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HERE’S THE MINUTIAE of the situation, although Clete and Father Julian and I don’t wish to visit it anymore, and when we go out for dinner, we talk about the world that others see and live in and pretend their vision of things is the correct one.
Johnny fired up the pontoon plane anchored at the stilt house and flew himself and Isolde into Mexico, and for many years their music was a doorway into the past for those of us who wanted to hold on to what was best in our youthful days. Penelope and Adonis grew prematurely old, as though they had outlived their time. I saw her on occasion at the racetrack in New Orleans or in a restaurant in the Quarter, and she was always polite and demure, but for just a second her eyes would linger on mine and her face would become warm and contemplative, and whether imaginary or not, I would smell her perfume, even feel it wrapping around me, like the heavy odor of magnolia on a cool spring night, and I would hear a warning bell at a train crossing and make an excuse and get out of New Orleans as quickly as I could.
But this is not what I wanted to tell you about. I have learned little in life, acquired no wisdom, and given up dealing with the great mysteries. Stonewall Jackson talked about mystifying the enemy. I’ve got news for the general. You don’t need to mystify anyone. On balance, our best thinking has been a disaster from birth to the grave.
What happened to Shondell’s yacht? We don’t know. It disappeared, with his body and the bodies of his employees. I saw it go under from the deck of the sailboat, the keel rolling out of the waves, black smoke gushing from the portholes and open hatches. Maybe it slipped off the continental shelf. Why not? There’s a German submarine down there, its crew still on board. Maybe Mark Shondell found the company he deserved.
But let’s look again at the larger story. Leslie and her daughter also disappeared, probably forever, at least in tangible form. However, I see her and Elizabeth with Gideon in my sleep. I even feel her fingers touch my brow, and I know I’m not alone. Clete says he saw them inside a white fog off Key West. He takes the tale a step farther. He says Gideon has come twice in the early A.M to his apartment on St. Ann Street, like a brother-in-arms who cannot let go of shared memories.
Clete has always been a closet bibliophile. For years, in a small room overlooking his courtyard, he stored hundreds of paperback books he bought in secondhand stores and yard sales, most of them about American history and the War Between the States. He read and reread James Street’s Tap Roots and By Valour and Arms, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, MacKinlay Kantor’s Andersonville, Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox, and all the works of Shelby Foote.
He also loved to visit Civil War battlefields. Not long ago Clete was visiting a site near the place where Grant had begun his Wilderness Campaign, which would eventually culminate at Appomattox Courthouse. Coincidentally, that same weekend, a collection of neo-Nazis and Klansmen had assembled in a city park, supposedly to oppose the removal of Confederate statuary. In a torchlight march, they chanted an anti-Semitic mantra of hatred and paranoia and carried the battle flag of Robert Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia next to Hitler’s swastika. The next day one of their members plowed his car into a crowd, injuring many and killing a young woman.
Clete left town, sickened by what he saw.
Late at night, back in New Orleans in the midst of an electric storm, Clete said Gideon sat down with him at the back of a poolroom. But he no longer resembled the reptilian figure who had haunted our lives. He was clean-shaven and clear-skinned and dressed in a corduroy coat and work pants and suspenders and a floppy hat an Italian vineyard owner might wear.
“The man Shondell served is in your midst, Mr. Purcel,” Gideon said. “But you should not worry about him. He will be destroyed by his own machinations.”
“Who’s the guy?” Clete asked.
“You already know.”
“I don’t want to believe that. I don’t want to hear it, either.”
Gideon squeezed Clete’s arm. “Arrivederci.”
I didn’t want to hear any more of the story. I had already put aside the unhappiness of the past and no longer wanted to probe the shadows of the heart or the evil that men do. It was time to lay down my sword and shield and study war no more. It’s odd, but just at dawn the other day, I saw a narrow boat with a hand-carved dragon’s head on the bow floating down Bayou Teche. On the boat I saw a woman reclining on her side, smiling at me, her lips parting, pulling me once again into the mists of ancient Avalon. Her hair was golden, her skin as pale as milk, a necklace of flowers hung on her breasts, and this is what she said:
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
the rains fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
