Out in the fog, I could hear somebody grinding the electric starter on the pontoon plane. We walked down one side of a dry coulee and up the opposite slope, the leaves crackling under our shoes, the air filled with a bright, clean odor not unlike the smell of snow. The leaves had drifted in piles so thick and high they were over the tops of our shoes, and the sound of the leaves breaking made me think of squirrel hunting in the fall with my father, Big Aldous, when I was a young boy. I wondered where Big Aldous was. I wondered if he was with my mother and if they were both watching over me, the way I believe spirits sometimes do when they’re not ready to let go of the earth. My parents had died violent deaths while they were young, and they knew what it meant to have one’s life stolen, and for those reasons I had always thought they were with me in one fashion or another, trying to do the right thing from the Great Beyond.
The cabin was not over twenty yards ahead of us. It had been built of cypress planks and chinked with a mixture of mud and moss before the War Between the States, then restored and reroofed with corrugated tin and outfitted with an air conditioner for the guests of Croix du Sud. I had often wondered if the guests had any idea of the deprivation that characterized the lives of the historical occupants. I had the feeling they did not dwell upon questions of that sort and probably would be bored and offended if they were ever questioned on the subject.
Then a strange occurrence took place, maybe one that was the result of a cerebral accident inside my head. Or maybe I experienced one of the occasions when we glimpse through the dimension and see the people to whom we thought we had said good-bye forever. Inside an envelope of cool fire, right on the bank of the bayou, like the flame of a giant votive candle, I saw my mother, Alafair Mae Guillory, and my father, Big Aldous Robicheaux, looking at me. She wore the pale blue suit and the pillbox hat with the stiff veil she had always been so proud of, and Big Aldous was wearing his tin hat and hobnailed work boots and freshly laundered and starched PayDay overalls, his arms covered with hair as thick as a simian’s. At first I thought my parents were smiling at me, but they weren’t. Both were waving in a cautionary way, their mouths opening and closing without making any sound, their faces stretched out of shape with alarm.
That was when I saw Pierre Dupree walk straight at me from behind a tree, either a. 32 or. 25 semi-auto in his left hand, aiming into my face, his chin lifted in the air, as though even in killing someone, he could not give up the arrogant demeanor that seemed to be his birthright.
“At three o’clock, Dave!” I heard Clete shout.
I lifted the shotgun and fired, but I was too late. I saw the muzzle flash of the semi-auto like jagged fire leaping off a spark plug, but I didn’t hear the report. Instead, I felt a pain high up on my cheek, similar to a heavy-handed slap that comes out of nowhere.
The burst from my shotgun had not only gone wild; there had been dirt in the muzzle, and the barrel had exploded, splitting the steel all the way down to the pump. The buckshot in the load had ripped through the canopy, scattering leaves down upon us. I fell sideways, one arm extended like a man looking for a wall to lean against. Then I crashed to the ground.
Through a red haze, I saw Clete firing at Pierre Dupree, walking toward him, the ejected nine-millimeter casings flying into the darkness, shooting one bullet after another into Dupree’s chest and head and neck, then shooting him again at almost point-blank range as he lay dead and spread-eagled against the trunk of a live oak.
I sat up in the leaves and pushed myself against a tree trunk and tried to clear my vision and stop the ringing in my ears. Clete was squatted down in front of me, staring into my eyes, holding up my chin with one hand, his mouth moving, his words like the muted sounds of submerged rocks bumping together in a streambed.
I saw Gretchen moving toward me, then Alafair kneeling by my side, holding my head against her breast, saying something inaudible.
“I don’t know what anyone is saying,” I said.
I felt her hands touching the side of my head and stroking my eyes. Her breath was cold on my skin, and her hair smelled like leaves and pine needles. “What are you saying, Alafair? I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”
She moved in front of me so I could see her mouth. “Can you hear me now?”
“Yes.”
“I think the bullet went out the side of your cheek. I think it’s a flesh wound,” she said.
“Where are Tee Jolie and Helen?”
“We left them in the coulee,” she said. “Some guys have got the driveway blocked. There aren’t many of them left.”
For reasons I couldn’t explain, her words seemed unrelated to what was happening around us, perhaps because the eye sometimes registers danger before the brain does. Regardless, I knew that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Where’s your gun?” I said to Gretchen.
“I dropped it in the dark when I was carrying the sheriff outside,” she said.
I stared at Clete and at the gun in his hand and realized our situation had changed dramatically and unfairly, as though the fates had conspired to cheat us of what was ours and deny us the fruits of victory. The backup magazine I had given Clete had not been fully loaded, and the bolt on the Beretta was locked open, the chamber empty. I was of no help to anyone. My head was throbbing, and blood was draining down the side of my face. The trees started to spin around me, and I turned aside and vomited into the leaves.
Like an ugly black-and-white film strip out of control on the projector, our collective bete noire was in our midst. He had stepped out of the slave cabin, the Prussian imperious aristocrat confronting the mongrel mix, a Walther P38 with checkered brown grips in his right hand. I can’t say that he had an amused expression, but it’s safe to say it was at least one of puzzlement. He gazed at us as he would at a collection of creatures behind a wire fence on a game farm. He glanced at the dead body of the man who may or may not have been both his son and his grandson, then back at us.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
I could hear the trees creaking in the wind and the grinding of the starter on the pontoon plane. The propeller caught for a moment, then died. The four of us stared back at him woodenly, still unsure how we had become powerless and at the mercy of a man who not only had no mercy but who took pride in his cruelty. “I see Pierre gave you a tap, Mr. Robicheaux,” he said.
“The only score that counts is the one at the bottom of the ninth,” I said. “It looks to me like your grandson or son or whatever he is had a bad night. I think he’s going to be dead for a long time.”
“Did you do that, Mr. Purcel?” Dupree said.
“I feel bad about it, actually,” Clete said. “Kind of like picking on a cerebral palsy victim.”
“Where does that leave us? Let me think,” Dupree said. “Is it true our little Jewish assassin here is your illegitimate daughter? Years ago I would have found a place for her. We spared many who were half Aryan. Did you know there were whorehouses at every one of the camps? I think that might have made a nice fit for you, Ms. Horowitz.”
Dupree was looking intently at Gretchen, a shaft of moonlight striking half of his face, the skin under one eye wrinkling. “Would you be willing to fly away with me in order to see your life spared?”
“I guess it depends on what you have in mind. Did you ever see The Mummy?” Gretchen said. “It starred Boris Karloff. If there’s a remake, I think you could do a better job than Boris. But wearing that mummy wrap on the set all day might be a problem. You seem to have a bulge around your ass. Do you have to wear adult diapers? I bet carrying around a couple of crab cakes all day is pretty uncomfortable.”
“Where’s Varina Leboeuf?” I said, trying to distract Dupree. It was not an easy task. Gretchen had gotten to him. “Is Varina on the plane?” I said. “She hates your guts, Mr. Dupree. I bet she’s going to be a loose cannon.”
“That’s why she’s handcuffed to a pipe in the utility room,” he said. He glanced toward the house. “I see someone
has started a fire there. How nice of you.”
Through the fog, I heard the starter on the plane grind again, but this time the engine caught and I could see the fog thinning from the back draft of the propeller, the tail and fuselage standing out in relief against the water and flooded elephant ears on the far bank.
Dupree walked to a spot by the corner of the cabin so he had a clear view of us and the house and the yard and the plane. He looked at us as if placing us inside a frame, or perhaps as though he were staring at us through a peephole in a door beyond which was a shower room full of disrobed people who had been told they would be spared if they were willing to murder their fellow prisoners.
I had no doubt he was about to shoot the four of us, and Gretchen was to be first. His left hand joined his right on the Walther’s grips; his tongue slid across his bottom lip. His teeth looked small and crooked inside his mouth as he raised the gun to eye level and sighted it on Gretchen’s throat. “It’s too bad to waste such a nice specimen,” he said. “But that’s the way it is.”
Then Clete Purcel performed one of the bravest acts that any human being is capable of. He ran forward, his feet churning in the leaves, his arms widespread, and threw himself on Alexis Dupree, hooking his hands behind the other man’s back, crushing Dupree’s body against his.
I heard a single shot and saw a flash of light between their bodies. I saw Clete stagger and lift Dupree into the air, then the two of them toppling backward into the leaves. I heard the gun fire a second time and saw Clete getting to his feet, ripping the Walther from Dupree’s hand, holding it by the barrel, pressing his other hand against his side, turning toward me, his mouth forming a large round O, his breath wheezing out of his throat.
“Clete!” I said. I said it again: “Clete!”
I was on my feet, and the world was tilting sideways, and I could hear a sound like a train whistle screaming inside a tunnel.
Gretchen took the Walther from Clete’s hand and set the safety on it and gave it to Alafair. She put Clete’s arm over her shoulder. “Sit down on the edge of the coulee,” she said.
“No,” he replied. “Give me the gun.”
“What for?” Alafair said.
“I’m going to kill him.”
“No,” Gretchen said.
“Then you do it.”
“What?” Gretchen said.
“Smoke him,” he said. “Do it now. Don’t think about it. He should have died a long time ago. Don’t give this guy a chance to come back.” Clete was holding on to the side of the cabin like a long-distance runner catching his breath.
“I can’t do it,” Gretchen said.
“Listen to me. A guy like this re-creates his evil over and over again. And nobody cares. He put thousands of people in gas ovens. He sent children to Josef Mengele’s medical labs. You’re not snuffing a man. You’re killing a bug.”
“I don’t care what he did. I’m not going to do these things anymore, Clete. Not unless I have to. I’m through with this forever,” she said.
Dupree was sitting up, brushing broken leaves and grains of black dirt off his hands. “Could I have a lock of your hair as a souvenir?” he said to Gretchen. “You wouldn’t mind, would you? Ask Daddy if he would mind. You two are wonderful at melodrama. The little half-kike telling Daddy she’s going to be a good little girl now.”
Clete removed the plastic bottle from the pocket of his trousers and eased himself down on one knee, the leaves crackling under him, his face draining with the effort. The left side of his shirt was soaked with blood above the place where it tucked into his belt. He steadied himself, unscrewing the small cap on the bottle with his thumb, the bottle concealed below his thigh. “How many did you kill in that camp?” he asked.
“The people who died in the camps were killed by the Reich. A soldier only carries out orders. A good soldier serves his prince. An unfortunate soldier is one who doesn’t have a good prince.”
“I got it,” Clete said. “You’re a victim yourself.”
“Not really. But I’m not a villain, either. Your government killed more than one hundred thousand civilians in Iraq. How can you think of yourself as my moral superior?”
“You’ve got a point there. I’m not superior to anybody or anything. That’s why I’m the guy who’s going to give you what you deserve and make sure you never hurt anyone again.”
I realized what Clete was holding in his hand. “Clete, rethink this. He’s not worth it,” I said.
“You got to do something for kicks,” he replied.
Clete pushed Alexis Dupree on his back and pinned him in the leaves with one hand. Dupree’s face was filled with shock and disbelief as he realized what was about to happen.
“Auf Wiedersehen,” Clete said. He forced the spout on the bottle past Dupree’s lips and over his teeth and pushed it deep into his mouth until the liquid Drano was pouring smoothly and without obstruction down his throat.
The consequence was immediate. A terrible odor not unlike the smell from an incinerator at a rendering plant rose from Dupree’s mouth. He made a gurgling sound like an air hose bubbling underwater. His legs stiffened and his feet thrashed wildly in the leaves, and his face contorted and seemed to age a century in seconds. Then a dry click came from his throat, as though someone had flicked off a light switch, and it was over.
Clete got to his feet, off balance, and let the bottle drop from his hand. He stared up the incline at the plantation house. “That fire is spreading. Maybe we should do something about that,” he said.
I had no idea what he meant. I picked up the bottle and walked deeper into the trees and scooped out a hole in the dirt with my foot and dropped the bottle into it and covered it over, my heart sick at the burden I knew Clete would carry for the rest of his life. The pontoon plane streaked past me, lifting out of the fog, banking above a sugarcane field where the stubble burned in long red lines and the smoke hung like dirty gray rags on the fields. As I walked back up the slope, I realized Clete had not gone directly to the house but to a loamy spot next to a clump of wild blackberry bushes on the bayou’s edge and was dragging a heavily laden tarp from a hole, the dirt sliding off the plastic as he worked it up the slope. Two road flares were stuck in his back pockets. He fitted his hands through the grips of two five-gallon gas containers and tried to pick them up. One of them fell hard on the ground and stayed there.
“Help me,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“It’s not over.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“You think I went too far with the old man?”
“What do I know?” I said, avoiding his eyes.
“He had it coming. You know he did. He was evil. The real deal. You know it.”
“Yeah, I guess I do,” I said. I did not let him see my face when I spoke.
“What kind of answer is that?” he said. “Come on, Dave, talk to me.”
I turned and headed up to the house by myself. I could hear him laboring up the incline, dragging one of the fuel containers behind him like a mythological figure pushing a great stone up a hill.
34
Even as I outdistanced him to the house, I knew I was selling Clete Purcel short. You should never keep score in your life or anyone else’s. And you never measure yourself or anyone else by one deed, whether it’s for good or bad. It had taken me a long time to learn that lesson, so why was I forgetting it now? What Clete had done was wrong, but what he had done was also understandable. What if our situation had turned around on us again? What if Alexis Dupree had been given another chance to get his hands on Gretchen Horowitz and Alafair?
For those who would judge Clete harshly, I’d have to ask them if they ever served tea to the ghost of a mamasan they killed. I’d also ask them how they would like to live with the knowledge that they had rolled a fragmentation grenade into a spider hole where her children tried to hide with their mother. Those were not hypothetical questions for Clete. They were the memories that waited for him every
night he lay down to sleep.
I was on the lawn and could see the carriage house and the driveway and the towering oak trees in the front yard. I turned around and looked at Clete, still lumbering after me, the gas container swinging from his arm. “What’s going on, gyrene?” I said.
He set the container down, his chest rising and falling inside his shirt. I walked back to him and removed my coat and pulled it over his shoulders. In the background I could see Alafair and Gretchen down by the coulee, helping Helen Soileau and Tee Jolie to their feet.
“It’s not over,” Clete said.
“You’re right. It never is,” I replied.
“You don’t look too good.”
“I’m okay. It’s just a flesh wound.”
“No, there’s no exit wound. Alafair was wrong, Dave. You’ve got a big leak in you. Sit down in the gazebo. I’ll be back.”
“You know better than that,” I said.
But the adrenaline of the last fifteen minutes was ebbing, and my confidence was fading. The yard and plantation house and windmill palms and azalea and camellia bushes bursting with flowers were going in and out of focus, like someone playing with a zoom lens on a camera.
“Hang tight, Dave,” Clete said.
He went through the kitchen entrance of the house, the gasoline sloshing inside the plastic container, the road flares sticking out of his back pocket, my coat draped on his shoulders. I followed him and was immediately struck by the density of the heat stored in the house. The fire Gretchen started in the dining room had spread along the carpet and climbed up two of the walls and was flattening against the ceiling. Smoke was climbing in a dirty plume through a hole that probably was once a conduit for the exhaust funnel on a gas-fed space heater.
“Clete?” I called out.
There was no answer.
“Clete! Where are you? It’s a match factory in here.”
I saw a door hanging open in the hallway. The gasoline container was sitting next to the doorjamb. Downstairs I could hear metal clanging and pipes rattling and bouncing on concrete. I went down the stairs, holding on to the handrail. A solitary light was burning behind a central heating unit, and I could see shadows moving on the wall, but I couldn’t see Clete. “What are you doing?” I said.
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