Green Eyes Page 0,127

And whenever she sought comfort in memory, she was brought up against Otille's conjuration of her fantasy, of Valcours, and the sickly light this shed on her own relationship with Donnell.

'You're underestimating yourself,' the psychiatrist had said. 'You've handled this surprisingly well. Look at some of the others. Petit, for instance. Her incidence of trauma was much less than yours, and I doubt they'll ever put her together. You'll be just fine in a while.'

His pious smile, and everything he said, had come across as an indictment, an unspoken comment that she was an unfeeling bitch and should quit wasting his time. She had flared up, offering an angry apology for not having crumbled into schizophrenia, and walked out. But she had followed his advice. She had been accepted at Berkeley, and if everything went as planned, within a year she would be doing fieldwork in Africa. She had goals, much work to do, yet nothing had changed.

It was all empty without him.

The people of Bayou Teche, those Donnell had cured and others, had raised a stone to him at Mr Brisbeau's. For a month she had avoided visiting it, but then, thinking this avoidance itself might be unhealthy, she drove to the cabin early one morning and - hoping not to rouse Mr Brisbeau - sneaked through the palmettos to the boathouse. It was there the stone had been erected facing the bayou. Her first sight of it appalled her. The stone was ordinary, gray-white marble shot with black veins, to the memory of donnell Harrison incised in neat capitals. But fronting it was a litter of candle stubs, gilt paper angels, satin ribbons, mirrors, rosary beads, and plate after plate of rotting food. Ants and flies crawled everywhere; mites and gnats swarmed the air. Greenish mounds of potato salad, iridescent hunks of meat. The stench made her gag. Dizzy, she sat down on a rickety chair, one of several crowding the boathouse. After a moment she regained her composure. She should have expected it considering how his legend had grown over the year, considering also the cultish nature of religion on the bayous. The chairs, no doubt, had been used in some rite or vigil.

When she looked up again, she paid no attention to the horrid feast and saw only the stone. It glowed under the morning sun, and the glow seemed to be increasing, dazzling her, as if her eyes had suddenly become over sensitized to light. She noticed with peculiar clarity the way the black veins of the marble twisted up through the letters of his name. She had to rest her head on her knees, overcome by emotion. Everything was bright and familiar, yet at the same time it was vacant-feeling, haunted; not by him, but by old husks of moments that flocked to her like ghosts to a newly abandoned castle, wisping up, informing of their sad persistence. God, she never should have come. There was nothing of him here. His body was potions and powders in some government laboratory, and all the stone served to do was punish her.

Someone whistled on the path.

She sat up and wiped her eyes just as Mr Brisbeau appeared around the corner, an empty burlap sack slung over his shoulder.

'Hello,' she said, trying to smile.

'Well,' he said, hunkering by the stone, 'it didn't take you twelve years, anyhow. How you doin', girl?'

'I don't know,' she said, incapable of affecting happiness. 'All right, I guess.'

He nodded. 'I jus' come here to pick up the garbage.'

He showed her the burlap sack. 'I takes 'em to ol' man Bivalaqua's hogs. Better'n leavin' 'em set.' He opened the sack and dumped one of the plates into it. 'You can't let go,' he said after a bit. 'Ain't that right, girl? It's a hard thing, lettin' go, but there it is.'

'It was so strange at the end,' she said, eager to explain it to someone, someone who would not analyze it. 'So many strange things were happening, and there were things he said and wrote... I'm just not sure. It sounds foolish, but I can't accept...' She shook her head, unable to explain it. 'I don't know.'

'You ain't thinkin' he's still alive?'

'No,' she said. 'I saw him fall, I've seen it for a year. I could see his face peering out a break in the wall. It was the only pale spot in all that blackness. And then he jumped. But not down. Forward. As if he were in a hurry to get somewhere. I'm sure he didn't think he was falling, but I don't understand what that means.'

'Girl, you know I believe in the mysteries,' said Mr Brisbeau, continuing to empty plates into the sack. 'In the now and forever, the here and hereafter. I'd be a damn fool, me, if I didn't. Ain't no point in not believin'.' He held up a moldy orange. 'See this here. That Robichaux boy he come 'bout ever' week and leave an orange, and the way that family is, so damn mean to each other and poor, this orange stands for somethin'! Somethin' special. The boy here' - he patted the stone - 'who knows what he could do if he can bring out the soul in Herve Robichaux's boy. Maybe you got reason to hope.' He tossed the orange into the sack.

'It's not hope,' said Jocundra. 'It's just confusion. I know he's dead.'

'Sure it's hope,' said Mr Brisbeau. 'Me, I ain't no genius, but I can tell you 'bout hope. When my boy he's missin' in action, I live wit hope for ten damn years. It's the cruelest thing in the world. If it get a hook in you, maybe it never let you go no matter how hopeless things really is.' He closed up the sack and laughed. 'I remember what my grand-mere use to say 'round breakfas' time. My brother John he's always after her to fix pancakes. Firs' ting ever' mornin' he say, "Well, I hope we goin' to have pancakes." And my grand-mere she tell him jus' be glad his belly's full, him, and then she say, "You keep your hope for tomorrow, boy, 'cause we got grits for today."' He stood and shouldered the sack. 'Maybe that's all there is to some kinds of hopin'. It makes them grits go down easier.'

He worried the ants with his toe for a few seconds, weighing something, then said, 'You come 'long wit me while I slop ol' man Bivalaqua's hogs, and after that I buy you breakfas' in town. What you say, girl?'

'All right,' she said, thankful for the company. 'I'll be up in a minute.'

As soon as he was out of sight, she opened her purse and took out the folded piece of paper on which Donnell had written 'The Song of Returning.' She went over to the stone and laid the paper on the ground. It fluttered and unfolded in the breeze. An ant ran along the central crease, using it as a bridge between scraps of food, and a stronger breeze sailed it toward the bayou. She started to chase it down, but held back. Even though she remembered the words, she had an idea that if she let it go she would finally be able to let go of Donnell. The paper caught on a myrtle twig beside the boathouse, tattered madly, and then, obeying a shift in the wind, it skittered to rest under the chair where she had been sitting. She waited to see where it would blow next, but the wind had swirled off into the swamp and the paper just lay there. After a while, she picked it up.

THE END