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“Louis, call up the chief of police and tell him to send an officer out here.”
“Yes, suh,” the black man said. He rose from his chair and went inside the office.
“You fathered a daughter with a woman of color?” I said.
Patout’s eyes had the lopsided look of two egg yolks in a skillet. “What if I did?”
“I’m not judging you, sir. I need your help.”
He propped his big hands on his knees and stared at a wall hung with old tires and fan belts and drop cloths and a child’s bicycle that was rusted and missing one wheel. “It was twenty-five years back. The colored girl didn’t want a white man’s baby. At least she sure as hell didn’t want mine. I went to Corina.”
“Corina is Desmond’s mother?”
“She said, ‘Milk through the wrong fence, carry the pail home by your own self.’ She was drunk and throwing things. Maybe clap got to her brain.”
“If she didn’t want Desmond, why would she want to raise another woman’s child?”
“I thought maybe we could get back together. Shows you the kind of fool I was.” He pointed at the bicycle on the wall. “I bought that for Desmond and tried to give it to his grandparents. They told me to begone. Anyone ever say that to you?”
“No, sir,” I replied. “Mr. Patout, there’s something missing from your account. Why did Desmond’s mother bear you such hostility? Why would the grandparents be angry with you when you were trying to do the right thing? The same with the black woman who had your child.”
“You got to ask them.”
“Did you force yourself on the black woman?”
He folded his hands, then squeezed one hand with the other. “A man has needs.”
“You raped her?”
“I didn’t think of it that way.”
“And you did the same with Desmond’s mother?”
“That’s what she told others. But it was a goddamn lie.” He took a blue bandana out of his overalls and blew his nose on it. “I don’t want to talk no more.”
“What happened to your little girl?”
“Church people took her.”
“What happened to the mother?”
“Killed herself.”
He stared at his steel-toed shoes, his fingers spread like banana peels on his thighs. I pulled the mechanic’s chair close to him and sat down. “You owned up. Over the years you did what you could. Tell the Man on High you’re sorry, then fuck the rest of it.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d leave,” he said, the words deep in his throat.
“Who are the church people, Mr. Patout?”
“I heard she ended up with a colored preacher and his wife in Cade, just outside New Iberia.”
“What’s the name of the preacher?”
“I never got his name.”
“You’ve been forthcoming. Don’t ruin it by lying.”
“Arceneaux. Her name was Lucinda Arceneaux.”
