It is not my responsibility to hold on to the discarded memorabilia of people to whom it obviously did not have great import. Frankly, you have proved a great disappointment. You besmirched my husband's name, and it would not surprise me that you are responsible for the rumor that I deliberately admitted a murderer to my home in order to rid myself of my husband. I understand you invested much of your life in drunkenness. Perhaps you should seek help.
Sincerely, Cora Gable
I flipped through the pages of the scrapbook, stiff with photos and postcards and ticket stubs and sealed locks of hair and pressed flowers that had been glued in place with brush and jar. There was a wedding photo of her and Big Aldous taken in front of the brick cathedral in Abbeville; a menu from the restaurant in the old Jung Hotel in New Orleans, where she and Big Al had their honeymoon; a newspaper article from the Daily Iberian about my return from Vietnam; another article about my graduating from the New Orleans Police Academy.
The next ten pages, the only ones remaining in the book, were filled with articles from both the Times-Picayune and the Daily Iberian about my career. Inside the back of the binder she had pasted a newspaper photograph of me in uniform, leaning on a cane, and below it a photo of me taken in third grade at the Catholic elementary school. She had created a frame around the two pictures by gluing strips of pink ribbon along the borders of the binder.
My mother had been virtually illiterate and was probably not sure of the content of many of the articles she had saved. Nor was she able to make annotations in her scrapbook to indicate what the articles meant to her. But I knew who my mother was. She had said it to her killers before she died. Her name was Mae Robicheaux.
And I was her son.
Winner of two Edgar Awards, JAMES LEE BURKE is the author of nineteen novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Sunset Limited, Cimarron Rose, Cadillac Jukebox, Burning Angel, and Dixie City Jam. He lives with his wife in Missoula, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana.
*** 
