Mr. Clarinet

Chantale's face was impassive.

Mercedes had written the first two letters down.

The pointer turned to the right and moved across the board slightly to stop at "I," its motions jerky yet steady, as if really guided by an unseen hand. It looked impressive—even if it was fake, which he kept telling himself it was, so he wouldn't freak out.

He thought of looking under the table to see if there was a machine underneath, controlling the spook show, but he wanted to see where it was all going.

Both Mercedes's hands were on the table.

The pointer moved back to "E" and stayed put. It looked like a big, congealed teardrop.

"He's here," Mercedes said. "Ask what you want to know."

"What?"

"Ask—him—your—question," Mercedes said slowly.

Max felt suddenly stupid, like he was being taken in and massively conned, all the while being loudly laughed at by an invisible audience.

"All right," he said, deciding to play along for the time being. "Who kidnapped Charlie?"

The pointer didn't move.

They waited.

"Ask him again."

"Sure he understands English?" Max quipped.

Mercedes gave him an angry look.

Max was about to say something about the batteries dying when the pointer jerked into motion and zipped around the two arches of letters, stopping there just long enough for Mercedes to write down what they were before moving on to the next.

When the pointer stopped moving, she held up her pad: H-O-U-N-F-O-R.

"It means temple," she said.

"As in voodoo temple?" Max asked.

"That's right."

"Which one? Where? Here?"

Mercedes asked but the pointer didn't move.

And it never moved again for them. They repeated the ceremony. Max even tried to empty his mind of all doubting thoughts and cynicism and pretend he really believed in what they were doing, but even so, the pointer didn't budge.

"Eddie has left," Mercedes concluded, when she'd tried for the final time. "He usually says good-bye. Something must have scared him. Maybe you did, Mr. Mingus."

* * *

"Was that for real?" Max asked Chantale as they walked back toward the orange grove.

"Did you see any trickery?" Chantale said.

"No, but that doesn't mean it wasn't going on," Max said.

"You need to believe in the impossible once in a while," Chantale retorted.

"I do," Max grunted. "I'm here aren't I?"

He was sure there was a perfectly rational, humdrum explanation for everything they'd witnessed at the Leballec house. Accepting what he'd just seen at face value was just too much of a mind-fuck.

Max believed in life and death. He didn't believe life crossed over into death, although he did believe that some people could be dead inside and appear to be living on the outside. Most lifers and long-timers he'd seen in prison were like that. He was pretty much that way too, a corpse wrapped in living tissue, fooling everyone but himself.

Chapter 38

WHEN THEY RETURNED to Clarinette, they asked anyone who looked old enough to remember, or give them a sensible answer, who had been in charge of the construction site they'd crossed over on their way to the stream.

The replies were the same from person to person:

"Monsieur Paul," they all said. "Good man. Very generous. Built us our town and hounfor."

Not Vincent Paul, Chantale explained, but his late father, Perry.

How long ago had they been working there?

No one was quite sure. They didn't measure time in terms of years, but in what they'd once been able to do—how much they could carry, how fast they could run, how long they could fuck and dance and drink. Some said fifty years when they didn't look much past forty, others said twenty years, a few claimed they'd been working on the building a hundred years ago. None of them had known what they were building. They'd followed orders.

Chantale estimated it would have been between the midsixties and the early seventies, before the Pauls had gone bankrupt.

What was Monsieur Paul like?

"He was a good man. Generous and kind. He built us houses and a hounfor. He brought us food and medicine."

Like father, like son, Max thought.

Did any children go missing during that time?

"Yes. Two: the children of mad Merveille Gaspésie. The brother and sister both disappeared the same day," they said, shaking their heads.

Then they all told the same story: the Gaspésie children used to play near the building works. They were youngsters, about seven and eight years old. One day they both vanished. People searched high and low, but they were never found. Some said they'd fallen into the waterfalls, others that they'd met Tonton Clarinette out by the graveyard.