DR10 - Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

the people they once were.
    "He tole me, you shake me again, you going away, Willie," she
said.
    "Who say that?"
    She walked out of the room and didn't answer.
    "Who?" he called after her.
     
    IT WAS THE LETTER that did it.
    Or the letter that he didn't read in its entirety, at least
not until later.
    He had driven the truck back from the store, turned into his
yard, and seen her behind the house, pulling her undergarments, jeans,
work shirts, socks, and dresses, her whole wardrobe, off the wash line.
    A letter written with a pencil stub on a sheet of lined paper,
torn from a notebook, lay on the coffee table in the living room.
    He could hear his breath rising and falling in his mouth when
he picked it up, his huge hand squeezing involuntarily on the bottom of
the childlike scrawl.
    Dear Willie,
    You wanted to know who the man was I been sleeping
with. I am
telling you his name not out of meaness but because you will find out
anyway and I dont want you to go back to prison. Alex Guidry was good
to me when you were willing to turn me over to Mr. Harpo because of
some moonshine whisky. You cant know what it is like to have that old
man put his hand on you and tell you to come into the shed with him and
make you do the things I had to do. Alex wouldnt let Mr. Harpo bother
me any more and I slept with him because I wanted to and—
    He crumpled up the paper in his palm and flung it into the
corner. In his mind's eye he saw Alex Guidry's fish camp, Guidry's
corduroy suit and western hat hung on deer anders, and Guidry himself
mounted between Ida's legs, his muscled buttocks thrusting his phallus
into her, her fingers and ankles biting for purchase into his white
skin.
    Cool Breeze hurled the back screen open and attacked her in
the yard. He slapped her face and knocked her into the dust, then
picked her up and shook her and shoved her backward onto the wood
steps. When she tried to straighten her body with the heels of her
hands, pushing herself away from him simultaneously, he saw the smear
of blood on her mouth and the terror in her eyes, and realized, for the
first time in his life, the murderous potential and level of
self-hatred that had always dwelled inside him.
    He tore down the wash line and kicked over the basket that was
draped with her clothes. The leafless branches of the pecan tree
overhead exploded with the cawing of crows. He didn't hear the truck
engine start in the front and did not realize she was gone, that he was
alone in the yard with his rage, until he saw the truck speeding into
the distance, the detritus of the sugarcane harvest spinning in its
vacuum.
     
    TWO DUCK HUNTERS FOUND her body at
dawn, in a bay off the
Atchafalaya River. Her fingers were coated with ice and extended just
above the water's surface, the current silvering across the tips. A
ship's anchor chain, one with links as big as bricks, was coiled around
her torso like a fat serpent. The hunters tied a Budweiser carton to
her wrist to mark the spot for the sheriffs department.
    A week later Cool Breeze found the crumpled paper he had flung
in the corner. He spread it flat on the table and began reading where
he had left off before he had burst into the back yard and struck her
across the face.
    I slept with him because I wanted to and because I
was so mad at you and hurt over what you did to the wife that has
always loved you
.
    But Alex Guidry dont want a blakgirl in his life, at
least not on the street in the day lite. I know that now and I dont
care and I tole him that. I will leave if you want me to and not blame
you for it. I just want to say I am sorry for treating you so bad but
it was like you had thrown me away forever.
    Your wife,
    Ida Broussard
     
    COOL BREEZE LAY ON a row of air
cushions inside the cabin
cruiser, his arm in a sling, his face sweating. When he had finished
speaking, Megan looked at me sadly, her eyes prescient with the
knowledge that a man's best explanation for his life can be one that
will never satisfy him