The Missing

Arsène nudged Tee Claude. “I bet Sam’s go

Tee Claude closed one eye. “How’d you wind up on that dancin’ boat, anyway? I thought you wanted to stay in the city.”

“The department store didn’t want me back.”

Tee Claude had a round, rascal’s face, and when he pursed his lips it grew even rounder. “I read in one of you letters that you’d get you job back if you fount that li’l girl.”

Sam swallowed a wonderful rush of cornbread and buttermilk. “It’s all right. The boat’s paying all right.”

Arsène shook his head. “Damned if I’d live in a big city where they go back on their deals. I’d of threw that evil fils de putain out his office window.”

Sam bit his pistolette and chewed on the comment. “He thought I took too long to find the girl and bring her back.”

“Well, hell, you got her back, didn’t you?”

“I did that. But she changed while she was taken.”

Uncle Claude stuck out his thick legs and crossed his boots. “That age, babies change day by day. Me, I’m not surprised one kid got took and another got brought back.”

“The rich people that stole her taught her things.”

Arsène laughed. “What a pile of cowshit. I wish some rich folks would steal me, yeah. Teach me how to sleep past six o’clock.”

Tee Claude drained his buttermilk and belched. “Who the hell’d steal you?”

“All right, shut your traps,” the old man said. “Time to get after them potato. Sammy, you go bust up some stovewood.”

“How much?”

“Well, the stove ain’t never go

SAM FELL ASLEEP in his chair at supper and woke when everyone began laughing at him, and he thought there was nothing better than a tableful of blood kin laughing at his expense. Nothing better than the chicken gumbo over fat pearls of rice and a tongue-popping potato salad on the side and a mug of hot coffee with fresh cream and three spoons of sugar in it. Nothing better and at the same time nothing sadder.

Everyone on the screened porch was telling stories. Arsène about a train wreck he’d been in. Tee Claude about a fistfight he’d started over a Duvillier girl. Sam about the girl in France he’d shot with a ca

“You shot a ca

Sam straightened his back in his rocker. “It was an accident!”

“Mais, who gave you a ca

“We just found it.”

Tee Claude shook his head. “Hell, Sam, remember when you couldn’t hit that rat in the outhouse with a rifle.”

Everybody laughed, and Sam stood up. “It was ru

Arsène told about a live rabbit in an icebox, and the tales went on toward the deep dark of eight-thirty. Aunt Marie talked about her sister’s operation, how her appendix was the size of a bell pepper and how mad she was when the doctor told her he’d thrown it away. She’d wanted it in a jar, a trophy to show the ladies at the Altar Society meeting. Uncle Claude told about a great-uncle who’d drowned, a man no one had heard of before, and everybody on the porch wanted to know what he was like and what he did with his short life. The old man tried his best at reincarnation and the night ended in stories about other drownings and near-drownings, floods, roof leaks, baptisms, an accordion played in the rain.

THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY when Sam got up the next morning. They’d let him sleep out of understanding. All his bones hurt with yester-day’s work, and he winced as he raised a cup of coffee to his mouth. He was packed and standing on the porch when his aunt and cousins came out of the fields to say goodbye.

His uncle rode up from the barn on horseback, and the cousins walked out into the sun and left for the fields.

“Just leave him tied at the station,” Uncle Claude said, getting off. “We’ll get him when we go in for feed this evening.”

“All right.” Sam took a long look at the house.

His uncle waited for his gaze to come around. “You goin’ to look for those people?”

“I think so.”

“And if you find where they at?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well. What you do will say who you are.”

He looked at the dust rising in the road. “I guess so.”

His uncle’s eyes were full of thought. Finally, he said, “The house, it’s still there, all growed up.”

“House?”

“You know. Where it happened. It was cypress all of it, so it’s still there. Six mile away.”

“It’s been there all along and you never told me?”

His uncle dismissed his voice with a wave of his hand. “I found somethin’ else in the cabinet you can have. It’s in a sack on the saddle.”

“What is it?”

“Violon. A fiddle. It belonged to you daddy.”

He looked toward the horse. “Another thing you never told me. I knew there was a fiddle in the cabinet, but I never thought anything about it.” He suddenly felt as if he’d lived a thousand years on this farm, and he turned around, staring.

“It was too sad to tell you what it was.” His uncle looked away and put his hands in his pockets. “He played that thing all the time we grew up. What I think of when I look at it is the music it’s not making. Tu sais ça?”

The sack hung off the pommel like a sad thought. “Oui. Je sais.”

“La seule chose plus triste qu’une chanson triste est aucune chanson du tout.”

Sam put an arm on his uncle’s shoulder, the muscles oakey and warm. “C’est vrai, ça.”

The old man turned his face. “True too much.”

Chapter Thirty-five

IN NEW ORLEANS he relaxed for a few days, played with Christopher, repaired a broken pipe under the bathroom, and went on long walks with the baby and Linda. She asked him to quit the boat several times, but he told her he was afraid to give up a job when he had no other prospects. He didn’t tell her that his playing was much better because he was working with a good group of musicians.

When he got off the train in St. Louis, he found the boat tied up below the Eads Bridge and half the crew down with influenza. The captain, his face compressed with worry, pulled him aside as soon as he stepped off the stage. “Sam, you stay in your cabin and don’t mix in. We’re trying to keep the sickest folks to the back of the boat.”

“All right. How’s Charlie?”

“He had a case in 1918 and says he can’t catch it again. But the cook staff and the café help are knocked down bad.” The captain squeezed his shoulder. “A cabin boy died yesterday, and the day before that, Maude Schull.”

“Big Maude in charge of the linen?” He pictured her going through the cabins, jerking sheets off their flimsy bunks.

“She’d been with us five years.”

“How’s Elsie doing in all this?”

“The captain lowered his voice. “She’s had the fever three days and is out of her head.”

Sam took a step back and looked aft down the rail. “Is there anything I can do for her?”

“You’d best try to keep well. We’ve canceled four days’ worth of trips, and when we start up again we’ll need every hand.”

He watched the captain pull himself up the stairs. Sam remembered the epidemic two or three years before. He’d gotten a skull-cracking case of it himself, but made it through. Six employees at Krine’s weren’t as lucky.

Later that afternoon, he met with the day band and they went over new arrangements, playing them out on the forecastle deck in safe, open air, the music ru