Half of Paradise

Avery Broussard

After the spring rains when the first hot days of summer begin, the inland waters of the Gulf of Mexico turn smoky-green from the floating seaweed, fading to dark blue beyond the sandbars where the great white pelicans dive for fish. On an island off the Louisiana coast there is an open-air pavilion among a group of cypress trees, and in those first wisteria-scented days of May one can sit in a wicker chair, drinking chilled wine, and listen to the salt breeze rustling through the overhanging moss, or just sit and watch the whitecaps break against the beach and disappear in an iridescent spray of foam.

Avery Broussard walked up the beach with his duffle bag over his shoulder and entered the pavilion. It was midafternoon and no one was at the bar. Two fishermen sat at one of the marble-topped tables. He drank a draught beer from a thick glass mug filmed with ice on the outside, and watched the fishermen hand-wrestle. One of them was a little drunk, and he laughed loudly and used a profane expression in French when the other man forced his hand down. Avery drank down the cold beer and ordered another. He counted the money in his wallet. He had fifteen dollars, enough to buy a bottle and get him home. He had quit his job on the oil exploration crew that morning, and he wanted to catch the afternoon launch to the mainland in order to be at the house by nightfall. It was three o’clock now and the launch left at four. He sipped the beer and looked out over the beach at the few palm trees and the sun bright on the water and the sandbars white in the distance.

Avery was through with oil crews. Six months ago he had signed on as a jug-hustler on a shooting crew that did offshore exploration preliminary to putting down a well. Later he became a driller’s helper. He got a pay raise, and he liked working on the drill better than pulling recording instruments out of the water ten hours a day with the sun hot on his spine and the skin on his fingers cracked and hard from being wet too long. But now he was finished. Life on the Gulf was fine, but he hadn’t returned home or seen his father in the six months since he had left, and he thought that he had gotten rid of the things that had made him leave. He bought a pint of bourbon and put it in his duffle to drink on the way home.

He walked slowly down the beach towards the landing. The sky was clear and the gulls dipped their wings and circled overhead. He wondered what his father would say when he saw him again. Avery had written home only twice since he started work on the crew. Several times he had wanted to write his father and tell him why he had gone, but he could never find the proper words. His father wouldn’t have understood, just as he didn’t understand when Avery’s older brother Henri had left. The father and the sons were apart in time. Avery hoped that now things could be different from what they had been, and that he wouldn’t have to go away anymore. It’s in you, he thought, like it’s in him. You don’t belong anywhere else. He cut the seal of the whiskey bottle with his pocketknife, peeled it back and unscrewed the metal cap, and took a drink. Generations of inbreeding have put it into your blood. The land, the house, the country around it, and all that goes with it is inside you.

He waited on the dock until the launch came. He went aboard and stood on the bow and leaned against the deck rail. The deckhands cast off the mooring lines and the boat headed for the mainland. Avery looked out towards the Gulf and saw the gray shapes of two oil tankers silhouetted against the sky; he wondered where they were going. Ahead lay the mainland, a long stretch of white beach with a heavy line of trees in the background. Off to the left he could see the salt marsh with its flat expanses of alligator grass and the blasted trunks of cypress trees half submerged in the water. A sailboat came out of the lagoon, tacking in the breeze. He took another drink from the bottle and turned his face into the wind. The air was fresh with the smell of brine. The whiskey felt hot inside him, and he was getting a good edge on. The boat churned inland and passed the sandbars and the salt marsh and neared the dock.

He put the bottle in his bag and walked down the gangplank after the boat landed. Several trawlers were tied up at the dock. The fishermen were spreading out their nets to dry. He walked up the landing, the duffle over his shoulder, past a few boarded shacks and headed down a gravel road that would take him to the highway. There was thick green foliage on both sides of the road and tall gray oaks with hanging moss, and the late afternoon sun cast dark shadows over the lane. He saw a nutria, like a huge rat, swimming in the irrigation canal beside the road. Two cranes flew up over the trees from the swamp, their wings gilded in the sunlight.

Avery came out on the highway and hitched a ride with an old man in a vegetable truck. Riding along, he thought about his family, or what was left of it. His mother had died in childbirth, and his brother had been killed at Normandy. Now it was just his father and himself, and sometimes he wondered if it wouldn’t be better if they were gone, too. His family had lived for over a hundred years in Martinique parish, in the same house, on the same piece of ground which his great-grandfather had bought from the Louisiana government when he came from the West Indies in 1850. His great-grandfather had had a Negro servant who came with him as a free man into a slave country, and the two of them had built a sugarcane plantation that was later to become one of the largest in the southern portion of the state. When the War Between the States broke out, Avery’s great-grandfather had enlisted in the Confederate army, although he spoke only a few words of English, and was made a captain in the infantry; he and his servant were attached to the Eighth Louisiana Volunteers under General Jackson, and at the battle of Fredericksburg he was made deaf by the explosion of a cannon ball and was captured by the Federal army and imprisoned at Johnson’s Island for the remainder of the war.

When Appomattox came he and his servant took turns riding a half-starved mule through the bayou country and moccasin-infested swamps with nothing to eat except a sack of parched corn, until they returned to Martinique parish to attempt rebuilding what was left of their home after the fields had been burned, the stock killed, and the house shelled by artillery. During Reconstruction half of the land was lost to carpetbaggers, and the other half was left unplanted because there was no money to buy seed or to hire manual labor.

The great-grandfather was killed in a duel in 1870 by a Spanish aristocrat who made a profitable living as a scalawag and who had tried to buy the Broussard land at one-third of its value. Rebuffed, he had joined forces with the carpetbag government in an attempt to prove that Mr. Broussard was the leader of the night riders which terrorized the Negro voters. The Spanish aristocrat won his duel, but he was shot dead two weeks later on Rampart Street in New Orleans. A witness to the shooting said that a well-dressed Negro had approached the Spaniard, asked his name, then pulled a dueling pistol from his vest and fired from three feet. No one knew the Negro, nor did they ever see him again in New Orleans, but some believed him to be the servant of the man whom the Spaniard had killed in a duel sometime before.

Over the years the land was lost in pieces until Avery’s father, Rafael Broussard, owned only twenty acres of the original two-thousand-acre tract. Now there was no one left save Avery and his father and a Negro named Batiste who was the grandson of the servant the first Broussard had brought with him from the West Indies in 1850. The twenty acres of land was mortgaged, and it no longer produced enough cane to pay their expenses.

The truck stopped and Avery climbed down and thanked the old man. He started down the lane through the wood gate towards the house. The gate swung back on its hinges over the cattle guard and clacked against the fence post. He could see his father standing on the veranda looking out over the barren fields in front of the house. Mr. Broussard wore the same black trousers and coat he always wore when he wasn’t in the fields. His thin hair was steel-gray, and the red veins in his cheeks showed through his gray whiskers, and he had on a wide-brimmed planter’s hat that was slanted over his eyes. Batiste was sawing logs and putting them in a cord by the side of the house. The house was built in French colonial style with red bricks covering the bottom half of the building, and a balcony ran completely around the second story. The banisters on the veranda were broken, and the paint was cracked and peeling, the roof sagged in places, and the outbuildings had weathered gray. To one side of the house there was a pecan orchard, the trees barren and twisted like broken fingers held in the air.

“Hello, son,” Mr. Broussard said. “Hi, Papa.”

“I’m glad you came home.”

Avery looked about him and felt the emptiness of his home press in upon him.

“Did you quit your job?” Mr. Broussard said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Batiste said you would come home. All the time you were away he said you would be back. It’s been a little hard since you’ve been gone.”

Why does he have to talk like that? Avery thought.

“Aren’t you planting this year?” Avery said.

“I have to get some money from the bank.”

“The oil company owes me some in back pay. They’ll send it in a couple of weeks.”

“That’s fine, son. Maybe we’ll have a good year.”

Batiste came over and shook hands with Avery. His hair had begun to turn white, and his shoulders were bent; he wore suspenders and a collarless shirt, and the leather was cut away from the toe of one of his shoes.

“He’s looking fine, ain’t he, Mr. Broussard?” he said.

“How’ve you been?” Avery said.

“Been waiting for you to come home. I didn’t have nobody to go hunting with.”

“We’ll go frogging tonight.”

“I reckon you grown into a man,” Batiste said. He was smiling with his hands on his sides.

“He looks older,” Mr. Broussard said.

Avery felt embarrassed.

“Yes sir, you grown into a man,” Batiste said. “It’s sure good to have you back. I ain’t had no fun hunting by myself.”

“We’ll get plenty of honkers this year,” Avery said. “Going to fix the blind up so we’ll be ready for them in the fall.”

Avery remembered when he and his father used to go hunting together. They would get up early in the morning and put on their waders and quilted hunting jackets. They used the outboard to cross the mouth of the river, and Avery would sit on the bow, letting the cold spray sting his face, and listen to the gulls that cry over the water before dawn. They would stand waist-deep in the freezing water, waiting for the ducks as they flew over the willow trees to feed in the rice field, then fire when the lead ducks dropped through the mist to land, he with the pump and his father with the double-barrel. The ducks would fold and fall heavily through the air, making a loud crack and splash when they broke through the thin sheet of ice. Avery would keep firing until his gun clicked empty, pumping the smoking shells into the water. The dogs would bark and jump off the levee into the reeds and swim towards the fallen birds. Then his father would break the double-barrel and wink at him as the empty shells plopped into the water. Keep shooting like that and we won’t have any birds for next season, he would say. They would wade to the levee and sit on the bank, drinking black coffee from thermos jugs, and listen to the geese honking in the marsh.

But that was then and not now. Mr. Broussard didn’t hunt anymore, and the double-barrel stayed over the fireplace. After his father quit hunting Avery went with Batiste, but it wasn’t the same.

“We’d better go in and have supper,” Mr. Broussard said.

“I’ll carry your duffle for you,” Batiste said.

Inside, Mr. Broussard and Avery ate at the kitchen table, which was covered with a red-and-white checkered oilcloth.

“How much do we owe the bank?” Avery said.

“There’s no need for you to worry about it, son.”

Why does he have to speak to me like that?

“How much is it?”

“Three hundred dollars,” he said.

“We can take another mortgage,” Avery said.

“Yes, we might be able to.”

“What do you say it like that for?”

“I’ll go see them about the mortgage tomorrow.”

“There’s something else, isn’t there?”

“I couldn’t meet the land taxes this year. The farm will go up at the sheriff’s tax sale unless I pay them soon.”

“My check from the company will pay the taxes.”

“It’s good of you to offer the money, but you know I didn’t approve of you taking that job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There are all manner of men on those oil crews. You should always seek your own level in associating with people.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Those men are from a different background than you.”

“What difference does it make?” Avery said, and then wished he hadn’t.

“When you associate with people of a lower social class as an equal, they bring you down to their level. You don’t bring them up to yours.”

“All right, Papa.”

“I let you take the job because you were old enough to make decisions for yourself, but I never approved of it.”

“I’m not on the job any longer.”

“I know that, but you must always seek out your equals.”

“All right. I’m not going to work on any more crews.”

“I wanted to go to sea when I was a young boy, and my father wouldn’t allow me to. At the time I thought he was wrong, but as I got older I realized that he had done the right thing.”

“Let’s finish dinner, Papa.”

“Why did you take that job to begin with?”

“I thought I might like working on the water.”

“Try to understand, son. I’m not attempting to keep you at home. You can get a job in town or go to the college if you like. But you should do something suited to your background.”

“I’ll help with the farm this summer.”

“Would you like to go to the college? I had hoped you would.”

“Maybe next year.”

“There’s something else I’d like to talk with you about. When you unpacked your clothes I thought I saw a bottle. Are you still drinking?”

“Not too much. Just once in a while.”

“You’re older now and you make your own decisions, but I don’t like to see you drinking,” Mr. Broussard said. “It killed your grandfather.”

“I’m all right.”

“Maybe it’s in your blood. They say the odd generation gets it. Henri started drinking early, too.”

“A friend of mine left the bottle with me.”

“I hope I haven’t raised you wrong. I brought you up the same way I was brought up. That’s the only way I knew.”

Avery began to wish he hadn’t come home.

“I leave it alone now. I haven’t been tight since I went to work.”

“I want to believe that’s true.”

Avery felt guilty for lying, but he had learned long ago that it was better to tell his father certain things, whether they were true or not.

“You know how disappointed I was in you the night the sheriff had to bring you home from that bar,” Mr. Broussard said.

“That was a long time ago, Papa. Let’s don’t talk about it.”

“He had to carry you up the front steps.”

“Yes, sir, I know. I told you I was sorry for it.”

“Well, it isn’t worth talking about now. I just don’t want to see you let liquor ruin your life.”

Avery got up. “Batiste and I are going frogging.”

“Will you get rid of that bottle?”

“All right.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

Avery put his dishes on the sideboard and went upstairs to get his flashlight and frog gig.

The next week Mr. Broussard paid the land taxes with Avery’s oil check and took out a second mortgage on the twenty acres. They bought seed, rented a tractor, plowed and planted. They worked hard, six days a week from dawn to nightfall, and Avery became aware of how badly his father had aged. Mr. Broussard was losing weight and his face became more drawn. He would not listen to either Avery or Batiste when they asked him to take things easier. He worked in his long-sleeve undershirt without a hat, and his face and neck became coarsened by the sun, and in the evening he went to bed right after dinner, sometimes with his clothes on. Once he stayed outside and continued working during a rainstorm. He caught a bad cold which almost developed into pneumonia. Three weeks later he was back in the fields. He did more work than Avery thought him capable of. Sometimes he spoke of the good year they were going to have, and how he would repay the bank and possibly improve the farm. Then during the next years they could repair the house (he never once considered living in another house), buy new farm machinery, and rent pasture land for the stock. The summer was hot and the rains were like steam, and the cane grew tall and purple and gold.

In September they began cutting the cane. They were working in the fields behind the house when it happened. Mr. Broussard stepped up on the running board of the truck to get into the cab, then suddenly his face whitened as he tried to hold on to the doorjamb, and fell backwards into the stubble and the broken stalks of sugarcane. He held his hands to his heart and gasped for breath while Avery tried to loosen his collar. Batiste and Avery put him in the cab, and the Negro folded his coat into a pillow. On the way to the house Mr. Broussard’s eyes remained glazed and staring.

That afternoon the doctor and the priest came. Avery stood on the veranda while they were inside. He looked off into the distance at the oil wells. The gas flares were red against the rain-clouded sky. Across the meadow a wrecking crew was tearing down the remains of the old Segura home. The roof was gone and the board planking was being stripped away with crowbars to be stacked in a large pile for burning. Two men were attaching chains to the brick chimney to pull it down with a bulldozer. A new highway was coming through, and a filling station was to be built on the site of the Segura house.

The doctor came out and walked past Avery to his car. Avery went inside and met the priest in the hallway. “Your father died in a state of grace,” the priest said. “He is in heaven now.” Avery went into his father’s bedroom without answering. The room was dark and smelled of dust. His father lay in the big mahogany tester bed with the ruffled and pleated canopy on top. Avery looked at the outline of his body under the sheet. He walked to the bed and pulled back the sheet. Mr. Broussard’s face was gray, and the flesh sagged back from the skull. The skin was tight around the eye sockets. He seemed much smaller in death than in life. Avery turned his head away and pulled the sheet over his father. He sat down in the chair and cried.

It rained the day of the funeral. It rained all that week. The freshly dug earth was piled beside the open grave among the oak trees. Water collected in pools and washed over the side of the grave. Batiste stood bareheaded in his only black suit with the rain streaming down his face. Avery watched the men lower the cloth and pine board casket with the pulleys. The priest read aloud from the book opened in his hands. Both of the gravediggers kept their hats on. The men from the funeral home coughed and sneezed and wanted to get out of the rain. A few people stood on the other side of the grave under umbrellas. Most of them were Negroes who had worked on the Broussard land in the past. The dye in the cloth on the outside of the casket ran in the rainwater.

J.P. Winfield

He was twenty-seven years old and he had a seventh-grade education, and he had never been more than sixty miles from his home. J.P. sat in the corridor outside the audition room and smoked cigarettes. The fans were off and he was sweating through his clothes. The Sears, Roebuck suit he wore was light brown, almost the color of canvas, and the sleeves and trousers were thread-worn and too short for him. Some people went by and he put his shoes under the chair so they wouldn’t be noticed. They were unshined and the stitches were broken at the seams. His polka dot clip-on bow tie was at an angle to his shirt collar. He took his guitar out of its case and tuned it again to pass the time. It was the only thing he owned of value. He had paid forty dollars for it in a pawnshop. It had twelve strings, and he kept the dark wood shined with wax. His fingertips were callused from practice.

He looked at the secretary behind the desk. She had on high heels and hose and a white blouse. She held her back very straight and her breasts stood out against the blouse. He thought how he would like to sleep with her. She went inside the audition room and came back out again.

“Mr. Hunnicut will see you now,” she said.

J.P. put out his hand-rolled cigarette under his shoe and placed the guitar back in its case. From the corner of his eye he watched the secretary sit down in her chair. Her skirt creased across the top of her thighs. He went into the audition room and saw a fat sweating man dressed in a white linen suit and candy-striped necktie sitting in a folding chair with a pitcher of ice water by his side. There were some other men standing around whom J.P. didn’t look at. The man in the linen suit filled his glass from the pitcher and swallowed two salt tablets.

“What do you do?” the man said.

“Play twelve-string guitar and sing,” J.P. answered. “I seen your ad in the paper about the talent show.”

“You know there’s an entrance fee of five dollars.”

“I give it to the secretary.”

“All right, go ahead. Sing.”

J.P. felt nervous. The other men were watching him. He thought they were smiling. He put the leather strap around his neck and began. He hit the wrong chords and his voice cracked. One of the men laughed.

“Shut up, Troy,” said Hunnicut, the sweating man in the white linen suit.

“I reckon I’m nervous,” J.P. said.

“Try it again,” Hunnicut said, bored.

Hunnicut leaned his weight back in the wood chair and looked at him. He spit on the floor and took a drink of water.

J.P. finished and put his guitar back in its case.

“Do you write your own music?” Hunnicut said.

“That’s one of Leadbelly’s songs. I heard him once when he first got out of the pen.”

“Who’s Leadbelly?”

“He was in Angola. He’s the man that made a twelve-string guitar.”

“Here’s a card. It will get you in the door tonight,” Hunnicut said.

“Do I get my five dollars back?”

“No, you don’t get it back. Do you want to use one of the electric guitars tonight?”

“I don’t play on no electric guitar,” J.P. said. “It ruins the tone.”

“You got another suit besides that one?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. It looks fine.”

“Let him wear a pair of overalls,” one of the other men said.

“Don’t mind Troy,” Hunnicut said. “He’s got a mouth disease. It don’t know when to stay shut.”

Troy was a member of Hunnicut’s show. He was from back-of-town Memphis, and he had black marcelled hair, sideburns, a high oil-slick forehead, and gold plating around the edges of his teeth. His lean jaws worked slowly as he chewed a piece of gum. The man with him was named Seth. He was tall and he had coarse brown hair like straw, and his face was scarred from smallpox. The skin was deeply pockmarked and reddened, and there was a scent of whiskey on his breath.

“I got something for you to sign,” Hunnicut said. “This is just a talent show and you don’t get paid. If you win you appear on the Louisiana Jubilee, and then we’ll talk about a salary. Seth and Troy will be on the show tonight, but they’re not in the contest.”

He gave J.P. a release to sign. J.P. put his signature at the bottom in pencil in large awkward letters.

“What’s your full name?” Hunnicut said.

“That’s it.”

“Your initials stand for something, don’t they?”

“J.P. is my name, mister. I ain’t got no other.”

“Where are you from?” Troy, the man with the black marcelled hair, said.

“Up north of here by the Arkansas line.”

“All right, boy. You’re all set to go. We’ll see you this evening,” Hunnicut said.

J.P. picked up his guitar case and left the audition room.

“You figure he come to town on a mule?” Troy said.

“He’s going to do all right,” Hunnicut said.

“You ain’t going to let him win?”

“He’s the man.”

“He’s a hillbilly.”

“You want to know something? I’ll tell you why you’ll never be anything but a dime and nickel picker in somebody’s troupe. Because you got no idea of what it takes to get on top of the pile. You either got to know how to act like a hick and make the real hicks think you’re as stupid as they are, or if you’re a real hick you got to have somebody with brains enough behind you to make the other hicks think like you want them to. The way to make money from hicks is to sell them a hick. And that boy is just what they want.”

“He’s still got fertilizer on his shoes,” Troy said.

J.P. crossed the street and walked towards the hotel. He had rented a room without a bath in the older part of the business district. The hotel was an ugly three-story building with rusted fire escapes and one wall had been blackened by a fire. He took his key from the desk clerk and went upstairs.

The room had a musty odor to it. He turned on the ceiling fan and opened the window. He leaned on the sill and looked down into the street. He saw the cotton exchange and the sample bales wrapped in brown paper and partially torn open and stacked by the side entrance; there were drygoods stores, a Negro peddler selling fruit from a wagon, groups of men in overalls and seersucker suits who talked and chewed tobacco and spit over the curbing, women in cotton-print dresses looking through the store windows at the cheap machine-made merchandise, and the late afternoon sun beat down on the asphalt and filled the air with a hot, humid odor. A man who had his legs amputated at the knees sat propped against one of the buildings with a hat in his hand. There were several pencils in the hat. People passed him by without notice, some looked at him in curiosity, one woman dropped a coin into his hat. He sat on a board platform with small metal wheels underneath. He rolled himself along the sidewalk by pushing with his hands against the pavement. J.P. watched him disappear around the corner. He turned away from the window and lay down on the bed.

He took out his guitar and drew his thumb slowly across the strings. Sometimes he used a beer cap for a pick as the cotton field workers did who used to play guitar in the juke joints on the edge of town. He had first liked music as a small boy when he used to sit on the levee in the late evening down by the nigger graveyard and listen to the funeral marches and see the sweating faces in the glow of pine fagots and hear the music that seemed to tell the sorrow of an entire race.

He wanted to write a song. It would contain all the things he felt inside him. It would have the sadness he saw in the country around him, the feeling of the niggers singing in the fields, it would be like the songs they sang on the work gangs and in the Salvation Army camps, or like sitting on the back porch alone, watching the rain fall on the young cotton.

He went down the hall to bathe and dress. At six o’clock he left the hotel and walked to the city auditorium where the contest was being held. The stores had closed and there were few people on the street. He passed the movie house and saw the man with the amputated legs on his wood platform off to one side of the entrance holding his hat and pencils in his hand. The beggar smelled of wine and dried sweat. The buttons of his shirt were gone and his bony chest showed. The theater manager asked him to move farther down the street; he was in the way of the people who wanted to go to the show.

J.P. went to the back door of the auditorium and gave the doorman his card. It was crowded back stage. He saw Hunnicut and Troy talking in the wings.

“Evening,” he said.

“Hi boy, how’s it going?” Hunnicut said, then shouted at one of the prop men, “You got the lights out of place — over there, no, I said over there.” He turned back to J.P. and Troy. “I got to do everybody’s job for them. Go show him where to put the lights, Troy. I should fire the whole goddamn crew of them.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” J.P. said.

“Let’s get you another suit of clothes first.”

“My suit don’t have nothing to do with playing guitar.”

“Hey, Seth, get over here.”

Seth was talking with a short, well-formed brunette.

“Take him into Troy’s dressing room and find him some clothes,” Hunnicut said.

“You sure Troy don’t mind?”

“To hell with Troy. Get Winfield a suit that don’t look like a piece of canvas.”

They walked behind the sets to the dressing room. Seth took a gray sports suit from the closet and laid it over the chair. The pockmarks in his face showed more deeply in the artificial light of the room. He took a pint bottle out of his coat pocket and unscrewed the cap. He drank out of the bottle while J.P. dressed.

“You want a shot?” he said.

“Thanks. You reckon I got a chance tonight?”

“You’ll be all right.”

“I spent my last few dollars to come to town.”

“Virdo will give you a job. You’re real good on a twelve-string.”

“Who’s Virdo?” J.P. said.

“It’s Hunnicut’s first name, but he don’t like nobody to call him by it.”

“Is that girl you were with in the show?”

“Yeah. She sings some. Mostly she’s out there to give the farmers something to look at. I never could get no place with her. She gives it to Troy pretty steady. He can have it, though. She’s on the powder. Mainline stuff.”

“You know some girls around town?”

“Just whores.”

“I’m busted.”

“Get Hunnicut to give you an advance after the show and I’ll take you to a place.”

“I ain’t got the job yet.”

“You ain’t seen the other people that’s going to be out there. There’s one fellow that beats on a washboard while he plays the harmonica. You ain’t got to worry about the job.”

They left the dressing room and went back to stand in the wings. Troy was onstage with the band, waiting for the curtain to open. Seth smoked a cigarette, then went onstage and picked up his banjo and adjusted the microphone. He smiled out at the crowd as the curtain opened.

“A great big howdy, friends and neighbors,” he said. “This is Seth Milton. Tonight we’re going to have some of your favorite artists from the field of country and western music, along with some of the best in local talent. The contest is going to start directly, but first me and the boys is going to pick and sing some of your favorite tunes. This show is being put on by Mr. V. L. Hunnicut of the Louisiana Jubilee, who has encouraged so much young talent and brought some of the major stars of country music into the national spotlight. Also I want to tell you about the big one hundred page color picture book that we have on sale at the entrance. It contains one hundred actual color photographs of your favorite country singers, ready to cut out and put on the wall at home. This big color picture book is selling for the low figure of two dollars and fifty cents, and if you ain’t got the money on you, you can put in your order and it will be sent to you collect. The pages is in bright glossy color, and when you’re listening over the radio to your favorite country entertainer you can look up his picture in the bigprint table of contents and it’s just like he’s in the room with you.

“Now, I want you to meet somebody that many of you already know. He’s one of the best guitar pickers in the field, and he’s just put out two new records. Come on up here, brother Troy.”

J.P. stood in the wings and listened to Troy sing and the applause afterwards. Then the brunette came on and sang “I Want to Be in My Savior’s Arms,” and he looked at her short-cut hair and Irish peasant face and her abnormally large breasts. She had a slender waist, flat stomach, and wide hips. He thought about laying her, and then he thought about going to a whorehouse later in the evening with Seth. He hoped he could get the job and the advance on his salary. It had taken all his money to come to town and enter the show, and it had been three weeks since he had slept with a woman; if he lost the contest he would have to hitchhike back home, and it would be another month before he could afford Miss Sara’s house out in the country.

The band left the stage, and the contest started. The man with the harmonica and washboard went on first. He held the harmonica in his mouth with his lips and played while he beat out the rhythm on the metal ripples in the washboard with his knuckles.

Three others went on, and it was J.P.’s turn. He walked out on the stage from the wings with his guitar. The lights were hot in his face. The audience was a dark, indistinct mass behind the lights. He sang “Good-Night, Irene,” which had been Leadbelly’s theme song.

The crowd liked him and they applauded until he sang it again. They were still applauding when he left the stage.

J.P. propped the guitar against one of the sets and wiped the perspiration off his forehead on his coat sleeve.

“You got on my suit,” Troy said.

“You can have it back. It don’t fit me, nohow.”

“I told him to take the suit,” Hunnicut said.

“I had it cleaned yesterday. He got sweat on the sleeve.”

“Take the goddamn thing back, mister. I didn’t want it in the first place.”

“Take it easy, Winfield. You did fine tonight.”

“Do I get a job with you?”

“You haven’t won the contest yet.”

“Seth said I already had the job.”

“All right, you’re working for me.”

J.P. took a crumpled one-dollar bill out of his pocket and gave it to Troy.

“This will pay for the goddamn cleaning,” he said.

“Where are you going?” Hunnicut said.

“To get my clothes.”

He went to Troy’s dressing room and changed into his Sears, Roebuck suit. After all the contestants had gone on, Hunnicut announced that the winner was J.P. Winfield, who would soon be appearing on the Louisiana Jubilee with the rest of the band. J.P. combed his hair in the mirror and clipped the comb inside his shirt pocket. He left Troy’s sports suit unfolded on top of the chair. He rolled a cigarette and walked back to the wings where Hunnicut, Troy,

Seth, and the brunette were talking. The auditorium had cleared.

“You ain’t met April yet,” Seth said.

J.P. looked at her.

“This is April Brien,” Seth said.

“Glad to meet you,” she said. Her eyes moved up and down him. Her peasant Irish face had a dull expression to it.

“Evening,” he said.

“April does all the spirituals in the show,” Seth said. He put his hand on the small of her back and let his fingers touch her rump.

“Cut it out,” she said.

He gave her a pat.

“Lay off it,” Troy said.

Seth winked at J.P.

“Come in the office,” Hunnicut said. “I got a contract for you to sign.”

They went into Hunnicut’s office, which he had rented with the auditorium. His white linen suit was soiled and dampened. The candy-striped necktie was pulled loose from his collar, and the great weight of his stomach hung over his trousers.

“I start you on a straight salary at three hundred and fifty a month,” he said, “plus any commissions we make off records and special appearances. This contract says that I’m your manager and agent, and I take twelve percent of your earnings. We’ll see how you do, and later on maybe we can work out a pay increase.”

“You take a commission off the same salary you give me?”

“That’s right. But I’m the man that schedules all your appearances, and if you’ve got the right stuff I can push you right up to the top. I put a lot of people on the Nashville Barn Dance.”

“How about an advance? That was my last dollar I give to that fellow for his suit.”

Hunnicut took a black square billfold out of the inside pocket of his coat. He flipped it open flat on the desk and counted out several bills.

“Here’s fifty dollars. Will that do?”

“That’ll do just fine.”

That night he and Seth went to a juke joint and got drunk and picked up two prostitutes. They spent the night in an apartment next door to the bar, and J.P. awoke in the morning with a hangover and looked at the woman beside him in the light and wished he had stayed sober the night before. He put on his clothes and counted the money in his wallet. He couldn’t find his clip-on bow tie, then he saw the prostitute sleeping on it, and he pulled it out from under her leg and left the room and caught a taxi to his hotel.

He bought a new suit and a new pair of shoes and gave his old clothes to the porter. He checked out of the hotel and walked down the street, holding the guitar case by its leather handle. He thought about the long bus ride ahead with the band through the sun-baked, red clay country of north Louisiana. He thought about the money he would make singing, three times the amount he made as a sharecropper back home. And Hunnicut had said that he might go up to the Nashville Barn Dance. The sun was very hot, and he had to squint his eyes in the white glare off the pavement. It would be a long trip in the summer heat.

Toussaint Boudreaux

A South American freighter had come into port the day before to unload a shipment of coffee and to pick up another load of machine parts. Down in the hold a gang of stevedores waited for the gantry to lower the cargo net through the hatch. The temperature was over a hundred degrees in the hold. The iron plates on the bulkhead would scald your hands if you touched them. Toussaint looked up through the hatch at the bright square of sky. The Negro watched the gantry boom swing around from the dock and drop the cargo net into the hold, loaded with crates of machinery. The gang loosened the net and pulled the crates free with their hooks and dragged them across the floor. Toussaint and another man whipped their cargo hooks into the wood and slid a crate into position against the bulkhead. It was almost quitting time. He watched the empty net go back up through the hatch. The work whistle blew and the men picked up their lunch kits and walked up the metal steps to the deck and down the gangplank to the dock.

Toussaint was fighting a four-round heavyweight bout at the arena that evening against an Italian from Chicago. He had wanted to get off work early, since his manager had promised him a main bout with a contender if he won tonight; but his gang boss wouldn’t let him off, and he had only a short time to rest before the fight. He ate a light supper and went to the pool hall to pass the time. He found a table in back and shot a game of nine ball. He liked the smooth felt green of the tables and the click of the balls. There was a horse board along one wall and a ticker tape machine that gave the race results. A couple of hustlers tried to get him into a game. He ignored them, chalked his cue, sank the nine ball, and had the boy rack the balls for another game. The hustlers played the slot machine and waited for someone else to come in. Toussaint looked at their clothes: the high-yellow pointed shoes, the knife-cut trousers, open-collar shirts without a coat, and short-brimmed hats with a wide hatband and a feather. He threw a dime on the table for the game and left.

He caught a bus to the arena. The preliminaries began at eight and he had the third bout. He carried his canvas athletic bag into the locker room and changed into his trunks and robe. The job he had on the docks was the best job he could find in New Orleans when he came to the city from his home in Barataria five years ago. But it was tough in the union and on the docks, and each man did his work and looked out for himself. It was very different from what Toussaint had known in Barataria. Most of the men on the gang, save a few, had accepted him by now; but when he first went to work he was treated with either indifference or resentment, and two men complained to the union about working in the same hold with a Negro.

He did some calisthenics to loosen up and sat on the rubbing table. There was no fat on his body, and the elastic band on his scarlet trunks was flat and tight across his stomach. He had fought once a month in the preliminaries for the last year. He had lost one bout, and it was after a split decision and the referee had decided against him because of a foul. Some of the people around the arena thought he could move up to the big circuits if he was handled properly, except he was thirty years old and his best years were behind him. He could punch hard, move around fast, and stand up under a beating. He had gotten his start when a fight manager had seen him in a fistfight down on the docks. Toussaint had fought another stevedore who had said that he didn’t like working with a Negro. The manager called him aside after the fight and told him he could earn fifty dollars for coming down to the arena and putting on the gloves. Since then Toussaint had become a promising club fighter with a good classic style.

Archie, his trainer, came into the locker room. He was an ex-navy man who ran a men’s health club downtown and picked up extra money as a part-time trainer. He wore white duck trousers, a T-shirt, and white low-topped tennis shoes. He had a thick chest and shoulders and biceps, and his face was tanned and part of his brown hair had been bleached out by the sun.

“You’re early tonight,” he said.

“I’m stiff. I need a rubdown.”

“I saw the dago in the hall. He says he’s going to crack you open.”

“What do you think?”

“I’ve never seen him fight before.”

“They say he’s good,” Toussaint said.

“He’s a ham and egg boy.”

“I want to get him fast. I don’t want no decision tonight.”

“He’s going to have the reach on you. You’ll have to get under him.”

“Where’s Ruth?” Ruth was Toussaint’s manager.

“Down at ringside with the money boys. They’ll be watching you.”

“What are the gamblers giving?”

“Two to one on you.”

“I wish I seen this boy fight before,” Toussaint said.

“How do you feel?”

“Tight.”

“Lay down. I’ll work on your back.”

Archie massaged his shoulders and taped his hands. Some of the other preliminary fighters came into the locker room and began dressing. The buzzer sounded for the first bout. One of the fighters left with his trainer. Fifteen minutes later they were back. The fighter was bleeding from the nose and mouth. He slammed the door and threw his robe into a locker. His chest and stomach were covered with red welts. He lay back on the rubbing table.

“I tell you he had oil on his gloves. I couldn’t see what I was doing,” he said.

His trainer pinched the bridge of his nose to coagulate the blood.

“Every time I got in close he slapped me across the eyes. It ain’t right.”

“You were lucky to last three rounds. He had it all over you,” his trainer said.

“I could have chewed him up and spit him out if he fought fair,” he said, still bleeding from the nose.

“Did Ruth say anything about talking with the promoters?” Toussaint said.

“They’ll give you a ten-round bout next month if you knock over the dago,” Archie said.

“I got to get out of the prelims before long. I ain’t got many years left fighting.”

“How does your back feel now?”

“I’m okay.” He rolled his arms and shoulders.

“You don’t pick up any fat on the docks.”

“Loading machinery don’t do nothing for me before a fight neither.”

“The second bout is almost over. Move around a little bit.”

Toussaint stood up and threw some shadow punches. Archie laced his gloves and snipped the plastic tips off with a pair of scissors. He put a mouthpiece, a water bottle, and some towels into a canvas bag.

“There’s the buzzer. Let’s go,” he said. He picked up the canvas bag and the first-aid kit, and they went out into the corridor and up the concrete ramp that led to the arena.

The arena was overcrowded and the air was heavy with a drifting haze of cigarette smoke. The house lamps dimmed for the third bout as they walked down the aisle. The lights above the ring were bright through the smoke. There was a steady noise of talking and scraping of chairs. Some of the people shouted to Toussaint as he passed them. He looked at his opponent, who was already in the ring. The Italian had a scarred face and was a few pounds heavier than Toussaint. He was rubbing his feet in the rosin and pressing one glove into the palm of the other. Toussaint climbed into the ring and did some footwork while the announcer tried to get the crowd’s attention.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said. He was dressed in a tuxedo. “Tonight we have two good boys with us for the third bout. Wearing scarlet trunks at a hundred and ninety-five pounds is Toussaint Boudreaux, a local boy with eleven wins and one loss. His opponent in the opposite corner, wearing black trunks, at two hundred pounds is Anthony Pepponi from Chicago, Illinois, with seventeen wins and two losses—”

Toussaint and Archie went to the center of the ring to get the referee’s instructions. They came back to the corner and Archie climbed down through the ropes. Toussaint handed him his scarlet robe.

He moved out fast with the bell and started punching. Pepponi had the reach on him, but Toussaint stayed in close and kept his head low to catch most of the heavy blows on his forearms and to work in for a body attack. Pepponi opened his guard when he hooked, and Toussaint unloaded on him. His head jerked back and the Negro hit him twice in the rib cage with his left and slammed another right on his jaw before he could recover. Pepponi backpedaled, fighting defensively, then caught Toussaint on the chin with a long one. Toussaint moved in and worked on his midsection. He crouched low to keep under Pepponi’s arms. Pepponi fought his way out of the corner, jabbing with his left to keep Toussaint away, and sent a right to his brow. Toussaint took a punch on the forehead for every two punches to Pepponi’s body. The Italian was breathing hard. They tied up in the center of the ring and worked on each other’s kidneys until the referee separated them. The crowd applauded at the bell.

Archie climbed up on the apron with the wood stool. Toussaint had a thin split over his eye. Archie took out his mouthpiece and Toussaint rinsed his mouth from the water bottle and spit into the funnel.

“Stay in close and wait till he opens up,” Archie said, rubbing the Negro’s chest with a towel. “You hurt him with that first right. Keep working on his body. He’s winded, and he’ll have to try to put you away. If it keeps up like this you’ll have him on a decision.”

“He knows how to hit,” Toussaint said. He could feel the flesh draw tight around his eye.

“Ten seconds,” Archie said. “Remember, don’t try to cool him till he comes after you.”

Toussaint kept his guard high to protect the cut over his eye. Pepponi concentrated his punches on the Negro’s forehead. The leather slapped as Toussaint brushed away the jabs, and then there was a raw crack when Pepponi connected with that long right. The blood came down in Toussaint’s eye, hot and sticky. He straightened up and gave Pepponi a target, and then ducked a right and caught him in the solar plexus. The Italian wheezed and pulled his elbows in to cover his stomach. Toussaint tried to move in on him, but Pepponi clinched him. The Negro took two more punches on the eye. Pepponi was throwing everything he had to keep Toussaint away. Toussaint worked on his body to open him up. Pepponi fought more carefully. He knew that Toussaint was waiting to unload on him, and he was going to try to take the fight on a technical knockout.

Toussaint was badly hurt in the third round. Pepponi butted him in a clinch and lengthened the split over his eye. He could no longer see out of his left eye, and Pepponi’s right hand was outside his vision. His nose was swollen and the inside of his mouth was cut. He knew that he had lost the round.

In the corner, Archie wiped his face with a wet towel and worked on the left eye with a cotton swab. The taste of blood in Toussaint’s mouth made him faintly nauseated. He drank from the water bottle and spit it out. The fourth round was the last one. He would have to get Pepponi then, or it would probably be a split decision. Toussaint had the first two rounds on points, but Pepponi had the third and he would probably get the fourth.

Toussaint was unsteady on his feet as he came out of his corner. Pepponi hit him on the bridge of the nose. Toussaint feinted with his left and drove a right hook into his side, just below the heart. Pepponi dropped his glove and Toussaint hit him hard across the side of the head. It knocked Pepponi against the ropes. Toussaint pinned him in the corner and went to work on him. He hooked a right into the Italian’s jaw, and then he felt a bone snap in the back of his hand. The pain rushed up his arm through his body, and made his eyes water. It had cracked like a dry stick. Pepponi got out of the corner and came towards him punching. Toussaint held his right glove in front of his face and tried to keep him away with his left. Toussaint feinted with his good hand to make him drop his guard, and shifted all his weight onto his left foot and drove an uppercut straight into the Italian’s throat. The pain almost made Toussaint pass out. Pepponi spit out his mouthpiece and stiffened as he bounced off the turnbuckle and sank to the floor with his head and arms hanging through the ropes.

He couldn’t get up before the final count. The referee came over and raised Toussaint’s arm to the crowd. Archie climbed up on the apron with the robe, and sponged his face and chest. The Negro’s eye was completely closed. Archie draped the robe on Toussaint’s shoulders, and they left the ring and made their way down the aisle to the locker rooms.

Toussaint lay down on the rubbing table while Archie tried to remove his glove.

“Your hand is swollen up like a rock,” he said. He cut away the glove with a razor blade. The leather peeled back from the edge of the razor. “That punch may’ve ruined your hand for good.”

Toussaint put his left arm across his face.

“The ring doctor will be here in a minute. Is it hurting bad?” Archie said.

“It’s numb now.”

“I don’t see how you did it.”

“I didn’t think about it. I saw him coming and it was over.”

“You got a rough shake. Maybe I didn’t have your hand taped tight enough.”

“The tape was all right. When I hit him he pulled his head in and I caught him with the back of my fist.”

Toussaint’s manager came into the locker room. He wore his hair in a crew cut and dressed in a dark business suit and silk tie with a jeweled tie clasp, and there was a Mason’s ring on his finger. His face was ruddy and there was hair on the back of his hands.

“What happened?” he said.

“He busted his hand.”

“Let’s see it.”

Toussaint held it up.

“Where’s the ring doctor?” Ruth said.

“He’s coming,” Archie said.

“We’ll get an X ray at the hospital and see how bad it is,” Ruth said.

“It’s a compound fracture,” Archie said. “He’s bleeding under the skin.”

“I’m sorry, Toussaint. I had it arranged with the promoters for you next month.”

“He’ll get another chance. The money boys are watching him.”

“They thought you’d make a good drawing card to fight an out-of-town boy.”

“How’s Pepponi?” Toussaint said.

“He was all right after he got up. You just took the wind out of him,” Ruth answered.

Archie cleaned the blood out of Toussaint’s eye with a piece of cotton.

“Here’s what I owe you for the fight,” Ruth said.

“There’s a little bit extra to hold you over. Tell the doctor to send his bill to me.”

“I ain’t asking for no handout, Mr. Ruth.”

“I know you’re not. I always give a boy something extra when he gets hurt and has to lay off a while.”

Ruth tucked the money in Toussaint’s robe pocket.

“When your hand is all right come down to the arena and we’ll see what we can do,” he said.

Ruth left the room. The ring doctor came in and put Toussaint’s hand in a temporary sling. He cleaned the cut over his eye and closed it with twelve stitches. Toussaint dressed without showering, and he and Archie drove to the hospital for an X ray. The intern said that he had broken several bones in the back of his hand and it would take a long time to mend. The intern set the hand in an aluminum brace that was shaped to the curve of the palm and fingers and didn’t allow any movement of the fractured bones. Archie drove Toussaint to his flat.

“Ruth meant it about you coming back to the arena when your hand is well,” he said.

“The doctor told me I got to wait six months before I fight again.”

“What about your job on the docks?”

“They ain’t hiring one-arm men to handle freight.”

Toussaint lived in a tenement building a few blocks from the warehouse district. He went up the narrow stairway through the darkened corridor to his room. The room was poorly furnished, and dingy like the rest of the building, with a tattered yellow shade on the window, a single bed with a brass bedstead, a wall mirror and a scarred chest of drawers by an old sofa that was faded colorless; the wallpaper was streaked brown by the water that seeped through the cracks every time it rained. He turned on the single bulb light that hung by a cord from the ceiling. He took off his sling to undress, and rinsed his face in the washbasin. He looked in the mirror at the row of black stiches across his eye; one side of his face was swollen into a hard knot. He showered, turned out the light, and went to bed.

Outside in the alley he heard drunken voices and the rattling of garbage cans. He looked up through the darkness and thought of his home in Barataria, south of New Orleans. He wondered if he would ever go back. A woman yelled for the drunks to be quiet. Toussaint rolled over in his bed and closed his eyes. He thought of himself on the deck of a trawler with the nets piled on the stern and the steady roll of the Gulf beneath his feet, the horizon before him where the dying sun went down in the water in a last blaze of red, the smell of the salt and the seaweed and the sound of the anchor chain sliding off the bow. He turned in his bed and couldn’t sleep. He remembered the tavern where they used to go after coming into port. It was a good place with a long polished bar and small round tables covered with checkerboard cloths. They served boiled crabs and crawfish, and you could get a plate of barbecue and a pitcher of draught beer for a dollar. It was always filled with fishermen, and Toussaint would stand at the bar and talk and drink neat whiskey from the shot glasses with water as a chaser.

The next morning he looked for a job. He tried the state employment agency first. The only jobs to be had were those of bellboy, bus hop, and janitor. He went to warehouses, trucking firms, auto garages, and was told that there was either no job to be had, or to come back when his hand had healed. The third day he went to a clothing store on Canal that had advertised for help in the stockroom. Toussaint applied and got the job. When he reported for work he was shown where the brooms, mops, dustpans, and cleaning rags were kept, and was told to mop the floor of the men’s and women’s restrooms. He left the store and looked for another job. A week passed and he found nothing. The landlord of his building asked for the rent, which took Toussaint’s last twenty dollars. He rode the streetcars and buses and walked over most of the city to find work. He went to a private employment agency. They said he might try cutting lawns; there wasn’t much else for a man in his condition.

Two weeks later he was sitting in the pool hall, reading the want ads in the newspaper. All the tables were being used. A man with a cigarette between his teeth sat down on the bench beside him. It was one of the hustlers who had tried to get him into a game the afternoon of his last fight.

“Out of work?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“See anything in the paper?” Toussaint looked towards the pool tables.

“I see you got a bad hand. Work must be hard to get.”

Toussaint folded his paper and put it on the bench.

“If you’re looking for a job maybe I can fix it up,” the hustler said.

“You run an employment agency?”

“I got a friend that needs a guy to drive a truck.”

“You drive it for him.”

“I make my bread in other ways.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“That’s him by the horse board.”

“I don’t know him,” Toussaint said.

“He don’t know you either.”

“Say what you got on your mind or go back to your friend.”

“He needs a driver and he figured you might want the job.”

“That ain’t telling me nothing. What’s he want to hire me for?”

“This is a special kind of trucking service. He don’t take on union drivers.”

“What’s he hauling?”

“That’s what the union asks,” the hustler said.

“And his drivers don’t ask nothing.”

“You got it.”

“I want to ask him some questions.”

“He ain’t used to it.”

“Get off it, boy. He wouldn’t have sent you over here to hire a one-arm man unless he needed a driver pretty bad.”

“You’re cool, daddy.”

They went over to the man by the horse board. He was a well-dressed, light tan Negro with thick, rimless glasses. He looked like a Negro preacher, except for the glass ring on his little finger.

“This guy might want to be a truck driver,” the hustler said.

“Did Erwin explain it to you?”

“What are you hauling?” Toussaint said.

“You make an out-of-state delivery. I take care of the rest.”

“What’s the pay?”

“A hundred dollars.”

“I want two hundred if I’m carrying a blind load.”

“I don’t pay a driver more than a hundred.”

“Get somebody else, then.”

“A hundred now, and a hundred when you get there.”

“Where am I going?”

“You’ll learn that tonight. Erwin will give you the address of the warehouse.”

“Is this a one-man job?”

“Another truck will go with you.”

“What is it? Whiskey?”

“Give him the address, Erwin.”

The hustler tore open an empty cigarette pack and flattened it against the wall and wrote something on it in pencil. He gave it to Toussaint.

“Here’s your bread ticket, daddy,” he said.

“Bonham Shipping Company,” Toussaint read. “Are you Bonham?”

“Yes. I am. Pick up the truck at nine.”

“You ain’t give me the money yet.”

“He’s real sharp, ain’t he, Mr. Bonham?” the hustler said.

Avery Broussard

It was night and the moon was high, and Avery sat on a log in the clearing while Tereau took the coffeepot off the fire. Tereau was three parts Negro, one part Chitimacha Indian, and he made the best moonshine in southern Louisiana. No one knew how old he was, not even Tereau, but a Negro must live very long before his hair turns white. He had fought sheriffs and federal tax agents to keep his still, and some people said that he carried a double-edged knife made from a file in his boot.

Tereau poured coffee in their cups and added a shot of whiskey from the pint bottle he carried in his coat pocket. They were waiting for the bootleggers who were to slip through the marsh in an outboard and meet them. The mules and the wagon were off to the side of the clearing by the trees, with the heavy kegs of whiskey loaded on the bed. Avery took another shot in his cup.

Tonight ain’t a good time to be drinking too much corn,” Tereau said.

“What happened to the bootleggers?”

They’ll be along. There’s a lot of moonlight. They got to be careful.”

“Do the state police ever catch any of them?”

“Sometimes, but they usually get rid of the whiskey before they’re caught. It don’t take long to dump them barrels overboard.”

Tereau rolled a cigarette and handed the package of rough-cut string tobacco to Avery.

“Them bootleggers don’t take much chance,” Tereau said. “They’re always moving and they got nobody except the state police to look out for. I got to worry about federal tax agents. They never give up looking for my still. Every month there’s a couple of them wandering around in the marsh trying to find it.”

Avery laughed.

“They almost got me once,” Tereau said. “When I leave the still I run a ball of string around it in a big circle, about a inch off the ground. One day I come back and the string was slack on the ground. I snuck around to the other side and seen one of them tax people hid behind my boiler. I went and got my brother and two cousins and we brung the wagon up close to the still, then I sent my brother down to the tax fellow’s car. It was parked about a mile away on a side road. My brother stuck a match in the horn button to keep the horn blowing, and the tax fellow took off to see what the matter was, and while he was stumbling through the briars we took the still to pieces and loaded it on the wagon and moved the whole outfit to the other side of the marsh.”

“You crazy old man,” Avery said.

“I don’t see no old men around here.” Tereau puffed on the cigarette and flicked it into the fire.

“Why’d you want to come with me, Avery? You ain’t never been one to break the law,” he said.

“Since they took the farm I got nothing else to do. Breaking the law seems like a good enough way to pass the time.”

“If you don’t end up busting rocks on a work gang.”

“They never caught you.”

“That’s because I been at it a long time. My grand-daddy taught me all the tricks when I was a little boy. When he was a young man he sold moon to both the Confederate and Federal army, except he might have added some lye or fertilizer when he sold it to the Yankees. I hope you ain’t planning on making this your life’s work.”

“You’d put me out of business.”

There was a rustle in the bushes, and two men came into the clearing. They were bootleggers who picked up Tereau’s whiskey to run it through the marsh downriver to Morgan City, and eventually to New Orleans and the dry counties in Mississippi. The whiskey was sold for four dollars a gallon at the still and twelve dollars a gallon at the retailers. It was clear and tasted like Scotch, and sometimes coloring was added and the whiskey was sold with a bonded Kentucky label, although its maker had never been out of Louisiana. The bootleggers were sunburned, rawboned men; their hands and faces were smeared with mud and handkerchiefs were tied around their necks to protect them from the mosquitoes; they were dressed in heavy work trousers and denim shirts with battered sweat-soaked straw hats. They were from the Atchafalaya basin, where there is nothing but lowlands, swamps, mud-choked bayous, scrubby timber so thick it is almost impassable in places, and swarming clouds of mosquitoes that can put a man to bed with a fever.

The bootleggers came into the light of the fire. Their names were LeBlanc and Gerard. LeBlanc was the taller of the two, with an old army.45-caliber revolver stuck down in his belt. He was dark and slender, and his eyes were bright in the light. Gerard was thick-necked, unshaved, with heavy shoulders that were slightly stooped; he had long muscular arms and a crablike walk. He cut a slice off his tobacco plug and dropped it into his mouth.

“You all are late tonight,” Tereau said.

“We had to take the long way,” LeBlanc said. “State police is on the river.”

“We’re going to have to change our pickup night. They got it figured when we move our stuff,” Gerard said.

LeBlanc looked at Avery.

“Who’s the boy?” he said.

“He’s all right,” Tereau said.

“What’s your name?”

“Avery Broussard.”

“I reckon Tereau told you it ain’t good to talk about what you see in the marsh at night,” he said.

“He told me.”

“Tereau says he’s all right,” Gerard said.

“Sure he’s all right,” LeBlanc said. “I’m just making sure he understands how we do things down here.”

“He knows,” Tereau said. “Where’s the boat?”

“Down in the willows. We got it covered up good,” Gerard said.

Avery looked at the wild stare in LeBlanc’s eyes.

“There’s too much moonlight. You can see us for a half mile on the river. We had to come down the bayou,” LeBlanc said.

Tereau went to the wagon to get tin cups for their coffee. “I got some rabbit. You want to eat?” he said.

“We ain’t got time. It’s about four hours till dawn. We got to reach Morgan City before daylight,” LeBlanc said.

They sat down on the log while Tereau filled their cups. LeBlanc stretched out his legs and removed the pistol from his belt and placed it on the log.

“Do you use that thing?” Avery said.

“They ain’t nobody around to say I have,” he said. He picked it up and rolled the cylinder across his palm. “I got it in the army.” He snapped the cylinder open into a loading position and snapped it back again. His eyes were hard and distant as he looked into the fire. “They teach you how to shoot real good in the army. I was a B.A.R. man. I could knock down nips at a thousand yards with a Browning.”

Gerard stood up and threw the rest of his coffee into the fire. “We better get moving,” he said. LeBlanc continued to stare ahead with the pistol in his hand. Gerard nudged him with his foot. “Come on, we better move. We still got to load the boat.”

LeBlanc rubbed the oil off the pistol barrel on his trouser leg. He put the gun on half cock and slid it back in his belt. He still had that same hard, distant look in his eyes. He finished his coffee in one swallow and got up and went over to the wagon to count the kegs of whiskey with Tereau.

“Don’t get him talking about the army no more,” Gerard said to Avery. “He ain’t been right since he come back from the war.”

“Did he ever use that gun on anybody?”

“I don’t ask him no questions. He knows his job, and what else he does ain’t my business. The only time I got to watch him is when we have a scrape with the law. Soon as he thinks they’re around he takes out his pistol and puts it on full cock. His eyes get like two pieces of fire when he sees a uniform.”

Avery looked over to the wagon. Tereau was fastening the tailgate after LeBlanc had climbed down from the bed. The mules shuffled in their harness.

“What happened to him in the army?” Avery said.

“He was in the South Pacific about a year. He even got decorated once. Then one day he tried to shoot his commanding officer and deserted. They found him about a month later and put him in the stockade. He went kind of crazy in there. They sent him to a hospital for a while, but it didn’t do no good. They finally give him a medical discharge because there wasn’t nothing else they could do with him.”

Gerard took the coffeepot off the iron stake and poured the coffee over the fire. The coals hissed and spit as the fire died and the clearing darkened except for the light of the moon. He pulled the iron stake out of the ground and kicked dirt over the faintly glowing embers.

“Don’t let LeBlanc worry you,” he said, and went over to the wagon in his slow, crablike walk, his shoulders slightly rounded, with the iron stake and coffeepot in each hand. Avery followed.

“Twenty-five kegs,” LeBlanc said.

“I reckon you want some money,” Gerard said to Tereau.

“I reckon you’re correct, Mister whiskey runner,” Tereau said.

Gerard loosened his shirt and unstrapped a money belt from his waist. He propped one foot on the hub of the wagon wheel and counted out the money on his thigh. He put the bills in a stack and handed them to Tereau and strapped the belt around his waist again.

“When you going to start putting my name on the labels?” Tereau said.

“Soon as you start paying federal taxes and we both go out of business,” Gerard said.

“I hear something out there,” LeBlanc said.

They listened for a moment.

“I don’t hear nothing,” Gerard said.

“It’s out on the river somewheres,” LeBlanc said.

“There ain’t nothing out there. We got rid of the police three miles back.”

LeBlanc moved his hand to the pistol and looked off into the darkness. “There’s something wrong,” he said. “Everything is going wrong tonight. I can feel it. There’s too much moonlight, and there’s somebody out on the river.”

“There ain’t nobody out there.”

“I heard it I tell you.”

Gerard looked at Tereau.

“Maybe he did hear something. Let’s go to the boat and don’t take no chances,” Tereau said.

Gerard threw the coffeepot and iron stake into the back of the wagon. Tereau got up on the seat and wrapped the reins around his fist. He drove the wagon around the edge of the clearing through a narrow break in the trees that opened onto a wheel-rutted road leading between the levee and a deep gully. They could hear the nutrias calling to each other in the swamp, a high-pitched cry like the scream of a hysterical woman. The oak trees stood at uneven intervals along the rim of the gully, and the moonlight fell through the branches, spotting the ground with pale areas of light against the dark green of the jungle. Tereau sat forward with the reins through his fingers. He looked back at Avery and Gerard, who were following, as the wagon banged over the ruts. LeBlanc walked ahead of the mules, straining his eyes against the darkness. He stopped and without turning put one hand in the air.

“What’s the matter?” Gerard said.

“There it is again. It’s a boat laying out on the river. I can hear the water breaking against its sides,” LeBlanc said.

“How in the hell can you tell it’s a boat?” Gerard said.

“I know it’s a boat.”

“I can’t hear nothing,” Tereau said.

“I’m going ahead to take a look,” LeBlanc said.

“You stay here. Me and the boy will go,” Gerard said.

“I reckon I don’t need nobody to tell me what to do.”

“We need the gun here,” Gerard said.

“Tereau’s got a rifle in the wagon.”

“I ain’t carrying it this time,” Tereau said.

Gerard touched Avery on the arm and they moved up the road past LeBlanc.

“I don’t like nobody telling me what to do,” LeBlanc said.

“I ain’t telling you nothing,” Gerard said. “I’m just asking you to watch the wagon.”

They walked on out of sight. The road continued in a straight line between the gully and the levee. Directly ahead was the cove where their boat was moored in the willows. The cove was about fifty yards wide, but the entrance was a bottleneck formed by sandbars, deep enough for small craft to enter and too shallow for anything larger. The river was swollen from the rains, flowing swiftly down to the Gulf. Avery and Gerard left the road before they got to the landing, and worked their way around the edge of the cove to where it met the river. From there they could see the willow trees, the cove, and the river without being seen. They went through the brush until they reached the river’s edge where the backwater rippled over the sandbar that formed one side of the bottleneck of the cove. They squatted in the sand and looked out through the reeds.

“There ain’t nothing here,” Gerard said.

“Look over yonder.”

“Where?”

“Just out from the sandbar. It’s an oil slick,” Avery said.

“It could have come from upriver.”

“It’s not spread out enough. A boat has been here in the last hour.”

Gerard spit a stream of tobacco juice into the sand. “Let’s get further downriver. Maybe we can see something.”

They worked back along the shore away from the cove. They kept in the shelter of the trees and didn’t speak. The frogs and crickets were loud in the marsh. Gerard walked ahead, not making any sound. They arrived at a small inlet that washed back through the trees. They waded into the water until it was around their thighs. Gerard stood with his hand on a tree trunk, looking out over the river.

“I can’t see a goddamn thing,” he said.

“Maybe they went on past us,” Avery said.

“Let’s go back to the other side of the cove. If there ain’t nothing there, we’ll load the boat and get out of here.”

“There’s another slick.”

Gerard looked at the metallic blue oil deposit floating on the water. He raised his eyes and studied the opposite bank.

“Sonsofbitches,” he said. “They’re hid back in the shadow against the bank. They must have cut their engine and floated downstream to wait for us.”

“What do you want to do?” Avery said.

“There ain’t no way to get my boat out as long as they’re sitting there.”

“Sink your boat and go back on foot.”

“They’d find it sooner or later and get my registration number.” Gerard spit into the water and waded to the bank. “We got to get rid of them. Let’s go get the others.”

They started towards the cove.

“What’s the sentence for running whiskey?” Avery said.

“One to three years.”

“Do you have a drink on you?”

“I never touch it.”

They went through the underbrush to the cove where the sandbar jutted away from the shore. They could just see the hard-packed crest beneath the surface in the moonlight. Gerard stopped for a moment in silence and looked out over the water at the sandbar, and then followed Avery back through the trees towards the road. They passed the clump of willows and turned along the gully. They could see the outline of the wagon and the kegs on its bed in the shadows. LeBlanc was sitting up on the seat with Tereau.

“What did you see?” Tereau said.

“They’re there,” Gerard said.

“Bastards,” LeBlanc said.

“I think I got a way for us to get out,” Gerard said. “We’ll have to load the whiskey first.”

“You can’t outrun them with a boatload of them kegs,” Tereau said.

“They ain’t going to chase us. They’re going to be piled up on the sandbar. Take the wagon up to the boat and we’ll get loaded.”

Tereau slapped the reins against the mules’ backs. The kegs lumbered from side to side as the wagon creaked forward. LeBlanc sat beside the Negro with his hand on the butt of his revolver.

“You ain’t going to need the gun,” Tereau said.

“I’m the judge of that.”

“We never had no shooting. We don’t shoot and they don’t shoot.”

LeBlanc looked grimly ahead. Gerard and Avery took the mules by their harness and turned them around so the tailgate would face the boat. Tereau tied the reins to the brake, and climbed down and went to the rear of the wagon. He pulled the metal pins from their fastenings and eased the gate down.

“It ain’t too late,” he said. “I’ll give you your money back and take the whiskey to the still.”

“We’ll make it,” Gerard said.

“It’s your three years,” Tereau said, and took the first keg off the bed onto his shoulder.

Avery got up on the bed and handed the kegs down. In a quarter hour the boat was loaded.

“Now what?” Tereau said.

“You better get ready to move,” Gerard said.

“It ain’t smart what you’re doing.”

“I never had to ditch a load yet.”

LeBlanc got into the long flat outboard and climbed over the kegs to the bow. Gerard got in and sat on the board plank in front of the motor. He took a flashlight from under the seat and placed it beside him. He wrapped the rope around the starter, put the motor in neutral and opened the throttle; he yanked hard on the rope. It caught the first time, and he increased the gas feed and raced the motor wide open in neutral. They heard the two Evinrude seventy-five-horsepower engines of the police boat kick over across the river.

Gerard took up the flashlight and shone it through the willows so it would be visible from the river. The throbbing of the police boat’s engines became nearer, then they saw it come around the river bend full speed towards the mouth of the cove, the water breaking white in front of the bow, the flat churning wake behind and the spray flying back over the uptilted cabin. Someone on board must have seen the sandbar, because the boat swerved to port just before it struck the crest. The bow lurched in the air, and the engines, still driving, spun the boat around on its keel until it came to rest with part of the stern out of the water and the starboard propeller churning in the sand.

LeBlanc stood up in the outboard and shouted at the police boat.

“Sit down!” Gerard said. “I got to get us out of here.” He threw the motor into gear and shot forward through the willows. The police boat’s searchlight went on, and the trees were flooded with a hard electric brilliance. “Bastards,” LeBlanc shouted. He stood up again and took aim with the pistol. The glass broke with the first shot, but the lamp still burned. He fired twice more, and the searchlight went out.

Avery and Tereau ran for the wagon. They climbed into the seat, and Tereau slashed the reins down on the mules. The mules jumped against their harness, and the wagon banged over the ruts, pitching back and forth, so that Avery had to hold on to the brake to keep from being thrown from the seat. He looked behind him and saw LeBlanc’s pistol flash three times in the dark. Tereau whipped the mules to a faster pace until the boat was out of sight. They could still hear LeBlanc cursing.

“He’s done it,” Tereau said. “We never had no shooting, but we’re going to have it now.”

“Where we going?”

“To the still. I’m going to move out everything I can. The swamp will be full of police before morning.”

The wagon swayed against a tree and careened back on the road. “My God,” Avery said.

“Got no time to waste.” Tereau whipped the mules harder.

“You think he hit anybody?” Avery said.

“It ain’t our doing.”

“We were with them.”

“When they got in the boat they were on their own,” Tereau said.

“Look out!”

The left front wheel of the wagon struck a large oak root that grew across the road. The rim of the wheel cracked in two, and the spokes shattered like matchsticks as the wagon went down on its axle, skidding across the road to the edge of the gully; it turned on its side and balanced for a second, then toppled over the brink, pulling the mules down with it. Avery was thrown free and landed on his stomach in the middle of the road. The breath went out of him in one lung-aching, air-sucking rush, and the earth shifted sideways and rolled beneath him, and a pattern of color drifted before his eyes; then he could see pieces of dirt and blades of grass close to his face, and his chest and stomach stopped contracting, and slowly he felt the pressure go out of his lungs as he pulled the air down inside him. He turned over on his back and sat up. He looked for the wagon. There was a scar of plowed dirt where the axle had skidded across the road. He stood up and walked to the brink of the gully.

“Get down here and pull it off me,” Tereau said.

Avery could see the top portion of the Negro’s body lying among the splintered boards. The wagon had come to rest upside down, pinning Tereau’s legs under it. The mules lay at the front, twitching and jerking in the fouled harness. The kegs had broken open and there was a strong smell of whiskey in the air. The broken slats (their insides burned to charcoal for aging the whiskey) and the copper hoops were scattered on the ground. Avery slid down the bank and tried to lift the wagon with his hands. It came a couple of inches off the ground and he had to release it. He moved to the front of the wagon and tried to raise it by the axle. It wouldn’t move. He stooped and got his shoulder under the axle and tried again. He pushed upwards with all his strength until he went weak with strain.

“Find something for a wedge,” Tereau said.

Avery hunted along the gully for a stout fallen limb. He found several thick branches, but they were rotted from the weather. He searched in the grass and saw a railroad tie that had been discarded by one of the pipeline companies that worked in the marsh. The tie was embedded in the dirt. Avery pried it up with his fingers and saw the worms and slugs in the soft mold beneath. He carried it back to the wagon.

“I’ll slip it under close to your legs,” he said. “When I lift up you pull out.”

“I’m waiting on you,” Tereau said.

Avery fitted the wedge under the side wall of the wagon and lifted.

“Hurry up and get out. I can’t hold it up long.”

“I don’t feel nothing in my legs. The blood’s cut off.”

“I got to drop it.”

Tereau reached under the wagon and grabbed his legs under the knees and pulled.

“I’m out. Let it go,” he said.

Avery released the tie and let the wagon drop.

“Is anything broken?” he said.

“I don’t know. Hep me up.”

He put Tereau’s arm over his shoulder and lifted him to his feet.

“They ain’t broke, but I can’t go nowheres.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“We ain’t getting out of the marsh this way.”

“I’ll help you. Can you walk if I help you?”

“I ain’t going far.”

“Let’s get away from the wagon. They can probably smell the whiskey out on the river.”

“There’s something you got to do first.”

“What?”

“Them mules is suffering,” Tereau said. He took the long double-edged knife from his boot. The blade shone like blue ice in the moonlight. “Put it under the neck. They won’t feel no pain that way.” He handed the knife to Avery.

Tereau leaned against a tree while Avery went over to the mules. The knife cut deeply and quick. He cleaned the blade on the grass and came back.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Farther down the gully there was a rainwash that had eroded a depression in the bank. It was dry now and overgrown with vines and small bushes. Avery was able to get Tereau up the wash to the road. They crossed to the other side and entered the thicket and headed towards the opposite end of the marsh where the still was. Tereau could take only a few steps at a time. For the next hour they worked their way through the undergrowth. Tereau was breathing hard and had to rest often. The vines scratched their faces and necks. In some areas the mosquitoes were very bad and swarmed around them and got inside their clothes. It took all Avery’s strength to keep the Negro on his feet. Tereau took his arm from Avery’s shoulder and sat on the ground.

“Go on and let me be,” he said.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Go on. You don’t belong down here nohow.”

“You’re not helping anything. You’re making things harder,” Avery said.

“My legs are gone. You’d have to carry me.”

“All right. I’ll try it.”

“You ain’t talking good sense.”

“I’ll get somebody to help. Will you be all right if I hide you here?”

“I’ll get along.”

Avery put him in the bushes and cut some branches from the trees to cover him.

“Leave me the knife,” Tereau said. “What for?”

“I need it.”

“No.”

“Give me my knife and get away from here.”

“I’m not going to give it to you. Stay put till I get back.” He put the knife in his belt.

“I’m too old a man to go to prison.”

“Stop talking like that.”

“Ain’t you got any sense at all? You won’t be back in time, and I ain’t going to no jailhouse.”

“Don’t talk so loud.”

“I don’t know why I ever took a young boy with me in the first place.”

“I’m going to Jean Landry’s houseboat. We’ll come back in his pirogue.”

Avery left him in the thicket and splashed into the knee-deep water of the swamp. It would take him a half hour to get to Landry’s, and about half that time to come back in the pirogue. The bottom of the swamp was mud and sand. His feet sank in to his ankles. He thought he heard the police in the distance. The branches of the trees overhead grew into one another, and there was almost no light in the swamp. He had trouble finding the direction to the houseboat. He believed that old man Landry would help them, since he disliked any type of authority and had moved out in the swamp years ago to avoid paying taxes and obeying the law. Unconsciously Avery felt at his side for the knife. It was gone. He thought he would have heard it splash if it had fallen in the water. It must have slipped out of his belt before he left Tereau. He headed back towards the shore, breaking through the overhanging vines with his forearms. A water moccasin slithered across the water in front of him. Avery’s foot caught on a tree root and he went under. He struggled to free himself and plunged through the reeds onto the bank.

The cut branches were still in place over the bushes where Tereau was hidden. Avery ripped the branches away. The Negro was sitting upright, just as he had left him, with the knife on the ground by his side.

“You ain’t forgot nothing, have you?” Tereau said.

“You and that goddamn knife.”

“Take off. You ain’t got much time. I heard the police on the road a few minutes ago.”

“Let’s get moving, then.”

“It ain’t no use. There’s a big tree out in the water I can hide in. Leave me there and Landry’ll find me in the morning when he picks up his nets. You can go through the grass flats to the other levee and get back to town. There ain’t nobody going to follow you through there.”

“I have to take the knife with me.”

“You’ll probably cut yourself with it.”

Avery picked up the knife and threw it through the air into the water. They heard it splash in the dark.

“Ain’t that a foolish thing to do.”

“Let’s go,” Avery said. He helped Tereau to his feet and picked him up over his shoulder in a cross-carry. He moved out of the thicket and waded into the water. Away from the bank there was a great cypress tree with one side split open and blackened and hollowed out where it had been struck by lightning. He slid the Negro off his back into the hollow. Tereau adjusted his position with his hands so that he could sit upright fairly comfortably, and pulled his feet out of the water inside the tree. He took off his boots and wrung out his socks.

“I reckon you’ll let me alone now,” he said.

“I reckon.”

Tereau took the pint bottle of whiskey from his pocket and pulled the cork out.

“Would the young gentleman care for a drink?” he said.

“You crazy old man.”

Avery and Tereau each took a swallow from the bottle. Avery waded back to shore and made his way through the thicket, walked down the gully and across the road and over the side of the levee, and began circling behind the police. He hoped the police would be searching the road so he could get to the big expanse of alligator grass without being seen and cross to the opposite end of the marsh. He could hear voices ahead. He crawled up the side of the embankment and looked down the road. Several flashlights shone through the trees opposite the gully. Two officers with Springfield rifles stood with a third man between them. The man’s hands were handcuffed behind him. He turned his face in the beam of one of the flashlights. His clothes were wet, he had lost his hat, and his black hair fell over his ears. His skin looked white in the flashlight beam. A captain and another state policeman climbed out of the gully onto the road.

“Why don’t you tell us where they headed for, and we can all go home,” the captain said.

LeBlanc glared at him in silence.

“We’re going to get the others whether you help us or not,” the captain said. “Your friend probably drowned trying to swim the river, and the ones in the wagon aren’t going far after the crackup they had. It’ll make it easier if you cooperate.”

“You go to hell,” LeBlanc said.

The captain motioned for the other men to continue down the road. Avery crawled back down the levee into the brush and started towards the grass flats. The glow of the flashlights shone above the levee He entered the wide field of alligator grass where there were bogs of silt and quicksand. The quicksand wasn’t deep enough to be dangerous, but usually a man was helpless in it if he didn’t have somebody to pull him out. The bogs looked like solid ground because they were covered with dead leaves and grass. He traveled slowly as he went deeper into the field, his head held down, watching the ground carefully. The sharp-edged grass cut his face. He saw a bog ahead and went around the side of it. The sand was wet and cold and came over his shoes. There was a dead nutria, half submerged, out in the middle of the bog. The buzzards would have gotten it if it had died anyplace else, but they couldn’t stand on the sand to feed. Avery looked up at the hard ivory brightness of the waning moon. It would be morning in a few hours, and old man Landry would get Tereau out of the tree. Avery went on for another mile and came out on the far end of the marsh. He walked through the sand and water and reeds onto the bank. He sat down exhausted. Someone on top of the levee shone a flashlight down at him. Avery whirled and started to his feet. It was a state policeman. He could see the campaign hat and the leather holster and the dust-brown uniform. The policeman had a revolver in his hand, the moonlight blue on the barrel.

“Stay still. You got nowhere to go,” he said.

J.P. Winfield

He appeared on the Louisiana Jubilee every Saturday night for the next five months. The show was broadcast throughout four states, and J.P.’s name became well known to those people who sit by their large wooden radios with the peeling finish and tiny yellow dial on Saturday night to listen to their requests and hope that their letters will be read between the advertisements of cure-all drugs and health tonics. J.P. came to be one of their favorite entertainers. They bought his records and wrote him letters, and he replied by sending them an autographed picture of himself and the band. He also received an increase in salary and replaced Seth as the main figure of the show. When the band appeared onstage J.P. acted as the spokesman and did most of the solos. He never used any accompaniment except his own guitar when he sang, his third record sold two hundred thousand copies, and Hunnicut had his name featured on the placards that were nailed to the fronts of the dance halls and roadhouses where they played.

During the week the show toured the small towns and played one-night performances in any dance hall that was willing to pay three hundred dollars to have a band from the Louisiana Jubilee. Each weekday night J.P. sang his songs in the juke joints and highway clubs, and the days were spent traveling across the country in a state of complete fatigue. The band didn’t quit until early in the morning, and there was little time for sleep except while riding in the bus. When they returned at the end of the week for the Saturday night performance on the Jubilee, J.P. was physically spent. It was at this time that April introduced him to a doctor who pushed narcotics. She had begun to pay attention to J.P. since he had moved to the front of the band, and on Sunday afternoon she called him into her hotel room to meet a man whom he would not forget for a long time.

“This is Doc Elgin,” she said. “He can give you something to make you feel better.”

Elgin was a thin sallow man who reminded J.P. of a rodent. His body was wasted and bent, and his hands were like bone. He had an ingratiating smile that made you want to look away, and his body structure seemed so fragile that J.P. thought a sudden blow would cause it to break to pieces like brittle candy.

“April says you need something to lift you up,” he said.

“I feel wore out all the time,” J.P. said.

“It happens to all of us, honey,” April said. “Doc will make you right.”

“I have something that will help you,” he said. His black bag rested on a chair. He opened it and took out a small cardboard box. He handed it to J.P. “Take one of these whenever you need a push.”

“This ain’t joy stuff, is it?”

“It’s Benzedrine.”

“What’s that?”

“It won’t harm you.”

“I don’t want no happy stuff, hear.”

“This is just a stimulant.”

J.P. slid the box open and looked at the row of pills on the cotton pad.

“What do I owe you?” he said.

“There’s no charge. That’s a sample a drug company sent me.”

“Ain’t you supposed to have a prescription for this?”

“No. These are mild. They won’t hurt you.” Elgin turned to April. “I’m going now. Give me a call when you need me.”

“All right, Doc.”

“It’s enjoyable meeting you, Mr. Winfield.”

“Yeah. You bet.”

Elgin went out. J.P. took one of the pills from the box and filled a glass of water from the pitcher on the dresser. He put the pill in the back of his mouth and drank the water.

“I reckon I’ll go lay down,” he said.

“You don’t have to leave.”

J.P. looked at her. She was standing close to him. She held her face up. He could see she wanted to be kissed. He wondered if he could lay her. He didn’t want to lead up to it and get hot for her and then be rejected. He looked at her black hair and the blunt features of her face.

“Troy figures you’re his girl,” he said.

“Troy is an ass. Don’t you like girls?”

“I ain’t interested in trading valentines.”

“You’re a big boy.”

He leaned down and kissed her. She moved her body against him and put her arms around his neck and breathed in his ear. He wanted her badly now. She widened her thighs and pressed her stomach tight against him. He worked his hand up her side and felt her breast.

“Let’s go over to the bed and I’ll teach you a nice game,” she said.

She pulled away from him and drew the blinds. The room fell in a yellow twilight. She undressed and sat on the bed and pulled off her stockings. He looked at her large breasts and flat stomach and white thighs. There was a weak feeling in his throat. She lay down on the sheets and waited for him.

“It isn’t nice to keep a girl waiting,” she said.

He got in beside her.

“That’s a good boy. Don’t you like this better than giving your money to those girls?”

“What girls?”

“I know you and Seth go to one of those places back of town. Tell me how they act when you’re in the room with them.”

“Ask Seth.”

“I bet he’s lovely when he finds somebody who will give it to him.”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Here, how’s this?” she said. “That’s a good boy. Let April do the work.”

That evening he returned to his room. He had a headache and felt depleted. He sank down in the armchair before the window and let the perspiration roll down his neck into his shirt collar. He wished he had let April alone and had slept during the afternoon. After they had been together for a while he had wanted to rest, but she wouldn’t let him go. Whenever he tried to stop she got him worked up again and forced him to continue, and now he felt sick. The Benzedrine had built him up, and then it abruptly dropped him. He put his feet on the bed and let his arms hang over the sides of the chair to the floor. He looked out the window at the late red sun slanting across the rooftops and the now russet-colored buildings. The swallows spun in black circles over the chimneys.

It was seven-thirty. He had to meet Virdo Hunnicut in his room at nine. Why couldn’t he have stayed away from April and rested during the afternoon? He felt like going to sleep and not getting up until the next night, but Hunnicut had said that there was something important for them to discuss. J.P. called the desk clerk and asked to be awakened at eight-thirty. He lay down on the top covers of the bed and went to sleep.

He dreamed he was sitting on the back porch of his home, looking out over the cotton field and its red earth and long green rows. The sky was dark with clouds, and the heat lightning flashed in the east. He breathed the wet smell of the rain as the first drops fell on the field. He was very alone on the porch of the tenant cabin, and he watched the lightning illuminate the edges of the clouds, and the showers burst from the sky. He leaned back in the wooden chair and put his feet on the railing and thought how he wanted to put it all into one song.

J.P. sat upright in bed just before the desk clerk rang the telephone to wake him. He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face. He was sweating all over, and his headache had increased. He stripped to the waist and went to the bath and turned the shower on his head. He let the cold water run over him until his mind had cleared. He dried himself with a towel and looked in the mirror. His face was dull with sleep and fatigue. He combed his hair and went back into the bedroom and took a clean shirt from the dresser. His head kept throbbing.

He started to leave the room and stopped. He took the cardboard box of pills from his pocket and slid it open. He hesitated for a moment, then went back into the bath and filled the water glass. He would need something to get him through the evening. A few minutes later he knocked on Virdo Hunnicut’s door.

“It’s open.”

J.P. went in. Hunnicut sat in the stuffed chair by the desk with an electric fan blowing on him. He wore a flowered silk sports shirt that was stained with perspiration. There was a bowl of ice cubes in front of the fan. His face was flushed pink from the heat.

“Have you ever seen it so goddamn hot for September?” he said. “I got one window in the room and it opens on the air shaft. It feels like they got the heaters on.”

J.P. sat in the straight-backed chair opposite Hunnicut. He watched the big man sweat and wipe his face.

“What did you want to talk about?” he said.

“I’ll tell you if you give me the chance.”

“I ain’t feeling too good. I want to get some sleep tonight.”

Hunnicut leaned his weight forward, opened the desk drawer, and handed him an envelope.

“What is it?”

“Look for yourself.”

He opened the envelope by tearing off the end and looked inside.

“Train tickets,” he said.

“You’re going to Nashville.”

“The Barn Dance?”

“Your train leaves at midnight.”

“When did I get on the Barn Dance?”

“About three hours ago, after I finished talking with Jimmy Lathrop.”

“Who in the hell is Jimmy Lathrop?” J.P. said.

“He’s the man that makes Live-Again, one of the biggest selling vitamin tonics on the market. From now on you make people drink Live-Again.”

“Why don’t you tell me first before you hire me out to somebody I never heard of?”

“You wanted to go to Nashville, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. But I like to be told before I’m hired out.”

“I got a contract in my office, signed by you, that says I manage your engagements and you got nothing to say about it.”

“I don’t feel like making no train trip tonight.”

“There’s something else in the envelope. Maybe it will make you feel better.”

J.P. took out the check and held it in the light from the desk lamp. It was for four hundred dollars, payable to him.

“Lathrop told me to advance it to you,” Hunnicut said.

“I still ain’t up to making a five-hundred-mile train trip tonight.”

“You’re giving me a burn in the ass, J.P.”

“You want me to take off in the middle of the night on two hours’ notice without telling me nothing except I’m going to sell vitamin tonic for somebody I ain’t even seen. That money won’t do me no good in a hospital or a cuckoo ward.”

“I want you to listen to what I got to say, J.P. Lathrop is one of the biggest men in the state. There’s a dozen of these fine politicians in the capital who get their bread buttered by Jim. He could have bought a boxcar load of hillbilly singers to push his product, but he picked you because me and him has done business before. If you think you’ve gotten big and you can tell me what to do, or slough off Lathrop’s offer, tear up that check and there will be someone else riding the train tonight.”

“I ain’t sloughing off his offer. I said I’m wore out and I want to be told about something once in a while.”

“I’m fed up talking with you. Either do what I tell you, or you can start back for the tenant farm and chop cotton like a nigger for three dollars a day.”

“You can’t break my contract.”

“I can do any goddamn thing I please.”

“Why does it have to be tonight?”

“Because I say so,” Virdo Hunnicut said, and slammed the flat of his hand on the desk. He wiped his sweating face. “Pack your things and get down to the station. When you get into Nashville go to the Grand Hotel. A man from the radio station will meet you there.”

J.P. sat for a minute and looked at Hunnicut. The room was quiet except for the creak of the straight-back chair and Hunnicut’s wheezing. He folded the check and put it in his shirt pocket with the tickets and walked from the room.

He packed the clothes he would need into a single suitcase, picked up his guitar, and took a cab to the depot. He rested his head on the back of the seat and looked blankly out the window while the cab rode downtown. The neon signs were a long blur of colored light without shape or form. The smell of the street, the tar and asphalt, and the dryness of the September night came to him through the open window. It was the end of day in the city; there was the burnt, electric odor of the streetcars and the dry scratch and flash of red as they crossed the electric connections; the pages of newspaper scudding along the sidewalks; the faint smell of rubber and gasoline from the automobiles; the Salvation Army band on the corner, with their high-collar blue uniforms and homely faces and loud brass instruments and tambourines and shrill voices, singing “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks We Stand”; and the missions where the bums could get a meal and a cot if they would sit through a sermon on salvation and Jesus Christ.

J.P. closed his eyes and let his head sag to one side. He didn’t know the cab had stopped at the station until the driver woke him. The redcap carried his bag into the waiting room; he sat down on one of the pewlike benches, put his guitar case beside him, and read the train schedule on the opposite wall. There were a few people in the waiting room. A porter slept in a chair by the platform door. J.P. took out his tickets and looked at them. Hunnicut had put him in a chaircar. He went to the ticket window and talked with the stationmaster and tried to get reservations on a Pullman. The stationmaster told him that there were no more reservations to be had, and he would have to ride in the chaircar.

His train was announced over the loudspeaker, and he carried his bag and guitar case out on the platform. The ice and baggage wagons rumbled over the wood planks. The trainmen opened the vestibule doors of the coaches and put down the stepstool for the passengers. Men in overalls moved along the cinder bed by the side of the train with copper oil cans. J.P. walked down the platform and found his car. The conductor looked at his ticket and helped him up into the vestibule.

The car was crowded and the air was thick with smoke. He made his way down the aisle, bumping people with his guitar case, and took a seat at the end of the car. A soldier snored loudly next to him. J.P. pushed back the seat and tried to relax. His legs were cramped and he couldn’t stretch out. A child close by began to cry. The train hissed and jolted and moved slowly out of the station. The lights in the car went down, and J.P. felt the darkness go over him.

The telegraph wires are weaving through the air outside the window and I’m going to Nashville Tennessee for Big Jim Lathrop Big Jim sends bread and butter checks to the state capitol the train is rocking back and forth rocking and I lean back and sleep in the dusty smell of old cushions and the train rocks me down past the dust of the cushions to where it is cool like sheets against my back and then the hot wetness of her on top of me I felt the bone in Doc Elgin’s hand and I had to look away when he stared at me and he give April something in a package because I seen it in her drawer and she covered it over with a slip when she seen me looking at it she has small blue marks on her arms

Hunnicutt said You can start back to the tenant farm and chop cotton like a nigger for three dollars a day but he don’t know nothing about chopping cotton the hoe goes up in the air and thuds down in the dirt and I see the shadow of my straw hat on the ground I never been in Tennessee Troy is from Memphis he ain’t picked cotton for two cents a pound none of them knows how to drag the half-full burlap sack through the rows with one hand and pick the white puff with the other and put it in the sack

they were singing On Jordan’s Banks and the bums stood in line to get inside because it was night and they had to find a place to sleep I heard them singing in the camp back home and they slept on army cots and mixed lighter fluid with orange juice and I seen one trade his overcoat for a quart jar of moon they put up the cots around a big iron stove and their faces looked like corpses sticking out from under the blanket sometimes I watched the evening train run across the sun and stop by the water tower and they would crawl out of the rods and that night I heard them singing hymns in the camp like the nigger funeral marches they’re not niggers their faces are white like ash under the blanket and they take off their coats and wrap them around their feet to keep warm.

Doc Elgin said to take one when I need a push it ain’t happy stuff I seen niggers taking cocaine and it comes in a powder and it gets them high and you can tell when they’re on it by their eyes her eyes were shrunk up like pinpoints and I started to ask her if Elgin done that too but I didn’t because she said not to talk about him no more the skin on her breasts looked thin and milky like a candle flame was behind it and you could see through it I could feel it coming on inside me and I held the back of her legs and felt it swell and burst and then she started it over again

whistle blowing down the line and I watch the sun plunge out of the sun across the fields and the crimson evening fade behind the trees

Toussaint Boudreaux

There were two trucks backed up to the loading ramp on the side of the warehouse. The side street was dark except for the glow of light that shone through the open freight doors of the building. A sign above the door said Bonham Shipping Company. A white man and a Negro were bringing out crates and loading them in the trucks. Bonham, the light tan Negro who looked like a Baptist deacon, stood on the ramp. Toussaint waited beside his truck and watched the loading. His arm was in a black sling. The driver of the other truck, a white man, sat in his cab behind the steering wheel. He wore yellow leather gloves and an army fatigue cap and smoked a cigarette without taking it out of his mouth. There were ashes on the front of his shirt.

“You been working here long?” Toussaint said.

“A while,” he answered, without looking at him, his gloved hands resting on the steering wheel.

“You got any notion where we’re going?”

“Bonham will tell you,” he said, still looking straight ahead.

“I asked you.”

“I don’t know.”

Toussaint turned away and looked up at Bonham on the ramp. He was dressed in a brown suit, with a good shoeshine, and his glass ring and rimless glasses glinted in the light from within the building. The last of the crates was loaded. One of the men closed the truck doors and locked each one with a heavy padlock. Bonham came down the ramp.

“Take highway ninety straight to Mobile,” he said. “There’s a street map of the city in your glove compartment. The place where you’re supposed to go is marked in red pencil.”

“Who’s going to pay me the other hundred dollars?” Toussaint said.

“My partner in Mobile will give it to you as soon as you get to his warehouse.”

“I’ll follow you,” Toussaint said to the other driver.

“Go on ahead,” Bonham said. “I have to talk with him about something.”

“He knows the road better than me.”

“It’s a good road all the way. You won’t have no trouble,” the other driver said.

“What about the weigh stations?”

“You’re under the load limit. The police won’t bother you,” Bonham said.

“I ain’t got any shipping papers.”

“They don’t ask for them unless you’re over the limit,” Bonham said.

“Go ahead. I’ll be right behind you,” the other driver said.

Toussaint climbed up in the cab and took the black sling off his arm so he could shift gears. He started the engine and put the truck in low and drove down the side street away from the warehouse. He turned at the intersection and headed towards the highway. He watched for the other truck in the rear-view mirror. Toussaint didn’t like the way Bonham and the other driver had sent him ahead. There was something wrong about it. Why would they send me on alone with a load of stuff that must be worth plenty, he thought. I could hide the load and drive the truck into the river and they’d never see me again.

Bonham was careful enough at first. He wouldn’t tell me where I was going until the last minute, but now he sends me on by myself. And why did he need two drivers? He could put all them crates in one truck. He didn’t need me. He hires a one-arm man out of a poolroom for no reason. It don’t fit.

Toussaint looked in the rear-view mirror again. There were two automobiles behind him. He slowed and let them pass. He turned into the main road that led to the highway. The river levee was on his left, and ahead he could see the looming black structure of the Huey Long Bridge. He accelerated to keep up with the traffic. Why don’t he come on, he thought. He’s had plenty of time. I can’t drive no slower without tying up traffic.

He entered the circle before the bridge and turned out on the highway. He drove on a mile to where the cars had thinned out, and pulled off on the gravel shoulder of the road. He opened the glove compartment, and under a street map of Mobile he found the red reflectors. He walked back down the highway and set them on the shoulder at intervals to warn the oncoming automobiles. He went back and stood by the running board and waited for the other truck.

A half hour later it came. Toussaint waved the driver down. The truck slowed and pulled off on the shoulder in front of the Negro. The driver opened the door and swung out of the cab as Toussaint walked up.

“Why did you pull me over?” he said. “You ain’t supposed to stop till you hit Mobile. You should be almost out of the state by now.”

“I got my markers out. Nobody is going to bother us.”

“You ain’t supposed to stop.”

“What have you and Bonham got on?”

“Mind your business,” the driver said.

“Why did you wait thirty minutes to follow me?”

“You ain’t paid to know anything.”

“You could have carried the whole load. He don’t need another driver.”

“He splits a shipment so he don’t take a chance on losing it all. The police ain’t going to get us both.”

“He ain’t the type man to trust a hot load with somebody he don’t know.”

“Ask him about it.”

“You’re the man I’m talking to.”

“Quit if you don’t like it.”

“I got another hundred dollars coming.”

“Earn it, then. I ain’t going to stand out here no longer.”

“What’s Bonham got planned?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I ain’t got to take that from you.”

“You work for a nigger,” Toussaint said.

The man tried to hit him, but Toussaint caught his arm in midair with his good hand and held it helpless before him.

“I’ll break your arm like a stick, white man.”

“God damn you.”

Toussaint pushed him away.

“Get in your truck,” he said. “I’m following you this time. I’m going to be on your bumper all the way to Mobile.”

The man climbed up in the cab and slammed the door. Toussaint picked up the reflectors from the roadside and got in his truck. He dropped the reflectors on the seat and followed the other truck off the shoulder onto the highway. He kept close behind so no cars could get between them.

As the road straightened out, the other truck began to widen the distance. Toussaint pressed on the accelerator to keep up. The speedometer neared fifty and the truck in front continued to gain. Toussaint pressed the gas pedal to the floor, but his speed didn’t increase. It’s got a governor on it, he thought. The gas feed is fixed so it can’t do more than fifty. He knows it too. He might have even put it on. They want to make sure I don’t stay with the other truck. He must be making seventy. He’s got a clear stretch ahead of him. I can’t catch him unless he runs into traffic.

Toussaint watched the taillights grow dimmer. The lead truck went over a rise and disappeared. The glow of the headlights reflected against the night on the other side and then disappeared too. Toussaint approached the rise and shot the truck into second gear to pull the grade. The highway before him was empty when he reached the top. He looked off to the side of the highway. There was a dirt farm road that led between two fields into a wood. He must have turned out his lights and took the side road, Toussaint thought. He couldn’t have got that far ahead of me.

Toussaint pulled into the road and hit his brights, illuminating the grove of trees. A yellow haze of dust still lingered in the air over the road. There were two lines of heavy tire marks crushed into the dry ruts. He stopped the truck and turned off the engine and cut the lights. He could faintly hear the engine of the other truck toiling along the back road through the woods. In a few minutes the truck would take another road and cross the border into Mississippi.

Toussaint felt among the tools beneath the seat until he found a heavy tire iron. He went around to the back of the truck and inserted the flat end of the iron behind the padlocked hinge on the two doors. He pried the screws loose and twisted the tire iron sideways until the hinge snapped. He pulled the doors open and climbed in. The crates were stacked against one wall. He fitted the iron under one of the crate tops and wedged it ajar, and then pulled it loose with his hand. He took out the packing and looked at the fur pelts inside. He turned the crate over on the floor and struck a match. They were nutria and rabbit pelts. He splintered another crate open with the iron. It was the same thing. He smashed in the sides of three more and scattered the furs over the floor. They were all rabbit and nutria pelts. The whole thing is almost worthless, he thought. They hired me to carry a load that ain’t worth two hundred dollars. The other truck is carrying the good stuff, and they was going to let me be picked up. They robbed a fur company, and the stuff is so hot they can’t get it out of the state. Bonham loaded me with cheap pelts and was going to feed me to the police while his other boy slipped out on the back roads. The police don’t know the difference between nutria and beaver. They’d think they had the real stuff. By the time they found out, the other truck would be gone. Bonham set me up for a stretch in the penitentiary, and I stepped right into it.

He climbed down from the back and shut the doors. He was going to leave the truck and hitchhike to the city. It would be better to leave it here than in town. An automobile came down the highway and slowed as it passed the farm road. It pulled off on the shoulder to make a U-turn and came back towards Toussaint. He threw the tire iron under the truck as the car turned into the road and caught him in its headlights. He walked to the cab and opened the door to get in. The car drew abreast of him and stopped. On the door was the white emblem of the state police. Two officers sat in the front seat. The driver turned a flashlight on Toussaint.

“What are you doing back here?” he said.

“Pulled off the road to get some sleep.”

“Most companies tell their drivers to stay on the highway.”

“Mine’s different.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Bonham Shipping Company in New Orleans.”

“Let me see your papers.”

“I ain’t got any. Take the light out of my eyes.”

“See what he’s carrying,” he said to the other officer. The far door opened and the second officer got out and went to the back of the truck.

Toussaint looked around him. It was too far to the woods, and the fields afforded no cover. There was nothing to do except stand there and listen to the whirr of the cars on the highway and look into the hot circle of light held in his face.

“The lock’s broken,” the second officer said from behind the truck, and then, “This is the one. There’re furs all over the place. He’s been breaking open the crates.”

The driver got out of the car and took the handcuffs from the leather case on his belt. He snipped them open.

“You don’t need them,” Toussaint said.

“Put out your wrists.”

Toussaint held them out.

“What’s wrong with your hand?”

“I broke it.”

“All right. Get in the back.”

The second officer returned and got in beside the Negro. He handed a small notebook to the man in the front seat.

“Here’s the license number,” he said. “It’s the truck that was stolen out in Gretna yesterday.”

Toussaint looked out the window at the fields and listened to the whirr of the cars on the highway.

“They add on three years for auto theft,” the driver said.

“I didn’t steal it,” Toussaint said.

“Where did you get the furs?”

“Bonham paid me to drive them out of the state.”

“How did you think you were going to get past us?” the second officer said.

“I didn’t have nothing to do with no robbery. The stuff you want is already in Mississippi. Them pelts is worthless.”

They didn’t understand Toussaint and ignored him. He looked at the fields and said nothing while the officer in front used the radio to put in a call for another car to come pick up the stolen truck. Both of the policemen felt they had done a good job in capturing Toussaint and the load of furs. While they waited for the other car to arrive, the driver asked Toussaint how he had hurt his hand. When the Negro told him the driver said he should have stuck to prizefighting.