Green Eyes Page 0,58

me, I'm just drunk. You my petit zozo.' He held out his arms to her.

His entire attitude expressed regret, but the lines of his face were so accustomed to smiling that even his despondency was touched with good humor. Jocundra had the perception of him she had had as a child, of a tribal spirit come to visit and tell her stories. She entered his embrace, smelling his familiar scent of bourbon and sweat and homemade soap. His shoulder blades were as sharp and hard as cypress knees.

'You was my fav'rite of all the kids,' he said. 'It lak to break my heart you leavin'. But I reckon that's how a heart gets along from one day to the nex'. By breakin' and breakin'.'

Jocundra lay on her side, waking slowly, watching out the window as gray clouds lowered against a picket line of cypresses and scrub pine. At last she got up and smoothed her rumpled blouse, wishing they had not left the overnight bag in Salt Harvest. She heard a rummaging in the front room. Donnell was sitting beside one of the junkpiles, his sunglasses pushed up on to his head.

'Morning,' she mumbled, and went out back to the pump. A few raindrops hollowed conical depressions in the sandy yard, and the sweet odors of rot, myrtle and water hyacinth mixed with the smell of rain. The roof of an old boathouse stuck up above the palmetto tops about fifty feet away; a car rattled on the gravel road which passed in front of the cabin, hidden by more palmettos and a honeysuckle thicket.

She had expected Donnell would want to discuss the events in Salt Harvest, but when she re-entered he insisted on showing her the things he had extracted from the junkpiles. An armadillo shell on which someone had painted a mushroom cloud, five-years-back issues of Madame Sonya's Dream Book, and a chipped football helmet containing a human skull. 'You suppose he found them together?' he asked, deadpan, holding up the helmet. She laughed, picturing the ritual sacrifice of a losing quarterback.

'What's he do with this stuff?' He flipped through one of the issues of the Dream Book.

'He collects it.' Jocundra lit the stove for coffee. 'He's kind of a primitive archaeologist, says he gets a clearer picture of the world from junk than he could any other way. Most people think he's crazy, and I guess he is. He lost his son in the Asian War, and according to my father, that's what started him drinking. He'd pin up photos of the president and target-shoot at them for hours.'

'Something funny's happening,' said Donnell.

She glanced at him over her shoulder, surprised by his abrupt change of subject. 'Last night, you mean?'

'The last few days, but last night especially.' He riffled the pages of the book. 'When I picked this up earlier, I had no idea what it was, but then I had a whole raft of associations and memories. Stuff about palmists, seances, fortune-tellers. That's how my memory has always worked. But lately I've been comparing everything I see to something else, something I can't quite put my finger on. It won't come clear.' Discouraged, he tossed the book onto a junkpile, dislodging a toy truck. 'I guess I should tell you about last night.'

His account took the better part of two cups of coffee, and after mulling it over, Jocundra said. 'You have to consider this in light of the fact that your thrust has been to supply yourself with a past, and that your old memories have been proved false. You remember my telling you about the gros bon ange? Back at the motel?'

'Yeah. The soul.'

'Well, you began to see the black figures almost immediately after I told you about them. It's possible you've started to construct another past from materials I've exposed to you. But,' she added, seeing his distress, 'you're right. It's not important to speculate about the reality of what you see. Obviously some of it's real, and we have to get busy understanding it. I'll ask Mr Brisbeau to pick up some physics texts.' She plucked at her blouse. 'And some clothes.'

'Oh, yeah. Here.' He reached behind his packing crate. 'It might not fit, but it's clean.' He pulled forth a dress, a very old, dowdy dress of blue rayon with a design of white camellias. 'Try it on,' he suggested.

In the back room, Jocundra removed her jeans and blouse, and then, because it was so sweaty, her bra. The dress had