Purple Cane Road

'I was just talking with your chauffeur about your friendship with Maggie Glick,' I said.

'Maggie, my favorite madam,' he said.

'You got her out of prison?' I said.

'Right again, Davester. A wrong narc planted crystal on her. It's a new day in the department. Too bad you're not with us anymore,' he replied.

It started to rain, thudding on top of the tents, misting on the neon and the strings of electric lights over the rides. A barman dropped a tarp on one side of the drink pavilion, and the air was sweet and cool in the dryness of the enclosure and I could smell the draft beer and whiskey and mint and sweet syrup and melted ice in the plastic cups along the bar.

'Remember me, Dave?' Sookie Motrie said, and put out his hand. After my hand was firmly inside his, he locked down on my fingers and winked and said, 'When I used to write bonds for Wee Willie Bimstine, I went to see you in the lockup once. I think you were doing extracurricular research. Back in your days of wine and roses.

I took my hand from his and looked out into the rain, then said to Bootsie, 'I promised Alf we'd be back early. I'll get the car and swing around behind the pavilion.'

I didn't wait for her to answer. I walked into the rain, out beyond the noise of the revelers in the tents and the rides whose buckets and gondolas spun and dipped emptily under the electric lights.

You just walk away. It's easy, I thought. You don't provoke, you don't engage. You keep it simple and your adversaries never have power over you.

I started Bootsie’s car and drove through the mud toward the drink pavilion. Cora Gable had disappeared, but Jim Gable was at the plank bar, standing just behind Bootsie.

I kept working my twelve-step program inside my head, the way a long-distance ocean swimmer breathes with a concentrated effort to ensure he does not swallow water out of a wave and drown. I told myself I did not have to live as I once did. I did not have to re-create the violent moments that used to come aborning like a sul- furous match flaring off a thumbnail.

Through the rain and the beating of the windshield wipers I saw Jim Gable standing so close behind Bootsie that his shadow seemed to envelop her body. She was dabbing with a napkin at a spot on the plank bar where she had spilled a drink and was evidently not aware of his closeness, or the way his loins hovered just behind her buttocks, the glaze that was on his face.

I stopped the car and stepped out into the rain, the car door yawing behind me.

Gable's nostrils were dilated as he breathed in the smell of Bootsie's shampoo, the perfume behind her ears, the soap from her bath, the heat off her skin, the hint of her sex in her underthings. I could see the cloth of his slacks tightening across his loins.

Then I was running out of the rain toward him. I hit him so hard spittle and blood flew from his mouth onto a woman's blouse four feet away. I drove my fist into his kidney, a blow that made his back arch as though his spine had been broken, then I hooked him with a left below the eye and drove a right cross into his jaw that knocked him across a folding table.

A man I didn't know grabbed my arm, and a big uniformed policeman crashed into me from the other side, wrestling with both of his big meaty hands to get his arms around me and smother me against his girth. But even while the two men tried to pull me off of Gable, I kicked him in the side of the head and kicked at him once more and missed his face and shattered his watch on the cement.

I fell over a chair and stared stupidly at the faces looking down at me, like a derelict who has collapsed on a sidewalk and must witness from the cement the pity and revulsion he inspires in his fellowman. Bootsie was between me and Gable now, her face incredulous. A wet cigarette butt clung to my cheek like a mashed cockroach. I could smell whiskey and beer in my clothes and Gable's blood on my knuckles and I swore I could taste whiskey surging out of my stomach into my throat, like an old friend who has come back in a time of need.

Through the sweat and water that dripped out of my hair I saw the governor and people from the crowd lifting Jim Gable to his feet. He was smiling at me, his teeth like pink tombstones in his mouth.

26

MY HANDS STILL HURT the next morning. I ran cold water over them in the kitchen sink, then drank coffee out on the picnic table in the blueness of the dawn and tried not to think about last night. I walked along the coulee that traversed the back of our property and looked at the periwinkles along the bank, the caladiums and elephant ears beaded with moisture, the willows swelling in the breeze. I wanted to stay in that spot forever and not go into the department on Monday morning, not look at the early edition of the Daily Iberian, not deal with the people who would speak politely to me on a sidewalk or in a courthouse corridor, then whisper to one another after they thought I was out of earshot.

I walked back up toward the house just as the sun rose behind the cypress trees and seemed to flatten like fire inside the swamp. The back of the house was still deep in shadow, but I could see a white envelope taped to Alafair's screen. I pulled it loose and looked at her name written across the front in a flowing calligraphy. The flap was glued, with tiny felt-pen marks that transected both the flap and the body of the envelope so the dried glue could not be broken without the addressee knowing it.

I opened my pocketknife and slit the envelope all the way across the top and removed the folded sheet of stationery inside.

I went down to the bait shop and called Wally, our 275-pound dispatcher at the department, and told him I was taking a vacation day on Monday and not coming in.

'You axed the old man?' he said.

'I have a feeling he'll get in touch,' I said.

'Hey, Dave, if I pass the detectives exam, can I hang around wit' y'all, solve big cases, mop the shrimp tails off the floor with New Orleans cops?'

But as I went back on the dock, I wasn't thinking about Wally's sardonic humor or my eventual encounter with the sheriff. I sat at a spool table and read again the letter that was written with the symmetry and baroque curlicues of a self-absorbed artist or what a psychologist would simply call a megalomaniac.

It read:

Dear Alafair,

I had a harsh conversation with your father. But he has tried to destroy our friendship and has also been asking people about my private life, about things that are none of his business.

At first I could not believe your words when you said you couldn't see me again. Did you really mean that? I would never betray you. Would you do that to me? I already know what the answer is.

Remember all our secret meeting places? Just be at any one of them and I'll find you. You're the best person I've ever known, Alafair. We're like the soldier and the girl on the vase. Even though they lived long ago and have probably moldered in the grave, they're still alive inside the arbor on the vase. Death can be beautiful, just like art, and once you're inside either of them, you stay young forever and your love never dies. See you soon.

As ever, Your loyal friend, Johnny

I walked up the slope to the house and went into the bedroom with the letter and showed it to Bootsie.

'My God,' she said.

'I'm at a loss on this one.'

'Where is she?'

'Still asleep. I'd like to-'

'What?' Bootsie said. She was still in her nightgown, propped on one elbow.

'Nothing,' I said.