Little Gale Gumbo (2 page)

 

 

 

 

Fog crawled along the island's rugged shoreline like old smoke, hugging shingled gables and steeped in the rich, salty taste of the tide.

From the bedroom window of her mustard cape, Dahlia Bergeron watched morning spread across her backyard, brushing daylight over her cold frame greenhouses in streaks of blue and gray. She couldn't remember the last time she'd risen before the sun, at least not to roll over and make love again. But the mattress beside her was empty and had been for a while now. What she wouldn't have done for a lover's company today, the smell of a man's skin on her fingertips, his hairs on her pillow.

When the phone sounded on the other side of the room, she reached it before the second ring. Most mornings she would have let it chime on and on until the machine swallowed it up, but not today. She'd known even as she hurried across her cluttered wood floor that there was only one reason anyone called this early.

“Dahl?”

Dahlia could hear her younger sister's ragged breathing on the other end. Josie had been crying. Sobbing.

“Joze, honey, what is it?”

“It's Daddy. He was here last night. He was here and he attacked Ben.”

Dahlia fell hard against the dresser, her collection of perfume bottles toppling. “Oh, God, is he . . . ?”

“Daddy's dead. He's dead and Ben's in a coma.”

Dahlia closed her eyes, swallowed. “Where is he?”

“Portland. He's in ICU. But the doctors won't let us see him. They said only family, and they won't make any exceptions.”

“Where are you?”

“The house.”

“I'm coming.”

“Just stay there,” Josie said. “Wayne's already on his way.”

Dahlia rushed downstairs to the front door and opened it just as the station wagon came barreling up the driveway, bringing with it a damp sea breeze that tumbled through the long tangles of her black hair and raised goose bumps along her bare legs.

Wayne emerged from the driver's side, his brown hair and beard wet with perspiration, his round face flushed.

Her brother-in-law looked grimly at her over the roof of the car.

“Get dressed,” he said. “Hurry.”

 

Josie waited for them on the front porch, pulling nervously at the ends of her short red bob.

This was all her fault. She'd grown so lazy with her Voodoo. She couldn't remember the last time she'd dressed a candle or covered the steps with brick dust. Her mother, Camille, would never have let so much time go by without a protection spell, never have left herself and her family so vulnerable.

And now the man who had been like a father to Josie and Dahlia for nearly twenty-five years, the man who'd loved their mother so much you would have sworn his skin had smelled from it, their beloved Ben, lay unconscious in a hospital bed.

It was unimaginable to her.

When the station wagon appeared, Josie rushed to the railing and watched Dahlia crawl out of the passenger seat, holding the door to steady herself.

Wayne closed the driver's side and walked ahead, wiping his forehead with his arm. “Any calls?”

“I don't know,” said Josie. “I couldn't stay in there alone. I was going to jump right out of my skin.”

Dahlia labored up the four crooked treads to the porch, her plastic garden clogs smacking the old wood with each step. “Your husband is a heartless son of a bitch.”

“Because I wouldn't stop at Clem's for booze,” Wayne explained wearily, passing Josie to enter their shingled cape. “I told her we had plenty of alcohol here.”

“Cooking sherry doesn't count!” Dahlia yelled after him, finally on the porch and face-to-face with Josie. “Hi, sweetie.”

The sisters embraced, clinging to each other with a desperation they hadn't felt in years.

“We're supposed to just sit here on our hands while he lies there all alone, Dahl. I can't bear it.”

“I know.”

They parted, still holding hands.

Josie nodded to the street. “Let's go in before the vultures land.”

 

“He wasn't supposed to get out, damn it.” Dahlia pulled an ivory mug down from the kitchen cabinet and poured the last of the coffee. “He was supposed to rot and die in there.”

“Well, he didn't,” said Wayne, pulling a soda from the fridge.

Dahlia carried her cold coffee to the window seat and dropped into it.

“I should have known something awful was coming,” Josie said, knocking the old coffee filter into the trash. “All this early heat, and that stupid fly that wouldn't leave me alone in the café yesterday. You remember, Wayne?”

Dahlia groaned. “Oh, Jesus, here it comes. . . .”

“Don't you dare make fun of me, Dahlia Rose.” Josie spun around. “If Momma were still alive she would have scrubbed the steps a dozen times by now.”

“Right—because that worked
so
well keeping him out all the other times!”

“Hey!” Wayne stared pointedly between them. “Just cool it. Both of you.”

The sisters fell silent, looking away.

Josie's hands shook as she peeled the lid off the coffee tin. “I hate that Ben's all alone in that hospital room and they won't let us see him. I just hate it.”

Dahlia stared numbly into the backyard, where Wayne's mower stood stalled in a patch of high grass. “So, who found them?”

“Who do you think?” Wayne snapped open his soda and took a long swig. Jack, of course. Dahlia rolled her head against the glass, trying to imagine what her ex-boyfriend must have thought, seeing her father again after so many years, and now with Jack being the island's police chief to boot.

Josie rinsed out the coffeepot, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. “Poor Jack,” she whispered.

“He went over as soon as dispatch got Ben's call,” Wayne said. “Apparently the front door was open and Ben and Charles were just lying there at the bottom of the stairs. Jack thinks Ben went upstairs to try to get away from Charles and Charles chased him to the top and they lost their balance.”

“Jesus.” Dahlia closed her eyes.

Wayne walked to the sink, shaking his head. “This shouldn't have happened. We should have just filled out those request forms from the prison when they came. Then we would have known he was out.”

“Well, don't look at me,” Dahlia said. “Your wife's the one who thought it was a better idea to soak them in gasoline and stuff 'em in a goddamned tree.”

“It was vinegar,” Josie said indignantly, “and I didn't
stuff them
in a tree; I buried them around the roots. There's a difference.”

“Oh, well, excuse me, Your High Priestess.”

“You and Daddy never understood what Momma and I believed. You never even tried.”

“What's to understand about digging a hole under a tree? And you know I hate when you call him that.”

“Fine, Dahl. What am I supposed to call our father?”

“Gee, I don't know. How about wife-beating asshole? Drug-dealing shithead? Either of those would work.”

“What difference does it make now?” Wayne said, taking the empty carafe from Josie's stalled hands and filling it himself. “He's dead.”

Dead. The sisters looked across the room at each other, waiting for the word to sink in. All the years they had suffered their father's violence. Leaving New Orleans to escape him, only to have him follow them north to the island, as relentless as a greenhead fly. They'd been so sure he'd chase them forever.

Them, and anyone who'd ever loved them. Ben, Jack, Wayne, and—

“Matty
.
”
Josie gasped.

Dahlia rose in an instant. They raced for the phone at the same time, shoulder to shoulder across the kitchen floor.

Wayne called after them, “I'm sure Jack's already talked to him.”

But neither sister was listening. It was unthinkable that their oldest and dearest friend should hear this unbearable news from anyone else. Josie reached the phone first and snatched it up. “We should try his cell.”

“No,” said Dahlia, over her sister's shoulder. “What if he's at work? Or driving? He'll run off the road!”

Josie agreed, already punching in the numbers. “We'll try his house first,” she said.

And just like that, after so many years of their agreed truce on the subject of Matthew Haskell, the Bergeron sisters unwittingly began their unspoken contest for his affections all over again.

Two

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fifteen-year-old Joey Ortiz was slouched in a yellow plastic chair across from Matthew Haskell's desk, scowling at his sneakers.

“Want to tell me what happened in the boys' bathroom after school yesterday, Joey?”

“What for?” the boy said. “You already know or I wouldn't be here.”

“Maybe I want to hear your side of the story.”

“I was smoking a cigarette. Big deal.”

Matthew gave the young man a flat stare. In his fifteen years as a guidance counselor at the Wharton School, he'd learned to read his students. He called it his Crapmeter, when lies ranged from faint unpleasant odors to all-out, steaming piles of bullshit. Right now Joey Ortiz was walking through a cow pasture.

“Just a cigarette, huh?”

The young man snorted. “See? I knew you wouldn't believe me.”

“One of the teachers said it smelled more like marijuana.”

“It was Mr. Kline, wasn't it? I saw him in the mirror. That dude's got it in for me. You know that, right?”

“It doesn't matter who it was.”

“Yeah, right. Like an old geek like him would even know what marijuana smells like.”

“Hey,” Matthew said gently. “That's not necessary. This isn't about Mr. Kline. This is about you. Don't change the subject.”

Joey quieted, his self-impressed grin drooping until he looked genuinely remorseful.

Matthew leaned back, linked his hands behind his head. “I heard Ashley was in there with you, too.”

“So what? Now it's against the rules to kiss your girlfriend? Come on, Mr. H. I've seen you and your wife kissing in the parking lot and no one calls
you
in for it.”

His wife. Matthew couldn't help a sad chuckle at that, even though Holly wouldn't have found much amusement in the boy's mistake. Her continued lack of a wedding band had been the final toppling block on a precarious stack of gripes piled over ten years together.

Who knew why he'd never asked Holly to marry him. He'd never wanted to lose her, never wanted anyone else more since he'd met her, and yet he'd never been able to make that ultimate commitment to her.

She'd blamed the sisters, the island, and he'd said nothing.

“So you two were just making out then?” Matthew asked pointedly.

Joey shifted nervously in his seat. “Mostly. You know how it is, Mr. H.”

“No, I don't. I'm an old geek too.”

Joey reddened, gnawing at his thumbnail. “I didn't mean you.”

Matthew grinned, flashing back to his own conflicted teenage years, his fumbling attempts at romance when he was fifteen, chaste in comparison, though not by any choice of his own. He would have gladly been one of Dahlia's early conquests if she'd only let him.

He took a sip of cold coffee, reminded of the last time he'd given safe-sex advice to a student. It was how he'd met Holly in the first place, when he'd been encouraged to seek counsel after the boy's parents had threatened to sue. Holly had looked so beautiful, so confident, strolling into the wine bar in her white suit. He had fallen for her at once, so relieved to know he could finally feel something for someone other than Dahlia Bergeron.

“Excuse me—Matt?”

Matthew turned to see Claire Wentz's ruddy face in the doorway. The school secretary wore a strained smile as she asked, “Can I speak with you a moment?”

Matthew moved to the door. Bad news about a student, he thought. It had to be.

Claire leaned in, looking around nervously. “I didn't want to say it over the intercom,” she whispered. “It's the police for you on line one. They said they're from Little Goose Island. . . .”