I'd seen it.
I turned my head to watch Verne's body against the white wall as she turned from back to side tugging covers along.
I was afraid to close my eyes, afraid it might all go away again.
Our biweekly garbage truck lugged into place out front. I swung legs over and stepped to the window. A lithe young man in khaki overalls leapt from the back, took up our bin and emptied it, then in what seemed a single continuous motion let the bin fall and, whistling to signal the driver to pull out, leapt back onto the truck.
It's possible, given the circumstances, that I may never have seen anything more beautiful.
Pillowlike clouds drifted above the boarded-up mansion opposite. Uniformed children with backpacks, alone and in straggling groups, trod towards school. Bicyclists young and white, old and black, whirred by.
All of it unspeakably lovely.
Look at the same thing day after day, you no longer see it, it goes away. To see again, one way or another you have to go away. Then when you come back, for just a while, your eyes work again.
It's a lesson I took to heart, one I'd carry with me the rest of my life.
'Thing is,' Don told me, 'no one in the department much cares who did Eddie Bone. We all figure hey, one less maggot we gotta worry about.'
We'd met at a hole-in-the-wall po-boy shop on Magazine, three or four mostly unused and unwashed tables and you didn't want to look too closely at the counter or grill, but the sandwiches were killer. When our order was called,
Don stepped up to a clump of pumped-up kids in hairnets and bandanas hanging out by the coimter thinking about coming on as hard cases. Don just stood there waiting. They looked at his face a moment or two and stepped aside.
'Let me put it this other way. Shrimp, right?' He handed mine across. Shreds of lettuce hanging out like Spanish moss off trees in Audubon Park. 'They've got means, since the case is still officially open. And they've got opportunity. What they don't have is motivation.'
He bit into his roast-beef po-boy. Gravy squirted onto paper plate, table, chin, shirt, tie.
'There's really no investigation under way, then.'
'The matter's 'not being actively pursued' according to department jargon, right. We get fifteen, twenty homicides a month, Lew, more during summer months. When all our ducks line up-when the city's not cutting back again, none of our people get shot or sick, none of them has family problems or turns out a drunk-we've got six detectives to the shift.'
Don finished off his sandwich and drank the last of his iced tea.
'Hey, you want a beer?'
'Ever know me not to?'
I finished my own sandwich as Don went back to the counter. No hesitation this time. The kids saw him get up and stepped away.
We took our beers outside. There were a couple of picnic benches each side of the street corner, but like the tables inside they rarely saw use. Most people just came up and ordered through the window, takeaway. Don and I claimed the table furthest off Magazine. Sat there watching the noontime rush. Not much of a rush compared to other major cities, but it's ours.
'You get much sleep?' Don said, reminding me that he'd dropped me off at LaVerne's only a few short hours ago.
I shook my head.
'Me either. Hard to remember when I did. Three in the morning I'm laying there trying to figure out if it's because of the alcohol I'm not sleeping, or if alcohol's the only reason I catch any sleep at all.'
Bolted into cement, our table sat beneath a tree that birds of every sort seemed particularly to favor-perhaps for its pungent, oily smell? Don leaned on one ham to wipe pasty greenish-white birdshit off the seat of his pants. The shop provided rolls of paper towels instead of napkins. This being one of Don's regular stops, he'd ripped off several panels when he picked up the beers.
'Verne okay?'
I nodded.
'Good. You tell her I said hello.'
I nodded, and we had a few more sips of Jax.
'That mother of yours is a piece of work, Lew.'
'She is that.'
'She just plain hate white folks or what?'
Though God knows the last thing I wanted to do was make excuses for her, I found myself saying, 'No, not at all. More like white people's lives just don't have anything to do with the one she leads.' I stopped, shaking my head. 'It's complicated, Don.' Probably there was no way I could ever explain it to him. 'Where she's from, it's all pretty clear, on both sides.'
'You'refrom there, too.'
'Not far enough.'
Neither of us spoke for a while.
'Wife keeps asking me about you, Lew. What do you think you owe that black man? she says. My life, I tell her.
'I got home this morning, she started up again. You already paid that debt. Kids and I hardly see you, when we do you're so tiredit's all you can do just to eat and fall in bed. Now here you've stayed up half the night driving this black man around.
'He's myfriend, I told her. Walked back out the door and went to work.'
'That's one way of ending an argument.'
Don laughed. 'Sometimes it's the only way. You want another beer, Lew?'
'Not really.'
Traffic began easing off. Couple of hours later there'd be a second tide as schools let out, another starting about four-thirty.
'Yeah. Me either, I guess.'
'Any chance you and Josie might come to dinner some night, Don? Verne makes a kickass gumbo. One bite of her court bouillon, you'll be grinning like a catfish and looking for mud to swim in.'
Moments went by. Don let out a long breath. 'I don't think Josie'd be able to do that, Lew. Sorry. Maybe someday.'
'I understand.'
Ancient time, once battles were over, scavengers appeared on battlefields, moving from body to body, retrieving what they could. All of us do the same with our pasts, our personal histories and relationships. Everything is salvage.
I drained my beer and stood.
'On the hoof as usual?' Don said.
I nodded.
'If you don't want a ride, then-'
I didn't.
'-mind if I walk along?'
We went up Magazine, past a block of doubles being remodeled, windowless, painters inside, stacks of new lumber and piles of old bricks in the yard, towards St. Charles. A scrawny, big-bellied cat followed us partway.
'Word is, there's someone who does care,' Walsh said. 'About Eddie Bone.'
We'd stopped at a corner.
'Ever hear of Joe Montagna?'
'Joey the Mountain,' I said. 'Sure. He have some place in this?'
The light changed and we started across. Eyes tracked us from within an old Ford truck with welded fenders, a new Datsun, a Lincoln whose expanse of flat hood put one in mind of aircraft carriers.
'Who knows? He's been asking questions, though. About you, about the mystery woman.'
'Not Eddie Bone.'
