A Stained White Radiance

'Alafair, Batist grew up poor and uneducated and never learned to read and write. But today he runs a business for a white man. He wants to do everything right, but he has to make an X when he signs for a delivery and he can't count the receipts at the end of the day. So he concentrates on things that he can do well, like barbecuing the chickens, repairing the boat engines, and keeping all the inventory squared away. Then Tripod gets loose and makes a big mess of the shelves. So in Batist's mind he's let us down.'

I saw her eyes blinking with thought.

'It's kind of like the teachers at school giving you a job to do, then someone else comes along and messes it up and makes you look bad. Does that make sense?'

She shifted Tripod in her arms, so that he lay on his back with his three paws in the air, his stomach swollen with food.

'I guess so. We going to the show?'

'You bet.'

'Batist is going, too?'

'I don't know, you think he should go?'

She thought about it.

'Yeah, he should go with us,' she said, as though she had just reached a profound metaphysical conclusion.

'You're the best, little guy.'

'You are, too, big guy.'

We popped Tripod into the hutch, then I swung Alafair up on my back and we walked beneath the sparking of fireflies onto the gallery and into the lighted house, where Bootsie was deep-frying sac-a-lait and listening to a Cajun song that was playing on the radio propped in the kitchen window.

The western sky looked like a blood-streaked ink wash, and I could hear the cicadas in a distant woods, all the way across the waving field of green sugarcane at the back of my property.

The next morning Alafair helped Batist and me open the bait shop. She earned her weekly allowance of five dollars by seining the dead shiners out of the bait tailks, seasoning the chickens that we barbecued on a split oil drum for our midday customers, draining the coolers, and pouring fresh ice over the beer and soda pop. But her favorite Saturday morning job was sitting on a tall stool behind the cash register, her Astros baseball cap low on her head, ringing up worm and shiner sales with a loud bang on the keys.

It was a wonderful morning to fish. The air was still cool and windless, the early pink light muted in the cypress trees, the moon still visible in one soft blue corner of the sky. After we had rented most of our boats, I started the barbecue fire in the oil drum, then fixed coffee and hot milk and bowls of Grape-Nuts for the three of us, and we ate breakfast on one of the telephone-spool tables under an umbrella out on the dock. I had managed to push the Sonnier case completely out of my mind when the phone rang inside the shop and Alafair got up and answered it.

I could see only the side of her face through the screen window as she held the receiver to her ear, but I had no doubt that she was listening to something that she had never expected to come through our telephone. Her eyes were blinking rapidly and her tan cheeks were filled with white discolorations, and I saw her look at me with her mouth parted as though a childish bad dream had become real in the middle of her day.

I went quickly inside the shop and behind the counter and took the receiver from her hand.

'Dave, he called you real bad names,' Alafair said. She was breathing hard through her mouth.

'Who is this?' I said into the receiver.

'You know who it is. Don't act stupid,' a high, metallic voice, like that of a midget, said. 'You cut a deal with Joey Meatballs, didn't you?'

'You're not shy about frightening a little girl. How about giving me your name?'

'You don't know my name?'

I picked up a pencil and scribbled across the top of a lined notepad: 'Boots, call office, tell them to trace call in shop.' Then I put the pad in Alafair's hands and pushed her toward the door.

'What's the matter, you got nothing wise to say?' the voice asked.

'What do you want, Fluck?'

'I want to know what you're giving Joey Gee so that he puts a whack out on me.'

'There's no deal with Joey.'

'You lying sonofabitch. He's out of the bag one day and everybody in New Orleans hears there's a five-grand open contract on me. You telling me you don't have anything to do with it?'

'That's right.'

'What is it, you guys want to wipe your books clean with my ass? Or is it a personal beef because I almost cooled you out in Sonnier's house?'

'You're going down because you killed a police officer and Eddy Raintree.'

'I'm shaking.'

'To tell you the truth, Fluck, I'm busy right now and you're a boring man to talk to.'

'The only reason somebody from the AB didn't take you out is you're not worth the trouble. But I'm going to give you a deal, one that'll make you big shit in your little town. I get immunity on that dead cop in the Sonnier house, I don't know anything about Eddy Raintree's problems next to a train track, and I give you everything you want on Joey Meatballs. I'm talking about guys he's whacked, the marshmallow Jack Gates shoved into the plane propeller, the crack they're selling to the niggers in the projects, gun deals with spics, you name it, I'll give it to you…. Are you listening to me, man?'

'I hear you just fine.'

'Then you set it up. I want protective custody, too. Maybe in another state.'

'I think you're overestimating your importance, Fluck. You're not the kind of witness that prosecutors get excited about.'

'Look, I can take you to two graves down by Terrebonne Bay. Two guys that Joey made kneel down on the edge of a trench and suck on a barrel of a.22 mag before he dumped a big one down their throats.'

'It's not a sellers' market these days.'

'What's with you, man? You want to see Joey Gee go down or not?'

'Where are you?'

'Are you kidding?'

'What I mean is, you're probably not too far from a police station of some kind. Turn yourself in. It's the only deal you're going to get from me or probably anybody else. You executed a police officer. You get caught by the wrong guys and you'll never make the jail, Fluck.'

'You're getting off on this, aren't you?'

Through the screen window I saw Bootsie wave at me from the gallery of the house.

'Nope, I'm tired of talking to you,' I said.

'I'm messing up your morning, huh?'

'No, you just made a big mistake today.'

'What mistake, what are you talking-'

'You phoned me at my house. You frightened my little girl. You did it because inside you're a small, scared man, Fluck. That's why you wanted Garrett to see it coming. For just a second you felt you were as big a man as he was.'

'You're talking yourself into something real bad.'

'Call the DEA. They cut deals with snitches all the time.'

I could hear him breathing into the receiver.

'Where you from, outer space? You're fucking with the AB. We're everywhere, man. There ain't anybody we can't clip. Even if I go down, even if I'm in a max unit somewhere, I can have your whole family taken out.'

'For five grand your AB buddies will have you in a soap dish.'

I could almost hear a wet, gastric click in his throat. Then he hesitated a moment, as though he were squeezing his anger back into a small box down in his chest.

'I want you to remember everything you said to me,' he said. 'Keep running the words over and over in your head. I'm gonna think up something for you, something special, something that you didn't think could ever happen in your life. I was in Parchman, man. You don't know how much pain a wise-ass fuck like you can go through before