Bandits

20

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?”

“It sunk, Mama.”

Maureen said, “How’s work, Jack?”

He looked at her slender body in the neat blue sundress, her slender arms, her slender legs crossed, her strong hands holding the drink in her lap; one hand or the other that used to sooner or later grip his when they were lying in the hammock that hung folded against the wall behind him and he would draw his hand out of her clothes.

“The same. It doesn’t change.”

Harby said, “Least you don’t have to buy malpractice insurance.”

Jack said, “No, we never get a complaint.” He said things here he never said anywhere else-Maureen watching him, knowing it. If one time he had not taken his hand out of her clothes and they had made love… He couldn’t imagine her making love to Harby Soulé.

Harby saying he worked two months a year for the darn insurance company. Cullen asked him what he did. Harby said he was a urologist. Cullen frowned and Raejeanne said he was a pecker checker. Cullen said, Oh, was that right? He said he had a question but had better save it, huh?

If they had made love… they could be sitting here right now, except Harby wouldn’t be here, or Cullen, and there wouldn’t be a Creole Indian named Franklin de Dios cruising around, or Nicaraguans… He still could have met Lucy Nichols.

“Have you ever heard of the Sisters of Saint Francis?”

“I’m not sure,” Maureen said. “Why?”

“I met one. They take care of lepers.”

Maureen said, “Oh,” nodding.

“Could you imagine doing that?”

“I doubt it. Where did you meet her?”

“Carville. Have you ever been there?” He felt himself pressing and he wasn’t sure why.

“I’ve never had a desire to go.”

“It’s quite a place. Looks more like a college campus than a hospital.”

“Harby, you’ve been there, haven’t you?”

“Where’s that?”

“Carville.”

“No, I’ve never been there. Several of my colleagues have though. Why?”

Colleagues, Jack thought. Harby Soulé the urologist has colleagues…

“Jack was just asking.”

“Yeah, if he wants to go there,” Harby said. “I can’t imagine why, but I suppose I could arrange it.”

The phone rang in the house. Raejeanne got up, left the porch.

“I think Jack’s already been there,” Maureen said. “You had to pick up a body?”

Jack said, “Yeah, last Sunday.” Wanting to tell them, But she was alive. See, there’s a Nicaraguan guy who wants to kill her, so we sneaked her out in a hearse and got stopped by another Nicaraguan who’s really Cuban and a Miskito Indian who later on shot that guy you might’ve read about at Ralph & Kacoo’s, thinking he’s up here fighting the war that these guys are raising money so they can keep it going and we’re trying to steal. Jesus Christ. Try to tell them even a little bit of that, just the first part…

His mom said, “I don’t recall that boat ever sunk. That was such a nice boat. You use to sail it all over the bay, didn’t you? You and Maureen.”

Raejeanne appeared in the doorway. “That was Leo. He said go on and eat, he won’t be able to make it till later on.” She said, “Mama, you want to help me in the kitchen?”

Maureen wiggled to get up. “Tell me what I can do.”

Jack watched her take his mother’s arm, the three women going off to cook.

“Raejeanne, what’d Leo say?”

She turned to look at him. “I just told you. I guess a body came in.”

“He had one come in this morning.”

“Well, I guess he got another one. I hate to say it, but I hope so. We need new drapes desperately.” She started to turn and looked back at him. “Hey, how come you’re not helping him?”

“It’s my day off.”

She said, walking out, “Poor Leo, alone with his dead while we’re having fun.”

Jack stood up. He felt an urge to leave, right now, and looked at Cullen.

Cullen, arms on his knees, was leaning toward Harby Soulé. “You don’t see the cordee much anymore, do you?”

Harby said, “The what?”

“The cordee. It’s when your dick curls up in a knot. They say there’s only one way to bust it loose. Guy told me one time he had it. He said what you do, the best way was to lay your dick on a windowsill, close your eyes, and slam the goddamn window on it. Guy said it hurts like a son of a bitch, but it’s the only way to break it loose once you have that cordee.”

Harby said, “I never heard of such a thing.”

Cullen said, “No, it’s a fact, you don’t hear about it so much anymore. The guy that told me, it was when we were in the service during WW Two. But I don’t know anybody at Angola had it and there was a bunch of guys there. I suppose they have drugs now do the job. They have drugs for near everything, they must have something for the cordee. I wonder if-no, they couldn’t. I was wondering if women ever got some form of it. You treat women too, don’t you?”

Harby said, “Well, of course I do.”

“Boy, you must see a lot of pussy, huh? You won’t believe it when I tell you I haven’t seen the old hair pie in twenty-seven years. I’m ready, it’s just-I ‘magine you heard the saying that if you don’t use it you lose it?”

The way Jack saw Harby, he looked like a man who’d been embalmed and they forgot to close his eyes and glue his mouth shut.

Cullen was telling him, see, he was about to get back into action after all these years, a friend was fixing him up; but now his prostate was giving him trouble and he wondered if before they sat down to their dinner the doctor would check it out for him…

Jack, walking into the house with his glass, heard Cullen say, “… give it the old finger wave,” but didn’t hear what Harby thought about it. Jack was in the hall now that ran through the middle of the house. He stopped as Maureen came out of a bedroom, Maureen looking up as she snapped her white purse closed. It was dim and quiet here.

“How’ve you been, Maureen?”

“Fine.” Perking up as she said it, throwing her shoulders back. She had fixed her makeup, done something to her eyes.

“You look great.”

“Well, thank you.”

“You haven’t changed one bit.”

“Really? Well, I have to confess we work at it. Harby and I jog four miles every morning, rain or shine, before he goes to Oschner.”

“You and Harby?…”

“And we watch what we eat. You know, stay away from all those rich sauces. It’s a kick, I’ve had to learn how to cook all over again. I don’t dare use a roux. If you can imagine that, a New Orleans girl.”

“It must be hard.”

“We don’t dare eat a bit of red meat, either. No more grillades, spaghetti and meatballs…” She gave him a faint smile. “You look good, Jack. Life treating you okay?”

He hesitated. “Yeah, I think it is.” He caught a glimpse of Maureen and Harby in bed together, serious, doing it by the number, one two, one two…

Maureen wrinkled her nose, staring at him. “What’re you smiling about?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just feel like it.”

“You haven’t changed one bit yourself, you know it? You still seem kind a, well, different. If that’s the word.”

He said, “It’s as good as any,” still smiling a little.

They had evening sun in their eyes coming off the freeway. Cullen said, “The days are getting longer, but I’m not getting any younger. I hope to hell Roy lined me up with something.”

Jack said, “You know the kind of women he knows?”

“You betcha I do.”

“You could catch something awful.”

“Who cares.”

“Have to go see Harby. Did he check your prostate?”

“He said I’d have to come by his office with thirty-five dollars.”

“Wait and have him check you for both things.”

“Do you want me to tell you what I give a shit about at age sixty-five,” Cullen said, “and what I don’t give a shit about?”

Lucy had come out of the sun parlor to the edge of the flagstone patio. Wearing black again today. Her new habit, Jack thought, the revolutionary new Lucy playing her part; his gaze held on her slim figure, her hands shoved flat into the pockets of her jeans. He followed Cullen along a brick walk through the backyard garden, through branches and flower stems grown lush from spring rains. In the tall cover of the trees the patio appeared in dim detail, Lucy’s face pale in the fading light, composed.

She said, “Roy called, twice. They went to five banks today and came out of each one with a canvas sack.”

Cullen made a sound that was like a groan.

Jack heard it, still watching Lucy as they reached the steps of the patio. He saw she was tense, holding on, the hands in the pockets no more than a pose.

“Where are they now?”

“They went back to the hotel. He just called again a few minutes ago. He said they put the car in the Royal Sonesta garage, across the street…”

“The new one?”

“Yeah, they got it. A cream-colored Mercedes sedan. The 560 SEL, top of the line.”

“I guess they can afford it.”

“Roy said they took the bank sacks up to 501, ordered champagne, and have been there ever since. He’ll call again in about an hour. He said, ‘To report in.’ ”

“Where is he?”

“He’s there. He got a room at the hotel, on the same floor as the colonel’s… How do you suppose he managed that?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “Maybe he was lucky. You never know about Roy, what he’s gonna come up with. That’s why we have him and hold him dear to our hearts.”

Lucy didn’t change her expression or say anything. Finally she turned and they followed her into the house.