Blonde Faith

10

I always had a pretty good memory in times of stress. When I felt that my life was threatened or someone I loved was in danger, I began to pay very close attention to detail. It was like that when the liar Captain Miles and his men came in on me. Many of those details, including the decorated MP’s medals, had stuck in my mind.

One medal had red and yellow stripes with a bronze leaf across it and an ornate bronze circle dangling underneath; another had a yellow background with green and yellow stripes on it with a medal like a coin; the last ribbon was green, yellow, red, yellow, and green, holding up a bright red star.

Gara let me go into the small military library after seeing my haunted expression. She probably thought I was upset because someone I loved was dying or near death. If I had told her about Bonnie, she would probably have laughed and sent me packing. A broken heart was no reason to put her job in jeopardy.

The medals on my soldier’s chest were all earned in Vietnam: the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, the Vietnam Service Medal, and a medal given specifically for wounds.

I wrote down the names and came out to the lounge to see Gara once again in her big green chair. She’d finished Salinger’s masterpiece and moved on to some fat tome. She was drinking from a sixteen-ounce soda bottle, smirking at the text.

“I have a need,” I said, all the sadness and remorse gone from my face and my voice.

“We all do,” she replied, continuing her reading and drinking.

“I need to know what soldiers have received these three medals in the last five years.”

I placed the list on the table next to her.

“Here at the library we lead the horse to water, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “We don’t get down on our knees and drink for him.”

I placed one of Miles’s hundred-dollar bills on top of the list. That was just another example of my emotional distress. If I had been in a normal state, I would have put a twenty down. Twenty dollars was enough for what I was asking. But there was something poetic, something that resonated with justice, about paying for my information with the very money the liar had given me.

Gara put down her sparkling sugar water and her book. Then she took up the hundred-dollar bill and the short list.

“I’ll have it by three o’clock tomorrow,” she said. “If it’s earlier than that, I’ll call you.”

I smiled and made a mock salute.

I was about to leave when she asked, “How’s the kids?”

“Fine. Great. Jesus and his girl had a baby.”

“They gettin’ married?”

“We’ll see.”

“How’s Bonnie?”

“We’ll see,” I said again.

I headed for the door before she could question my answers.

THE LITTLE YELLOW DOG must have been chasing gophers in the backyard, because he wasn’t barking as I came up on the porch. Frenchie knew the sound of my car. Bonnie had told me that she knew I was coming from a block away just because of his angry bark.

But that day I made it all the way to the front door undetected. The door was open and so only the screen separated me from the sounds of the house. I could hear Essie crying a few rooms away and Feather speaking in French. Her time in Switzerland in the clinic and then later with Bonnie and Jesus had taught Feather to converse easily in that tongue. But the only person she spoke French to on the phone was Bonnie. Now that my daughter was becoming a woman, they chattered like girlfriends.

I reached for the door handle and stopped. Feather laughed out loud and said something that was both a question and an exultation. I spoke some French, Creole mostly from my childhood in Louisiana, but the fast-paced Parisian that Bonnie had taught Feather was too much for me.

I pulled the screen door open but didn’t walk right in.

“He’s here,” Feather said in a voice she tried to muffle. “I gotta go.”

She’d hung up by the time I came in.

“Daddy!” she cried, and ran up to hug me.

I held her harder than I should have. But I needed to hold on to someone who loved me.

“Hi, baby.”

Feather leaned back and looked into my eyes. She knew that I’d heard her. She wanted to help me feel better.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

“Hi, Dad,” Jesus said.

He was standing at the door to the kitchen wearing a brown apron and yellow rubber gloves.

“Hey, boy.”

“Hello, Mr. Rawlins,” Easter Dawn said. She was standing by Jesus’s leg, flour on her hands and cheeks.

“You guys cookin’, huh?” I said.

“I’m making pound cake,” the little doll said. “And Juice is washing the dishes and helping.”

“You want to help me with lunch?” I asked her.

The child’s black eyes glittered and her mouth opened into a perfect circle. Domesticity was her bastion of power in her father’s house. He never made a decision about household matters without first consulting her. And Easter almost always had the last word.

I HAD OXTAILS in the refrigerator. We dredged them in flour and seared them in lard with green peppers, diced onions, and minced garlic. While they simmered, we took out the pound cake, set rice boiling, and chopped up some brussels sprouts, which we sautéed in butter and then laced with soy sauce.

While we did all this cooking, the child and I discussed our adventures.

Feather was spending another day at home taking care of her. They had gone to the art museum, then read Feather’s history book and done her lessons for school. I realized that I had to enroll Easter in school or Feather’s education would suffer.

I tried not to think about how Bonnie would have taken care of all that when she was there.

Bonnie had made the house run smoothly, even when she was away on international flights for Air France. She hired people and had friends do chores that made my life easier.

How could I have thrown that concern away?

“Did you find my father?” Easter asked, and I was drawn back into the world.

“Gettin’ close. How long did you live in that house across the street from the big tire?”

“I don’t know . . . a week, maybe.”

“Hm. I found some people who might know where he is,” I said. “They’re supposed to call me tomorrow morning with what they know.”

“Who did you talk to?” she asked.

“A man named Captain Miles. Black guy in the army. Have you ever met him?”

Easter was standing on a chair next to me at the stove. It was her job to drop in the vegetables while I stirred them in the hot butter.

She thought for a moment and then shook her head.

“No. No Captain Miles has ever been to our house. Not when I was awake.”

“Do people come over in the night when you’re asleep?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Have you ever seen any of them? I mean, maybe you woke up and looked downstairs.”

“No,” she said very seriously. “That would be spying and spying is bad. But . . .”

“Yeah?”

“But one time that lady with yellow hair came at night, and she was still there in the morning.”

“What was she like?”

“Very sad.” Easter nodded to assure me of what she was saying.

“About what?”

“Her husband was in trouble. His friends were mad at him and they were mad at her too.”

“Did she say anything else about those men?”

“No. Can we have strawberries on our pound cake?”

“I’ll send Jesus to the store to get some.”

Our conversation went back and forth about cooking and the people her father knew. There wasn’t much useful to me. But when E.D. was making the rice, I remembered the bar of soap wrapped in paper.

“Mr. Fishy,” she cried, unwrapping the bar. “I thought I lost you.”

“I found it at the place across the street from the big tire.”

“Was my daddy there?” Easter Dawn asked.

“No. No, he wasn’t. But I wondered . . . Did you drive down to LA in your father’s Jeep?”

“No. The lady had a green car. Daddy drove that.”

“And did she let him keep it?”

“No. He borrowed a blue car from a friend of his, but then he said he was going to buy a red truck with a camper on it from that funny man.”

“What funny man?”

“The one on the TV who has the animals and the pretty girls around him all the time.”