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"Hello?"
"I want to talk to you tonight."
"Sam?"
"That's right. I'm playing up at the black juke in St. Martinville. You know where that's at?"
"The last time I had an appointment with you, things didn't work out too well."
"That was last time. I was drinkin' then. Then them womens was hangin' around, made me forget what I was supposed to do."
"I think you let me down, partner."
He was quiet except for the sound of his breathing.
"Is something wrong?" I said.
"I got to tell you somet'ing, somet'ing I ain't tole no white man."
"Say it."
"You come up to the juke."
"I'll meet you at my office tomorrow morning."
"What I got to say can put me back on the farm. I sure ain't gonna do it down there."
Elrod picked Tripod up horizontally in his arms, then bounced him up and down by tugging on his tail.
"I'll be there in an hour or so," I said. "Don't jerk me around again, Sam."
"You might be a policeman, you might even be different from most white folks, but you still white and you ain't got no idea 'bout the world y'all give people of color to live in. That's a fact, suh. It surely is," he said, and hung up.
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I should have known that Hogman would not be outdone in eloquence.
"Don't pull his tail," Alafair was saying.
"He likes it. It gets his blood moving," Elrod said.
She sighed as though Elrod were unteachable, then took Tripod out of his arms and carried him around the side of the house to the hutch.
"Can you take yourself to the meeting tonight?" I asked Elrod.
"You cain't go?"
"No."
"How about I just wait till we can go together?" He rubbed the top of the table with his fingers and didn't look up.
"What if I drop you off and then come back before the meeting's over?"
"Look, this is a, what do you call it, a step meeting?"
"That's right."
"You said it's about amends, about atoning to people for what you did wrong?"
