CHAPTER TWO
It is a hotel for gamblers, built to capitalize on the two river boats moored downtown alongside the levee. There is something called Downtown Development, which is a way of trying to reverse white flight by throwing money at the downtown area and hoping enough people from the suburbs will come for festivals and other events, and that enough conventioneers will come from out of town to lose their money. At least, that’s what the car rental agent said at the airport counter. He was a burly man in his late thirties, named Annunzio, and he asked if I was coming to a convention or to gamble and I told him neither. I asked if the names Hobbs, Chandler or St. Martin meant anything to him and he said no. Then I tried the name Sikes and he didn’t know it, either. Finally. I tried Brood and he hesitated and then said it sounded like the name of a street in the southern part of town, which made sense.
It didn’t matter because I checked them all out before I came here and the only one in the book is St. Martin. B. St. Martin, to be exact, but that could be Benjamin or Belle or Blanche. And I was too cowardly to call before I left.
So now, in the middle of a warm Sunday afternoon in May, I stand in the fresh-scented hotel room, maybe only the twentieth person to use it, if the desk clerk is to be believed, and I stare out over the river and wonder what I’m going to say when I pick up the phone.
“Blaize, I remember some things from back then, the spring of fifty-nine. But I don’t know if they’re true. Maybe I invented them. More than anything, there’s this black pit that keeps sucking me toward it, like a whirlpool in the river, and I know the truth is down there but I may have to drown to find out what it is.”
“Aren’t you a true crime writer? It’s all public record. Old newspapers and things.
“I’m also a coward. I can’t make myself do the research. I thought maybe if I came back.”
“I’m not this Blaize. You must want somebody else.”
And the phone would click.
I know I won’t get off that easily.
Blaize is old family. They never move away.
Everything out there is different, which I expected, because, after all, it’s been over thirty years since I was here to bury my father, and over forty since I actually was a resident. I had to use a road map to get here from the airport, on the new throughway, even though every Saturday, as a boy, I went downtown to the Louisiana Theater to watch the double feature western.
I asked about the old Red Sticks, the minor league baseball team, and I was told they built the throughway right over the stadium from which Big Roger McKee once hit a home run all the way to Dalrymple Drive, on the edge of the lake.
The Heidelberg Hotel, once the lair of Huey Long and his cronies, is now vacant, and several attempts over the years to resuscitate it failed, I was told, until gambling came, at which time it was decided the downtown deserved an entirely new hostelry.
I wonder as I stand here if maybe the whole image through this window has been painted on, to deceive the unwary. What can one say about gambling boats that don’t cruise or a World War II destroyer permanently fixed to its dock, or a jet fighter rooted to its stand like an oversized model? Maybe if I go down I will see things the way they really are, in the city I remember from 1959, with two ferry boats that shuttle hack and forth to Port Allen every half hour, with a load of cars and pedestrians. I remember the smell of those ferries, part grease from the huge diesel engines, and part popcorn and cotton candy from the concession on the top deck. I remember looking down at the stern wheel, endlessly churning brown river water into a white froth, and I remember the huge, tireless eccentric arm that drove the engine, never stopping until the boat docked.
In those days the only bridge was five miles upriver, near the refineries, and it wasn’t built until 1941. When I lived here, everyone took the ferry.
Of course, I know the scene isn’t painted on. It is real and what is unreal is my memory. Perhaps none of it happened at all.
I turn around to stare at the phone.
Maybe, I think, I should just drive out there, not give him a chance to hang up. Maybe as I drive past I’ll see him in the yard, and stop “by accident.” Or maybe if it isn’t him, I can pretend to be lost, ask directions, and assure myself that the St. Martin I’m looking for never lived at this address. People work in their yards on Sunday afternoons. It seems like a plan.
I drive out through the university, under the canopy of oaks that cover Nicholson Drive, and between the two great cathedrals, Tiger Stadium for football, and Alex Box, where baseball is played. Once my father took me to a football game but I knew it bored him. He said that the university had misplaced its priorities, and being a faculty member, he resented the fact that the football coach made more than the professors. But we went to baseball games often. Even though the team was mediocre, he seemed to forget his resentment against sports as we sat on the hard bleachers in the afternoon sun, rooting for the home team. I wondered later if it was because baseball was no threat to him, but later I realized it was because it Look him back to a time in his own youth before he knew he would be a poet and not an athlete. In watching the team play he saw himself the way it might have been. Happy days, before he met the love of his life, who died.
Once I leave the University I get lost, it has all changed that much. The address I’m looking for is out Highland Road, but it is in a subdivision that was a cotton field when I was growing up. Now it is a stylish middle-class community with twenty-five year old houses and well-kept lawns. I circle down streets that resemble mobius loops and end up in cul-de-sacs more than once before I find the street where the map says it should be.
The house is one story, ranch-style, and there’s no one working in the garden. I’m not even sure anyone is home, because there is no light visible through the crack in the curtain drawn over the picture window. I sit at the curb, engine running, and try to decide what the house tells me. No toys on the close clipped front lawn, but, then, we are all old enough to be grandparents by now. A single gray Honda Minivan rests in the shade of the carport. The other slot is empty.
I can always go up to the door and knock.
But I am a coward. What will I do if he opens it?
I leave the subdivision and start back for the hotel.
Once I reach the University I make a left, heading for the River Road. But when I get to it, I hesitate. A right will take me downtown, where I started. And a left will take me away from town. To Windsong.
I am not ready yet.
The hotel room is my haven. I can stay here as long as I want, a god looking down on the half-empty streets below (because, despite all the money invested in the downtown, there are still relatively few people out; some are walking along the levee, on a bicycle path, and a gaggle of teenagers linger at the fountain, but they can hardly qualify as a crowd).
Carolyn said I should come, would have come with me, except that she still has school and they don’t let high school teachers just fly off for a week. I promised I’d call every night.
Now, as the afternoon light melts into evening gold and the sun starts to burn in through the tinted, west-facing window, I look back at the phone. Is she home right now, waiting for the call? Will I tell her I didn’t have the courage to follow through after flying a thousand miles?
So I lift the phone and force myself to punch in the number. Not ours, but his. B. St. Martin.
I know it’s Blaize before he says hello, because in that split instant between the time he picks up the receiver and the Lime he speaks I hear piano music in the background.
“This is Colin Douglas,” I say finally. “Blaize?”
“Yes.” His voice is deeper than I remember. “Colin?”
“Yeah, me. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Colin. Where are you?”
“In town. At the Centroplex Hotel. I was thinking about old times and I saw your name in the book.”
“Old times,” he says hesitantly. “Colin, did you come here to write a book?”
Now I understand the reserve.
“No,” I say and imagine I can hear him exhale relief.
“I read a couple of your books,” he says. “They made that TV movie out of one of them, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. Red Widow.”
“That’s right. I watched most of it. Pretty good.”
“I didn’t write the screenplay, if that makes a difference.”
“I wondered.” An awkward silence while the music, a Beethoven piano sonata, plays on in the background. “I always figured you’d come here and write about what happened.”
“Once I thought I might. But I kept finding other projects.”
“You have a project now?”
“Just a personal one.” I tell him about the dreams. “I know the basics but I can’t be sure if all I remember’s accurate. Sometimes I seem to remember different things in the dreams, hike it happened some other way.”
“It was a long time ago, Colin. I try not to think about it.”
It sounds like a judgment.
“Do you know where any of the others are?” I ask. “Toby or Stan?”
“No. I think Toby got into some trouble a few years ago. He was a lawyer, you know. I haven’t heard anything about Stan for forty years. To tell the truth, I haven’t tried to find out, and I don’t go to class reunions.”
“You still play the piano?” I ask.
“Not as much,” he says. “But I like to listen.”
“So how’s life?” I try again, desperate to prolong the conversation. “You have children? Grandkids?”
“A son,” he says. “He’s thirty-two, divorced. Lives in Houston, near his mother.”
“Oh.” The music finishes. “Look, maybe we could meet for lunch tomorrow.”
“I’d like to, Colin, but it’s hard during the week. I teach, you know. One of the public high schools. It’s pretty much an all day business.”
It’s a polite way of saying no and I can only accept his decision, I tell him goodbye and disconnect.
Why should I be surprised that he’s not glad to hear from me? What am I but a specter carrying my own contagion?
That night I walk down to the levee and look at the lights reflected in the water from the new bridge. A thread of music echoes from the Belle, the nearest gambling boat, and a languid breeze stirs the warm air. I find a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that serves po’boys and I have one with oysters, drowning the sandwich with a couple of draft beers.
When I get back my phone is ringing. I lift the receiver and hear Carolyn’s voice.
“I just wanted to check,” she says.
“Everything’s fine.” God, I love this woman.
“Have you talked to anybody?”
“Just Blaize. I don’t think he wants to get back into it. Can’t say I blame him.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know. Work up my courage and drive out there if I have to.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“Sure.”
“Col and Honey say to tell you hi.” The two grown kids, one in Boulder the other in Los Angeles.
“What did you tell them?”
“Just that you were going home to do some research for something you were writing.”
“I guess that’s close enough.”
“Colin.” There’s fear in her voice, but all she says is: “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
When we hang up I lie on the bed, wondering if I’ll be able to sleep. I’ve read about sleepwalkers who rise from their dreams to act out problems that bother them during the day. Will I be found tomorrow wandering down the River Road in my skivvies?
But I am too tired to resist. I turn out the light and I dream.
211 p. Academy Chicago, paperback, $16.95.
ISBN: 9780897335836