at least eBay-resalable books) at junk stores on the way. Haidee is always telling me to slack off some. I work at the store almost every day. I hadn’t been on a vacation in forever. I would fight the idea down as foolishness, and then the twinge would hit me again. Finally in late September the foolishness won out. I reserved a room in a Baton Rogue Best Western and turned my wheels to the east with copy of The Moon Lilly in hand.
It was a trying and uneventful Monday. Haidee and Ben would work the store until Thursday. I drove through White Castle and located the tiny chapel, the nursing home, and the Cora-Texas sugar mill, which seemed to be the village’s biggest industry. I would sack out for the night and see Mr. Amos Carter Tuesday morning.
I had vague and unpleasant dreams, but nothing like the nightmares I secretly hoped for.
The I Did It My Way Retirement Home was a foul-smelling twenty-room facility on the corner of Bayou Street and Andrew Jackson Avenue. It had been painted a pale green and had dark brown trim. Two old white women were on metal porch rockers. “Good morning, youngster!” the oldest of them cackled. I smiled back, “Lovely day, ladies!” I stepped inside. The reception area was paneled in what had no doubt once been brown wood veneer that had faded to gray. The receptionist nurse was an African American woman in her fifties, about my age. She looked tired and it was only 9:00 in the morning. I guessed her shift had begun in the wee hours of the morning. Her black glossy plastic nametag read Kassandra.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“I am looking to visit Mr. Amos Carter.”
Her expression would have done justice to the pubgoers in a werewolf movie. “Mr. Carter has no visitors except his grandson.”
“I know that is not correct. A friend of mine, Mr. Addison E. Steele, visited not long ago,” I replied. The moment I felt her resistance this suddenly became important to me. The vague sense of a Quest that had been calling to me since I had glanced at The Moon Lily suddenly crystallized. I needed to see this 107-year-old man.
“I am sorry about your friend. Mr. Carter can be violent. Normally we leave him tied to his gerry chair.”
“The man is 107,” I began.
“Nobody here believes that. You’ve never seen him. You are like that man from New Orleans, the one that died. Look, the whole Carter family stinks. They’re weird and awful. If I had my way we throw old man Carter out.”
“Why?”
“There’s something about him that just isn’t right. Not Amos, the other one.”
“Don’t you worry about your job saying things like that?” I asked. I could hear the sounds of The Jerry Springer Show from down the hall. She gave me a look. “You couldn’t get someone else to work in this dump. I lost my job in New Orleans after Katrina. This town is literally where my car broke down.”
“My friend was from New Orleans.” I said.
“Yes, I know; he ran a bookshop in the Quarter. Court of the Dragon. My son used to like that stuff. Look, mister, I am trying to save your white butt. Don’t mess around with Mr. Carter or his grandson or any of them.”
“I am not worried by an old man.”
“Do you know what the problem with white people is? They live in denial. That’s why they screwed up the world. That’s why they hate us.”
I was about to give my Austin knee-jerk reaction, which would no doubt have included being an Obama supporter, when the phone buzzed at the desk saving me from looking foolish. Kassandra said, “Number 13.” And waved me toward one wing.
The old-people smell intensified as I headed to my left. An almost bald old man was pushing a walker down the hall, his toothless mouth agape and drool pouring out in streamers. His dingy white bathrobe was partially open, displaying his shrunken member to God and the world. I passed the TV lounge where Springer’s half-man was pulling the chair out for a three-hundred-pound transvestite while two-blue