Ace Atkins - New Orleans Noir - The Classics

Bert sat in a chair outside the door. He was in uniform. His car was parked in front of cabin 10. The door was open, and just inside Howard Bedlow sat in an identical chair, staring out like a prisoner who knows there must be bars even though he cannot see them. He leaned forward, hands hanging down before him, and even from a distance he looked much older than I had remembered him.

Bert walked over as I parked. — How was the trip?

We stared at each other. — A revelation, I said, — He’s sober?

— Oh, yeah. He had a little trouble last night down at the Kit-Kat Klub. Bert pointed down the road to a huddled cinder-block building beside a trailer court.

— They sent for somebody to see to him, and luck had it be me.

Howard looked like an old man up close. His eyes were crusted, squinting up at the weak morning sun, still misted at that hour. His hands hung down between his legs, almost touching the floor, and his forefingers moved involuntarily as if they were tracing a precise and repetitious pattern on the dust of the floor. He looked up at me, licking his lips. He had not shaved in a couple of days, and the light beard had the same tawny reddish color as his hair. He did not seem to recognize me for a moment. Then his expression came together. He looked almost frightened.

— You seen her, huh?

— That’s right.

— What’d she say?

— It’s all right with her.

— What’s all right?

— The divorce. Just the way you want it.

— You mean... like everything I said... all that...?

— She said maybe she owes you that much. For what she did.

— What she did?

— You know...

— What I said, told you?

— Wonder what the hell that is, Bert put in. He walked out into the driveway and stared down the street.

Bedlow shook his head slowly. — She owned up, told you everything?

— There was... a confirmation. Look, I said, — Bert will line you up a lawyer. I’m going to represent Ir... your wife.

— Oh? I was the one come to you...

I took a piece of motel stationery out of my pocket. There was a five-dollar bill held to it with a dark bobby pin. I remembered her hair cascading down, flowing about her face. — You never gave me a retainer. I did not act on your behalf.

I held out the paper and the bill. — This is my retainer. From her. It doesn’t matter. She won’t contest. I’ll talk to your lawyer. It’ll be easy.

— I never asked for nothing to be easy, Bedlow murmured.

— If you want to back off the adultery thing, which is silly, which even if it is true you cannot prove, you can go for rendering life insupportable...

— Life insupportable...? I never asked things be easy...

— Yes you did, I said brutally. — You just didn’t know you did.

I wanted to tell him there was something rotten and weak and collapsed in him. His heart, his guts, his genes. That he had taken a woman better than he had any right to, and that Albert Sidney... but how could I? Who was I to... and then Bert stepped back toward us, his face grim.

— S..., he was saying, — I think they’ve got a fire down to the trailer court. You all reckon we ought to...

— If it’s mine, let it burn. Ain’t nothing there I care about. I need a drink.

But Bert was looking at me, his face twisted with some pointless apprehension that made so little sense that both of us piled into his car, revved the siren, and fishtailed out into Airline Highway, almost smashing into traffic coming from both directions as he humped across the neutral ground and laid thirty yards of rubber getting to the trailer court.

The trailer was in flames from one end to the other. Of course it was Bedlow’s. Bert’s face was working, and he tried to edge the car close to the end of it where there were the least flames.

— She’s back in Alex, I yelled at him. — She’s staying in a motel back in Alex. There’s nothing in there.

But my eyes snapped from the burning trailer to a stunted and dusty cottonwood tree behind it. Which was where the old station wagon was parked. I could see the tail pipe hanging down behind as I vaulted out of the car and pulled the flimsy screen door off the searing skin of the trailer with my bare hands. I was working on the inside door, kicking it, screaming at the pliant aluminum to give way, to let me pass, when Bert pulled me back. — You g. . . d fool, you can’t...

But I had smashed the door open by then and would have been into the gulf of flame and smoke inside if Bert had not clipped me alongside the head with the barrel of his .38.

Which was just the moment when Bedlow passed him. Bert had hold of me, my eyes watching the trees, the nearby trailers whirling, spinning furiously. Bert yelled at Bedlow to stop, that there was no one inside, an inspired and desperate lie — or was it a final testing?

— She is, I know she is, Bedlow screamed back at Bert.

I was down on the ground now, dazed, passing in and out of consciousness not simply from Bert’s blow, but from exhaustion, too long on the line beyond the boundaries of good sense. But I looked up as Bedlow shouted, and I saw him standing for a split second where I had been, his hair the color of the flames behind. He looked very young and strong, and I remember musing in my semiconsciousness, maybe he can do it. Maybe he can.

— ... And she’s got my boy in there, we heard him yell as he vanished into the smoke. Bert let me fall all the way then, and I passed out for good.

It was late afternoon when I got home. It dawned on me that I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. Huge white thunderheads stood over the city, white and pure as cotton. The sun was diminished, and the heat had fallen away. It seemed that everything was very quiet, that a waiting had set in. The evening news said there was a probability of rain, even small-craft warnings on the Gulf. Then, as if there were an electronic connection between the station and the clouds, rain began to fall just as I pulled into the drive. It fell softly at first, as if it feared to come too quickly on the scorched town below. Around me, as I cut off the engine, there rose that indescribable odor that comes from the coincidence of fresh rain with parched earth and concrete. I sat in the car for a long time, pressing Bert’s handkerchief full of crushed ice against the lump on the side of my head. The ice kept trying to fall out because I was clumsy. I had not gotten used to the thick bandages on my hands, and each time I tried to adjust the handkerchief, the pain in my hands made me lose fine control. My head did not hurt so badly, but I felt weak, and so I stayed there through all the news, not wanting to pass out for the second time in one day, or to lay unconscious in an empty house.

— Are you just going to sit out here? Joan asked me softly.

I opened my eyes and peered up at her. She looked very different. As if I had not see her in years, as if we had lived separate lives, heights and depths in each that we could never tell the other. — No, I said. — I was just tired.

She frowned when I got out of the car. — What’s the lump? And the hands? Can’t I go away for a few days?

— Sure you can, I said a little too loudly, forcefully. — Any time at all. I ran into a hot door.

She was looking at my suit. One knee was torn, and an elbow was out. She sniffed. — Been to a firesale? she asked as we reached the door.

— That’s not funny, I said.

— Sorry, she answered.

The children were there, and I tried very hard for the grace to see them anew, but it was just old Bart and tiny Nan trying to tell me about their holiday. Bart was still sifting sand on everything he touched, and Nan’s fair skin was lightly burned. Beyond their prattle, I was trying to focus on something just beyond my reach.