Free The Up-Down by Barry Gifford

Isn’t that why you’re callin’ now? Not that you’d ever have to phone first, you know.”
    â€œThanks, Marnie, yes. It’s good you’re still so prescient about most things. I’d like to get back to N.O. for a little while and I was hopin’ you’d be up for takin’ me in. If anything, Bay St. Clement ain’t turned out to be any more peaceful than anywhere else. I’m writin’, though, and that seems to be pretty much holdin’ my mind together. What about you?”
    â€œI opened a bakery over on St. Philip. Goin’ pretty good so far. I call it Kowalski’s Cake & Pie Company. Open from five A.M. ’til two P.M.; then I go swimmin’ at the Y. What’re you writin’?”
    â€œThe story of Sailor and Lula; it’s a novel.”
    â€œCan’t wait to read it, babe. When you comin’?”
    â€œIt’ll take me a couple of days to close up the houses and pay some bills. I’ll drive over once that’s done. Now you got me thinkin’ about your lemon meringue pie. Nobody in N.O. besides you could ever get it to come out right.”
    â€œPeople don’t understand the weather here like I do, that’s why. It’s the weather affects the bakin’. Well, this is Sunday, so I’ll be expectin’ you around Thursday. If I’m not at the house I’ll probably be at the bakery, corner of St. Philip and Burgundy.”
    â€œThanks, Marnie. You know I love you to death.”
    â€œLove you to death, too, Pace. Drive careful.”
    Pace hung up. The last time he’d seen her, Marnie was living with two rescued and supposedly rehabilitated pit bulls she’d named Milk and Honey. She had a boyfriend, too, an ex-Navy Seal—Bigger or Digger, Marnie called him, Pace couldn’t remember. He wondered if that guy was still around. Marnie hadn’t mentioned him.
    Pace was not entirely certain that he should be leaving at all, but he did feel the need to create some distance for himself from the killings and reprehensible behavior of Rapunzelina Pasternak Cruz. Where she had gone Pace did not know and did not want to know. Perhaps she would make it to the Congo one of these days and do some good for mankind like she hoped, though Pace had his doubts.
    The night before he left for N.O., Rapunzelina appeared to Pace in a dream. She was naked, adorned only by numerous bracelets on each arm, rings on every one of her fingers and indecipherable tattoos on her breasts. Punzy extended her arms toward him, turned upward the palms of her hands and said, “Do not forgive me. The river is mine and I have made it.”

 
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    Driving to New Orleans, Pace realized that the route he was following from Bay St. Clement was the same one his mother and her lifelong best friend, Beany, had taken on the last trip of Lula’s life. At the age of eighty she had gone on the road to visit Pace, which she had, and stayed with Beany at Marnie Kowalski’s house on Orleans Street. All had gone relatively well until a dilemma in Beany’s family caused the women to cut short their time with Pace. It was on their way to Beany’s daughter’s home in Plain Dealing, Louisiana, that Lula suffered a heart attack and died.
    Lula and Beany had encountered a spot of trouble in South Carolina after a young man they had given a ride to was stabbed to death by a disturbed woman he met during a stopover. Both Lula and Beany had been unnerved by this incident but Pace did not think it had anything to do with his mother’s subsequent passing. Lula had experienced many worse situations in her lifetime and managed to weather them all. Her heart, strong and wild as it was, had finally just quit. Pace missed his parents but was satisfied that they had lived their lives as best they could and passed on to him their spirit of adventure, decency and generosity. As far as legacies go, Pace figured, that was