Both of us ordered po’boys and beer.
At some point during the meal, and for no particular reason, I asked Don about his father. He shrugged.
“Didn’t really know him much. Left, or my mother threw him out, or he got put away, whatever, when I was, I don’t know, nine or ten, maybe. What I do remember’s not good. Lots of hollering and being stood in corners or sent to bed, a few beatings-more, toward the end. Usual happy American childhood, right?”
“Close, anyway. Seems like it.”
I bit off a plug of hard bread, shredded lettuce, hot sauce, oysters. Chewed.
“Mine never touched me. Never said much, but you could see the world going on back there behind his eyes. Had this kind of private smile, mostly. I didn’t know him very well, either, not even what he did for a living. He’d go away for long periods, months sometimes. And he’d always be a little … I don’t know … different, when he came back. Nothing you could pin down, but different. Like whatever he’d been away doing had changed him. And so I had all these different fathers coming home every time. But I didn’t know any of them, not really.”
A drunk stumbled up on the street outside and pressed his face close to the glass. The black man in livery shucking oysters behind the bar gently shooed him away.
“I remember one time I was nine maybe. I’d done something pretty terrible-stolen dimes from a jar of them my mother kept in the closet, I guess. They were standing in the doorway to the room where both of us kids slept, and they must have thought I was asleep. ‘You’ve got to lay hands on him this time, George,’ she was telling him. And after a while my father just said, very quietly, ‘I will not bring violence into my home, Louise. I’ve lived by it too long.’ The next few times he left, he stayed away longer, then one of those times he didn’t come back at all. After a while Momma moved us in with relatives.”
“Jesus, Lew.”
“-has nothing to do with it, as Mae West said.” I finished up my beer and signaled for two more. “Anyhow, I made all that up. Nothing mysterious or dangerous about him. He was just an ordinary man.”
Don looked at me a long time. “Sometimes I think you just may be as crazy as everyone says you are.”
“I am. Sometimes.”
We drank our beers.
“Ordinary,” Don said. “I used to be that, I guess.”
“Well, good buddy, whatever else happens, at least you’re still white.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” And putting down the empty glass: “You want to get some air?”
We walked down Decatur to the French Market and trudged over the levee. A cool breeze eased in off the water. Due south along the river’s curve lay the city’s bulky torso, flanked by the wharf with its growth of ships, tugs, barges. The Canal Street ferry was just pulling out of its slip heading at an angle toward Algiers.
That camel’s hump of land over there, directly opposite oldest New Orleans and now the city’s fifth ward, is central to its history. At various times called Point Antoine, Point Marigny and Slaughter House Point, in the last days of French rule it was the site both of the colony’s abattoir and powder magazine-and a depot for shipment after shipment of slaves newly arrived from Africa.
Dr. King had a dream. I at least had History.
Chapter Seven
I spent the rest of the day making phone calls and wondering. Maybe I should have stayed there at the Belright and called Vice. They wanted Sanders; maybe something in the scenario-whatever it turned out to be-would have led us to Cordelia. But Sanders himself seemed, as they said over at Jefferson Downs, a better horse.
Still, I didn’t really expect him to meet me. I figured it might take two or three times to convince him I was serious. And next time he wouldn’t be so easy to find.
I was half right.
Just as I was leaving the office to head for Jackson Square, the phone rang.
“Griffin? Sanders, Bud Sanders. I asked some people about you, man.”
I let it hang there.
“They said you’re crazy as shit. Someone told me you killed a man you didn’t even know up near Baton Rouge a couple of years back.”
“The girl, Sanders.”
“Look, give me some time-a day, right? I’ll do what I can.”
“Noon tomorrow, call me then or before. And Sanders?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t disappear.”
“Disappear, hell. I’m getting easier to spot all the time. Got cops sitting out in the alley waiting to go through my goddam garbage, my wife’s lawyers on me like fleas. Now I gotta have you burning my ass.”
“Reaping what you sow, Sanders.”
“And what about you, man? You ain’t no goddamn pope yourself, now, are you?”
“Noon. Tomorrow.”
I hung up.
And what about me? Back when I found Corene Davis I’d thought my anger, my hatred, was gone forever. I’d been on top for a long time now, even chipped off a little corner of the good life for myself. But it was a lie, a story that didn’t work, a piece of white man’s life, not mine; and now the anger and hatred were coming back. I had kicked that guy in the hotel room in the stomach. I had wanted to kill him, kill them both. Robert Johnson’s hellhound was nipping at my heels.
I tried a couple of numbers for LaVerne and didn’t get her, so I figured she was with a client. Not much wanting to be alone just then, not really alone, but not with anyone either, I drove over to Joe’s.
Happy hour was in full bloom. One guy had already zonked out, face down on one of the corner tables, but everybody kept buying rounds for him and lining them up in front of him. There were the usual jokes about Joe’s hard-boiled eggs. Two guys were throwing darts in the back, with a Playboy picture of Ursula Andress tacked to the board. Nipples were automatic wins.
Nancy asked me what it was going to be and I said it was going to be scotch. To see her, you’d think Joe was violating child-labor laws. She looked fifteen and was twenty-four, with three bad marriages already behind her and another (I’d met the guy, and there was no way) looming on the horizon.
She brought the scotch for me and an orange juice for herself. I’ve never known her to drink.
“How ya been, Lew? It’s been a while.”
“Ca va bien, as our friends from the swamps say.”
“Yeah, I took French in high school. Had this teacher, one of the best-looking guys I’ve ever seen. He’d sit on the edge of the desk, throw his hair back, it was real long for them days, and he’d recite these poems and things. And I’d be looking at his pants the whole time, cause he wore them real tight, and you could see his dick laying there on his left leg. Looked absolutely huge.” She took a swig of o.j. “Found out later he was queer.”
“C’est la vie.”
“How’s Verne?”
“Fine, last I saw of her.”
“She working?”
“Guess so.”
She finished off the o.j. and rinsed her glass, put it mouth-down on a towel.
“I get off at eleven, Lew.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Yeah, well, like you say: C’est la vie. Such as it is. You want another, you let me know. That one’ll be on the house.”
“Joe doesn’t believe in the concept of ‘on the house,’ as near as I can recall.”
“What Joe don’t believe in is coming in once in a while to find out what the fuck is going on.” She laughed. “Got him a new young honey.”
“At his age?”
“Ain’t no age limit on love, Lew.”
“How about ‘at his size,’ then?”
“There’s always ways.”
“Right. Wills and ways. What does Martha have to say about this?”
She shrugged. “What’s Martha said about all the others? She’d better be clean, not in his house ever, watch the money, knock on my door when it’s over.”
After a few more scotches I joined the dart throwers and hit four nipples in a row. Goaded on by them, I ate four of Joe’s eggs, then we started in together on the drinks lined up by the zonked guy at the corner table. A long time later I realized that Nancy had her purse and was standing by the door.