Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

"Don't talk no more. Don't look at my face either."

"What's I gonna do? You here to kill my boy."

"You don't know that. Maybe we just want to talk to him… Don't look at my face."

"I ain't lying on no flo'. I ain't gonna sit by while y'all kill my boy. What y'all t'ink I am?"

"An old man, just like I'm getting to be. You can have something to eat or put your head down on the table and take a nap. But don't mix in it. You understand that? You mix in it, we gonna forget you're an old nigra don't nobody pay any mind to."

The man in the raincoat came back through the door, a sawed-off over-and-under shotgun in his right hand.

"I'm burning up. The wind feels like it come off a desert," he said, and took off his coat and wiped his face with a handkerchief. "What was the old man talking about?"

"He thinks the stock market might take a slide."

"Ask him if there's any stray pussy in the neighborhood."

The man with whiskers on his chin leaned over and spit tobacco juice into the coffee can. He wiped his lips with his thumb.

"Bring his dog in here," he said.

"What for?"

"Because a dog skulking and whimpering around the door might indicate somebody kicked it."

"I hadn't thought about that. They always say you're a thinking man, Harpo."

The man with the whiskers spit in the can again and looked hard at him.

The man who had worn the raincoat dragged the dog skittering through the door on its leash, then tried to haul it into the air. But the dog's back feet found purchase on the floor and its teeth tore into the man's hand.

"Oh, shit!" he yelled out, and pushed both his hands between his thighs.

"Get that damn dog under control, old man, or I'm gonna shoot both of you," the man with whiskers said.

"Yes, suh. He ain't gonna be no trouble. I promise," Mout' said.

"You all right?" the man with whiskers asked his friend.

His friend didn't answer. He opened an ice chest and found a bottle of wine and poured it on the wound. His hand was strung with blood, his fingers shaking as though numb

with cold. He tied his handkerchief around the wound, pulling it tight with his teeth, and sat down in a wood chair facing the door, the shotgun across his knees.

"This better come out right," he said.

MOUT' SAT IN THE corner, on the floor, his dog between his thighs. He could hear mullet splash out in the saw grass, the drone of a distant boat engine, dry thunder booming over the Gulf. He wanted it to rain, but he didn't know why. Maybe if it rained, no, stormed, with lightning all over the sky, Cool Breeze would take shelter and not try to come back that night. Or if it was thundering real bad, the two white men wouldn't hear Cool Breeze's outboard, hear him lifting the crab traps out of the aluminum bottom, hefting up the bucket loaded with catfish he'd unhooked from the trot line.

"I got to go to the bat'room," he said.

But neither of the white men acknowledged him.

"I got to make water," he said.

The man with whiskers stood up from his chair and straightened his back.

"Come on, old man," he said, and let Mout' walk ahead of him out the back door.

"Maybe you a good man, suh. Maybe you just ain't giving yourself credit for being a good man," Mout' said.