Little Gale Gumbo (11 page)

“I still don't see why I have to wear this stupid shirt,” Matthew grumbled, following his father up the foyer stairs to the apartment door in a crisp, brown oxford.

“Because it's the polite thing to do, son.” Ben put his arm around Matthew and tugged him close. “So's brushing your hair,” he added, grinning as he tried to smooth down Matthew's curling cowlick.

“I don't know why you're even bothering to bring those, Pop.” Matthew gestured to the trash bag filled with winter coats that Ben carried in his other hand. “Most of the girls in my class wouldn't be caught dead in old snowmobile jackets.”

“They would if they got cold enough.”

Josie answered the door, flushing instantly. “Hi, Matthew.”

Matthew muttered his greeting, glancing over Josie's shoulder, looking for a sign of her sister. From the kitchen, Camille called them in and pointed them to the table. Dahlia emerged from the bedroom, her dark hair pulled up on one side with a tarnished silver comb, her expression one of clear challenge as she took the seat across from Matthew.

“You really didn't have to trouble yourself,” Ben said when Camille arrived.

She smiled. “It's no trouble.”

“Momma's an amazing cook,” Josie said, sitting up as straight as she could in the rickety ladder-back chair after all the bowls had been set out. “People in the neighborhood used to smell her gumbo cooking and they'd make up any excuse to stop in for a bowl. Even Mr. Avery. And Dahlia said he wouldn't get up off his porch if his ass was on fire.”

“
Josephine
,” Camille whispered as she took her own seat, blushing slightly, then to Ben: “She exaggerates. Pass the bread, will you, girls?”

Dahlia reached out, but Josie was quicker, thrusting the basket at Matthew, who took two slices.

“This is delicious,” Ben said, wiping his mouth. “What did you call it?”

“Jambalaya,” said Camille. “We Creoles like ours with tomato. It's not nearly as good as gumbo, but it is a great deal quicker to make.”

Matthew took a small bite, wary of the curious rice dish flecked with chunks of chicken and sausage, while Josie stole glimpses of his profile, trying to decide whether his eyes were bluish green or greenish blue. Across the table, Dahlia stretched out her bare foot and poked Matthew in the ankle until he looked up, only to find her glancing around innocently.

When Camille rose to get Ben a second helping, Ben glimpsed the bookcase on the other side of the living room, empty except for a stack of records on the top shelf, no doubt left by the last tenant, he thought.

“Sorry about those,” he said, pointing. “I can get rid of them for you.”

“Don't you dare,” Camille called from the kitchen. “I carted those records all the way from New Orleans.”

“They're yours?” Ben looked at her, genuinely surprised.

“They are now,” she said proudly, returning with his replenished bowl. “We had so many more but there wasn't time. Or room.” She smiled. “One day I'll hear them again.”

Matthew watched his father's eyes drift down to his dinner, Ben's brow knotting in thought.

Later that night, Matthew came downstairs to find his father in the foyer, buttoning up his coat.

“I'm going out for a bit,” Ben said, tapping on his cap.

Matthew nodded, saying nothing. Just as he said nothing the next morning when Ben presented Camille with the record player he'd dug out of Malcolm Clements's shop at the end of Tuttle Road, or when Matthew caught his father wearing a small smile in his study later that afternoon, the lively swing of Louis Armstrong audible from across the house, the clear sounds of dancing feet landing on cold wood floors.

 

Just three days later, an early storm dropped five inches of wet snow over the island, leaving a layer of glistening ice on rooftops and car hoods, and in the week that followed, Camille and the girls could count on one hand the times they left the house. But the quarantine was far from unwelcome. While winter raged outside, warmth abounded within, and there was plenty to do in their new home. Rooms needed to be painted, Camille said. White walls would do for churches and hospitals, but not for their house.

When she asked Ben if she might add some color to the apartment, he thought she meant to change the window trim. He was shocked to find the next day that she'd returned from the village hardware store with gallons of paint in colors he suspected that Sam Milkie, the store's owner, had never even heard of, let alone mixed for a customer: China red, eggplant purple, mustard yellow, olive green.

Camille requested a few old sheets to use as drop cloths, but Ben provided more than linens. He recruited Matthew, and soon they were spending the weekend alongside Camille and the girls, their arms, elbows, and chins paint streaked, until the apartment was reborn.

The next week, when Ben overheard Camille longing for Old Paris china and velvet curtains, he piled them all into the Wagoneer and drove to a large indoor flea market in New Hampshire, Josie rolling toward Matthew every time the Jeep took on a bumpy patch of road.

That night as thanks, Camille made shrimp Creole and dirty rice for them all. After dinner they lingered in their seats around Ben's kitchen table, letting the heat from the wood-stove warm their necks and cheeks while Camille practiced her tarot readings on the men, feeling rusty after months away from the cards. She explained to Matthew and Ben about Creole Voodoo, about the spirits and the spells, and how the power of desire was the most important tool of all. She told them little things, too: That it was never wise to throw away hair combings, because birds could pull them from the trash and weave the combings into their nests, which would give a never-ending headache to the person the hair had belonged to. Or how you must never extinguish a candle with your fingers but blow the flame out and let the tiny spark endure, so a soul might briefly rest from torment.

“Momma's going to make lots of money with her spells,” Josie promised them all proudly. But when a job opened up at the island's Laundromat the following week, Camille applied, much to Josie's disappointment.

“There's no rush,” Ben said quietly. “This house is paid for, you know. If you need more time to get settled, I wouldn't want you to take something just because.”

Camille smiled, grateful, but she'd never taken charity and she wasn't about to start. She was hired on at the Laundromat the following week, but only because Fred Lucas's niece had just been put on bed rest with her fourth child.

It seemed that things might be falling into place. But news of Camille's skin color—too dark to pass for tan in December—and her suspiciously single status had already found its way around the island, spreading like ice crystals across a frosted window.

Ten

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack was shutting off the lights in the station's waiting room when his cell phone chimed. He glanced down at the small screen before he answered, glad it wasn't another reporter. “Hi, Arch.”

“Jack.” Portland's deputy chief sounded tired. It had been a long day for everyone, it seemed. “Sorry to be so late getting back to you,” Archie Wentworth said. “Just wanted to let you know Collins is coming down first thing Monday morning to do the autopsy. I don't see the point myself, but you know how that sanctimonious prick is.”

Jack knew, all right. His relationship with the state's medical examiner had never been a smooth one. Frank Collins took every opportunity he could to malign the efforts of smaller police forces, Little Gale's being one of his favorite examples of inefficiency.

“Thanks for the heads-up, Arch. Fortunately there's not much dirt to dig up on this one.” Jack walked to the window and parted the blinds enough to see Main Street at dusk, the day tourists gone, the sidewalk spotted now with locals looking to unwind at Shell's or the Captain's Table.

Christ, what he wouldn't have done for a cold beer himself just then.

“I'll have the final report sent over in the next few days,” Jack said, dropping the blinds and heading back out into the hall. “A few more witness statements just to round it out.”

“Pretty much open-and-shut then, huh?”

“Seems it. There was no forced entry, just some broken dishes on the floor by the fireplace. Ben Haskell was probably just sitting there, having tea before bed, when Bergeron sneaked up on him. Startled him and he dropped his cup.”

“Son of a bitch.” Wentworth sighed. “They think Haskell's gonna recover?”

“No one knows for sure. The doctor says we can only wait and see.”

“Wait and see,” the deputy chief echoed. “Don't you just hate having to do that.”

 

Matthew peered through the narrow glass insert on the ICU floor of Portland's Maine Medical Center and barely recognized the pale, unmoving man on the other side.

“When can I see him, Doctor?”

“Tomorrow.” The doctor, fair-haired and slight, stood beside Matthew, holding Ben's patient folder in his hand. “We've sedated him to prevent any further damage to the brain, and we may need to keep him under sedation for several more days. Mr. Haskell, did your father suffer from high blood pressure?”

“What difference does that make?”

“A great deal of difference, actually. High blood pressure is one of the main risk factors for stroke.”

“Doctor, my dad was in great shape. He still shoveled off his own roof every winter, for Christ's sake.”

“Fitness only goes so far, I'm afraid. When people age, their blood vessels weaken and become brittle. Sometimes when there's stress, be it any kind of emotional or physical exertion, it can raise a person's blood pressure, increasing the volume of blood in already fragile vessels.”

Matthew frowned impatiently. “So what the hell does all that mean?”

“Imagine a dry-rotted rubber hose,” said the doctor, “and you've turned the spigot on high.”

An image of Charles Bergeron standing behind his unsuspecting father flashed through Matthew's head. He swallowed, sickened.

“Is he going to be all right, Doctor?”

“We're confident he'll regain consciousness.”

“That's not what I'm asking.”

The doctor smiled patiently. “It's difficult to assess the level of neurological damage of someone who has suffered a stroke, Mr. Haskell. It takes time.”

Time.

Matthew nodded dully, his gaze sweeping the room through the glass. Except for the view of Portland Harbor and all its twinkling lights, it could have been the set of a science-fiction movie, so many machines and tubes, monitors with flashing lights. Then the reality, a cold hand on his spine; his father was alive only by the grace of a pleated blue tube, his lungs expanding because of an electrical current coming through a hole in the wall.