Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

"Go ahead and piss."

"I ain't never give no trouble to white people. Anybody round New Iberia tell you that. Same wit' my boy. He worked hard at the bowling alley. He had him a li'l sto'. He tried to stay out of trouble but wouldn't nobody let him."

Then Mout' felt his caution, his lifetime of deference and obsequiousness and pretense slipping away from him. "He had him a wife, her name was Ida, the sweetest black girl in Franklin, but a white man said she was gonna cook for him, just like that, or her husband was gonna go to the penitentiary. Then he took her out in the shed and made her get down on her knees and do what he want. She t'rowed up and begged him not to make her do it again, and every t'ree or fo' nights he walked her out in the shed and she tole herself it's gonna be over soon, he gonna get tired of me and then me and Cool Breeze gonna be left alone, and when he got finished wit' her and made her hate herself and hate my boy, too, another white man come along and give her presents and took her to his bed and tole her t'ings to tell Cool Breeze so he'd know he wasn't nothing but a nigger and a nigger's wife is a white man's jelly roll whenever he want it."

"Shake it off and zip up your pants," the man with whiskers said.

"You cain't get my boy fair. He'll cut yo' ass."

"You better shut up, old man."

"White trash wit' a gun and a big truck. Seen y'all all my life. Got to shove niggers round or you don't know who you are."

The man with whiskers pushed Mout' toward the shack, surprised at the power and breadth of muscle in Mout's back.

"I might have underestimated you. Don't take that as good news," he said.

MOUT' WOKE JUST BEFORE first light. The dog lay in his lap, its coat stiff with mud. The two white men sat in chairs facing the front door, their shoulders slightly rounded, their chins dropping to their chests. The man with the shotgun opened his eyes suddenly, as though waking from a dream.

"Wake up," he said.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. That's the point. I don't want to drive out of here in sunlight."

The man with whiskers rubbed the sleep out of his face.

"Bring the truck up," he said.

The man with the shotgun looked in Mout's direction, as if asking a question.

"I'll think about it," the man with whiskers said.

"It's mighty loose, Harpo."

"Every time I say something, you got a remark to make."

The man with the shotgun rewrapped the bloody handkerchief on his hand. He rose from the chair and threw the shotgun to his friend. "You can use my raincoat if you decide to do business," he said, and went out into the dawn.

Mout' waited in the silence.

"What do you think we ought to do about you?" the man with whiskers asked.

"Don't matter what happen here. One day the devil gonna come for y'all, take you where you belong."

"You got diarrhea of the mouth."

"My boy better than both y'all. He outsmarted you. He know y'all here. He out there now. Cool Breeze gonna come after you, Mr. White Trash."

"Stand up, you old fart."

Mout' pushed himself to his feet, his back against the plank wall. He could feel his thighs quivering, his bladder betraying him. Outside, the sun had risen into a line of storm clouds that looked like the brow of an angry man.

The man with whiskers held the shotgun against his hip and fired one barrel into Mout's dog, blowing it like a bag of broken sticks and torn skin into the corner.

"Get a cat. They're a lot smarter animals," he said, and went out the door and crossed the board walkway to the levee where his friend sat on the fender of their pickup truck, smoking a cigarette.

* * *