A Private Cathedral

Chapter Seventeen

One week later, Mark Shondell was back in town, perhaps with Isolde or perhaps not. People were afraid to ask. If you have not lived in a small Southern town or city, you will probably find this strange. But the greatest fear in our culture has always been deprivation. It trumps all the other sources of our discontent, including the racism that has been with us since Reconstruction. So maybe it seemed almost appropriate, considering the times in which we find ourselves, that Mark Shondell returned to New Iberia with a former Klan leader and neo-Nazi by the name of Bobby Earl.

I do not mean to impugn Bobby. He had been with us a long time. He was not the problem. We were. He was the aggregate for everything that was wrong in us. Unfortunately, he was a master at making use of his perverse gifts to mesmerize a crowd and validate their barely concealed desire to do great physical injury to Jews and people of color. Women loved him, ignoring the fact that most of his facial features were the product of plastic surgery. Men did, too. He was a womanizer, an LSU graduate, and he attended all their home games. Invariably, he was interviewed in front of Tiger Stadium before the game, exuding an almost rapturous adoration of the Southeastern Conference because it was comprised entirely of Southerners, concluding for the television audience that no matter the numbers on the scoreboard, both teams were victorious. Bobby was a pioneer in the conflation of militarism, football, and evangelical Christianity. I wonder sometimes why his constituency has not raised a statue in his honor.

His lies, his disingenuousness, the way he could create a tragic profile before a camera, like Jefferson Davis gazing upon the ruins of Richmond, were seldom if ever challenged, even by the media, because Bobby Earl was impervious to insult and, in reality, thrived upon it, floating above the fray like a phoenix above the ash.

He wore tailored three-piece gray suits like the one worn by Robert Lee during the surrender at Appomattox, although I doubted that Bobby had any grasp on the meaning of Lee’s last words when the old general suddenly woke on his deathbed and cried out, “Strike the tent and tell Hill he must come up.” I also doubted that Bobby Earl would enjoy marching up the slope at Cemetery Ridge with the boys in butternut, many of them barefoot and emaciated, tearing down fences in ninety-degree heat as they went, while Yankee grapeshot and canister and chain whistled in their midst and air bursts blew off the tops of their best friends’ skulls.

Clete had been in New Orleans for five days. When he returned to New Iberia, I asked him to go to lunch with me at Bon Creole out on Old Spanish Trail. We ordered po’boy sandwiches and shrimp and sausage gumbo and iced tea, and while we waited for our order, I told him everything Johnny had said about the man named Gideon Richetti.

“Johnny says that’s the guy who hung me upside down?” Clete said.

“Yeah, but I came up with blanks,” I said. “There doesn’t seem to be any such guy anywhere. No sheet, no prints, nothing.”

“He travels through time? What the fuck is that?”

“Will you lower your voice?”

“You went through NCIC?” he said.

“Everywhere. The FBI, the state police, the state attorney’s office in Florida, John Walsh.”

“Why him?”

“He finds people nobody else can.”

I could see Clete’s frustration. I was giving him information that was not information while calling to mind one of the worst experiences of his life.

His gaze wandered around the room. There were antlers and deer heads and a marlin mounted on the walls. Then he looked out the window at a black Mercury with tinted windows that had just parked under a live oak. The waiter put our food on the table. Clete went to the window and came back. “If that guy comes in here, I’m calling the health department.”

“What guy?”

“Bobby Earl.”

“Clete, if you get us kicked out of here—”

“Don’t start,” he replied, popping open a napkin on his lap.

“I mean it.”

“The passenger window is down,” he said. “The Balangie girl is in the front seat. They don’t have the decency to bring her inside.”

Bobby Earl and Mark Shondell came through the front door and got in the service line. All faces in the restaurant turned toward them. But in one second, with no change of expression, the same people looked quickly at their food or at their hands or at the deer heads and the marlin on the wall. Mark Shondell looked across the room at us and smiled, but I didn’t acknowledge him. He left the line and came to our table. His tan was darker than the last time I had seen him, his expensive clothes immaculate, not one hair out of place on his head. The jeweled rings on his fingers glinted under the ceiling lights. “It’s nice to see you, Dave,” he said, ignoring Clete.

I didn’t answer.

“Sir, did you hear me?” he said.

“Yeah, I did,” I replied, looking through the window at the Mercury.

“Then what seems to be your problem?”

“Your treatment of Isolde Balangie,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder, then back at me. “Her stomach is upset. She didn’t want to come inside.”

“You’re molesting her, you son of a bitch.”

The waiter and waitress and patrons became motionless, as though they were painted on the air. You could not hear a fork or spoon scrape against a plate or saucer.

“How dare you,” he said.

“Get away from our table,” I said.

I doubted that Mark Shondell had ever been called to task in public. A single blue vein was throbbing in his left temple. “You will not speak to me like this.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself any worse than you have,” I said.

“Walk outside with me,” he said.

“No, we’ll end this right here,” I said. I stood up, and with my open hand, I slapped him across the face as hard as I could, so hard his chin hit his shoulder.

“Oh, shit, Dave,” I heard Clete whisper.

I cannot tell you with exactitude what happened next. I felt as though I were standing in the middle of a dream from which I couldn’t wake. The other patrons were staring at their uneaten food. Bobby Earl slipped his arm inside Shondell’s. “Let’s go, Mark,” he said. “It’s all right. He’ll never be your equal.”

He led Shondell outside in the silence.

“How about those Saints?” Clete said to everyone in the room.

No one laughed.

It wasn’t over. I followed Bobby and Shondell into the parking lot. The sky was blue, the live oak above us full of wind. It was a grand day and should have been one of celebration, but I knew a couple of cruisers were probably on their way and that I didn’t have long before someone else took over the situation. Shondell was already in the backseat, and Bobby Earl was getting behind the wheel. I opened the passenger door. Isolde Balangie looked up at me. Her cheeks were pooled with color, her whitish-blond hair sifting on her face. She made me think of an abandoned doll.

“Come with us, Isolde,” I said.

“I’m with Uncle Mark,” she replied.

“He’s not your uncle. He’s a pervert.”

Shondell leaned forward so that his head was right behind Isolde’s. His features looked like an inverted triangle, one that was full of hate. “Be gone, you evil man.”

“I’m going to get you, Shondell,” I said.

“Your career is over,” he said. “You’ve slept with this poor girl’s mother, and you accuse me of moral turpitude? I’m going to expose you for the trash you are.”

“Let’s go, Dave,” I heard Clete say behind me.

“No,” I said. I picked up Isolde’s hand and held it in mine. “I visited Johnny at the treatment center. He was wearing the digger’s hat. He played his guitar for me. He loves you, Isolde.”

Tears formed in her eyes. “I have to be with Uncle Mark,” she said.

“Your mother doesn’t want you to do this,” I said.

“She brought me here.”

“I’ll have a talk with her about that,” I said.

“Let go, Mr. Dave,” she said.

I felt Clete’s hand on my arm. I stepped back and closed the door. Bobby Earl scoured gravel out of the parking lot onto the highway, the dust and exhaust and stench of the tires drifting into our faces.

At two P.M. that same day, Carroll LeBlanc called me into his office. I suspected I had put my badge in jeopardy again, and I prepared myself for another onslaught of LeBlanc’s disdain and sarcasm. But I was about to learn again that people are more complex than we think. “What started it?” he said.

“At Bon Creole?”

“Oh, yes, could it be that?”

“Mark Shondell is molesting a kid in plain sight,” I said. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“Yeah, it does, so sit down and shut up a minute.” He propped his foot on the trash can and looked out the window at the grotto dedicated to Jesus’ mother. He glanced at his ever-present legal pad. “You popped Shondell in the face?”

“I think that’s what happened. I had a blackout.”

“You were drunk?”

“I have blackouts without drinking. It keeps my bar tab down.”

“What’s the deal with the Balangie girl? Don’t tell me human trafficking, either.”

“That’s what this is about — human bondage.”

He rubbed his mouth. “Yeah, there’s predation involved, but it’s in-house stuff between the greaseballs. I just don’t get the trade-off.”

“What do you mean, trade-off?”

“What is Adonis Balangie getting out of this? How about the mother? You’re getting in her bread, right? What does she have to say about her daughter?”

“Carroll, I believe you come from another planet. Maybe another galaxy.”

“Stop being so sensitive. If I had my way, I’d be up her dress, too. Does Adonis Balangie know what y’all are doing?”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“I got to give it to you, that broad’s ass ought to have its own zip code.”

“I’m about to leave your office, Carroll.”

He dropped his foot from the trash basket and held up his hands. “All right, that’s a little crude. What’s really going on between the Balangie family and the Shondells?”

“I think it’s about money.”

“That simple, huh?”

“Not quite,” I said.

“What’s the rest of it?” he said.

“Johnny Shondell says there’s a player who travels through time.”

“Anyone local?”

“Talk to Clete Purcel.”

“In your dreams.”

“I’ll see you later, Carroll.”

“Unfortunately,” he said.

I started to leave.

“Hold up,” he said.

“What is it?” I said irritably.

“You really smacked Shondell across the face? Not just a tap? You let that prissy cocksucker have it?”

“Afraid so.”

He looked at me as though seeing me for the first time. “You’re a motherfucker, Robo.”

That evening I sat at the picnic table in the backyard and fed my cats and two raccoons and a possum who carried her babies on her back and invited herself to a free meal whenever she had the opportunity. If you’re given to depression, the fading of the day can seep into your soul and bind your heart and shut the light from your eyes. During those moments when I’m tempted to let my thoughts be drawn into the great shade, I seek out the company of animals and try to take joy in the transfiguration of the earth as the sun’s afterglow is absorbed into the roots and trunks of the trees and the clumps of four-o’clocks and the Teche itself at high tide, when the light is sealed beneath the water and shines like rippling gold coins in the current.

I walked down to the bank to a spot where I could see the drawbridge at Burke Street and the black people who fished under it with cane poles and cut liver. Another storm was rolling in from the Gulf, already chaining the water’s surface with rain rings. In one fashion or another, our history was written on Bayou Teche. Spanish and French explorers had used it to invade and steal the Indians’ land. Pirates like Jean Laffite had sold slaves from the West Indies on its banks in violation of Thomas Jefferson’s embargo of 1807. (One of Lafitte’s partners was James Bowie, who would later die in the Alamo.) In 1863 an entire Yankee flotilla came up the Teche loaded with soldiers who got deliberately turned loose on the civilian population, particularly on women of color, who were raped at random. Our history was not a benign one.

But rather than dwelling on iniquitous deeds, I wanted to remember the Cajuns who lived on houseboats and went up and down the bayou in their pirogues back in the 1940s, and the paddle wheeler that one night a week came by at dusk, a sculpted replica of Charlie McCarthy on the prow, the decks as brightly lit as a wedding cake, a Dixieland band blaring on the fantail. Even today I sometimes see a pirogue in the fog, with my mother and father on board, beckoning at me, and the experience is not a bad one at all.

The rain began clicking on my hat, and I went inside and ate a cold sandwich at the kitchen table, then fell asleep in a chair in the living room. When I woke, the rain was thundering on the roof, the trees thrashing outside in the darkness, sometimes flickering whitely as though a giant strobe had flashed from the clouds. The phone rang, but when I picked it up, I heard only static. The caller’s name was blocked. I replaced the receiver and went to bed. An hour later, the phone rang again. I looked at the caller ID. This time it was completely blank, something it had never done before. I picked up the receiver and placed it to my ear but said nothing.

“You—” a voice rasped.

“Who is this?” I said.

“Need to pay.”

“Pay what?”

“Come outside,” the voice said. “It’s your time. Nothing you can do will change it.”

“Time for what? Who is this?”

“You have intervened in things that are not your concern. Now you must pay.”

“I’m about to hang up. You’d better get yourself a better scriptwriter, bud.”

“Walk to the water’s edge.”

“What for?”

I was in the kitchen and the lights were off; I believed I could not be seen. I could see the driveway and my pickup and the porte cochere and the backyard. I was convinced no one was there.

“You and your friend are going on a journey from which you will not return,” the voice said.

“Tell you what, podna. How’d you like to eat a bullet?”

“Bravely said. But in each man is a child. They whimper like children. They beg and soil themselves.”

“I’m going to hang up now,” I said.

“I thought you were a more dignified and modest man.”

“Say again?”

“You’re dressed in your underwear. That’s both unclean and immodest.”

High in the sky, lightning jumped between the clouds. There was no one in the yard. I could hear myself breathing. “Your first name is Gideon. Your last name is Richetti. You broke a pimp’s neck in the Quarter, and you gave a hooker thirty grand to start a new life. Who knows, maybe you’re not all bad. But how about losing the time-traveler charade? It’s a drag.”

“You say time traveler?” the voice said, each word coated with phlegm. “Look out the back window again, my friend.”

Then I saw the galleon slide into view in the middle of the Teche, its wood sides and oars glistening with rain, a muscular man in a brass helmet and leather vest and leather skirt beating cadence on a drum.

“Do you deny what your eyes tell you?” the voice asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“How so?”

“Because you’re a fraud of some kind. Because maybe you’re—”

“I’m what?”

“Evil,” I said. “A magician of the mind, someone who knows how to use hallucinogens on others. But ultimately a hoaxer.”

“You lie,” the voice said. “Never speak to me that way again.”

I fumbled the phone onto its cradle, my hand shaking. Then the phone fell into the sink. I jerked the cord from the base unit. The phone was completely disconnected now. But the caller’s voice rose from it, disembodied, floating in the air around me, laughing.

I went to the window. The galleon was gone. The room was tilting and spinning around as though I were caught in a vortex. I tried to walk into the bedroom, then stumbled and fell, taking a chair down with me. I woke at two in the morning, trembling as though the malaria that lived in my blood was giving me a free ride back to Vietnam, my ears filled with hissing sounds like automobile tires on a wet highway, like 105 artillery rounds arching out of their trajectory, like snakes writhing upon one another in a basket.