Read Online My Juliet by John Ed Bradley - Free Book Online Page B

figures it out.
    My Juliet
, it says.
    By the time she returns to the dining room he’s already cleared her table. The menu is gone, the flatware put away.
    â€œOh, I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought you’d left.”
    â€œYou know what I think, Louis? I think you were a cripple long before you ever lost that leg.”
    He doesn’t seem to be listening. “Leave him be, Juliet. That’s all I ask.”
    â€œCripple,” she repeats in a small voice.
    â€œI’ll tear your heart out if you hurt him again. I’ll lay it hot and bleeding between some French bread and make me a Juliet poboy. Don’t think I’m playing, either.”
    â€œI’m just now remembering something,” she says. “Maybe this was just a rumor spreading around—it reached me way out in California, anyway—but that leg wasn’t all you lost, was it? You left something else in the road, didn’t you?”
    â€œYou got a lot of nerve bringing that up,” he says.
    â€œToo bad. Because even before, you were a little sawed off in that department, weren’t you?”
    On the banquette outside she stands at the window watching as he moves to the bar and pretends to eat a Juliet poboy. She sticks her tongue out and presses it against the glass, but he keeps munching on the imaginary sandwich.
    She shoots him the bird and still he eats.
    â€œHow come you peed on the schoolteacher, Juliet?”
    â€œPenis.”
    â€œHow come you killed your mama like that, Juliet?”
    â€œPenis.”
    In the end she walks off dragging her right leg just as he dragged his, the echo of her laughter bouncing off the old buildings pressing in on her along the street.

    When Sonny parks the truck in front of the Maison Orleans Nursing Home Mr. LaMott is already waiting outside with a nurse’s aide. The woman holds her arms crossed at her massive chest, rather like a schoolyard bully without an ounce of mercy left. She seems less likely to greet him with a hello than to punch him in the mouth.
    â€œYou know I’m always on time, Agnes. Won’t you forgive me this once?”
    â€œI don’t like being out the air condition.”
    â€œYes, and I feel terrible about it.”
    The woman helps Mr. LaMott into the truck and Sonny thanks her with a pat on the back and he and his father start on their way to the Rigolets. The old man is wearing what he always wears when they go fishing: rubber boots, khaki pants, a golf hat decorated with antique lures, and a navy polo shirt with the name
Paul Piazza & Son
scripted in gold thread across the breast. Until a few years ago when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Mr. LaMott was the top salesman for Piazza, a wholesale shrimp distributor with headquarters near the cemeteries just north of the French Quarter. The last time Sonny asked his father about Piazza, Mr. LaMott said he liked his with anchovies and extra cheese.
    Earlier this morning Sonny strapped the rods, tackle box and ice chest to an anchor in the truck bed, and every few miles he throws a glance back to make sure everything’s riding okay. “Looks good,” he says, nodding at his father.
    â€œLooks good,” comes Mr. LaMott’s enthusiastic reply.
    Today the weather is nice and balmy and Sonny and Mr. LaMott drive with the windows down. Music plays on the radio, show tunes from long ago. Sonny tries to coax Mr. LaMott into singing along but the old man is too busy opening and closing the window vent.
    â€œYou know this one, Daddy? Let me hear it.”
    Mr. LaMott doesn’t do so much as hum.
    On the Chef Menteur Highway they pass a settlement populated with Vietnamese immigrants and Sonny remarks as to how hard these people work shrimping the Gulf but Mr. LaMott seems as clueless about shrimping as he is about Vietnamese. Besides, he has that vent to fool with.
    â€œI think I’ve been here before,” Mr. LaMott says as Sonny