The white worm was gone. I didn't feel the need to drink and use.
Bootsie's body was warm with sleep under the sheet, the breeze from the window fan ruffling her hair on the pillow. I kissed the back of her neck and began making breakfast, then noticed an unopened envelope from Reed College under the toaster, the same envelope I had seen two days earlier on the couch. It was addressed to Alafair, and the fact that she had not opened it told me what the contents were. Ever since she and I had gone on a backpacking trip up the Columbia River Gorge, she had longed to return to the Oregon coast and to major in English and creative writing at Reed. She had applied for a scholarship, then had realized that even with a grant we would still have to pay several thousand more in fees than we would if she chose to commute to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
I sliced open the envelope and read the letter of congratulations awarding her most of her tuition for her first year. I went into the living room and wrote out a two-thousand-dollar check to be applied against her registration and dormitory fees for her first semester, placed a stamp on the return envelope, and walked out to the road and stuck it in the mailbox, then flipped up the red flag for the postman.
When I came back inside, Alafair was seated at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. She had put on makeup and a powder-blue dress and earrings. Through the back screen door I could see Tripod eating out of a bowl on the steps, his ringed tail damp with dew.
'Where you headed?' I asked.
'Over to UL. I'm going to enroll, get things started,' she replied.
'Hear anything from Reed?'.
'Not exactly. I've decided against it, anyway. I can learn as much here as I can out there.'
'You look pretty, Alafair. When I grow up, I'm going to marry you,' I said.
'Thank you, thank you, thank you,' she said.
'You're going to Reed.'
'No, it was a bad idea. I wasn't using my head.'
'It's a done deal, kid. Your scholarship came through. I sent them a check for your fees.'
Her eyes were a dark brown, her hair like black water on her cheeks. She was quiet a long time.
'You did that?' she asked.
'Sure. What did you think I'd do, Alf?'
'I love you, Dave.'
The best moments in life are not the kind many historians record.
I went to the office, then signed out at ten o'clock and drove south toward Poinciana Island, crossing the freshwater bay that separated the island from the rest of the parish. At the far end of the bridge the security guard came out of the little wooden booth he used as an office and flagged me down. He wore a gray uniform and a holstered revolver, an American flag sewn to his shirtsleeve. His face was young and sincere under his cap. He held a clipboard in one hand and bent down toward my window.
'You're here to see somebody, sir?' he said.
'My name's Dave Robicheaux. I'm a police officer. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be driving a sheriffs cruiser,' I replied, and took off my sunglasses and grinned at him.
'You're Mr. Robicheaux?' He glanced down at his cupboard. He cleared his throat and looked away nervously. 'Mr. Robicheaux, I ain't supposed to let you on the island.'
'Why not?'
'Mr. Perry just says there's some folks ain't supposed to come on the island.'
'You did your job. But now you need to get on the phone and call Mr. Perry and tell him I just drove across your bridge on official business. Our conversation on this is over, okay?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Thank you,' I said, and drove onto the island, out of the sun's white glare into the damp coolness of trees and shade-blooming four-o'clocks and the thick stands of water-beaded elephant ears that grew along the water's edge.
I followed the winding road to the log-and-brick house where Ladice Hulin lived, directly across from the scorched stucco shell of Julian LaSalle's home. She came to the door on her cane, wearing a print dress, her thick gray hair pinned up on her head with a costume-jewelry comb, her gold chain and religious medal bright on her throat.
'I knowed you was coming,' she said through the screen.
'How?'
' 'Cause I cain't hide the troot no more,' she said, and stepped out on the gallery. 'I'd ax you in, but Rosebud's sleeping. She come in last night, moaning and crying and hiding in the closet. She's got terrible t'ings locked up in her head. Some of this is on me, Mr. Dave.'
She sat down in her wicker chair and gazed across the road at the peacocks that wandered lumpily through the shade trees arching over the ruins of Julian LaSalle's home.
'How is it on you, Miss Ladice?' I asked.
'Lies I tole,' she replied.
'People always thought your daughter was fathered by Mr. Julian. But I think the father was actually Legion Guidry. He raped you, didn't he? I suspect on a repeated basis.'
'People didn't call it rape back then. The overseer just took any black woman he wanted. Go to the sheriff, go to the city police, they'd listen while you talked, not saying nothing, maybe writing on a piece of paper, then when you was gone they'd call up the man who had raped you and tell him everything you'd said.'
'When did Tee Bobby learn his grandfather is Legion Guidry?' I asked.
I saw her knuckles tighten on the handle of her cane. She studied the scene across the road, the peacocks picking in Julian LaSalle's yard, a scattering of poppies, like drops of blood, around a rusted metal roadside cross put there by a friend of Mrs. LaSalle's.
'I always tole Tee Bobby his granddaddy was Mr. Julian,' she replied. 'I t'ought it was better he didn't know the blood of a man like Legion was in his veins. But this spring Tee Bobby wanted money to go out to California and make a record. He went to see Perry LaSalle.'
'To blackmail him?'
'No, he t'ought he deserved the money. He t'ought Perry LaSalle was gonna be proud Tee Bobby was gonna make a record. He t'ought they was in the same family.' She shook her head. 'It was me who put that lie in his life, that made him the po' li'l innocent boy he is.'
'Perry told him Legion is his grandfather?' 'When Tee Bobby come back to the house, he t'rew t'ings against the wall. He put Rosebud in his car and said he was gonna meet Jimmy Dean Styles and fix it so he could take Rosebud out to California, away from Lou'sana and the t'ings white people done to our family.'
'I see. That was the day Amanda Boudreau died?' 'That was the day. Oh, Lord, this all started 'cause I t'ought I could seduce Mr. Julian and go to college. Tee Bobby and that white girl got to pay for my sin,' she said. 'You didn't choose the world you were born into. Why don't you give yourself a break?' I said.
She started to get up, then her arm shook on her cane and she fell back heavily into her chair, dust ballooning out from her dress, her face riven with disbelief at what age and time and circumstance and the unrequited longings of her heart had done to her life.
I went back to the department and called Perry LaSalle at his office. His head secretary, who was an older woman, robin-breasted and blue-haired and educated at Millsaps College, told me he wasn't in.
'Is this Mr. Robicheaux?' she said.
'Yes,' I said, expecting her to tell me where he was. But she didn't.
'Do you expect him soon?' I asked.
'I'm not quite sure,' she replied.
'Is he in court today?' I asked.
'I really don't know.'
'Does it seem peculiar when a lawyer doesn't tell his secretary where he is or when he will be back in his office?' I said.
