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"Beg your pardon?"
"Cain't have nobody saying later that ain't her."
"Breeze, she's been in the ground a long time."
"Don't matter. I'll know. What you t'ink I am anyway? Other men can look at my wife, but I'm scared to do it myself?"
"I think you're a brave man," I said.
He turned his head and looked at the side of my face.
The backhoe was bright yellow against the islands of willow trees between the graveyard and the main portion of the river. The loam in the grave turned to mud as the bucket on the backhoe dipped closer to the coffin. The day was blue-gold and warm and flowers still bloomed on the levee, but the air smelled of humus, of tree roots torn out of wet soil, of leaves that have gone a
cidic and brown in dead water. At five feet the two black diggers climbed into the hole with spades and began sculpting the coffin's shape, pouring water from a two-gallon can on the edges, wiping the surface and corners slick with rags.
They worked a canvas tarp and wood planks under it, then ran ropes tied to chains under the tarp, and we all lifted. The coffin came free more easily than I had expected, rocking almost weightlessly in the bottom of the canvas loop, a missing panel in one side blossoming with muddy fabric.
"Open it up," Cool Breeze said.
The pathologist looked at me. He wore red suspenders and a straw hat and had a stomach like a small pillow pushed under his belt. I nodded, and one of the diggers prized the lid loose with a blade screwdriver.
I had seen exhumations before. The view of mortality they present to the living is not easily dismissed. Sometimes the coffin fills with hair, the nails, particularly on the bare feet, grow into claws, the face puckers into a gray apple, the burial clothes contain odors that cause people to retch.
That is not what happened to Ida Broussard.
Her white dress had turned brown, like cheesecloth dipped in tea, but her skin had the smooth texture and color of an eggplant and her hair was shiny and black on her shoulders and there was no distortion in her expression.
Cool Breeze's hand reached out and touched her cheek. Then he walked away from us, without speaking, and stood on the edge of the graveyard and looked out at the river so we could not see his face.
"How do you explain it?" I said to the pathologist.
"An oil company buried some storage tanks around here in the 1930s. Maybe some chemical seepage got in the coffin," he replied.
He looked back into my eyes. Then he spoke again. "Sometimes I think they wait to tell us something. There's no need for you to pass on my observation."
* * *
TWENTY-ONE
FRIDAY EVENING BOOTSIE AND I dropped Alafair at the show in Lafayette, then ate dinner at a restaurant on the Vermilion River. But as soon as Alafair was not with us, Bootsie became introspective, almost formal when she spoke, her eyes lingering on objects without seeing them.
"What is it?" I said outside the restaurant.
"I'm just tired," she replied.
"Maybe we should have stayed home."
"Maybe we should have."
After Alafair went to bed, we were alone in the kitchen. The moon was up and the trees outside were full of shadows when the wind blew.
"Whatever it is, just say it, Boots."
"She was at the dock today. She said she couldn't find you at your office. She didn't bother to come up to the house. Of course, she's probably just shy."
"She?"
"You know who. She finds any excuse she can to come out here. She said she wanted to thank you for the shooting lessons you arranged for her. You didn't want to give them to her yourself?"
