Charming Grace (8 page)

Just as he’d always been mine.

Chapter 5

I was eight years old and running from God, man and the law on a pony named Frenchie. Mama had died two days before and life for us Noleenes had taken a big turn for the worse. Behind me, Armand kicked a faster gallop out of a small pinto he’d named Go Man. “Keep ol’ Frenchie’s ass movin’!” he yelled. I dutifully gouged the fat pony with my bare heels, feeling bad about it. Frenchie was my best friend, next to Armand. Ahead of me, the pine woods and swamps closed in on our sandy jeep trail. I gagged on the smell of stale water and rot, stinking and smothering in the heat of that August day.

A dusty parish police car roared around the bend behind us, fishtailing but sticking to the narrow trail like a toy racer on a track. We didn’t stand a chance. “Head off!” Armand yelled, and pointed to our right. I swung Frenchie off the road with Armand and Go-Man on his chestnut tail. We curved Frenchie and Go-Man among the pines like pole racers at the rodeo. The patrol car slid to a stop. I heard a door slam, then, “Goddammit, you little sonsuvbitches! They ain’t nothing and nobody out yonder in the world to care for y’all! Come on back here!”

Armand slid Go-Man to a stop and wheeled him around. “Go’n fuck a goat!” he shouted. Even at twelve Armand had a suave way with words. “I’ll take care of my little bro and ‘tween the two of us we’ll take care of
ourselves
!”

Armand whirled Go-Man again and took off after me. Small tree limbs slapped me in the face, setting loose tears I could blame on the pines. Mama lay in a morgue over in a little bayou town we’d called home; we wouldn’t even get to see her buried. Our dear ol’ daddy, a man named Drew Noleene, only looked out for us from some snapshots Mama had kept in her frillies drawer. He’d left when I was a baby; Armand had only a vague, but good, recollection of him, and so made up plenty of exalting stories.

“He was a secret agent like James Bond and the gov’ment sent him off to Russia to kick some ass,” Armand would say. Or, “He went down to N’awlins and got a fine job on an oil tanker. Those oil people are payin’ him the big money, and he’s gonna come back rich some day. He took the job for him and Mama to buy us our own ranch. He told me so right ‘fore he left.”

Secret agent or oil rigger, it didn’t matter. Our daddy was long gone, and now Mama was dead. We’d had a good upbringing on the big cattle ranch where she cooked and kept house for a rich old man who was retired from business. That old man would’ve let me and Armand stay on, going to school and working for him, but his fat-cat son from N’awlins called for the cops. One of the wranglers tipped Armand off. The bastard was sendin’ us to some kind of boy’s home.

“No way,” Armand said.

By sunset of our getaway day we rode out of the pine swamps on the edge of a pretty little farm. “Keep to the bushes,” Armand whispered. We hid behind some big camellias looking into the quiet yard of a nice house with porch swings. Bees swarmed in the heavy air. Grief and fear felt like suction cups on my skin. Armand flicked a blistered finger across the open blade of a long pocket knife. Frenchie and Go-Man snorted softly in the hot, dimming light. Under a metal awning beside the house, an old blue Chevy Impala waited.

“We’re takin’ that car,” Armand announced. “Soon as it’s dark.”

“
We can’t steal a car
.” I hunched over, bile rising in an empty stomach. Between coughs I went on, “Mama’s dead in heaven and if we steal a car
we’ll go to hell
!”

Armand looked down at me with a jaunty smile. If my brother was ever afraid of anything, including Hell, he never let me know. “Nah, bro,” he drawled, “we’re going to heaven, just like Mama. Only by way of N’awlins.”

I had never been to New Orleans. It lay on the edge of the Gulf waters like a kingdom in a fairytale. I saw it on TV, on maps; I only heard about it. “What . . . what are we gonna do in
a place that big
?”

“We’re gonna find ol’ Escheline Taber.”

“Her! But Mama says . . . ” I choked. “Mama always
said
that old lady’s probably dead. Mama says,
said
, she did
voodoo
. Says,
said
—”

“Would you shut up?” Armand’s voice trembled. “Mama also says—” Armand halted, his throat working around the same painful mistake I kept making—“Mama
said
I should take care of you. You dig, little bro? I’m in charge now. And I
say
you and me ain’t gonna be split up and sent to no damned orphanage. We’re goin’ to N’awlins and find Miz Taber.” Armand punched me, hugged me, then took Frenchie’s reins from me. “Sorry, but we got to leave Frenchie and Go-Man here.”

I stared at him, then at the fat gray pony I’d loved since I was old enough to climb on his back. I had two dreams in my life: To be a cowboy and an architect. I didn’t think in those lofty terms—it was more like,
Build things and ride things
. But I knew.

And love things. Armand and Frenchie were all I had left.

“He’ll get out in the road and get hit by a truck,” I moaned.

“Nah. He’s a smart pony. He’ll go find him a pasture and a new home. Go-Man’ll take care of him.” Turning away so I couldn’t see his eyes, Armand snuffled and patted Go-Man’s nose. “Go-Man’ll lead the way. Yeah. He’s a smart guy, Go-Man.” Armand gently thumped a fist on the pony’s broad white forehead. “Smart guy. Go-Man. Go-Man.” He stepped back, chin up. “They’ll be just fine.”

I felt like I was strangling. “But, but—”

Armand grabbed me. “We got no fuckin’ choice.” A tear slid down his face. I knew then that he was right. If Armand cried, it was hopeless.

We unsaddled the ponies, took off their bridles, and shooed them. Frenchie studied me with big, dark eyes. “Go on and find you some sweet grass to eat,” I told him, the words burning. “I’ll come get you later. Promise.”

“Go on, mule head,” Armand said to Go-Man, then snuffled and looked away.

Go-Man wandered toward a field behind some shacks. Slowly, Frenchie followed him.
I’ll come back for you
, I called silently.
I promise. I’ll come back for goodness sake
. For the goodness lost that night in my childhood and Armand’s. I believed that.

“
Now
,” Armand hissed. The light had finally faded to dusk. We ran like shadows to the old car. Armand shoved me in the back seat. “Get down on the floor and
stay
down.”

He vaulted into the front seat. I heard the scrape of his knife blade as he slid it into the ignition. Thanks to hanging out with the ranch’s bums and wranglers, my bro knew how to do things he shouldn’t know how to do. “Swamp cowboys got godless ideas and bad habits,” Mama liked to say, usually in French, usually while crossing herself. So did Armand, now.

The engine cranked. We rolled out into the hot Louisiana night, eased down a back road, made our way to a main road, and got off scot free. Armand yelled—just
yelled
, like a wounded war cry; it put chills down my back. I climbed over the seat into the front and sank into the old sedan’s cool vinyl, trying not to cry. We cranked down the windows and let the air roar over us.

Armand yelled above the wind, “I swear to you, little bro, I’ll buy you a hundred ponies. We’re gonna be rich. We’re gonna be somebody. You’ll see. The Noleene brothers won’t ever be kicked out of their home again! If I have to beg borrow or steal. You’ll see!”

I said nothing, just nodded. I’d follow Armand anywhere, do anything he wanted me to do. I tried not to think about Mama, or Frenchie, or the future. I nodded again then turned my wet eyes to the N’awlins-bound wind.

Beg, borrow, or steal.

Steal.

We Noleene brothers had too much pride to beg or borrow.

Madame Taber. Palm Reading and Pawn Shop
.

“What’s a palm readin’ and pawn shop?” I whispered to Armand. Dirty, scared and worn out, we stood on a cracked New Orleans’ sidewalk at midnight. This back street of the famous French Quarter didn’t look any pretty tourist picture I’d ever seen, unless passed-out hippies and half-naked women who lolled just outside the light of the street lamps were tourists.

Armand winced. “Keep quiet. I’ll do the talkin’.” He eased up to a peeling blue door sprinkled with shaky, hand-painted white crucifixes that looked like they were flying off in every direction, like weird birds.

He knocked long and loud. A little red lamp, like a wavery eye, came on inside. We heard heavy footsteps coming downstairs; chains rattled, and locks pulled back. The door swung open. A big, stringy young guy thrust his face out. He smelled like beans and gin and pot. “Wha’ the fuck do you kids want?”

Armand pushed me further behind him. “We’re lookin’ for Madame Taber. Our mama sent us.”

“Your mama? Who the shit is yo’ mama and why would I give a—”

“Our mama’s Gigi Noleene.”

“Gigi! Law, Gigi!” an old-lady voice scratched out, from somewhere in the red-shaded dark behind Bean Boy. A dumpy little witch woman pushed in front of Bean Boy. Hard to say what color she was. Red nosed and yellow skinned, with black eyes and a black lady’s crinkled black hair. Mixed, I guess. Nothing new about that, where we came from. It was just the strange combination. Bean Boy—who’d we find out later was her son, Jeremiah, was potato-white with long, thin brown hair and glazed black eyes. Madame Taber cooed at us. “You Gigi’s boys?”

“Yes, ma’am. Armand and Boone. Mama’s dead. She always spoke highly of you. We got nowhere else to go. So we thought you might help us out.”

“Law, what handsome boys. I knowed your daddy, and you too look like him. Big man, always moving, full of charm, full of trouble. Oh, your poor mama. My poor Gigi. When I worked for her mama, I practically raised Miss Gigi. Y’all come on in here. Course you can stay. Comeon. I’ll go heat up some beans for your supper.” She shuffled away.

Her son glared at us. “What do I need with a pair of little toad turds like y’all?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” said Armand without batting an eyelash, like his mouth was anchored to balls the size of cantaloupes. “We give us a place to sleep—you
don’t
give us any shit—and we’ll give you everything we find on the streets. For your pawn business.”

“You think I take hot goods, boy?”

“I didn’t say nothin’ about stealin’. I said what we find.
Find
. All these people who come here, rich people, they
drop
things, you know. Wallets and watches and shit. Me and my bro, we got good eyes. We’ll just be on the look out for what people lose.”

“You are one big-dicked piece of work.” But suddenly, he smiled. I had never seen so many gold teeth in my life. “All right. I’ll set you up sellin’ balloons down by Lafayette Square.”

“Deal.” They shook on it.

Later, as we bunked in a sagging bed in a hot attic upstairs, Armand said, “You’re gonna sell balloons. That’s
all
you’re gonna do.”

“But…what are
you
gonna do?”

“I’ll be lookin’ for tourists with lazy fingers,” Armand said. “And I intend to find
plenty
of ‘em. I know it’s hard to believe, little bro, but we’ll get by. And one day we’ll be rich, and we won’t ever have to ask any two-bit shit for any thing. I promise.”

I snuggled as close to him as I could without being too sissy. He didn’t seem to mind. “I believe you,” I whispered.

I dreamed of Mama and Frenchie that night, and of Armand crying in his sleep, like me.

Before long Armand became the best thief in the French Quarter and I wasn’t far behind. He tried to keep me on the balloon beat but the hot air of decency wouldn’t support us. “I know you take a lot of grief from Jeremiah when you don’t
find
enough
lost
stuff,” I told Armand. “I know he threatens to smack you around. You need a partner.”

Armand sputtered and cursed and threatened to ram my head into a wall, but I ignored him and joined our little two-man itchy-fingers business. All we had was each other, thieves or not. So there I was—former balloon huckster, now a pre-teen street thief. I never picked a tourist’s pocket, though. That was somehow mean, personal, undignified. I was still Gigi Noleene’s good Catholic boy.