Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

Quick as a snake his mother rapped him twice on the skull with her spatula. “You are a ringtailed dumbass if ever there was one.”

Billsy raised his forearms above his head. “I didn’t say nothing.”

Sam could see how scrambled his thoughts were by looking at his eyes. “What did this nice-talking man look like?”

Before his mother could hit him again, Billsy blurted out, “He just had a little mustache and talked about his wife a lot. Rode a horse in a suit.”

Sam made a face. “A horse in a suit?”

Ralph suddenly pulled a big sheath knife and banged it on the table boards. “You about ready to leave, ain’t ya?”

“What do you know about the killing in Troumal?”

“I’ll tell you about a killin’ right here in a minute. Now get out.”

Sam glanced at his eyes and stood up. “Can I get past that dog?”

“You can get past him goin’ out,” Ralph Skadlock told him. “But I wouldn’t try it comin’ back. He’ll eat you like a meat grinder.”

IT WAS ONE O’CLOCK when he climbed on Number 6 to ride back to St. Frank, a slow trip through the spiders and snakes.

The shadows were long when he reached the bayou, and he was so hungry and stuck up with briars that he galloped Number 6 into the water before the horse could think about it too much, hollering him across and up the bank toward town.

The man at the livery stood watching as Sam rode up and tied off.

“Here’s your animal. I’ll take my deposit.”

The man looked at Sam’s clothes. “Looks like he got his money’s worth out of you.”

“It’s hard to keep him in a straight line.”

“Well, I guess you did good to even get back.” He grabbed the reins and began to lead the animal.

Sam gave him a hard look. “Say.”

The man stopped and let Number 6 roll on like a shoved wagon.

“Some time ago, maybe two months, did you rent a horse to a little man wearing a suit?”

“No.”

Sam looked down the road toward the river. “How come you can answer so quick?”

“I ain’t rented nothin’ to nobody wearin’ a suit coat in five years or better. Nowadays, if you wear a suit you got a Ford.”

“Somebody was up there wearin’ one.”

The liveryman crossed his big arms and spat. “Could of rode in from Woodgulch to the northwest. They’s more than one point on the compass, you know.”

He started walking in the direction of the boat feeling not only tired but thick-headed. More than one point on the compass. He wasn’t cut out for the wilderness, was damn lucky he hadn’t got lost or killed. And if he could help it, he’d never climb on another horse.

HE GOT to the stage plank five minutes before the boat cast off and was squeezing through the crowd when the captain grabbed him by the arm.

“By God, Lucky, you smell like a sardine. Get cleaned up and out on deck in ten minutes. We’ve got a load of country boys on with the rest and I don’t think some of ’em have ever seen electricity.”

Sam put a hand on his lower back. “I’m about half dead, Captain.”

“Well, the half that ain’t dead better work twice as hard.” He gave Sam a shove toward the stairs, and he went up to wash and change into his uniform. The upper decks and companionways were reeling with excursionists, some well dressed, some in khaki cotton work clothes, a few wearing blue jeans belted with strips of blond leather. Up on the roof he checked the fire buckets, then opened the pilothouse door.

Mr. Brandywine, who seldom used the new steering levers, was standing on a spoke of the ten-foot wheel, waiting for castoff, and he turned halfway around. “Knock before you come in here.”

“I’m looking for the Wellers.”

“Mr. Simoneaux, I am not in charge of the musicians.”

As Sam retreated down the steps, Mr. Brandywine hung half his weight on the whistle cord and set the big three-bell chime to roaring. The deckhands cast off lines and the boat backed out full speed, the decks shaking as the paddlewheel beat down the water.

The café was jammed, and Ted Weller was pinned at the back of the room by a party of eight dandies examining the one-page paper menus with exaggerated care. The sun was going down and young couples were thronging the open area on the hurricane deck, most of them good natured, smoking and sneaking sips from their pocket flasks. He checked in with Charlie Duggs, who was blending with the crowd at the edge of the dance floor, where perhaps a quarter of the paying customers stood in awe of the black orchestra, of the bounce and surprise of the music, the sass of the trumpet. Most of them had never heard anything like it, but knees began to bend, hips to slide, feet to rise like boats lifted on a freshet of notes. Sam moved downstairs and found the main deck jammed, people tossing cigarette butts in sparking pinwheels across the wooden floor and ordering tableloads of ice and soda.

He walked to the rail and saw that Mr. Brandywine had brought the Ambassador out into a skein of dead water and was letting the boat loaf with its bow upstream, more or less staying in the same pocket of river. The point of the trip, he realized, was not to go somewhere, but only to seem to go somewhere. It was a sad passenger who knew what was happening outside the vessel on a night cruise. The whole point was to stay in the breezy bubble of comfort and music and forget the dark and airless shore.

The cruise brought three fistfights and a bad screaming match between a woman and her boyfriend. One man refused to quit fighting, and Sam had to drag him down to the little brig in the engine room and lock him in. He banged the man’s head with the door when he slammed it shut because he was angry at his own exhaustion. There were still unpulled stickers in his legs, and the insides of his thighs ached from the saddle.

Passing through the main-deck lounge, he watched the bracing of the dance floor jounce over his head, as if an army were doing jumping jacks, and the captain, who was rushing through to the engine room, stopped and listened to the rumble. “Lucky, run up and tell the band to slow their tempo ten beats per minute on the fast numbers if they don’t want the damn boat to fold in half.”

At last came the race of unloading and policing the boat, and he worked asleep on his feet, moving people along, killing cigarettes, counting deck chairs to see how many had been thrown overboard from the dark upper deck. It wasn’t until he’d climbed into his bunk that he thought of the Wellers, and he let out a groan.

“I hear you,” Charlie Duggs said. “Tired as I am, I got the headache so bad I can’t go to sleep.”

“What’s up for tomorrow?”

“We’re pullin’ out in a bit, bud.”

“Where bound?”

“ Natchez. I expect old Brandywine will run on a full bell all night and have us there by eight o’clock.”

He put an arm over his eyes. “God, not a morning cruise.”

“It’s Sunday. First run is two-thirty. Captain Stewart lets anyone who wants to walk to church get sanctified. You a churchgoing man?”

“Catholic.”

“Well, then, I’ll walk up the hill with you.”

THE NEXT MORNING he washed up, brushed out his clothes, and they set off for ten o’clock Mass, walking in a group with a fireman, Captain Stewart, two white porters, Nellie Benton and her nephews, the engineers. At the top of the hill one group split off for the Methodist church while Sam and Charlie walked straight for a spire in the distance. He stopped on a street corner and looked back.

“What’s up?” Duggs asked.

“The Wellers ever go to church?”

“I don’t remember. Don’t start looking down your nose at folks for not goin’ to church. Both of them pulled double shifts yesterday and likely won’t knock off till midnight tonight.”