"How much it worth?" Poteet said.
"You can buy them for a dollar at a store in New Orleans."
"You give me a dollar for it?" Poteet said.
"Why don"t you keep it instead, Po"?" I said, and rubbed the top of her head.
"I don"t want no nasty minie ball. It probably gone in somebody," she said, and flung it into the cornstalks.
"Don"t do that. You can use it in a slingshot or something," Alafair said. She crawled on hands and knees up the row and put the minie ball in the pocket of her jeans. Then she came back and lifted Tripod up in her arms. "Dave, who was that old man?" she said.
"What old man?"
"He got a stump," Poteet said.
"A stump?"
"That"s right, got a stump for a leg, got an arm look like a shriveled-up bird"s claw," Poteet said.
"What are y"all talking about?" I said.
"He was on a crutch, Dave. Standing there in the leaves," Alafair said.
I knelt down beside them. "You guys aren"t making a lot of sense," I said.
"He was right up there in the corn leaves. Talking in the wind," Poteet said. "His mouth just a big hole in the wind without no sound coming out."
"I bet y"all saw the scarecrow."
"If scarecrows got B.O.," Poteet said.
"Where"d this old man go?" I said.
"He didn"t go anywhere," Alafair said. "The wind started blowing real hard in the stalks and he just disappeared."
"Disappeared?" I said.
"That"s right," Poteet said. "Him and his B.O."
"Did he have a black coat on, like that scarecrow there?" I tried to smile, but my heart had started clicking in my chest.
"No, suh, he didn"t have no black coat on," Poteet said.
"It was gray, Dave," Alafair said. "Just like your shirt."
"Gray?" I said woodenly.
"Except it had some gold on the shoulders," she said.
She smiled at me as though she had given me a detail that somehow would remove the expression she saw on my face.
My knees popped when I stood up.
"You"d better come home for supper now, Alf," I said.
"You mad, Dave? We done something wrong?" Alafair said.
"Don"t say "we done," little guy. No, of course, I"m not mad. It"s just been a long day. We"ll see you later, Poteet."
Alafair swung on my hand as she held on to Tripod"s leash, and we walked up the slope through the pecan trees toward the lighted gallery of our house. The thick layer of humus and leaves and moldy pecan husks cracked under our shoes. Behind the house the western horizon was still as blue as a robin"s egg and streaked with low-lying pink clouds.
"You"re real tired, huh?" she said.
"A little bit."
"Take a nap."
"Okay, little guy."
"Then we can go to Vezey"s for ice cream," she said. She grinned up at me.
"Were they epaulets?" I said.
"What?"
"The gold you saw on his shoulders. Sometimes soldiers wear what they call epaulets on the shoulders of their coats."
"How could he be a soldier? He was on a crutch. You say funny things sometimes, Dave."
"I get it from a certain little fellow I know."
"That man doesn"t hurt children, does he?"
"No, I"m sure he"s harmless. Let"s don"t worry about it anymore."
"Okay, big guy."
"I"ll feed Tripod. Why don"t you go inside and wash your hands for supper?"
The screen door slammed after her, and I looked back down the slope under the overhang of the trees at the corn garden in the fading twilight. The wind dented and bent the stalks and straightened the leaves and swirled a column of dust around the blank cheesecloth visage of the scarecrow. The dirt road was empty, the bait shop dark, the gray clouds of insects hovering over the far side of the bayou almost like a metamorphic and tangible shape in the damp heat and failing light. I stared at the cornstalks and the hot sky filled with angry birds, then pinched the moisture and salt out of my eyes and went inside the house.
A TROPICAL STORM THAT HAD BEEN EXPECTED TO HIT THE Alabama coast changed direction and made landfall at Grand Isle, Louisiana. At false dawn the sky had been bone white, then a red glow spread across the eastern horizon as though a distant fire were burning out of control. The barometer dropped; the air became suddenly cooler; the bream began popping the bayou"s darkening surface; and in less than an hour a line of roiling, lightning-forked clouds moved out of the south and covered the wetlands from horizon to horizon like an enormous black lid. The rain thundered like hammers on the wood dock and the bait shop"s tin roof, filled our unrented boats with water, clattered on the islands of lily pads in the bayou, and dissolved the marsh into a gray and shapeless mist.
Then I saw a sleek white cabin cruiser approaching the dock, its windows beaten with rain, riding in on its own wake as the pilot cut back the throttle. Batist and I were under the awning, carrying the barbecue pit into the lee of the shop. Batist had two inches of a dead cigar in the cornerof his mouth; he squinted through the rain at the boat as it b.u.mped against the strips of rubber tire nailed to the dock pilings.
"Who that is?" he said.
"I hate to think."
"He wavin" at you, Dave. Hey, it"s that drunk man done fell in the bayou the ot"er night. That man must surely love water."
We set the barbecue pit under the eave of the building and got back inside. The rain was whipping off the roof like frothy ropes. Through the screen window I could see Elrod and Kelly Drummond moving around inside the boat"s cabin.
"Oh, oh, he trying to get out on the dock, Dave. I ain"t goin" out there to pull him out of the bayou this time, me. Somebody ought to give that man swimmin" lessons or a big rock, one, give people some relief."
Our awning extended on wires all the way to the lip of the dock, and Elrod was trying to climb over the cruiser"s gunwale into the protected area under the canvas. He was bare-chested, his white golf slacks soaked and pasted against his skin, his rubber-soled boat shoes sopping with water. His hand slipped off the piling, and he fell backward onto the deck, raked a fishing rod down with him and snapped it in half so that it looked like a broken coat hanger.
I put on my rain hat and went outside.
Elrod shielded his eyes with his hands and looked up at me in the rain. A purple and green rose was tattooed on his upper left chest.
"I guess I haven"t got my sea legs yet," he said.
"Get back inside," I said, and jumped down into the boat.
"We"re going after speckled trout. They always. .h.i.t in the rain. At least they do on the Texas coast."
The rain was cold and stung like BBs. From two feet away I could smell the heavy surge of beer on his breath.
"I"m going inside," I said, and pulled open the cabin door.
"Sure. That"s what I was trying to do. Invite you down for a sandwich or a Dr Pepper or a tonic or something," he said, and closed the cabin door behind us.
Kelly Drummond wore leather sandals, a pair of jeans, and the Ragin" Cajuns T-shirt with my name ironed on the back that Alafair had given to Elrod after he had fallen into the bayou. She picked up a towel and began rubbing Elrod"s hair with it. Her green eyes were clear, her face fresh, as though she had recently awakened from a deep sleep.
"You want to go fishing with us?" she said.
"I wouldn"t advise going out on the salt today. You"ll probably get knocked around pretty hard out there."
She looked at Elrod.
"The wind"ll die pretty soon," he said.
"I wouldn"t count on that," I said.
"The guy who rented us the boat said it can take pretty heavy seas. This weather"s not that big a deal, is it?" he said.
On the floor was an open cooler filled with cracked ice, long-necked bottles of Dixie, soda pop, and tonic water.
"I can outfit you with some fly rods and popping bugs," I said. "Why not wait until the rain quits and then try for some ba.s.s and goggle-eye perch?"
"When"s the last time you caught fresh-water fish right after a rain?" He smiled crookedly at me.
"Suit yourself. But I think what you"re doing is a bad idea," I said. I looked at Kelly.
"El, we don"t have to go today," she said. "Why don"t we just drive down to New Orleans and mess around in the French Quarter?"
"I planned this all week."
"Come on, El. Give it up. It looks like Noah"s flood out there."
"Sorry, we"ve got to do it. You can understand that, cain"t you, Mr. Robicheaux?"
"Not really. Anyway, watch the bend in the channel aboutthree miles south. The water"s been low and there"re some snags on the left."
"Three miles south? Yeah, I"ll watch it," he said, his eyes refocusing on nothing. His suntanned, taut chest was beaded with water. His feet were wide spread to keep his balance, even though the boat was not moving. "You sure you don"t want a tonic?"
"Thanks, anyway. Good luck to you all," I said.
Before I went out the cabin door, Kelly made her eyes jump at me, but I closed the door behind me and stepped up on the gunwale and onto the dock.
I began pushing huge balloons of water out of the awning with a broom handle and didn"t hear her come up behind me.
"He"ll listen to you. Tell him not to go out there," she said. There was a pinched indentation high up on her right cheek.
"I think you should tell him that yourself."
"You don"t understand. He had a big fight with Mikey yesterday about the script and walked off the set. Then this morning he put the boat on Mikey"s credit card. Maybe if we take the boat back now, the man"ll tear up the credit slip. You think he might do that?"
"I don"t know."
"El"s going to get fired, Mr. Robicheaux."
"Tell Elrod you"re staying here. That"s about all I can suggest."
"He"ll go anyway."
"I wish I could help you."
"That"s it? Au revoir, f.u.c.k you, boat people?"
"In the last two days Elrod told both me and my wife he"d like to go to an AA meeting with me. Now it"s ten in the morning and he"s already ripped. What do you think the real problem is-the boat, your director, the rain, me, or maybe something else?"
She turned around as though to leave, then turned backand faced me again. There was a bright, painful light in her green eyes, the kind that comes right before tears.
"What do I do?" she said.
"Go inside the shop. I"ll try again," I said.
I climbed back down into the boat and went into the cabin. He had his elbows propped on the instrument panel, while he ate a po"-boy sandwich and stared at the rain dancing in a yellow spray on the bayou.
His face had become wan and indolent, either from fatigue or alcoholic stupor, pa.s.sive to all insult or intimidation. The more I talked, the more he yawned.
"She"s a good lady, El," I said. "A lot of men would cut off their fingers with tin snips to have one like her."
"You got that right."
"Then why don"t you quit this bulls.h.i.t, at least for one day, and let her have a little serenity?"