That Dark Fellow in the Ground

The black candy-lacquered hearse pulled up real slow to a bronze-donned cemetery gate about 10 feet high - only 16 feet higher than the maggots making way for Christophe LeBlanc’s soon-to-be-interred body. Lydia, with her French cut and large bosoms, turned as she always did to light her too-skinny cigarette. She was dressed like a widow and acted the part all too well. Sebastian sported a slim black suit, his shirt dismissed of its top fasten and his person set off with just enough jewelry to dissuade the attention of the higher sex. He was a notable balance of lamial comportment and masculine disinterest. He had a small scar just above his right eye where he had caught the wrong end of a poker bet in his youth. He pursed his lips and put his hand gingerly on Lydia’s thigh.

“I can’t wait for this to be over,” he said smoothly.

Lydia flashed him a cool half-smile and slid her hand over his. “At least he’ll rest easy knowing you came,” said Lydia as she blew a halo of minty tobacco fumes across the seat.

Sebastian made a start. “Lydia, I didn’t…”

The car came to an abrupt halt and the door flew open. It was Antoinette, Sebastian’s mother’s mother. Her purple dress broke the solemnity of the day and the sea of black ushering its way towards the dead man’s grave. She lifted her cane as high as heaven would allow and uttered some unintelligible tongue of the angels - or likelier, devils. Nevertheless, all the world had understood and bade Sebastian step out of the car respectfully if not somewhat annoyed.

The old woman looked him over and nodded a reserved approval of his presence until his tired mama, Kay LeBlanc, hugged him quietly and lead the missus off and away.

The sun cared not for the burden of death among men, as it blazed a glimpse of hellfire over the August of the deep American South. The next hour poured into Sebastian’s soul an unbearable heaviness of feigned grief, unresolved tensions, the most unpleasant of pleasantries and the too-oft said, though never enough fulfilled “Let me know if you need anything.”

It’d be remiss to say that Sebastian didn’t need a stiff drink at that very moment. And suddenly, like deft ears on a rumor, Anaïs was beside him. She was always too much of everything - curls, attitude, cleverness, lovers – but that day, the edge of Damocles’ sword swung away in Sebastian’s favor and a better sibling she couldn’t have made if she hadn’t shoved their grandfather’s silver flask into his hand, and whispered in her aired Creole, “In need of liquid courage, ma cher frère?”

“Thanks,” mumbled Sebastian.

“I nipped ‘t from the old man’s cache of brandy from tha’ shoeshine box in the pantry,” she murmured roguishly.

Sebastian laughed and took a sip. Its sting tasted like lies and forgetfulness. Finally, respite was within reach.

Lydia joined in on the libatious conspiracy and the two girls talked about whatever it is girls talk about when they admire one another too well to compliment the other and resent one another too much to start a fuss.

Later that evening, at the tall, dilapidated colonial, after the guests had departed the repass, leaving sweating cheese, spoiled meats and crumpled napkins astray, what was left of the LeBlanc family lolled languidly about the house. After a short while, Marta came to relieve the family of cleaning and avoiding each other’s company. She was from Nicaragua, and her legal status was dubious at best, but happily overlooked for her promise to work holidays and gracefully conceal whatever secrets the departed Mr. LeBlanc would not or could not trust to his wife.

Only four days later would it be revealed at the reading of the will by Christophe LeBlanc’s executor of the estate, Mr. Benoit, that the family had been bankrupt for two years, and the old man had been slowly parceling off land to Chinese investors, hemp farmers and microbrewery start-ups. The money from the sales was thought to be hidden away in an account in Panama that Mr. LeBlanc had opened upon the tale of seeing a heart specialist for the very ailment he had died from. But until then, the family remained in lessor ignorant misery.

Sebastian slinked onto the crumbling veranda with its chipped white paint and loose floorboards, and joined Anaïs, Lydia, his mother and uncle Leo for spiked lemonade in a cool, wordless respite. The lady of the house had suffered too much of the day quoting the holy book and cursing the kin of the family’s stained bloodline and so resigned herself to her bedroom to assume the duties and the peculiarities of a widow of a certain age.

The heat of the day was finally searing off over a horizon of droning cicadas. Two children of some distant kin napped still as statues under the ancient, rotting magnolia in the front yard with some stray, but familiar cat muddling about.

Sebastian leaned in the doorway and wished for a quick end to the season and a quicker journey back to his music and his failing press in the city, which impeded any prospects he had of making Lydia an honest woman.

The phone rang. No woman moved from her seat. Uncle Leo – who always smelled of engine oil and whiskey - did not even stray his thinking as he stroked his long ashen beard. Sebastian’s mother turned towards the door half-interested and looked at Sebastian pleadingly, as if to say, “no more calls today.”

Sebastian turned into to the house, closing the screen door behind him and walked easily over to the telephone, putting his drink down on the crowded table.

“Hello,” he answered with a heavy, even voice.

It was Christophe LeBlanc’s tailor, Mr. Reid. He extended his apologies for the family’s loss, among some other related anecdotes about his grandfather taking him as his servant after a gambling fit turned much too urgent for the old man. After much pandering, Mr. Reid finally relented to Sebastian’s impatience and false charm and relayed that Mr. LeBlanc had left in his possession a newly tailored, white cotton suit, and a repaired paisley blue blazer, neither of whose account had been settled.

Sebastian told Mr. Reid that he’d come by on Monday before he returned from this drawn-out exodus. However, Mr. Reid insisted that Sebastian come at once, as he would be leaving town for a vaguely extended amount of time to rekindle an old flame in some war-torn former banana republic.

Sebastian relented.

“Fine, I’ll be there in an hour,” he said, his words hanging harrily in the air as he slammed the phone in a heap of fuming chagrin.

He seized his distemper from its place upon his brow and blew through the screen door, disturbing the reserved sanctitude of the veranda, sending up a stir among its company.

Anaïs called out, “where you going?” as she nearly chocked on a drag of a stollen cigarette of Lydia’s.

But Sebastian was already out of earshot, pulling out of the driveway on the tall, green bicycle, rusting away with each turn of its pedals. It only needed to last a mile or so before it gave away to a sensible expiry within the bounds of the remarkably unremarkable appointment, pending.

Sebastian, hot and bothered, stained with sweat and mounting animosity and depreciation of respect towards his grandfather’s affinity for superfluous decadencies, reached Cherry Blossom Street, where Mr. Reid’s shop sat unchanged from Sebastian’s childhood, not 40 yards away.

Quite expectantly, though without any immediate cause, the chain of that rickety cycle caught taut, and Sebastian’s pants suffered the fault with no grace, sending him tumbling forward, and tearing both his pant leg and his pride.

A whimsy of curses and surly insults towards the bike and its late owner were thrown in all directions, begging the attention of passersby, who stopped to consider the injured, but offered no remedy in the face of the owner’s fury.

Sebastian succeeded in freeing himself from the wretched beast and left it to suffer some vague fate of wasting away on the sidewalk. He stumbled towards the tailor’s shop. He took a breath, passed his hand through his wavy black tresses and steadied his temperament before pushing the shop door open, sending a broken bell crying through the stuffy atelier.

Mr. Reid, his eyes darting and his feet much younger than his person, came trotting to the counter from some deep abyss of imported linen, colorful spools of thread and a fury of sewing contraptions.

“Sebastian! Spittin’ image o’ tha’ crone, aint ya?”

Sebastian didn’t entreat the conversation to surpass formality.

“The bill for the clothes, please, Mr. Reid,” he insisted coldly.

Mr. Reid retreated from his charisma, opened his large brown ledger and ran his finger down a list of names of Southern gentlemen with their measurements, notes of preferred styles and, perhaps most importantly, any outstanding balances. Mr. Reid nodded.

“$537.47,” he trilled.”

Sebastian, who had been reaching for his wallet, fumbled upon hearing the perplexing mix of numbers.

“What, was he going to the Opera?” He said in a low growl.

Mr. Reid shrugged. “I b’lieve ‘e was talin’ ‘bout some weddin’. Laissez les bon temps rouler, eh Seba?”

Sebastian, pulled out his credit card, defeated.

The little man stepped away from the counter and hurried into the abyss to retrieve the garments, throwing back a question:

“Wasn’t yo’ weddin was it?”

“Highly doubt it,” Sebastian scoffed as he considered leaving the store before Mr. Reid could return.

But the sprightly man was back in a wink with the garments and a cigar. Sebastian paid the bill and caved into his former vice with the ranting man, before stumbling home some hours and bottles of scotch later.

Sometime after the crickets had been slayed by those amphibious creatures of the night, Sebastian awoke to find himself in his childhood bedroom, Lydia sleeping soundly beside him, her hair tied in a silk scarf. He intuited that he would pay for his indulgence with her frigidity in the morning. But for now, the night still belonged to him. He looked over at the white suit and blazer which now laid across the arched armchair in the corner.

Sebastian got up quietly and drifted to the clothes. Something took hold of him. That suit was his.

He looked into the mirror across from the chair, and the white cotton poured over his shoulders and around his waist and down his legs like cream over coffee. Sebastian turned and preened. He looked good. Better than good. He patted the breast pocket as if to acknowledge the missing pocket square. Perhaps cornflower would flatter the trim. But his hand found something hard and stiff.

Sebastian reached into the breast pocket and pulled out a small black notebook, bound with Italian leather and tied with an elastic band.

Sebastian untied the band and flipped through the pages carelessly, drunkenly. Mostly, the book was empty except for a few dates written in an ancient form of cursive. He landed on a page in the middle to find large letters and numbers that read:

Vía Israel, Panama City, Panama

Account Number: PA223158682

Additional Account Holder: Sebastian Christophe Ruben LeBlanc

September 2nd

$20,000 - Wedding Gift

Sebastian’s indifference for the affairs of his family disintegrated into dust. And whatever future and security his grandfather had squandered on suits and gambling debts and trips to foreign lands was instantaneously replaced with reverence. Whatever secret disloyalty Christophe LeBlanc had committed was temporarily displaced with green eyes and a sudden desire to visit a former banana republic. And that dark, sordid fellow in the ground started looking a bit brighter.

Sebastian looked over at Lydia who had just awoken and was reaching for her pack of white fume sticks and suddenly her cigarettes didn’t seem too skinny anymore.