“Yeah, Kermit Abelard was there. But I’m not making the connections here. What are we talking about?” He sneaked a glance at his wristwatch.
“You ever hear of the St. Jude Project?”
“In New Orleans? I thought Katrina shut down all the welfare projects.”
I didn’t know whether he was being cynical or not. After Katrina made landfall and the levees burst and drowned over one thousand people, a state legislator stated that God in His wisdom had solved the problems in the welfare developments that man had not. The state legislator was not alone in his opinion. I knew too many people whose resentment of blacks reached down into a part of the soul you don’t want to see. “The St. Jude Project is supposed to be a self-help program for people who have addiction problems. Junkies, hookers, homeless people, battered wives, whatever,” I said.
“The big addiction those people have is usually their aversion to work. Not always but most of the time. I’m not knocking them, but you and I didn’t have a charitable foundation to take care of us, did we?”
“Kermit Abelard never talked to you about the St. Jude Project?”
“Dave, I just said I’ve never heard of it. Hey, Carolyn, you got the meat on the fire?”
“You ever hear of Herman Stanga?”
“No, who is he?”
“A pimp and a dope dealer.”
“I haven’t had the pleasure. Before we go any farther with this, how about telling me what’s really on your mind?”
“Seven dead girls in Jeff Davis Parish.”
Layton’s hands were resting in his lap. He gazed at the back lawn. It had already fallen into deep shade, and the wind was flattening the azalea petals on the bushes. The sun had started to set on the far side of the trees, and its reflection inside the room had taken on the wobbling blue-green quality of refracted light at the bottom of a swimming pool. Then I realized that the change of color in the room had been brought about by the sun’s rays shining through a large dome-shaped panel of stained glass inset close to the ceiling.
“I’m not up on homicides in Jeff Davis Parish,” Layton said. “Kermit Abelard is mixed up in something like that?”
“I was wondering why Kermit is doing biofuel presentations with you.”
“He’s interested in saving the environment and rebuilding the coastline. He’s a bright kid. I get the sense he likes to be on the edge of new ideas. You drove all the way down here about Kermit Abelard? He’s a pretty harmless young guy, isn’t he? Jesus Christ, life must be pretty slow at the department.”
“You know the Abelard family well?”
“Not really. I respect them, but we don’t have a lot in common.”
“Why do you respect them? Their history of philanthropy?”
“You go to a lot of meetings?” Layton asked.
“Sometimes. Why?”
“I’ve heard that when alcoholics quit drinking, they develop obsessions that work as a substitute for booze. That’s why they go to meetings. No matter how crazy these ideas are, they stay high as a kite on them so they don’t have to drink again.”
“I was admiring your stained glass.”
“It came from a Scottish temple or church or something.”
“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 horizon. 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.”
