“What’s that got to do with it?”
“If you don’t believe there’re people like Alvin Cromwell then you’re dumb, that’s all. They’re the kind of guys become regular army and are right there when the time comes we have to fight a war. They’re the ones save our ass.”
“What’re you getting mad for?”
“ ’Cause you think you’re smart. You think a guy like that’s square that believes in his country and is willing to lay down his life for it. Where were you during Vietnam?”
“I tried to get in, I told you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I didn’t go to Canada or burn my draft card. I got called and they turned me down.”
“And you were glad.”
“Well, of course I was. Cully, what’s the matter with you? All I said was, do you believe him?”
“I know what you said.”
They reached the Mercedes parked on the street, opened the doors, and stood there to let the air circulate inside. Jack looked at Cullen, across the sun glare laying hot on the roof.
“I didn’t know you were in the army. You never mentioned it before today.”
Cullen didn’t say anything. He was studying the buildings across the street, his gaze inching along.
“Were you in the whole time?”
“Three and a half years,” Cullen said, looking up the street now, past the few cars angle-parked along the blocks of storefronts. He turned then, slowly, to look toward the port area, the small-craft harbor and commercial fishing piers. He said with wonder in his voice, “Je-sus Christ.”
“What’s the matter?”
“The first bank I ever walked in and robbed, all by myself, was right here in Gulfport.”
“Is that right?”
“But it’s gone. I don’t see it.”
“That big new building we passed coming in, that’s a bank.”
“Naw, this was an old bank.”
Jack moved out toward the street, shading his eyes with his hand. “Look up there, Cully, this side of the new building. The Hancock Bank.”
Now Cullen came out to the rear end of the car. He said, “Oh, my Lord, that’s it. We passed right by it.”
Jack turned to the car, his gaze taking in the wide expanse of Twenty-fifth Avenue. He stopped and looked down that way again: at the man standing in the street about fifty feet away, at the rear end of a black car parked on the same side of the street. It took Jack a moment to realize it was the Creole-looking Indian, staring back at him.
“Yeah, that’s it all right,” Cullen said. “I remember those pillars in front.”
Franklin de Dios, in a dark suit and white shirt, his coat open; he stood there without moving, looking this way.
Jack said, “Cully, let’s go.”
They got in the car and backed out. There he was through the windshield now. The guy hadn’t moved. He turned as they drove past, watching them. Turned all the way. There he was in the rearview mirror, still watching.
Jack said, “Cully?”
Cullen said, “I think back now, the best time of my life was when I was in the service.”
They drove down to the port area and turned right looking at empty semitrailers parked in the yard of the banana truck depot and drove past the Standard Fruit pier and then the small-craft and shrimp boat harbor. Pretty soon they were looking at the clean white sand that stretched along the Gulf of Mexico and Jack began to glance at his rearview mirror: from the mirror to a wind-surfer in the gulf, a blue-and-orange sail skimming along out there, and back to the mirror.
Cullen saying, “I saw fellas that were my buddies get killed on that island. Shit, it was only about seven miles long, I don’t know what we needed it for, little piss-ass island. But we were all in that war together. There was a feeling there I’ve never experienced again, ’cause we knew we were doing something, I mean that was important. It didn’t matter how big that fucking island was, not at all.”
“We’re into something now,” Jack said.
“I have my doubts it’ll ever come off. But you know what? I don’t even think I care.”
“I mean right now we’ve got something to think about. There’s a tail on us.”
“A cop? You haven’t done nothing.”
“Not a cop, the Indian. The one… you know.”
Cullen said, “Yeah?” But didn’t seem interested enough to turn around and look. He asked though, “What’re you gonna do about it?”
“We’ll get just the other side of Pass Christian…” Jack paused, looking at the mirror again.
“I used to admire those big homes along there,” Cullen said. “I thought, yeah, boy, that’d be the place to live.”
“Then I’m gonna punch it,” Jack said, “get up to about a hundred and twenty miles an hour…”
“Around that curve?” Cullen said. “There’s a big curve ‘fore you come to the bay.”
“Shit,” Jack said, “you’re right. Okay, I’m gonna get around the curve and then punch it. We’re gonna fly across the bridge and then make a quick right on North Beach and lose his ass.”
That’s what they did.
JACK CAME TO TREE SHADE and rickety piers and coasted along the empty shore road: old frame houses under mossy oaks on one side, the worn cement steps of a seawall on the other-where they dropped crab nets into the shallow water. He saw the long plank walk reaching out into the bay. They were approaching the house that had weathered more than a hundred years of hurricanes. “Camille took off the front porch,” he told Cullen, “left four feet of mud inside.” He turned into the side street-noticing the name for the first time, Leopold-and parked at the back of the house behind Raejeanne’s Chevette and some kind of sparkly blue car, brand new, that showed numbers instead of a name and the word Turbo. A woman was watching them from the back screened porch. Then another woman, a bigger shape in the dim area, moved past her to push open the screen door. His sister, Raejeanne. She said, “Who’s that? Friend or enema?” Getting out of the car he heard her say, “Mama, it’s Jack.”
They stood on the back porch by the long dining table set for five, Jack introducing Cullen, Jack taking his mother in his arms, his mom frail and getting smaller, her quiet voice saying, “How’s my fine big boy?” as he patted her and got a sound of keen interest in his voice to ask her how she’d been. “Just fine.” Everything was just fine with her at seventy-five, her hair done in blond-gray waves, her glasses shining, wearing white earrings that matched her beads; but she was an old-timey seventy-five and now she seemed alarmed and he asked her what was wrong. She said, “We haven’t set enough places at the table.” He said, hey, tell me what you’ve been doing, how you’ve been. His mom said, “I been fine till last week, I was in bed a while with artha-ritis.” Jack asked her, “Who’s Arthur Itis?” She grinned, trying not to show her dentures, and said he sounded just like his dad, her Irishman. Close by Cullen was sniffing, making mmmmmm sounds as Raejeanne said they were having a mess of boiled shrimp and there was gumbo left over. She said, “We have company. Guess who’s here, Jack?” He knew, when she said it that way. His mom didn’t have to tell him, giving him a sad look as she said, “Maureen and her husband.” Raejeanne said, “Let’s fix you all a drink and go out on the porch.” His mom said, “Maureen was asking about you. I told her you were working hard as ever with Leo; Maureen said, Oh, that was nice. Her husband’s with her, that doctor.” Jack said, Harby. His mom said, “She’s the sweetest girl…” Raejeanne said Leo was gonna try to get away early. She said to Jack, “Leo mentioned you ran into Helene. You seeing her again?”
“He tell you everything he knows?”
“I hope so,” Raejeanne said.
His mother said, “You ran into somebody in the car?”
They followed a linoleum hall to the front porch. Maureen and Harby Soulé came up out of their chairs, Maureen smiling, putting out her hand to Jack. “I don’t know why but I knew it was you in that nice car.” He held her familiar hand and kissed her on the cheek as Harby stood by in his starched seersucker suit and little bow tie and eyebrow-pencil mustache, Jack feeling the man should have menus under his arm-my God, but he did look like the colonel-Jack feeling alive, glad to be here, feeling confident. There was a Creole Indian who killed people turning through streets in Bay St. Louis right now, looking for him, as Raejeanne handed him a vodka collins with a cherry in it and his mom asked if he felt the breeze. She said there was always a nice breeze in the afternoon. She said, “Remember how you and Maureen loved to go sailing? They don’t have that boat no more. Raejeanne, what happened to that sailboat Jack and Maureen use to love so much?”