Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke Page B

burning newspaper inside the draft, then began preparing breakfast for herself at the drainboard. He sat at the table and stared at her back stupidly, hoping she would reach into the cabinet, pull down a bowl or cup for him, indicate in some way they were still 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 sheriff’s 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