The Plot (16 page)

“I've got to get her,” he said. “Alex and that big ape!”

“Now you're being the big dumb hero to match Alex! Are you going to rush off right into danger after her? Without using your head either?”

“I don't intend to use my head.” He hit one fist against the other one. He wanted to feel Budder's jawbone against his fist, to hit him in the soft flesh of his abdomen.

“Calm down, Louis. He won't touch her unless I tell him to. It isn't that he wouldn't like to, but with Budder it's ‘No, no, three thousand bucks, no.' What I'm trying to say is that even your beautiful precious Alex doesn't look as good to Budder as this check for three thousand dollars.” She had the check in her hand, she was waving it, and it was her own check made out to Louis Daignot.

Louis didn't bother reading it. “To hell with your check.”

“Wait just a minute, Louis!” But he would not stop. She grabbed his arm, but he pulled her along with him, moving down the hall.

“I can find the street all right, even if I was tight.” He was trying to locate, in his mind, the little shack Budder and his sister occupied. “If I can't, I'll go to that bar. They'll know where Budder lives.”

“So you're going down there on your white charger to rescue the fair lady?” She had released his arm, but was following him closely. Now he opened the front door. “Don't be such a fool, Louis.” She moved out after him. “Maybe by some stretch of the imagination you can see yourself knocking Budder out, although he has sixty pounds on you, but that isn't going to get you Alex.” She grabbed his arm again.

“Let go of me.”

“You don't think she's sitting in that dirty bedroom of Budder's waiting to knight you when you win your fight with Budder, do you?”

Now he paused, because if Alex wasn't there …

She used the respite to catch her breath. “I told him to put her somewhere else, I figured you would do just this. Here's your compass, your passport, your ammunition, Louis.” She held the check toward him. “The only thing that will get you the fair Alex is this check and a couple of scratches of your doughty pen. Here's your key.

“Ah, don't be so selfish, Louis. You can take a poke at Budder afterward, if that's what you want to do. I don't think it's gentlemanly of you to keep Alex locked up while you scour all Charleston for traces of her. Give him this first, get Alex out first, then indulge your pugnacity.”

He stared at the check, wishing she were wrong, knowing perfectly well that she wanted his name on the check, that she wanted another souvenir of their complicity; but she was right. He had no choice, not when he thought of Alex and Budder. (When he thought of Alex and Budder, he didn't think; a screen of feeling, hot, red, vaporous, rolled up between him and thought.) “And if I don't?”

“Budder promised me to wait a certain length of time.” She pulled up her sleeves and pretended to be examining the big black-and-blue bruises on it. “Don't pity me; I like it. Do you think Alex will like it? Go on, take the check. It will cover both Alex' honor and Libbie Mae's honor.” She laughed. “Would you say half for Libbie Mae's and half for Alex' honor, or would you divide it differently?”

Joseph Reas had just driven up with the car, bringing the dinner. Ethel spoke to him peremptorily. “Will you take out the dinner and then drive Mr. Daignot to Charleston immediately?”

“But, Miss Ethel——”

“Mr. Daignot is going to get Miss Alex. Maum Cloe must be worried about Miss Alex.”

Joseph Reas nodded. Maum Cloe
was
nervous.

“Mr. Daignot will bring her back. Alive,” she added, allowing herself to laugh.

“If”—Louis licked his dry lips—“if anything has happened to her, Ethel, I'll kill you. Do you hear that?”

“I hear it. Did you hear it, Joseph Reas?”

“I don't care who hears it. If anything has happened to Alex, I'll break your neck.”

“Duly noted. Joseph Reas, stop at the big house and send William Reas here to serve dinner while you take Mr. Daignot to Charleston.”

“Yes, Miss Ethel.”
I'll break your neck
, Joseph Reas repeated under his breath. He wished he could say it aloud to Miss Ethel. Sometimes to everybody. But Maum Cloe would want Mr. Daignot to go for fetch Miss Alex, that was certain sure.

At the window, Jamey watched while Ethel stood on the path and Louis, without looking back once, got into the car. Jamey, pulling his monk's robe around him, pulled the cord tighter, for it seemed to him that his room had become chill. He glanced at the sky and saw that the sun had disappeared. “It's going to rain,” he said. “It's going to pour rain.” He went into the big living room, and in a few minutes Ethel came in quietly. “Louis gone after Alex?”

“To Charleston, yes, Jamey.”

“Well, it is calmer without the pair of them.”

“Shall we go in and have dinner, Jamey? Dinner for two, again, just like old times, before Louis came?”

“No, it is not the same, Ethel, not the same at all. That was a fateful moment, wasn't it, Ethel? When you brought me Louis' letter? Ethel, do you think I should have resisted my fate and told you I wouldn't see the boy? Do you think I should have stayed in my solitude?”

“I really don't know, Jamey.”

“But it is all written, is it not, Ethel? ‘Where such things are, what mortal shall boast any more that he can ward the arrows of the gods from his life?'”

“What's that?” Ethel spoke absent-mindedly; she seemed preoccupied. When she was not talking, little muscular movements in her jaw and cheeks seemed to indicate that she was having an internal debate or discussion, a most active one.

“
Oedipus Rex
, Ethel.” They both looked out of the window, down the road where the car, with Louis in it, had driven.

“Oh,
Oedipus Rex
.” Her tone said “again.” She shook off her lethargy, called quits on the internal discussion. “How about dinner? Aren't you hungry today, Jamey?”

“Ah, dinner! And what a dinner! What a pity the dear children must miss it!”

“It certainly is. Louis seemed so anxious about Alex.”

“Yes, he was worried about that naughty Alex, but to miss white fricassee, lemon sweet-potato pudding as an escort, okra and ratafia cream for dessert!”

“That sounds divine, Jamey.” Her tongue flicked around her lips.

He nodded. “It is divine. I will now wash my hands. Have you washed already, Ethel? Are your hands clean?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Louis could not quite remember how you reached the narrow alley where the two-room shack was, but Ethel had given Joseph Reas the address. Joseph Reas drove quickly and competently, but every muscle of his back indicated his dislike of the shabby neighborhood. He stiffened even further when Louis muttered that Joseph Reas would recognize the place because of the smell.

Louis was certain now, in spite of everything Ethel had said, that Alex was being kept in that shack. All the way down from the plantation through the thick rain that had started halfway between it and Charleston, Louis kept visualizing Alex being hurt by Budder Green, manhandled—like Ethel. Lying weeping on the dirty red couch, tied to one of the sagging chairs, strapped to the gray and unspeakable bed, locked in the small airless bedroom, where, from the open top drawer of the dresser, the tail of Budder's shirt and a piece of Libbie Mae's pink underwear lolled at Alex like protruding, nightmare tongues. He groaned with impatience. Once it seemed to Louis that he heard Alex scream for help, and it was so real he asked Joseph Reas whether he had heard anything.

“No, suh,” Joseph Reas said. He was now bent forward because even with the windshield wiper groaning and panting, the glass was dim with rain.

“Hurry,” Louis said.

Joseph Reas hurried, and hurried equally as he drove away after depositing Louis.

In none of the scenes his imagination had projected on the ride down had Louis included Libbie Mae, but when he burst into the shack, he found her there. She had pulled up one of the wooden chairs and set it in front of the bedroom door. Alex was there, then! Louis thanked God for Libbie Mae.

“Hi,” Budder said calmly. He had been sitting at the round scarred golden-oak table, playing double solitaire; now he scraped up the cards, his long dirty fingernails rasping the table. “Hi, Louis boy.” He held up his hand, barring the way to the bedroom. “You got the check?”

“Is she all right?”

“You got the check, Louis?”

Libbie Mae untwined her legs from the leg of the chair. She leaned forward to be closer to Louis.

“Is she in there? Is she all right?”

“Relax, Louis boy. I didn't do nothing but give a lady room and board. Ethel sent her, Louis boy; I didn't drag her here.”

“I'll kill Ethel if she's been touched. Is she in there?”

“You stop looking at Louis boy like that, Sis Lib; he's no gentleman. Saying he'll kill a lady! Look how mad he is now, Sis Lib! You're not going to budge me like that, Louis boy. Give me the check.”

Louis seemed to hear a faint voice inside the bedroom. He took the check out of his pocket and gave it to Libbie Mae, but her brother, who always moved more quickly than seemed possible to his brutish clumsiness, snatched it, looked at it, spelled it out, holding the paper close to his eyes, his loose lips forming the words.

“He isn't signed it over yet. Where's the pen, Sis Lib?”

On top of the sideboard, sitting in a cracked soup dish, was an ancient bottle of ink, uncapped and with a penny pen, a school pen, stuck into it. Libbie Mae looked at the pen point, then wiped off the crusted ink on the end of the couch, and dipped it solemnly. She handed it to Louis, who had, because of the smell of the ink, the grammar-school look of the penholder and nib, the strangest feeling that he was a little boy and back in school again. He signed his name carefully in a round hand, like a child. Budder shook the check in the air, blew at it. He said, “
L—o—u—i—s D—a—i—g—n—o—t
. That's the stuff, Louis boy!” There was another stir from inside the bedroom, and Budder, glancing at Louis' face, skipped out of his path lightly, and so did Libbie Mae. When Louis rushed into the bedroom, they stood at the open door, watching.

“And look how he handles her, Sis Lib, like she was made of sugar candy. That how he handled you, Sis Lib?”

She said furiously, watching Louis and Alex, “You shut your big mouth.”

His mouth did not shut; it opened, gaped; his eyes opened wide before they narrowed. Then his vicious slap sent her reeling and crouching across the room.

Inside the bedroom, behind the door Louis had closed, he knelt and cut the ropes that bound Alex. He was clumsy; he was trembling. Alex rubbed her wrist where the rope had reddened it. Louis reached out, but she pulled her hands away. “Did he hurt you, Alex? Are you all right? Alex, darling, you're all right, aren't you?”

“I'm all right.” She let the tears roll down her cheeks; her voice was as formal as she could make it. “I thank you.”

“I don't expect you to thank me, but why are you angry with me?”

“I don't understand.” She looked around the room. “I don't understand.” She put her palms to the sides of her head. “I don't understand.”

“Alex, darling, you came here—you came to this dive——What were you going to pay them off with?”

“I had some money. I had a ring.”

“You sweet. You darling.”

“Don't touch me. Do you think it was for your sake?”

He fell back on his heels.

“I wouldn't come here for you. I warned Jamey. I warned him. He wouldn't listen. I told him about her. I told him you had to have money. He wouldn't have Joseph Reas there, he's strong, or William Reas, just went on and on talking. He wouldn't do anything. He stayed there, all alone, and that is why I came here to buy these people off, so Jamey would be safe.”

“So Jamey would be safe from me? You thought you had to keep Jamey safe from me?”

“Yes, yes. I told him.” She began to cry wildly.

He had been squatting back on his heels; now he got up stiffly, as if he had been on his knees for a long time, he got up as stiffly as Rip Van Winkle waked out of a twenty-year sleep, and stared around the dirty fuggy room as if it were a new world, a strange and menacing world at which he was looking for the first time. He said, “What time is it?” He rushed to the door. “What time is it?” There was a clock on the wall, but it wasn't going.

Budder pulled out a turnip watch. “Four o'clock, Louis boy.”

It was too late. Since he was here, in Charleston, four o'clock was too late.

Louis pulled Alex off the dirty bed. “Get out of here. Don't come back.”

She obeyed him, walking out of the bedroom, walking through the other room to the front door. “Yes, Louis.” She did not know why she obeyed him now.

“Go somewhere in Charleston, some friends, somewhere. Stay there.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to Jamey.” Too late. Too late. “If you walk, you'll find a taxi, Alex.” He spoke to Budder, as though they were strangers, as though they were friends. “Will you drive me out to the plantation, quickly?”

“Why, for sure, Louis boy.”

Alex was walking up the street slowly, turning her head every few steps to look back at him. He waved at her to go away. Budder was rising, stretching. “Get going, Budder!”

“What's your hurry?”

“Get a move on. Shake it up.” He ran out of the house and seated himself in Budder's car, cursing himself because, among other things, he had never learned to drive. No telephone. No neighbors. Police would take much too long to understand. No quicker way. “What time is it?”

Budder showed Louis his turnip watch, which said it was five after four. By now, Ethel and Jamey must have finished dinner. Jamey would yawn, tapping his small mouth with his fingers. Jamey would say, “What time is it, Ethel?”