Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

"What you calling your song?" Woodrow asked, sitting down next to him in the dusk.

" "The Angel of Work Camp Number Nine,"" Junior replied.

Woodrow rubbed the whiskers that grew like black wire on his chin. "T'ink that's a good idea, Junior?" he asked.

"Gonna record it up in Memphis one day. You gonna see," Junior replied.

"I seen her car out here last night. Parked right there on the road. She was smoking a cigarette behind the wheel and playing the radio in the dark."

"You better not be fooling with me, Woodrow."

"It was her. Cap'n Posey walked up to her window and axed if any ting was wrong. She said she was just taking a drive. Then she drove on down the road toward the li'l sto' by the bridge. A li'l while later I seen her drive on back to the big house. She was drinking a bottle of beer, tilting her chin up each time she took a sip."

"Why didn't you come get me?"

"You spent too much time up Nort', Junior. You're having t'oughts ain't no nigger in Lou'sana ought to be having."

"Maybe it was that way at first. But not now. You know what she got that make her special?"

"Her tits ain't bad."

"Don't be talking that way, Woodrow. She's special 'cause she got respect for other people."

Junior adjusted the belly of his guitar on his thigh and slipped his three steel finger picks on his right hand, then corded the neck of the guitar and began singing:

At Camp Number Nine its "Roll, nigger, roll, No heaven for you, boy, the state own your soul." They took my home and family,

Give me chains, fat side and beans, Bossman making me a Christian, God Almighty, hear that Betty scream.

"You risking your ass for somebody don't know you alive," Wood-row said.

"Rich ladies like that got all kinds of things they got to do, places they got to travel to, Woodrow. She cain't be coming down here all the time."

"Don't let Boss Posey hear that song."

"When she invites me back up to the house?" Junior said.

"Yeah?"

"That's the first song I'm gonna play."

There was drought in the fall and the fields hardened and cracked under a merciless sun and an empty sky that by noon was like white glass. The leaves of the cane baked in the wind and frayed into thread on the ends and rattled dryly on the stalks, and by evening the sky was cinnamon colored with dust and the convicts filling mule-drawn water tanks with buckets they flung into the bayou on ropes had to tie wet handkerchiefs across their nostrils and mouths. To conserve water the convicts bathed in the bayou, then sat listlessly on the porches of their cabins until lock-up. Every third or fourth evening, while the cicadas sang in a grove of cedar trees near the camp, Junior worked on the song he was composing in tribute to Andrea Lejeune, waiting for the invitation to play on her lawn again, telling himself she was contacting the governor and that any day a parole order for his release would be delivered at the camp's front gate.

At bell count on a September morning Jackson Posey saw the folded brown paper sack covered with penciled lyrics sticking from Junior's back pocket.

"What you got there, Junior?" he asked.

The early sun was already a dull red inside the dust blowing out of the fields. At the bottom of the slope that led down to the bayou, the water was low and swarming with gnats, algae-webbed snags protruding from the surface, all of it smelling of dead fish that lay bloated and fly-specked on the banks.

"Just li'l notes I keep for myself, boss," Junior replied.

"Let's see it," Jackson Posey said, fitting a pair of glasses on his nose. He took the bag from Junior's fingers and studied the words on it, his lips moving slightly as he read. The sores on his arms seemed deeper, more black than purple now. His eyes fixed on Junior's. "You got Camp Number Nine in here?" he said.

"Yes, suh."

"Camp Number Nine is us."

"It is and it ain't, boss."