Elaine giggled.
‘He’s been sick,’ said Jocundra. ‘Radiation treatments.’ She refused to look at Donnell.
‘Actually it was bad drugs,’ said Donnell. ‘The residue of evil companions.’
‘Yeah?’ said Greg, half-questioning, half-challenging. He took a stab at staring Donnell down, but the eyes were too much for him.
‘You shoulda seen the dude!’ The van veered onto the shoulder as Earl turned to them. ‘He talked some wild shit to them goddamn Christians! Had ol’ Papa’s balls clickin’ like ice cubes!’
Elaine cupped her hand in front of Donnell’s eyes and collected a palmful of reflected glare. ‘Intense,’ she said.
Greg lost interest in the whole thing, pulled out a baggie and papers and started rolling a joint. ‘Let’s air this sucker out,’ he said. ‘It smells like a goddamn pig’s stomach.’
‘You the one’s been rootin’ in it.’ Earl chuckled, downshifted, and the van shot forward. He slipped a cassette into the tape deck, and a caustic male voice rasped out above the humming tires, backed by atonalities and punch drunk rhythms.
The singer began to scream ‘I’m gettin’ all worked up’ over and over, his words stitched through by a machine-gun bass line. Glass broke in the background, heavy objects were overturned. Earl turned up the volume and sang along.
Jocundra continued to avoid Donnell’s gaze, and he couldn’t blame her. He had nearly gotten them killed. A manic, sardonic and irrationally confident soul had waked in him and maneuvred him about the stage; and though it had now deserted him, he believed it was hidden somewhere, lurking behind a mist of ordinary thoughts and judgements, as real and ominous as a black mountain in the clouds. Considering what he had done, the bacterial nature of his intelligence, it would be logical to conclude that he was insane. But what logic would there be in living by that conclusion? Whether he was insane or, as Edman’s screwball theory proposed, he was the embodiment of the raw stuff of consciousness, the scientific analogue of an elemental spirit, it was a waste of time to speculate. He had too much to accomplish, too little time, and - he laughed inwardly - there was that special something he had to do. A mission. Another hallmark of insanity.
Earl turned down the tape deck. ‘Where you people headin’?’
Jocundra touched Donnell’s arm to draw his attention. ‘I’ve thought of a place,’ she said. ‘It’s not far, and I think we’ll be safe. It’s on the edge of the swamp, a cabin. Hardly anyone goes there.’
‘All right,’ said Donnell, catching at her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.’
She nodded, tight-lipped. ‘Can you take us as far as Bayou Teche?’ she asked Earl. ‘We’ll pay for the gas.’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Earl’s mood had soured. ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘My ol’ man’s gonna kill my ass.’
Chapter 11
May 21 - May 23, 1987
A tributary of Bayou Teche curled around the cabin, which was set on short pilings amid a palmetto grove, and from the surrounding darkness came a croaking, water gulping against the marshy banks, and the electric sounds of insects. Yellow light sprayed from two half-open shutters, leaked through gaps in the boards, and a single ray shot up out of a tin chimney angled from the roof slope, all so bright it seemed a small golden sun must be imprisoned inside. The tar paper roof was in process of sliding off, and rickety stairs mounted to the door. Jocundra remembered the story Mr Brisbeau had told her, claiming the place had been grown from the seed of a witch’s hat planted at midnight.
‘This is the guy who kept the moths? The guy who molested you?’ Donnell had put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses - a gift from Earl - and the lenses held two perfect reproductions of the cabin. ‘How the hell can we trust him?’
‘He didn’t molest me, he just…’
Before she could finish, the door flew back, giving her a start, and a lean old man appeared framed in the light. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked, looking out over Jocundra’s head, then down and focusing on her. Gray streaks in his shoulder-length white hair, a tanned face seamed with lines of merriment. His trousers and shirt were sewn of flour sacking, the designs on them worn into dim blue words and vague trademark animals. He squinted at her. ‘That you, Florence?’
‘It’s Jocundra Verret, Mr Brisbeau,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a friend with me.’
‘Jocundra?’ He was silent, the tiers of wrinkles deepening on his brow. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘better you come in than the damn skeeters.’
He had them sit on packing crates beside a wood stove while he boiled coffee and asked Jocundra about herself. The cabin was exactly as she remembered: a jackdaw’s nest. Waist-high stacks of yellowed magazines along the walls interspersed by even taller heaps of junk. Dented cookware, broken toys, plastic jugs, boxes, papers. Similar junkpiles occupied the room center, creating a miniature landscape of narrow floorboard valleys meandering between surreal mountains. Beside the door was a clothes-wringer, atop it a battered TV whose screen had been painted over with a beach scene. The wood stove and a cot stpod on opposite sides of a door against the rear wall, but they were so buried in clutter they had nearly lost their meaning as objects. The walls themselves were totally obscured by political placards and posters, illustrations out of magazines, torn pages of calendars. Layer upon layer. Thousands of images. Greek statues, naked women, jungle animals, wintry towns, movie stars, world leaders. A lunatic museum of art. Mildew had eaten away large areas of the collage, turning it into gray stratifications of shreds and mucilage stippled with bits of color. The light was provided by hurricane lamps - there must have been a dozen - set on every available flat surface and as a result the room was sweltering.
Mr Brisbeau handed them their coffee, black and bittersweet with chicory, and pulled up a crate next to Jocundra. ‘Now I bet you goin’ to tell me why you so full of twitch and tremble,’ he said.
Though she omitted the events at the motel and in Salt Harvest, Jocundra was honest with Mr Brisbeau. Belief in and acceptance of unlikely probabilities were standard with him, and she thought he might find in Donnell a proof for which he had long been searching. And besides, they needed an ally, someone they could trust completely, and honesty was the only way to insure that trust. When she had done, Mr Brisbeau asked if he could have a look at Donnell’s eyes. Donnell removed his glasses, and the old man bent close, almost rubbing noses.
‘What you see wit them eyes, boy?’ he asked, settling back on his crate.
‘Not much I understand,’ said Donnell, a suspicious edge to his voice. ‘Funny lights, halos.’
Mr Brisbeau considered this. ‘Days when I’m out at the traps, me, even though ever’ting’s wavin’ dark fingers at me, shadows, when I come to the fork sometimes the wan fork she’s shinin’ bright-bright. Down that fork I know I’m goin’ to find the mus’rat.’ He nudged a bale of coal-black muskrat skins beside the stove. ‘Maybe you see somethin’ lak that?’