Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“It’s your imagination. They don’t come much more simple than me.”

I remember one of the last times I saw my mother. It was 1945, just before the war ended, and she came to our house on the bayou with the gambler she had run away with. I was out front on the dirt road, trying to catch my dog, who was chasing chickens in the ditch, when he stopped his coupe, one with a rumble seat and a hand-cranked front window with gas-ration stamps on it, thirty yards down from the house. She walked fast up the lane into the shade of our oaks and around to the side yard, where my father was nailing together a chicken coop. She worked in a drive-in and beer garden in Morgan City. Her pink waitress uniform had white trim on the collar and sleeves, and because her body was thick and muscular it looked too small on her when she walked. Her back was turned to me while she talked to my father, but his face was dark as he listened and his eyes went up the road to where the coupe was parked.

The gambler had his car door open to let in the breeze. He was thin and wore sideburns and brown zoot pants with suspenders and a striped shirt and a green necktie with purple dots on it. A brown fedora sat in the back window.

He asked me in French if the dog was mine. When I didn’t answer, he said, “You don’t talk French, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That your dog?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know how to make him stop running them chicken? Break a stick on him. You ain’t got to do it but once.”

I walked away in the dust toward the house and the trees, and I didn’t look at my dog. I heard my father say to my mother, “In five minutes I’m coming there. That little gun won’t do him no good, neither.”

She took me by the hand and walked me quickly to the front steps and sat me in her lap. She brushed my face and hair with her hands and kissed me and patted my thighs. There were drops of perspiration behind her neck, and I could smell her perfume, like four-o’clocks, and the powder on her breasts.

“You been good at school, huh?” she said. “You been going to mass, too, you? You been making confess and go to communion? Aldous been taking you? You got to do good in school. The brothers gonna teach you lots of t’ings.”

“Why you stay with him?”

She pressed my face against her breasts. I could feel the hard shape of her stomach and her thighs.

“He shot somebody. In a card game,” I said.

“He ain’t bad. He’s good to me. We brung you a present. You gonna see.”

She picked me up and carried me to the road. I could see my father watching from the side yard, the hammer in his hand. She set me down by the open door of the coupe. The air was humid and hot in the sun, and the cattails in the ditch were coated with dust.

“Come see,” she said. “Show it him, Mack. Behind the seat.”

His face had no expression. He reached behind the seat, his eyes looking out at the yellow road, and pulled out a paper bag. It was folded across the top and tied with string.

“Here,” she said, and unwrapped it for me. Her dress was tight across her thighs and there were dimples in her knees. The man got out of the car and walked out on the road and lit a cigarette. He didn’t look in my father’s direction, but they could see each other well.

“You like a top, huh?” my mother said. “See, it got a crank. You push it up and down and it spin around and whistle.”

There was perspiration in her black hair. She put the top in my hands. The metal felt hot against my palms.

“Is he coming out?” the man said.

“No. He promised.”

“The last time was for free. You told him that?”

“He don’t want no more trouble, Mack. He ain’t gonna bother us.”

“I give a damn, me.”

“Don’t be talking that way. We gotta go. Don’t be looking over there. You hear me, Mack?”

“They gonna keep him in jail next time.”

“We going right now. Get in the car. I gotta be at work. Dave don’t need be standing out in the hot road. Ain’t that right, Davy? Mack, you promised.”

He flipped his cigarette away in the ditch and got behind the steering wheel. He wore two-tone brown and white shoes, and he wiped the dust off the shine with a rag from under the seat. I saw my father toss his hammer up on the workbench, then pick up the chicken coop and look at the angles of its side.