
“Both married young girls,” said Sam. “Elvis had his Priscilla, and we all know about Jerry Lee’s thirteen-year-old cousin.”
“Ruined his career, didn’t it? But you remember what they said about Elvis after he died? Grown women he was with, well, maybe a little on the young side, but legal—all with the same panties.”
“I don’t remember this, Ark.”
“He made ’em all wear white cotton panties. That was what he liked. Well, Otis had the same problem. There he was, at the pinnacle of his career, couldn’t stop chasing white cotton panties.”
“That’s disgraceful,” said Sam, sounding like her aunt Lona.
“Well, now, before we get all high and mighty,” said Ark, “I think we ought to think about what’s on the TV these days, not to mention the movies and videos anybody can rent, walk in off the street. Furthermore, take a look at what’s running around. Women, young and old, dressed up in high heels and short skirts and makeup? Wearing black fishnet stockings, dozens of rings in their ears, not to mention some in their noses? Tattoos on their behinds?”
“Arkadelphia! Where you been hanging out?”
“They’re all over town. You just ain’t been paying attention. You watch these Sacred Heart girls what they put on when they get home, out of them little plaid skirts and into their play clothes. Play! In a pig’s you know what. Their mamas too. Some of them grandmamas.”
“What are you saying, Ark?”
“I’m saying old Otis had plenty of temptation. It was everywhere. And just ’cause he’s a man of the cloth don’t mean he was blind.”
“So what’d they catch him doing?”
“Pair of twenty-year-old twins had him tied down to a bed in a Holiday Inn with the
ir cotton panties. Took Polaroid pictures. Sent ’em to the board of deacons.”
“And the business hit the fan.”
“Honey, they took back that Mercedes and that Cadillac and that house in River Oaks so fast it’d make your head spin.”
“Where’s Aunt Stella, Ark?”
“We getting there. So anyway, that’s the last of poor old Otis as a preacherman. Mary Sue divorced him on the spot. Got herself on the next plane to the Dominican Republic, paper in her hand she’d made Otis sign, saying the divorce was okay with him, giving her what little they had left. Otis dropped clear out of sight. And nobody much cared. First Corinthians Baptist Church of Houston got itself a new preacher. Old man. No flash. Just did the Old Testament fire-and-brimstone thing. Everybody’s happy.”
“So?”
“So a couple years later, anybody’d who’d ever known about old Otis had done forgotten him, when these weird things started happening at Mardi Gras.”
Taking it on faith that somehow he’d bridge the gap from one part of this story to the other, Sam said, “I thought that was the definition of Mardi Gras.”
“Nawh. I mean weird. What it was was this man started appearing at fancy Carnival balls. Not like Comus, you understand, where it dudn’t matter if you give ’em your right tit, pardon my French, they still won’t let you in, but still real fancy ones. Like Osiris, which is especially rich. Athenians. Rex. Caliphs of Cairo—with a lot of new money.”
“Do I hear that the tinkle of coins is important here?”
“You got it. And here’s the trick. This man, in the correct formal attire, top hat, cane, cape, the whole ball of wax, would get in without a wrinkle—finagled, forged invitations, nobody knew. But, anyway, there he’d be, tall and good-looking in his penguin suit, which meant he wasn’t a member of the krewe—or at least he wasn’t dressed for a parade or the tableaux—the best dancer on the floor, with callouts for the richest ladies.”
“Callouts? How’d he manage that?”
“Nobody knew. But these ladies, some of them fat old battleships, maiden aunts like Tante Marie, would suddenly hear their names called when they’d be least expecting it, some of them sitting around in the balcony for years without a whirl, and there on the floor waiting for them would be Prince Charming.”
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