The earth seemed to be moving under his feet. He sat down at a picnic table under one of the shelters and waited for his dizziness to pass. It didn’t. A Cajun band was playing a song he had heard over and over since he came to Acadiana.
Even though he spoke Spanish, Smiley could not understand the Acadian dialect. But somehow he knew the song was about loss. The musicians were sunbrowned and lean, the kind of Cajun men for whom privation had been a way of life during the days of the oligarchy. They played most of their songs with joy, but not this one. The cast in their eyes was funereal. Smiley felt a spasm in his side as though a lance had pierced it.
Two little girls were staring at him. They were wearing pinafores and had flowers in their hair. Their eyes seemed unnaturally sunken. “You all right, mister?” one of them said.
“I have a tummyache,” he said. “My name is Smiley. What’s yours?”
“I’m Felicity,” one said. She had red hair and was covered with freckles. “This is Perpetua. Your face don’t have no color, Smiley.”
He slipped his hand into his coat pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill. “There’s an ice cream truck by the street. Can you get me a Buster Bar and whatever y’all want?”
They walked away, looking back at him strangely. What bothered him about the girls? Their dresses were clean, but their skin looked powdered with dust. He felt the ground shift again and wondered if he was losing his mind. The oaks shook, and leaves as thin as gold scrapings filtered through the limbs and bands of sunlight. He reached down and picked up a handful of leaves. They fell apart and sifted and then disappeared between his fingers. For a moment he thought he saw Wonder Woman at the edge of his vision, her gold lariat dripping from her belt, her magic bracelets and her star-spangled bosom bathed in cold sunshine.
He knew there was a term for the affliction he had. What was it? Peritonitis? A septic intrusion working its way through his entrails, boring a hole in his stomach. He felt his colon constrict; his eyes went out of focus.
Help me, he said to Wonder Woman.
But she was lost in the crowd, maybe gone from the park entirely. His heart sank at the thought of being alone. He saw the little girls coming toward him. The girl with the freckles was carrying a cold bag. She put it in his palm. “Your Buster Bar and change are in the bag.”
“Where are yours?”
“We don’t need any. We’re here to take you home.”
“Home?” he said.
“We’re dead, Smiley,” the other girl said. “We’ve been that way a long time.”
He rose from the table, backing away from them. Then he turned and plunged into the crowd, past the platform where the Cajun band was playing “Allons à Lafayette.”
He continued walking through the trees to the other side of the park, deep into a clump of oaks where there were no tables or picnic shelters and the grass was uncut and strung with paper cups and napkins and plates blown from the recreational areas. It was cold in the shade. Or was he losing blood, causing his body temperature to drop? He saw a Subaru convertible parked farther down the slope, the top and windows up, the shadows of the trees black on the windows. He saw a black woman moving around in the back seat, as though trying to position herself on her knees and not finding adequate space.
Then he realized what he was watching.
The images filled him with embarrassment and shame; they were part of the unclean thoughts he’d been taught not to have. The man was spread-eagled, his shirt unbuttoned, his trousers down, his bronzed muscle-corded abdomen exposed. The woman’s head moved up and down above his body. The man’s eyes were closed, his face suffused with pleasure.
Smiley wanted to run away. But he recognized the man: He was one of the movie people. The men always looked the same — their bodies hard, their hair bleached at the tips, the sun’s warmth trapped inside their skin, their teeth perfect, their eyes sparkling as they stared into the faces of ordinary people, never blinking.
No one else was around. Smiley pulled his small .22 semi-auto from his pants pocket and clicked off the safety. He curled his left hand inside the Subaru’s door handle. Neither the woman nor the man heard him ease the door open. Then the woman stopped what she was doing and turned around and held both of her hands in front of her face, her bottom lip quivering.
“No,” she said. “Please, suh. Please, please.”
Smiley pulled the trigger. The firing pin snapped on a dead round. The man came to life, his eyes opening, his teeth shiny with saliva.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Clete had to pick up a bail skip in St. Martinville at nine a.m. I left him at the motor court and drove to Desmond’s home on Cypremort Point. My cut-down twelve-gauge was wrapped in a blanket behind the seat. I had no plan in mind. However, that statement is one I have always distrusted in other people, and I distrust it even more when I think it or say it myself. The unconscious always knows what the person is doing or planning. The agenda is to find the situation and the rationale that will allow the individual to commit deeds that are unconscionable.
No matter how you cut it, I was back to the short form of the Serenity Prayer, known in AA and other recovery groups as Fuck It. I cannot praise the nuances of Fuck It enough, but you already know the drill. I ached to get back on that old-time rock and roll, this time not with the flak juice but with double-aught bucks and pumpkin balls at point-blank range.
Don’t mistake this for a paean to the gun culture. It’s my admission of the madness that has defined most of my adult life.
No one was home. A gardener was raking the yard. He said Mr. Cormier was at a picnic in New Iberia.
“How about Mr. Butterworth?” I said.
“I don’t have no truck wit’ Mr. Butterworth’s goings or comings, suh,” he said, his eyes downcast.
I drove back home and left the shotgun behind the seat and went inside. I heard Alafair clicking on her keyboard in her bedroom. I stood in the doorway until she reached a stopping place. Snuggs was sleeping inside her manuscript basket, his thick tail hanging through the wire. I didn’t know where Mon Tee Coon was. Alafair’s hands were still for a long time, as though she were coming out of a trance.
“Hey, Squanto,” I said.
“Sorry, Dave. I didn’t see you there.”
“Is that your new book?”
“Yeah, it’s called The Wife.”
I looked through the window and across the bayou. “Is that the movie crew over there?”
“The whole city is invited.”
“You’re not going?”
“I took your advice. I’m getting loose from Des and his crowd. I’m not going to Arizona for the reshoot either. Des is leaving in the morning.”
“What changed your attitude?”
She rubbed her forehead and took a breath. “I love Hollywood, I don’t care what people say about it. But Des isn’t Hollywood, Dave. He’s Leonardo da Vinci working for Cesare Borgia, except he won’t admit it.”