river. No way could Cletus have missed him.
Seagulls honked. Noisy schoolboys from Phillips walked along the lower path by the levee, just down from where Perry was sitting. A tugboat chuffed by.
Perry watched the surface of the water bunch up in its wake, and the first of the waves creeping across the river his way.
A boy screamed.
Perry would have sworn it was a little girl screaming, so high was the pitch. But he was sure it was boys he had seen on the footpath. Guess they haven’t got the change of voice yet.
Another boy screamed. Then another.
Perry jumped up from the jetty so fast a cigarette fell from his mouth to his lap, burning him.
He looked over the top of the levee and saw a boy down on the footpath with schoolbooks spilled on the ground next to him. The boy was looking up at Perry, the first available adult, and shouting, “Mister—you got to help us!”
“What is it?” Perry asked the boy.
“There’s a man, he’s—!”
Another boy interrupted with a shrill, “Get the police!”
Perry lowered himself down the jagged levee wall to the footpath, skinning his wrists in the process. Three boys waited for him.
“What is it?” Perry asked.
All three boys, frightened and crying, pointed to a gap in the side of the levee where a black man lay in a bloody heap, facedown and dead. Next to the body was a blue-and-white suitcase.
SEVEN
Bless me, Father, for I am a shitheel. I make this confession:
That priest I mentioned how I wanted to deck— John Sheehan, the department chaplain—was good enough to officially marry Ruby and me last April when we got back from the other side. After which I proceeded to honor my bride by making a weeping, drunken Irish slob of myself for the next several months in a number of New York saloons that cater to weepy Irish drunken slobs whose middle-aged hearts have been variously broken by dear old accursed Eire. As I also mentioned, this was the sloppiness that landed me in the Straight and Narrow for those six horrible weeks when some other priests laid into me about how the boozing is a sign I have been ungrateful to pretty much everybody in my life, including myself.
Yet here now I sit comfortably: a shitheel in a cozy Amtrak roomette compartment, on a fine leather seat
by the window, watching the Alabama countryside speed by.
Dusty brown rivers, lined with groves of cedar and ash, webbed in Spanish moss; back alleys of grim small towns, crowded with milky-faced kids and skinny dogs with drooling ribbon lips; the old gray treeless hills outside of Anniston, weary from strip mining, topped with gigantic wood crosses erected by some nameless zealot in the cause of Christ the Lord; ancient billboards with paint peeling off the tin—hawking catfish dinners, chewing tobacco, peanut brittle, the depravity of communism and the glory of life insurance. My personal favorite sign features a square-jawed Aryan in a denim shirt adorned with a flag pin, muscular arms folded across his chest, and the caption: BE A MAN, JOIN THE KLAN.
Ruby’s curly head is rested on my undeserving shoulder. She gently sleeps this way, beauty nestled against beast.
New Orleans, where I have never in my life set foot, looms in my imagination as I listen to the rhythmic clacking of the rails.
Boozy-smelling music halls on Basin Street, aboveground graveyards full of mossy crypts with French names cut in stone, old black men playing jazz at funerals, people out on their lace iron balconies throwing beads down on Mardi Gras revelers. And saxophones, and a streetcar named Desire. I have never heard of a subway named Desire.
New York City and all that I know for certain grows so very far, far away.
And I am thinking, ungratefully, that I do not miss home. Everything that has happened in New York since I met Ruby has distracted or sorely tested our slow-dance together: my own obsession with the cases I Work, these having mostly to do with meek souls driven to maniacal deeds;
Seagulls honked. Noisy schoolboys from Phillips walked along the lower path by the levee, just down from where Perry was sitting. A tugboat chuffed by.
Perry watched the surface of the water bunch up in its wake, and the first of the waves creeping across the river his way.
A boy screamed.
Perry would have sworn it was a little girl screaming, so high was the pitch. But he was sure it was boys he had seen on the footpath. Guess they haven’t got the change of voice yet.
Another boy screamed. Then another.
Perry jumped up from the jetty so fast a cigarette fell from his mouth to his lap, burning him.
He looked over the top of the levee and saw a boy down on the footpath with schoolbooks spilled on the ground next to him. The boy was looking up at Perry, the first available adult, and shouting, “Mister—you got to help us!”
“What is it?” Perry asked the boy.
“There’s a man, he’s—!”
Another boy interrupted with a shrill, “Get the police!”
Perry lowered himself down the jagged levee wall to the footpath, skinning his wrists in the process. Three boys waited for him.
“What is it?” Perry asked.
All three boys, frightened and crying, pointed to a gap in the side of the levee where a black man lay in a bloody heap, facedown and dead. Next to the body was a blue-and-white suitcase.
SEVEN
Bless me, Father, for I am a shitheel. I make this confession:
That priest I mentioned how I wanted to deck— John Sheehan, the department chaplain—was good enough to officially marry Ruby and me last April when we got back from the other side. After which I proceeded to honor my bride by making a weeping, drunken Irish slob of myself for the next several months in a number of New York saloons that cater to weepy Irish drunken slobs whose middle-aged hearts have been variously broken by dear old accursed Eire. As I also mentioned, this was the sloppiness that landed me in the Straight and Narrow for those six horrible weeks when some other priests laid into me about how the boozing is a sign I have been ungrateful to pretty much everybody in my life, including myself.
Yet here now I sit comfortably: a shitheel in a cozy Amtrak roomette compartment, on a fine leather seat
by the window, watching the Alabama countryside speed by.
Dusty brown rivers, lined with groves of cedar and ash, webbed in Spanish moss; back alleys of grim small towns, crowded with milky-faced kids and skinny dogs with drooling ribbon lips; the old gray treeless hills outside of Anniston, weary from strip mining, topped with gigantic wood crosses erected by some nameless zealot in the cause of Christ the Lord; ancient billboards with paint peeling off the tin—hawking catfish dinners, chewing tobacco, peanut brittle, the depravity of communism and the glory of life insurance. My personal favorite sign features a square-jawed Aryan in a denim shirt adorned with a flag pin, muscular arms folded across his chest, and the caption: BE A MAN, JOIN THE KLAN.
Ruby’s curly head is rested on my undeserving shoulder. She gently sleeps this way, beauty nestled against beast.
New Orleans, where I have never in my life set foot, looms in my imagination as I listen to the rhythmic clacking of the rails.
Boozy-smelling music halls on Basin Street, aboveground graveyards full of mossy crypts with French names cut in stone, old black men playing jazz at funerals, people out on their lace iron balconies throwing beads down on Mardi Gras revelers. And saxophones, and a streetcar named Desire. I have never heard of a subway named Desire.
New York City and all that I know for certain grows so very far, far away.
And I am thinking, ungratefully, that I do not miss home. Everything that has happened in New York since I met Ruby has distracted or sorely tested our slow-dance together: my own obsession with the cases I Work, these having mostly to do with meek souls driven to maniacal deeds;
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