"You ax me, he's been spooked out," he answered.
"How's that?" I asked.
"Man's smart. See the mosquitoes I been swatting all day?"
"They're bad after a rain," I said.
"They're bad in these trees anytime. Man don't see nobody out yonder on the bank, he knows what's waiting for him inside the woods. That, or somebody done tole him."
"You take it easy," I said.
Helen and I walked along the bank toward the spot where I had thrown the oar lock. I could feel her eyes on me, watching.
"You're damn quiet," she said.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to be."
"Dave?"
"What's up?"
"I'm getting a bad sense here."
"What's that?" I said, my eyes focused on the gazebo that two carpenters were hammering and sawing on around the bayou's bend.
"What that trooper said. Did you warn Crown?"
"We don't execute people in Iberia Parish. We want the man in custody, not in a box."
"We didn't have this conversation, Streak."
The carpenters were on all fours atop the gazebo's round, peaked roof, their nail bags swinging from their stomachs.
"That's quite a foundation. Y'all always pour a concrete pad under a gazebo?" I said.
"High water will rot it out if you don't," one man answered.
"What did y'all do with the dirt you excavated?"
"Some guy hauled it off for topsoil."
"Which guy?"
"Some guy work for Mr. LaRose, I guess."
"Y'all did the excavation?"
"No, sir. Mr. LaRose done that hisself. He got his own backhoe."
"I see. Y'all doin'all right?"
"Yes, sir. Anyt'ing wrong?"
"Not a thing," I said.
I walked down on the grassy bank, which was crisscrossed with the deep prints of cleated tires and dozer tracks. A fan of mud and torn divots of grass lay humped among the cattails at the bayou's edge. I poked at it with a stick and watched it cloud and drift away in the current.
"You want to bag some of it?" Helen said.