Green Eyes Page 0,47

Chapter 10

May 20, 1987

According to the map it was eight-five miles, about two hours' drive, to the town of Salt Harvest, and there they could catch the four-lane to New Orleans; but to Jocundra the miles and the minutes were a timeless, distanceless pour of imaginary cherry tops blinking in the rear view mirror, the wind making spirit noises through the side vent, and memories of the policeman's face: an absurdly neat concavity where his eyes and nose had been, as if a housing had been lifted off to check the working parts. Cypresses glowed grayish-white in the headlights, trees of bone burst from dark flesh. Rabbits ghosted beneath her wheels and vanished without a crunch. And near the turn-off a little girl wearing a lace party dress stepped out onto the blacktop, changing at the last second into a speed limit sign, and Jocundra swerved off the road. The van came to rest amid a thicket of bamboo, and rather than risk another accident, they piled brush around it and slept. But sleep was a thing seamlessly welded to waking, the continuance of a terrible dream, and in the morning, bleary, she saw shards of herself reflected in the fragments of the mirrored ball that Richmond had broken.

They started toward New Orleans, but the engine grated and the temperature indicator hovered near the red. A mile outside Salt Harvest they pulled into Placide's Mobile Service; junked cars resting on a cracked cement apron, old-fashioned globe-top pumps,, a rickety, unpainted shack with corroded vending machines and lawn chairs out front. Placide, a frizzy-haired, chubby man chewing an unlit cigar, gazed up at the sky to receive instructions before allowing he would have a look at the van after he finished a rush job. Miserable, they waited. The radio news made no mention of the killings, and the only newspaper they could find was a gossip rag whose headlines trumpeted Teen's Pimples Found to be Strange Code.

'Somebody must have seen them by now!' Donnell kicked at a chair in frustration. 'We've got to get out of here.'

'The police aren't very efficient,' she said. 'And Sealey didn't even check us in. They may not know there was anyone else.'

'What about Marie?'

'I don't know.' She stared off across the road at a white wooden house by the bayou. A tireless truck in the front yard; shade trees; children scampering in and out of the sunbeams which penetrated the branches. The scene had an archaic air, as if the backing of a gentle past were showing through the threadbare tapestry of the present.

'Don't you care?' he asked. 'Aren't you worried about being caught?'

'Yes,' she said tonelessly, remembering the yellow dimness and blood-smeared floors of the restaurant. 'I...'

'What?'

'You just don't seem bothered by what happened.'

'Bothered? Guilty, you mean?' He thought it over. 'The cop bothers me, but when Sealey pulled the trigger' - he laughed - 'oh, he was a happy man. He'd been waiting for this chance a long time. You should have seen his face. All that frustrated desire and obsession blowing up into heaven.' He limped a little way across the apron.

'It was Sealey's crime. Richmond's maybe. But it's got no moral claim on me.'

Around five o'clock a sorrowful Placide delivered his report: a slow leak in the oil pan. Ten or fifteen more miles and the engine would seize up. 'I give you fifty dollars, me,' he said. Jocundra gave him a doubtful look, and he crossed himself.

They accepted his offer of a ride into town, and he let them off at the Crawfish Cafe where, he said, they could learn the bus schedules. A sign above the door depicted a green lobsterlike creature wearing a bib, and inside the lighting was hellishly bright, the booths packed with senior citizens - tonight, Sunday, being the occasion of the cafe's Golden Ager All-U-Can-Eat Frog Legs and Gumbo Creole Special $2.99. The smell of grease was filmy in Jocundra's nostrils. The waitress told them that a bus left around midnight for Silver Meadow ('Now you be careful! The shrimp fleet's in, and that's one wild town at night.') and there they could catch a Greyhound for New Orleans where she had a sister, Minette by name, who favored Jocundra some though she wasn't near as tall, and oh how she worried about the poor woman living with her madman husband and his brothers on Beaubien Street like a saint among wolves... Try the shrimp salad. You can't go wrong with shrimp this time