Zion (21 page)

Wesley thought about the money for a second. “That would go a long way. It would pay to fix my bum starter and loud muffler, and buy a new set of tires, too.”

“Would you draw me nude? That’s what I’d really like,” she asked.

He hesitated, his conscience gnawing at him. It was a risk. He would leave behind a record of sex. He wanted no evidence of their tryst, their ongoing sexual relationship. She always supplied him with a condom to wear, and she was on the pill. But the picture could get him busted for sure.

She gazed at him, touched his chest. “I’ll let you keep it for me as a little memento.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

Wesley set up his charcoal pencils and easel in the informal den of the big house. After they finished eating burgers and fried onion rings in the kitchen that she’d picked up from the diner a block away, he began to draw her as she sat unrobed in a chair in the den. Her legs were crossed, just like the model for the class in New Orleans. He sat with his easel and pencils. He began to square her from the rough edges, and he saw that she was even more beautiful nude inside the living room than in the darkened bedroom where they made love, even more striking than her body at poolside in the warm sun. Her legs crossed like scissors and cut into his heart. He couldn’t understand how he had wandered into such a magical place.

Wesley listened to her chatter, going on and on about her trip to Paris and Rome with Dr. C. last April. Her talk was constant. She said she was planning to attend school for art history, though she had not taken a single class since she graduated from high school.

Sometimes he thought she was lying out of habit. She didn’t mean anything by it, just routine deception as a means to keep the conversation lively. He tried to stay focused on his work, trying not to be aroused by her naked sex. Her breasts were unblemished and firm, round, and her thighs full of lust, her proportions almost perfect, unlike the nude model in New Orleans who was plain and slim with an average face, a kind of gangly woman. Charity looked like Miss America plus ten pounds at thirty-one years old, the sunlight’s effects on her cheeks and near her eyes. She’d won the Milltown Strawberry Queen title and had kept the tiara and sash, she said. He didn’t want to think about the love they’d make after the painting, after he was done, because he’d fail to concentrate on the depiction.

Twice, unsolicited, she assured him that Dr. Claiborne wouldn’t return for another week, and she would personally go pick him up at the airport in New Orleans. Dr. C.’s schedule never included any surprises, she promised. But for some reason, she looked a little nervous to Wesley.

Wesley was good at doing portraits. He had been drawing and painting them for years, sketching horses and animals, drawing members of the family and his classmates. He’d even tried his hand at drawing dead birds like John James Audubon when the naturalist was marooned at the Oakley Plantation House in St. Francisville during in the summer of 1821. The Hardin home was full of portraits and drawings that Wesley had completed over the years.

As he concentrated on his pencil and tried to keep his mind from wandering, he acknowledged her with nods and whispers of “hum,” “huh,” and “that’s so funny,” as she kept talking endlessly. He drew her curves and tried to stay focused on the shapes. There had been little sexual interest with the model at the gallery, but Charity was different, and the eroticism poured into his eyes with a sharp light.

He had watched The Graduate, and sometimes Charity reminded him of Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson. Charity was as cynical deep down, he knew, just as jaded as Mrs. Robinson. But he loved her and wanted to stay in her bed forever despite the danger and the obvious finitude of their relationship. He lusted over her, and he tried to draw her perfectly with every stroke from his charcoal pencil. And like many men his age and many far older, he had mistaken good sex for love. This was the great weakness of men the world over.

Other than two quick trips out of the motel, one for a phone call and the other to look around Thomas Jefferson Avenue and to call the Claiborne House, James Luke never strayed from his room. He ate the food he’d carried with him, heating and cooking some of it on his Coleman stove inside the room. He went to the payphone in the motel lobby on Saturday morning and called the Honey Tree Lounge in Trebor Heights, and he arranged for a prostitute to come to his room later, a little entertainment he looked forward to during the whole ride down from Mississippi. And the Honey Tree Lounge did not disappoint in the least.

At dark on Sunday night, he drove back to the Heller-Reid neighborhood and parked on the street beside the red brick Presbyterian sanctuary. It was three minutes before eight o’clock. He sat with an open Bible on the seat beside him. Dressed in church clothes, a long sleeve white shirt, black trousers, but no tie, he looked like he had been next door to the service. His matching suit coat was hanging in the backseat window.

The Presbyterians met at seven o’clock. If the police or anyone else stopped him, he’d say he was going to or from the worship service, depending on who was doing the asking, and what time it was. The reason he hadn’t left his vehicle was because he fell ill, too sick to drive.

He looked in his open Bible at an underlined verse in Isaiah 53. He read it aloud, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” It was the book Tom had given him fifteen years earlier when he’d voiced some fleeting interest in God and religion. Tom had read the verse aloud to him and flagged it with a pencil mark and a red ribbon in the spine. James Luke sat in the truck sweating. Beneath the seat was his .45 pistol with the pearl handles. The high-powered rifle was secure and waiting in a long steel storage box behind the backseat.

Now the man watched a couple of dozen souls leave the front doors of the church. He was thankful that it was cooling a little as the sun fell. James Luke witnessed the last car leave the empty parking area and drive away. The area was poorly lit. Nearby was the alley behind the big houses, a strip of pavement that allowed the residents access to their homes from the rear. He got out of the Suburban, put on his dress coat, the Bible in one hand, his pistol in his waistband, and two bullet clips like blocks in his pocket. He crossed the sidewalk and into the alleyway. The night was now the hue of coal, no sun at all, the back alley as opaque as a tomb.

He could see the lights on when he arrived earlier, see the Mercedes parked outside. He’d driven past the house again. He didn’t want to kill anyone unless the course of events forced it, but he wanted to deal with Charity. His plan was to teach her a lesson just like he taught Sara Hardin years ago. And he wasn’t driving back to Natchez without coming to a personal understanding with the nutty woman. She needed to shut the hell up or recant what she had said to the marshal and to everyone else. At the back steps, he hesitated, and then grabbed the doorknob. This could go south quickly, he thought. He turned the knob, and he could tell in an instant the door was locked. The unbuttoned dress coat covered his big pistol. He stood with his hand on the knob. He pushed against the door hard and it rattled in the frame but felt solid.

“Hell,” James Luke whispered, “I’ll go to the front door just like regular white people.” He left the backdoor and picked up the Good Book. He didn’t want to make noise breaking down the door.

“Did you hear something?” Charity asked. She fidgeted in her nakedness.

“No.” Wesley held the pencil in his fingers. He looked thoughtful, wise, a curious enough guise on his face. He resembled a street artist in the French Quarter making portraits of tourists.

“Can I have a quick break? I need a cigarette.”

“Sure,” he said, looking up from the sketch in progress.

She stood. There was a slight line of goose bumps on her arms.

The doorbell rang. James Luke stood at the front door with the Bible under one arm like a preacher or perhaps a summertime book salesman, dressed in all black except for the white shirt. In many ways, he resembled the Apostle Thad Hussert at the Flaming Sword Church.

 “Damn it,” Charity said, “probably a neighbor lady wanting something, trying to invite me to another bridge tournament. They’re relentless and all twice my age.” Her pubic hair was visible when she stood. She put on the robe that she had placed across the arm of the couch, and she reached for her pack of Kools and lighter on the end table. “Wesley, answer the door, and tell the old woman I’ll be right down. But don’t dare let her in. We’ll never get rid of the old bat.” She climbed the stairs in a rush.

“Okay,” he said, standing up, a little rattled. He put his pencil on the easel ledge and walked over to the door.

The bell rang again before he could reach it. Wesley opened the heavy front door and stared at the man dressed in the suit with the Bible. James Luke held the book in one hand and the other hand was at his waist, not far from the pistol. They eyed one another for a couple of seconds.

Wesley was perplexed at first, then sure. “Uncle Jimmy,” he said. He was shocked, as if he’d just seen an angel or something from another world.

“Yeah. I’m James Luke Cate, but who the hell are you?” He glanced away to the street and then back to the young man’s face.

“I’m Wesley Hardin. Tom and Sara’s boy.”

James Luke shook his head. He turned a dark shade of reddish purple and ground his teeth. “I guess you are. I need to talk to Charity. I know she’s in there.”

At first, Wesley wanted to hug the man just like when he was a boy, but he could sense a strange distance that was alarming. James Luke Cate was not his real uncle, but he’d been like a brother to his father ten years before he left the region. Wesley had never seen him again until now.

“Come in. She’ll be down in a minute.” He walked James Luke through the living room into the den. The odd visitation made no sense to Wesley. Why would he come here? He still wanted to shake the man’s hand or hug his neck, but James Luke seemed to be agitated and tense by the way he gripped the Bible tight, his face hard. There was some kind of a sneer wired across his mouth that never eased.

“You just leave church?” Wesley stared at the book. He rubbed his pants legs aimlessly with the palms, fidgeting.

“I guess you could say that,” James Luke said, looking down at the Bible in his hand as if he hadn’t realized it was there.

Wesley offered him a seat on the couch. They both sat down. Then Wesley realized he needed to go tell Charity about the visitor. He stood to go upstairs.

“By God, you’ve grown a lot, way bigger than Tom and every bit as tall as me. How is Tom doing?” James Luke’s voice and manner softened slightly.

“He’s all right. He works as a carpenter at the junior college.”

“You live here?”

“I stay at the pool house out back.”

James Luke gazed at the painting, the rough sketch of Charity nude. He looked back at Wesley and grinned. “Yeah, I’m sure you stay up in that pool house. I bet stolen water is real sweet.”

Wesley knew he was being mocked. He quickly covered the easel with a cloth. “In two weeks, I’m going to go to Southwestern in Lafayette, the School of Architecture, and I’ve been staying out back at the pool house this summer while I’m working on a carpentry project here. It’s some shelving and cabinetry to go into the study. I need to go tell Mrs. Charity you’re here.”

“You do that.”

Wesley walked up the stairs and down the hall into the master bedroom where Charity stood at the bathroom doorway in her robe. He could see that her face was contorted. He moved toward her. She had the telephone receiver in her hand, her fingers tight around it. She put the phone to her ear and gave the address, saying she needed the police to come immediately to her home on Thomas Jefferson Avenue. A man was breaking into the house.

She threw the phone down on the bed and snatched open the nightstand drawer, pulling out a little black pistol that Wesley hadn’t seen before. A burning cigarette smoldered on the edge of the nightstand and fell to the floor. She was standing by the bed where they’d made love last night and many times before. She cocked the black pistol with a click.

“Charity, what are you doing with the pistol? James Luke Cate is here. I know him from when I was a boy in Zion. This seems strange,” Wesley said.

“Oh my God, Wesley,” she said, “you get in that bathroom and lock the door. Get in the bathroom right now, dammit.” She had the little Beretta pistol in her hand, her finger on the trigger.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

She grabbed his arm with her left hand and tried to push him into the bathroom. The phone was lying on the bed, the receiver making noise.

“He’s a dangerous man. I’ve called the police. You go hide. Open the window and jump out and run away.” She pushed him into the bathroom. Her face was ashen, and the look was nothing less than terror.

Before Charity could shut the door and hide Wesley in the bathroom, he saw James Luke raise the big Colt pistol from the hallway just past the bedroom door. He’d seen the pistol when he was a child, and James Luke had let him fire it once. It was pointed toward them. Wesley hollered, “No!”

James Luke trained the pistol on Wesley, and he was hit with a round to the skull. Blood and brain sailed across the vanity mirror six feet away and splattered the wall like John F. Kennedy’s cranial matter across the trunk of the Lincoln Continental in Dallas.

“I’ll kill you, you loudmouth bitch,” James Luke sneered as he pointed the Colt at Charity.

She got off a quick shot with the .25 automatic, and plaster split from the wall beside James Luke’s head. He moved beside the doorframe, but she fired at him again, missing a second time. He stepped out from the hallway long enough to squeeze off a round at her, and simultaneously she at him. Her bare chest became a massive butterfly as the heavy bullet entered above her left nipple. She, too, scored a hit unwittingly, a round piercing high on his shoulder, lacerating his right trapezoid. It stung him like fire, and he began to curse the pain.

Charity fell to the floor. James Luke stepped over to her body and shot her again in the face for good measure, her blood spattering on the side of the bed sheet.

She lay dead. He began to kick her with his black cowboy boots. He smelled gunpowder in the air and the burnt flesh of death that reminded him of Heartbreak Ridge in Korea.

After James Luke quit kicking her, he saw that Wesley looked dead, too. He stopped cold and sized things up. He gazed at Wesley’s mangled forehead. He spoke to the young man on the floor in the bathroom. “What a damned waste.” He stared at his head and scowled, feeling sad for a brief moment until the pain wiped his conscience clear, and he focused his attention back on himself. He dropped his Bible on the bed and surveyed the damage.

He put Charity’s little pistol in his back pants pocket, took a towel from the rack in the bathroom, and pressed it against his right shoulder. He could tell the wound was more of a glancing blow than a direct hit, the meat cut with a deep indention on his shoulder through the dress coat, and it hurt with pulsing pains in his neck. His shoulder burned, bleeding down his arm on the towel.

“What a batshit whore!” he said. The pain was intense, almost breathtaking. He turned to go downstairs, and said, “Woman, everything you touch turns to shit.”

James Luke stuck the big Colt pistol in his waistband and fled the room. Blood filled the white towel he had pressed to his shoulder which he held tight. The crimson dripped onto his boots, and his stomach immediately started to feel swollen with pain.

This was the law of unintended consequences, bad luck, or perhaps bad karma, he thought. He almost tried to feel guilty over it all, but he could not. He was suffering a considerable amount of pain, and he felt fortunate to be alive when he left into the night as fast as he could, out the back door and down the steps and through the yard and into the alley. He was not going to expend any of his strength dwelling on the lost boy and the lost world he’d just made.