JEZEBEL'S BLUES Page 13

  He didn’t know love any more than he knew happiness. As his breath, moist and warm, brushed her cheek and his scarred fingers held her, Celia knew she would lose him.

  In spite of that, in spite of the foolishness of it, she whispered in his ear. “I love you, Eric.”

  It was a small thing, that single, heartfelt whisper, but at least he could take it with him when he left her. He enveloped her then, holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe—as if he could keep her from slipping away.

  * * *

  They slept again. When Celia awakened, it was to find the bed empty. Alarmed, she sat up. He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, would he?

  “Celia.” The word was heavy and deep.

  She turned to see him crouched by the window, wearing his jeans and nothing else. On his neck were small marks made by her mouth, and his hair had not yet been combed; it tumbled in a glossy disarray around his face. “I thought you’d gone,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t leave while you were sleeping,” he said, and stood up. “But I need to get out and make some more phone calls about Laura.”

  His walls had slammed into place again—as if nothing had passed between them, as if he would just walk away and forget the night. Gathering the sheet around her, Celia sat up straight. “I thought,” she said, testing, “that I might talk you into staying for that breakfast I never fixed you.”

  He closed his eyes. She watched his jaw clench one time, then he looked at her and she saw the loneliness screaming from the blue depths. He crossed the room and knelt by the bed, taking her hand. “Celia, I shouldn’t have come here last night.”

  She yanked her hand from his grip. “Save it,” she said harshly. “I can do without graceful parting words.”

  “Celia—”

  “I mean it,” she said, and stood up, taking the sheet with her. “I’ve had lots of practice with people who care for me only when it’s convenient.”

  He reached for her again. “No, Celia—”

  With a bitter smile, she dodged his touch. Shaking her head over her own illusions, she said, “I knew when I met you that it would be like this. I kept telling myself to leave it alone. To stay clear of you.” She swallowed hard, clinging to her anger and frustration to keep the sorrow at bay.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice was subdued. “It was selfish of me to come here. I just wanted to see you.”

  Bright, life-giving anger surged through her. She lifted her chin. “Don’t do it, Eric—don’t cast yourself as one of Jacob Moon’s tragic heroes, and don’t you dare make me one of his weak, victim heroines.”

  “It’s not like that!” he said. His eyes narrowed, his chin jutted forward and Celia knew he was going. “You’re the one that keeps thinkin’ I’m somebody I’m not.” He grabbed a sock from the floor and stormed toward the door. On the threshold, he pawed and looked back at her as if he would say something else. Then with a single shake of his head, he left her.

  Only then did she allow herself to sink down onto the bed, her control crumbling. The scent of him clung to the pillow he had slept on, and Celia buried her face in it.

  She was an idiot. A fool. A victim of her own fantasies. Eric wasn’t the good and honest man she’d tried to believe he was. Or perhaps there was some goodness and honesty there, but it had long been buried by his restlessness and wandering.

  She wept. Wept for him and for herself, for the perfect sweetness of their union and for all the days they would never share. Wept for her stupidity and romantic delusions, wept for the times she would miss him.

  Then, because she was practical above all things, she dried her eyes and got up. They could no doubt use an extra pair of hands at the Red Cross station. And really, in light of the sorrows some of those people faced, a broken heart seemed a manageable affliction.

  * * *

  It was something of a mistake to go to the high school, Celia found. She busied herself in helping to prepare the noon meal for a slowly dwindling crowd, then bustled about performing various small tasks. A week and a half had passed since Jezebel had retreated, however, and the greatest portion of disasters the people had faced were now dealt with. A federal work crew had been dispatched to rebuild and repair the damage wrought by the water; relatives and friends had taken in most of the homeless temporarily sheltered in the school gym, and even most of the missing had been found. Except Laura. Laura was still missing.

  Foiled in her attempt to stay busy, Celia went to her classroom in the late afternoon. It was located on the third floor of the old building, and the proportions were satisfyingly grand. A bank of broad windows faced south and showed a wide expanse of verdant treetops punctuated with the rooftops of Gideon. Below, in a baseball field, a gaggle of youths pitched and batted, caught fly balls and ran bases.

  It was an extraordinarily peaceful scene. A painting of small-town America, just as she’d pictured it for so many years.

  What would it have been like to grow up here? She rested a hip against the windowsill and frowned. What would it have been like to attend this high school with people she had known since kindergarten? Would she, like Eric, want to leave this town by now?

  She had missed the comfort of long-term friendships and the steadiness of familiar faces in her wandering childhood. But what had she gained?

  She had gained Paris in the morning, had heard the music of Italian voices in Milan. She had ridden a train through the Alps and stared in awe at the stupendous beauty of those history-drenched mountains. She had sat in a German pub listening to the wild music of Gypsies while her parents danced and drank dark beer. She had watched her gloriously beautiful mother dance Sleeping Beauty in ornate, centuries-old theaters and listened to her father read aloud in his booming, powerful voice words that he had written and words he had not.

  All that early roaming had left her ready to settle in this small, quaint place—but if she had spent her childhood here, her curious heart would have led her away, just like so many others.

  Lynn spoke from the door of the quiet room. “Celia. Thank heaven—I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  Struck by an odd tone in her friend’s voice, Celia turned with a frown. “What is it?”

  “I just got a call from some rescue workers.” Her expression was heavy. “They found a man’s body in a rowboat several miles downriver—they think it’s Jake.”

  “Laura Putman’s ex-husband.”

  “Right.”

  “Why did you need to find me for that?” Unconsciously, Celia crossed her arms.

  Lynn gave her a knowing smile. “Honey, I’ve been around the block a time or two. I saw Eric walking from your house this morning.” With a lift of her eyebrows, she added, “I’ve also seen more than one case of whisker burn.”

  Celia guiltily touched the raw pink place on her chin and flushed. “I should have stayed home today.”

  “No one but me would put it together.” Lynn shrugged. “Anyway, someone needs to tell him, and I thought you might be the best one.”

  “I don’t think so,” Celia returned, biting her lip. She dusted the windowsill distractedly with her fingertips. “We didn’t exactly part on the friendliest terms.”

  Lynn settled at one of the desks. “Come sit down for a minute. Whoever it is in that boat isn’t going anywhere.”

  Celia hesitated.

  “We need to talk,” Lynn insisted, and patted the chair.

  “I’m not all that sure I want to talk.”

  “Yeah, I know. Just like you didn’t want to the other night.” Steadfastly, Lynn pointed to the chair.

  Rolling her eyes in defeat, feeling like a recalcitrant child and unable to help herself, Celia sat. “Talk away.”

  Lynn took Celia’s hand and leaned over, her dark eyes penetrating and sharp. “Mmm,” she murmured to herself. “I figure you must have hooked up with him during the flood at some point, since I saw you three days before that and you were fine.”

  Celia looked away.


  “Did he get stranded there?”

  With a sigh of defeat, Celia looked at Lynn with a reluctant smile. “You won’t rest until you get the whole story, will you?”

  “Now you’re getting the idea.”

  “So Texans aren’t just know-it-alls, they’re nosy, too, huh?”

  Lynn squeezed her fingers. “You’re in love with him.”

  Briefly, Celia closed her eyes. Sarcastically she said, “It was such a wise decision on my part. I knew better—but I can’t seem to help it.”

  “Love doesn’t pay much attention to shoulds,” Lynn said quietly. “I can’t tell you your business—but he needs something, that’s for sure.”

  “I have serious doubts that he’ll find it in Gideon.”

  Lynn pursed her lips, then smiled. “His attitude has been pretty bad for a while now, I’ll grant you that. But I have the advantage of having known him a long time, and I know from having seen what he was and where he came from that he’s one of the original fighters.” She paused, shaking her head. “That uncle of his drank up nearly every damned penny Eric earned—and he worked hard, you understand. Did everything—pumped gas and washed windows and mowed lawns.”

  Gently, she stroked Celia’s hand. “Nobody really ever took him seriously, though—they all figured sooner or later he’d end up like the rest of his kin. You didn’t grow up around here—you just can’t know how it is to be white and poor.” She smiled. “Anyway, then Willie Hormel taught him guitar.” She snapped her fingers. “Eric got to where he walked proud, no matter what anybody said.”

  Celia frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but Lynn forestalled her with one uplifted palm.

  “You want to know why he’s got such a bad attitude and I’m getting to that.”

  In spite of herself, Celia felt a brief flicker of amusement. Her father, too, had told stories this way. How many times had she heard her mother sigh in exasperation, “For heaven’s sake, Jacob, just get to the point!”?

  “Well, you know that he left when he was about sixteen or so. It had to have been hard for him out there, but he made his mark. He was a big deal when he came home—those songs he wrote and the fact that he’d played with everybody who was anybody in the blues. The folks around here, well, most of them are happy just to have enough to pay the bills and buy a new used car every few years. Your daddy and Eric Putman went out there and got themselves famous.”

  Slowly, now, the point of Lynn’s tale was emerging. Celia waited.

  “A few years ago, when he came home for Laura’s wedding, there was a girl who followed him wherever he went. She was a lot like him in some ways—she wanted to be somebody, and nobody had ever taken the time to tell her she was. She’d been one of my students, the first year I started teaching.”

  “Retta,” Celia said.

  “He told you about her?”

  “A little. Just the accident.”

  “He blames himself for it,” Lynn said with a shake of her head. “But there’s people who just have a violent end written all over them, and Retta was one even back in high school. She drank too much and she gave herself away—“Lynn made a sad noise. “She and Eric were too much alike.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lynn bit her lip for a moment, and Celia could see she wasn’t absolutely certain she ought to go on.

  “Come on, Lynn,” Celia said. “You’ve gone this far, you may as well go all the way.”

  Lynn nodded. “They neither one of them had any sense of who they were, because there’d never been anyone to tell them they were something besides beautiful. Eric found his guitar and something else to hang on to, but Retta never did. I kept thinking he’d be able to help her, but he didn’t love her—not the way she wanted him to. He took her with him because he saw himself. I think, if Retta hadn’t been so dead set on destroying herself, Eric would have probably married her, love or not. But that wasn’t enough for Retta.”

  The thought of Eric married to someone else, someone he didn’t love, pierced Celia. She bowed her head, knowing the next part of the story—but she wanted to hear it from Lynn, who’d already given a new slant to everything else.

  “When he had the accident, he came home for a little while, just to mend. Retta’s brothers called him a murderer, and there were some folks who were unkind about the life-style they thought musicians indulged in—you know?”

  A conversation wafted through Celia’s mind. Do people still have babies christened? Around here, they sure do. This is the Bible Belt, sister. “I can imagine,” she said.

  “So he lost his guitar, which was all he thought he had, and he came home to the same kind of ugliness he knew when he was a child.” Lynn straightened. “But the worst thing was that he couldn’t save Retta—which in his mind was pretty close to saying he couldn’t save himself, either.”

  Celia rubbed her face. “Sometimes I feel like I’m lost in one of my father’s books. Why do all these people believe all these things?”

  “You haven’t read enough if you have to ask.”

  In surprise, Celia looked up. “You’ve read his books?”

  “Of course I have—he’s our hometown hero!” More seriously, she added, “He was a great writer, Celia, but you have to look pretty deep to see what he was trying to say. I don’t think he meant to be obtuse. He just couldn’t look at Gideon head on.”

  Celia didn’t want to talk about her father. The man was dead, and Lynn had sought her out and told her this story for a reason. “Why did you tell me all these things?”

  “If something happens to Laura—“Lynn shook her head. “He’s gonna need somebody in his corner, Celia. You are that somebody, whether or not either one of you knows it.”

  “Do you mother everyone in Gideon this way?”

  Lynn smiled. “Pretty close. Will you go give him the message?”

  Celia made a sound of annoyance. “Yes. I’ll give it to him.”

  “In person.”

  “Yes.”

  Lynn hugged her. “Thank you.” Without releasing her, Lynn lifted her head. “He really is a man worth knowing. Try to remember how hard things have been for him—don’t give up.”

  “I’m not going to talk about this again. Do you understand?”

  Lynn chuckled. “I read you loud and clear.”

  * * *

  The suppertime odor of frying meat filled the air as Celia drove to Eric’s house. Or rather, she corrected herself, his sister’s house. He didn’t have one.

  She parked and climbed out of the car as calmly as she could. The front door was open and from within came the sound of voices, laughter, a quick squeal of guitar.

  Bitterly Celia thought it hadn’t taken Eric very long to recover from the night. But then, men were like that, weren’t they? Able to engage their bodies without engaging their emotions. Too bad, she thought going up the swept path, women didn’t operate in the same way.

  No matter what Lynn said, Celia was still furiously angry with him. And she didn’t care if it was irrational, if she had encouraged him, if it was wrong. Anger was safer than some of the other things she might feel if she let it go.

  She knocked on the screen door, bracing herself to deliver her message. Eric appeared, for once wearing his shoes and a shirt—a turquoise T-shirt with New Orleans emblazoned over the front. The color lent his eyes a peculiar intensity.

  He frowned, puzzled.” Hi, Celia. Come on in.”

  She nearly protested, but he’d pushed open the door and moved aside to give her passage, and there was nothing else to do. Bowing her head to avoid looking at him, she brushed past him.

  A thin, dark youth sat on the couch, a guitar in his lap. He greeted her cheerfully. “Hi.”

  “Celia,” Eric said, “this is James. He’s a blues guitarist.”

  “Hello,” she said, politely, and bit her lip. She didn’t know if she ought to deliver her message in front of this earnest young man or not. But if she asked to speak to Eric privately, he might constru
e an entirely different meaning from the request. An untenable thought.

  “I don’t want to keep you,” she said, her voice brusque. “Lynn asked me to tell you they’ve found Laura’s ex-husband. Or they think they have—no one has identified the body positively yet.”

  Every scrap of color drained abruptly from Eric’s face. He sank into an armchair. “He’s dead?”

  Celia nodded.

  “Where? How’d they find him—I mean, was Laura—”

  “He was in a rowboat,” she said. “They didn’t really know why or what he was doing.” She took a breath. “There was no sign of Laura.”

  For an instant, he seemed to crumple. Not outwardly. He simply sat in his chair, his hands folded loosely between his knees. Outwardly, Eric looked as sturdy as a live oak, but Celia could see the contraction of muscles, the wince of terror, the bleakness of his horror. Even through her anger, she felt a pluck of sympathy.

  She cleared her throat: “I’ll drive you over there,” she said quietly. “You can see for yourself.”

  James rose. “I’ll come back another time.”

  Distractedly, Eric looked at the youth. “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right, man. Family comes first. I understand that.” With a smile, he dipped his head toward Celia. “It was nice to meet you.”

  “You, too,” she said.

  Even after James ambled out, Eric didn’t move. He just sat there, staring sightlessly at the floor. Celia hesitated, looking around her at the collections of the missing Laura. It was a warm room, with begonias blooming in the windows and a tidy arrangement of books along one wall. The color scheme was a little odd for Celia’s taste, with splashes of red and purple and green against walls of cream. Gold-threaded pillows in the same mix of wild color decorated the couch.

  “She must be something else,” Celia commented, smiling. “A little crazy, but sweet.”

  Eric didn’t reply. His stillness broke suddenly as he took a long hard breath and bent his head into his hand, pressing a fist against a spot on his forehead. “Lord have mercy,” he whispered roughly, and it was plain the words were as close as he could get to a prayer.