Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 106, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 648 & 649, October 1995

Salvation by Milt McLeod

© 1995 by Milt McLeod

Although he is a published poet and serves as president of the Southwest Literary Arts Council, Milt McLeod has only recently tried his hand at fiction. This debut short story introduces a New Orleans police detective whom the author plans to feature in a series. Mr. McLeod makes his home in Houston, Texas, not The Big Easy of his story.

Remy’s Surf Club happened to be nowhere near the surf. It was perched on the side of a ragged, garbage-strewn hill overlooking the Cayenne docks. And, as it was nowhere near the surf, neither was Remy’s a real club of any exclusivity, other than via the criminal history of most of its patrons. You might say Remy’s was just a seedy dive — only one with a view. But whatever Remy’s was, it was Remy’s.

The ramshackle structure itself had a floor of hard-packed earth and walls made of salvaged crates. Most of the light inside came from an open porch that looked out onto the indigo blue of the South Atlantic and three arid, sun-baked islands in the distance. At five degrees north of the equator, the sun there was nearly always up and merciless, and on that day, it reflected a golden light off what I later learned were the ochre walls of low block buildings that dotted those three islands.

I could see Remy at the far end of the bar, talking to a French sailor dressed in grimy whites. I guess I recognized him from Tony Copa’s less than flattering description. Remy was a small, thin man — mid-fifties, maybe. He had the physical stature of an elf and the face of a ferret, with tiny bird-eyes and a rodent-like snout. Remy François was neither handsome nor terribly ugly. He was just peculiar-looking.

I felt a gnawing pity for the five or six lepers who had grouped themselves as a tight cadre in one dark corner. And in another comer, two shirtless Roucouyene Indians, their muscular chests adorned with purple tattoos, passed a bottle of rum between them. The rest of the melange included a half-dozen maroons — mixed-race descendants of Indians and former African slaves — then a few Indochinese, an Arab or two, and the rest, mainly European and Latino expatriates.

Most of the people in Remy’s were men, and nearly all wore cruel scars on their arms and faces: some proudly, no doubt, as badges of courage; others, as merely the grim reminders of some misfortune. Scattered among the men were an adequate supply of bar girls, some drunk, but others simply pretending, probably waiting for an opportune moment to palm some loose francs from an admirer’s pocket.

I was feeling the need to relieve myself when I saw a door on the far wall that I knew wasn’t the front door, and it wasn’t the kitchen door either — ’cause, thank God, this place didn’t serve food. So I got up and walked toward that door, feeling as if at least a hundred eyes were watching me, but maybe it was only my imagination.

The door creaked on its makeshift hinges and slammed behind me with a loud bang, pulled shut by a rusty one-inch spring that looked as if it came off the relief valve of a ship’s boiler. Inside the room, high on one wall, was a dirty window with a few missing panes that let in enough outside light to keep a person from stepping into one of the three dark holes in the floor.

But there were really four holes. I hadn’t seen the one on the left, as there was an enormous man squatted over it, a man with a scarred face that could scare you, if it ever came close. The man’s skin was a jaundiced, sickly yellow, and he had a misshapen head that looked like a huge squash, as if a part of his skull was missing. The T-shirt pasted to his sweaty body had a crude cartoon on the back showing two people copulating on the seat of a Harley.

I knew I’d seen that T-shirt before. It had been stretched over that same hulk-of-a-man outside the Cayenne Airport. He’d been standing next to the taxi I’d gotten into with a hooker who had said that she too was headed for Remy’s Surf Club. I remembered her Indochine features, but I guess I’d been preoccupied by the curious scar that marked her tanned skin with a thin, jagged ivory line that nearly circled her throat. I’d never seen a throat wound that long on anybody that lived.

The man grunted something unintelligible as he brushed past me, and I could swear he smiled. But that God-awful room with the holes in the floor was not the place to return anybody’s smile, especially his. The room had seemed to me to be too small for both of us, and with the big man’s leaving, I felt a welcome sense of relief, so that I could now relieve myself with a measure of peace.

Then all eyes were on me again as I let the door go and heard it bang. I walked back to my table, still uneasy, but anxious to meet this Remy François quickly, take care of my promise to Tony Copa, and get the hell out of this place, this town, this country or colony or whatever it was.

I’d left my Browning in a locker at the airport, and already I was missing its comforting feel against my left calf. On the flight to Cayenne, I’d heard two passengers talking about French Guiana — how nearly every living soul there had ancestors who were either criminals or cannibals or both. Maybe that was an overstatement, but looking at the faces lining the bar, I’d already begun to question my own sanity for agreeing to come here just to do a favor for a friend of a friend.

I’d been away from New Orleans for nearly four months — an N.O.P.D. detective on loan to the Brazilian Federal Police in São Paulo. Tony Copa and I had been working together on a murder case, but it was time for me to get back home. I figured by now my dog and maybe another friend or two might be missing me.

Just what the hell am I doin’ in French Guiana? was what I was asking myself as Remy François walked toward me from the shadows at the far end of the bar. I knew the answer, of course. But I was still kicking myself for being so damned accommodating.

Just because I was on my way back to New Orleans, and French Guiana was not that far out of the way along my four-thousand-mile route, I’d promised Antonio Suarez, the Brazilian cop we called Tony Copa, that I would help out his friend Remy François by delivering something to New Orleans.

So why doesn’t Remy either do it himself or use the mail? I hadn’t gotten the answer to that one yet, but Tony had assured me that Remy would explain.

Remy was obviously expecting me. He stuck out a bony hand, and I shook it, with a degree of caution.

“Monsieur LeCroix?” he inquired.

“That’s me,” I said. “Just call me Nick. Mind if we speak English?”

“No problem, Nick,” Remy said with a wide, gold-filled grin. “Say, I tended bar in the Big Easy a few years back. Lester Bergeron’s Boogie Room. You know that place?”

“Sure do,” I said. Then I thought about a favorite drink I’d had there: Remy’s Sloe Gin Fizz. I was about to ask...

He beat me to it. “Say, you ever had a sloe gin fizz — I mean at Lester’s?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You tellin’ me you’re that Remy?”

“You got it,” he said. “My claim to fame, I guess.”

I knew by then that Remy François and I were about to become old friends.

Now French Guiana was the last place on earth I’d ever have expected to run into an expatriate Cajun. I’d have figured, if a man’s living in God’s country already, he’s not likely to want to move this close to hell. But here he was. It made me wonder a little, but I figured that if I hung around awhile — knowing the way most Cajuns like to talk — pretty soon Remy would tell me the whole story.

“You have any trouble findin’ my place?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. “That Indochine lady at the bar was headed here too. I think maybe she’d been workin’ the lounge at the airport. We shared a taxi.”

Remy shot me another grin. “Let me get you a drink, Nick.”

“Do it, man,” I said, knowing what it would probably be and thinking that two kinds of gin plus grenadine and club soda were probably safer than either the local beer or the water, not to mention the fact that I was about to imbibe a legendary potion as created by the man himself.

Remy left for a few minutes and returned with two tall glasses filled to the rim with cracked ice and a pale red mixture that looked deliciously familiar.

“Let’s go out in the daylight,” he said.

That suited me just fine. Remy pointed out one of the cheap dinette-type tables on a far corner of the porch, and pulled up two empty cable spools for us to use as chairs. We sat down, and he raised his glass in a toast. I took his cue and raised mine.

“To salvation,” he said.

Strange toast, I was thinking, when I saw Remy’s glass arc wide in a flourish and point out to sea.

“Those islands,” he said. “In French, folks call ’em the Îles du Salut. To us, they’re the Salvation Islands. You know about ’em? Used to be French penal colonies.”

“Heard some talk about ’em on the plane,” I said. Then I motioned inside toward the bar. “From the looks of that crew in there, I’d say that most everybody in Cayenne must’ve moved here from those islands.”

Remy slapped his thigh and let out a shrill laugh that caused everyone at the bar to look our way. I was beginning to wish I’d kept my comments to myself. Then he told me about the three islands — Île Saint-Joseph, Île Royale, and Île du Diable — France’s most notorious former penal colonies, now tourist attractions and a popular docking spot for cruise ships.

For more than a century, Remy told me, French justice had meted out double sentences. The first was served on one of the three islands, imprisoned under the harshest conditions imaginable. The second sentence was served on the mainland of French Guiana as a libéré, only not so liberated as to be able to leave. Many of the ex-convicts intermarried with the only available women — Indian women of some of the fiercest tribes in South America — and stayed to live out their lives in the relentless heat and disease and danger of French Guiana.

We just talked trash for a while, Remy and me, LSU football and the latest skinny from the Quarter. I told him a little about me and what I’d been doing with Tony Copa in São Paulo. Remy responded by telling me how he came to be in French Guiana.

Remy was tending bar at the Boogie Room in ’79 when Chino Canelli got whacked while sitting in his car on Rue Conti. The hit posed two major problems for Remy François.

One — when the hit went down, Chino’s car had been parked right in front of the Boogie Room. Two — Lester Bergeron, Remy’s boss, had shorted Remy some money for working a few all-night parties. Remy was giving Lester a hard time, so Lester told Chino’s old man Vinny — the Don himself — that Remy knew more about the hit than he was saying.

The next evening, while Remy was tending bar, Vinny’s crew firebombed Remy’s apartment on Rue Toulouse, just to get his attention. The next morning, Remy took what money he had out of the bank and left the Big Easy for good.

He drove to Miami, and from there flew down to Venezuela, where he worked the oil fields at Lake Maracaibo for a year or two. He made enough money to last him for a while, then started working his way east, along the coast. The oil-field work had given Remy some time to think. He knew where he had to go. There was some old family business that needed cleaning up in French Guiana.

Remy left the table to get us another round, and I braved the room with the holes in the floor one more time. When he returned with the drinks, Remy carried with him an old manila envelope. He set everything on the table, took a long, pale-red swallow, and reached inside the envelope, pulling out two old black-and-white photographs. He laid them side-by-side on the table, facing me.

“I’m gettin’ close to talkin’ about what I need you to do, Nick.”

“I figured that was cornin’.”

“See this picture?” he said, pointing to a photograph of a man in merchant seaman’s clothes with two tiny boys clinging to his legs.

The three of them were standing in front of a huge tree.

“That was taken in nineteen forty, in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana,” said Remy. “You know where Breaux Bridge is, Nick?”

“Sure,” I said, not wanting to hurt the man’s feelings, because that’s an unusual question for one Cajun to ask another. It’s just been a long time since he was back in Louisiana, I was thinking.

“Love those crawfish,” I said, “any way you want to cook ’em — étouffée, bisque, jambalaya — you name it. And you know, any Cajun who loves crawfish has probably spent some time in Breaux Bridge.”

“Then I bet you know where that big tree is,” said Remy.

I thought a minute. “You mean that big old swamp oak at the fairgrounds? The one down by the water — right next to Bayou Teche?”

Remy smiled. “That’s the one,” he said. He hesitated for a second. “We’ll talk about that tree later.”

My mind was still on that old oak when I saw Remy’s finger move to the three figures standing beneath the tree.

“The two boys in the picture are my brother Philippe and me,” he said. “The man is our papa — Henri François.”

Then Remy pointed at the other photograph. It seemed to be an old official photo of some kind — one showing a man seated on a bench wearing prisoner’s stripes. The man was rail-thin, and his sunken eyes were set deep in his gaunt face.

“This one’s also Papa,” said Remy. “It was taken about ten years after the other one. The surveillants, the guards — they took it. Papa had just come from over there.” He pointed toward the three islands in the distance.

I don’t know why that came as such a surprise, but Remy must have read my expression.

“That’s where Papa was,” he said. “Nick, I want you to know some things about Papa Henri. It’s important that you know, ’cause it’s about what I’m gonna ask you to do.”

Remy proceeded to tell me about Papa Henri François, how he was born in Chartres, France, about 1910, how he shipped out of Le Havre as a merchant seaman at age nineteen, and how in 1935, he landed at the Port of New Orleans and met some Cajuns who took him to a dance over at Breaux Bridge.

That’s where Henri met Marie Gaudin, a local girl, whom he married the next year. They settled in a little cabin on Bayou Teche that Marie’s folks gave them, and in another year, Remy was born. Two more years, and Philippe came along, but this time Marie developed complications during the birth, and she died.

The year was 1940, and that year, suffering in his loss, Papa Henri took the boys to stay with Marie’s folks and shipped out again to Marseilles. On the return voyage, his ship made port at Fort St. Louis on Martinique. Henri was trying to drown his grief in the local rum when a thief tried to rob him. In a rage, Henri hit the man with a bottle and killed him.

The magistrate declared Henri Francis a transports — that’s a murderer — and sentenced him to twenty years, ten to be served on those terrible islands and ten more on the mainland of French Guiana. That’s where the photograph was taken.

“How did you learn all this?” I asked Remy.

“It’s all public record,” he said, “especially since the late forties, when the French closed the penal colonies. The records were moved to the archives here in Cayenne. I really think the officials have leveled with me, Nick. But it’s still hard to believe how those men suffered.”

Almost everybody tried to escape at least once, Remy told me. The conditions were that bad. Fifty men were confined to each barracks, with no light at all inside. They were allowed only two half-hour periods outside each day. If they didn’t die from disease or kill each other in the darkness of the barracks, they would slip down to the beach and try to swim or raft to the mainland. Usually they would drown or fall prey to the sharks or both.

Escape was known as “going to meet La Belle.” Those who failed to meet her and were captured might be beaten to death by the guards or executed with one of the three on-site guillotines or thrown into solitary in one of several cylindrical stone structures with only a three-inch opening for light.

Solitary was what happened to Papa Henri. The guards pulled him off a coconut-husk raft halfway to shore. They put him in one of those tiny stone rooms and locked him onto the fer, an iron horseshoe attached to a wooden bed. His only company for six months were the vampire bats that came to feed on his blood by biting his bare feet each night.

All this was interesting, of course, but I felt that Remy had to be suffering some just to tell me about it. I’d been watching his eyes, so I tried to hurry him along. “What finally happened to your papa?” I asked.

“He served his full ten years on the islands,” Remy said. “Then he was brought to live on the mainland as a libéré, only he didn’t live long. He died that same year of malaria.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, as if it had just happened.

“That brings me to what I need you to do, Nick,” he said.

I just sat there, now anxiously waiting to find out what all this could possibly have to do with me.

“The prison records contained Papa’s will,” Remy said. “He had nothing to leave Philippe and me, but he dearly wanted to go back home to Breaux Bridge.”

I’m sure my eyes widened on hearing that. “You have his body?” I asked, fearful of the answer.

“His ashes,” Remy said. “Just his ashes. He asked that they be buried under that big oak at the fairgrounds. There’s a white flagstone there. I’d like to ask you to bury the urn under that stone. Will you do it?”

“Sure. But I’m curious, I guess. I know why you can’t go back — the greaseballs never forget. But what about Philippe?”

“Philippe’s got some big problems,” said Remy. “I don’t think he could handle doin’ this right now. But he lives in Algiers, just across the river from the city — I’ll give you the address. I’d like for you to let Philippe know — that is, after you put Papa where he said he wanted to be. When things settle down for Philippe, I know he’ll want to go over there.”

“I don’t mind doin’ that,” I said. “Where’s the urn?”

“Your hotel,” said Remy. “The Hotel des Palmistres. It’s owned by a friend of mine. The urn’s in your room, along with Philippe’s address.”

I went to sleep that night in the room that Remy had reserved for me, looking at the tall gray urn standing on the dresser. That night I seemed to dream the whole night: dreams of treachery and grief and loss and imprisonment and then the final dream, which must have come about dawn.

In that dream, Papa Henri was standing in his prisoner’s stripes, but they were clean, and the white stripes were radiant. And next to him stood a faceless person in luminous white, and this person took Papa Henri’s hand and offered it to me. And I thought to myself, even in this dream, that I had something important to do, and that what I was going to do would be good and profound, unlike the waste I’d made of my life so far.

The next morning, before checking out, I concluded that something with a loved one’s ashes inside deserved a little privacy, so I placed the gray urn in a brown paper grocery sack and folded down the top. That sack was in my hand when I got into the taxi headed for the airport.

At the airport, I went straight to the locker and got the Browning, put it in my suitcase, and checked the suitcase at the Air France counter. Still carrying the sack with the urn inside, I flagged a uniformed airport security officer. He was a black man, unarmed, but carrying a truncheon. I identified myself and showed him my badge.

“I figured I ought to check in with you guys before I board,” I said.

I followed the officer down a hallway and through a door to a security office, where he introduced me to his superior — a Captain Gadbois, an older black man wearing a white shirt and tie. The captain’s coat hung on a rack next to his desk, and he wore his badge on the pocket of his shirt.

“What can I do for you, Detective?” he asked.

“I already checked my suitcase at the counter,” I said. “There’s a Browning .380 in it. I’m carrying no weapons on my person for this flight. The real reason I’m here is that I’d like to show you what’s in this sack.”

I opened the sack and handed it to him. He reached in and pulled out the urn.

“It’s sealed,” he said. “What’s inside?”

“Just human ashes, as far as I know,” I told him. “I trust the man who asked me to deliver this to New Orleans, but I’ve been a cop too long not to try to avoid gettin’ blindsided, if you know what I mean. And because we’re talkin’ about the ashes of a friend’s father, I wouldn’t feel right about openin’ the urn myself. But I also wouldn’t want to get on that flight until somebody checked it out. Do you mind?”

“Not at all, Detective,” the captain said.

“If it’s okay,” I said, “I’ll just wait outside the door.”

The captain nodded, and I stepped out into the hallway.

It was nearly a half-hour before the door opened and the officer came walking toward me, holding the sack with the top folded shut. He handed it to me.

“The captain said to tell you, ‘Have a pleasant trip,’ ” the officer said.

I’ll admit to breathing a sigh as I took the sack with the urn in it and headed for the departure area. But suddenly I saw, rounding the corner just ahead of me, something uncomfortably familiar.

It was the big man himself, the one with the misshapen head and the yellow skin and the same nasty T-shirt. He didn’t look back as he continued down the hallway, the momentum from his enormous bulk hurling him from side to side in a lurching motion. At the end of the hallway, he disappeared into the wide expanse of the lobby.

When I came out of the hallway and into the lobby, I stopped next to a column and peered around it, trying to see where the big man had gone. I saw him standing at a public phone, one big yellow hand flailing the air, illustrating every word he spoke.

When the big man finished his conversation, I saw him exit the lobby to the outside walkway, where the taxis were lined up. There was a long floor-to-ceiling window there, and I could see his face pressed to the glass, the scars more contorted than ever — the ugliest human I’d ever seen.

I walked across the lobby to the departure area, glancing several times over my shoulder at the window. I could still see the big man there, his twisted face growing even more grotesque as he pressed it tighter against the glass, his eyes following my every move.

In what seemed like an hour, but probably was only a few minutes, I heard my flight number called out for boarding. I glanced at the front window one more time to see if he was still there, and he was, but next to the big man’s ugly face, to my surprise, was the ferretlike face of Remy François.

Of course, I thought of Remy as a friend, but I was not at all sure about the big man, and I didn’t have time right then to sort out all the strange goings-on. While I was considering whether to wave to Remy, my flight began to board, and an attendant took the boarding pass from my hand and guided me through the door to the tarmac.

Once seated on the Air France jet, I slid the brown paper sack under the seat in front of me and then settled back, breathing a long, slow sigh. I looked down at the sack and spoke in my mind to whatever part of Henri François might be left to listen: We’re leavin’ this place, Papa Henri. You’re goin’ home.

When the taxi pulled up in front of my little house in Gretna, I paid the driver, set my suitcase inside the front door, and carried the brown sack to my Ford pickup, which was parked in the driveway. Fortunately I’d called ahead and had LeBlanc’s Texaco charge the battery and take the truck around the block a few times. After layovers in Sint Maarten and Miami, the day had been long and lazy, but there was still enough light to make it to Baton Rouge, then do some night driving to Breaux Bridge. I figured that the hours around midnight were probably the best time to do what I needed to do.

It was about 1:00 A.M. when I entered the fairgrounds. The area wasn’t set up for any events, and the park was nearly deserted except for a few cars and pickups parked alone in the most shadowy places, where at least a century of lovers, including myself, had come to practice their night moves.

I drove down to the oyster-shell road that followed the winding course of Bayou Teche and pulled up next to the big old swamp oak that was in Remy’s photograph — the same oak I remembered from my own youth. I took the brown sack, a shovel, and a flashlight from the pickup and walked down to the oak.

I shined the flashlight around the tree’s base and, sure enough, there where Remy had said it would be was a white flagstone, about three feet across, set into the weeds. I’d picnicked under that oak dozens of times, and I didn’t remember ever seeing it. I guessed that must have been before I became a cop trained to notice such things.

I levered the flagstone up with the shovel blade and slid the stone to one side. Then I dug a hole where the stone had been. I stopped digging at about two feet because of the tangles of roots. I opened the sack and lifted the urn out, then reverently lowered it into the hole. I backfilled the hole and slid the flagstone back into place.

As I was putting my things back into the pickup, I saw an old longneck Budweiser bottle lying in the weeds. I picked it up, went down to the bayou and filled it, broke off a small hibiscus branch covered with red flowers, stuck it down into the longneck bottle, and set the bottle on the stone.

“This one’s for you, Papa Henri,” I whispered, then headed back to the pickup.

Philippe François lived in a clapboard shack on Fifth Street in Algiers, in the shadow of the big Huey P. Long Bridge that spanned the Mississippi, right where Canal Street met the river. I saw the union bumper sticker on Philippe’s rusted-out ’82 Chevy and figured that he must work as a stevedore at the port, a job not unlike that of many of the patrons of Remy’s Surf Club.

I’d thought about phoning first, but I couldn’t find a number, which was not surprising after seeing the house. I knocked on the unpainted door and saw a man’s hand part the dingy curtains on the front window. In a moment the door opened.

Philippe François was the image of his slightly older brother, even down to the grin. Only there was no gold in Philippe’s teeth — only rotted dark spaces — and there was a hollow look in his eyes, like he hadn’t slept much.

“You must be Mr. LeCroix,” he said. “I’d invite you in, but my daughter Lisette is real sick. Is it about the urn?”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here,” I said. “I buried it under that big oak at Breaux Bridge — the one in the picture. Actually, I buried it under the flagstone, just like Remy asked me to do. He asked me to tell you. Said you’d want to know.”

“Thanks,” Philippe said. He started to say something else, but the words seemed to stick in his throat.

Then he turned away for a moment. When he turned back to face me, his face was wet with tears. He must have loved that old man a lot, just like Remy, I was thinking.

“Guess I’ll be going,” I said. “I hope Lisette gets well real soon. Anything serious?”

Philippe nodded. “She got hepatitis when she was a baby. She’s ten now. Needs a new liver real bad.”

Looking at Philippe was like looking at Remy, and I knew I liked Remy. Having never had any kids of my own, it troubled me somewhat that I could instantly feel concern for this man’s daughter, whom I’d never even known existed. But I knew that I desperately wanted her to be okay.

“I see you’re a union man,” I said to Philippe. “Hear they have good insurance,” I added, without thinking.

“That was a long time ago,” he said. “Dock work’s real slow these days.”

“Well, guess I’d better be going,” I said again. I handed him my card. “Let me know if I can do anything. Anything at all. Okay?”

Tears were forming in his eyes again. “You’ve already done more than most folks would. You’re a really kind man,” he said as he closed the door.

I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. Most of them were said in anger. I smiled to myself as I walked to the car, but it was not a comfortable smile.

That next Sunday’s Times-Picayune carried a story on the features page about a little girl whose life had just been saved by a much-needed liver transplant. Her family had been waiting for a year. They just didn’t have that kind of money, and time had almost run out. After seeing the girl’s name, I picked up some flowers and headed for the hospital.

The rain was coming down monsoon-style, just like in the tropics. I had to park almost a quarter-mile away and wade the flooded streets, but when I got there, Lisette’s smile made it worth the effort. When I left her room, Philippe walked with me out into the hospital corridor and stopped next to the door.

I was still choked up with a happiness for Lisette that really didn’t seem like mine to share. I felt awkward, and I tried to think of something else to say to Philippe.

“Guess now, with the operation over,” I said, “and your daughter coming home soon, you’ll have some time to go down to Breaux Bridge. When I was there, I left some flowers in a bottle. They may not have lasted — with the rain and all.”

“Already been there,” said Philippe. “Next day. Papa would have expected it, you know.”

I puzzled for only a few seconds over what I’d just heard. I felt like I needed to say something, but I wasn’t sure what. So I said, “Yeah. That’s probably true.”

I saw Philippe’s tiny eyes dart down the corridor to either side. Then I thought I saw him give me a thin, wry smile.

I read somewhere awhile back that the brain has two halves that each do different things, and I can’t remember exactly which side is which, but I know, after leaving the hospital that day, that the two sides of my brain were having one hell of an argument with each other.

One was saying, LeCroix, just let this thing go, and the other kept answering, Not until I know for sure. The next day I drove back to Breaux Bridge.

It was broad daylight, but I told myself that if I did this, it couldn’t be like before. It just wouldn’t be right to do it in the dark. As I drove the oyster-shell road next to Bayou Teche, I could see the big oak in the distance, and beneath it, the white flagstone, reflecting the late-morning sun like a pale talisman worn by the oak — almost a holy thing. I pulled up in front of the oak and parked next to the flagstone, in a spot that afforded some privacy for what I was about to do.

The first thing I noticed was the longneck Budweiser bottle lying on its side in the weeds and the shriveled hibiscus branch lying next to it. Kids could’ve done that, one side of my brain said, and the other side answered, Just lift up that stone.

I grabbed my shovel and got out of the pickup. I levered the flagstone, just like before, and slid it aside. The earth looked much the same as I’d left it. Bet you expected a hole, one side said, and the other side, being the upstart that I probably am, answered, Go ahead and dig. You’ve gotta know.

So I did — but gently, of course. When I heard the shovel make a scraping sound, I got down on my knees and scooped the earth away until I could see it. But it was not the top of the gray urn, but rather something the color of brass. I kept on digging with my hands until I could grab whatever it was and pull.

It was a small Mason jar, only a fraction the size of the urn. It had a brass-colored lid, and through the glass I could see a gray, gritty powder. I unscrewed the lid. Inside were what looked like human ashes and bits of bone. I didn’t touch what I saw inside. I replaced the lid, slid the jar back down into the hole, filled the hole again, and slid the flagstone back into place.

Then I just stood there, still stunned, I guess, my mind trying to pick apart the tangled implications. In a few minutes, I picked up the Bud bottle, filled it with bayou water again, and found another sprig of hibiscus.

“That’ll have to do for now, Papa Henri,” I said.

On the way back to the city, my brain was talking again. One side said, That’s the way it happens. You get sentimental, and you get conned, and the other side, after being silent for most of the trip, answered, Maybe. Maybe not. But so what.

Even today, I still think about those arid, sun-baked islands off the coast of French Guiana. The Salvation Islands, Remy had called them. And I still wonder sometimes if everything or anything that Remy told me was really true.

I wonder whether Papa Henri François really had been locked up for all those ten terrible years on that hell-on-earth penal colony. I wonder whether he really had lived his happiest days in Breaux Bridge. And sometimes I wonder whether he really died, a Godforsaken exile, in French Guiana.

In my line of work, you can get fooled a lot. And I can tell you for sure that I’ve been fooled a helluva lot more than once, and for a helluva lot less honorable reasons.

Salvation. Yeah, you know, I always liked the name of those islands.