Blood Memory (46 page)

“Father and daughter. Old Leviticus skimmed right over that one. Because he knew the reality of life.”

“Which is?”

My grandfather’s eyes shine with the conviction of a zealot. “You came from my loins, Catherine. Your mother and Ann, too. You are the issue of
my blood
. You were
mine.
To do with as I saw fit.”

He walks to the gun safe, quickly spins the dial, and opens the heavy door. From it he takes a rifle, which he calmly loads with a cartridge from a box on the shelf. As he walks toward me, I recognize the Remington 700 that killed my father.

“It’s still true,” he says, his eyes locked on mine. “You’re
still
mine.”

He works the bolt and chambers the round. “What if this gun were to go off?” He brings the barrel within a foot of my face. “What if it blew your brains all over the wall? What do you think would happen?”

“You’d be convicted of murder.”

He smiles. “Would I? I think not. A woman with your psychiatric history? Documented bipolar disorder, unstable past, threats of suicide? No. If I really considered you a threat, you wouldn’t leave this room. But you’re not a threat. Are you, Catherine?”

I should back down. Show submission. Live to fight another day. But I can’t. I’ve done it all my life for him, and I won’t do it anymore. “Oh, I’m a threat. I’m going to make sure you die in prison. And you should know this: if you kill me now—or before I get back to New Orleans—someone’s going to do the same to you.”

He looks more interested than afraid. “You mean Detective Regan?”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

There’s a hint of humor in his eyes. “Catherine, do you honestly believe I don’t know who you see down there? I
own
Sean Regan. Do you think he would kill me in revenge when that would result in photographs of the two of you rutting like animals being sent to his wife and children?”

No…he wouldn’t.

“If this Malik film you spoke of really exists, you’d do well to get it for me or destroy it. I’d hate to give you something to really be depressed about.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Life’s little tragedies.” He smiles again. “You hate me for being this way, but one day you’ll thank God that you have my blood flowing through your veins. My genes determining your fate.”

When my voice finally emerges, it’s utterly devoid of emotion. “You’re wrong. I wish I’d never been born. You don’t know this…but I’m pregnant. And for the first time since I found out, I’m wondering whether I should bring that child into this world. I feel contaminated. Like I can never wash your poison out of me.”

He lowers the rifle and steps closer, his eyes glowing. “You’re pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Boy or girl?”

“I have no idea.”

He reaches for my arm. I jerk backward.

“Take it easy, girl. Who’s the father?”

“You’ll never know.”

“Don’t be that way. You’ll come around. You’ve got more of me in you than you think.”

“What do you mean?”

A knowing smile now. A man hoarding a secret. “I could be your father, Catherine. Do you realize that?”

With these words, what’s left of my composure crumbles. My very being is unraveling into nothingness. My grandfather’s face is red, the way it gets when he’s stalking game on the island.

“Luke spent all his time on the island,” he says, “chasing that nigger girl, Louise. And your mother just lay sleeping in her room here, half-looped on Luke’s medicine.” He nods slowly. “You see now?”

The triumph in his face is absolute. It’s the triumph of the hunter standing over his dying prey. He’s shoved the steel into my heart and broken off the handle. He revels in the pain in my face, just as he must have all those years ago. The savage joy in his eyes brings me back to the world, and in returning, I feel a horror I never thought imaginable.

“Is that true?” I ask in a small voice.

He shrugs. “It’s certainly something to think about while you’re making plans to talk to the district attorney.”

I’m backing away from him, reaching blindly for the doorknob.

“And if you’re thinking of Pearlie testifying to anything, forget it. She’ll never do it.”

My hand closes around the brass knob. “Why not?”

“Because she knows the order of things. You might get her stirred up with a lot of nonsense, but in the end she won’t say a word against me. Pearlie knows her place, Cat. Same as the niggers on the island. Your ancestors taught them well, and I’ve reinforced the lesson.” He goes to the sideboard and pours some Scotch into a glass. “You know your place, too, honey. Deep down, you do.”

I drop my shaking hand from the knob, then raise it and point a quivering finger at him. “No. You were too strong for me when I was a baby. But not anymore.”

With a bemused look on his face, he drinks off the Scotch and wipes his mouth on his cuff.

I pull open the door, stumble through it, then run down the hallway toward the kitchen. I don’t know where I’m going, only that I have to get away from this house. Sean expects me in New Orleans, but it’s hard to imagine functioning in any normal capacity. Simple linear thought seems beyond me now.

I crash through the kitchen door and race through the rose garden, toward the parking lot behind the slave quarters. Mom’s Maxima is parked where I left it, a few yards away from the Lincoln and the Cadillac. As I near the cars, I hear a muted banging. Then the passenger door of Pearlie’s Cadillac opens, and Billy Neal climbs out. There’s a pistol in his hand. He aims the barrel at a spot between my breasts.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he says. “Let’s take a ride.”

“What’s that noise?”

With a gleeful smile, he opens the trunk of the Cadillac. “Come see.”

I walk to the back of the car.

Pearlie lies bound in the trunk, her hands and face covered with blood. Her wig is gone. A grayish white fuzz covers her narrow skull, which is wedged against the spare tire. I’ve never seen her eyes so filled with terror. As I reach down to help her, Billy’s gun pokes the ribs under my left arm. He slams the trunk shut, then shoves me toward the driver’s seat.

“You’re driving,” he says, pushing me behind the wheel.

“Did you shoot her?”

“Don’t worry about that old bitch. Worry about the driving.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you think?” He grins so broadly that it makes my cheeks hurt. “The island.”

My last ride to the island is both dream and nightmare.

Highway 61.

A narrow, winding strip of asphalt following the Mississippi River.

Mythical American highway.

Escape route for northbound refugees, most of them black, fleeing a place that held no hope but where their hearts remained nonetheless, yearning for the body’s return. I tried to use this highway as an escape route, too, only I never got away. For thirty-one years I’ve driven up and down this road between two lovely, sleepy cities, but always the island lay between them, a dreamworld shrouded in fog and memory, waiting like an empty stage for my life’s final act.

Today it will be played out.

The messenger of my fate is Billy Neal.

It seems wrong, somehow. I never really knew this man. This black-haired, pale-skinned, dime-store-handsome Vegas punk with snakeskin boots and a night-school law degree. What the hell is he doing in my life? Obligingly, he answers me without being asked.

“You still don’t know who I am, do you?”

I grip the wheel harder and keep my eyes on the road.

“
Man,
I’ve been waiting for this,” he says, his gaze moving over me like a wet tongue. “You’ve had this coming a long time. The nigger, too.”

If Pearlie weren’t tied in the trunk, I’d take my chances and ram the Cadillac into a tree, just to kill this bastard. That’s probably why he put her in there.

“You don’t know shit, do you?” he says.

“Guess not.”

“Look at me.”

“I’m driving.”

He reaches out with his gun and pulls my face around. He looks as angry as he does triumphant.
Why?
I wonder, my eyes lingering on his pistol. It’s an automatic, ugly and clean as a fresh scalpel. It’ll do its job.

“Did my grandfather send you to do this?”

Billy smiles strangely. “A smart officer doesn’t give orders like this. But a good soldier knows what to do when trouble comes. A good soldier doesn’t have to be told.”

“Soldier? I know what kind of soldier you are. The kind my father got stuck with in Cambodia.”

His eyes narrow. “What?”

“Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”

Billy kicks a snakeskin boot up onto the dash of the Cadillac. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

I don’t answer.

“You smart enough to know what’s about to happen to you?”

“You’re going to kill us.”

He laughs. “You get the prize, sweet thing. But that was the easy part. The question is,
why
?”

I know better than to take this bait. The more interest I express, the less he’ll tell me. That’s his nature. He’s never had much power, so he takes it however he can get it.

“Well?” he presses. “Do you?”

Pearlie bangs twice on the trunk lid. It makes my heart hurt, but at least she’s still alive.

“Because you’re in my way,” Billy says in a reflective voice. “That’s why.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you stay alive, you’ll inherit my money.”

This wasn’t the answer I expected. “Your money? What are you talking about?”

He laughs again, this time almost a cackle. “Kirkland’s my father, you dumb cunt. You haven’t figured that out yet?”

After all I’ve heard today, this revelation doesn’t have much effect.

“My mother worked for one of those DeSalle companies. Bookkeeping. She did a lot of work at home. Dr. Kirkland would go by her house to check up on the figures. I guess the main figure he was interested in was hers. Anyway, he nailed her. And I was the result.”

“You sound proud of it.”

Billy shrugs. “Nothing to be ashamed of. He paid her hush money nice and regular. Sent me to school, got me out of a couple of scrapes. That’s how I wound up in the army.”

“The army or jail, was it?”

“Something like that. He paid for law school, too, when I got out. Anyway, that makes me your uncle—or that’s what I thought until today. After hearing what he told you in the study, it sounds like I may be your half brother, too.” Billy laughs again.

“That’s bullshit.”

“You wish it was.” He checks the safety on his pistol, then flicks it on and off a couple of times. “The thing is, I already got a piece of the gross of the Indian casino. I did a lot of work prepping that deal for him. Wet work, you know what I’m saying? But the thing is, there’s more money to be had. A lot more. My mama’s got records of it. There’s money you probably don’t even know about. Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, all over. And now that your pretty little aunt offed herself, you and your mother are the only living heirs in the will. You believe that?”

I believe it. Grandpapa may have wanted sons, but nothing would cause him to bequeath one dollar outside the legitimate family, not even to charity. Not unless he got something in return.

“He’s been relying on me more and more lately,” Billy says. “He’s seen what I can do. While
you’ve
been doing nothing but fucking up. You’re a pure liability to him now, that’s a fact. When you disappear, he’ll breathe a sigh of relief.”

“You’re probably right.”

Billy looks at me in surprise, but then he nods with satisfaction, glad to have his intuition confirmed.

Highway 61 unrolls steadily ahead of us, curving through the hardwood forest, leading us ever southward. A gray mass of clouds is gathering to the southeast. If we went on toward Baton Rouge, we’d probably miss it, but the bulk of the storm seems to be piling up over the river, right about where the island faces Angola Prison.

Only fitting, I suppose, that my last bit of thread should play out in the rain.

We’re ten miles down the Angola road when the rain sweeps over us. The sound of drops hitting the roof sends me halfway into the trance I learned to enter before I could even think for myself. Billy Neal seems to think the rain a good omen. Smiling with contentment, he tunes the radio to a country station.

“You like the rain?” I ask.

“Today I do.”

“Why today?”

He turns to me and purses his lips, as though debating whether to confide something. “Because you’re going to drown today, Sis.”

This strikes me as so absurd that I almost laugh out loud. “How’s that?”

“You’re gonna drive off the bridge to DeSalle Island.”

I say nothing, but in my mind I see Brer Rabbit crying,
Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!
Is this the best that Billy can come up with? If he drives me into the old river channel in this car, I can get myself and Pearlie to shore without even breaking a sweat.

“I see you thinking,” he says. “Don’t worry, I know all about your free diving. You’re gonna be down at the bottom
way
too long to save yourself.”

“If you tie me up, it won’t look like an accident.”

He smiles his secret smile again. “You’re not the only one who can swim. After you’ve been down there twenty minutes or so, I’m going to go down and take the ropes off. No muss, no fuss. A drunk manic-depressive runs herself and her nigger maid into the river in a storm. Open-and-shut case.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“You will be.” He opens the glove compartment and takes out a pint of Taaka vodka. “Found this in the slave quarters. Guess your mama likes vodka, too.” He uncaps the bottle and shoves it at me. “Drink.”

“No, thanks.”

“Not up to your standard?” He presses the barrel of his gun against my temple. “Drink.”

“I can’t. I’m pregnant.”

“Pregnant!” He laughs from deep in his belly. “Shit, you’re going to be dead in an hour!”

“So you say.”

The blow from the gun is so sudden and sharp that everything goes black for a moment. I feel the car swerve, but I manage to right it.

“You fucking drink this,” he commands.

“No.”

He’s tensing to hit me again when I see the turn for the island. “Look!”

“Go on,” he says. “Take it.”

Just ahead, a narrow dirt track leaves the road and heads into the deep woods. How many times did I take this turn as a little girl, terrified it would rain when I reached the island, yet powerless to stop the journey? Thirty years later, I’ve come full circle.

Billy Neal takes a swig from the vodka bottle, then screws the cap back on and throws the bottle into the seat behind us.

“You’ll drink it,” he says. “Or I’ll beat that nigger to death right in front of you.”