Light of the World

by James Lee Burke

  “Caspian couldn’t carry his father’s briefcase.”

  “Why’d you marry him?”

  “I was the little match girl looking through the window. I took the easy way.”

  Her fingers rested on the bar, inches from his hand. Her nails were tiny and clipped, the bones in her wrist as delicate as a kitten’s. Whenever she lifted her eyes to his, her mouth became like a compressed flower, the black mole at the corner a reminder of how perfect her complexion was. Her blouse hung loosely from her shoulders, and he could see the sunlight from the door reflecting on the tops of her breasts. He wanted to reach out and touch the mole.

  “I’m alone, Mr. Purcel,” she said. “My daughter is dead. My husband is a satyr. Think ill of me if you wish. I don’t apologize for what I am.”

  “I don’t think you ought to apologize to anybody. I think you’re a nice lady. Maybe you don’t like New Orleans, but you don’t know how beautiful your accent is. It’s like a song.”

  “I haven’t eaten supper yet. That’s why I didn’t want to drink a lot,” she said. “Have you eaten, Mr. Purcel?”

  “You want to go to the Depot? It’s right down the street. We can eat on the terrace. In the evening you can see the deer up on the hills above the train tracks. I always like this time of day.”

  “You really worked for the Mafia?”

  “Just one guy. His name was Sally Dio. Sometimes people called him Sally Deuce or Sally Ducks. Somebody put sand in the fuel tank of his airplane. He survived the crash, but he was turned into a french fry. Dave and I ran into him again a few years back.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Sally Dee caught the car to Jericho. That’s an expression people in the life used in New Orleans years ago.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Jericho is a dead city. If you got on the streetcar to Jericho, you weren’t coming back.”

  Maybe, he thought, he would scare her and she would go away. She got up from the stool and pushed a strand of hair away from her eye, her profile as perfect as a miniature inside a Victorian locket. She tripped in the doorway and fell against him, then blushed and apologized and walked with him into the twilight, neither touching the other.

  They did not pay attention to a man leaning against a parking meter down the street. He was smoking a pipe and gazing at the freight cars pulling out of the train yard. His hair was oiled and combed back over the tops of his ears. He puffed on his pipe and let the smoke curl out of his mouth into the breeze. He seemed to take a special pleasure in the purple cast of the hills, backdropped by a sky that was the blue of a robin’s egg. He did not seem to notice Clete and the woman as they walked past him into the restaurant called the Depot.

  A locomotive backed into the train yard, pushing a long row of boxcars ahead of it, the couplings clanging with such force that chaff from the boxcar floors powdered in the sun’s afterglow. The man leaning against the meter tapped the bowl of his pipe on his hand, ignoring the live cinders that stuck to his skin. Then he put away his pipe and entered the restaurant through the terrace and took a seat at the bar, staring with self-satisfaction at the face he saw in the mirror.

  “What are you having?” the bartender asked.

  “A glass of ice water and a menu,” the man said.

  “You got it. Visiting?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Saw your tag through the window. How do you like Montana?”

  “The state tree of Kansas is a telephone pole,” the man said. “Does that tell you something?”

  TWO HOURS EARLIER, Gretchen had gone up to the main house and thrown a pebble against Alafair’s screen on the third floor. “Want to take a ride?” she said.

  “Where to?” Alafair replied.

  “A dump by the old train station.”

  “What for?”

  “To find Clete.”

  “Call him on his cell.”

  “He turned it off. If he’s doing what I think he is, he doesn’t plan to turn it on again.”

  “Leave him alone, Gretchen. He’s a grown man.”

  “Except he needs someone to strap a cast-iron codpiece on his stiff red-eye.”

  “Do you know how bad that sounds?”

  “I heard him talking on the phone to Love Younger’s daughter-in-law. Are you coming or not?”

  They drove in Alafair’s Honda to the saloon where Clete sometimes drank. Gretchen got out and went inside while Alafair waited in the car, the motor running. Gretchen came back out and got in the car and closed the door. “The bartender said he left with a woman five minutes ago.”

  “Gretchen, don’t get mad at me. What’s the harm if he’s with this woman?”

  “Duh, she’s married? Duh, the Younger family would like to turn Montana into a gravel pit?”

  “Sometimes Clete drinks at the Depot.”

  “I thought he only drank in dumps,” Gretchen said.

  “It was James Crumley’s hangout.”

  “Who?”

  “The crime novelist. He passed away a few years back. Can I make a suggestion?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Alafair pulled away from the curb. “Ease up on your old man. He thinks the world of you. He’s easily hurt by what you say.”

  “So don’t hurt your father’s feelings, even if he’s about to walk in front of a train?”

  “You’re a hard sell,” Alafair said.

  They drove up the street and stopped in front of the restaurant. Gretchen went inside by herself. She looked in the dining room, then went into the bar and gazed through the French doors at the people eating on the terrace. A man hunched on a stool a few feet from her had just said something about the state tree of Kansas. Through a door pane, she could see Clete sitting with a small woman at a linen-covered table under a canopy stretched over the terrace. The woman had a shawl across her shoulders. A candle flickered on the table, lighting her hair and mouth and eyes. She seemed captivated by a story Clete was telling while he drank from a tumbler of ice and whiskey and cherries and sliced oranges, both hands lifting in the air when he made a point, the ice rattling in the glass. Gretchen was breathing hard through her nose as though she had walked up a steep hill.

  “Buy you a drink, legs?” asked the man hunched on the stool.

  “I didn’t catch that,” she replied, not taking her eyes off Clete’s back.

  “You’ve got long legs, lady. I should have called you ‘beautiful.’ I didn’t mean anything by the other name.”

  “Blow me,” she said without looking at him. She went out on the terrace and approached Clete’s table. “You shouldn’t be driving,” she said.

  Clete and the small woman looked up. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes lit with an alcoholic shine. “Hey, Gretchen. What’s the haps?” he said. “Miss Felicity, this is my daughter, Gretchen Horowitz.”

  “Did you hear me?” Gretchen asked.

  “Hear what?” he said, grinning, squinting as though the sun were in his eyes.

  “You’re sloshed,” she said.

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” Felicity said.

  Clete tried to hold his smile in place. He pushed out a chair. “We just ordered. Did you eat yet?”

  “Yeah, by myself. After I fixed supper for both of us.”

  He looked confused. “We were supposed to eat together? I must not have heard you. Is Alafair with you?”

  “Yeah, I’ll drive the Caddy. She’ll follow us home. Let’s go.”

  “Maybe we should do this another time, Clete,” Felicity said.

  “No, no,” Clete said. “Sit down, Gretchen. I’ll go get Alafair. Order me a refill.”

  Gretchen propped her palms on the table and leaned down. “What’s your name again?” she said to the woman.

  “Felicity Louviere.”

  “You’re married to Caspian Younger?”

  “Yes. How would you know that?”

  “I’m making a documentary on your family and your oil and natural-g
as explorations. You’re not aware of it?”

  “Somehow it escaped my attention.”

  “I don’t like to say this, Ms. Louviere, but I think you’ve asked for it. You’re out with a man who’s not your husband after just losing your daughter. Does that seem normal to you?”

  “Clete, I’d better get my car,” Felicity Louviere said. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I hope to see you another time.”

  Clete pinched his temples as though the pressure of his fingers could impose a modicum of sanity on the situation. “Tell Alafair to come inside,” he said. “We’re going to have dinner. We’re going to talk like civilized human beings. This bullshit ends, Gretchen. Now sit down.”

  Gretchen felt the blood go out of her cheeks. The candle on the table seemed to brighten and change shape and shine as though burning underwater. “She looks like Mickey Mouse’s twin sister,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Clete said.

  “It’s your life, Clete. Be a public fool if you want. You’re really good at it,” Gretchen said.

  She walked toward the French doors, her eyes shiny, an electric grid printing itself all over her back. “Don’t go, Gretchen,” she heard him say.

  She gripped the brass handle on the French doors and turned to look once more at the table. Clete had stood up and was leaning over Felicity, his hand resting on the back of her chair, as though he were comforting her. His eyes met Gretchen’s. He smiled and walked toward her. Her heart was pounding so loudly, she could hardly hear his words.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  “Get rid of her. Don’t do this to yourself.”

  “There’s no problem. We’re just having dinner.”

  “You may have the right to hurt yourself, but you don’t have the right to hurt others.”

  “You want me to leave her alone in the restaurant? A woman whose daughter might have been murdered by the same guy who was stalking Alafair?”

  “She’ll use you. When she’s finished, she’ll be fucking some other poor halfwit who thinks he’s the love of her life. You make me so mad, I want to get as far away from you as I can and never come back.”

  People at the tables turned and stared.

  “We’ll talk later. I’ll see you at the cabin,” he said.

  “You mean after you get your ashes hauled. After you come home hungover and stinking like a cathouse in Trinidad on Sunday morning.”

  She saw the twitch in his face, the injury in his eyes. “Okay, I messed up about supper. I got a long history of being irresponsible,” he said. “You knew that when you signed on.”

  “That’s the way you feel? A bimbo lets you scope her jugs and you dump the only family you have? That’s pathetic. I hear there’s a T and A bar on North Higgins. Maybe both of you can get jobs there.”

  She went through the French doors into the bar. It was crowded with college boys and tourists, all of whom were talking as loudly as they could. A television set was blaring, and someone was yelling whenever a soccer player on the screen kicked the ball down the field. She wanted somebody to start something with her, to step in her way, to put a hand on her, to make a pass, to comment on the anger in her face. She wanted to twist off someone’s head and kick it down the sidewalk. Where was the smart-ass who had called her “legs”?

  She seemed to have become invisible. She walked out the front door and got in Alafair’s car.

  “What happened in there?” Alafair said. “You look like someone put you in a microwave.”

  “Don’t be clever at my expense.”

  “What did Clete say to you?”

  “Nothing worth repeating. He’s an expert at empty rhetoric. Fuck him.”

  “We’re your family, Gretchen. You need to trust people a little more.”

  “I told you to give it a rest, Alafair. You sound like your father.”

  “Clete’s charity is his weakness. Manipulative women use it against him,” Alafair said. “And don’t be making remarks about Dave.”

  “Porking a bitch like Felicity Louviere is an act of charity? No wonder your family is screwed up.”

  Alafair drove down a brick-paved street that paralleled the train tracks. The evening star was bright and cold above the hills in the west. A solitary drop of rain struck the windshield. “I’m going to forget what you just said.”

  “Did I need to put this on flash cards? Clete just made a choice. He wants to get in that bitch’s bread. If that hurts his daughter, too bad. His swizzle stick comes first.”

  Alafair pulled the Honda to the curb and cut the engine. She waited for a rusted-out Volkswagen bus and two bicyclists to pass. She started to speak, then studied a reflection in the outside mirror.

  “Let’s get going. I don’t need any more psychoanalytical crap,” Gretchen said.

  “I thought I saw a guy come out of the restaurant and look at the back of my car. He’s gone now.”

  “A guy was hitting on me in there.”

  “Who?”

  “How would I know? The kind of guy who sits on a barstool like a vulture. Who cares? What were you going to say?”

  “You have to accept Clete as he is,” Alafair said. “When we take people to task for being what they are, we’re deceiving ourselves. It’s also pretty arrogant. We’re telling others they have to be perfect in order to be our friends. It took me a long time to figure that out. You need to dial it down, Gretch.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Clete would lay down his life for any one of us. This stuff with the Louviere woman will pass. Clete has never grown up. He probably never will.”

  “How would you feel if your father put another woman ahead of his family?”

  The car was quiet.

  “Not too goddamn good, right?” Gretchen said.

  “You’re right,” Alafair said.

  “Start the car and drop me by the Caddy.”

  “What for?”

  “I have a spare set of keys. If Clete wants to go to a motel, his punch will have to take her car, because I’m going to boost the Caddy.”

  “You don’t take prisoners, do you?”

  Gretchen didn’t reply and stared out the side window into the darkness. She sniffed and dabbed her nose with her wrist.

  “You’re my best friend,” Alafair said. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I’ll drive you to Clete’s car. But after that, you’re on your own.”

  “I’ve always been on my own,” she said. “That’s what none of you have figured out. You don’t know shit about what’s in my head.”

  They were silent while Alafair circled the block and pulled to the curb by the restaurant parking lot. Gretchen got out and walked to Clete’s convertible, her tote bag swinging from her shoulder. She stuck her spare key into the door lock and looked back at the street. Alafair cut her engine and walked into the parking lot. “I’ll make this brief,” she said. “I’ll always be your friend, no matter what you say or do. Dave and Molly will always be there for you, too. But if you ever speak to me like that again, I’m going to kick your butt around the block.”

  CLETE SAT BACK down at the table and drank the melt in the bottom of his tumbler, crunching the cherries and orange slices between his molars. “I shot off my mouth,” he said.

  “I don’t know if I’m up to this kind of evening,” Felicity said.

  “Gretchen is a good kid. She just had the wrong idea. My body doesn’t process booze the way it used to.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t drink.”

  “It doesn’t quite work like that.”

  “You treat your daughter as if she’s a child. Mature people don’t throw temper tantrums in a restaurant.”

  “I wasn’t there for her when she was growing up. She was surrounded by bad guys. I’m talking about johns and degenerates, one in particular.”

  “You’re talking about a molester?”

  “A guy who burned her all over with cigarettes when she was a toddler
. He isn’t around anymore.” He felt her gaze rove over his face.

  “What are you telling me?” she asked.

  “I’m saying the guy who hurt my daughter isn’t going to hurt anybody else.”

  “No, what are you trying to tell me about your daughter?”

  “Not everybody grows up in a regular home. Gretchen’s mother was a hooker. Her old man was a drunk and on a pad for the Giacano crime family in New Orleans. The old man tried to set things right and took care of the guy who hurt her. But punching somebody’s ticket doesn’t give back the life a pervert stole from a little girl. That’s what I was trying to say.”

  “Maybe you’re a better man than you think you are. When I said you shouldn’t drink, I wasn’t criticizing you. I thought maybe we would have a fine evening.”

  “I’ve got King Midas’s touch in reverse. Whatever I touch turns to garbage. Excuse me, I got to go to the restroom.”

  He went into the men’s room and relieved himself and washed his hands. The reflection he saw in the mirror could have been that of a profligate doppelgänger come to mock him. The skin around his eyes was green, his face dilated and oily with booze, the welted scar running through one eyebrow as red and swollen as an artery about to burst. There was a lipstick smear on his shirt pocket, where she had fallen against him when they were going out the door of the saloon. He washed his face in cold water, heaping it with both hands into his eyes and rubbing it on the back of his neck. He wiped his face with paper towels and combed his hair and returned to the table.

  “We can cancel the order and maybe go somewhere else,” Felicity said.

  “I think I’ve blown out my doors for tonight. I’ve got to square things with Gretchen. You’re a nice lady. I’ll help you in whatever way I can, but right now I’m done.”

  She placed her hand on his knee. “Don’t let our evening end like this.”

  “End like what? I’m tired. I’m running on the rims. I’m a fucking mess.”

  “Don’t let situations and people control you, Clete. Our destiny isn’t in the stars, it’s in us. We can control the moment we have. That moment is now.” Her fingers lingered on his knee, as light as air, one finger idly brushing the fabric. “I really like you,” she said.