AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“With unicorns and satyrs on it?”
“You got me. The architect stuck it in there. Dave, a conversation with you is like petting a porcupine. Ah, Carolyn with a cold beer. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You got some iced tea or a soft drink for Dave?”
His wife, Carolyn Blanchet, wore a halter and blue jeans and Roman sandals; she had platinum hair and the thick shoulders of a competitive tennis player. She had grown up in Lake Charles and had been a cheerleader and varsity tennis player at LSU. Now, twenty years down the road and a little soft around the edges, the flesh starting to sag under her chin, she still looked good, on the court and off, at mixed doubles or at a country-club dance.
Her laugh was husky, sometimes irreverent, perhaps even sybaritic, the kind you hear in educated southern women who seemed to signal their willingness to stray if the situation is right.
“I’m so happy you can have dinner with us, Dave. How’s Molly?”
“She’s fine. But I can’t stay. I’m sorry if I gave that impression,” I said.
“Your steak is on the grill,” Layton said.
“Another time.”
“She made a big salad, Dave,” Layton said.
“Molly is waiting dinner for me.”
“That’s all right. We’ll invite y’all out on another evening,” Carolyn said. “I heard you talking about Kermit Abelard. Did you read his last novel?”
“No, I haven’t had the chance.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s about the Civil War and Reconstruction in this area. It’s about this slave girl who was the illegitimate daughter of the man who founded Angola Penitentiary. A white Confederate soldier from New Iberia teaches her how to read and write. But more than anything, the black girl wants the recognition and love of her father. Do you know Kermit Abelard?”
“He’s gone out with my daughter from time to time.”
“I’ve never met him. But his father gave Layton the stained glass up there. At sunrise it fills the room with every color of the rainbow.”
“I think the architect got that from Mr. Abelard, Carolyn. Mr. Abelard didn’t give that directly to us,” Layton said.
“Yes, that’s what I meant.”
“I’d better go now,” I said.
Layton sipped from his beer, taking my measure. “Sorry you can’t eat with us. You’re missing out on a fine piece of beef.”
He laid his arm across his wife’s shoulders and squeezed her against him, his eyes as bright as a butane flame, the sweat stain in his armpit inches from his wife’s cheek.
ON SATURDAY MORNING I drove to the rural community south of Jennings, where Bernadette Latiolais had lived with her grandmother. It had been raining hard for two hours. The ditches in the entire neighborhood were brimming with water and floating trash, the fields sodden, the sky gray from horizon to hor
izon. Few of the mailboxes had legible names or numbers, and I couldn’t find the grandmother’s house. At a crossroads, I went into a clapboard store that had a pool table in back and a drive-by daiquiri window cut in one wall. Through the rear window I could see rain swirling in great vortexes across a rice field that had been turned into a crawfish farm. I could see an abandoned Acadian cottage, its windows boarded, the gallery sagging, hay bales stacked inside the doorless entranceway. I could see a rusted tractor that seemed to shimmer to life when lightning splintered the sky. I could see thick stands of trees along a river that was blanketed with fog, the canopy green and thrashing inside the grayness of the day. I could see all these things like a transitional photograph of the Louisiana where I had been born and where now I often felt like a visitor.
One wall of the store was stacked from floor to ceiling with cartons of cigarettes. I bought a cup of coffee and started to ask directions to the grandmother’s house from the woman behind the cash register. I had my badge holder in my hand, but I had not unfolded it. She interrupted me and waited on a car full of black men who had already ordered frozen daiquiris through the service window. She gave them their drinks and their change and shut the window hard, holding it firm for a second with the heel of her hand. Her arms and the front of her shirt were damp with mist, her physique bovine, her face stark, like that of someone caught unexpectedly in the flash of a camera. I identified myself and asked again for directions to the grandmother’s house. She glanced at my badge and back at me. “All the daiquiris was sealed,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Ain’t no law been broken long as I seal the cups. I know what they do when they leave here, but it ain’t me that’s broke the law.”
“I understand. I just need directions to the home of Eunice Latiolais.”
“The law says the driver ain’t s’ppose to have an open container. That’s all the law says.”
“Will you give me the directions to the Latiolais house, please?”
“Go sout’ a half mile and turn at the fo’ corners, and you’ll see it down by the river. People been dumping there. There’s mattresses and washing machines all back in the trees. If you ax me, the people been doing this is the kind that just left here. I’m talking about the dumping.” She paused. Her hands were pressed flat on the counter. She had run out of words. She looked out at the rain and at the backs of her hands. “This is about Bernadette?”
“Did you know her?”
