“Inside, resting. It’s cool tonight. She t’ought she’d rest.”
“Mr. Robicheaux says you came to my house and tried to make amends. How does a man like you make amends for what he did, Mr. Melancon?”
“I wanted to give y’all some diamonds I taken from a man who taken them from somebody else.”
“That’s an insult.”
“Suh, I ain’t mean to hurt y’all no more. I t’ought I was—” He stopped and widened his eyes, as though smoke were in them. “I ain’t gonna say no more. Call the cops or do what you come here to do.”
Otis wore a short-sleeved shirt that suddenly seemed too small for his chest and throat, so small and tight he couldn’t breathe. “You wait here,” he said.
He went inside the house without knocking. It was dark inside and he could hear the hum of mosquitoes in the rooms. The floor and walls seemed to be covered with the same greenish-black sludge or mold that he had seen on the debris piled in the yard. A woman lay on a cot in the hallway, breathing audibly, a pillow stuffed behind her head. “That you, Bertrand?” she said.
“No, my name is Otis Baylor.”
There were bandages wrapped around the palms of both the woman’s hands. “Where’s Bertrand at?” she said.
“Outside, in the driveway,” Otis said.
“You one of the men shot into my li’l house?”
“No.”
“You a policeman?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then what you doing here?”
“I’m an insurance man.”
“You come here about Clemmie’s claim?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said.
“Would you help me up?”
Otis reached down to take her by the arm. Then he heard the screen door behind him. “That’s all right, suh. I got it,” Bertrand said. He held a small white bowl in one hand. “She burned herself on the grill. I got to help her with her soup.”
“These women shouldn’t be here,” Otis said.
“Ain’t no place to take them,” Bertrand said.
Otis watched while Bertrand hand-fed his grandmother. Otis wiped the mosquitoes out of his face. When the wind changed and blew through the back door, the odor of feces struck his nostrils. “I want to talk to you,” he said.
“I got to finish here,” Bertrand said.
“No, you come outside and talk to me now.”
Bertrand set the bowl down on the floor, next to the cot, and followed Otis outside.
“I feel like tearing you apart,” Otis said.
“I guess you do.”
“You go over to that car and you apologize.”
“Suh?”