A Private Cathedral

by James Lee Burke

  I don’t mean to tire others with this account. But everyone has a private cathedral that he earns, a special place to which he returns when the world is too much late and soon, and loss and despair come with the rising of the sun. For me it was the little dry mudbank on which I now stood, the tide rippling past me, the ducks murmuring and ruffling their wings among the cattails and flooded bamboo.

  Then a giant wobbling soap bubble of incandescence descended on the bayou, bent and distorted, metamorphic, its colors changing from pink to yellow and red and pink again, as though it were swirling with fire that contained no heat. In the center was the galleon Clete and I had seen before, the oars dipping into the Teche, but this time Gideon was standing in the bow, beckoning. “Don’t be afraid,” he called.

  “No, I will not board your ship, sir,” I said.

  “You must.”

  “I came as you asked,” I said. “Please do not act in an authoritarian fashion.”

  A boarding hatch opened on the gunwale, and a ramp slid from the deck to the bank. I found myself drawn up the ramp, inside the bubble, the light as tangible as tentacles on my skin.

  Gideon was not wearing a cowl. His tiny ears and nose and the reptilian tightness of the skin on his face and skull were frightening.

  Down below, between the hull and the deck on both sides of the ship, were row after row of men chained to their benches and oars, some dozing with their heads on their chests, others with the expressions you would associate with infants ripped from their mothers’ grasp.

  In the midst of the oarsmen sat Jess Bottoms, his feet bare, chains attached to his wrists and ankles. His hair was barbered and his clothes were clean. His face was stupefied. He was examining his chains as though he could not understand their presence on his body.

  “Sometimes decades pass before these fellows know where they are,” Gideon said. “In reality, all of us are outside of time. There is no past, present, or future. The future you and Mr. Purcel have is already taking place. It will just take a little while for you to find your way to it.”

  “I don’t wish to talk about the future,” I said. “I don’t want to be on board your ship, either.”

  “You’re just a visitor, Mr. Robicheaux. People such as you don’t make the cut.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “I need you to help me.”

  “Sir?”

  “I was used to kill many people. I have no peace. The one I grieve over most is Leslie Rosenberg. She was totally innocent of any crime. I hate what I have done.”

  “Any crimes you have committed were done with your own consent. I suggest you lose the ashes-and-sackcloth routine.”

  “You won’t help me?”

  “I’m not a theologian. Call up Father Julian.”

  “Evil people are about to hurt him.”

  “Mark Shondell?” I said.

  “Don’t speak to me about the Shondells.”

  “You were at his house,” I said. “Marcel LaForchette saw you there.”

  “I will not discuss this.”

  “You worked for him. Why denounce him now?”

  “Don’t tempt me, Mr. Robicheaux.”

  “Then don’t be a hypocrite.”

  “Be gone with you,” he said.

  “Did you kill Firpo?”

  “I kill no one. They kill themselves.”

  “That’s a lie,” I said.

  “I can do you great injury.”

  “The words of a bully,” I said. “I thought better of you.”

  His skin and the scales on it were luminous with an oily sweat. He raised his hand as though to strike me. I knew I was in mortal danger but could not move. Suddenly, Gideon and the galleon and the poor devils on it disappeared, and I was on the bank, deep in the shadow of the live oak, the air dank and cold and throbbing with frogs.

  I walked home like a drunk man and woke in the morning facedown on the couch, my clothes on, the soles of my shoes rimmed with mud.

  * * *

  IT WASN’T EASY to tell Helen Soileau all this, but I did. As she listened, she flicked a ballpoint pen in a circle on her ink blotter. She had started her career as a meter maid at NOPD and had ended up my partner in Homicide in New Iberia. I believed several people lived inside Helen, both male and female, all of them complex. She was a good cop and a brave and loyal friend but also mercurial and sometimes violent.

  After I finished, she propped her cheek and chin at an angle on her palm, as a teenager might. “There are a couple of things that bother me about your account, bwana. Number one, you said this character Gideon mentioned Vietnam and calling for air support.”

  “That’s right. He knew things about me he could have no knowledge of.”

  “But he used a phrase I’ve heard you use before: ‘Did he smile upon his work to see?’ Where’s that from?”

  “William Blake’s poem about the nature of evil.”

  “You and Gideon read the same books?”

  “That’s a possibility,” I said.

  “The other part that bothers me is you say you walked home like a drunk man.”

  “I haven’t been drinking, Helen.”

  “When was your last drink?”

  “Nineteen months ago.”

  She dropped her ballpoint in a drawer. “This story doesn’t just sound crazy, it scares the shit out of me,” she said. “I have to be honest, Streak. I think you’re having a nervous breakdown.”

  “Is Clete having one? Is Leslie Rosenberg having one?”

  “Ever hear of mass hysteria? How about Salem, 1692?”

  “I told you what I saw and heard,” I said. “Do with it as you wish. I’ll see you later.”

  “This morning I heard from Baton Rouge PD,” she said. “The sugar cubes from Father Julian’s refrigerator contained LSD. Second item: A friend of mine who works in the diocesan office says two anonymous callers have accused Father Julian of child molestation. A third caller said he tried to rape her.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said.

  “They have to deal with it. Father Julian has pissed off a lot of people, particularly these right-to-life fanatics.”

  “I think this is Mark Shondell at work,” I said.

  “Let Father Julian fight his own battles, bwana.”

  “Great attitude,” I said.

  “Have you ever considered the possibility Julian may not be innocent?”

  “He killed Eddy Firpo? Stop it.”

  “How did his stamps end up on Firpo’s shoe?” she said.

  “They were planted.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Glad I’m on the side of the good guys,” I said.

  I walked out of the office. She wadded up a piece of paper and threw it at my back. I walked back inside and picked it up and placed it on her desk. “Shame on you, Helen,” I said.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT I ate by myself at Clementine’s. Outside, dust was swirling out of the streets, paper boxes and pieces of newspaper bouncing down the asphalt and the sidewalks. The light was strange, too, as though it were draining from the western sky into the earth, not to be seen again, robbing us of not only the day but the morrow as well. Of course, these feelings and perceptions are not uncommon in people my age. This was different. As I mentioned earlier, I have long believed that my generation is a transitional one and will be the last to remember what we refer to as traditional America. But somehow the fading of this particular evening seemed a harbinger of a sea change, perhaps a tectonic shift in the plates on which our civilization stood.

  Vanity? That could be. But how do you just say fuck you to the culture and the people who kept Hitler and Tojo from shaking hands across the Mississippi?

  The front door opened, and with a gust of rain-peppered wind at his back, Johnny Shondell walked past the bar and sat down across from me in the dining room, the candle on my table flickering on his white sport coat. “What’s happenin’, Mr. Dave?” he said.

  “No
haps, Johnny,” I said.

  He looked his old youthful self, his system free of skag and tobacco and booze. His dark blue silk shirt was unbuttoned at the top, exposing his tan chest.

  “Where’s Isolde?” I said. I didn’t know whether they were still on the run from Mark Shondell. I assumed they were not, since the uncle had been at the nightclub in Baton Rouge to hear Johnny and Isolde play when Eddy Firpo was slashed to death.

  Johnny’s gaze roamed around the room. “She’s at the motel. We’re flying out to Nashville in the morning for a session at Martina and John McBride’s Blackbird Studios. It’s an album tribute to Hank Williams. Did you know he was the crossover guy to rock and roll, not Elvis? Listen to ‘My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It.’ Your neighbor told me you were probably here.”

  “Can I help you with something?”

  He looked over his shoulder and back at me. “Mr. Dave, you’re the only person who came to see me in rehab. I won’t ever forget that. So I thought maybe I could tell you about something that’s tearing me up, that I don’t understand, and that I can’t talk to other people about.”

  “Does this have to do with your uncle Mark?”

  “He wants me and Isolde to get involved with some of these college kids who want to take down the Confederate flag and the statues of the generals or some shit like that.” His eyes went away from mine as though he had said something obscene.

  “When did your uncle become the John Brown of New Iberia?” I said.

  “You mean the guy who tried to set the slaves free?”

  “Yeah, that John Brown.”

  “Uncle Mark has always treated black people okay. Right?”

  Because to him, they’re not important enough to think about one way or another, I thought. “How do you feel about the issue?”

  “A lot of our fans carry Styrofoam spit cups. Plus, they don’t come to a concert to beat each other up.”

  “I’m not objective about your uncle,” I said. “But everyone in this town knows he does nothing that is not in his interest. They also know he will destroy anyone who gets in his way. Why would he want to help college kids tear down statues of people who have been dead for over a hundred years?”

  “You got me,” he said.

  “If you really want to make people mad, tell them you’ve decided which flags they can fly and which icons they can see in public places,” I said. “You’re a smart kid, Johnny. Whom do you think this benefits?”

  “Right-wing dipshits in general?”

  “That says it all, partner.”

  He looked wanly at the ceiling. It was plated with stamped tin and had been there since the nineteenth century. “Can I say something else?” he asked.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Isolde’s mother has got it in for you. The only thing stopping Adonis Balangie from hurting you has been Miss Penelope.”

  “I hope you and Isolde have great careers,” I said.

  “Don’t shine me on, Mr. Dave. You’ve seen Gideon recently, haven’t you? Up so close you couldn’t lie to yourself about who or what he is?”

  I felt the air go out of my lungs. “How do you know that?”

  “It’s in your eyes. You’ve seen things other people won’t believe. So you’ve stopped talking about them.”

  “I stopped talking about them after I came back from Vietnam, Johnny.”

  “Yeah? Well, the Shondells and the Balangies stopped jerking themselves around over four hundred years ago. That’s why Adonis Balangie’s eyes are dead. That’s why I accept the fact that my uncle Mark might be a monster. The world is a fucking zoo.”

  “Don’t use language of that kind, Johnny,” I said.

  “I got to ask you something.”

  “What?” I said, knowing what was coming next.

  “Did you sleep with Miss Penelope?”

  I crimped my lips and didn’t answer.

  “I didn’t think you were that kind of guy, Mr. Dave,” he replied. “She’s a sweet lady. I think that blows.”

  Try going home and falling asleep with words like those in your head.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  THAT NIGHT THE sky was sealed with clouds that resembled the swollen bellies of whales, and when lightning split the heavens, hailstones thundered down all over Iberia Parish, particularly out on the four-lane, where a slender man wearing a tall-crown hat and a three-piece suit and spit-shined pointy-nose cowboy boots entered a truck stop café and sat down in a booth and ordered a piece of pecan pie and a glass of chocolate milk.

  The storm was so severe that most truckers traveling the four-lane had parked under the overpasses to protect their windshields and windows. As a consequence, the man in the Stetson was the only customer in the café. The only waitress on duty, Emily Thibodaux, said she never believed that one day a man in a café would cause her to lose control of her bladder and pee a pool of urine around her shoes.

  Carroll LeBlanc and I arrived at the café at a quarter past midnight, just after the first ambulance and fire truck had gotten there. The Thibodaux woman was sitting at a table, smoking a cigarette, her lipstick smeared on the cigarette butt, her hand shaking as violently as her teeth were chattering. A blanket was wrapped around her. She looked like a frightened Eskimo.

  “He had silver hair?” Carroll said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Wit’ yellow in it, like dirty soap was ironed into it. His voice was way down inside himself. I don’t t’ink he’s from around here.”

  “He had a foreign accent?” I said.

  “No, suh. Maybe Texas or Mississippi.” She looked toward the service window in the kitchen. There was a sorrow in her face that I’ve seen only among civilians in war zones or in the aftermath of fatal accidents or natural catastrophes.

  “Start over,” Carroll said.

  “He come in and sat down and left his hat on. His eyes didn’t have no color.”

  “What do you mean, no color?” Carroll said.

  “Like cataracts. I brought him his pie and chocolate milk, and he called me back and said did I know Clete Purcel. I tole him Mr. Clete comes in late at night, but he ain’t come in tonight, maybe ’cause of the storm and all. He axed me what time he comes in when he comes in. I tole him I wasn’t sure.”

  “That’s what got him jacked up?” Carroll said.

  “No, suh,” she said. “I was walking away and he said, ‘This pie tastes like dog turds.’ I tole him that wasn’t a nice way to talk. He said, ‘Talk to me like that again, you cunt, and I’ll put somet’ing in your mout’ ain’t gonna be pie.’ ”

  She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her wrist.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I went in the kitchen and got a fresh piece of apple pie and give it to him.” She drew in on her cigarette and exhaled slowly, staring into the smoke as though she wanted to hide in it.

  “Tell us about the homeless man,” Carroll said.

  “He come in off the road dragging a suitcase, wit’ ice in his hair, coughing in his hand somet’ing awful. He wanted a cup of coffee, but he only had fifty cents. I tole him I’d make up the difference, me, but I couldn’t give him no food. Troot’ is, I’d get in trouble for letting him stay inside.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “The man in the hat tole me I’d better get that pile of stink away from him. I went into the kitchen and got the homeless man a piece of apple pie and tole Tee Boy, that’s the cook, I knowed I was stealing from the café, but I cain’t let nobody starve. I said, ‘At least I’m serving him pie ain’t got no germs on it.’ Tee Boy axed what I meant, and I tole him I spit in the apple pie I give Mr. White Trash for calling other people names.”

  She looked for a place to put her cigarette. Carroll took it from her and got up from his chair and flicked it out the door. I waited for him to come back. “What’s the rest of it, Miss Emily?” I said.

  “The service window was open,” she said. She looked into space, as though her words were written on air
and she would have to look at them the rest of her life. She started to cry.

  “This isn’t your fault, Miss Emily,” I said. “This man who came in here is evil. Don’t let him hurt you any more than he has.”

  “Tee Boy got seven children.”

  Tee Boy was black and must have been six and a half feet tall. I had not looked at the body yet. And I didn’t want to. Through the window, I could see uniformed deputies stringing crime-scene tape around the parking lot and the building. More emergency vehicles were coming down the four-lane, flashers rippling in the rain.

  “What happened then?” Carroll said.

  “I went back out and started wiping off the tables, like we do before we close, even though we wasn’t closing. I seen a shadow cover my shoulder and arm and hand and then the table, like the shadow was alive. I turned around and he was standing right behind me.”

  “How was he dressed?” Carroll said.

  “He had on a blue suit and a gray vest that didn’t look like they belonged together. Everyt’ing about him was like that. He had a funny smell, like bedclothes when a man and woman has been lying on them and doing t’ings.”

  “Where was the homeless man all this time?” I said.

  “In the bat’room,” she said. “If Mr. Fontenot finds out he was in there, I’m gonna lose my job.”

  “I’ll talk to your boss,” Carroll said. “Just tell us what happened, Miss Emily.”

  “The man said—”

  “Said what?” I asked.

  “I don’t like using these words. I know his kind. They beat up on women, yeah.”

  “What did he say, Miss Emily?” I asked.

  “He said, ‘I want you to sit down and watch this, bitch. Then I’m gonna light you up. Oh, am I gonna light you up.’ That’s when I wet myself. The homeless man come out the bat’room door, and the man in the suit shot him t’rew the face. Then he went after Tee Boy.”

  “That’s when you hid in the freeze locker?” I said.

  “I couldn’t go out the front ’cause he could see me, so I run down the hallway to go out the back, where my car is at. But the Dumpster guy moved the Dumpster and blocked the door.”