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"She a traiteur. She got power. That's why Hipolyte scared of her. He got the gris-gris. That man you looking for, Jimmie Lee Boggs? You ain't got to worry about him, no. He got a gris-gris, too. He gonna die, that one."
"Wait a minute, Dorothea. You knew Boggs?"
"I seen him with Hipolyte, back yonder by that trailer. Right there. Gros Mama say they both got the gris-gris, they carry it in them just like a worm. Suh?"
"What?"
"Suh?"
"What is it? And you really don't need to call me sir."
"I wants to ax you something." She looked at me full in the face for the first time. Her lipstick was on crooked. "You ain't lying? You can really he'p Tee Beau?"
"I can try. If he'll let me. Do you know where he is, Dorothea?"
"Gros Mama want me back inside now. Friday a real busy day."
"If you talk to Tee Beau, tell him I said thank you."
"I got to be going now."
"Wait a minute. I have an umbrella," I said.
I popped it open in the rain and walked her to the entrance of the juke joint. Then she walked hurriedly past the men staring at her from the bar, toward her station by the dance floor.
I had promised to take Alafair to the open-air restaurant at Cypremort Point for bluepoint crabs, a weekly ritual whose aftermath made the waitresses cringe: Alafair, in a white bib with a big red crawfish on it, went about disassembling the crabs with wood mallet and nutcrackers and such clumsy intensity that the plank table had to be washed down later with a hose. I tried never to disappoint her, or see her hurt any more than she had already been hurt by the drowning of her real mother in the crashed plane, and the death of Annie, my second wife. But since I had been shot by Jimmie Lee Boggs, I had become an ineffectual caretaker in my own home rather than a parent, and I had no idea when I would put everything back in the proper box and see the worry and uncertainty go out of Alafair's eyes. And I knew absolutely that that moment would not come of its own accord.
So I drove down to a café on the blacktop, called the house, and asked Clarise, my mulatto housekeeper and baby-sitter, to give Alafair her supper and to stay with her until I got home. I talked with Alafair and told her I would take her out for ice cream later and we would go to Cypremort Point for crabs the next night. I sat at the counter and ate a plate of red beans, rice, and breaded pork chops, and drank coffee until over an hour had passed. Then I headed back to the juke joint.
It had stopped raining now, and the air was clear and cool, the sky dark except for a lighted band of purple clouds low on the western horizon. I drove through the parking lot to the back of the building, the flattened beer cans and wet oyster shells crunching under my tires, and through the big fan humming in the back wall I could hear the zydeco band pounding it out:
"Mo mange bien, mo bois bon vin,
Ça pas coute moi à rien.
Ma fille aime gumbo filé
Mo l'aime ma fille aussi."
I parked by one of the trailers and walked up on the wood steps. Back under a solitary spreading oak tree was the pickup truck I had seen earlier: only one man was in the cab now. The trailer was made out of tin and had been covered with thick layers of green paint. Curtains were pulled across the windows, but a light was on inside. The inner door was closed and the screen was latched. I tapped on the screen with my knuckles and looked back over my shoulder at the man in the truck. He looked away from me.
"Sheriff's department," I said, and tapped again.
There was no answer, but I heard movement inside.
"Open up," I said.
Still no answer. I grasped the handle to the screen door firmly and jerked the latch out of the jamb, then opened the inner door, which was unlocked, and stepped into the trailer.
The musky, thick odor of marijuana struck at my face like a fist. The woman whom I had seen at the trailer door earlier lay on a narrow bed in a pink bra and pink panties, her head reclining on a pillow, one arm propped casually behind her head, her free hand holding a joint over an ashtray on a small nightstand. She put the joint to her lips, looked me straig
ht in the face, and took a long, deep hit, ventilating the edges of the paper, until the ash was a bright red coal in the gloom of the trailer.
But the dark-skinned man in denims and work boots, his straw hat clenched against his thigh, his belt buckle still hanging down over his fly, was obviously terrified. His eyes were riveted on the badge in my palm.
"It's not a bust, partner. Rest easy," I said.
He continued to stare wide-eyed at me. His hands were square with calluses, his fingernails half-mooned with dirt.
