“Something wrong, Dave?” she said.
“No, not at all.”
“Something bad happen, ain’t it?”
“Don’t say ‘ain’t.’”
“Why you mad?”
“Listen, little guy, I’m going to run some errands this afternoon and I want you to stay down at the dock with Batist. You stay in the store and help him run things, okay?”
“What’s going on, Dave?”
“There’s nothing to worry about. But I want you to stay away from people you don’t know. Keep close around Batist and Clarise and me, okay? You see, there’re a couple of men I’ve had some trouble with. If they come around here, Batist and I will chase them off. But I don’t want them bothering you or Clarise or Tripod or any of our friends, see.” I winked at her.
“These bad men?” Her face looked up at me. Her eyes were round and unblinking.
“Yes, they are.”
“What they do?”
I took a breath and let it out.
“I don’t know for sure. But we just need to be a little careful. That’s all, little guy. We don’t worry about stuff like that. We’re kind of like Tripod. What’s he do when the dog chases him?”
She looked into space, then I saw her eyes smile.
“He gets up on the rabbit hutch,” she said.
“Then what’s he do?”
“He stick his claw in the dog’s nose.”
“That’s right. Because he’s smart. And because he’s smart and careful, he doesn’t have to worry about that dog. And we’re the same way and we don’t worry about things, do we?”
She smiled up at me, and I pulled her against my side and kissed the top of her head. I could smell the sun’s heat in her hair.
I parked the truck in the shade of the pecan trees, and she took her lunch kit into the kitchen, washed out her thermos, and changed into her playclothes. We walked down to the dock, and I put her in charge of soda pop and worm sales. In the corner behind the beer cases I saw Batist’s old automatic Winchester twelve-gauge propped against the wall.
“I put some number sixes in it for that cottonmouth been eating fish off my stringer,” he said. “Come see tonight. You gonna have to clean that snake off the tree.”
“I’ll be back before dark. Take her up to the house for her supper,” I said. “I’ll close up when I get back.”
“You don’t be worry, you,” he said, dragged a kitchen match on a wood post, lit his cigar, and let the smoke drift out throu
gh his teeth.
Alafair rang up a sale on the cash register and beamed when the drawer clanged open.
I put everything from the mailbox in a large paper bag and drove to the Iberia Parish sheriff’s office. I had worked a short while for the sheriff as a plainclothes detective the previous year, and I knew him to be a decent and trustworthy man. But when he ran for the office his only qualification was the fact that he had been president of the Lions Club and owned a successful dry cleaning business. He was slightly overweight, his face soft around the edges, and in his green uniform he looked like the manager of a garden-supply store. We talked in his office while a deputy processed the wrapping paper, box, note, and hypodermic needle for fingerprints in another room.
Finally the deputy rapped on the sheriff’s door glass with one knuckle and opened the door.
“Two identifiable sets,” he said. “One’s Dave’s, one’s from that colored man, what’s his name?”
“Batist,” I said.
“Yeah, we have his set on file from the other time—” His eyes flicked away from me and his face colored. “We had his prints from when we were out to Dave’s place before. Then there’s some smeared stuff on the outside of the wrapping paper.”