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“I didn’t say he called me anything.”
“I haven’t met you formally yet, but I’m looking forward to it,” I said.
“Get yourself a better dialogue writer, Jack. And while you’re at it, go fuck yourself,” she said.
I eased the phone down into the cradle and signed out a cruiser and followed the back road down Bayou Teche into St. Mary Parish.
I’VE ACQUIRED LITTLE wisdom with age. For me, the answers to the great mysteries seem more remote than ever. Emotionally, I cannot accept that a handful of evil men, none of whom ever fought in a war, some of whom never served in the military, can send thousands of their fellow countrymen to their deaths or bring about the deaths or maiming of hundreds of thousands of civilians and be lauded for their deeds. I don’t know why the innocent suffer. Nor can I comprehend the addiction that laid waste to my life but still burns like a hot coal buried under the ash, biding its time until an infusion of fresh oxygen blows it alight. I do not understand why my Higher Power saved me from the fate I designed for myself, while others of far greater virtue and character have been allowed to fall by the wayside. I suspect there are answers to all of these questions, but I have found none of them. I think Robert E. Lee was not only a good man but a heavily burdened one who debated long and hard over his decision to take Cemetery Ridge at a cost of eight thousand men. I think that’s why he wrote at the end of his life that he had but one goal, “to be a simple child of God,” because the contradictions of his life were so intense they were almost unbearable.
For me, the greatest riddle involves the nature of evil. Is there indeed a diabolic force at work in our midst, a satanic figure with leathery wings and the breath of a carrion eater? Any police officer would probably say he’d need to look no further than his fellow man in order to answer that question. We all know that the survivors of war rarely speak of their experience. We tell ourselves they do not want to relive the horror of the battlefield. I think the greater reason for their reticence lies in their charity, because they know that the average person cannot deal with the images of a straw village worked over by a Gatling gun or Zippo-tracks, or women and children begging for their lives in the bottom of an open ditch, or GIs hanged in trees and skinned alive. The same applies to cops who investigate homicides, sexual assaults, and child abuse. A follower of Saint Francis of Assisi, looking at the photographs of the victims taken at the time of the injury, would have to struggle with his emotions regarding abolition of the death penalty.
Regardless, none of this resolves the question. Perhaps there’s a bad seed at work in our loins. Were there two groups of simian creatures vying for control of the gene pool, one fairly decent, the other defined by their canine teeth? Did we descend out of a bad mix, some of us pernicious from the day of our conception? Maybe. Ask any clinician inside the system how a sociopath thinks. He’ll be the first to tell you he doesn’t have a clue. Sociopaths are narcissists, and as such, they believe that reality conforms to whatever they say it is. Consequently, they are convincing liars, often passing polygraph tests and creating armies of supporters. Watch a taped interview of James Earl Ray. His facial expressions are soft wax, the eyes devoid of content, the voice deferential and without emotion or an apparent need to convince the listener.
Why the digression? Because on my Monday-morning trip over to St. Mary Parish, I realized how severe my limitations were when it came to discerning truth from falsehood and good from evil in my fellow human beings.
Three miles from Croix du Sud Plantation, I saw a Saab convertible on the left shoulder of the road and a woman changing a tire. She had already removed the lugs and lifted off the flat, but she was having trouble raising the jack high enough to fit the spare on the studs. I pulled the cruiser onto the shoulder and turned on the light bar and crossed the road. Varina Leboeuf was still squatting down in the gravel and struggling with the tire and did not look up at me. Her father was sitting in the passenger seat, smoking a cigarette, making no attempt to hide his glower. I turned the handle on the jack and raised the frame of the Saab another two inches. I could feel Jesse Leboeuf’s stare taking off my skin. “Your old man fires up a smoke right after having a heart attack?” I said.
Varina pushed the spare tire onto the studs and started twisting the lugs on. “Ask him that and see what you get,” she said.
&nbs
p; “Did y’all just come from your husband’s home?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Is Alexis Dupree there? Or your husband?”
“Both of them are. And I do not consider Pierre my husband.”
“I thought you couldn’t stand to be around Alexis.”
“My father needed to talk with him.”
I leaned down so I could speak to her father through the driver’s window. “Is that right, Jesse?” I said.
“I don’t like you calling me by my first name,” he replied.
“Okay, Mr. Jesse. In the past, you gave me the impression that you didn’t want any truck with the Dupree family. Did you change your mind about them?”
“That old Jew owes me money. I aim to get it from him,” he replied.
“How is Pierre doing?” I asked Varina.
“Not feeling very well. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. Do you know why I had a flat? My goddamn husband put recaps on my Saab so he could save two hundred bucks.” She stood up. There was a smear of grease on her cheek. “What’s your problem of the day, Dave?”
“Everything. You, your father, your husband Pierre, your grand-father-in-law Alexis. But right now my big problem is mostly you and your involvement with my friend Clete Purcel.”
“Well, you arrogant fuck.”
“I always liked you. I wish you hadn’t tried to hurt my friend.”
“You have no right to talk about my private life. I thought Clete had some class. I can’t believe he discussed our relationship with you.”
A diesel truck passed, blowing dust and exhaust fumes in its wake, its weight causing the Saab to shudder on the jack. When I looked back at her, her eyes were moist.
“Why couldn’t your father call up Alexis Dupree rather than come out to his house?” I said.
“Because I confront people to their face, not over the telephone,” Jesse Leboeuf said from the front seat. “You leave my daughter alone.”
