James Burke - Dixie City Jam

My father, whose name was Aldous, who was also called Big Al in the oil field, where he worked as a derrick man up on the monkey board, was a huge, dark, grinning Cajun with fists the size of cantaloupes. He loved to fight in bars, sometimes taking on three or four adversaries at once. Oil field roughnecks would break their hands on his head; bouncers would splinter chairs across his back; but no one ever hurt Big Al except my mother, who worked in a laundry with Negro women to support us while he was in the parish jail.

When he went back to Marsh Island for the muskrat season, a man named Mack, a bouree dealer from Morgan City who wore a fedora, zoot slacks, suspenders, French cuffs, and two-tone shoes, began to come by the house and take her for rides in his Ford coupe.

One day in late fall I came home early from school. There was no sound in the house. Then I walked past my parents' bedroom door. My mother was naked, on all fours, pointed toward the head of the bed, and Mack was about to mount her. He had a thin, white face, oiled black hair parted in the center, and a pencil mustache. He looked at me with the momentary interest that he might show a hangnail, then entered my mother.

I sat on a sawhorse in the barn until it was almost dusk. The air was raw, and leaves were blowing across the dirt yard. Then Mack was standing in the barn door, his silhouette etched with the sun's last red light, a bottle of beer in his left hand. I heard him tilt it up and drink from it.

'What you t'ink you seen?' he said.

I looked at my shoes.

'I ax you a question. Don't be pretend you ain't heard me,' he said.

'I didn't see anything.'

'You was where you didn't have no bidness. What we gonna do 'bout that?' He held out his right hand. I thought he was going to place it on my shoulder. Instead, he put the backs of his fingers under my nose. 'You smell that? Me and yo' mama been fuckin', boy. It ain't the first time, neither.'

My eyes were full of water, my face hot and small under his stare.

'You can tell yo' daddy 'bout this if you want, but you gotta tell on her, too.' He drank out of the beer bottle again and waited. 'What's you gonna do, you? Sit there and cry?'

'I'm not going to do anything.'

'That's good,' he said. ''Cause you do, I'm gonna be back.'

Then he was gone, out of the red light, and down the dirt lane to his car. The pecan and oak trees around the house were black-green and coated with dust; the dry coldness of the air felt like a windburn against the skin. I hid when my mother called me from the back porch. Behind the barn, I sat in the weeds and watched our two roosters peck a blind hen to death. They mounted her with their talons, their wings aflutter with triumph, and drove their beaks deep into her pinioned neck. I watched them do it for a long time, until my mother found me and took me back inside the kitchen and, while she fixed our supper, told me that Mack had helped her find a good job as a waitress at a beer garden in Morgan City.

The day after my trouble with Tommy Lonighan, I received a phone call from Clete Purcel at my office.

'I hear you pistol-whipped Tommy Bobalouba,' he said.

'Who told you that?'

'A couple of the Caluccis' lowlifes were talking about it in the Golden Star this morning.'

'Ah, the Caluccis again.'

'That's what I was trying to tell you, mon. They're going across tribal lines.'

'Who were these two guys?'

'Nickel-and-dime gumballs. Were you trying to sweat Tommy about that sub?'

'Yeah, but I didn't get anywhere.'

'Dave, maybe there's another way to get Buchalter out of the woodwork. What if you can find that sub again, you mark it, then you tell The Times-Picayune and every salvage company in town about it?'

'It's a thought.'

'By the way, congratulations on getting Lonighan's attention. Somebody should have mopped up the floor with that guy a long time ago… Why the silence?'

'I shouldn't have hit him.'

'Why not?'

'He's a tormented man. The guy's got a furnace in his head.'

'I'm weeping on my desk, Dave. Oh, that's great, mon. Tommy Lonighan, the tormented man…' He was laughing loudly now. 'Did you see the body of the guy Tommy drowned with the fire hose? It looked like the Michelin Man. Tommy shoved the nozzle down the guy's mouth. Tommy, the tormented man, oh Dave, that's beautiful…'

I went home early that evening, with plans to take Bootsie and Alafair to Mulate's in Breaux Bridge for crawfish. When the deputy who was on guard by the drive saw my truck approaching, he started his engine and headed back toward New Iberia. At the head of the drive, close by the house, was a two-door white Toyota that I didn't recognize.

I walked down to the end of the dock, where Alafair was skipping stones across the water into a cypress stump.

'Want to go eat some crawfish, Alf?' I said.

'I don't care,' she said. Her face was sullen. She whipped another stone across the bayou.

'What's wrong, little guy?'

'I told you I don't like 'little guy' anymore, Dave.'

'All right. Now, what's wrong, Alf?'

'Nothing. Bootsie says she's sick. That's all.'

'"Says" she's sick?'

'She's been in her room all afternoon. With the door shut. She says she's sick. I told you.' She propped one hand against a post and brushed dried fish scales off the planks into the water with her tennis shoe.

'Tell me the rest of it, Alf.'

Her eyes followed a cottonmouth moccasin that was swimming across the bayou into a flooded cane brake.

'She put an empty whiskey bottle in the garbage can out back,' she said. 'She wrapped it up in a paper bag so nobody would see it. Then the sister went and got her some beer.'

'What?'

'There's a sister up there. She went down to the four corners and bought Bootsie a six-pack of beer. Why didn't Bootsie just get it out of the bait shop if she wanted some beer?'

'Let's go find out.'

'I don't want to.'

'You want to go to Mulate's later?'

'No. I don't like the way Bootsie is. I don't like that sister, either. What's she doing here, Dave?'

I rubbed the top of her head and walked up the slope through the deep shade of the trees and the drone of the cicadas. There was no sound or movement in the front of the house, and the door to Bootsie's and my bedroom was closed. I went on through the hallway into the kitchen. Sister Marie Guilbeaux was rinsing glasses and two plates in the sink.

'Oh!' she said, her shoulders twitching suddenly when she heard me behind her. She turned, and her face colored. 'Oh, my heavens, you gave me a start.'

I continued to stare at her.

'Oh, this is embarrassing,' she said. 'I hope you understand what's, why I-'

'I'm afraid I don't.'

'Of course… you couldn't. I called earlier, but you weren't here.'

'I was at my office.'

'I tried there. You had already left.'

'No, I was there until a half hour ago.' I could see a half dozen empty beer cans in the yellow trash basket. 'No one called.'

' I did. A man, a dispatcher, took a message.'

'I see. Where's Bootsie, Sister?'

'Asleep. She's not feeling well.' Her face was filled with perplexity. 'I know this looks peculiar.'

'A little.'

'I teach part-time at an elementary school in Lafayette. We're having a program on safety. You were so courteous at the hospital and over the phone I thought you might be willing to visit our class.'

'I'm a little tied up right now.'

'Yes, Bootsie told me.'

'Can you tell me why you bought beer for my wife, Sister?'

Her face was pink. 'Mr. Robicheaux, I wandered into somebody's personal situation and I've obviously mishandled it.'

'Just tell me what's happened here, please.'

'Your wife was going to drive to the store for some beer. I didn't think she should be driving. I told her I'd go for her.'