Gone South (11 page)

Fear started clawing at him again. The dull throbbing in his head returned. Full dark had fallen, a sickle moon rising over the trees. Traffic was sparse on the road, but every set of headlights in his rearview mirror stretched Dan’s nerves. The nearer he got to Alexandria, the more he doubted this mission could be accomplished. But he had to try; if he didn’t at least try, he wouldn’t be worth a damn.

He passed a sign that said
ALEXANDRIA 18 MI.

The police are gonna be there, he told himself. They’ll get me before I can walk up the front steps. Would they have the telephone tapped, too? If I called Susan, would she put Chad on the phone or would she hang up?

He decided he couldn’t drive up to the house. There had to be another way. But he couldn’t drive around in circles, either.

ALEXANDRIA 10 MI.
the next sign said.

He didn’t know what to do. He could see the glow of Alexandria’s lights on the horizon. Two more miles reeled off the odometer. And then he saw a blinking sign through the trees on his right —
HIDEAWAY M TOR CO RT
— and he lifted his foot from the accelerator. Dan slowed down as the turnoff to the motor court approached. He had another instant of indecision, but then he turned off Highway 28 and guided the pickup along a dirt road bordered by scraggly pines and palmettos. The headlights revealed green-painted cottages tucked back amid the trees. A red wooden arrow with
OFFICE
on it pointed in the direction he was going. Dan saw no lights in any of the cottages, and a couple of them looked as if their roofs were an ill wind away from collapse. The grounds were weeded-up and forlorn, a swing set rusted and drooping next to an area of decaying picnic tables. Then the driveway stopped at a house painted the same shade of vomito green as the cottages, a rust-splotched station wagon parked alongside. A yellow buglight burned on the front porch, and other lights showed in the windows. The Hideaway, it appeared, was open for business.

As Dan cut the engine, he saw a figure peer through a window at him, then withdraw. He’d just gotten out when he heard a screen door’s hinges skreek.

“Howdy,” a man said. “How’re you doin’?”

“I’m all right,” Dan lied. He was facing a slim, buck-toothed gent who must’ve stood six-four, his dark hair cut as if a bowl had been placed on his head as a guide for the ragged scissors. “You got a vacancy?”

The man, who wore blue jeans and a black Hawaiian-print shirt with orange flowers on it, gave a snorty laugh. “Nothin’ but,” he said. “Come on in and we’ll fix you up.”

Dan followed the man up a set of creaky stairs onto the porch. He was aware of a deep, slow rumbling noise on the sultry air; frogs, he thought it must be. Sounded like hundreds of them, not very far away. Dan went into the house behind the man, who walked to a desk in the dingy little front room and brought out a Nifty notebook and a ballpoint pen. “Allrighty,” the man said, offering a grin that could’ve popped a bottle top. “Now we’re ready to do some bidness.” He opened the notebook, which Dan saw was a registration log that held only a few scribbled names. “I’m Harmon DeCayne, glad you decided to stop over with us.”

“Dan Farrow.” They shook hands. DeCayne’s palm felt oily.

“How many nights, Mr. Farrow?”

“Just one.”

“Where you from?”

“Baton Rouge,” he decided to say.

“Well, you’re a long way from home tonight, ain’t you?”

DeCayne wrote down the fake information. He seemed so excited, his hand was trembling. “We got some nice cottages, real nice and comf’table.”

“That’s good.” Dan hoped the cottages were cooler than the house, which might’ve served as a steam bath. A small fan on a scarred coffee table was chattering, obviously overmatched. “How much?” He reached for his wallet.

“Uh —” DeCayne paused, his narrow brow wrinkling. “Does six dollars suit you?”

“Seven
dollars. Paid in advance, if you please.”

DeCayne jumped. The woman’s voice had been a high, nasty whiplash. She had come through a corridor that led to the rear of the house, and she stood watching Dan with small, dark eyes.

“Seven dollars,” she repeated. “We don’t take no checks or plastic.”

“My wife,” DeCayne said; his grin had expired. “Hannah.”

She had red hair that flowed over her thick-set shoulders in a torrent of kinky curls. Her face was about as appealing as a chunk of limestone, all sharp edges and forbidding angles. She wore a shapeless lavender-colored shift and rubber flipflops, and she stood maybe five feet tall, her body compact and wide-hipped and her legs like white tree trunks. She was holding a meat cleaver, her fingers glistening with blood.

“Seven dollars it is,” Dan agreed, and he paid the man. The money went into a metal tin that was instantly locked by one of the keys on a key ring attached to DeCayne’s belt. Hannah DeCayne said, “Give him Number Four. It’s cleanest.”

“Yes, hon.” De Cayne plucked the proper key from a wall plaque where six other keys were hanging.

“Get him a fan,” she instructed her husband. He opened a closet and brought out a fan similar to the one that fought the steam currents. “A pilla, too.”

“Yes, hon.” He leaned into the closet again and emerged with a bare pillow. He gave Dan a nervous smile that didn’t do much to hide a glint of pain in his eyes. “Nice and comf’table cottage, Number Four is.”

“Does it have a phone?” Dan asked.

“Phone’s right here,” the woman said, and she motioned with the meat cleaver toward a telephone on a table in the corner. “Local calls cost fifty cents.”

“Are Alexandria numbers long distance?”

“We ain’t in Alexandria. Cost you a dollar a minute.”

And she’d time him to the second, too, he figured. He couldn’t call Susan with this harpy listening over his shoulder. “Is there a pay phone around anywhere?”

“One at the gas station couple of miles up the road,” she said. “If it’s workin’.”

Dan nodded. He stared at the cleaver in the woman’s fist. “Been choppin’ some meat?”

“Froglegs,” she said.

“Oh.” He nodded again, as if this made perfect sense.

“That’s what we live on,” she continued, and her lower lip curled. “Ain’t no money in this damn place. We sell froglegs to a restaurant in town. Come out of the pond back that way.” She motioned with the cleaver again, toward the rear of the house. Dan saw jewels of blood on the blade. “What’d you say your name was?”

“Farrow. Dan Farrow.”

“Uh-huh. Well, Mr. Farrow, you ever seen a cockeyed fool before?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s one, standin’ right beside you. Ever heard of a cockeyed fool buyin’ a damn motel on the edge of a swamp pond? And then puttin’ every damn penny into a damn fairyland?”

“Hon?” Harmon’s voice was very quiet. “Please.”

“Please, my ass,” she hissed. “I thought we was gonna be makin’ some money by now, but no, I gotta damn fool for a husband and I’m up to my elbows in froglegs!”

“I’ll show you to your cottage.” Harmon started for the door.

“Watch where you step!” Hannah DeCayne warned Dan. “Damn frogs are breedin’ back in that pond. There’s hundreds of ’em ’round here. Show our guest the fairyland while you’re at it, why don’tcha?” This last statement had been hurled at her husband like a bucketful of battery acid. He ducked his shoulders and got out of the house, and Dan darted another glance at the woman’s meat cleaver before he followed.

“Enjoy your stay,” she said as he went through the door.

Holding the fan and the pillow, Harmon climbed into the pickup truck and Dan got behind the wheel. Harmon made a slight nasal whistling sound as he breathed, kind of like a steam kettle on a slow boil. “Number Four’s up that road,” he said with an upward jerk of his chin. “Turn right.”

Dan did. “Woman’s always on me,” Harmon said bitterly. “So I messed up, so what? Ain’t the first man in the world to mess up. Won’t be the last neither.”

“That’s true,” Dan agreed.

“It’s that way.” Harmon motioned to a weed-grown pathway meandering off into the woods.

“What is? The cottage?”

“No. The fairyland. There’s your cottage up ahead.”

The headlights showed a dismal-looking green-daubed dump waiting ahead, but at least the roof appeared sturdy. Also revealed by the headlights was a squattage of frogs, maybe two dozen or more, on the dirt road between Dan’s truck and the cottage. Dan hit the brake, but Harmon said, “Hell, run ’em over, I don’t give a damn.”

Dan tried to ease through them. Some squawked and leapt for safety, but others seemed hypnotized by the lights and met their maker in a flattened condition. Dan parked in front of the cottage and followed DeCayne inside, the noise of the frogs a low, throbbing rumble.

He hadn’t expected much, so he wasn’t disappointed. The cottage smelled of mildew and Lysol, and the pent-up heat inside stole the breath from his lungs. DeCayne turned on the lights and plugged in the fan, which made a racketing sound as if its blades were about to come loose and fly apart. The bed’s mattress had no sheet, and none was offered. Dan checked the bathroom and found two fist-size frogs croaking on the shower tiles. DeCayne scooped them up and tossed them out the back door. Then he presented the key to Dan. “Checkout time’s twelve noon. ’Course, we’re not expectin’ a rush, so you can take your time.”

“I’ll be leavin’ early anyway.”

“Okay.” He’d already put the pillowcase on the pillow and directed the fan’s sullen breeze toward the bed. “You need anythin’ else?”

“Not that I can think of.” Dan didn’t plan to sleep here; he was going to bide his time for a few hours and then call Susan from the gas station’s pay phone. He walked outside with DeCayne and got his duffel bag from the truck.

“Hannah’s right about watchin’ where you step,” the man said. “They can make an awful mess. And if you find any more in the cottage, just pitch ’em out back.” DeCayne looked toward his own house, which stood fifty yards or so away, the lights just visible through the woods. “Well, I’d better get on back. You married, Mr. Farrow?”

“Used to be.”

“I knew you were a free man. Got the look of freedom about you. I swear, sometimes I’d give anythin’ to be free.”

“All it takes is a judge.”

DeCayne grunted. “And let her steal me blind? Oh, she laughs at me and calls me a fool, but someday I’ll show her. Yessir. I’ll fix up the fairyland the way it oughta be and the tourists’ll come from miles around. You know, I bought all that stuff for a song.”

“What stuff?”

“In the fairyland. The statues and stuff. It’s all in there: Cinderella’s castle, Hansel and Gretel, the whale that swallowed Jonah. All they need is patchin’ and paint, they’ll be like new.”

Dan nodded. It was obvious the man had constructed some kind of half-baked tourist attraction along that weeded-up pathway, and obvious too that the tourists had failed to arrive.

“One of these days I’ll show her who’s a fool and who’s smart,” DeCayne muttered, mostly to himself. He sighed resignedly. “Well, hope you have a good night’s sleep.” He began walking back to his house, frogs jumping around his shoes.

Dan carried his duffel bag into the cottage. In the bathroom he found a sliver of soap on the sink, and he removed his baseball cap and damp shirt and washed his face and hands with cool water. He was careful to get rid of the last traces of blood between his fingers and under his nails. Then he took a wet piece of toilet paper outside and cleaned the pickup’s steering wheel. When he returned to the cottage, he discovered in the bedside table’s drawer a six-month-old
Newsweek
magazine with Saddam Hussein’s face on the cover. Beneath the magazine was the more useful discovery of a deck of cards. He sat down on the bed, leaning back against the plastic headboard, and he took off his wristwatch and laid it beside him. It was twelve minutes after nine; he’d decided that he’d go make the call at eleven o’clock.

He dealt himself a hand of solitaire, the first of many, and he tried with little success to get Blanchard’s dying face out of his mind. In a couple of hours he might either see Chad or be in the back of a police car heading for jail. Was it worth the risk? He thought it was. For now, though, all he could do was wait and play out the cards before him. The wristwatch’s second hand was moving, and the future would not be denied.

A
S
D
AN HAD BEEN DRIVING
away from Reverend Gwinn’s house, a black 1978 Cadillac Eldorado with a broken right headlight and a crumpled passenger door turned into the parking lot of the Old Plantation Motel near Shreveport’s regional airport.

In the sultry twilight gloom, the place looked as if Sherman had already passed through. Flint Murtaugh guided his car past a rusted cannon that defiantly faced the north. A tattered Confederate flag drooped on its warped pole. The motel’s office was constructed to resemble a miniature plantation manor, but the rest of the place was definitely meant for the slaves. Trash floated on the brown surface of the swimming pool’s water, and two men sat sharing a bottle beside an old Lincoln up on cinder blocks. Flint stopped his car before the door marked twenty-three and got out. Beneath Flint’s shirt, Clint twitched in an uneasy sleep. Flint heard a man’s and woman’s voices tangled in argument through an open door, cursing each other purple. Beer cans and garbage littered the parched grass. Flint thought that the South wasn’t what it used to be.

He knocked on the door of number twenty-three. A dog began barking from within, a high-pitched
yap yap yap yap.

“It’s all right, Mama,” he heard a man say.

That voice. Familiar, wasn’t it?

A latch clicked. The door opened a few inches before the chain stopped it.

Flint was looking at a slice of pudgy face and a sapphire-blue eye. An oily comma of dark brown hair hung down over the man’s forehead. “Yes sir?” that deep, slightly raspy, oh-so-familiar voice asked as the dog continued to yap in the background.

“I’m Flint Murtaugh. Smoates sent me.”

“Oh, yessir! Come on in!” The man took the chain off, opened the door wider, and Flint caught his breath with a startled gasp.