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“Tell you what,” Clete said. He went back to the Caddy. “I got you a bat. I’ll pitch ’em, you hit ’em.”
Homer missed the first two pitches, clipped the third, and hit the fourth squarely, ripping it across the grass. The welfare man from the state volunteered as catcher. It was 12:26.
“Do I have to stay here, Mr. Clete?” the boy said.
“For a time. Mr. Smith and Miss Carolyn and I will be looking in on you.”
The boy swung the bat at nothing. At 12:37 they heard the whine of a dirt bike. The boy’s face drained. Clete saw Smith mouth the words “Son of a bitch.”
Kevin Penny cut the gas feed and coasted up to the Caddy. He had a backpack. He pulled on the neck of his T-shirt and wiped his nose with it. “The big three. Or call it the two and a half.”
“I need your signature and I’ll be gone,” Smith said.
“What day of the month does the check come?” Penny said.
“Pardon?”
“It’s supposed to be in the agreement. The amount and the date of delivery.”
“I think you’ll find everything in order,” Smith said.
“Oh, hell yes,” Penny said. He unslung his pack and walked past his son to the porch, grinding the Astros cap into the boy’s scalp. Penny sat on the top step and opened a can of Bud and began tearing apart a rotisserie chicken from his pack and eating it with his hands. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Clete pitched the ball to Homer, but the boy let the bat stay on his shoulder and watched the ball drop into the dirt.
“Strike one,” Penny said.
Clete took off his fielder’s glove and walked to the porch. He curled the glove into a cone and tucked it between Penny’s thigh and the railing. “There’s Little League ball in Jennings.”
“Reach me those napkins in my pack, will you?” Penny said.
Clete didn’t answer. Penny said something with his mouth full of meat.
“What’s that you say?” Clete asked.
Penny cleared his throat and laughed. “I thought that perfumed cunt from the welfare office would be here. Instead I get you.”
“I’ll be running along now.”
“Want a thigh?” Penny raised the chicken and the grease-pooled foil to Clete’s face.
Clete walked to the Caddy, a sound in his ears like tank treads clanking or the mewing of barnyard animals caught inside an unbearable flame. He bent down to Homer. “I’ll be back to see you, pal. I’m on your side. So are Miss Carolyn and Mr. Smith.”
The boy was not listening. His eyes were wide, his bottom lip trembling, as he stared at his father.
Clete could remember little of driving back to New Iberia. Nor could he remember when he’d had a sadder day or a greater sense of foreboding.
* * *
THAT AFTERNOON HELEN caught me in the corridor. “In my office, Dave.”
I followed her inside and shut the door.
“The prosecutor is on my butt about the Dartez investigation,” she said.
“He doesn’t like how it’s going?”
“He thinks you should be on the desk.”
