Chapter Six #2
The years had not been kind to these two men, and I wonder what stories their deep creases and tough hides could tell. I also wonder about the other brothers. The ones Travis said left town or maybe he had used the word escaped.
Eddie shuffles his dirty boots rather than picking up his feet, and when he stops, he rocks back and forth like he’s on rough seas. I remember Eddie the most. He followed Travis around like Mabry followed me. Limited speech development, no eye contact. Again, like Mabry.
During my third year in grad school as a research assistant studying children bullied on playgrounds, I made a special trip home to my mother’s latest apartment, where Mabry still lived, and hugged Mabry so tightly she coughed.
Most of the children I was studying needed genetic testing, something Mabry was never offered.
She fell through the cracks, somehow managing to get her GED despite not being able to even get a driver’s license.
Then I learned about FAS and knew Mabry didn’t need genetic testing after all.
Fetal alcohol syndrome strikes randomly in families, and it struck Mabry.
Hard. Cognitive defects, abnormal facial features like large low-set ears and the smooth philtrum above her lip.
And yet, I’m sure Mama didn’t abstain when she was pregnant with me, and I turned out fine enough to graduate summa cum laude from Baylor without even having to try that hard.
It took years for me to harness my anger at the unfairness in that, at Mama for denying Mabry her full potential.
“Not sure why these Texas folks had to come in,” Doyle says in his thick south-Louisiana drawl, breaking off my thoughts. “Look, see, we coulda done this for free.”
I remember Doyle as a lanky kid with severe acne who scurried around during those lazy summer days, shy and sneaky and always watching.
Travis motions toward the water. “These Texas folks are free. They’re volunteers.”
“Huh. Well, you should of kept it local, bro. These boys might go diggin’ where they shouldn’t.”
“She don’t wanna be alone!” Eddie’s agonized cry cracks through the heat, startling me and several people near us. He rocks and hugs himself.
Doyle slides a look at me. “Don’t mind my brother, ma’am. He’s an idiot.” He tilts his head. “Hang on a minute. You that girl that used to run around with those crazy old twin ladies in that big ole house?”
“Hi, Doyle,” I say, keeping my shoulders back, spine straight. Ready for whatever he says next.
He lets out a long whistle. “You look different with your shirt on.” That one I’m not ready for, and as I stutter and try to craft a smart retort, he adds, pointing to my chest and laughing, “Guess TV does add ten pounds.”
Travis pops his brother in the chest with the back of his hand. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He lowers his voice; his jaw is tight. “Get the hell out of here.”
“Yeah, yeah. Was just leaving.”
As Doyle walks off, my eyes burn a hole in his back, pissed I hadn’t pointed to his crotch and said that even a camera wouldn’t help his cause.
Eddie pauses a moment. I turn my attention to him, but he won’t look me in the eyes.
Instead, he reaches into his cavernous front pocket and extracts a metal object, holds it out to me in his massive palm.
I glance at Travis, then take the small object from Eddie.
It’s a metal doll, little arms and legs soldered to a round body, like a small misshapen baby Frankenstein.
“Thank you,” I say, even though it gives me the creeps.
Eddie smiles at the ground, then lopes off to catch up with Doyle.
Travis says, “Sorry about that. Doyle’s the one who’s an idiot.” He points to the metal object. “Eddie still doesn’t talk much. I think those dolls are his way of communicating. He doesn’t normally give them away, though. He must like you.”
I think of Mabry’s sketchbook and wonder if, even though she spoke more than Eddie, that was her way of communicating; I’m surprised I haven’t thought of that before now.
It’s common in children exposed to trauma.
I start to quiz Travis more on Eddie, but as I go to speak, a woman’s sharp high-pitched scream cuts through the low rumble of the crowd.
People gasp and lean in to look toward the bayou. The tow truck is backing up. A diver is standing on the bank, taking the chain from the truck, and heading back into the water.
“They found it!” A man in the crowd yells, and I feel Travis’s hand find mine and give it a quick, almost imperceptible squeeze.
I’m starting to feel dizzy, maybe from the heat. Maybe not. “Travis.”
He follows my gaze to the area downstream where the divers’ boat launched.
A man and woman stand at the water’s edge.
The woman is crying. Another woman moves to where the couple stands.
It’s a woman I saw in Nan’s Café this morning, sitting at the media table.
She’s wearing an expensive navy pantsuit.
Her slick hair swept from her face in a tight black ponytail, a microphone clutched in her hand, and a cameraman following closely behind.
In her element, I recognize her. Rita Meade, an investigative reporter for a national news program.
She’s got quite a following, both on and off air.
And earlier, at Nan’s, I’d caught her staring at me.
“Oh, hell,” Travis says, looking her way. “Stay here.”
Travis tries to block Rita from getting to the couple as a young deputy steps in and escorts them away from the water and toward me, Rita fast on their heels.
The deputy tells Rita to leave these poor people alone, but he obviously doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.
Rita Meade’s reporting style is notorious, ruthless.
She’s famous for helping solve the Kansas City murders back in 2016.
An entire family was slain as they slept, and Rita pounded on doors and interviewed neighbors, coworkers, lovers for almost a year.
She’d even interviewed the family’s minister, who, it turned out, was in a long-term affair with the wife and distraught over her calling it off.
Rita had used that footage to help the police get enough evidence to arrest him.
Covering that case put Rita on the map and thrust her into a new echelon of investigative reporters.
And now she’s here, feet from me, homing in on this sad-looking couple.
A light on the camera behind Rita flares. She glances in my direction, pauses on my face, then refocuses on the man and woman. She pulls them off to the side, ignoring the deputy who is trying, and failing, to stop her.
“What are you hoping will happen here today, Mrs. Boudreaux?” Rita says.
Boudreaux. The last name from the newsclip I watched on Travis’s phone. These are the missing teacher’s parents, Alice and Calvin Boudreaux.
Alice looks directly into the camera. Her husband keeps his head down. “I’m hoping we’ll learn something, one way or the other.”
“Are you prepared for what the divers might find today?”
My stomach clenches. I know I’m not.
Alice shakes her head. “We just need closure.”
Indeed you do. Alice holds her tears in check now.
Much stronger than I would be in that situation.
She’s got a good wall up, but I have bad news for her.
They haven’t invented a wall strong enough to keep grief out.
Eventually, it will find her. And when it does, I hope she has someone besides the man next to her to help her get through it.
The husband, Calvin, has my attention. He hasn’t spoken a word, but his body language is interesting: arms crossed over his chest, eyes constantly shifting to the muddy water, jaw working side to side.
Like he’s nervous. Like he’s hiding something.
Rita turns her attention to him.
“Mr. Boudreaux,” Rita says, “do you think your daughter could be a victim of foul play?”
He snaps his head up, eyes wide. He flexes his hands, then balls them into fists as he glares at Rita. Probably not an uncommon reaction to her, but the way he watches her makes the hair on my arms rise. He looks like he wants to punch her.
Mrs. Boudreaux answers, “No! We know our child. She’s not a drug addict or a runaway like the one they found in that barrel. She’s a schoolteacher. And she had an accident. I just know it.”
I’m tempted to go to her, put my arm around her shoulder, and get her the hell away from Rita’s hyperfocused gaze.
I want to comfort her and tell her she will survive this.
But really what will happen is she’ll feel like it should kill her, she’ll pray for it to kill her, but it won’t.
Then the slow realization will hit that she will have to live with it.
And there’s no comfort in that. I stay rooted to my spot, watching.
Calvin Boudreaux is still now, very still. Almost like a child who thinks if he closes his eyes and doesn’t move, he can’t be seen. But Rita sees everything, and she turns her focus on him again.
“What about you, Mr. Boudreaux? Do you have anything you want to say?”
His eyes narrow. “What’s it matter. She’s gone.”
Rita lowers her chin. “Maybe you’d like to comment on some information I’ve recently become aware of, regarding your domestic-abuse charges?”
Mrs. Boudreaux gasps. “Those charges were dropped.”
Mr. Boudreaux balls his hand into a tighter fist. But before anything else can be said, a sharp whistle cuts through the thick air.
Rita, the Boudreauxes, and I all swing our heads toward the tow truck.
Chief Wilson is motioning for it to back up even more.
A winch begins to unspool. I barely turn back to the scene in front of me before Rita snaps at her cameraman and rushes back toward the water’s edge.
Mrs. Boudreaux is fast behind her, yelling “My baby” over and over.
Pulsing energy ripples through the crowd around me.
Locals yell about something coming out of the water.
Travis yells “Get back!” to everyone. Then police and divers swarm to the tow truck’s back end.
A large heavy chain lowers from the tow truck into the bayou.
One diver on shore walks into the depths with a hand on the chain, and both disappear under a layer of algae.
I crane my neck to get a better look. The young deputy tries to move me back, but I refuse to move. My orange boots stick to the dry grass.
Chief Wilson shoves his radio to his ear, then places two fingers in his mouth and whistles to the tow truck driver again. The chain stops.
The silence that follows is deafening. Even Rita falls quiet. A bullfrog croaks from its hidden spot, and a woman in the mass of people screams. Nervous laughter follows.
It’s the teacher’s car, I tell myself over and over. But something in my gut twists to the point that I want to double over.
Then the thick chain reverses direction. The back tires of the tow truck start to sink into the bayou mud, and men begin to shout again. The driver grinds the gears, and the smell of smoke fills the air. One of the divers yells, “It’s a car, all right.”
I cross my arms over my stomach and dig my fingers into my ribs.
Mrs. Boudreaux releases a howl and claws her way toward the tow truck. “My baby. I told you! I told you she was here!”
I watch Travis grab her, and she pounds at his chest. The crowd moves back except for Rita, whose cameraman stays with Mrs. Boudreaux. Mr. Boudreaux is nowhere to be seen.
The edge of a bumper starts to emerge from the water.
Breathe, I tell myself.
“Easy, Scooter,” Chief Wilson hollers at the tow truck driver, and the driver backs off the winch.
With a sucking, gurgling sound, the back end of a car rises from the muck and is pulled onto dry ground.
Water and algae drip from it. Several officers inch up to the car like it’s a ticking bomb.
It was once a convertible, but its ragtop has long since disintegrated.
My knees buckle.
Chief Wilson runs two fingers through the thick grime on its exterior, winces, and turns to another deputy. “Donald, what color’s the teacher’s car?”
“White!” Mrs. Boudreaux screams. She crumbles from Travis’s grasp and falls to the ground.
Chief Wilson wipes his hand on his pant leg and kicks the ground. Travis’s gaze finds mine for a split second, but I keep my eyes on the red swath left behind by the chief’s fingers.
Chief Wilson yells to no one in particular, “This ain’t the teacher’s car!”
I suck in a breath that chokes me. He’s right. It ain’t the teacher’s car. It’s my mother’s.