Part 9 (1/2)

They talked on as hours pa.s.sed and light descended. After the distraction of moons.h.i.+ne and food, Velmyra leaned back in her chair and turned to Kevin. ”Do you mind if I ask you how you got so interested in all this...this land stuff? And how you got to know so much about it?”

Kevin laid down his fork and sat back, his blue eyes luminous in the fading light. He had grown up in Pointe Louree Parish on a ragged remnant of land called Terre Rouge, not far from Silver Creek. In his first year at LSU, he'd studied contracts with a professor named Spencer LeClaire.

”He had to be the most brilliant man I ever met. Black man. His family lost a huge spread this way, up around Jackson Parish, a long time ago. A couple of years ago, he saw stuff happening again, land changing hands quickly, around these parts. So Prof decided he was going to try to help folks, you know, school them on how to protect their property, make wills and stuff. He got a couple of us students to help him, for a little extra credit.” Kevin spread his hands across the table and looked at his long fingers, his voice quieting. ”Prof died last year. Eighty-three years old. Now it's just me. So anyway, I'm hearing about somebody cruising around this property, somebody who sure as h.e.l.l don't look like they belong here. Then I'm reading about this auction. Didn't smell right. That's why I was looking for your daddy.”

Julian leaned forward, burying his head in his hands. The young law student cleared his throat, lowered his head and spoke quietly. ”Sure sorry about what you folks been through, down there in New Orleans. Sure hope you find your daddy.”

”Me too,” Julian said.

Kevin told Julian he'd be willing to help him get the land back. ”There might be a way we could fix this thing. There might be a loophole we could take advantage of.”

Julian sat forward, his arms on the table. ”You think we got a chance if we fight this?”

”There's a chance. There's always a chance.”

They decided to meet the next day and try to find Genevieve. And maybe, Kevin said, Genevieve could lead them to the other relatives of the Fortier clan, one of whom had to have sold their portion of the land.

When Kevin stood up, his long body lurched forward into a stumble that almost landed him on the table. ”Whoa. I guess I better get going. It's getting late, and you folks've been awful nice. That gumbo. That was something special.”

From his mouth came the sound of a low, drawn out belch. He covered his mouth with three fingers. ”Whoops. Sorry 'bout that.”

Velmyra stood and touched his shoulder. ”You OK to drive?”

”Yeah. I'm good. I'm just down the road.”

”Why don't you let us take you there?” Julian's voice was etched with concern.

Kevin straightened up and arched his back. ”I'm really OK. It'll take me about ten minutes to get home. I been gone a while and my girlfriend's gonna have a fit if I don't get home pretty soon. She's pregnant. Seven months along.”

He looked at his watch. ”I'm more worried about you folks. The roads are gonna wash out pretty good with alla this rain. Maybe y'all oughta be staying here tonight. I wouldn't try to go too far in this weather.”

Julian and Velmyra looked at each other.

”Maybe he's right.” Velmyra shrugged. ”That little road wasn't that easy to navigate when it was dry. You think your cousin would mind if we stayed here?”

Julian parted the cafe curtain covering the small window that looked out on the front yard. Rain came down in thick gray sheets, made opaque by swirling wind.

Julian couldn't help the twinge of guilt. He hadn't been to Silver Creek to see Genevieve in years, even though she'd constantly asked Simon about ”my young cousin.”

”If she knew I was here, she'd love it, after she'd ride my b.u.t.t about staying away so long. We should be able to find some sheets or something around here.”

”Good.” She nodded. ”Then we can look for your cousin in the morning, maybe visit her.”

Kevin walked toward the door. He took a long step, stumbled as if he were trying to board a pa.s.sing train, and Julian grabbed his arm. ”Easy, friend,” he said, and looked at Velmyra. ”I think we better take you home, man.”

Julian drove Kevin's big Ford truck, following Velmyra and Kevin in the Neon, through wooded, water-sludged paths in a slas.h.i.+ng downpour. The truck rambled along the muddy road that rimmed the swollen creek, and when Velmyra and Kevin headed down a pitch-black path under canopying cypresses, Julian wondered if the young lawyer was sober enough to remember his way home. He was relieved to see the glow of a porch light at the end of the road. By the time they returned to Genevieve's cabin, the rain had stopped and the clouds had parted to reveal a bright, full moon.

Four hours after he had found the sheets and pillows for Velmya and had stretched himself across the lumpy divan in the living room, the luminous moon shone through the sheer curtains in the living room, waking Julian from restless sleep. That, the soft rasp of Velmyra's snoring, and the river of thoughts coursing through his brain.

There had been a time when that snore was as familiar as his own breath. The bedroom door was only half-closed, and from the pitch of her snore he knew exactly how she lay-on her side, one hand tucked under her face, mouth slightly open, and eyelids fluttering as the light of her dreams flashed in her sleep.

From time to time, she would arch her back, throw her arm across his torso, a signal for him to slide himself into the S-curve of her body as if she were the mold that defined his form.

That was how it had been with them-natural, easy. He had thought it would be that way forever. He got up from the divan and walked with the sheet draped around him like a bath towel toward the moonlight spilling in from the window.

The air in the cabin was as thick and moist as human breath, and the house seemed to heave and swell as the rainwater soaked deeper into the wood. He leaned his arms on the small sill and looked up at the blue-black sky. He looked over his shoulder at the thin bluish light seeping from the open door, and turned back to the moon. He thought about the last time he had seen her, years ago, before the breakup. How had they gotten to this point? A few feet away and worlds apart, two strangers on opposite sides of a half-closed door.

He hadn't been the only one who needed to recover. When the thing with Vel ended, and Julian fell into moribund silence, he felt a steady beam of curious light from his father's eyes. Tacit questions lay stranded in the air between them, the unease between father and son palpable.

The old man would have loved to play consoling confidant with mother-wit advice; often he had surprised Julian with his country brand of wisdom plumbed from some deep store of life lessons. But Julian, hard-headed, reticent, embarra.s.sed, had put up a wall that even a father's love could not pierce. One night after Simon grew weary of his son's silent moping, he put away the supper dishes and turned to Julian with a frustrated sigh. ”Why you ain't out finding you another somebody is beyond me.” The words stuck in Julian's throat: he didn't want ”another somebody.”

Simon shook his head and went back to rolling dough for his crawfish pies, while Julian took out his trumpet and poured his blues into it.

Outside, the leaves of the sprawling oaks and the eaves and gutters of the cabin continued to echo the random dripping rhythms of the just-ended rain. Julian went back to the divan and arranged himself between the lumps in the cus.h.i.+on and pulled the sheet back over himself and thought about the heaped-on hurts in his father's life; Ladeena, the flooded, drowned city he loved, and now, Silver Creek. The Treme house had been in his family for generations, but the Silver Creek land, his great-grandfather Moses' legacy, was Simon's life. Julian's stomach knotted once more at the thought of having to tell his father, if ever he saw him again, that it was gone.

Find me, or find what's left of me. Put me down beside your mama.

Dread stole into his mind as it had so often over the last couple of days; and as he had done each time before, he pushed it back. Daddy is not gone. Daddy is alive somewhere, Daddy is not gone. Daddy is alive somewhere, he told himself, as if the words alone had the power of miracles he told himself, as if the words alone had the power of miracles. It wasn't easy; he felt like a small boy floating a flimsy kite on a dying wind. But he had to keep that thought aloft. It wasn't easy; he felt like a small boy floating a flimsy kite on a dying wind. But he had to keep that thought aloft.

Julian closed his eyes and eased himself back inside the refuge of Velmyra's rhythmic snore, pulling it around him like a favorite childhood blanket, its familiar sputters and groans offering the only comfort there was now. Later, when the morning sun arced over the cabin between the branches of the oaks and spread long rods of light across the cypress floors, Julian woke again to the pungent aromas of frying bacon and French-roasted cinnamon coffee.

11.

Velmyra handed him a cup of coffee as he stood in the doorway of the kitchen. ”Hey.”

”Hey, yourself.”

”I didn't want to wake you up. Figured you had a hard enough time sleeping on that little couch.”

He took a sip from the smooth, strong brew that tasted like heaven, not bothering to ask her how she'd remembered the little touch of cinnamon he liked, and where she had found it. Velmyra was nothing if not resourceful. It was exactly the way he had drank it for the last twelve years, with just enough sugar to round the edges.

”Thanks. This is just what I need.”

He rubbed sleep from his eyes. ”I must've been unconscious. With these thin walls, I can't believe I didn't hear you in the kitchen.”

Standing at the stove, she had an eyes-wide freshness that he envied, her nutmeg skin glowing. The tufts of tight curls rising from the red bandana crown she'd arranged made her look like some kind of fas.h.i.+onable, New Age Jemima. She wore a clean white T-s.h.i.+rt emblazoned with the picture of a black woman blues singer and the words ”Mardi Gras '96” in red letters, and crisply pressed red shorts. It was like her to prepare for a situation like this, tucking a change of clothes inside her bag, just in case.

He looked at the gateleg table by the window set with places for two.

”Vel, you didn't have to do all this. We could have gone out somewhere.”

Velmyra took the spatula she was holding and pressed bacon into the small iron skillet. Her eyebrows lifted above her smile, her laughing eyes, as she pointed the spatula toward him. ”You're kidding, right? From here, we'd have to drive for miles just to arrive at the world's smallest town. By the time we got to...wherever you had in mind, I would have pa.s.sed out. Blood sugar, you know.”

Right. He felt a twinge of embarra.s.sment; she'd remembered how he liked his coffee, but he couldn't remember how her blood sugar dipped now and then, and she would climb the walls until there was food in front of her.

She was bustling around the kitchen as if it were her own, opening drawers, finding silverware and gla.s.ses.