Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

"No, suh. He was after Boss Posey. A man like Castille Lejeune don't go after a nigger convict. It was Boss Posey he took it out on."

"I don't understand. Jackson Posey knew Junior was innocent, that Andrea Lejeune was having an affair with a man in Crowley."

"What was Boss Posey gonna say? "Your wife been sleeping wit' another white man and I knowed about it and I ain't said nothing'? Boss Posey was caught, just like Junior. Boss Posey was gonna save his job and his ass only way he knew how."

Woodrow Reed stopped his account, his hands fixed rigidly on his thighs, staring at me with his flat, sightless eyes. The pupils were overly large, like black dimes, as though they contained thoughts and remembered images that were bursting inside his head.

"Save his ass how, Woodrow?" I said.

"I got great shame about this, Mr. Robicheaux. The story of Judas ain't only in the Bible. Thirty pieces of silver can come to you in lots of ways."

He looked at me a long time while fireflies sparked in the darkness outside and moths thudded softly against the screens, then he told me the rest of it.

Two weeks passed at the camp, and still there was no rain, only heat and dust blowing from the fields and dry lightning at night and the rumble

of distant thunder over the Gulf. Cigarettes thrown from automobiles and pickup trucks started roadside grass fires that spread into the cane, and after sunset Woodrow and Junior sat on the front steps of their cabin and watched the dull red glow inside the clouds of brown smoke on the horizon.

Junior no longer played his guitar or sat in on bouree games or sassed the guards. Until lock-up he loitered in the corners of the yard, or sat on his up-ended Coca-Cola box, which everyone now called "Junior's box," or sat on the steps with Woodrow, staring at the empty dirt road that led down to a small general store by the drawbridge.

"You tearing yourself up over so meting that was never real," Woodrow said. "Miss Andrea is a nice white woman. But that's all she is. She ain't sent down by God to take care of Junior Crudup."

"Shut up, Woodrow," Junior replied.

"Sure, I can do that. Then you can talk to yourself 'cause everybody else around here t'inks you done lost your mind."

Woodrow took a worn pack of playing cards out of his shirt pocket, shuffled them, then cupped and squared them in his palm. "Here, I'm gonna give you one of my readings. Won't cost you a cent," he said.

"Don't be giving me none of your truck," Junior said.

But Woodrow went ahead and turned the cards over one at a time, placing them in a circle in the space between him and Junior. "See,

there's you, the one-eyed Jack. Slick, wit' a li'l thin mustache, got the mojo going on the rest of the world. Up top there is the queen of hearts. Guess who that is. Over here is the king of diamonds. Guess who that is. Notice the king and the queen ain't interested in whether the one-eyed Jack is playing pocket pool wit' himself or not. What that mean, Junior, is that rich white people don't care about what goes on down here in this camp."

"Ain't got time for this, Woodrow."

Woodrow peeled three more cards off the deck and snapped them down in a vertical line traversing the circle. "See, there's the joker, right over the head of the one-eyed Jack. That means our man, the one-eyed Jack, is a full-time fool. Sure you don't want to rename your song "The Dumbest Nigger in Camp Number Nine'?"

But Junior only stared at the fires and brown clouds of smoke on the horizon and the buzzards that were slowly descending in a vortex toward a woods on the far side of the bayou.

Woodrow put three cards down on the step in a horizontal line, completing a cross inside the circle. Junior expected another ridiculing remark but instead there was only silence. He glanced sideways at Woodrow. "Why you got that look on your face?" he said.

Woodrow started to scoop the cards up. But Junior held his wrist. "Answer me, Woodrow," he said.

"It's just a card trick. Been playing it on people for years. Don't none of it mean any ting he replied.

Junior peeled loose a card that was cupped inside Woodrow's palm. "How come you trying to hide the Jack of spades?" he asked.

Woodrow rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand and stared sadly at the bayou. "It's Boss Posey, Woodrow. Lawd Gawd, it's Boss Posey. Why you gone and done this to yourself?" he said.

Then he rushed away to be by himself, leaving his deck of cards scattered on the steps.

The next day Junior received a contract in the mail from the recording studio. He sat on the edge of his bunk and read the letter that accompanied it, then walked to the fireplace and held a match to the letter, the contract, and the envelope they came in and watched the pages blacken and curl into ash on the hearth. The next morning at bell count Junior stood unshaved and dirty in the front row of men who were about to go into the fields to trench fire lines around un-burned cane and shovel dirt over stubble that was still smoldering. Jackson Posey looked at the puffiness around his eyes and sniffed at his breath. "Where'd you get the julep?" he said.

"Don't remember, boss," he replied.

"Woodrow, run back to the shed and bring me a case of them empty pop bottles," Posey said.

Woodrow started toward the rear of the camp.