“What do you mean, trade-off?”
“What is Adonis Balangie getting out of this? How about the mother? You’re getting in her bread, right? What does she have to say about her daughter?”
“Carroll, I believe you come
from another planet. Maybe another galaxy.”
“Stop being so sensitive. If I had my way, I’d be up her dress, too. Does Adonis Balangie know what y’all are doing?”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“I got to give it to you, that broad’s ass ought to have its own zip code.”
“I’m about to leave your office, Carroll.”
He dropped his foot from the trash basket and held up his hands. “All right, that’s a little crude. What’s really going on between the Balangie family and the Shondells?”
“I think it’s about money.”
“That simple, huh?”
“Not quite,” I said.
“What’s the rest of it?” he said.
“Johnny Shondell says there’s a player who travels through time.”
“Anyone local?”
“Talk to Clete Purcel.”
“In your dreams.”
“I’ll see you later, Carroll.”
“Unfortunately,” he said.
I started to leave.
“Hold up,” he said.
“What is it?” I said irritably.
“You really smacked Shondell across the face? Not just a tap? You let that prissy cocksucker have it?”
“Afraid so.”
He looked at me as though seeing me for the first time. “You’re a motherfucker, Robo.”
* * *
THAT EVENING I sat at the picnic table in the backyard and fed my cats and two raccoons and a possum who carried her babies on her back and invited herself to a free meal whenever she had the opportunity. If you’re given to depression, the fading of the day can seep into your soul and bind your heart and shut the light from your eyes. During those moments when I’m tempted to let my thoughts be drawn into the great shade, I seek out the company of animals and try to take joy in the transfiguration of the earth as the sun’s afterglow is absorbed into the roots and trunks of the trees and the clumps of four-o’clocks and the Teche itself at high tide, when the light is sealed beneath the water and shines like rippling gold coins in the current.
I walked down to the bank to a spot where I could see the drawbridge at Burke Street and the black people who fished under it with cane poles and cut liver. Another storm was rolling in from the Gulf, already chaining the water’s surface with rain rings. In one fashion or another, our history was written on Bayou Teche. Spanish and French explorers had used it to invade and steal the Indians’ land. Pirates like Jean Laffite had sold slaves from the West Indies on its banks in violation of Thomas Jefferson’s embargo of 1807. (One of Lafitte’s partners was James Bowie, who would later die in the Alamo.) In 1863 an entire Yankee flotilla came up the Teche loaded with soldiers who got deliberately turned loose on the civilian population, particularly on women of color, who were raped at random. Our history was not a benign one.
But rather than dwelling on iniquitous deeds, I wanted to remember the Cajuns who lived on houseboats and went up and down the bayou in their pirogues back in the 1940s, and the paddle wheeler that one night a week came by at dusk, a sculpted replica of Charlie McCarthy on the prow, the decks as brightly lit as a wedding cake, a Dixieland band blaring on the fantail. Even today I sometimes see a pirogue in the fog, with my mother and father on board, beckoning at me, and the experience is not a bad one at all.
The rain began clicking on my hat, and I went inside and ate a cold sandwich at the kitchen table, then fell asleep in a chair in the living room. When I woke, the rain was thundering on the roof, the trees thrashing outside in the darkness, sometimes flickering whitely as though a giant strobe had flashed from the clouds. The phone rang, but when I picked it up, I heard only static. The caller’s name was blocked. I replaced the receiver and went to bed. An hour later, the phone rang again. I looked at the caller ID. This time it was completely blank, something it had never done before. I picked up the receiver and placed it to my ear but said nothing.