Chasing the Wind (28 page)

"And get some first-year lawyers to help you with that."

Amalise breathed a sigh of relief.

"Rebecca. Come with me. I'll help you catch up, walk you through the deal points."

Amalise looked at Rebecca—beautiful self-confident Rebecca, Jude's future wife—and felt the axis of their friendship slip a few degrees off center.

Jude sat in a rocking chair on the front porch of the station house in Pilottown, sipping a cup of coffee and looking out over the river. The night was dark, the moon hidden by thick fog. He'd been assigned to a ship down-bound from New Orleans that reached safety in Pilottown just after the fog descended. Now Pilottown, the river, the passes—all were socked in by a whiteout fog. The red light was up, and he knew that out in the gulf, up-bound ships were anchored, waiting.

He sat back in the chair. The rest of the watch was inside, playing poker or bourré and eying that old rabbit-ear TV even though the signal had been swamped by the weather. Some, the smart ones, were catching up on sleep. He was out here alone because he wanted to be alone, wanted to think.

As the mist drifted over the water, Jude could almost see the first settlers here, guarding the entrance to the Mississippi after LaSalle claimed it for France in the early 1700s. There had been tall French sailing ships at first, sails blooming in the wind, and years later the Spanish and English, all crossing the bar at
La Balize
, the wickedest, bawdiest spot in all Louisiana before the pilots' families moved in. He imagined pirates slipping in and out of the swamplands and bayous; hunters and trappers in flatboats, skiffs, and pirogues; fishers and merchant ships; then later on, the war vessels—Confederates, Yankees, and in the not-so-distant past, German U-boats.

What a history! With a half smile he knew that if Amalise were here, they would swap stories and she'd invent every detail about those early settlers—where they came from, what they wore, what they ate, and how they lived.

He caught himself.
Enough
. Since the night at Clancy's, Amalise had been too much on his mind. He couldn't allow himself to become preoccupied while on watch. He wouldn't think of her right now.

Leaning back in the rocking chair, he strained to see the stars—any star—through the thick soup. In good weather Pilottown was blanketed with stars at night. He and Amalise had spent many hours contemplating the stars in Marianus when they were kids. He smiled at the recollection. Sometimes at night in the summertime, when the air was hot and thick and he couldn't sleep, he'd throw acorns at her window and she'd crawl out on the branch of the oak tree in her nightgown. And they'd sit there, looking at the stars and talking about the future. Possibilities had always excited Amalise.

He was doing it
again
. Staring out at the river, he rubbed his chest, as if to ease the hurt inside. Always before, when he'd looked down through the years, Amalise was right there with him. She'd become a part of him, and what once was friendship had evolved into such a strong bond that it was almost overwhelming. He'd thought he had loved before, several times. But this was different.

What if he'd really lost her?

One thing he knew: This yearning had to stop, one way or the other. Amalise had made her feelings plain. He could either wait or start to plan for life without her.

Phillip Sharp had changed her. The predator—that's how he thought of Phillip. Emotions like empathy, compassion, love—these had proved powerful weapons in the hands of a master manipulator like Amalise's dead husband. He closed his eyes as old feelings of dread and loss swept over him. What was he up against, loving Amalise? Would she ever risk herself again?

Jude doubled over at the thought, elbows slipping to his knees and face in his hands as memories of the night Phillip died ran unbidden through his mind. Amalise running from the scene. The long dark road. His headlights catching her, too late. The seemingly eternal drive to the hospital in St. Tammany Parish, with Amalise unconscious. The ragged fear that she might not make it, that he'd lost her.

Lifting his head, he looked out over the river and rubbed his hands together. If Phillip weren't already dead, he'd want to kill him. Slowly he leaned back in the rocking chair.

Amalise had made it clear that their friendship was status quo, at least for now.

And he had a job to do.

Through the eerie fog on the river he could just make out the ghost ships now gliding past the old quarantine station, down-bound ships, their river pilots rounding up for anchor in the fog, moving blind with the current toward the station. As he watched, the routine ran through his mind and voices carried over the water, shouts from pilot to captain to mate.

"Slow now, slow! Windless in gear—back out."

"Watch it! Only one, only one. Now anchor up!"

Jude sat there rocking and watching the round-up, as one by one the ships arrived, turned about, and anchored. His turn would come tomorrow when the fog lifted and the ships moved on over the sandbars and into the Gulf.

Then a thought came to him. If these large, hulking vessels could beat the weather and the current, holding fast, couldn't he do the same? Wasn't his love for Amalise just as strong? Wasn't it worth the fight? He ran his hands over his eyes, feeling tired.

I'll put that in your hands, Lord. This one's in your hands now.

Love for his oldest, dearest friend welled within him again, a sweet feeling, deep and strong, too precious to release. He would give her time.

And he would wait until she came to him.

With the frantic pace Bingham Murdoch
had set for Black Diamond, the days and nights ran together for Amalise. One afternoon, when Bingham and his entourage were at lunch, she left her office and walked through the Quarter toward Jackson Square. Cathedral bells tolled the noon hour as she reached the square.

She hurried passed Gina's café on the corner and crossed St. Peter Street, dodging a stream of cars as she headed toward the Cabildo, the state museum and one-time seat of the Spanish colonial government. She turned left at Pirate's Alley, the narrow passage that separated the Cabildo from the cathedral. Paved with slate that jutted and dipped in places, the alleyway was shaded from the sun by the high walls on either side this time of day. She passed a bookstore in the house where William Faulkner had lived, walking on between rows of heavy wooden doors to her left and the garden of the cathedral hidden in trees to her right.

At the end of the alley, Amalise crossed Royal and stopped in front of an Oriental shop she'd always loved, listening for a moment to the tinkling of the wind chimes, glass on glass. She opened the door of the shop and was greeted by a sweet musky fragrance. She'd visited this place many times when living in the Quarter. She loved the colorful silk kimono wraps, the varieties of painted glass, the paper and silk fans unfolding their picture stories when spread, and the exquisite carved figurines.

The woman she recognized as the proprietor came forward to greet her with her usual mysterious smile. Small and dainty like the figures on her shelves, her dark hair pulled into a chignon at the back of her neck, she pressed her hands together in a Western semblance of obeisance and welcomed Amalise.

"I've come to ask some questions, if you have a little time."

"How can I be of assistance?"

Amalise suddenly felt foolish. Nevertheless, she pushed back her hair and said, "I'm concerned about a child from Asia. We don't know what country he's from." She found herself lapsing into the woman's formality as she told of Luke. "He's a foster child, living with a family here in the city."

The woman gave her a blank look. "He is an orphan, a refugee?"

"Yes."

"Ah, there are so many. So many." She lowered her eyes and clasped her hands at her waist, tucking back her elbows. "Most are from Vietnam. But, of course, you wouldn't be here if he were from Vietnam. You would know."

Amalise nodded. "His paperwork was misplaced. The children's home thought he had a sponsor here in our city, but that turned out to be incorrect."

Almost imperceptibly, the woman bowed her head and her fingertips touched her chin. "And how may I help?"

"This boy spoke a word a few days ago. It's the first thing he's said that we know of. I thought perhaps you could tell me what it means."

The woman dipped her chin but said nothing.

"
Mak
. The word was
mak
."

The shopkeeper hesitated. "How does he say it?"

Amalise gave her a puzzled look. "Just like that." She pronounced the word again, carefully, making one flat sound. "Mak."

"Yes." The woman looked off for a moment. "It's not tonal, like Vietnamese. It's probably Khmer."

Amalise started. "Cambodia?" She still recalled every moment on the news of that terrible day in 1975 when the dead-eyed boys of the Khmer Rouge army marched past the cameras into Phnom Penh. Even now she could see the hordes of children waiting at the burned-out airport, searching the skies for the planes that dropped food each day, not knowing that those planes would never come again. Only the bravest reporters had remained in Phnom Penh on that day, their cameras rolling even as the veil of evil fell over the city.

"Probably Cambodia. Although Khmer is spoken by some in Vietnam as well. But the dialect is different."

The shopkeeper drifted toward a table on which delicate colored boxes in various shapes and sizes were arranged, and she looked down, lightly dragging her fingers over them. "Mak," she said again. With a glance at Amalise, she added, "There are many dialects in Cambodia."

"Perhaps it's a name?"

The woman shook her head. She studied Amalise and then clasped her hands together, smiling. "
Mak
. Yes, I know. It is an intimate word. It refers to someone close, someone like a mother."

Amalise stared.
Mother?

The woman nodded. "Did he say this to you?"

Amalise nodded. She reached out and steadied herself against a glass display case. She looked into the shopkeeper's still, dark eyes that seemed to know so much, but found she couldn't speak.

Luke had called her Mother.

As if in a daze, Amalise wandered back down Pirate's Alley, across the square, and into the Café Pontalba. She took a stool at the bar, not feeling hungry, and Henry whisked the area before her with a white cloth. He then set a cold bottle of Tab and a glass of ice down on the counter. He smiled. "Want something to eat?"

"No, thanks."

She turned her eyes to the television set fixed high on the wall at the end of the bar. It was on, but muted. She pulled her eyes away, shaking her head, trying to banish the images of the shadow children she'd seen on that set many times a couple of years ago, children limned in the mist of time.

Had Luke been one of those children?

"You look like you've just seen Jean Lafitte's ghost," Henry said. She turned to him, and his smile disappeared. He moved close and leaned on the bar, his face inches from hers. "What's wrong, Amalise? I know that look."

When she didn't answer, he shook his head. "I'll get Gina."

"No, no. I'm fine." She stretched a wan smile across her face. "I'm fine." When Henry continued scrutinizing her, she picked up the Tab and drank. The cold sweet fizz slid down her throat, lifting her from the daze. "I was just around the corner and decided to stop in."

Henry turned as someone called. With a hard look back at Amalise, he nodded to the customer and walked to the other end of the bar.

She looked about, remembering. What could anyone do in the face of such injustice?
Abba, why do you allow such things?
She'd told herself that she'd done what she could at the time, sending her tip money now and then. But the truth was, she'd looked the other way after that and gone on with her life, focused on her own problems and fought her way up the ladder at Mangen & Morris, chasing the wind.

And now here was little Luke. And he'd called out to her; he'd called her Mak. She wished that Jude were here so she could tell him about Luke. But Jude was in Pilottown, and even if he were here, he'd be with Rebecca.