"This better come out right," he said.
MOUT' SAT IN THE corner, on the floor, his dog between his thighs. He could hear mullet splash out in the saw grass, the drone of a distant boat engine, dry thunder booming over the Gulf. He wanted it to rain, but he didn't know why. Maybe if it rained, no, stormed, with lightning all over the sky, Cool Breeze would take shelter and not try to come back that night. Or if it was thundering real bad, the two white men wouldn't hear Cool Breeze's outboard, hear him lifting the crab traps out of the aluminum bottom, hefting up the bucket loaded with catfish he'd unhooked from the trot line.
"I got to go to the bat'room," he said.
But neither of the white men acknowledged him.
"I got to make water," he said.
The man with whiskers stood up from his chair and straightened his back.
"Come on, old man," he said, and let Mout' walk ahead of him out the back door.
"Maybe you a good man, suh. Maybe you just ain't giving yourself credit for being a good man," Mout' said.
"Go ahead and piss."
"I ain't never give no trouble to white people. Anybody round New Iberia tell you that. Same wit' my boy. He worked hard at the bowling alley. He had him a li'l sto'. He tried to stay out of trouble but wouldn't nobody let him."
Then Mout' felt his caution, his lifetime of deference and obsequiousness and pretense slipping away from him. "He had him a wife, her name was Ida, the sweetest black girl in Franklin, but a white man said she was gonna cook for him, just like that, or her husband was gonna go to the penitentiary. Then he took her out in the shed and made her get down on her knees and do what he want. She t'rowed up and begged him not to make her do it again, and every t'ree or fo' nights he walked her out in the shed and she tole herself it's gonna be over soon, he gonna get tired of me and then me and Cool Breeze gonna be left alone, and when he got finished wit' her and made her hate herself and hate my boy, too, another white man come along and give her presents and took her to his bed and tole her t'ings to tell Cool Breeze so he'd know he wasn't nothing but a nigger and a nigger's wife is a white man's jelly roll whenever he want it."
"Shake it off and zip up your pants," the man with whiskers said.
"You cain't get my boy fair. He'll cut yo' ass."
"You better shut up, old man."
"White trash wit' a gun and a big truck. Seen y'all all my life. Got to shove niggers round or you don't know who you are."
The man with whiskers pushed Mout' toward the shack, surprised at the power and breadth of muscle in Mout's back.
"I might have underestimated you. Don't take that as good news," he said.
MOUT' WOKE JUST BEFORE first light. The dog lay in his lap, its coat stiff with mud. The two white men sat in chairs facing the front door, their shoulders slightly rounded, their chins dropping to their chests. The man with the shotgun opened his eyes suddenly, as though waking from a dream.
"Wake up," he said.
"What is it?"
"Nothing. That's the point. I don't want to drive out of here in sunlight."
The man with whiskers rubbed the sleep out of his face.
"Bring the truck up," he said.
The man with the shotgun looked in Mout's direction, as if asking a question.
"I'll think about it," the man with whiskers said.
"It's mighty loose, Harpo."
"Every time I say something, you got a remark to make."
The man with the shotgun rewrapped the bloody handkerchief on his hand. He rose from the chair and threw the shotgun to his friend. "You can use my raincoat if you decide to do business," he said, and went out into the dawn.
Mout' waited in the silence.
"What do you think we ought to do about you?" the man with whiskers asked.
"Don't matter what happen here. One day the devil gonna come for y'all, take you where you belong."
"You got diarrhea of the mouth."
"My boy better than both y'all. He outsmarted you. He know y'all here. He out there now. Cool Breeze gonna come after you, Mr. White Trash."
"Stand up, you old fart."
Mout' pushed himself to his feet, his back against the plank wall. He could feel his thighs quivering, his bladder betraying him. Outside, the sun had risen into a line of storm clouds that looked like the brow of an angry man.
The man with whiskers held the shotgun against his hip and fired one barrel into Mout's dog, blowing it like a bag of broken sticks and torn skin into the corner.
"Get a cat. They're a lot smarter animals," he said, and went out the door and crossed the board walkway to the levee where his friend sat on the fender of their pickup truck, smoking a cigarette.
TEN
"COOL BREEZE RUN OUT OF gas. That's why he didn't come back to the camp," Mout' said.
It was Wednesday afternoon, and Helen and I sat with Mout' in his small living room, listening to his story.
"What'd the Vermilion Parish deputies say?" Helen asked.
"Man wrote on his clipboa'd. Said it was too bad about my dog. Said I could get another one at the shelter. I ax him, 'What about them two men?' He said it didn't make no sense they come into my camp to kill a dog. I said, 'Yeah, it don't make no sense 'cause you wasn't listening to the rest of it.'"
"Where's Cool Breeze, Mout'?"
"Gone."
"Where?"
"To borrow money."
"Come on, Mout'," I said.
"To buy a gun. Cool Breeze full of hate, Mr. Dave. Cool Breeze don't show it, but he don't forgive. What bother me is the one he don't forgive most is himself."
BACK AT MY OFFICE, I called Special Agent Adrien Glazier at the FBI office in New Orleans.
"Two white men, one with the first name of Harpo, tried to clip Willie Broussard at a fish camp in Vermilion Parish," I said.
"When was this?"
"Last night."
"Is there a federal crime involved here?"
"Not that I know of. Maybe crossing a state line to commit a felony."
"You have evidence of that?"
"No."
"Then why are you calling, Mr. Robicheaux?"
"His life's in jeopardy."
"We're not unaware of the risk he's incurred as a federal witness. But I'm busy right now. I'll have to call you back," she said.
"You're busy?"
The line went dead.
A UNIFORMED DEPUTY PICKED up Cool Breeze in front of a pawnshop on the south side of New Iberia and brought him into my office.
"Why the cuffs?" I said.
"Ask him what he called me when I told him to get in the cruiser," the deputy replied.
"Take them off, please."
"By all means. Glad to be of service. You want anything else?" the deputy said, and turned a tiny key in the lock on the cuffs.
"Thanks for bringing him in."
"Oh, yeah, anytime. I always had aspirations to be a bus driver," he said, and went out the door, his eyes flat.
"Who you think is on your side, Breeze?" I said.
"Me."
"I see. Your daddy says you're going to get even. How you going to do that? You know who these guys are, where they live?"
He was sitting in the chair in front of my desk now, looking out the window, his eyes downturned at the corners.
"Did you hear me?" I said.
"You know how come one of them had a raincoat on?" he said.
"He didn't want the splatter on his clothes."
"You know why they left my daddy alive?"
I didn't reply. His gaze was still focused out the window. His hands looked like black starfish on his thighs.
"Long as Mout's alive, I'll probably be staying at his house," he said. "Mout' don't mean no more to them than a piece of nutria meat tied in a crab trap."
"You didn't answer my question."
"Them two men who killed the white boys out in the Basin? They ain't did that in St. Mary Parish without permission. Not to no white boys, they didn't. And it sure didn't have nothing to do with any black girl they raped in New Iberia."
"What are you saying?"