years later. I’m not excusing atrocities or anything like that. I’m just saying…hell, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
A deep sense of frustration is building inside me. “Is there anybody I could talk to who might know more specific information? Somebody Daddy might have confided in?”
Burley shrugs. “There was a black guy Luke was pretty tight with for a while. Some of the brothers don’t come around here as much as they could. We try to make ’em welcome-a vet’s a vet, you know? — but it was the same in-country. Especially after sixty-eight, when Dr. King was assassinated.”
“Do you remember this guy’s name?”
“Jesse something. Can’t quite recall his last name.” Burley waves back toward the building. “Ought to have it inside, but I don’t. Our records are for shit right now. Computer’s busted. Jesse was in the Airborne, too, I remember that. Different unit from your daddy’s. Same unit Jimi Hendrix served in. Jesse was real proud of that.”
“Was Jesse from here?”
“No, Louisiana. Down the river a bit. St. Francisville, maybe.”
“You can’t remember his last name?”
Burley squints like man looking into bright sunlight. “I know it…I just can’t
I’d hoped I would recognize the name, but I don’t. Glancing down the hill toward the tennis courts, I wipe sweat from my eyes. I played tennis down there a few times. In another life, it seems now. I look up at my car but feel no inclination to drive anywhere. “Do you need help taking down the float?”
Burley laughs. “I don’t need it, but I’d sure love the company. I know you got better things to do than hang around here, though.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Hey!” He slaps the picnic table with a beefy palm. “You ought to be able to find Jesse real easy.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’re Dr. Kirkland’s granddaughter, right? Grew up over in that big house, where Luke lived in the barn?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Jesse was related to the housekeeper over there. Second cousin, or nephew, something like that.”
My scalp and palms are tingling. “To the housekeeper? You mean Pearlie?”
“
I stand so suddenly that I feel light-headed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Burley, I need to go.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Thank you so much.” I’m already walking backward toward my car.
“Hey, listen,” Burley calls. “Don’t you worry about what your daddy done over there. He came back alive, that’s the main thing, right there.”
“He made us this Huey,” Burley says. “Anybody makes something that pretty and gives it away for free, he’s gotta be all right down deep. You know?”
Chapter 24
Pearlie Washington is sitting on her porch reading the newspaper when I drive into the lot behind the slave quarters. Aunt Ann’s Acura hasn’t returned-or else it’s come and gone-but my grandfather’s Lincoln is back. I see no sign of Billy Neal, though, and I’m glad for it.
“Where you been?” Pearlie asks, not looking up from her copy of the
“Driving.”
“
“I never chased boys. They chased me.” There are two rockers on Pearlie’s porch. I sit in the empty one.
“Don’t bother asking,” she says. “I done told you all I know.”
“About what?”
“Whatever it is you gonna ask me about.”
I look over at the rows of blooming rosebushes. “Pearlie, I think you could talk from now until next week and not finish telling me everything you know about this family.”
“I ain’t paid to talk. I’m paid to clean.” She licks her finger and turns a page. “Dr. Overton’s wife died yesterday. She was a cranky old so-and-so.”
“Tell me about Jesse Billups.”
Pearlie goes still, like a deer sensing threat.
“Don’t even try to pretend you don’t know who he is.”
She looks up from her newspaper at last. “Who you been talking to?”
“A guy who served in Vietnam. Jesse Billups knew Daddy, Pearlie. I want you to tell me who and where he is. You know I’ll find out one way or the other. I can’t believe you never told me about him before.”
Pearlie closes her eyes as though in pain. “Jesse is my sister’s child. Half sister, really. We had the same mama but different daddies.”
“Your sister from DeSalle Island?”
Pearlie nods. “Ivy the only sister I got.”
I see an image of a small, strong black woman with her hair pulled back in a bun. With this image comes the smell of alcohol and a memory of pain. Ivy gave me a painful tetanus injection once, after I stepped on a nail in the pond.
“Where is she now?”
“Ivy done passed, baby. Don’t you remember? Been almost four years now.”
I don’t remember hearing that Ivy died, but I remember the woman well-not by name, but by occupation. She worked as my grandfather’s assistant in the little building known on DeSalle Island as the clinic. Grandpapa maintains the clinic to treat the island’s black population whenever he stays there, or when emergencies arise. At times, more than a hundred people have lived and worked on the island, many of them using chain saws and dangerous farm equipment daily. I saw Grandpapa stitch up so many lacerations there that by twelve I could do it myself if the need arose. He charged nothing for his services, so most islanders waited for his visits rather than seeking medical care on the “mainland” across the river. Ivy had no formal medical training, but she was smart, silent, and had deft hands. Grandpapa taught her enough to do a good deal of “doctoring” in his absence. Their most famous exploit was removing my aunt Ann’s appendix by lantern light during a storm that cut off the island from the mainland in 1958.
“What about Jesse Billups?” I ask. “Is he still around?”
Pearlie sighs and rubs her forehead. “Baby, what you digging into all this old business for?”
I refuse to be sidetracked. “Is Jesse still alive?”
“Jesse’s the foreman on the island now. Or caretaker, or overseer, whatever they call it now.”
“Jesse Billups is caretaker on the island now? He runs the hunting camp, all of that?”
“Sho’ do.”
“How old is he?”
