'You get hurt or something?'
'I'm doing fine. How about you, Passion?'
I sat at the bar and looked at an empty, oversized beer mug in front of me. The near side of the mug was coated with a thick, orange residue of some kind.
'The governor of Louisiana just drank out of that. I'm not sure if I should boil it for germs or not,' Passion said. She wore a white cotton dress printed with flowers. The light colors made her look even bigger than she was, and, in a peculiar way, more attractive and forceful.
'Belmont Pugh was here?' I said.
'He played Letty's piano. He's not bad.'
'What did he want from you?'
'What makes you think he wanted anything?' she asked.
'Because I know Belmont Pugh.'
Then she told me. It was vintage Belmont.
His black Chrysler had braked to a stop in the shell parking lot, drifting a dry, white cloud of dust across the building, and Belmont had come through the front door, stooping under the door frame, moisture leaking out of his hat, his silver shirt glued to his skin, a sweaty aura of libidinal crudeness and physical power emanating from his body.
'I'm in need of massive liquids, hon,' he said, and sat with his face in his hands while Letty drew a draft beer for him. 'Sweetheart, that little-bitty glass ain't gonna cut it. Give me that big'un yonder, bust three raw eggs in it, and tell my family I died in your arms.'
She laughed, her arms folded across her chest.
'I always heard you were unusual,' she said.
'That's why my wife throwed me out, God bless her.
Now what am I gonna do heartbroken, hungover, too old to have a beautiful, young Creole thing like you in his life? It's a misery, girl. Fill this up again, will you? Y'all got anything good to eat?'
He played the piano while she fixed him a sandwich in the cafe. She put the sandwich on a plate and set the plate on the end of the bar. He sat down on the stool again and removed his hat and mopped his face with a handkerchief. The skin across the top of his forehead was as pale as a cue ball.
'That record your sister cut in jail? She's a major talent, if you ask me. The minister at my church says she's a fine woman, too,' he said.
Passion looked at him silently, her rump resting against the tin wash bin behind her.
'You wondering why I'm here? I don't want to see a good woman die. It's that simple. But y'all gotta hep me and give me something I can use,' he said.
'How?' Passion asked.
'That story y'all told the jury didn't do nothing but leave skid marks on the bowl. There wasn't no evidence Carmouche ever molested anybody else. It's hard to believe after all those years your sister would suddenly decide to take the man apart with a mattock. Like she was bored and it just come to mind as the thing to do.'
'Would you like me to describe what he did to me and Letty?'
'Lord, it's hot in here. Why don't you fix your air conditioner? No, I don't want you to describe it. I suspect the man was everything you say he was. That's why I want you to find somebody who can support your story. Round up a mess of black people, talk to 'em, you hear what I'm saying, sometimes folks shut out bad memories, you gotta remind them of what happened.
They call it 'recovered memory.' People get rich suing over it.'
'You want me to get some black people to lie for us?'
'Girl, please don't use that word. And I don't care if they're white or black. I'll get state investigators down here to take their deposition. But y'all gotta understand my situation. I cain't give clemency to a woman 'cause I like the way she plays the piano. People in the last election was already calling me the Silver Zipper.'
'Letty won't go along with it.'
'You better hear what I'm saying, Miss Passion, or it's gonna be on y'all's own self. Them sonsofbitches in Baton Rouge is serious.'
'You want a refill, Governor?'
His face was tired and poached-looking in the warm gloom of the bar. He pulled his shirt out from his chest with his fingers and shook the cloth, his mouth down-turned at the corners. 'Damn if I can ever find the right words to use to people anymore,' he said, and pushed his Stetson on his head and walked back out of the club, the electric fan by the door flapping back his coat just before he stepped into the heated whiteness of the day outside.
Passion walked to the door.
'I'll tell her,' she said as his car scoured dust out of the parking lot.
But Belmont did not hear her.
'Maybe Belmont's a little corrupt, but he's got his hand on it,' I said.
'Meaning?' she said, her face in a pout.
'Nobody bought y'all's story. Vachel Carmouche had been gone from here for years. The very night he returned, your sister killed him. Over deeds done to her as a child?'
'You came out here to put this in my face?'
'No. Little Face Dautrieve inasmuch told me she was there that night. But that's all she'll say. What happened that night? Is Little Face protecting somebody?'
'Ax her.'
'You want it this way?' I said.
'Pardon?'
'That I be your adversary? The guy you don't trust, the guy who makes a nuisance of himself?'
'I didn't mean to make you mad,' she said.
'Give me a Dr Pepper, will you?'
'There isn't no way out for us, Dave. My sister's gonna die. Somebody got to pay for that nasty old piece of white trash.'
She walked on the duckboards to the end of the bar, her back turned toward me so I couldn't see her face. Her large body was framed against the white glare of the parking lot, her smoke-colored hair wispy with light. She picked a rose out of a green bottle on the liquor counter and stared at it dumbly. The petals were dead, the color of a bruise, and they fell off the stem of their own weight and drifted downward onto the duck-boards.
I GOT HOME LATE from work that evening. Alafair had gone to the City Library and Bootsie had left a note on the kitchen blackboard that said she was shopping in town. I fixed a cup of coffee and stirred sugar in it and sat on the back steps in the twilight and watched the ducks wimpling the water on the pond at the foot of our property.
But sometimes I did not do well in solitude, particularly inside the home where my original family had come apart.
In the gathering shadows I could almost see the specters of my parents wounding each other daily, arguing bitterly in Cajun French, each accusing the other of their mutual sins.
The day my mother had gone off to Morgan City with Mack, the bouree dealer, my father had been hammering a chicken coop together in the side yard. Mack's Ford coupe was parked on the dirt road, the engine idling, and my mother had tried to talk to him before she left me in his care.
My father was heedless of her words and his eyes kept lifting from his work to Mack's car and the sunlight that reflected like a yellow flame off the front windows.
'That li'l gun he carry? See what good it gonna do him he step his foot on my property,' he said.
The day was boiling hot, the air acrid with a smell like fresh tar and dust blowing off a gravel road. My father's skin was glazed with sweat, his veins swollen with blood, his size seeming to swell inside his overalls with the enormous range his anger was capable of when his pride had been injured.
I sat on the front steps and wanted to cover my ears and not hear the things my parents said to each other. I
