James Burke: Heaven’s Prisoners

The light was pink in the trees along the bayou when I opened the dock for business early the next morning. It was very still, and the water was dark and quiet in the overhang of the cypress trees, and the bream were feeding and making circles like raindrops on the edge of the lily pads. I watched the light climb higher in the blue sky, touching the green of the tree line, burning away the mist that still hung around the cypress roots. It was going to be a balmy, clear day, good for bluegill and bass and sunfish, until the water became warm by mid-morning and the pools of shadow under the trees turned into mirrors of brown-yellow light. But just before three o'clock that afternoon the barometric pressure would drop, the sky would suddenly fill with gray clouds that had the metallic sheen of steam, and just as the first raindrops clicked against the water the bluegill would begin feeding again, all at once, their mouths popping against the surface louder than the rain. I cleaned out the barbecue pit on the side porch next to the bait shop, put the ashes in a paper bag, dropped the bag in a trash barrel, spread new charcoal and green hickory in the bottom of the pit and started my lunch fire, then left Batist, one of the black men who worked for me, in charge of the shop, and went back up to the house and fixed an omelette and cush-cush for our breakfast. We ate on the redwood picnic table under the mimosa tree in the backyard while blue jays and mockingbirds flicked in and out of the sunlight.

Then I took Alafair with me in the truck to the grocery store on the highway to buy ice for the dock and shelled crawfish to make étouffée for our supper. I also bought her a big paper kite, and when we got back home she and I walked back to the duck pond at the end of my property, which adjoined a sugarcane field, and let the kite lift up suddenly into the breeze and rise higher and higher into the cloud-flecked blue sky. Her face was a round circle of incredible surprise and delight as the string tugged in her fingers and the kite flapped and danced against the wind.

Then I saw Annie walking toward us out of the dappled shade of the backyard into the sunlight. She wore a pair of Clorox-faded jeans and a dark blue shirt, and the sun made gold lights in her hair. I looked again at her face. She was trying to look unconcerned, but I could see the little wrinkle, like a sculptor's careless nick, between her eyes.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"Nothing, I guess."

"Come on, Annie. Your face doesn't hide things too well." I brushed her suntanned forehead with my fingers.

"There's a car parked off the side of the road in the trees with two men in it," she said. "I saw them a half hour or so ago, but I didn't pay any attention to them."

"What kind of car?"

"I don't know. A white sports car of some kind. I went out on the porch and the driver raised up a newspaper like he was reading it."

"They're probably just some oil guys goofing around on the job. But let's go take a look."

I knotted the kite twine to a willow stick and pushed the stick deep into the soft dirt by the edge of the pond, and the three of us walked back to the house while the kite popped behind us in the wind.

I left them in the kitchen and looked through the front screen without opening it. A short distance down the dirt road from the dock, a white Corvette was parked at an angle in the trees. The man on the passenger side had his seat tilted back and was sleeping with a straw hat over his face. The man behind the wheel smoked a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. I took my pair of World War II Japanese field glasses from the wall where they hung on their strap, braced them against the doorjamb, and focused the lens through the screen. The front windshield was tinted and there was too much shadow on it to see either of the men well, and the license plate was in back, so I couldn't get the number, but I could clearly make out the tiny metal letters ELK just below the driver's window.

I went into the bedroom, took my army field jacket that I used for duck hunting out of the closet, then opened the dresser drawer and from the bottom of my stack of shirts lifted out the folded towel in which I kept the U.S. Army-issue.45 automatic that I had bought in Saigon. I picked up the heavy clip loaded with hollow-points, inserted it into the handle, pulled back the receiver and slid a round into the chamber, set the safety, and dropped the pistol into the pocket of my field jacket. I turned round and saw Annie watching me from the bedroom doorway, her face taut and her eyes bright.

"Dave, what are you doing?" she said.

"I'm going to stroll down there and check these guys out. They won't, see the gun."

"Let it go. Call the sheriff's office if you have to."

"They're on our property, kiddo. They just need to tell us what they're doing here. It's no big deal."

"No, Dave. Maybe they're from Immigration. Don't provoke them."

"Government guys use economy rentals when they can't use the motor pool. They're probably land men from-the Oil Center in Lafayette."

"Yes, that's why you have to take the pistol with you."

"So I have some bad habits. Leave it alone, Annie."

I saw the hurt in her face. Her eyes flicked away from mine, then came back again.

"Yes, I wouldn't want to tell you anything," she said. "A good Cajun girl stays barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while her macho man goes out and kicks ass and takes names."

"I had a partner eight years ago who walked up on a guy trying to change a tire two blocks from the French Market. My partner had just gotten off work and he still had his badge clipped to his belt. He was a nice guy. He was always going out of his way to help people. He was going to ask this guy if he needed a bigger jack. The guy shot him right through the mouth with a nine-millimeter."

Her face twitched as though I had slapped her.

"I'll be back in a minute," I said, and went out the screen door with the field jacket over my arm.

The pecan leaves in the yard were loud under my feet. I looked back over my shoulder and saw her watching me through the screen, with Alafair pressed against her thigh. Lord, why did I have to talk to her like that, I thought. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me. She was kind and loving and every morning she made me feel that somehow I was a gift in her life rather than the other way around. And if she ever had any fears, they were for my welfare, never for her own. I wondered if I would ever exorcise the alcoholic succubus that seemed to live within me, its claws hooked into my soul.

I walked on into the trees toward the dirt road and the parked white car. Then I saw the driver flip his cigarette out into the leaves and start the engine. But he didn't drive past me so I could look clearly into the car or see the license plate in the rear. Instead, he backed down the dirt road, the spangled sunlight bouncing off the windshield, then straightened the car abruptly in a wide spot and accelerated around a bend that was thick with scrub oak. I heard the tires thump over the wooden bridge south of my property and the sound of the engine become thin through the trees.

I went back to the house, slipped the clip out of the.45, ejected the shell from the chamber, snicked the shell into the top of the clip again, and folded the towel over the.45 and the clip and replaced them in the dresser drawer. Annie was washing dishes in the kitchen. I stood beside her but didn't touch her.

"I'll say it only once and I'll understand if you don't want to accept it right now," I said. "But you mean a lot to me and I'm sorry I talked to you the way I did. I didn't know who those guys were, but I wasn't going to find out on their terms. Annie, when you love somebody dearly, you don't put limits on your protection of them. That's the way it is."