Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“It smells the same,” she says.

“Good or bad?”

“Both.”

Across the river, lines of headlights move east and west on the main highway crossing the hard-shell Baptist country of Louisiana. Twelve miles into that darkness, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart were raised under the flaming shadows of God and Satan, while around them sharecroppers toiled in the cotton and sang their pain to the uncaring fields.

“People think they'’re in the South when they'’re in the Carolinas,” she says. “And they are, I guess. But this place is

still

the South, you know? It’s unassimilated.”

I murmur assent, but I still don'’t engage in conversation, preferring to study her from an oblique angle. This is the closest I have been to Caitlin in months. In a crowd of Mississippi women she stands out like a European tourist. In our moist, subtropical climate, the milk-fed, round-cheeked faces of the belles usually last until thirty-five, like a prolonged adolescence. This beauty seems a gift at first, but when it goes, the rearguard action begins, a protracted battle against age and gravity that leaves many with the look of wilted matrons masquerading as prom queens. Plastic surgery only makes the masks more startling in the end. Caitlin’s face is all planes and angles, a face of architectural precision, almost masculine but not quite, thanks to feline eyes that shine like emeralds in the dark. Her every movement seems purposeful, and if she has nowhere to go, she stands like a soldier at rest. She never drifts. And remembering this, I realize that this walk is not just a walk.

“What brought you back here?” I ask softly.

She hugs herself against the wind shooting up the face of the bluff. “Katrina.”

This answer is certainly sufficient, but it seems too easy. “You’re covering the aftermath?”

“I'm taking it in. Trying to process it. I’'ve heard a lot of disturbing things about what happened down there. The Danziger Bridge shooting, wide-open rules of engagement. The administration’s response on the humanitarian side, or lack of one. Talk about too little, too late.”

There’s nothing original in this view. And I'm not much interested in a privileged publisher taking a luxury tour through the dark side of our national character. This reminds me of Caitlin as I first met her, a Northern dilettante who preached liberalism but who had no experience of the world outside a college classroom or a newspaper owned by one of her father’s friends.

“Disturbing things happen everywhere,” I say, “all the time. In Natchez, in Charlotte, wherever. You can find a window into hell a mile from wherever you are, if you really want to.”

She inclines her head, almost as though in prayer.

I didn't mean to sound so cynical, but I have little patience with selective outrage. “You could just as easily be doing a story on how the white Baptist churches are sheltering black refugees, but that

won'’t sell as many papers as a white-cops-shoot-black-civilians story, will it?”

“You always kept me honest, didn't you?”

“And you, me.”

She turns from the rail, and her green eyes throw back reflections of the streetlamps behind me on Broadway. A thumping bass beat booms from the tavern across the street, then a blast of calliope music blares dissonant counterpoint from below the bluff.

“Wow,” Caitlin exclaims. “The boats must really be crazy tonight.”

With a start, I realize that for a few peaceful minutes I haven'’t thought of Tim Jessup. “I really should get back to Annie,” I say, suddenly anxious about the depth of my need to be near Caitlin. “I’'ve got a really long day tomorrow.”

“No doubt. I heard you’re on the morning flight,” she says with a knowing smile. “Is that true?”

“No way out of it, I'm afraid. I'm schmoozing a CEO who could bring a new plant here.”

“I heard. You think you may swing that, Mayor?”

“No comment.”

She laughs dutifully, but her eyes are troubled. “I can’t read you like I used to.”

“I know how you feel.” Despite my anxiety, I realize that the dread I felt earlier has been replaced by an exhilarating feeling of lightness under my sternum, as though I’'ve ingested a few particles of cocaine along with Caitlin’s words. An electric arc shoots through me as she takes my hand to lead me down the steps.

“Is Annie with your mother?” she asks. The path along the bluff is filling up with people preparing to watch the fireworks display across the river in Vidalia. “I haven'’t seen your parents in so long. I feel bad.”

“They still talk about you. Dad especially.” I don'’t want her to ask any more about Annie. I don'’t feel she has the right to, really.

“You know, Charlotte’s not what I thought either,” she says.

“No?”

“It’s a lot smaller than I expected. Boston too. I'm starting to think that no matter where you go, it’s basically a small town. The newspaper business is a small town. L.A.’s a small town.

Paris

is a small town.”

“Maybe those places only look small from the window of a limo. When you have the phone number of everybody who matters.”

She doesn’'t respond to this, but after a moment she lets my hand fall. As we near the festival gate, she stops and gazes at me without the guard of irony up. “That'’s the question, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Who matters?”

“Yep.”

Her eyes hold mine steadily as the crowd swirls around us. “What’s your answer?”

“That'’s easy. Annie.”

“Touché. You’re right, of course.” She looks back toward the carnival lights beside Rosalie, brushes the black veil of hair away from her face. “This feels strange. So familiar, and yet…I don'’t know. You don'’t seem quite yourself.” She tilts her head and tries to penetrate the time that hovers between us like an invisible shield. “Is it just me? Or is something really wrong?”

“What are you doing here, Caitlin?”

Her eyes narrow. “I told you. Working a story.”

“A New Orleans story?”

She glances away for the briefest of moments. “There might be a Natchez angle.”

Before I can ask about this, a male voice cries her name twice in quick succession. “

There

you are!” says the newcomer, a handsome man of thirty-five who disengages from the chaos with some difficulty. He has a bohemian look—bohemian chic might be more accurate—and he clasps Caitlin’s right hand in both of his. “I’'ve been looking all over for you. I ended up down at the stage, talking to some gospel singers. They’re fantastic!”

Caitlin casually extricates her hand and introduces me as the mayor of Natchez. The bohemian’s name is Jan something.

“Jan’s doing a documentary on the Danziger Bridge incident.”

“Bridge

massacre,

” Jan corrects, as though quoting the title of the film.

On the Danziger lift bridge in New Orleans, four white cops responding to an “officer down” call received sniper fire from a group of black men, returned fire, and killed two of them. The black group later contended that they had been unarmed. As with so much

of what happened in the first days of Katrina’s flood, no one has yet been able to ascertain what really transpired. “I'm sure they’ll eat that up in Park City,” I say with a brittle Chamber of Commerce smile.

Jan draws back in momentary confusion, and Caitlin looks startled. I usually cover my emotions better than this, but tonight I just don'’t give a damn.

“You guys have fun. I need to find my daughter.”

And with that I'm away from them. I couldn'’t have stood much more, and that knowledge frightens me. Yet as I walk through the festival gate, making for the flashing neon above the rides grouped on the bluff, it’s not heartache that preoccupies me, but some of Caitlin’s last words: