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That’s as far as he got. I hit him so hard the blow peppered blood across the window glass. He went straight down on his buttocks like a man whose legs had caved into broken ceramic. Chapter 16
T HAT DAY I HAD PLANNED to meet Molly at home for lunch. She worked at a Catholic foundation down the bayou that built homes for poor people, and twice a week she prepared an extraordinary lunch before she left for work, then returned home before noon and laid it on the kitchen table so it would be ready when I walked through the door.
Today she had heated up a pot of white rice and a fricassee chicken that had already cooked down into a soft stew of onions, pimientos, floating pieces of meat, chopped-up peppers, and brown gravy. She had set flowery lace mats on the table, and heaped a tight ball of steaming rice in each of our gumbo bowls, and placed jelly glasses and a pitcher of iced tea filled with lemon slices and sprigs of mint in the center. It was a simple meal, but one that few men can come home to at noontime on a workday.
I sat down with her, and she said grace for both of us, one hand touching mine. Snuggs was stretched out on a throw rug in front of a floor fan, his short fur stiffening in the breeze. Through the back window I could see a spray of gold and red four-o’clocks opening in the shade of a live oak and blue jays flying in and out of the sunlight. I filled a spoon with rice and stewed chicken and put it in my mouth.
“What happened to your finger?” Molly asked.
“You mean that little cut?” I replied, removing my hand from the table and picking up the napkin in my lap.
“I don’t call that a little cut. It looks like somebody bit you.”
I laughed and tried to shine her on.
“Dave?”
“Huh?”
“Answer my question.”
“I had a little run-in with Lonnie Marceaux.”
“The district attorney? Clarify run-in.”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” I replied, ignoring the second part of her statement, bending over the bowl, putting another spoonful in my mouth, my eyes flat now.
“You punched the Iberia Parish district attorney?”
“It was more or less a one-shot affair. Hey, Snuggs, you want a piece of chicken?”
Molly was staring across the table now, her mouth open. “You’re playing a joke, aren’t you?”
“He called Helen a queer. He accused me of—” I didn’t continue.
“What? Say it.”
I told her. Then I added, “So I dropped him. I wish I’d kicked his teeth in.”
“I don’t care what he said. You can’t attack people with your fists whenever someone offends you.”
“Louisiana law allows what it calls provocation. It goes back to the dueling code. Lonnie is a fraternity pissant and should have had his head shoved in a commode a long time ago.”
“What does his fraternity history have to do with anything?”
“It—”
But she wasn’t interested in my response. She rested her forehead on her fingers, her other hand clenched on her napkin, her eyes wet. I felt miserable. “Don’t be like that, Molly,” I said.
“Your enemies know your weakness. You take the bait every time.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“Oh, Dave,” she said, and went into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear the water running, then I heard the faucet squeak and the pipe shut down. But she didn’t come
out.
“Molly?” I said through the door.
