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"Who?"
"The mens. When they want her. They come here and take her home."
"Do you know who they were, their names?"
"Them kind ain't got no names. They just drive their car up when she get off work and that po' girl get in."
"I see. All right, Jennifer, this is my card with my telephone number on it. Would you call me if you remember anything else that might help me?"
"I don't be knowin' anything else, me. She wasn't goin' to give the name of some rich white man to an old nigger."
"What white man?"
"That's what I tellin' you. I don't know, me."
"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying."
"You don't understand English, you? Where you from? She say they a rich white man maybe gonna get her out of sellin' jellyroll. She say that the last time I seen her, right befo' somebody do them awful t'ings to that young girl. Mister, when they in the bidness, every man got a sweet word in his mouth, every man got a special way to keep jellyroll in his bed and the dollar in his pocket."
She threw the bucket of clear water on the glass, splashing both of us, then walked heavily with her brushes, cleaning rags, and empty bucket down the alley next to the bar.
The rain fell through the canopy of oaks as I drove down the dirt road along the bayou toward my house. During the summer it rains almost every afternoon in southern Louisiana. From my gallery, around three o'clock, you could watch the clouds build as high and dark as mountains out on the Gulf, then within minutes the barometer would drop, the air would suddenly turn cool and smell like ozone and gun metal and fish spawning, the wind would begin to blow out of the south and straighten the moss on the dead cypress trees in the marsh, bend the cattails in the bayou, and swell and ruffle the pecan trees in my front yard; then a sheet of gray rain would move out of the marsh, across the floating islands of purple hyacinths in the bayou, my bait shop and the canvas awning over my boat-rental dock, and ring as loud on my gallery as marbles bouncing on corrugated tin.
I parked the truck under the pecan trees and ran up the incline to the front steps. My father, a trapper and oil-field roughneck who worked high on the derrick, on what they called the monkey board, built the house of cypress and oak back in the Depression. The planks in the walls and floors were notched and joined with wooden pegs. You couldn't shove a playing card in a seam. With age the wood had weathered almost black. I think rifle balls would have bounced off it.
My wife's car was gone, but through the screen door I could smell shrimp on the stove. I looked for Alafair, my adopted daughter, but didn't see her either. Then I saw that the horse lot and shed were empty and Alafair's three-legged coon, Tripod, was not in his cage on top of the rabbit hutches or on the chain that allowed him to run along a clothesline between two tree trunks.
I started to go inside, then I heard her horse paw the leaves around the side of the house.
"Alafair?"
Nothing.
"Alf, I've got a feeling somebody is doing something she isn't supposed to."
"What's that, Dave?" she said.
"Would you please come out here and bring your friends with you?"
She rode her Appaloosa out from under the eave. Her tennis shoes, pink shorts, and T-shirt were sopping, and her tanned skin glistened with water. She grinned under her straw hat.
"Alf, what happened the last time you took Tripod for a ride?"
She looked off reflectively at the rain falling in the trees. Tripod squirmed in her hands. He was a beautiful coon, silver-tipped, with a black mask and black rings on his thick tail.
"I told him not to do that no more, Dave."
"It's 'anymore.' "
"Anymore. He ain't gonna do it anymore, Dave."
She was grinning again. Tex, her Appaloosa, was steel gray, with white stockings and a spray of black and white spots on his rump. Last week Tripod had spiked his claws into Tex's rump, and Alafair had been thrown end over end into the tomato plants.
"Where's Bootsie?"
"At the store in town."
"How about putting Tex in the shed and coming in for some ice cream? You think you can handle that, little guy?"
