Blood Memory

Chapter 62

I’ve never seen panic like that in Billy Neal’s eyes, but I’m not waiting around to enjoy it. With a wild lunge, I throw my body most of the way out of the car. He makes a halfhearted grab for my feet, but by kicking hard, I manage to get clear.

Scrambling to my feet, I fight the urge to look back as I stagger into the trees. One moment of hesitation might be all he needs to pick up the gun and kill me. I’m still stumbling through the trees when I hear the engine start.

Terrified for Pearlie, I turn and race back toward the car. It’s hard to run with your hands cuffed behind you. I fall several times, and by the time I get back to the clearing, the Cadillac is gone. I hear its motor accelerating up the dirt road.

Naked from the waist down, I struggle down to the old river channel and work my way along it toward the bridge. It’s muddy by the water, but there’s a lot of sand in the soil, so the going isn’t too bad. Soon I am trotting herky-jerky across the bridge to the island like some armless woman running for charity.

On the far side of the bridge I see my grandfather’s orange pickup rusting in the weeds. This time it doesn’t faze me, because a hundred yards to the right of it, a white pickup is rolling down the perimeter road, heading for the bridge.

I can’t wave my arms, but I can scream.

With tears streaming down my face, I shout for help again and again, sucking in great lungfuls of air that Billy Neal only wishes he could inhale right now. I don’t know if it’s my screaming or my nakedness that draws the driver’s attention, but the truck turns onto the bridge and comes straight toward me. For a moment I think he means to run me over, but then the brakes squeal and the truck shudders to a stop. A black man jumps down out of the cab, his eyes wide. His face is a mass of scar tissue.

“Sweet Jesus!” cries Jesse Billups. “What happened to you?”

“Get back in the truck! I’ll tell you on the way!”

“Where are we going?”

“Pearlie Washington’s hurt! She’s locked in the trunk of a car, and the driver’s going to kill her.”

“My aunt Pearlie?”

“Yes!”

Jesse isn’t sure what’s going on, but he gets behind the wheel and throws the truck into gear. When I climb up into the cab beside him, he reaches behind the seat, grabs a dirty Windbreaker, and ties it around my waist.

“Go for the Angola road!” I shout. “I hurt him bad. He’s got to be trying to get to a hospital.”

Jesse steps on the gas and heads for the shore. “Who you talking about? Who did you hurt bad?”

“Billy Neal.”

Jesse wrinkles his lips. “That’s a no-count motherfucker, right there.”

“You know him?”

“Oh, I know him. He the one called me away from the island the night you disappeared. You remember? We was talking at the cabin, and I got that call.”

“I remember.”

“He told me he needed to talk to me down in Baton Rouge. Said it was real important, and for me not to tell you about it. I drove down there to the hotel he said he was at, but he was gone. He never showed.”

“He tried to kill me that night.”

Jesse shakes his scarred head. “Why ain’t you got no pants on?”

“Billy tried to rape me.”

The foreman gives me a quick once-over. “Tried?”

“He was raping me, okay? He was going to kill me. Pearlie, too.”

“How’d you hurt him?”

“You’ll see, if you catch him. Get this damn thing moving!”

When we reach the dirt road, Jesse pushes the truck as fast as it will go in the mud, which is bound to be faster than Pearlie’s Cadillac. I remember the Caddy sliding back and forth on the curves like a heavy boat navigating a bayou.

“Damn,” Jesse mutters. “Ain’t that Aunt Pearlie’s car there?”

Fifty yards ahead of us, a baby blue Cadillac is sitting nose-first against a pecan tree, steam rising from its hood. The driver’s door is open, and a man’s torso and head are lying out of it. The man’s face is covered with bright red blood.

“Hurry!” I shout. “Pearlie’s in the trunk!”

Jesse skids to stop a few yards from the car. Billy Neal isn’t moving, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead. The blood on his face could be from nothing more serious than a broken nose.

“Do you have a gun?” I ask.

Jesse reaches behind the seat and brings up a bolt-action deer rifle.

“Cover Billy while I get the trunk key.”

“How you gonna get the key out the ignition with them handcuffs on?”

“You’re right. You do both.”

Jesse gets out of the truck and chambers a bullet with a reassuring snick of metal. I jump down awkwardly from the cab and walk close behind him as he approaches Billy Neal.

“That fucker moves, I’m wasting him,” Jesse says.

“Fine by me.”

He edges up to the Cadillac with the rifle barrel extended toward Billy, the way he might approach a wounded rattlesnake. As he gets closer, I sense the tension in his body easing. And then I see why.

Both of Billy’s hands are empty, and the graying fingers are covered in blood. In the red flag of blood that is his face, two eyes stare skyward, the life in them all but gone. When I get close enough to touch him, I hear a faint whistle. Tiny red bubbles are frothing from the hole in his throat.

“How the fuck did he do that in a car wreck?” Jesse asks.

“He didn’t. I did it.”

“With what?”

“My teeth.”

Jesse leans down closer. “Mother fucker. ”

“Get the keys, Jesse.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

While Jesse retrieves the key from the ignition, I kneel beside Billy. His eyes widen in fear, and then freeze that way.

The whistling has stopped.

I’ve killed a man. I’ve killed a man, and all I can think is that I’m glad I got my father’s teeth. DeSalle teeth are small and round. Kirkland teeth are large and square but prone to decay. Ferry teeth are hard as stones, the incisors square, the canines sharp. I remember my daddy popping the caps off Coke bottles with his bottom teeth when I was little. He said he learned it from his father. As this memory passes through my mind, an intoxicating current of elation flows through me. I could not have Ferry teeth if Luke Ferry weren’t my father. It’s not as conclusive as a DNA test, but I know teeth like I know nothing else.

Luke Ferry was my father.

“Look at this shit!” Jesse cries. “Get up out of there, Aunt Pearlie!”

I jump up and go to the back of the Cadillac. Having laid his rifle on the ground, Jesse is now lifting his aunt carefully out of the trunk. Pearlie’s face and hands are still bloody, but compared with Billy Neal’s, her eyes are full of life.

“Are you all right, Pearlie?” I ask.

She points at my naked legs beneath the Windbreaker. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I told youwith the Lord’s help, you’d come through.”

I don’t even try to argue. “Yes, you did.”

Jesse sets her gently on her feet and holds her erect while she tests her legs. Then he leaves us alone. Without her wig, Pearlie looks a hundred years old. But she’s not. She has a lot of life left in her.

“What you gonna do now?” she asks, looking down at Billy Neal’s corpse. “What Dr. Kirkland gonna do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t worry about that now. I have to get to New Orleans.”

She looks shocked. “Now?”

“Right now.”

“How come?”

Because I have a killer to talk to, and I need to beat everyone else to her. “If I don’t, the FBI is going to arrest me.”

Pearlie shakes her head. “Well, you do what you have to do, then. Jesse can take me to the island.”

“You need a hospital, Pearlie.”

She makes a scornful face. “A drink of whiskey is what I need.”

Jesse returns with a small silver key in his hand. “You want those handcuffs off?”

I turn my back to him, and he removes the cuffs. Rubbing my wrists to get the blood flowing, I go to the car and retrieve my jeans from the backseat.

“Aunt Pearlie said you need to get to New Orleans,” Jesse says, walking up to me.

“That’s right.”

“How you plan to get there?”

“I’m going to take one of the island trucks.”

He looks uncomfortable. “Dr. Kirkland know about that?”

“No, he don’t,” Pearlie snaps from behind him. “And he ain’t gonna know.”

Jesse turns toward his aunt. She’s standing with her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, glaring at him as she might at a recalcitrant boy of seven.

“Jesse Ford Billups,” she says, “you gonna serve the man who beat you bloody all them years ago? Or you gonna help this girl do what’s right?”

He sighs heavily. “Shit, Aunt Pearlie. I don’t know what-”

“What you say?” The old woman shakes her finger in Jesse’s face. “You know better than to curse me, boy! If your mama was alive, she’d knock you nekkid. You get your narrow ass in gear. Now. ”

Jesse Billups, combat veteran and foreman of DeSalle Island, nods in surrender. “What about that one?” he asks, jerking his thumb toward Billy Neal.

Pearlie turns up her nose. “Leave that trash for the buzzards. They got to eat, too.”