James Burke - Dixie City Jam

I knelt beside him, loosened his belt, and brushed the dirt out of his eyes with my fingers.

'Where's Buchalter?' I said.

He swallowed with a clicking sound and tried to speak, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. I turned his head with my hands so his mouth could drain.

'Where did Buchalter go, Chuck?' I said. 'Don't try to protect this guy. He deserted you.'

'I don't know,' he said. His voice was weak and devoid of all defense. 'Get the arrow out.'

'I can't do it. You might hemorrhage. I'm going to call an ambulance.'

His crossed eyes tried to focus on mine. They were luminous and black with pain and fear. His tongue came out of his mouth and went back in again.

'What is it?' I said.

'I need a priest. I ain't gonna make it.'

'We'll get you one.'

'You gotta listen, man…'

'Say it.'

'I didn't have nothing against y'all. I done it for the money.'

'For the money?' I said as much to myself as to him.

'Tell your old lady I'm sorry. It wasn't personal. Oh God, I ain't gonna make it.'

'Give me Buchalter, Chuck.'

But his eyes had already focused inward on a vision whose intensity and dimension probably only he could appreciate. In the distance I heard someone start a high-powered automobile engine and roar southward, away from the drawbridge, down the bayou road in the rain.

The next morning I went down to the sheriffs office and got my badge back.

Chuck, whose full name was Charles Arthur Sitwell, made it through the night and was in the intensive care unit at Iberia General, his body wired to machines, an oxygen tube taped to his nose, an IV needle inserted in a swollen vein inside his right forearm. The lower half of his face was swathed in bandages and plaster, with only a small hole, the size of a quarter, for his mouth. I pulled a chair close to his bed while Clete stood behind me.

'Did Father Melancon visit you, Chuck?' I said.

He didn't answer. His eyelids were blue and had a metallic shine to them.

'Didn't a priest come see you?' I asked.

He blinked his eyes.

'Look, partner, if you got on the square with the Man Upstairs, why not get on the square with us?' I said.

Still, he didn't answer.

'You've been down four times, Chuck,' I said. 'Your jacket shows you were always a solid con. But Buchalter's not stand-up, Chuck. He's letting you take his fall.'

'You're standing on third base,' Clete said behind me.

I turned in the chair and looked into Clete's face. But Clete only stepped closer to the bed.

'Chuck was in max at Leavenworth, he was a big stripe at Angola. He wants it straight,' he said to me. 'Right, Chuck? Buchalter'll piss on your grave. Don't take the bounce for a guy like that.'

Chuck's defective eyes looked as small as a bird's. They seemed to focus on Clete; then they looked past him at the swinging door to the intensive care unit, which had opened briefly and was now flapping back and forth.

His mouth began moving inside the hole in the bandages. I leaned my ear close to his face. His breath was sour with bile.

'I already told the priest everything. I ain't saying no more,' he whispered. 'Tell everybody that. I ain't saying no more.'

'I don't want to be hard on you, partner, but why not do some good while you have the chance?' I said.

He turned his face away from me on the pillow.

'If that's the way you want it,' I said, and stood up to go. 'If you change your mind, ask for the cop at the door.'

Out in the corridor, Clete put an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

'I never get used to the way these fuckers think. The sonofabitch is on the edge of eternity and he's scared he'll be made for a snitch,' he said, then noticed a Catholic nun with a basket of fruit two feet from him. 'Excuse me, Sister,' he said.

She was dressed in a white skirt and lavender blouse, but she wore a black veil with white edging on her head. Her hair was a reddish gold and was tapered on her neck.

'How is he doing?' she said.

'Who?' I said.

'That poor man who was shot last night,' she said.

'Not very well,' I said.

'Will he live?' she said.

'You never know, I guess,' I said.

'Were you one of the officers who-'

'Yes?'

'I was going to ask if you were one of the officers who arrested him.'

'I'm the officer who shot him, Sister,' I said. But my attempt at directness was short-lived, and involuntarily my eyes broke contact with hers.

'Is he going to die?' she said. Her eyes became clouded in a peculiar way, like dark smoke infused in green glass.

'You should probably ask the doctor that,' I said.

'I see,' she said. Then she smiled politely. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound rude. I'm Marie Guilbeaux. It's nice meeting you.'

'I'm Dave Robicheaux. This is Clete Purcel. It's nice meeting you, too, Sister,' I said. 'You're not from New Iberia, are you?'

'No, I live in Lafayette.'

'Well, see you around,' I said.

'Yes, good-bye,' she said, and smiled again.

Clete and I walked out into the sunlight and drove back toward my house. It was the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, and the convenience stores were filled with people buying beer and ice and charcoal for barbecues.

'Why didn't the nuns look like that when I was in grade school?' Clete said. 'The ones I remember had faces like boiled hams… What are you brooding about?'

'Something you said. Why's Chuck Sitwell stonewalling us?'

'He wants to go out a mainline, stand-up con.'

'No, you said it earlier. He's scared. But if he's scared Buchalter will be back to pull his plug, why doesn't he just give him up?'

Clete looked out into the hot glare of the day from under the brim of his porkpie hat and puffed on his cigarette. His face was pink in the heat.

'You're a good guy, Streak, but you don't always think straight about yourself,' he said.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'You parked four-rounds in the guy.'

I looked at him.

'Come on, Dave, be honest,' he said. 'You only stopped popping caps when you ran out of bullets. You were trying to blow him all over that cane field. You don't think the guy knows that? What if he or Buchalter tell you what they had planned for you and Bootsie, Bootsie in particular, maybe even Alafair if she walked in on it? I'd be scared of you, too, mon.'

He glanced sideways at me, then sucked once on his cigarette and flipped it in a spray of sparks against the side of a red stop sign.

The weekend was hot and dry and uneventful. A guard remained on duty twenty-four hours at the door of Charles Arthur Sitwell's hospital room. Sitwell kept his promise; he refused to answer questions about anything.

I got up Tuesday morning at dawn, helped Batist open the bait shop, then walked up the slope through the trees to have breakfast with Bootsie before going to the office. The house was still cool from the attic and window fans that had run all night, and the grass in the backyard was thick with mockingbirds who were feeding on bread crumbs that Bootsie had thrown out the screen door.

'A deputy will be parked out front again today,' I said.

'How long do you plan to keep one here, Dave?' Bootsie said. She sat across from me, her shoulders straight, her fingers resting on the sides of her coffee cup. She had put aside her piece of toast after having eaten only half of it.

'It gives the guy something to do,' I said.

'We can't live the rest of our lives with a deputy parked out front.'

'We won't have to.'

She had just washed her face, but her eyes looked tired, still not quite separated from the sleep that came to her with certainty only at first light.

'I want to buy a gun,' she said.

'That's never been your way.'