Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

But I was falling prey to that old self-serving notion that well-intended rhetoric can remove a stone bruise from the soul.

I pulled the sheet over her and didn't say anything for what seemed a long time. Then I said, to change the subject, 'Who was the woman with you when you got stopped?'

'Sister Marie.'

'Who?'

'Marie Guilbeaux, the nun from Lafayette.'

'What were you doing with her?'

'She was bringing some potted chrysanthemums out to the house. Then she saw me coming out of the convenience store, and I asked her to go with me to the drive-in for a beer. She's a nice person, Dave. She felt bad about her last visit here. What's wrong?'

'I don't want her around here anymore.'

'I don't understand your attitude.'

'She keeps showing up at peculiar times.'

'I don't think you should blame Sister Marie for my behavior, Dave.'

'We'll address our own problems, Boots. We don't need anybody else aboard. That's not an unreasonable attitude, is it?'

/> 'I guess not. But she is nice.'

'I'll fix supper now. Why don't you take a short nap?'

'All right,' she said, and touched my forearm. 'I'm sorry about all this. I want to go to a meeting with you. First thing tomorrow morning. I won't break my promise, either.'

'You're the best.'

'You too, kiddo.'

Later, I strung an entire spool of baling wire, six inches off the ground, hung with tin cans, through the oak and pecan trees in the front and side yards, around the back of the house, across the trunk of the chinaberry tree and the back wall of the tractor shed, over the coulee, and back to Tripod's hutch, where I notched it tightly around an oak trunk. Then I put the sheriffs AR-15 on the top shelf of the bedroom closet, my .45 under the mattress, and got under the sheet next to Bootsie. Her body was warm with sleep, her mouth parted on the pillow with her breathing. The muscles in her back and shoulders and the curve of her hip were as smooth as water sliding over stone. Deep inside a troubling dream she began to speak incoherently, and I pressed myself against her, pulled the contours of her body into mine, breathed the strawberry smell of her hair, and, like a bent atavistic creature from an earlier time, his loins caught between desire and fear, waited for the tinkling of cans on a wire or the soft, milky glow of a predictable dawn.

After work the next afternoon, just as I pulled into the drive, I saw Zoot Bergeron sitting on top of a piling at the end of my dock, flipping pea gravel at the water. I parked my truck under the trees and walked back down the slope toward him. He jumped from the piling, straightened his back, and flung the rest of the gravel into the canebrake. His skin was dusty and his pullover sweater stained with food. In the lobe of his left ear was a tiny green stone, like a bright insect, on a gold pin.

'What's happening, Zoot?' I said.

'I need a job. I thought maybe you could put me on here. I done this kind of boat work before. Lot of it.'

'How'd you get here?'

'Rode the bus to New Iberia. Then walked.'

'You walked fifteen miles?'

'That man yonder give me a ride the last two miles.' He pointed up the road to a parked, mud-caked van where a man in coveralls was working under the front end with a wrench. 'I'll work hard for you, Mr. Dave. I won't get in no trouble, either.'

'What about school, partner?'

'I ain't going back there. I need to train, get in shape, maybe get on a card. You don't need school for that. Mr. Tommy tole me he quit school when he was sixteen.'

'That's part of the reason he's a moral imbecile, Zoot.'

'A wha—'

'What's your mom say about all this?'