Blood Memory

Chapter 7

Pearlie sits on the edge of my old bed and looks at the wall, her eyes cloudy with remembrance. “The truth is, I didn’t see much. If I’d been sleeping in my house, I might have, but I was in the big house tending to your grandmother.”

She stops talking, and for a moment I fear she means not to continue. But she swallows and goes on.

“Mrs. Kirkland was having pains that turned out be her gallbladder. She had to have it cut out the next night. Your granddaddy wanted to do it, but she wouldn’t let him. Anyway, I heard a gunshot.”

“What time?”

“About ten-thirty, I guess. Rifle, I thought. That cracking sound, you know? It woke up your grandmother. I said Dr. Kirkland probably just shot a buck that wandered up out of the woods, but Mrs. Kirkland told me to call the police.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“How long did it take them to get here?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe a little longer.”

“And you only went down to the garden after the police got here?”

She nods slowly. “But I phoned down here to make sure you and your mama was okay.”

“Who answered?”

“Dr. Kirkland. He told me everything wasn’t okay, but that I should stay with Mrs. Kirkland. I panicked and made him tell me you was all right. That’s when I figured out something had happened to Mr. Luke.”

Mr. Luke Pearlie’s term of address for my father.

“He was supposed to have left for the island about nine, but I just had a feeling. I went out to the back gallery of the big house and looked down. When I saw Mr. Luke lying under that tree, it broke my heart. Lord, let’s don’t talk about that.”

“Did you speak to Mom when you phoned down?”

“No.”

I close my eyes. Blue police lights flash behind them, illuminating the great U created by the rear of Malmasion and the two slave quarters, painting the streaking rain with a sapphire glow. Tall men wearing uniforms and caps stand talking to my grandfather amid the roses, deferring to him like soldiers to a senior officer. I open my eyes before the memory can go any further.

“This is what I remember being told,” I murmur. “Daddy and Grandpapa both heard someone prowling the grounds. Daddy was in here, Grandpapa in the main house. They met outside, talked a few seconds, then started checking the grounds separately. Both had guns, but Daddy was surprised by the prowler. They fought in the dark, and Daddy was shot with his own rifle.”

Pearlie nods sadly. “That’s what Dr. Kirkland told me.”

“Is that what he told the police?”

“Course it is, child. That’s what happened. Why you ask me that?”

Without realizing it, I’ve already formulated an answer to her question. “Because I think that bare footprint on the carpet is mine. And I think I put it there on that night.”

Pearlie shakes her head. “That’s nonsense, child. You ain’t never got over losing your daddy, that’s all. You been trying to make sense of it for twenty years, but there ain’t no sense to things like that. Not unless you God hisself. Then you understand everything. But that’s the only sense there is. Ain’t none for you and me.”

I ignore Pearlie’s simplistic philosophy, however accurate it might be. “Talking to Mom about that night was like pulling teeth. When she did talk, she told me conflicting stories. She heard the shot, she didn’t hear it. She saw one thing, then she didn’t see it. What do you think about that?”

Pearlie gives me a rare unguarded look. “You say you’re grown up nowand I guess you are. Old enough to hear this, anyway. Your mama didn’t see anything that night, baby. She was taking your father’s sleeping pills back then. Or his pain pills. Whatever he took for his war wound and his nerves.”

Nerves Pearlie’s euphemism for post-traumatic stress disorder. “You’re saying that was a habit?”

“Girl, your mama swallowed most everything Mr. Luke got from the doctor back then. She had nerve problems herself. Your daddy went to Dr. Tom Cage back then, and I think Dr. Cage prescribed enough for the both of them. Your mama wouldn’t hardly go see a doctor.”

I make a mental note to find out if Dr. Cage is still alive. “So Mama was unconscious when Daddy was shot?” I close my eyes and try to visualize something-anything-before the blue lights appeared, but nothing will come. “So it was only when you came down to the garden that you saw me walk up to the body?”

“That’s right.”

“Where did I come from?”

Pearlie hesitates. “From this house, I think. Or behind it, maybe. I’m not sure.”

I try again to recall something fresh from that night, but the impassable gate that guards that information from my conscious mind remains locked. “Pearlie, who do you think that prowler was? What was he doing here?”

The maid sighs with bone-deep fatalism, and then her dark eyes settle on mine. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I think he was a friend of your daddy’s. Either that, or somebody who came here to kill Dr. Kirkland.”

For a moment I can’t speak. In all the years since my father’s death, I’ve never heard anyone voice either of these theories. “Kill Grandpapa? Why would someone do that?”

Pearlie sighs heavily. “Nice as your granddaddy can be, he’s a tough businessman. He’s ruined some people, and in a town this small, that can catch up with you.”

“Has anybody tried to hurt him since that night?”

“Not that I know about.” She gives a little shrug. “I’m probably wrong about that. But now he’s got that driver, that Billy Neal. I don’t like that boy at all. ”

I’ve met my grandfather’s driver only once, and then briefly. Thin-faced and muscular, Billy Neal reminds me of the men who relentlessly hit on me in bars. Quiet men who assume too much. Their silence is not solicitous but threatening, almost belligerent. “Do you think Billy Neal is a kind of bodyguard?”

Pearlie snorts. “I know he is. He too mean to keep around for anything else. Specially just driving.”

The idea that my grandfather should need a bodyguard seems ridiculous, yet that was the impression I got when I saw him in New Orleans with his new driver. But it’s Pearlie’s first theory that has my heart thumping. “Why do you say the prowler might have been a friend of Daddy’s?”

“I think it would have had to be,” she says firmly. “To get close enough to your daddy to shoot him with his own gun like that?”

“Why?”

“I never saw a man so alert, child. Mr. Luke slept with both eyes open. Always looking for danger. I guess the war made him that way. Dr. Kirkland think he’s a big hunter, but your daddyhe could walk through the woods without bending a blade of grass. First couple of years he was back from the war, he walked this property all hours of the night. The island, too, I heard. ’Bout scared me to death sometimes. He’d just appear in front of you, like a ghost. Couldn’t nobody slip up on Mr. Luke without him knowing. No way, no how. That’s one thing I know.“

“A friend,” I murmur, trying to get my mind around the idea. “I don’t remember Daddy having friends.”

Pearlie smiles with regret. “They wasn’t friends, really. Just boys like he was. Boys who’d been in the war. Not with him, but like him. They was good boys, but a lot of good boys come back from Vietnam hooked on that dope. Black and white the same. My nephew was one. Anyway, them friends would’ve known your daddy had pills around. Plus, they probably figured Dr. Kirkland kept drugs here. Not hard to figure the rest, is it?”

I gaze around the forlorn bedroom. A child’s room without a child in it. I’m not claustrophobic, but sometimes certain places get to me, and in those times I have to move. Move or freak out. “Let’s go outside.”

Pearlie takes my hand. “What’s the matter, baby?”

“I need some air.”

“Well, let’s get you some then.”

I let Pearlie exit first, then close the door behind us. “Don’t go back in there anymore,” I tell her. “I still have work to do inside.”

“What kind of work?”

“The same work I do in New Orleans. There may be more blood in there.”

Anxiety tightens her shoulders.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

She stops in the kitchen and lays a hand on my forearm “Baby girl, it don’t do no good to dig up the past. Even simple folk know that. And you ain’t simple.”

“I wish I were sometimes.”

Pearlie clucks softly. “There’s one thing we can’t change in this world. Our natures. We come into the world with them, and they stay with us all the way through.”

“Do you really believe that?”

A terrible wisdom seeps from her eyes. “I believe it, all right. I’ve watched too many children from the cradle to the grave not to.”

I don’t agree, but neither do I argue. Pearlie Washington has lived a lot longer than I have. We walk out into the sunlight of the rose garden.

“I have one more question,” I tell her. “And I want you to tell me the truth.”

The maid’s eyes deepen again, like a stilling pool. “I’ll try, baby.”

“Do you think Daddy might have killed himself?”

She draws back. “What you talking ’bout, girl?“

“I’m asking you if there was really a prowler here that night, or whether everybody’s been lying to me all these years to protect my feelings. Whether what Daddy went through in the war was just too much for him. So bad thatthat even Mom and me weren’t enough to keep him wanting to live.”

Pearlie lifts her long brown fingers to my cheek and wipes away tears. “Oh, baby, don’t you ever think that. Mr. Luke thought the sun rose and set in your eyes. That’s a fact.”

I try to blink away the wetness in my eyes. “Did he? I don’t remember.”

She smiles. “I know you don’t. He got took from you too early. But Mr. Luke didn’t go through all he did in that war just to shoot hisself when he got back home. He loved you more than you’ll ever know. So you get that foolishness right out of your mind. All right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I’m surprised by the childlike sound of my own voice.

“I better find Natriece,” Pearlie says, squaring her shoulders and looking toward Malmaison. “You holler if you need me.”