Delusion
Peter Abrahams
To L a u r a G e r i n g e r
Contents
The man they called Pirate heard a guard coming down…
1
Light slanted down through the gently heaving water in sunny…
9
The seaplane rose in a long semicircle. At first Little…
16
A little ghost brother, going round and round?" said Nellie.
25
Pirate opened his Bible, read the following passage several times.
33
Lee Ann was on the phone. "Any chance of getting…
40
Lee Ann drove fast, hunched over the wheel. She swung…
48
Clay hurried across the clearing, followed by his driver and,…
57
Scuff, scuff, scuff. Pirate, on his bunk, picked up the…
67
Pirate dreamed about God. God thundereth marvellously with his voice.
75
You went to the hearing?" Clay said. "I don't understand."
84
Norah?" 92
That night Nell fixed a nice dinner-roast pork with orange…
100
Pirate unlocked the minibar. "Just lookin'," he said aloud. Nice…
113
The Guardian landed with a thump in the driveway. Nell,…
124
Pirate awoke. For a moment, he didn't know where he…
133
And what about the live lineup, the one that came…
142
Nell wasn't a gambler, had never made any kind of…
151
Am I disturbing you?"
164
Clay and Nell drove home from the airstrip east of…
174
The Yeller's Autobody wrecker was just pulling away from the…
184
Pirate opened the door. Yes, her: the tanned, in-shape one,…
192
Was it possible?
201
This was nice, to play a little music in Joe…
207
Nell?" 216
Night: a warm night with soft sounds in the air.
223
Alone in her house all night: Nell hardly slept. And…
231
Nell left Foodie and Company and drove home. As she…
241
Beauregard Street had changed, or else Pirate was remembering wrong.
248
Nell got off the floor. Pain shot up and down…
255
Timmy drove Nell home. His uniform was crisply ironed and…
263
Pirate poked his head around a corner, got a partial…
275
Nell gazed out the window. Rain pounded down on the…
284
The man they called Pirate heard a guard coming down the cell block. Pirate had excellent hearing. He could identify the guards just from the sound of their footsteps on the cement floor. This one—Hispanic, bushy salt-and-pepper mustache, dark depressions under his eyes—had a tread that was somehow muffled and heavy at the same time, and once in a while he dragged a heel in a way that made a little scuffing sound Pirate found pleasant.
Scuff, scuff,
and then the footsteps stopped. “Hey,” the guard said.
Pirate, lying on his bunk, facing the wall—a featureless wall, but he’d grown to like it—turned his head. The Hispanic guard with the mustache and tired eyes—Pirate no longer bothered to learn their names—stood outside the bars, keys in hand.
“Wakie wakie,” the guard said.
Pirate hadn’t been sleeping, but he didn’t argue. He just lay there, head turned so he could see, body curled comfortably, one hand resting on his Bible. Pirate hardly even opened it anymore—the one section that interested him now pretty much committed to memory—but he liked the feel of it, especially that gold tassel for marking your place.
“Come on,” the guard said. “Shake a leg.”
Shake a leg? Pirate didn’t understand. It wasn’t chow time, and besides, weren’t they in lockdown? Hadn’t they been in lockdown the past two or three days, for reasons Pirate had forgotten, or never
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PETER ABRAHAMS
known? He didn’t understand, but didn’t argue, instead getting off the bunk and moving toward the bars. Keys jingled. The guard opened up, made a little motion with his chin, a quick tilt. Pirate raised his arms, spread his legs, got patted down. The guard grunted. Pirate turned, lowered his pants, bent over. The guard grunted again. Pirate straightened, zipped up. The guard made another chin motion, this one sideways. Pirate stepped outside.
They walked down the corridor, the guard on Pirate’s right. On the right was bad, his blind side, made him uncomfortable. But there was nothing he could do.
“You got a visitor,” the guard said.
A visitor? Pirate hadn’t had a visitor in a long time, years and years. They went down the row of cells, Pirate’s good eye, his only eye, registering all the familiar faces, each one more or less wrong in its own way; and around the corner, more cells, four tiers, on and on.
It reminded him, when he thought of it at all, of an experiment he’d seen in a movie, one with rats. The difference was he’d felt sorry for the rats. Pirate didn’t feel sorry for anyone in here, himself included.
That part—no longer feeling sorry for himself—was his greatest ac-complishment. He was at peace, in harmony with passing time. That was the message of the gold tassel.
“Who?” he said.
“Who what?” said the guard.
“The visitor.”
“Your lawyer, maybe?”
Pirate didn’t have a lawyer. He’d had a lawyer long ago, Mr. Rollins, but hadn’t heard from him in years.
They came to a gate. Pirate’s guard handed over a slip of paper.
Another guard opened the gate. They went down a short walkway, through an unlocked door, into the visiting room.
There were no other inmates in the visiting room. The guard took a seat at the back, picked a newspaper off the floor. On the far side of the glass, by one of the phones, sat a young woman Pirate had never seen. She smiled—smiled at him, Pirate. No doubt about it—besides, there was no one else around, no one she could have been smiling at. Except the guard, maybe; but the guard, opening his newspaper,
D E LU S I O N
3
wasn’t paying any attention to the woman. A big photograph of a man with his arms raised in triumph was on the front page. Pirate didn’t recognize him.
“Ten minutes,” said the guard.
Pirate moved toward the glass wall, a thick, shatterproof glass wall with three steel chairs in front, bolted to the floor. He sat in the middle one, facing the young woman. Her skin transfixed him. No one inside—inmates or guards—had skin like this, smooth, glowing, so alive. And her eyes: the whites of them, so clear, like alabaster, a word he’d come across in his reading and now grasped.
She raised a hand, small and finely shaped, with polished nails and a gold wedding band. He followed its movements like a dog; as a boy, he’d had a very smart dog named Snappy, capable of following silent commands. Some time passed—his mind on Snappy—before he realized what she wanted him to do: pick up the phone.
He picked up the phone. She spoke into hers.
“Hello, Mr. DuPree.”
His real name: When had he last heard it? “Hello,” he said; and then, remembering his manners, added, “ma’am.”
She smiled again, her teeth—more of that alabaster, like works of art, having nothing to do with biting, sparkling even through the dusty, smeary glass—distracted him, so he almost missed what came next. “Oh,” she said, “just call me Susannah. Susannah Upton.”
“Susannah Upton?”
She spelled both names for him. “I’m a lawyer.”
“Yeah?” said Pirate. “Are you from Mr. Rollins?”
“Mr. Rollins?” she said.
“My lawyer,” said Pirate. “At the trial.”
Susannah Upton frowned. That meant one tiny furrow appeared on her brow, somehow making her look even younger. “I believe . . .”
she began, and opened a leather briefcase, taking a sheet of paper from a folder with Pirate’s full name written in red on the front: Alvin Mack DuPree. “. . . yes,” Susannah continued, “he passed away.”
“Died?”
Susannah nodded. “Almost ten years ago now.”
At that moment, Pirate felt a strange feeling that came from time
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PETER ABRAHAMS
to time, a squinting in the socket where his right eye had been; like he was trying to see better, get things in focus. “What of?” Pirate said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Mr. Rollins. What did he die of?”
“It doesn’t say.”
Pirate tried to picture Mr. Rollins, estimate his age back then.
He’d had graying hair, but that didn’t necessarily mean . . .
“But my visit has nothing to do with Mr. Rollins,” Susannah went on. “Are you familiar with the Justice Project, Mr. DuPree?”
Although he couldn’t form an image of Mr. Rollins’s face, Pirate had a clear memory of Mr. Rollins’s breath in the courtroom, boozy little rising clouds, almost visible. Was it the booze that killed him?
Pirate was about to ask, when Susannah spoke.
“Mr. DuPree? The Justice Project?”
He shook his head, although he thought he remembered a band by that name. Pirate had played guitar at one time, traveled with a bar band that covered country hits, and once, at the Red Rooster, even backed up a singer who was going to be the next Delbert McClinton.