Now? I said.
What better time? the sergeant said. His cheeks were spiked with blond whiskers, his uniform sun-faded and stiff with salt, white light radiating from a hole in his chest.
I have a daughter who needs me.
We all get to the same place. She’ll be joining us one day as well.
You wouldn’t talk like that if you had a daughter.
I had a son, though. The blue-belly who put a ball through my heart didn’t care about him or me.
If God had a daughter, I bet He wouldn’t have let her die on a cross.
Then perhaps you belong among the quick. Right you are, sir. Top of the evening to you.
The column disappeared inside the fog. I felt a weight bounce sharply on my lap and tumble off my knees. I thought I had wakened, then realized I was still dreaming, because I saw a raccoon waddling through the leaves, his furry tail flicking like a fat spring. I fell deeper into my sleep, into a place that was cool and warm at the same time, when the year was 1945 and people in my community spoke only French and on festival days danced under the stars with the innocence of medieval folk.
Someone shook my arm, hard and steady. “Wake up, Dave.”
I looked up at Alafair’s face.
“Better come in before you get rained on,” she said.
I stood up, off balance. “What a dream.”
“You were laughing.”
“I thought a big coon jumped in my lap.”
“Better take a look at your trousers.”
The muddy paw prints were unmistakable. There was a gummy smear on one thigh. I touched it and smelled my fingers.
“What is it?” she said.
“Sardines.”
“Maybe he got in somebody’s trash.”
“Coons don’t jump in people’s laps.”
“Tripod did,” she said.
“He sure did. How you doin’, Alfenheimer?”
“Why are you acting so weird?”
“I’ll take weird over rational any day of the week,” I said.
The next day, I went to the office of the Broussard family physician, Melvin LeBlanc. “Now what?” he said.
“Rowena cut her wrists right above the palms,” I said.
“Yes?”
“If you’re serious about going off-planet, you do it higher up, don’t you?”
“People are not in a rational state when they try to take their lives,” he replied.
“Am I right or not, Doc?”
“They do it here.” He drew two fingers high up on his inner forearm. He gazed innocuously out the window.
“Is there something else you want to tell me?”
“No.”
“Let me rephrase. Is there something else you feel I should know?”
“I’d like to have you banned from my office. How about that?”
I held his eyes.
“Rowena had medical training in Australia,” he said. “She nursed Indians in South America. What we used to call meatball medicine.”
“She wasn’t serious about getting to the barn?”
“This doesn’t mean she wasn’t assaulted.”
“Thanks for your time,” I said.
Chapter 14
That night, Alafair played tennis with friends at Red Lerille’s Health & Racquet Club in Lafayette. The night was black, the lights over the courts iridescent with humidity, the whocking sounds of tennis balls and the huffing and shouts of the players a celebration of spring and rebirth. When Alafair’s friends quit for the evening, she wiped herself off with a towel and began hitting on the backboard. A woman in a pleated tennis skirt and a white sweater cut off at the armpits, with black hair pulled back as tightly as wire, walked up behind her, spinning the shaft of a racquet in her left palm. “Like to have another go at it?”
“Pardon?” Alafair said.
“You’re Alafair Robicheaux. I recognized you from the photo on your book jacket.”
“Yes,” Alafair said.
“I’m Emmeline Nightingale.”
“Are you—”
“Jimmy Nightingale’s cousin and bookkeeper. My partner didn’t show. I was hoping to hit a few.”
“I was about to head back to New Iberia.”
“Maybe another time, then. Your last book was marvelous.”
“Thank you.”
“I read you graduated at the top of Stanford Law. Look, I didn’t mean to do anything inappropriate. I know who your father is, and I know he’s talking to Jimmy about some legal matters.”
“No, that has nothing to do with my situation,” Alafair said.
“Well, anyway, I wanted to introduce myself and tell you how much I admire your writing. Damn it, I wanted to play tonight.”
“If you like, we can volley a bit.”
Emmeline went to the far end of a nearby court and began dancing on the balls of her feet. Alafair went to the baseline and bounced the ball once, then hit it leisurely across the net. Emmeline returned it in the same way, smiling, showing no sense of competitiveness, making sure the return always went to Alafair’s forehand. Then, for no apparent reason, she swung the racquet hard, rolling it with her wrist and top-speeding the ball so it scotched the surface of the court and flew past Alafair’s reach.
“Good shot,” Alafair said, ignoring the breach of protocol.
“Sorry, I was still thinking about my partner not showing up,” Emmeline said.
They stroked the ball back and forth, then Alafair hit to Emmeline’s left side and advanced on the net, intending to create a routine pepper game. Emmeline returned the ball with a two-arm backhand that slashed the ball like a BB into Alafair’s face.
Alafair lowered her racquet and pressed her wrist to her mouth. Emmeline ran to the net. “Are you all right? I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
“I’m fine,” Alafair replied. “You didn’t know I was coming to the net. It’s my fault.”
“Here, let me see,” Emmeline said. “Your lip is cut. Let’s go inside. I’ll get some ice.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Let’s have a cold drink. Please. I feel awful.”
“Really, I’m okay.”
“Please,” Emmeline said.
Alafair slipped the cover onto her racquet and zipped it up. She looked at her automobile in the lot. Emmeline touched a Kleenex to Alafair’s chin and showed it to her. “Come on, we have to take care of that.”
After Alafair went to the restroom, she joined Emmeline in the health bar. Emmeline ordered iced fruit drinks for them and put the charge on her bill. “I took a chance: You like strawberries and pineapple, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“The ice will stop the swelling. Go ahead. Drink.”
Alafair looked at Emmeline’s reflection in the mirror. The woman’s face was flushed, her breath short, as though from exertion or excitement.
“You seem a little tense,” Alafair said.
“I have a confession to make.”
“What’s that?”
“I recognized you not only from your photo but from the university library. You were asking the reference librarian about Civil War maps and the Union occupation of southwestern Louisiana. You told her you were writing a screenplay.”
“That’s true.”
“Can I ask about what?”
“Reconstruction and the White League and a Confederate veteran who teaches a former slave girl to read and write.”