against the glow of the underwater lights, the surface chained with rain rings. I walked out into the darkness, into the parking lot, and started my truck.
Who else would go fishing in an electric storm or ignore the danger represented by a man like Legion Guidry? I asked myself. But that was Clete's nature, defiant of all authority and rules, uneducable, grinning his way through the cannon smoke, convinced he could live through anything.
Evidently, James Jones and Ernest Hemingway bore each other a high degree of enmity. Ironically, they both described the evolution of the combat soldier in a similar fashion. Each author said the most dangerous stage in a soldier's life is the second one, immediately after he has survived his initial experience in combat, because he feels anointed by a divine hand and convinces himself he would not have been spared in one battle only to die in another.
Clete had never evolved out of that second stage in a combat soldier's career. His great strength lay in his courage and his uncanny knowledge of his enemy. But his weakness was in direct proportion to his strength, and it lay in his inability to foresee or appreciate the consequence of his actions, or, more simply said, the fact that a cable-strung wrecking ball is designed to swing both ways.
I drove back up the Loreauville Road and crossed the drawbridge in the center of town and turned onto Burke Street, then walked up the steps to Barbara Shanahan's apartment overlooking the Teche. A lamp was on in the living room, but no one answered the bell. I hammered on the door, but there was no movement inside. I stuck a note in the doorjamb, asking her to call the house when she returned.
I drove to the motor court where Joe Zeroski and Zerelda Calucci were staying. Zerelda was not in her cottage, but Joe was, dressed in pajama bottoms, a T-shirt, and slippers, holding the door open for me, the rain blowing in his face.
'Just the guy I wanted to see,' he said.
'Me?' I said.
'Yeah, this whole town ought to be napalmed. I called the sheriff at his house. He told me to talk to him during business hours. Hey, crazoids don't keep business hours. That includes Blimpo.'
'Blimpo is Clete?'
'No, Nancy Reagan. Who do you think I mean?'
'You're going too fast for me, Joe.' I closed the door behind me. His television set was on, a glass of milk and a sandwich on a table by an overstuffed chair.
'Purcel took my niece fishing. He didn't say where, either, which means he wants to boink her without me being around. In the meantime Marvin Dipshit is knocking on her door, with roses in his hand and this puke-pot look on his face,' he said.
'When?' I asked.
'Two hours ago.'
'Where is Oates now?' I asked.
'I'm supposed to know that? No wonder you people got a crime wave. Get out of here,' he said.
'Joe, I think Marvin may have murdered your daughter,' I said.
'Say that again.'
'Marvin Oates may have molested a woman in St. Mary Parish. He keeps showing up in places he has no business at.'
'When'd you start looking at this guy?' Joe said.
'He's been an unofficial suspect for some time.'
'I'm here now, Joe, because I'm concerned about both Clete and Zerelda. If you can help me in any way, I'll be in your debt.'
An angry thought went out of his eyes. 'I don't know where they're at. But I'll make some calls,' he said.
'No cowboy stuff. Oates is a suspect. That's all,' I said.
'You figure him for the hit on Frankie?' he said.
'Maybe.'
'How could a watermelon picker like that take out Frankie Dogs? A guy who wears boots that look like they come off a Puerto Rican faggot. You ever seen anybody besides an elf or a fruit wear red and green boots?'
'When did you see him in these boots?' 'Tonight. Why?'
I went back home. I tried to imagine where Clete might have gone, but I was at a loss. L called his apartment again and got the answering machine, but this time I just hung up.
'Clete always lands on his feet,' Bootsie said.
'I wouldn't say that,' I replied.
'You can't live his life, Dave,' she said.
I went out on the gallery and sat in a chair, with the light off, and watched the rain fall on the swamp. I thought about the biblical passage describing how God makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on both the good, and the wicked. A few miles away Jimmy Dean Styles and Tee Bobby Hulin were both housed in the parish prison, held without bond, in twenty-three-hour lockdown. I wondered if Tee Bobby had finally accepted his fate, if he looked out at the drenched sugarcane fields surrounding the stockade and saw his future there, either as a lifetime convict laborer on Angola Farm or as a hump of sod in the prison cemetery at Lookout Point, with no identification on his grave marker except a number.
I even wondered if Jimmy Dean Styles still doubted his fate. I could not imagine a worse death than being confined in a cage, knowing the exact date, hour, minute, and second you will die at the hands of others. To me it was always miraculous that the condemned did not go insane before the day of their execution.
But an old-time warden at Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi confided to me an observation of his own that I've never forgotten. He said that no matter how pathological or evil the condemned might be, they do not believe the state will carry out its sentence. An army of correctional officers, prison psychologists, physicians, hospital attendants, prison administrators, and chaplains is assigned to the care and well-being of those on death row. They're fed, given every form of medical care, nursed back to health if they try to kill themselves, and sometimes punished, as children would be, for possessing a stinger or a jar of prune-o.
Would these same representatives of the state strap down a defenseless individual and fill his veins with lethal chemicals or create an electrical arc from his skull to the soles of his feet? My friend the warden believed the contradictions were such that no sane person could quite assimilate them.
On the far side of the swamp a bolt of lightning leaped from the earth and quivered whitely in a pool of clouds at the top of the sky. I felt the day's events wash through me in a wave of fatigue. Then the phone rang in the living room and I went inside to answer it.
It was Mr. Lemand, the manager of Clete's apartment complex.
'I'm sorry to call so late,' he said.
'It's all right. Can I help you?' I said.
'A lady named Mrs. LeBlanc lives next door to Mr. Purcel. After you left, her toilet became clogged and I had to go up and fix it. Since I knew you were concerned about Mr. Purcel, I asked if she had seen him. She said he'd told her he had rented a camp at Bayou Benoit.'
'Do you know where exactly?'
'No, I asked her that.'
'Thanks very much, Mr. Lemand,' I said.
'I'm afraid that's not all. She said a man had been looking into Mr. Purcel's window. She was disturbed at first, then she recognized the man as a Bible salesman she knew. He told her he was delivering a Bible to Mr. Purcel but hadn't been able to find him. So she told him where Mr. Purcel was.'
'What you've told me is very helpful, Mr. Lemand,' I said.
'Unfortunately, there's more. When she looked out her window, she saw a red pickup truck follow the Bible salesman out of the parking lot. Then she noticed the man driving the truck didn't turn on his lights until he was out on the road. She had seen this man earlier. He had a pair of binoculars. She's quite concerned she put either Mr. Purcel or the salesman in harm's way.'
'She and you have done all the right things, Mr. Lemand. Tell her not to worry,' I said.
