'That's Dave yonder,' Batist said to him from behind the counter, seemingly relieved. He picked up a can of soda pop and went outside to drink it at one of the telephone-spool tables under the awning that shaded the dock.
Flat's eyes went up and down my body. His wife began eating a Moon Pie, chewing with her mouth or open while she stared idly out the window at the bayou.
'Looks like you're a hard man to grab holt of,' he said.
'Not really. I was up at the house.'
'Don't like to bother a man in his home.'
'What could I do for you, sir?'
'I belong to the Citizens Committee for a Better New Orleans.
I make no apology for hit. The town's a commode. But I don't like what got done to your colored boy.'
'Boy?'
His southern mountain accent grated like piano wire drawn through a hole punched in a tin can. He took a toothpick from his shirt pocket, worked it into a back tooth, and measured me again with his bemused, pale eyes.
'You one of them kind gets his nose up in the air about words he don't like?' he said.
'Batist is older than I am, Reverend. People hereabouts don't call him a boy.'
'He probably ain't gonna get much older if you don't take the beeswax out of your ears. There's something bad going on out yonder. I don't like hit.' He waved his hand vaguely at the eastern horizon.
'You mean the vigilante?'
'Maybe. Maybe something a whole lot bigger than that.'
'I don't follow you.'
'Things falling apart at the center. I think it's got to do with the Antichrist.'
'The Antichrist?'
'You got woodpecker holes in your head or something?'
'I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about.'
'There's signs and such, the way birds fly around in a dead sky right before a storm. You had a president with the numbers in his name.' He puffed out both his cheeks. 'I can tell you're thinking, son. I can smell the wood burning.'
'What numbers?'
'Ronald Wilson Reagan. Six-six-six. The Book of Revelation says hit, you'll know him by the numbers in his name. I think that time's on us.'
'Could I get y'all anything else?'
'Does somebody have to hit you upside the head with a two-by-four to get your attention?' he said.
'Stop talking to the man like that, Os,' his wife said, opening another Moon Pie, her gaze fixed indolently on the willows bending in the breeze.
'That colored fellow out yonder's innocent,' he said to me. 'These murders, I don't care if hit's dope dealers being killed or not, they ain't done by somebody on the side of justice. People can pretend that's the case, but hit ain't so. And that bothers me profoundly. God's honest truth, son. That's all I come here to tell you.'
'Do you know something about the murders, Reverend?'
'You'll be the first to hear about hit when I do.' His face was dilated and discolored in the heat, as though it had been slowly poached in warm water.
After he and his wife drove away in their flatbed truck, the exact nature of their mission still a mystery to me, I called up to the house.
'Hey, Boots, I'm going to Lafayette to talk to a lawyer, then I have to pick up some ice for the coolers,' I said. 'By the way, that man in the blue shirt you saw… I think he was just in the shop. He's a fundamentalist radio preacher. I guess he's trying to do a good deed of some kind.'
'Why was he staring up at the house?'
'You've got me. He's probably just one of those guys who left his grits on the stove too long. Anyway, he seems harmless enough.'
If I had only mentioned his name or the fact that he was with his wife, or that he was elderly, or that he was a southern mountain transplant. Any one of those things would have made all the difference.
chapter six
She had just changed into a pair of shorts and sandals to work in the garden when he knocked on the front screen door. He wore a blue cotton short-sleeve shirt and a Panama hat with a flowered band around the crown. His physique was massive, without a teaspoon of fat on it, his neck like a tree stump with thick roots at the base that wedged into his wide shoulders. His neatly creased slacks hung loosely on his tapered waist and flat stomach.
But his green eyes were shy, and they crinkled when he smiled. He carried a paper sack under his right arm.
'I wasn't able to give this to your husband, but perhaps I can give it to you,' he said.
'He'll be home a little later, if you want to come back.'
'I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name's Will Buchalter. Actually this is for you and the little girl.'
'I'm not quite sure I understand.'
'It's a gift. Some candy.' He slipped the box, which was wrapped in ribbon and satin paper, partially out of the sack.
'That's very nice of you, I'm sure, but it might be better if you drop back by when Dave's here.'
'I didn't mean to cause an inconvenience. I'm a little bit inept sometimes.'
'No, I didn't mean that you were-'
'Could I have a glass of water, please?' He took off his hat. His fine blond hair was damp in the heat.
Her eyes went past his shoulder to the dock, where she could see Batist washing fish fillets in a bloody pan.
'Or I can just walk down to the bait shop,' he said.
'No, no, come in. I'll get you one,' she said, and opened the screen for him. 'Dave said he was talking to you earlier about something?'
He nodded, his eyes crinkling again, filling with light, focusing on nothing. When she returned from the kitchen, he was sitting on the couch, examining two seventy-eight rpm records that he had removed from the metal racks where I kept my historical jazz collection.
'Oh,' she said. 'Those are quite rare. They have to be handled very carefully.'
'Yes, I know,' he said. 'This is Benny Goodman's nineteen thirty-three band. But there's dust along the rim. You see, the open end of the jacket should always be turned toward the back of the shelf.' He slipped his large hand inside one of the paper jackets and slid out the record.
'Please, you shouldn't do that.'
'Don't worry. I have a big collection of my own,' he said. 'Watch my hands. See, I don't touch the grooves. Fingerprints can mar a record in the same way they cause rust on gun blueing.'
He rubbed the record's rim softly with a piece of Kleenex, then carefully inserted it back in the paper jacket. He looked up into Bootsie's face.
'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have handled them,' he said, twisting sideways and replacing both records on the rack. 'But a shudder goes through me when I see dust on a beautiful old record. You have some wonderful ones in your collection. I'd give anything to have those Bix Beiderbeckes and Bunk Johnsons in mine.'
'Dave's collected them since he was in high school. That's why I'm a little nervous if somebody picks them up.' She handed him the glass of water and remained standing.
'Well, I won't take any more of your time. I just wanted to leave this little gift and introduce myself.' He took a
