Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“I want to talk to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“I want to talk to you alone.”

“Where are you?”

“Lafayette.”

“Drive on over. Go out East Main, then take the bayou road south of town. You’ll run right into my place.”

“Give me an hour.”

“You sound a little gray, podna.”

“Yeah, I probably need to get married again or something. Dangle loose.”

Every morning Batist and I grilled chickens and links on the barbecue pit that I had made by splitting an oil drum horizontally with an acetylene torch and welding hinges and metal legs on it. I sold paper-plate lunches of barbecue and dirty rice for three-fifty apiece, and I usually cleared thirty dollars or so from the fishermen who were either coming in for the day or about to go out. Then after we had cleaned the cable-spool tables, Batist and I would fix ourselves plates and open bottles of Dr Pepper and eat under one of the umbrellas by the water’s edge.

It was a warm, bright afternoon, and the wind was lifting the moss on the dead cypress trees in the marsh. The sky was as blue and perfect as the inside of a teacup.

“That man drive like he don’t know the road got holes in it,” Batist said. His sun-faded denim shirt was open on his chest. He wore a dime on a string around his neck to keep away the gris-gris, an evil spell, and his black chest looked like it was made of boilerplate.

The pink Cadillac convertible, with its top down, was streaked with mud and rippled and dented along the fenders. I watched the front end dip into a chuckhole and shower yellow water all over the windshield.

“Dixie Lee never did things in moderation,” I said.

“You ain’t renting him our boat?”

“He’s just coming out to talk about something. He used to be a famous country and rock ’n’ roll star.”

Batist kept chewing and looked at me flatly, obviously unimpressed.

“I’m serious. He used to be big stuff up in Nashville,” I said.

His eyes narrowed, as they always did when he heard words that he didn’t recognize.

“It’s in Tennessee. That’s where they make a lot of country records.”

No help.

“I’ll get us another Dr Pepper. Did you feed Tripod?” I said.

“You t’ink that coon don’t know where the food at?”

I didn’t understand.

“He ain’t lost his nose, no.”

“What are you saying, Batist?”

“He eat all your fried pies. Go look your fried pies.”

Dixie Lee cut his engine, slammed the car door behind him, and lumbered down the dock into the bait shop, flipping one hand at us in recognition. His face was bloodless, the skin stretched tight on the bone, beaded with perspiration like drops of water on a pumpkin. His charcoal shirt, which was covered with roses, was damp along the buttons and under the armpits.

I followed him inside the bait shop. He dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter, opened a long-necked Jax on the side of the beer box, and upended it into his mouth. He kept swallowing until it was almost empty, then he took a breath of air and opened and closed his eyes.

“Boy, do I got one,” he said. “I mean wicked, son, like somebody screwed a brace and bit through both temples.”