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"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 corner of his mouth; he squinted through the rain at the boat as it bumped 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 wh
ipping 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.
