Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

“He’s imbued with this notion he’s a Confederate hero of some kind and my daughter is his girlfriend. He was reading an acc

ount in our library about two lovers who committed suicide during the Civil War in a home on Camp Street.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s living in New Orleans.”

“You have something better to offer?”

“Every cop in the city has a mug shot of this guy. What else can we do?”

“Pull Jim Gable’s personnel records for me.”

“Forget it.”

“Why?”

“We’ll handle our own people. Am I communicating here? Gable is none of your business.”

That’s what you think, I thought as I lowered the receiver into the phone cradle.

I worked late that evening, then drove home along the bayou road in the dusk. I could smell chrysanthemums and a smell like gas on the wind and see fireflies lighting in the gloom of the swamp. The house had already fallen into shadow when I turned into the drive and the television set was on in the living room, the sounds of canned laughter rising and falling in the air like an insult to the listener’s credulity. I tried not to think about the evening that awaited Bootsie and me as soon as I entered the house, hours of unrelieved tension, formality that hid our mutual anger, physical aversion, and periods of silence that were louder than a scream.

I saw Batist chopping up hog meat on a butcher table he had set up by the coulee. He had taken off his shirt and put on a gray apron, and I could see the veins cord in his shoulder each time he raised the cleaver in the air. Behind him, the sky was still blue and the evening star was out and the moon rising, and his head was framed against the light like a glistening cannonball.

“Sold thirty-five lunches today. We run out of poke chops,” he said.

A cardboard box by his foot contained the hog’s head and loops of blue entrails.

“You doin’ all right?” I asked.

“Weather’s funny. The wind’s hard out of the west. I seen t’ings glowing in the swamp last night. My wife use to say that was the loupgarou.”

“It’s swamp gas igniting or ball lightning, podna. You know that. Forget about werewolves.”

“I run my trot line this morning. Had a big yellow mudcat on it. When I slit it open there was a snake in its stomach.”

“I’ll see you later,” I said.

“When the loupgarou come, somebody gonna die. Old folks use to burn blood to run it back in the trees.”

“Thanks for putting up the meat, Batist,” I said, and went inside the house.

Bootsie sat at the kitchen table reading from two sheets of lined paper. She wore blue jeans and loafers and a denim shirt with the sleeves cut away at the shoulders; wisps of her hair had fallen loose from her barrette and hung on the back of her neck. Her fingers were pressed to her temples while she read.

“Is that from Remeta?” I said.

“No. I went to an Al-Anon meeting today. Judy Theriot, my sponsor, was there. She said I had a problem with anger.”

“She did?” I said, my voice neutral.

“She made me do a Fourth Step and write out an inventory. Now that I’ve read it again I’d like to wad it up and throw it away.”

I went to the icebox and took out a pitcher of iced tea and poured a glass at the sink. I raised the glass to my mouth, then lowered it and set it back on the drainboard.

“Would you care for one?” I asked.

“You want to know what’s in my inventory?” Bootsie asked.

“I’m a little bit afraid of what’s coming.”