The Devil’s Punchbowl

I pause beside Annie’s door and peek through the crack. A pale green night-light limns her form, bunched beneath the covers. That she can sleep alone in her own room brings me an abiding sense of peace. After Sarah died, Annie not only had to sleep in my bed, but also had to be in direct physical contact with me. If her hand fell from my arm or hip, she’d jerk awake with night terrors. The peace she now enjoys is a testament to the soundness of my decision to bring her back here. Living near my father and mother brought Annie the gift once enjoyed by all societies that revered the extended family: a profound sense of security. That decision cost me my future with Caitlin, but Annie’s recovery has given me the strength to deal with that loss. And yet…tonight a nagging voice echoes endlessly beneath my conscious thoughts: We’ve stayed too long…

After I undress and brush my teeth, I walk to my bedroom window and gaze across sixty feet of space to the second floor of Caitlin’s house. Is she there? Did she fall asleep with the light on? Or is she down at the Examiner offices, badgering the editor about the layout of tomorrow’s paper? This thought brings a smile, but then I realize Caitlin could just as easily be dancing at one of the bars on Main Street, or exercising her gift for irony at the expense of some pompous, nouveau-riche redneck who threw a balloon-race party. I feel a compulsion to walk down and check her garage for a rental car. Has eighteen months of separation from her turned me into a stalker? The reality is that she could pull up to her house right now with a man and disappear inside for a night of recreational sex behind that familiar curtain.

Christ. As selfish as it sounds, this image has a more violent effect on my adrenal glands than the photos I viewed in the cemetery. If I’m this jealous, can I possibly be over her? One thing is sure: I’ll be damned–truly damned–if I stand here mooning at her light like a latter-day Gatsby, until the very scene I fear transpires before me. Caitlin left me because I believed the path to my future lay through the past. So what the hell is she doing back here, where the past is never past?

As I drift toward sleep, the images from Tim’s cell phone snapshots rise again, but they seem remote, like evidence dropped on my desk by cops I dealt with in Houston. Can young girls be raped and dogs be slaughtered within sight of the town I love so dearly? In the foggy frontier between sleep and wakefulness the idea seems farfetched, yet one burden of my legal experience is the knowledge that savage crimes occur in the most benign settings, that screams go unheard, that pleas for mercy are ignored, even relished.

When thoughts like these trouble my passage into sleep, I use a trick taught me by a sixties-era rock musician I saved from going to jail in Houston. Whenever drug withdrawal sent him into paroxysms of pain and need, whenever the demons came for him, he would picture a virgin field of ice, blue-white and impossibly clean, so remote that no footprint had ever marred its surface. He would focus on that scene until he felt himself inside it, and sometimes peace would come. To my surprise, I found this sometimes works for me as well. But tonight, as I carefully construct my Zen-like sanctuary, I cannot keep the demons out. Dark shapes move beneath the ice like predators prowling a vast sea, ever alert for the shadows of prey on the white sheet above.

Tonight I’m on the ice, I realize, one more shadow to be hunted. A penumbra the size of a small car flashes beneath me, and I run. Though I lie supine in bed, my heart thumps in my chest, and the blood rushes through my veins. Far ahead, I see a blue mark on the ice. A hole. Beside it Tim Jessup stands shirtless and blue from the cold. As I crunch toward him, he removes his pants and looks down into the hole. I shout for him to wait, but he doesn’t hear. He sits down, dangles his legs in the water, then, with a gentle shove like a boy edging himself off a roof, drops through the blue-black opening. I start to scream, but a new vision stops me. Stark against the horizon, a wolf stands watching me. His fur is bone white, and his eyes gleam with unsettling intelligence. I try to stop running, but I slide forward, hopelessly out of control. As I come to rest, the wolf begins to move, walking at first, then loping toward me with single-minded purpose. His eyes transfix me, and as I try to force my legs to backpedal, I hear Tim’s hysterical voice crying, ‘You don’t know, man! You don’t know….’

6

Julia sits at her kitchen table, staring at a Ziploc sandwich bag filled with speckled pills and white powder. She found it an hour ago, when the running toilet got on her nerves badly enough to make her remove the tank cover. The baggie was sealed inside a small Tupperware container weighted with a handful of bolts. The edge of the Tupperware lid was keeping the toilet flapper from sealing. Tim had been clean for so long that the first moments after lifting the container out of the tank filled Julia with confusion. But after removing the lid, she’d felt her universe imploding as surely as if a black hole had swept into it.

She’d set the baggie on the kitchen table and simply stared at it for a while, shivering with anger and her sense of betrayal. But mostly she felt fear, because she hadn’t seen any sign that Tim was using again. To stop her hands from shaking, she got out her crocheting needle and tried to crochet the way her grandmother had taught her, but her mind was unable to direct her fingers. So she waited, her gaze moving from the dope on the table to the clock on the stove, an endless motion of eyes that offered no solace.

Julia tenses now, listening for sound from the baby’s room. It’s 3:45 a.m., almost time for a feeding. She has preternatural hearing when it comes to her baby; Tim is constantly amazed by the things she picks up. It’s like she’s bound to the child by an invisible thread, a silken strand like a spider’s web, and if little Timmy moves, it pulls something down in Julia’s belly. She knows what that something is.

When you lose a child and God grants you another, you take no chances. She feels the same way about Tim, but on that score there isn’t a lot she can do. Someone has to stay with the baby. She’s been worried recently, but not about drugs–not for a long time. It infuriates her to think that she was afraid for Tim tonight. Before she found that baggie, she’d believed he was doing something about whatever he’d seen at work, and trying to protect her by not telling her details. But he’d been almost three hours late even then. She feels so stupid that she wants to tear out her hair or whip herself.

As if Penn Cage would stay out this late with Tim! Penn is home in bed with Libby Jensen, or somebody like her. Someone smart who can still laugh with innocence in her eyes, someone who has her shit together. Julia wonders briefly why Penn left Libby. Maybe Libby doesn’t have her shit quite as together as she seems to. Maybe she doesn’t really understand what’s important in life. Or maybe Penn just grew bored with her, the way men do.

Julia hadn’t thought Tim was bored with her, but there’s the dope, right there on the table. What else could it mean? That he can’t cope? With what ? With happiness? With a loving wife and a beautiful son? This thought terrifies her. Julia once thought Tim was smarter than she, and he is, in book smartness. But what good is that when the issue is survival, as it has been for them? Julia’s common sense and fortitude have gotten them through some tough times. To sit facing the prospect of reliving the hell she thought long behind them is almost more than she can bear. She has gone from fury to terror and back a thousand times. The pills make her wonder about other women. A woman might push Tim back to using, if she was an addict, a woman from the boat, maybe—

An unfamiliar scraping sound brings Julia to full alertness, the yarn stretched taut between her fingers and the hook. That noise didn’t come from the baby’s room–she’s sure of that. It sounded like someone raising the window in the guest room at the back of the house.

She swallows hard, then goes to the cabinet above the stove and takes down the pistol Tim stole from his father’s safe back when he was using. He’d tried to give it back later, but his father told him to keep it. The gun is heavy and black, but Julia grips it firmly in her flexed fist and tiptoes to the back of the house.

Terror hits her, gluing her bare feet to the floor. She can hear shoes moving behind the door. They creak as the intruder shifts his weight. Could it be the police? No–they would crash through the door. It might be another junkie, coming to steal Tim’s stash. When the window slides back down, Julia tightens her finger on the trigger and almost fires through the door.

She’s on the verge of bolting for the baby’s crib when she realizes that the intruder must be Tim, because there’s no light on in the guest room, yet the person inside is moving with assurance. She slides back three steps and aims the pistol at the door. If it opens and anyone but Tim appears, she will fire. She hears a muttered curse, and then the door opens.

Tim jerks as though he’s been hit with a cattle prod when he sees the gun pointed at his face. Then suddenly he is apologizing, begging her to forgive him. She’s so angry that she wants to shoot him, but her relief is even stronger.

‘Where were you?’ she cries in a squelched scream. ‘It’s four in the morning!’

‘Hey, hey,’ he says soothingly, throwing some balled-up clothes onto the floor. ‘It’s going to be all right now.’

‘Bullshit!’ she hisses. ‘I almost shot you! You fucking liar! Liar liar LIAR!’

Tim’s forehead wrinkles with puzzlement. ‘What are you talking about? I’ve been with Penn, honey. You don’t want to know more than that.’

Julia wipes her eyes with a quivering hand and looks at him the way she used to when she had to manage every moment of his life to keep him from sliding back into the abyss. She means to ask about the drugs, but what she says is ‘Just with Penn?’

Something in the quick blinking of his eyes tells her that whatever follows is going to be a lie. As she turns away, the fine cracks that have accumulated in her trust over the past weeks give way, and the true fragility of her existence is revealed. She stifles a wail, then goes to the kitchen cupboard and takes out a bottle of Isomil to heat on the stove.

She now knows that what she told herself after leaving her first husband was a lie. If a man ever cheats on me again, I’ll leave him in a second. So easy to say, but with a baby in the nursery things get a lot more complicated.

‘Julia?’ Tim says awkwardly.

If he tries to approach her, she will move away to avoid smelling another woman on him. ‘There’s something for you on the table,’ she says coldly.

‘Huh?’

‘The table!’ She watches the gas flame glow at the edge of the pot.

‘Oh, God,’ Tim breathes. ‘Julia—’

‘Mm-hm?’

‘It’s not what you think.’

‘It’s not? That’s not dope on the table? That’s not Vicodin and cocaine?’

‘No. I mean…it is, yeah. You know it is.’

‘Let me guess. It’s not yours, right? You’re just holding it for somebody.’

Hearing the floor creak, she holds up a hand to ward him off. He stops.

‘Baby, I know what you think, but that stuff is part of what Penn and I are doing.’

Even Julia is surprised by the harshness of her laughter. ‘Oh, right. I understand now. You and the mayor are using a bag of dope to save the city.’

There’s a brief silence. Then Tim says, ‘Actually that’s about it. Penn doesn’t know about that part of it, but it’s the only way. That’s all I can really tell you now. Anything else would be dangerous. In a few days, though, I should be able to explain it to you.’

‘If you’re not in jail, you mean?’

Tim sighs in what sounds like exhaustion. ‘I just wish you’d believe me. Haven’t I earned that yet?’

Julia grips the pot handle with her shaking hands. Part of her wants to throw the hot water on him, to scald him for lying to her. But part of her wants to believe. Tim sounded like he was telling the truth about the drugs, and she truly hasn’t seen any signs of his being high. But he’s lying about something–that she knows.

‘Julia?’

‘You’re home now,’ she snaps, her eyes locked onto the milk bottle warming in the pot of water. ‘Whatever you’re doing, get it done, so we can get back to living.’

Tim keeps his distance. ‘Okay.’

‘All right,’ she says, cutting off further discussion. ‘Go get Timmy, please. You know what time it is. He’s going to start crying any second.’

The kitchen is so small she can feel Tim nodding in the shadows. ‘Okay,’ he mumbles in surrender.

Julia opens the bottle and touches some hot milk to the inside of her wrist. She knows what’s important.

7

I come awake swatting at my bedside table like a man battling a horsefly. According to the alarm clock, I got four hours of sleep. It’s all I can do to walk blindly into the shower and stand under scalding spray until my synapses seem to be firing normally. After making sure Annie is awake, I dress a little sharper than usual, since I have to spend at least two hours giving Hans Necker, the visiting CEO, a tour of sites for his recycling plant. Annie gives me a thumbs-up when I walk into the kitchen, a rare seal of approval for my day’s outfit. She’s eating cereal and some garlic cheese grits my mother made yesterday. I finish off the cheese grits, drink the cup of coffee Annie has made me, and follow her out to the car, so exhausted that I forget to glance into Caitlin’s driveway for a car.

Annie is uncharacteristically quiet during the ride to St Stephen’s, but as we near the turn for the school, I discover why.

‘I dreamed about Caitlin last night,’ she says softly.

‘Did you?’ I wonder whether my daughter could have seen or heard something across the street that told her Caitlin might be in town.

Annie nods with slow deliberation. As I watch her from the corner of my eye, it strikes me that the topless teenager serving beer in Tim’s photograph was probably only four years older than my daughter. This realization is freighted with such horror that I have to clear my throat and look away. Annie knows nothing of such things yet, or at least I hope she doesn’t. Right now one of her deepest concerns is the women in my life.

‘Have you ever dreamed about Caitlin before?’ I ask.

‘Yes. Not for a long time, though.’

‘What was last night’s dream about?’

Annie keeps her eyes forward. ‘I don’t want to say.’

Strange. ‘Why not? Was it scary?’

‘Not at first. But then it was, kind of.’

Recalling my own nightmare of the ice field and the wolf, I turn into the school’s driveway and pull up to the door of the middle school building. ‘Sometimes things are less scary if you talk about them.’

Annie looks at me with her mother’s eyes. ‘I just want to think about it for a while.’

Her enigmatic expression tells me she’s already beyond my understanding. ‘You know what’s best for you, I guess.’

She gets out and shoulders her backpack like a younger version of her babysitter, but as she walks through the big doors, I see her mother in every sway of her body. It’s moments like these–the most commonplace events–that hit me hardest, reminding me that widower is more than an archaic word. As my eleven-year-old disappears into the halls of the same school I attended at her age, I wish fervently that the woman who supplied the other half of Annie’s DNA could have lived to see who she’s becoming.

‘Baby girl,’ I whisper to the breath-fogged window, ‘Mama sees you.’

In this affirmation lies a hope that I’ve never quite been able to sustain, yet still I continue to affirm it. I don’t believe Sarah sits in heaven looking benevolently down upon our daughter; but I do believe she survives within Annie–in her face, her voice, in her quick perception and even temperament. In my years with Caitlin, seeing these avatars of my wife in my daughter brought pleasure, not pain. But now, alone again, I find that each memory carries a sharp edge on its trailing side. Whatever brings you comfort can also bring you pain.

I turn onto Highway 61 and force my thoughts to the business of the city, which takes more effort than I would have believed possible two years ago.

Whoever said, ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ must have served as mayor of a small town. If there were ever a case of being punished with one’s dream, being elected mayor of Natchez is it. The mayor of a city like Houston has a certain amount of insulation from his electorate, which he can justify in the name of security. But when you’re mayor of a small town, every mother’s son believes your time is his, no matter where you are or what you might be doing. A call from a Fortune 500 company might be followed by an irate visit from a man whose neighbor’s goats keep eating his rosebushes. If you keep your sense of humor, you can tolerate these situations with equanimity, but I’ve been having difficulty maintaining mine for some time now.

Today it’s neither goats nor roses, but a Minnesota millionaire with a bold–or possibly crazy–scheme to recycle waste from all the cities along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Hans Necker plans to gather aluminum, plastic, and paper refuse, compress it at collection points, then float the resulting cubes downstream on barges to a recycling facility at Greenville or Natchez or Baton Rouge–wherever he ultimately decides to locate his plant. One thing is sure: Katrina just scratched New Orleans off his short list. We have three potential sites for such a facility in Natchez, all close to one another. Despite this, Necker has chartered a helicopter to view them, as well as the city and its environs. Even the thought of spending hours bobbing and pitching over the city in a chopper gives me a mild case of airsickness, but what choice do I have? Hans Necker wants a sky tour from the mayor, so a sky tour he will get.

Halfway to the airport, Paul Labry, one of the few selectman I consider a friend, texts me that Necker is running late. The CEO has already spent more time in Greenville than he’d expected to, and the selectmen are drawing all sorts of negative conclusions from this. I can’t get too stirred up about it. Compared to what I’d have to deal with if Tim Jessup were to uncover proof of his allegations, losing a possible recycling plant seems like small potatoes.

With the jarring synchronicity I experience so often in life, my cell phone vibrates against my thigh. I take it out, expecting another update from Labry, but I find a text message from a number I don’t know. I don’t even recognize the area code. When I click READ, the words make my mouth go dry.

Xing the Rubicon. Stay close to ur fon & n range of a tower. Don’t respond 2 this msg! Mrs Haley.

‘Shit,’ I whisper. Mrs Haley taught Tim Jessup and me Latin in the eighth grade. Crossing the Rubicon? What the hell is Tim playing at? I figured he’d wait at least a few days to try whatever it is he’s been planning. Doesn’t he understand how important this weekend is to the city? ‘Shit,’ I say again, unable to get my mind around the idea that Jessup could be committing any number of felonies at this moment, endangering both himself and the future of the casino industry in Mississippi.

‘Tim, you crazy son of a bitch,’ I mutter, and start to reply to his message with a warning. But before I hit SEND, caution wins out over anxiety, and I shove the phone deep into my pocket.

Locking my car, I march out onto the tarmac where a few single-engine planes wait in lonely silence. There isn’t much to see at the airport. Natchez hasn’t had steady commercial service since the 1970s, when the oil business was booming and the DC-3s of Southern Airways flew in and out every day. I remember being led aboard one of the sturdy old planes by a pretty stewardess when my parents took my sister and me to London as children. I’ve always believed that trip generated my sister Jenny’s love of Britain, a love that eventually pulled her away from us for good. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the buffeting wind from the big propellers as they revved up to carry us to the Pan Am 747 waiting in New Orleans. Two slices of Americana gone forever.

I need that prop wash this afternoon. Last night’s wind died this morning, and the sun blazes white over the runways, roasting me as I check the northern sky for Hans Necker’s Gulfstream IV. The lack of wind was good for the Balloon Festival’s ‘media flight’ this morning, but it sucks for a man wearing a long-sleeved button-down, even Egyptian cotton. The humidity in south Mississippi could drown a desert dweller if he breathed too fast.

After shedding another pint of sweat, I finally spy a silver glint in the sky far upriver. As Necker’s jet descends toward me, I hear the whup-whup-whup of a helicopter approaching from the south. The Gulfstream circles and executes its approach from the southeast, landing as gracefully as the first duck of winter on a dawn-still pond. As the jet taxies up to the small terminal, a blue Bell helicopter descends toward the tarmac twenty yards away from me. Then the aft door of the Gulfstream opens and the steps unfold to the ground with a hydraulic hum.

Hans Necker emerges alone, a stocky, red-faced man of about sixty with a grip of iron. ‘Penn, Penn! Face-to-face at last,’ he says, walking exuberantly while we shake hands. ‘Sorry to be late, but we made up most of the time in flight.’

I greet Necker with as much enthusiasm as I can muster while he guides me past the tail of his jet and toward the settling chopper. Straight to business, then. Suits me. The sooner we go up, the sooner we get back.

The moment the chopper’s skids touch down, Necker yanks open the side door, pushes me into the vibrating craft, and climbs in next to me. The pilot points at two headsets lying on the seat. I slip one on, then grip the handle to my left in anticipation of takeoff.

‘Take her up, Major!’ Necker shouts in my crackling headset.

The chopper rises like a leaf on a gust of wind. Then its nose dips and we start forward, rapidly gathering speed as we climb into the blue-white sky.

‘Penn,’ Necker says over the intercom link, ‘our pilot’s Danny McDavitt. Flew in Vietnam.’

‘Good to meet you,’ I tell the back of the graying head in front of me.

‘You too,’ says a voice of utter calm.

I recognize McDavitt’s name from an incident about six months ago involving a helicopter crash-landing in the river. There was some talk about the pilot and a local doctor’s wife, but there’s so much talk like that all the time that I only pay attention if it involves me or the city. The idea of a crash awakens a swarm of butterflies in my stomach, but in the sixty seconds it takes us to sight the Mississippi River to the west, Danny McDavitt convinces me that he’s an extension of the machine carrying us, or that the machine is an extension of his will. Either way, I’m happy, because this chopper flight is the first I’ve ever endured without my stomach going south on me.

‘How did the media flight go this morning?’ Necker asks, his face pressed against the glass beside him.

‘Great!’ I reply too loudly. ‘Weather looks good for most of the weekend. Except maybe Sunday.’