“I’m asking you to stay with Bootsie, Batist.”
“I ain’t stayin’ here no mo’. You don’t want me wit’ you, I’ll walk back down to Catfish Town. Y’all can pick me up on your way back home.”
I looked at the injury in his face, and I remembered my father admonishing me never to treat a brave man as anything other than a fire walker, and I wondered if I was guilty of that old southern white conceit that we must protect people of color from themselves.
“Well, I think the city cops will probably grab the old man before he does any more harm. But let’s check it out, partner,” I said. “It’s really just the roller-derby crowd with a political agenda.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
We drove back down Highland, through the LSU campus, to the park where Bobby Earl’s constituency had come out in force. Amid the pin oaks, the pine and chinaberry trees, against the backdrop of tennis courts and a dusty softball diamond and picnic tables, it looked like a festive and innocent celebration of the coming of summer. A Dixieland band thundered under a pavilion; black cooks in white uniforms turned flank steaks on a huge portable barbecue pit that had been towed in on a truck; the back of the speaker’s platform was lined with a thick row of American flags, and under trees that were strung with red, white, and blue bunting children raced breathlessly across the pine needles and queued up for free lemonade and ice cream.
Who were the parents? I asked myself. Their cars came from Bogalusa, Denham Springs, Plaquemine, Bunkie, Port Allen, Vidalia, and mosquito-infested dirt-road communities out in the Atchafalaya basin. But these were not ordinary small-town blue-collar people. This was the permanent underclass, the ones who tried to hold on daily to their shrinking bit of redneck geography with a pickup truck and gun rack and Jones on the jukebox and a cold Coors in the hand.
They were never sure of who they were unless someone was afraid of them. They jealously guarded their jobs from blacks and Vietnamese refugees, whom they saw as a vast and hungry army about to descend upon their women, their neighborhoods, their schools, even their clapboard church houses, where they were assured every Sunday and Wednesday night that the bitterness and fear that characterized their lives had nothing to do with what they had been born to, or what they had chosen for themselves.
But when you looked at them at play in a public park, in almost a tattered facsimile of a Norman Rockwell painting, it was as hard to be angry at them for their ignorance as it would be to condemn someone for the fact that he was born disfigured.
Then on a side street we saw Clemmie’s junker car parked in a yellow zone. I found a parking place farther down the street, and Batist walked back to Clemmie’s car, raised the hood, disconnected a fistful of sparkplug wires, and locked them in our trunk. I took my bolstered .45 out of the glove box, clipped it onto my belt, and put on my sports coat.
“You’re sure you want to go?” I said.
“What else I’m gonna do, me? Stand here and wait for a man that’s got a pistol?”
“Well, I don’t think anybody is going to give us any trouble,” I said. “They feel secure when they’re in numbers. But if anybody gets in our face, we walk on through it. All right, Batist?”
“Dave, ain’t nobody know these people better than a black man. They ain’t worried by the likes of me, no. They scared of the young ones. They ain’t gonna admit that, but that’s what’s on they mind. They scared to death of some noisy kids whose mamas should have whupped them upside the head a long time ago.”
“They’re scared of anybody who looks them in the eye, partner.”
“We gonna set around here and wait for that man to shoot Mr. Sonnier?”
“No, you’re right. Let’s go see what they’re doing at the bottom of the food chain these days.”
Batist peeled the cellophane off a cigar, put it deep into his jaw, and we walked back down the block and into the park, where someone had just turned on the field lights over the softball diamond.
“Hey, Dave, wasn’t there s’posed to be a lot of policemens here?” Batist said.
“Yep.”
“Where they at?”
I saw one uniformed cop directing traffic, another one eating a barbecue sandwich under a chinaberry tree. I saw no one in the crowd who looked like plainclothes. I walked up to the cop under the chinaberry tree and unfolded my badge in my palm.
“I’m Detective Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department,” I said. “Did you guys get a report about a man with a pistol?”
His face was round, and his mouth was full of bread and meat. He wiped his lips with the back of his wrist and shook his head.
“I didn’t,” he said. “There’s a guy around here with a gun?”
“Maybe. Have you seen a man with a burned face? You can’t miss him. His skin looks like red putty.”
“No.”
“Where’s your supervisor?”
“He was over at the pavilion a while ago. This is no shit, some guy’s after Bobby Earl?”
“No, not Earl. His brother-in-law, a man named Weldon Sonnier. Do you know him?”
“I never heard of him. Look, you want me to, we can get on the mike and find this guy.”
“You can do what?”
“We can page him. We can get him out of the crowd.”
I tried to hide the expression that must have been on my face.
“How about finding your supervisor for me, then calling for some more help?” I said.
“Sure.” Then he looked over my shoulder. “Who’s he?”
“Find your supervisor, podna. Okay?” I said.
Batist and I walked through the crowd toward the concrete band shell. The western sky was piled with purple clouds that were scorched black and crimson on the edges in the sun’s fiery afterglow. In the distance an emergency siren was pealing through the streets. The band in the pavilion stopped playing a moment, then suddenly it struck up “Dixie,” and a second band, inside the concrete shell, in candy-striped vests and straw boaters, joined in as though on cue, and in the deafening exchange of trombones, clarinets, trumpets, and martial drumrolls, the crowd went insane.
Then somebody released the restraining ropes on a huge net filled with red, white, and blue balloons, which rose by the hundreds into the windstream, and I realized what was going on. It was Bobby Earl’s moment. Amid a throng of applauding people he was walking from the pavilion, dressed in a double-breasted tropical suit, his dry, wavy hair tousled by the breeze, toward the speaker’s stand that had been constructed in front of the concrete shell, where the microphones, American flags, television cameras, and banks of loudspeakers waited for him. His smile had all the ease and confidence of a man who knew that he was loved, that he had truly found his place in this world.
We worked our way through the crowd. The bands were still blaring out “Dixie,” and a drunk fat man in a sweat-stained pink shirt had climbed up on a picnic table and was screaming rebel yells at the speaker’s platform. The smell of flat beer, deodorant, chewing tobacco, and talcum powder seemed to rise in a collective sticky layer from the people around us. I tried to push our way through the edge of the crowd into the picnic area behind the band shell. A uniformed police sergeant shouldered his way through a bunch of college kids and stood in front of me. He was a large man, with ridged brow, sunken green eyes, a fresh sunburn on his face, and sweat rings under his arms. His love handles hung over his gunbelt, and he rested one palm on the butt of his .357 magnum.
“You the sheriff’s detective from New Iberia?” he asked.
“That’s right. I’m Dave Robicheaux.”
His eyes shifted to Batist, then back to me.
“I just heard about this burned man with a gun,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“His name is Vic Benson. He’s deranged, and I think he plans to harm Bobby Earl’s brother-in-law.”
“He’s got a gun?”
“A chrome-plated revolver, caliber unknown.”
&
nbsp; “Hell of a fucking place to have a crazy man running loose with a gun. Every time I have to work one of these things, I have dreams the night before about earthquakes and tornados. My wife says I eat too much before I go to bed. Who’s this man?”
“He’s a friend.”
“All right, I’m going to get some more uniforms into the crowd. In the meantime, you find Earl’s brother-in-law, you get him out of here. A bunch like this can take to religion or flattening your town, either one, in about five minutes.”
“Thanks for your help, sergeant.”
“Don’t thank me, podna. I worked a riot once at the stadium. The next time I get caught in one, I’m going home, open a beer, and sit in the backyard. Maybe listen to it on the radio.” He smiled.
The crowd began to thin at the edges, and finally Batist and I stepped out into an area of pine trees, barbecue pits, overflowing trash barrels, and a small sandy stretch of playground with seesaws and swing sets.
There, sitting in a child’s swing, sipping beer out of a deep paper cup, was Weldon Sonnier.
“I think you aged me about ten years tonight,” I said.
He looked up at me.
“Hey, Dave. Hey, Batist. What’s up?”
“Your father is around here somewhere with a pistol. Guess who he’s looking for?”
“What?”
“After you left, he beat up the black maid and stole her car. It’s parked about a block from here. He’s got a revolver.”
He made a clucking sound. “The old man’s always up to new tricks, huh?” he said.
“The Baton Rouge cops want you out of the area. I do, too.”
He sipped his beer and gazed lackadaisically at some kids shagging flies on the softball diamond.
“Where’s Bama?” I asked.
“She went to give Bobby his present. You got to get a number and wait. You’d think he was the pope.”
“It’s time for you to go back to Lyle’s. I’ll find Bama and bring her along.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Dave?”
“You’re leaving.”
“Are you serious?”
“You’re leaving on your own or you’re leaving in custody. It’s up to you, Weldon.”
“I don’t know about legal jurisdiction and that sort of thing, but I doubt you have much authority here, Dave. And I don’t see any Baton Rouge cops, and I don’t see any old man with a pistol. Take a break and get a soft drink over at the pop stand.”
“You’re starting to piss me off again, Weldon.”
“That’s your problem.”
“No, it’s yours. I think you were born with a two-by-four up your butt.”
“I never said I was perfect.”
“Do you have to prove that you’re not afraid of your father? You flew hundreds of combat missions. Didn’t you ever learn who you are?”
He raised his face and looked at me in an odd way. For just a moment in the fading light, his big ears, his square face, his close-cropped head made me remember the young boy of years ago, his bare feet gray with dust, his overalls grimed at the knees, swamping out the poolroom for two bits an hour.
Then the light in his eyes changed, and he took a drink of beer and looked down between his knees.
“You’ve done your job, Dave. Now let it go,” he said.
I felt Batist pull my sleeve, felt the urgency in his hand even before I heard it in his voice.
“Dave, look yonder,” he said.
Bobby Earl and his entourage of bodyguards and political aides had gone into the grassy area between the speaker’s platform and the concrete shell. Bama had worked her way through the throng and was giving him an oblong box wrapped with satin-finish white paper and a pink ribbon. But that was not what Batist had seen.
On the other side of the concrete shell, Vic Benson had just exited one of the portable bathrooms that stood in a long row under the trees, a baseball cap on his head, dark glasses on his nose. And as quickly as I saw him, he disappeared behind the far wall of the shell.
Then it hit me.
He knows Bama went to the park with Weldon. Through the crowd he got a glimpse of Bama talking with Bobby Earl. At a distance he’s mistaken Bobby Earl for Weldon.
“Good God, he’s going to shoot Bobby Earl,” I said.
“What?” Weldon said.
I took my badge from my coat pocket, held it open in front of me, and ran toward the grassy area behind the speaker’s platform, the weight of the .45 knocking against my hip. I heard Batist hard on my heels. People paused in midsentence and stared at us, their expressions caught between laughter and alarm. Then Earl’s bodyguards were moving toward us, spreading out, their faces heating with expectation and challenge.
Through their bodies I saw Earl’s peculiar monocular vision focus on my face.
“Get that man out of here!” he said.
Two men in suits stepped in front of me, and one of them stiff-armed me in the shoulder with the heel of his hand. His coat hung at an odd angle because of a weight in the right-hand pocket.
“Where you think you’re going, buddy?” he said. His breath was rife with the smell of cigars.
“Iberia Parish sheriff’s office. There’s a man in the crowd with—” I began.
“Yeah? Who’s that with you? The African paratroopers?” he said.
“He’s FBI, you peckerwood shithead,” I said. “Now, you get the fuck out of my way.”
Mistake, mistake, I thought, even as the words came out of my mouth. Don’t humiliate north Louisiana stump-jumpers in front of either their women or the boss man.
“Iberia Parish don’t mean horse piss on a rock here,” the second man said. “You better haul your ass ’fore you get it hauled for you.”
Then more of Earl’s bodyguards and aides pressed toward me, as though I were the source of all their problems, the spoiler of a grand moment in which they had been allowed to participate.
I stepped back from them and held my palms outward. Then I pointed one finger at them.
“I’ll make it brief,” I said. “Get your man out of sight before he gets dusted. Second, I’m going to be back later and bust every one of you for interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty.”
I moved out of the crowd and behind the concrete shell to the far side. Lines had formed in front of the portable bathrooms, and large numbers of people were now drifting out of the picnic areas and the pavilion toward the speaker’s platform. The wind had suddenly died, and the air had grown close and hot, with a dusty, metallic smell to it, and the field lights were white and haloed with humidity against the darkening sky. I kicked over a trash barrel, rolled it snug against the concrete shell, stood on it, and tried to see Vic Benson’s baseball cap among the hundreds of heads in the crowd.
It seemed impossible.
Then I heard a woman scream and I saw people separating themselves from some terrible or frightening presence in their midst, tripping on each other’s ankles, falling backward to the ground. Not twenty feet from me, Vic Benson was racing through the crowd, the way a barracuda would slice through a school of bluefish, a small silver pistol in his upraised hand.
Bama saw him before Bobby Earl, whose back was turned as he signed autographs for children. Her face went white, and her mouth opened in a round red O.
I knocked a woman down, felt somebody bounce hard off my shoulder, crashed across a folding wheelchair, and dove headlong into the small of Vic Benson’s back.
He hit the ground under me, and I heard the breath go out of his lungs in a gasp, and once again I smelled that odor that was like turpentine or embalming fluid, wind-dried sweat, nicotine, smoke rubbed into the skin and clothes. His baseball cap toppled off his head, his dark glasses were askew on his face, and his eyes stared into mine the way a lizard’s might if it were trapped on top of a hot rock in the middle of a burning field.
His lips moved, and I knew he wanted to curse or wound me in some fresh way, but his breath rasped in
his throat like a man whose lungs were perforated with holes. I slipped my hand along his arm and removed the unfired pistol from his fingers.
I thought it was over. It should have been.
But Batist, when he had seen what was about to happen, had plunged through the crowd from the other side, his arms outspread, and had flung both Bama and Bobby Earl to the ground and had landed with his huge weight on top of both of them. People were screaming and shoving one another; photographers and TV cameramen were trying to get Bobby Earl’s prone body, with Batist’s on top of it, into their cameras’ lenses; and three uniformed cops were fighting desperately to get through the rim of the crowd and into the center before a riot spread throughout the park.
Then I realized that most of the people pressed into the center of the grassy area had not seen Vic Benson or understood what he had tried to do. Instead, some of them obviously believed that Batist had attacked Bobby Earl.
As Batist tried to raise himself on his arms, a man on the edge of the crowd swung a doubled-over dog chain at his head, then two of Earl’s bodyguards grabbed him by the belt and began tugging him backward.
“Put that fucking nigger in a cage,” someone yelled.
Then the crowd surged forward, toppling over one another, trampling others who had already fallen to the ground. Between their legs I saw the desperation in Batist’s face as he tried to shield his eyes from a solitary fist that was flailing at his head. A string of saliva and blood drooled from his lower lip.
I tore into their midst. I drove my fist as hard as I could into the back of a man’s thick neck; I ripped my elbow into someone’s rib cage and felt it go like a nest of popsicle sticks; I lifted an uppercut into another man’s stomach and saw him cave to his knees in front of me, his face gray and his mouth hanging open as if he had been eviscerated.
Then they rolled over both Batist and me.
There are moments in your life when you think the last frames in your film strip have just snapped loose from the reel. When one of those moments occurs, you hear your own blood thundering in your ears, or a sound like waves bursting over a coral reef, or hundreds of feet pounding dully on the earth.