"What are you reading?" I asked.
"Night Comes to the Cumberland. It's by a lawyer named Harry Caudill. It's a history of the southern mountains," she said.
"For your creative writing group?" I asked.
"No, a boy at the library said I should read it. It's the best book ever written about the people of Appalachia," she replied.
"You're going to read your new story tonight?" I said.
"Yeah," she said, smiling. "By the way, I might get a ride home tonight."
"With whom?" Bootsie said.
"This boy."
"Which boy?" I asked.
"The one who told me about Night Comes to the Cumberland."
"That nails it down," I said.
"Dave, I am sixteen now… Why are you making that face?"
"No reason. Sorry," I said.
"I mean, lighten up," she said.
"You bet," I said, looking straight ahead.
A few minutes later Alafair got into the car with Bootsie to ride into town. Under the trees the sunlight was red on the ground, and I could smell humus and the wet, dense warm odor of the swamp and schooled-up fish on the wind.
"No riding home with boys we don't know, Alafair. We got a deal?" I said.
"No," she said.
"Alf?" I said.
"You have to stop talking to me like I'm a child. Until you do, I'm just not going to say anything."
Behind Alafair's angle of vision Bootsie shook her head at me, then she said, "I'll be back in a little while, Dave," and I watched them drive down the road toward New Iberia.
I don't know how good a father I was, but I had learned that when your daughter is between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, you will never win an argument with her, and if you fall back on anger and recrimination and coercion to prevail over her, you will come to loathe your triumph and the weakness it disguises and you will not easily find forgiveness for it in either her or yourself.
I read the newspaper on the gallery, then the dusk gathered inside the trees and the leaves on the ground darkened and became indistinct and a car passed on the road with its headlights on. I saw Batist walk out of the bait shop and scoop the hot ashes out of the barbecue into a bucket and fling them in a spray of burning embers onto the bayou's surface.
I went inside and lay down on the couch with the newspaper over my face and fell asleep. In my dream I saw the sculpted, leafless branches of a tree on an alkali plain, and in the distance purple hills and pinon and cedar trees and cactus and rain bleeding like smoke out of the clouds. Then a flock of colored birds descended on the hardened and gnarled surfaces of the barren tree, and green tendrils began to grow from the tree's skin and wind about its branches, and young leaves and flowers unfolded with the sudden crispness of tissue paper from the ends of the twigs, so that the tree looked like a man raising a floral tribute toward the sky.
But a carrion bird descended into the tree, its talons and beak flecked with its work, its feathers shining, its eyes like perfectly round drops of black ink that had dried on brass. It extended its wings and cawed loudly, white insects crawling across its feathers, its breath filling the air with a scrofulous presence that enveloped the tree and the tropical birds in it like a moist net.
I sat up on the couch and the newspaper across my face cascaded to the floor. I closed and opened my eyes and tried to shake the dream out of my mind, although I had no idea what it meant. I heard Bootsie's car outside and a moment later she opened the front screen and came inside.
"I fell asleep," I said, the room still not in focus.
"You okay?" she said.
"Yeah, sure." I went into the bathroom and washed my face and combed my hair. When I came back out Bootsie was in the kitchen.
"I had a terrible dream," I said.
"About what?"
"I don't know. Is Alf all right?"
"She's at the library. She promised me she'd call or get a ride from somebody we know."
I took two glasses out of the cabinet over the drain-board and filled them from a pitcher of tea in the icebox.
"Why wouldn't she tell me who this boy is?" I asked.
"The one who recommended the book about the Appalachians?"
"Yes."
"Because she's sixteen. Dave, don't see a plot in everything. The kid she's talking about is studying to be an artist."
"Say again?"
"Alafair said he's a painter. He paints ceramics. Does that sound like Jack the Ripper to you?"
I stared stupidly at Bootsie, and in my mind's eye I saw the humped black shape of the carrion bird in the midst of the flowering tree.
I dialed 911 and got the city dispatcher, then I was out the back door and in the truck, roaring backwards in the driveway, the rear end fishtailing in a plume of dust out on the road. The dust drifted out onto the glare of the electric lights over the dock, glowing as brightly as powdered alkali under the moon.
I came DOWN East Main, under the oaks that arched over the street, and pulled into the City Library. The outside flood lamps were on and the oak trees on the lawn were filled with white light and shadows that moved with the wind, and next to the parking lot I could see a wall of green bamboo and the stone grotto that contained a statue of Jesus' mother.
A city police cruiser was parked under a tree by the grotto, and an overweight, redheaded cop, his cap at an angle on his brow, leaned against the fender, smoking a cigarette. He was a retired marine NCO nicknamed Top, although he had been a cook in the corps and never a first sergeant.
"I've already been inside, Dave. Your daughter's with a bunch of kids upstairs. I don't see anything unusual going on here," he said.
"You didn't see a tall kid, wide shoulders, dark hair, real white skin, maybe wearing glasses with black frames?"
"How old?"
"It's hard to tell his age. He doesn't always look the same."
He took the cigarette out of his mouth, and, without extinguishing it, tossed it in a flower bed.
"That's what I need. To be hunting down Plastic Man," he said.
We entered the building and walked through a large reading area, then went up the stairs. I saw Alafair sitting with five or six other high school kids around a table in a side room. I stood just outside the door until she noticed me. Her concentration kept going from me to the creative writing teacher, a black writer-in-residence at USL in Lafayette who volunteered his time at the library. Alafair got up from the table and came to the door, her eyes shining.
"Dave…," she said, the word almost twisting as it came out of her mouth.
"The kid who paints ceramics? Is he here tonight?" I said.
She squeezed her eyes shut, as though in pain, and opened them again. "I knew that was it."
"Alf, this guy isn't what you think he is. He's a killer for hire. He's the guy who escaped custody in the shoot-out on the Atchafalaya."
"No, you're wrong. His name's Jack O'Roarke. He's not a criminal. He paints beautiful things. He showed me photographs of the things he's done."
"That's the guy. O'Roarke was his father's name. Where is he?"
A fan oscillated behind her head; her eyes were moist and dark inside the skein of hair that blew around her face.
"It's a mistake of some kind. He's an artist. He's a gentle person. Jack wouldn't hurt anybody," she said.
"Alf, come with me," I said, and put my hand on her forearm, my fingers closing around the skin, harder than I meant to.
"No, I'm not going anywhere with you. You're humiliating me."
I could see the veins in her forearm bunched like blue string under the skin, and I released her and realized my hand was shaking now.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Everybody's looking at us. Just go," she said, her voice lowered, as though she could trap her words in the space between the two of us.