Jolie Blon's Bounce (Dave Robicheaux 12)

Tee Bobby brushed a raindrop out of his eye and continued to stare at Legion, his sequined purple shirt puffing with air in the wind.

“I said you slept with my grandmother. That ain’t true. You raped her. You pushed old man Julian around and you raped my gran’mama,” he said.

“The white man gonna screw down whenever he got the chance. Nigger woman always gonna get what she can out of it. Which one gonna lie about it later?”

“My gran’mama don’t never lie. You better not call her a nigger, either,” Tee Bobby said.

Legion struck the flint on his lighter and cupped the flame in the wind, inhaling on his cigarette.

“I’m leaving now. Them shrimpers gonna be coming out of there. You better get your ass home, you,” he said.

Legion got behind the wheel of Joe Zeroski’s automobile and started the engine, his cigarette hanging from his mouth. But before he could back out and turn around, Tee Bobby picked up a piece of broken cement the size of a softball and smashed the driver’s-side window with it.

Legion braked the car and got out, a huge hole in the window, his forehead bleeding, his cigarette still in his mouth.

“You got sand,” he said.

“Fuck you,” Tee Bobby said.

“Ax yourself where you got it. The parents who didn’t want you? Be proud of the blood you got, boy,” Legion replied.

He got back in Joe Zeroski’s automobile, tossed his cigarette through the hole in the window, and drove away.

Late that night Baby Huey Lagneaux stole Joe Zeroski’s automobile out of Legion’s yard and was driving it back to New Iberia when he was stopped for speeding. Baby Huey sat in jail for suspicion of car theft until Monday morning. Before he went back on the street, I had a deputy bring him by my office. “You were taking the car back to Joe?” I asked.

“Yes, suh.”

“I don’t get it. His men used a stun gun on you.”

“Mr. Joe t’rew down his .38 and got on his knees to save my life. He don’t even know me.”

The chair he sat in groaned with the strain, his skin so black it had a purple sheen to it. He gazed out the window at the freight train clicking by on the rail crossing.

“See you around, Huey,” I said.

“I can go?”

“Why’d you ever become a pimp?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I ain’t one now. Can I go?”

“You bet,” I said. I leaned back in my chair, my fingers laced behind my head, and wondered at the complexities and contradictions that must have existed in the earth’s original clay when God first scooped it up in His palm.

Twenty minutes later my desk phone rang. “This kid Marvin Grits or whatever was handing out Bible pamphlets at the motor court this morning. But that ain’t why he’s here. He’s got the hots for Zerelda. I want him picked up. Besides, he’s drunk,” the voice said.

“Joe?”

“You thought it was the pope?”

“Marvin Oates is drunk?”

“He looks like he got hit by a train. He smells like puke. Maybe he just come from First Baptist,” Joe said.

“I’ll see what I can do. Baby Huey Lagneaux just left my office. He told me about your run-in with Legion Guidry.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I always said you were a stand-up guy.”