She picked the cat up in her arms and kissed him on top of his head. Then she flipped him on his back and set him in the crevice formed by her thighs and straightened his body by pulling his tail as though it were a strap on a piece of luggage. She scratched him between his ears and under his chin. "We're going to call him Mr. Adorable. No, we're going to call him Snuggs," she said.
"What's happening', Theo?" I said.
"I heard about your visit to my father's house."
"Your father has a problem with the truth. He doesn't think he needs to tell it."
"He says you talked to him as though he were a criminal."
"I talked to him as though he were an ordinary citizen. He didn't like it. Then, rather than confront me about it, he used his attorney to report me to the sheriff."
"He comes from a different generation, Dave. Why don't you have a little compassion?"
Time to disengage, I said to myself. The streetlights were coming on under the oak trees, and the air was cool and damp and I could smell an odor like scorched brown sugar from the mills. Theo set down the cat and stroked his back, then stood up. "You want to see my new guitar?" she asked.
"Sure. I didn't know you played," I said.
She came back from the car with her guitar and unsnapped the case. "I'm not very good. My mother was, though. I have some old tapes of her singing some of Bessie Smith's songs. She could have been a professional. The only person I've ever heard like her is Joan Baez," she said.
Theo removed the guitar from its case and sat down again on the steps. She made a chord on the neck and brushed her thumb across the strings, then began singing "Corina, Corina" in Cajun French. She had been much too humble about her ability. Her voice was lovely, her accompaniment with herself perfect as she ran each chord into the next. In fact, like all real artists, she seemed to disappear inside the thing she created, as though the identity by which others knew her had nothing to do with the inner realities of her life.
She smiled at me when she finished, almost like a woman delivering a kiss after she has made love.
"Gee, you're great, Theo," I heard myself saying.
"My mother used to sing that. I don't remember her well, but I remember her singing that song to me before I went to sleep," she said. She began putting away her guitar.
The cat she had named Snuggs nuzzled his head against her knee. The wind riffled through the oak and pecan trees overhead, and a group of children on their way to the library rode by on bicycles, laughing, the streetl
ights glowing in the dampness like the oil lamps in a Van Gogh painting. There was not a mechanized sound on the street, only the easy sweep of wind and the scratching of leaves on the sidewalk. I didn't want the moment to end.
But like the canker in the rose or the serpent uncoiling itself out of an apple tree, there had been an element in Theo's song that disturbed me in a way I couldn't let go of.
"The melody for "Corina, Corina' is the same as "The Midnight Special,"" I said.
"Un-huh," she said vaguely.
"That was Leadbelly's song. The Midnight Special was a train he rode into the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. According to the prison legend, the convict who saw the headlight on the locomotive shining at him in his sleep was going to be released in the coming year."
But I saw she had still not made the connection.
"Your father didn't want to answer questions about Junior Crudup, Theo," I said. "Crudup was Leadbelly's friend inside Angola. They probably composed songs together. I think Crudup was a convict laborer on your father's plantation."
She continued snapping her guitar case shut and never looked at me while I spoke. But I could see what I thought was a great sadness in her eyes. She reached over and petted the cat good-bye, then turned toward me. "You have an enormous reservoir of anger inside you, Dave. I guess I feel sorry for you," she said.
The next morning events kicked into overdrive, beginning with a phone call from Clotile Arceneaux, the black patrolwoman who Helen said was an undercover state trooper.
"We've got Father Jimmie Dolan in custody," she said.
"Are you serious?" I said.
"As a material witness. He won't give up Max Coil's whereabouts."
"Which administrative moron is behind this?" I said.
She paused before she spoke again. "Coll tried to kill the priest but he won't press charges. So a couple of detectives figured Father Jimmie is not a friend of N.O.P.D. and decided to put the squeeze on him. Look, the word on the street is there's an open contract on Max Coll. We need this guy out of town or in lock-up. We also don't need trouble from Catholic priests."
"Can't help you," I said, and hung up the phone.