AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh Lord God, look what they done to that po’ man,” the other said. “His face hanging off the wrong side of his head.”
CHAPTER 9
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT before I finished with the paramedics, local sheriff’s deputies, an angry detective who accused me of operating in his jurisdiction without first contacting his office, and the parish medical examiner, who, like many of his kind, had aspirations to be a comedian.
“You could can that guy’s B.O. as a chemical weapon and bring the Iranians to their knees,” he said. “I’d consider rabies shots.”
When I got into my truck I knew I should drive straight back to New Iberia. That would have been the reasonable thing to do. But my late-night hours had never been characterized by reason, neither as a practicing or as a recovering drunk.
Less than an hour later I was on Highland Drive, west of the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, and I turned out of the long corridor of oaks into a brick-paved driveway lined with a rick fence and rosebushes. It led to an enormous white house with antebellum pretensions that might have been built five minutes ago on a Hollywood movie set. The trim on the front door was pink, the brass-work as bright and portentous as gold.
When he opened the front door in his pajamas, the breeze made the chandelier over his head ring with sound and light.
“Bootsie needs your help,” I said. “No, that’s not really true. I need it for her. I’m out there on the rim, Lyle.”
CHAPTER 10
THE NEXT MORNING was Saturday, and I should have been off for the day, but the dispatcher called at 9 A.M.
“What do you want to do with these four guys Levy and Guillory brought in?” he asked.
“What four guys?”
“The bums Levy and Guillory brought in from the shelters. Levy said you were looking for guys who’d been in an ugly-man contest. You’ve got some beauts here, Dave.”
I had completely forgotten.
“Where are they now?” I said.
“In the drunk tank.”
“How long have they been there?”
“Since yesterday.”
“Get them out of there. I’ll be right down.”
Fifteen minutes later I was at the office. I walked down a corridor to a holding cell, where the four men patiently waited for me on a single wood bench. In the center of the cell floor was a urine-streaked drain hole. The men all had the emaciated characteristics of people whose lives existed on a straight line between the blood bank and the wine store. Like most professional tramps, they had a strange chemical odor about them, as though their glands had long ago stopped functioning properly and now secreted only a synthetic substitute for natural body fluids. I opened up the barred door.
One man’s head was misshapen, broken on one side like a dented walnut; the second’s face was eaten with a skin disease that looked like skin cancer; the third had a bad harelip and virtually no cartilage in his nose; but it was the face of the fourth man on the bench that made me wince inside.
“Have you guys eaten?” I said.
They nodded that they had, except the man on the end. His e
yes never blinked and never left my face.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” I said. “I didn’t mean for you to be locked up. I had just wanted to talk to you, but I went out of town and my orders got a little confused.”
They made no reply. They shuffled their shoes on the concrete floor and looked at the backs of their hands. Then the man with the skin disease said, “It ain’t bad. They got TV.”
“Anyway, I apologize to you guys,” I said. “A deputy will drive you back to wherever you want to go. He’ll also give you a voucher for a meal at a café in town. Here’s my business card. If you ever want to pick up a dollar or two sanding down some boats, call that number.”
They rose as one to go out the open cell door.
“Say, podna, would you stay a minute with me?” I said to the last man on the bench.
He sat back down indifferently and began rolling a cigarette. I took a chair from the corridor and sat opposite him. His whole head looked like it had been put in a furnace. The ears were burnt into stubs; the hairless red scar tissue looked like it had been applied in layers to the bone with a putty knife; part of the lips had been surgically removed so that the teeth and gums were exposed in a permanent sneer.
