“But later maybe you guys went over to see what was going on?”
They looked at one another, then at the birds freckling the sky.
“Y’all sure you don’t want to tell me something?” I said.
“Want some crackers and Kool-Aid?” the girl said.
“Thanks just the same. Don’t you guys go on the other side of that yellow tape, okay?”
“No, suh, we ain’t. Gonna stay right here, outside the fence.”
I waved good-bye to them and walked away. When I glanced back over my shoulder, one of the boys was working open the can of tuna while the other boy filled three plastic glasses with Kool-Aid.
I DROVE BACK into New Iberia and visited Monarch Little at Iberia General. He was sitting up in bed, watching a Chicago White Sox game on the television mounted high up on the wall, the sheet drawn up over his sloping girth. I sat down on the side of his bed and picked up each of his hands and examined his skin from his wrists to his upper arms.
“What you doin’?” he said.
“Lean forward,” I said.
“What for?”
“So you don’t end up charged with murder. For once in your life, try cooperating with someone who’s on your side.”
He sat motionless while I looked closely at his face and hair and throat and the back of his neck.
“Take off your shirt,” I said.
“Mr. Dee-”
“Just do it.”
He pulled off his pajama top, held his massive arms straight out, and let me examine his chest and back.
“That’s it,” I said.
“That’s what?”
“You didn’t kill Bello Lujan.”
“That’s a big breakt’rew for you? I ain’t never killed nobody.”
“Why’d you put all that skag in your arm, Monarch?”
“Felt like it.”
“You almost caught the bus, partner.”
“Maybe I’d be better off.”
“What about all those soldiers in Iraq? What kind of day do you think they’re having?”
“I tried to join the army. They didn’t want me.”
My question to him had been a cheap shot and I deserved his reply. I sat in a chair next to his bed for a long time and didn’t say anything. He tried to concentrate on the televised baseball game, but it was obvious he was becoming more and more uncomfortable with both my presence and silence.
“You got some wiring loose in you, Mr. Dee,” he said.
“I want you to call me as soon as you get out of here,” I said.
“What for?”
“My wife wants you to come over for dinner.”
There was a broken smile at the corner of his mouth. “Who you kidd-” he began.
“Don’t mock her invitation. She used to be a Catholic nun. She’ll rip your arms off and beat you to death with them,” I said.
He made a show of crushing the pillow down on his own face, but I could hear him laughing under it.
THAT NIGHT the weatherman on the late news talked about another storm building in the Caribbean, one that was expected to reach hurricane velocity as it approached Cuba. I fell asleep on the couch while dry lightning flickered in the trees and leaves gusted in the street. I dreamed about baseball and summer evenings in City Park back in the 1950s, when we played pepper games in front of the old wood and chicken-wire backstop that was overhung by oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. In the dream the air smelled of boiled crabs and barbecue grease flaring on hot charcoal, and I could hear a Cajun band playing “Jolie Blon” down by the old brick firehouse. The dream seemed to reflect an innocent time in our history, an idyllic vision I have never been able to disengage from. But in reality there were many elements of the 1950s that were not so innocent, and Monarch Little was there, in the dream, to tell me that. Or at least that was what I thought.
He was standing at home plate with a bat propped on his shoulder, in an era when people of color were not allowed in the park, whacking grounders to the three black children I had seen flying a kite by Bello Lujan’s back fence. Except in the dream the children were uninterested in Monarch and his baseball bat, and were sitting on the close-cropped grass just beyond the infield, eating a picnic lunch. One of the children was opening a can of tuna.
I woke from the dream like a man breaking through a pane of glass.
THE NEXT MORNING was Saturday. I got up at seven and dressed in the kitchen so I wouldn’t wake Molly. I fed Snuggs and Tripod on the back steps, left Molly a note on the chalkboard we used for messages, took a half- carton of orange juice out of the icebox for myself, and drove down St. Peter Street to Iberia General. Monarch was just checking out of the hospital as I came through the reception area.
“I need to talk with you,” I said.
“I got a cab coming,” he said.
“After we talk, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. My truck’s outside.”
“I ain’t eat yet,” he said.
“That makes two of us,” I said.
We headed toward the McDonald’s on East Main. The clothes Monarch had been wearing when the paramedics pulled him out of the ice water at the crack house had been washed and dried at the hospital and, riding in the truck, with the windows down and the trees and shadows sliding by us, he looked cool and comfortable, strangely at peace with himself. I pulled into the line of vehicles at the take-out window.
“You lay down your sword and shield?” I said.
“What you mean, ‘sword and shield’?”
“You’re not ‘gonna study the war no more.’ Those are lyrics from a hymn. The singer is telling the listener he’s resigned from the fray, that he’s made his separate peace.”
“What the FBI do to me, what y’all do to me, it don’t matter one way or the other. I just ain’t gonna fight wit’ it no more. I’m t’rew wit’ dope, t’rew wit’ gangs, t’rew wit’ the life. If I stack time, that’s the way it be.”
“That’s what I was talking about.”
“Then why you got to say everyt’ing in code?” he said.
The electronic order box came on and I ordered eggs, sausage, biscuits, and coffee and milk for both of us. “T’row a couple of fried pies in there,” Monarch said.
“Two fried pies,” I said to the box.
I got our order at the second window in the line, then parked under the big oak tree by the front. I couldn’t believe how much food Monarch could stuff into his mouth at one time.
“What you want to know?” he asked, pieces of scrambled egg falling off his chin.
“When I questioned you about Tony Lujan’s death, you said you were supposed to meet him out by the Boom Boom Room, but you changed your mind.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“I was gonna jack him for money. It was a bad idea. So I didn’t go. He ended up shotgunned to deat’, but I didn’t have nothing to do wit’ it.”
“Yeah, I know all that. But why was it a bad idea?”
“I just tole you. I was gonna jack him-”
“No, that’s not the explanation you gave me originally. You were afraid something was going to happen.”
“Yeah, I said what if Tony called up Slim Bruxal and Slim and them other colletch boys showed up wit’ ball bats.”
