He tossed a chicken bone over his shoulder into the water and wiped his hands on his trousers. “You’re going to hear it whether you like it or not. It was in South America. We were drilling in jungle that was so thick the wind couldn’t blow through it. The temperature was one hundred degrees at ten P.M. and the humidity ninety percent. We all felt like we had ants crawling inside our clothes.
“The Indians claimed the land was theirs and hung bones in the trees as a warning. When that didn’t work, they started shooting arrows at us. We built a wooden shell around the derrick. It turned into an oven, maybe one hundred twenty degrees. The floor men were fainting or puking in a bucket. We poured water on everybody every half hour. One guy got hit with the tongs. Then a kid took a blow dart in the neck. It had poison on it.”
“I know where you’re going,” I said, raising my hand. “Don’t say any more.”
He ignored me. “The crew was going to quit. The alternative was to bring in the army. That meant we’d have them on the payroll. For all I knew, it was the army who stirred up the Indians. What was I supposed to do? Everything was coming apart. There was no reasoning with the Indians. They filed their teeth and mutilated their bodies. The head greaseball said they killed their own children. I had to do something. My father said a leader has to take charge. ‘You save lives when you take charge.’ That’s what he always said.”
Jimmy paused in the way people do when they want you to agree with them. I stared at the incoming tide, the orange pontoon plane rocking in the chop, baitfish skittering across the surface as they tried to evade a predator below.
“I got ahold of some satchel charges,” he said. “They were old, maybe Korean War — issue. I didn’t know if they’d detonate. I was twenty-two years old. Another geologist and I flew over the Indians’ village. He took the stick, and I pulled the cord on the satchels and threw them out the window. I thought maybe they’d land in the trees and scare the hell out of everybody. I mean, the plane was banking, I wasn’t thinking clearly, that’s all I wanted to do, scare them. That’s what I was thinking when I got in the plane. Just scare them. I told that to the other geologist. That kid they shot with the blow dart almost died, for Christ’s sake.”
I reeled in my line and laid my rod across the gunwale. Just off Marsh Island, a sailboat was tacking hard in the wind, waves bursting on the prow. My father used to trap on Marsh Island. He was killed in a blowout on a derrick. Sometimes I would see him standing in the surf, giving me the thumbs-up sign, his hard hat cocked on his forehead.
“You’re not going to say anything?” Jimmy asked.
“No.”
“What, you think I’m geology’s answer to Charlie Manson?”
“No.”
“Get off it, Dave. What are you trying to do to me?”
“What happened to the Indians?”
“The army went in and cleaned it up.”
“Cleaned it up?”
“Took care of the injured or whatever.”
“Did you go to the village?”
“I had a deadline. We were down eight thousand feet. We should have hit a pay sand at five thousand. Our investors were shitting their pants.”
“Answer my question.”
“The village was on fire. You could see it glowing all night. In the morning there was a black column of smoke across the jungle for two miles. It smelled like garbage burning. Any white person who went down there would have been killed or tied to a tree, and had the skin stripped off him.”
I unscrewed my thermos and filled the cap with café au lait and drank from it. “I’m sorry I don’t have another cup. There’re some cold drinks in the ice.”
“A cold drink? Where’s your soul?”
“You’ve made your statement, Jimmy. My advice is to get rid of the past and get on the square.”
“I am on the square. That’s why I’m running for Senate. I want to do good things for other people. There’re people who say I can be president. Look at Clinton and Obama. They came out of nowhere.”
“You’re in with Bobby Earl,” I said. “When he’s no longer useful, you’ll throw him out with the coffee grounds. Here’s a reminder for you. Mussolini was hanged upside down in a filling station by the same people who elected him.”
“I’m going to be a dictator?”
I shifted my position on the cushion and flung my line, baited with shrimp, in a high arc over the water. I kept my back to Jimmy Nightingale until I felt the boat wobble as he stepped onto his plane. Then I pulled my anchor and started my twin outboards and headed toward home, eager to see Alafair and Clete and all the others who represent what is good in the human race.
In my opinion, one of the great follies in the world is to put yourself inside the head of dysfunctional people. The mistake we usually make is to assume there is a rationale for their behavior. In most cases, there is none. Long ago, I came to regard the Mob in New Orleans as I would an infected gland. Most of them had the technical skill of hod carriers. They were brutal, stupid to the core, and had the visceral instincts of medieval peasants armed with pitchforks. Their sexual appetites were a hooker’s nightmare. The portrayal of them as family men was a joke. They preyed on the weak, corrupted unions, appropriated mom-and-pop stores, and created object lessons with chain saws and meat hooks. The reinvention of this bunch as Elizabethan men of honor probably would have made Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe sick.
Tony Nine Ball not only came to New Iberia, his chauffeured Chrysler caught up with Alafair on the paved running track in City Park. He rolled down his tinted window. “How you do, Miss Alafair? I’m Tony Nemo, an associate of your father’s.”
She thought she was looking at a malignant octopod stuffed into a tailored suit. She sped up and passed the picnic tables and swing sets under the live oaks and circled by the baseball diamond while the Chrysler paced her.
“I just want to explain something,” Tony said out the window. “I got the backing for the picture. But I got to tie it down. Hey! How about listening, here? You deaf?”
She stopped and breathed slowly. “Say it.”
“Get in. I got coffee, I got beignets, I got cinnamon rolls. I got some chocolates, too.”
She had done three miles. She wiped the sweat out of her eyes and tried to catch her breath. “Last chance, Mr. Nemo.”
“I got to get out of the car. I can’t bend over and talk like this. It pinches off my pipes.” His driver helped him out, then walked him to a picnic table. Tony collapsed on the bench, wheezing. “These guys in Hollywood say I got to get the option. It ain’t enough to use a historical story. Levon Broussard told me to get lost, that a local person is already doing the treatment. So who’s that local person gotta be?”
“I don’t have control of the option, Mr. Nemo. I was doing an outline for fun.”
“Nobody does anything for nothing in the film business. Look, come in with me on this deal. I checked you out. You’re already in the Screenwriters Guild. The state of Louisiana pays up to twenty-five percent in tax exemptions and subsidies for films that get made here. We put some locals in Confederate uniforms and hire a boxcar load of boons, and we’re in business.” When she didn’t answer, he looked her up and down. “I’m not supposed to say ‘boons.’ They call each other niggers.”
“The answer is no.”
“Union minimum for a treatment is, what, twenty-two grand? That’s for ten pages. I’ll write you a check now.”
“Sorry.”
“How much you want?”
“Talk to Levon.”
“He won’t talk! That’s why I’m here!” He began coughing and spat a wad of phlegm between his legs. He wiped his mouth with a lavender monogrammed handkerchief. His face was dilated, his eyes as big as oysters. “I’m gonna have a heart attack here.”