James Burke: Creole Belle

“I feel selfish coming here, ’cause it wasn’t just to give you a Dr Pepper and the iPod,” she said. “I came here to ax you somet’ing, but I ain’t gonna do it now.”

“You can say anything you want, Tee Jolie, because I’m not even sure you’re here. I dream in both the day and the night about people who have been dead many years. In my dreams, they’re alive, right outside the window, Confederate soldiers and the like.”

“They had to come a long way, huh?”

“That’s safe to say,” I replied. “My wife and daughter were here earlier, and I know they were real. I’m not sure about you. No offense meant. That’s just the way it is these days.”

“I know something I ain’t suppose to know, and it makes me scared, Mr. Dave,” she said.

She was sitting in the chair, her ankles close together, her hands folded on her knees. I had always thought of her as a tall girl, particularly when she was onstage at the zydeco club where she sang, an arterial-red electric guitar hanging from her neck. Now she looked smaller than she had a few moments ago. She lifted her face up into mine. There was a mole by the corner of her mouth. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say.

“Did you get involved with some bad guys?” I said.

“I wouldn’t call them that. How come you to ax me that?”

“Because you’re a good person, and sometimes you trust people you shouldn’t. Good women tend to do that. That’s why a lot of us men don’t deserve them.”

“Your father was killed in a oil-well blowout, wasn’t he? Out on the Gulf when you was in Vietnam. That’s right, ain’t it?”

“Yes, he was a derrick man.”

As with many Creoles and Cajuns, there was a peculiarity at work in Tee Jolie’s speech. She was ungrammatical and her vocabulary was limited, but because of the cadence in her language and her regional accent, she was always pleasant to listen to, a voice from a gentler and more reserved time, even when what she spoke of was not pleasant to think about, in this case the death of my father, Big Aldous.

“I’m wit’ a man. He’s separated but not divorced. A lot of people know his name. Famous people come to the place where we live. I heard them talking about centralizers. You know what they are?”

“They’re used inside the casing on drilling wells.”

“A bunch of men was killed ’cause maybe not enough of those centralizers was there or somet’ing.”

“I’ve read about that, Tee Jolie. It’s public knowledge. You shouldn’t worry because you know about this.”

“The man I’m wit’ does bidness sometimes with dangerous people.”

“Maybe you should get away from him.”

“We’re gonna be married. I’m gonna have his baby.”

I fixed my gaze on the glass of Dr Pepper and ice that sat on the nightstand.

“You want some more?” she asked.

“Yes, but I can hold it by myself.”

“Except I see the pain in your face when you move,” she said. She lifted the glass and straw to my mouth. “They hurt you real bad, huh, Mr. Dave?”

“They shot me up proper,” I replied.

“They shot your friend Mr. Clete, too?”

“They smacked both of us around. But we left every one of them on the ground. They’re going to be dead for a long time.”

“I’m glad,” she said.

Outside the window, I could hear the rain and wind sweeping through the trees, scattering leaves from the oaks and needles from the slash pines across the roof.

“I always had my music and the piece of land my father left me and my sister and my mama,” she said. “I sang wit’ BonSoir, Catin. I was queen of the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge. I t’ink back on that, and it’s like it was ten years ago instead of two. A lot can change in a short time, cain’t it? My mama died. Now it’s just me and my li’l sister, Blue, and my granddaddy back in St. Martinville.”

“You’re a great musician, and you have a wonderful voice. You’re a beautiful person, Tee Jolie.”

“When you talk like that, it don’t make me feel good, no. It makes me sad.”

“Why?”

“He says I can have an abortion if I want.”

“That’s his offer to you?”

“He ain’t got his divorce yet. He ain’t a bad man. You know him.”

“Don’t tell me his name,” I said.

“How come?”

Because I might want to put a bullet between his eyes, I thought. “It’s not my business,” I said. “Did you really give me this iPod?”

“You just saw me.”

“I can’t trust what I see and hear these days. I truly want to believe you’re real. The iPod is too expensive a gift.”

“Not for me. He gives me plenty of money.”

“My wallet is in the nightstand drawer.”

“I got to go, Mr. Dave.”

“Take the money.”

“No. I hope you like the songs. I put t’ree of mine in there. I put one in there by Taj Mahal ’cause I know you like him, too.”

“Are you really here?” I asked.

She cupped her hand on my brow. “You’re burning up, you,” she said.

Then she was gone.

Nine days later, a big man wearing a seersucker suit and a bow tie and spit-shined shoes and a fresh haircut and carrying a canvas bag on a shoulder strap came into the room and pulled up a chair by the bed and stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

“You’re not going to smoke that in here, are you?” I asked.

He didn’t bother to answer. His blond hair was cut like a little boy’s. His eyes were bright green, more energetic than they should have been, one step below wired. He set his bag on the floor and began pulling magazines and two city library books and a box of pralines and a carton of orange juice and a Times-Picayune from it. When he bent over, his coat swung open, exposing a nylon shoulder holster and the blue-black. 38 with white handles that it carried. He removed a pint bottle of vodka from the bag and unscrewed the cap and poured at least three inches into the carton of orange juice.

“Early in the day,” I said.

He tossed his unlit cigarette end over end into the wastebasket and drank out of the carton, staring out the window at the robins fluttering in the oak trees and the Spanish moss stirring in the breeze. “Tell me if you want me to leave, big mon.”

“You know better than that,” I said.

“I saw Alafair and Molly getting in their car. When are you going home?”

“Maybe in a week. I feel a lot stronger. Where have you been?”

“Running down a couple of bail skips. I still have to pay the bills. I’m not sleeping too good. I think the doc left some lead in me. I think it’s moving around.”

His eyes were bright with a manic energy that I didn’t think was related to the alcohol. He kept swallowing and clearing his throat, as though a piece of rust were caught in it. “The speckled trout are running. We need to get out on the salt. The White House is saying the oil has gone away.”

He waited for me to speak. But I didn’t.

“You don’t believe it?” he said.

“The oil company says the same thing. Do you believe them?”

He fiddled with his fingers and looked into space, and I knew he had something on his mind besides the oil-well blowout on the Gulf. “Something happen?” I said.

“I had a run-in two nights ago with Frankie Giacano. Remember him? He used to burn safes with his cousin Stevie Gee. He was knocking back shots with a couple of hookers in this joint on Decatur, and I accidentally stepped on his foot, and he says, ‘Hey, Clete, glad to see you, even though you probably just broke two of my toes. At least it saves me the trouble of coming to your office. You owe me two large, plus the vig for over twenty years. I don’t know what that might come to. Something like the national debt of Pakistan. You got a calculator on you?’”