Roots of Misfortune

by Seth Pevey

  “Bye Scrappy,” he said to the sky.

  “Rainbow Bridge, right?”

  “Yeah…I sure hope so.”

  “But you don’t believe it, do you?” She put a hand on his arm.

  “I’m not so sure of anything anymore.”

  They walked on, along the edge of the brown pond.

  “So…how’s your partner holding up?” she asked.

  Felix tossed the empty mason jar into a trash can and turned to her, wiping his hands together. “I guess as well as can be expected. I suppose it all gave him a bit of closure.”

  They stopped in front of a large live oak. Tina looked at the tree, walked up to it, ran her hand against its rough bark. “They said it grew…right out of her stomach?” she asked. She scrunched her nose and Felix could see the glaze of wet on her eyes, though it was hard to tell how much of it was from the pollen.

  “Something like that. I didn’t ask for too many details.”

  “Jesus. How many have they found, so far?”

  “Three, including Julie. But they are still digging all along the bank. They figured the guy might have planted about a dozen out there. That’s not counting the ones that didn’t get buried, either. The girl on the highway, or the one in Florida. Who knows how many there were. But since he crossed state lines, the FBI is getting involved. It looks like he qualifies as a serial killer. One of the worse since Bundy.”

  She moved towards him, leaned in close and measured him with her eyes. “And he would have kept going if not for you, Felix.”

  Was that the blood rushing to his cheeks?

  “I was just lucky. I had plenty of help.”

  “I guess that’s true. I mean you had Scrappy,” she placed her pale hand on Felix’s hot cheek. “And you had me.”

  Felix nodded. “Yeah, who knows what kind of tree I’d be planted under if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”

  Her head angled and she pushed the crimson bangs out of her eyes. “I’d bet it would be a lemon tree, because of how zesty you are.”

  He smirked, couldn’t help himself. “Come on. Enough with the gallows humor. That’s usually my thing. It doesn’t suit a pretty girl like you.”

  “Yeah, you’re right…I find myself trying to be someone else these days.”

  They stood in silence for a moment, admiring the spring day, both of them imagining how abruptly their lives had nearly stopped. Felix thought about all the girls that were never saved. How they had felt. The fear, the hate, the love.

  “What a fucking psycho, huh?” Tina finally blurted. “I mean, you told me what he went on about. About wanting to fill the spirit world with his kids, but that just doesn’t…I mean that can’t really be the reason why? He couldn’t have really believed that? He seemed intelligent. Purposeful. And just imagine how much devotion and dedication you have to have to do a thing like that. To do it over and over. Again, and again. For years. Felix, why do you think he really did all that?” She pounded her fist at the base of the tree as she spoke.

  He took a deep breath, looked her in the eyes. It was a question he’d been considering for long hours each night as he lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, not sleeping at all.

  “What you know…you know,” he said to her.

  Tina gave him a strange look. “What is that supposed to mean? What you know…you know…” she said, testing the words out, weighing them on her tongue.

  “It’s from Shakespeare. From Othello. I had to read it in college.”

  “Oh, college…” she said, a tiny scrunch of hurt troubling her brows.

  “Well, they didn’t teach me much worth knowing, Tina. But this one line keeps popping up in my head when I think about all this.”

  “Alright professor.” She looked at him expectantly.

  “Well…this character, Iago, gets mad at Othello, who is his boss, for passing him over for a promotion. So, Iago wants some revenge, right? When the thing starts off, we all get it. The audience is kind of understanding, I mean. Who likes getting passed over? But as the play goes on, Iago gets…well, he gets dark. Obsessive. Crazy past the point where a missed promotion seems like any kind of reasonable motivation for all the sick things he is doing. The revenge plot starts to grow way out of proportion, until it is so far removed from justice that the rest of the characters can’t seem to understand what this guy’s problem is. The audience, too. I mean, he gets Othello to kill his own wife and then kill himself. And after everything, after Othello’s complete destruction, the characters all ask him. Why Iago? Why did you do all this fucked up stuff to Othello? And that is all he says. What you know, you know. And then the play ends.”

  “What you know, you know....” Tina repeated.

  “Yeah. I like to think of it as meaning something…bigger…you know. Like a much louder voice is speaking. Not just a little revenge story. But bigger than that.”

  “Bigger?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I mean this must all sound like nonsense to you.”

  Felix felt suddenly shy, like he had dug himself a hole. Some things were perhaps best left unspoken. But it was too late now.

  “No. Tell me, Felix.”

  “Like maybe Shakespeare was talking about human nature. Like maybe he was saying that, deep down, we all know. And what we know is that…there is just a darkness there. Somewhere. Down in our roots. Under everything. We know it in our guts. But we don’t like to look too closely at it, or to talk about it. Because then we might see it in ourselves. And that scares the hell out of us. So, when someone does a terrible, awful thing, we demand satisfaction. We demand there to be a clear, logical reason. And we ask Iago why. We scream it at him. We pound our fists on oak trees. Because if there isn’t…if there isn’t a clear reason…well if there isn’t then that same seed might just be planted in us all, waiting to sprout under the right weather conditions.”

  She was quiet a long moment, carefully considering his words. “What you know, you know,” she whispered to the bark of the oak. Finally, she turned to him

  “Or, maybe…Just fuck that Iago guy in particular. Maybe it is just that there are some bad apples once in a while. They are so bad they can’t even see how bad they are. They can’t explain it away. Maybe you and I have nothing in common with people like that, and the best thing we can do is say to hell with Iago, and just get on letting the good people be good to each other.”

  Felix tried to laugh. She’d had a much harder life than he had, and there was a resilience to her sense of hope that drew him to her. Maybe she was right. Maybe she was. And maybe there was a Rainbow Bridge where Scrappy would run into his arms and lick his face some sweet and final day.

  Maybe so.

  “Anyway, G.D. won’t be bothering anyone again,” he said. “The doctors say he suffered something called hypoxic brain damage. They saved his life, but I’m told he now has the mental function of a three-year-old.”

  “That’s a nasty thing to say about three year olds.”

  “Yeah…fuck him.”

  They stood facing each other, the blue sky above.

  “Anyway Tina. I want to show you something.”

  She put her hands in his. Her red hair ruffled in the breeze and her eyes went golden flecked in the bright light.

  Before he could think of all the reasons why or why not, he found himself seizing her in a deep kiss. They held that moment for as long as they could, pressing their lips together in the sunshine. The world spun and danced, went blurry and bright, and then returned—landed them back down in the park, their feet on the warm bricks, where they finally let go of one another and stepped back into what really was.

  A moment of shy laughter. Awkward foot scraping.

  “I wanted to do that first,” he said.

  “Oh, there is more?” she laughed.

  And then Felix pulled out the envelope from his back pocket.

  Her eyes blinked at the return address.

  “What is this?” She folded it open with delicate, s
low movements. Her hands trembled.

  “We are pleased to inform you…” she read, her words trailing off.

  A full ride at the University of New Orleans. Applied Veterinary Sciences. A new scholarship set up at the behest of a very charitable donor.

  The Julie Melancon Foundation for Agricultural Sciences, spearheaded by the Herbert family and a fortune made of ham.

  Tina didn’t say a word. There were some things that went beyond certainty.

  The look she gave Felix Herbert, that spring morning in a park full of free men and women, was one of those things.

  Twenty-Six

  Beep, beep, beep.

  A little bird? Perched somewhere in this cloud. A wisp of a thing. A heart bird. Red-breasted and quick. He twittered, fast fast fast in all this white. Too fast. The song percussed somewhere in his chest and went in and out with a harsh dismay, quickened to a thrumming panic.

  A spirit bird?

  but…

  Did spirits thirst? There was a dryness in his throat that nothing could wet. And it seemed he’d swallowed a giant worm at some point, for some reason, but he couldn’t quite get it down into his stomach. He could feel it wiggling in his throat, excavating his burning tubes.

  Beep, beep, beep.

  But…he wasn’t a bird. He was a man. A man who knew things, things he couldn’t remember. He lay his man body down and the bird flew around the room, landed on his chest, its talons piercing his skin, digging into the chambers of him. Jealously it chirped. Beep Beep Beep went the bird. Wriggle wriggle wriggle went the worm. And the thirst.

  The thirst.

  But this? Was this? Could it be? Had he crossed over at last?

  It wasn’t right, this spirit world. It wasn’t the way it was meant to be: all light and grace and rum, the secret knowing of the cogs that moved mankind. Where were the tables set for a feast? Where were the dice games, where they rolled for the fate of the living?

  Where were his little seeds, all those planted seeds, meant to be running and giggling underfoot?

  There was none of that. Just the bird, growing annoying now with his damn beeping. Just the worm, keeping his throat in agony. He felt the dryness would split apart and crack him. The way you see mud do on a hot day.

  He had the sick sensation of something half done. Of something important forgotten or misplaced. Perhaps there was something he was meant to do? To make it final. A pact. Make your sign here on this line and cross the river on the skull-man’s ferry. Surely that was it. Spread his wings and fly away. Fly away to join them.

  Only…he couldn’t move his wings. Only, he didn’t have wings at all. He had his long arms. His legs.

  He couldn’t move them either. Their muscles twitched to no avail. Something held them. They were in bondage. A kind of cocoon was laced around him. He coughed against the worm, shook the bird’s beep out of his head, struggled to move inside the web, but found it all futile.

  A river sound. A mountain stream on rocks? Jingling. Dancing. Lilting.

  That was not it. Heavier than that. More ponderous, yet small. Dense and cold.

  It was the rattle of chains. Chains that led from a canvas straightjacket to a bed.

  A bed?

  No…this was not possible. Not this.

  He was not alone. Two blue men stood at the door with hands on black metal hog legs. Big men. Living men. They wore beards and great belts, leaned dangerously. They looked at him with dark eyes and called out to someone in the hall.

  A man in white came rushing in. Clean-faced. Gentle. Green, intelligent orbs probing behind a white mask. Living, breathing.

  Say it isn’t so. Say it is over. Say there will not be another moment of this bondage.

  Say that I’m to be free. Say that I’m to join them. Now and not later.

  But the man in white said nothing of the sort. He shone a bright light in his face. The blue men at the doorway stood tense, regarding.

  The man in white mumbled something to them. They relaxed their grips. All laughed, cold.

  A piercing sensation in the arm. A vial of pinching darkness. Silence crept in on him.

  He awoke in the night. A living man in an empty room. He even remembered his own name. He remembered a life. Vague flashes. A shrimp boat. A parade of feathers. A mule’s undulating muscles below him. The look in women’s eyes. But these images were not comforting.

  The beep of his avian heart monitor raced. The web of straightjacket pinned him down. A river of chains tinkled against the metal lip of the hospital bed. That terrible thirst cauterized his throat and his mind stifled like a bag of wet cement had been slopped over it. He went through flashes of a dozen emotions, before landing at that horrible moment of vague realization.

  He had been buried alive.

  A dead man who would not be allowed to die. A spirit trapped in a mute, drained body.

  He tried to speak. His palms wanted to grab for the John the Conqueror he usually kept in his pocket. But the two dark hands lay bound across his chest, enthralled.

  He would call out to them. He would call to the spirits to help him. To protect him. To guide him through the doorway and let him cross. They would ferry him. He would have this done and be gently gliding over to them at any moment. They would sing songs and pour drinks, expecting him at their table. How his children would giggle and his women would dance.

  If only he could speak to them.

  But his throat would not make a sound. His chords would not chime. Only a terrible, guttural spurt and a choking cinch in his trachea.

  So, he called them wordlessly, in his own way. A silent prayer. A pressure in the brain. He beseeched the spirits for their help, their love, and for freedom from this mummified body.

  And the spirits answered.

  In the darkness, they appeared around him, drifting in through the walls. Grim-faced, white-eyed, haunting spirits. The lwa, the invisibles, the mystères. However you called out to them, they replied. They opened the door from that place beyond certainty and they floated into his hospital room with purpose.

  At last, he thought to himself, you are here.

  But then they stepped closer. Their features could now be seen glowing in the light of his heart monitor. Did he recognize them?

  An olive young woman with a terrible, raw hole in her breast, sputtering out her blood onto a torn university hoody. She came closer.

  A black girl all flattened to nothing, horrid tire marks across her flank, lines of a truck grill imprinted on her face. Her terrible burned skin glistened in the glow of the instruments. She too came closer.

  Blonde and blue-eyed Julie, with the dark thumb prints on her throat, her belly a wicked tangle of sooty roots. She too came closer.

  Others still—their faces twisted in pain, in torment, in their terrible lust to get near him.

  He tried to scream. But again, he found himself muted by a lump of hot lead in his windpipe. He tried to move, but again, the binds of the canvas jacket and the tinkling of the silver chains arrested him.

  Closer.

  Their faces smiled, wept tears of rot from grey eyes. Their bone teeth waxed in lipless grins. They stepped closer again, glowing in the ecstatic expectation of a debt, gone far too long delinquent, ready to be repaid.

  They stood in a ring around his hospital bed. They grinned. They reached out with ruined fingers.

  And they stepped closer.

  Twenty-Seven

  David Melancon sat on a balcony overlooking Ursulines, right where it ran down to the Mississippi. He could see the tops of riverboats rolling by, could look down on the piles of gravel being barged upstream. The sun hung low by the bridge and the gulls curled in the soft light. There was music coming from inside, from below, blown down from every alley.

  Spring was here in full, and here he was. By some miracle, he’d lived long enough to see yet another Easter. By the skin of his teeth.

  But he was injured. He’d taken a harsh drink. Had downed a whole bottle of cold realit
y and it had puckered his face and pickled his insides. The proof had been too high even for a wet old man like himself. It had splashed down inside his gut and burned up some vital last bit of him, some organ of the spirit, dissolved a vestigial sense of relish and joy that he felt he’d never get back.

  Or maybe he would. Maybe he’d heal in time. Sober time. A better time than any to switch to iced-tea.

  “Two lemons, please,” he told the young woman, who clicked her pen and smiled at him. “I’ll wait to order until my date arrives.”

  He’d found the body of his little girl, buried there at the roots of that appropriately aged fig tree, growing with its leaves hanging down into the Pearl—oddly shaped leaves, leaves like the feet of some lush reptile, the little fruit buds clustering together beneath them, waiting to ripen into something.

  One day they could have ripened.

  One day, if not for the excavator’s cruel work, digging out and ripping the roots apart, finding them threaded through rib bones; a soft, half-formed baby skeleton peered out from her belly.

  He’d braced for it. Taken it on the chin. Here he was on the other side. The soft bits had burned out of him and left only his wrought-iron soul.

  The hardest part had been phoning Dorothy. He’d had to explain it to her. All the details had to be laid out fresh, bare, dredged up and reconstructed. The puzzle had to be put together in front of her a second time, and it was horrible to finally know how many pieces she had been hiding in her pocket.

  She knew about the strip club, the pregnancy, an assortment of other licentious facts about their daughter. When he asked why she hadn’t told him at the time, or better yet, told him at the time of her disappearance, Dorothy had turned the blame on him. Blamed his work, his drinking, his loose lips she feared would have had the worst of it spread over town before she could button back up her baby girl, could see her buds bear the fruits of propriety.

  But there was one chaser to the bitter slug. He had managed to save another girl from the same fate. The case had been settled. Young Min Ji had been recouped. A little wetter, perhaps, after her bath in the Pearl, but safe and sound. A little wiser too, Melancon hoped.