T he guy in the Mustang wouldn't let anyone get between us, as if he wanted to follow me and thought he had to stay close to do it. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled, and he drove with his left hand hanging down along the door. One of those.
I turned off the state road and headed back toward town, and the Mustang turned with me. I pulled into an Exxon station and topped off my tank and asked a kid in a grease-stained uniform about the local bass fishing. The Mustang drove past while the kid was telling me, but a couple minutes later it pulled up to a stop sign a block away and sat waiting. Following me, all right.
I took it easy up through town, letting him follow, and twice managed to stop for traffic lights. Each time I stopped he eased up behind me, and each time he made a big deal out of staring off to the side. The ostrich technique. If I don't see you, you can't see me. I had to smile at this guy. He was something. At a four-way stop a kid in a red Isuzu pickup tried to turn in behind me, and the guy in the Mustang jumped the stop sign and blew his horn, cutting him off. Maybe he thought I wouldn't notice.
A set of railroad tracks ran through the center of town. The tracks were prominent and the road was old, so everybody was slowing to ease their cars across the tracks. On the other side of the tracks there were several businesses and a couple of cross streets and, still further down, a little bridge where the road crossed the bayou. Cars were waiting at most of the cross streets, people getting off work.
I eased the Taurus across the tracks, then punched it, putting enough distance between me and the Mustang for a woman in a light blue Acura to get between us. The Mustang came up to her fast, swerving into the oncoming lane, but there was too much traffic for him to pass. I swung to the right onto the shoulder, floored it past six or seven cars, then jerked it back into the traffic lane and then right again around a bread truck and into a Dairy Queen parking lot. He wouldn't have been able to see me turn past the bread truck. I pushed it around the back of the Dairy Queen, threw it into park, then jumped out and ran up the side past a couple of kids sucking malts in a '69 VW Bug. The Mustang was still behind the woman in the Acura, blowing his horn and swerving from side to side, until finally she couldn't take it anymore and pulled to the side. He horsed it past her, giving the finger and screaming that she should get her head out her butt, and then he blasted away up the shoulder, spraying gravel and dust and little bits of oyster shell. I wrote down his license number, went back to my car, and turned again toward Martha Guidry's. I checked the rearview mirror from time to time, but the Mustang didn't reappear. You had to shake your head.
I drove up the center of Evangeline Parish through dense stands of hardwood trees and sweet potato fields, passing small frame houses set near the road, many with rusted cars and large propane gas tanks and chickens in their yards. Martha Guidry lived in such a house across the street from a strawberry stand. She was a small bony woman with skin like rumpled silk and cataract glasses that made her eyes look huge and protruding. She was wearing a thin housedress and socks and house slippers, and when she answered the door she was carrying a large, economy-sized can of Raid Ant amp; Roach Killer. She squinted out the thick glasses. "You that Mr. Cole?"
"Yes, ma'am. I appreciate your seeing me."
She pushed open the screen door and told me to come in quick. She said if you don't come in quick all kinds of goddamned bugs come in with you. As soon as I was in she fogged the air around the door with the Raid. "That'll get the little bastards!"
I moved across the room to get away from the cloud of Raid. "I don't think you're supposed to breathe that stuff, Ms. Guidry."
She waved her hand. "Oh, hell, I been breathin' it for years. You want a Pepsi-Cola?"
"No, ma'am. Thank you."
She waved the Raid at the couch. "You just sit right there. It won't take a moment." I guess she was going to give me the Pepsi anyway. When she was in the kitchen there was a sharp slap and she said, "Gotcha, you sonofabitch!" The thing about this job is that you meet such interesting people.
She came back with two plastic tumblers and a single can of Pepsi and the Raid. She put the glasses on her coffee table, then opened the Pepsi and poured most of it in one glass and a little bit in the other. She offered the full glass to me. "Now, what is it you want to know?"
I lifted the glass but noticed something crusted down in the ice. I pretended to take a sip and put it down. "Mrs. Berteaux said that you're a midwife."
She nodded, eyes scanning the upper reaches of the room for incoming bugs. "Unh-hunh. Not in years, a'course, but I was."
"Thirty-six years ago on July ninth a baby girl was born in this area and given up for adoption. Chances are that the child was illegitimate, but maybe not. Chances are that the mother was underage, but maybe not."
Her eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses. "You think I birthed the child?"
"I don't know. If not, maybe you heard something."
She looked thoughtful. "That was a long time ago."
"Yes, ma'am." I waited, letting her think. Probably hard with all the nerve damage from the Raid.
Martha Guidry scratched at her head, working on it, and then seemed to notice something in the far corner of the room. She put down her Pepsi, picked up the Raid, then crept across the room to peer into the shadows behind the television. I got ready to hold my breath. She said, "Goddamned ugly bugs," but she held her fire. False alarm. She came back to the chair and sat. "You know, I think I remember something about that."
Well.
She said, "There were some folks lived over here around the Nezpique." She was nodding as she thought about it, fingering the Raid can. "They had a little girl, I think. Yes, that's right. They gave her away."
Well, well. "You remember their names?" I was writing it down.
She pooched out her lips, then slowly shook her head, trying to put it together. "I remember it was a big family. He was a fisherman or somethin', but they might've cropped a share. They lived over on the bayou. Right over here on the Nezpique. Wasn't no bastard, though. Just a big family with too many mouths to feed."
A name?
She looked sad and shook her head. "I'm sorry. It's right on the tip of my tongue and I just can't remember it. You get old, everything goes to hell. There's one!" She raced to a potted plant beneath the window and cut loose with the Raid. Clouds of gas fogged up around her and I walked over to the door, leaned out, and took deep breaths. When she was finished with the Raid I went back to the chair. Everything smelled of kerosene and chemicals.
I said, "These bugs are something, aren't they?"
She nodded smugly. "They'll run you out of house and home, let me tell you."
I heard the crunch of a car pulling off the road. Not in her yard, but farther away. I went back to the door. The white Mustang was sitting across the street by the strawberry stand. I said, "Ms. Guidry, has someone else approached you about this?"
She shook her head. "Unh-unh."
"A few months ago."
She got the thoughtful look again. "You know, I think a fella did come here." She made a face like she'd bit into something sour. "I didn't like his looks. I won't deal with anybody I don't like the way they look. No, siree. You can tell by a person's looks, and I didn't like that fella, at all. I ran 'm off."
I looked back out the door. "Is that the man?"
Martha Guidry came over next to me and squinted out through the screen. "Well, my goodness. That's him. That's the little peckerwood, right over there!"
Martha Guidry charged through the screen door with her can of Raid as if she'd seen the world's largest bug. She screamed, "Here, you! What are you doin' over there?!"
I said, "Oh, God."
She lurched down the steps and ran toward the highway, and I was wondering if maybe I should tackle her before she became roadkill. Then the Mustang fishtailed out onto the highway and roared back toward Ville Platte, and Martha Guidry pulled up short, shaking her fist at him. I said, "Martha, do you remember his name?"
Martha Guidry stalked back up the steps, breathing hard and blinking behind the thick glasses. I was hoping I wouldn't have to dial 911. "Jerry. Jeffrey. Somegoddamnthing like that."
"Aha."
"That rotten sneak. Why do you think he was out here?"
"I don't know," I said. "But I'm going to find out."
She took a deep breath, shook herself, then said, "God damn, but I feel like a drink! You're not the kind of fool to let a lady drink alone, are you?"
"No, ma'am, I'm not."
She threw open the door and gestured inside with the Raid. "Then get yer ass in there and let's booze."