Half of Paradise

Toussaint Boudreaux

They were clearing a field of stumps the day he escaped. Toussaint waited with the team of mules while Brother Samuel cut the stump from its roots with a chain saw. The field looked flat and bare with the trees cut down. Pieces of splintered wood were strewn over the ground. The air was loud with the knock of the axes and the whine of the saws. There was a big pile of brush burning on the edge of the field. Samuel put down the saw and chopped the remaining roots loose with an axe. His mud-colored face was slick with heat. He rested on one knee and swung the axe down over his shoulder. Toussaint backed up the mules and fastened the chains around the stump. Easing the mules forward, he let them tighten against their harness, then slapped the reins down on their backs; they strained for a moment and then pulled the stump free. He and Samuel took up their axes and split it in pieces to put in the wheelbarrow.

“You ain’t talking today,” Brother Samuel said.

“Got something on my mind,” Toussaint said.

Most of the gangs were working at the other end of the field. Evans was the only guard close by. He stood off to the side of the burning brush, from where he could see all his men. The fire was very hot. Toussaint rolled the wheelbarrow past Evans and began throwing pieces of the stump into the flames. He looked back across the field. It was almost time for lunch and the other guards were taking their gangs back to the road to wait for the food truck.

The fringe of the woods was just behind the brash pile. Toussaint left a thick piece of tree limb in the bottom of the wheelbarrow. Evans stood about thirty yards away in his khaki uniform and cork sun helmet. He took off his helmet and wiped the inside of it with his handkerchief. Toussaint knew that once he was past Evans he could get across the short span of ground into the safety of the trees before the other guards realized anyone had escaped. He looked back across the field again. None of the other guards was looking this way. He pushed the wheelbarrow along the rutted ground until he was opposite Evans. He let the wheelbarrow drop on its side, and knelt with his back to the guard and wrenched the rubber tire from the wheel.

“What’s the matter?” Evans said.

“The wheel busted.”

“Fix it.”

“The tire split. I got to go back to the line shack for another one.”

“You ain’t going nowhere. Let me see it.”

Toussaint gripped the tree limb tightly. He waited for Evans to get close. He raised up quickly and struck him squarely across the forehead. The limb was rotten and it broke in his hand. Evans fell back heavily and lay still, his cork sun helmet beside him. Then Toussaint was racing across the bare strip of ground beside the brush pile, expecting to hear a guard call out to the others, into the protection of the woods, the branches whipping against his face and tearing his clothes. He tripped across the vines that covered the ground, and the thornbushes broke his skin. He ran through the undergrowth and briar, and then the woods began to thin and he could see the green grass on the riverbank through the trees.

He ran down the slope and dove into the water. Swimming out to the middle, he let the current catch him and carry him downstream. He looked at the high clay banks and the trees hanging over the water. There was a houseboat tied to the shore. He didn’t see anyone on it. He went underwater and stayed down until he believed he was past it. Some sunken tree branches brushed under his legs. He came up for air and swam towards the opposite bank. The river made a curve ahead, and beyond it a logging company was working in the woods. He walked up through the shallows onto the mud flat. The police would be delayed while the dogs had to hunt along the bank for his scent after crossing the river. He entered a pecan orchard and stopped to get his breath and pull off his boots. The leather was wet and would blister his feet, and running was faster barefooted. The orchard opened onto a meadow; to the right there was a narrow bayou that cut back through a thicket. He carried his boots in one hand and followed the bayou, walking in the shallows as much as possible so the dogs wouldn’t be able to track him. He took off his shirt and turned it inside out to hide the stenciled prison letters and put it back on again.

By late afternoon he had reached a crossroads off the main highway. There was a grocery-and-hardware store on the corner and some farmhouses in the distance. A bridled mule was hitched to the porch railing of the store. A Negro came out with a cloth sack of groceries, got on the mule, and rode down the gravel lane. Toussaint knew the police would have the main roads blocked, and the town constables would be watching for him in the small settlements. He needed food, a change of clothes, a gun, and ammunition. He wanted to keep going south until he hit the swamp country around Bayou Lafourche; once there, he could get a pirogue and slip through the canals into Barataria where he could hide indefinitely. He had relatives in Barataría, and people in that part of the country cared little for the law. Later, when the police had stopped looking for him, he could get out of the state.

He hid in a cornfield and waited for nightfall. A police car came down the road and stopped in front of the store. An officer got out and spoke to the men sitting on the porch. He went back to his car and stood with one foot on the running board and talked into the microphone of his radio. Toussaint could see the sunlight glint on the butt of his revolver. He wished he had a gun. He felt helpless without one. There was a chance they could take him back to the work camp if he had no weapon.

The officer got in his car and drove off. Toussaint smelled the clean odor of the earth. He rubbed some dirt between his hands. This was good land. The corn was high and green, and there was a field of strawberries across the road. Around his home most of the men were fishermen, but he liked the land and things growing. It had been a long time since he had been on a farm. There had been his time in prison, and before that the city where he saw nothing except concrete buildings and the faces of people he didn’t understand, nor who understood him. He could have lain in the field without ever getting up. The soil was cool and a thin breeze ruffled through the cornstalks. A cottontail jumped into his row and stopped, its ears pressed down against its back, the nose twitching. We got to keep moving, don’t we, rabbit? Toussaint thought. If we don’t there won’t be no more cornfields or strawberries or going home. There won’t be nothing.

That night he waited until the store closed. He could see two men playing dominoes through the window. The light went off in back and the two men and the owner came out on the porch. They got into a car and drove down the road. Toussaint moved forward to the edge of the field and remained watching to make sure they were not coming back for anything. He could see the lighted farmhouses in the distance. The moon was down, and the road was dark. He could hear the crickets and the frogs in the woods. He crossed the road and went around to the back of the store. He pushed in the screen on the door with his hand until it broke from its fastening. The inside door had a glass pane in it. He tried to force the door by slowly pushing his weight against it. It was bolted. He got a piece of brick and wrapped it in newspaper. He broke out the glass near the corner of the frame and reached in and slid the bolt loose.

He was thirsty. He hadn’t had a drink of water since he swam the river. He took a bottle of pop out of the cooler and drank it. He opened another and drank it while he went along the shelves and took the cans of food he would need. He found a gunnysack behind the counter and put in the cans. There was a rack with used clothing and work clothes by the front door. He took a shirt and a pair of trousers and put them in the sack with the cans and tied a knot in the top. He set the sack on the counter and looked around the store. The guns rested on wooden pegs against the wall. They were all secondhand. He took a Winchester off its pegs and worked the action. He could find only two boxes of shells for it. He loaded the magazine and put the rest of the shells in his pocket. He would need a knife also. He slid back the cover of a glass case and chose a good Queen knife with a yellow bone handle and two long blades. He picked up the gunnysack from the counter and looked out the front window at the road. He went out the back door and circled around the store, crossed the road, and ran through the cornfield into the woods.

He went deep into the trees before he stopped. He took the shirt and trousers from the sack and changed clothes. He rolled his prison denims into a ball and dug a hole in the leaves and soil with his hands and buried them. He traveled south through the meadows and wooded areas, avoiding the roads and farm settlements. He made good time, and by dawn he had found a deserted cabin in a pinewood where he could hide until the next night. One side of the cabin was stored with grain, and there was a damp cool mealy smell inside. There were tracks in the grain where the squirrels had come to feed. The roof of the cabin had a big hole in it, and Toussaint could see the blue light in the east spreading across the sky. He was tired, and after he had eaten he lay back in the grain and slept.

It was noon when he awoke and heard the dogs barking. They had picked up his trail at the crossroads. He grabbed his rifle and ran out of the cabin into the hot light. He hadn’t thought they would catch up with him so soon. He cut through the woods and hoped that he could find a bayou where he could throw the dogs off his scent. The trees were thickly spaced and slowed his running; there was no bayou. The barking of the dogs seemed farther behind him now, but that was because the police had stopped to search the grounds around the cabin; it would not take them long to discover that he had just fled and was less than a mile away. He had left the sack of food behind.

He headed for the marsh. It was the only thing left. If they caught him in the open he would either be killed without a fight, or worse, handcuffed and returned to camp. The marsh was a long way, and he had to travel at a steady pace without halting to rest. The main highway was off to his left and the state troopers were skirting the woods to the right, trying to cut him off. His path was laid out for him like a geometric rectangle; on one extreme was the dead end where he would make his stand, and on both sides were the police, who tightened the rectangle like a vise with each passing hour.

Once they almost got him. He was crossing a dried-out river bottom when the deputies opened fire. The river bottom was flat and reddish brown and baked by the sun, and the clay broke up and sank under his boots. He splashed through the few remaining rivulets of water that flowed through the low places in the bottom. He ran up the opposite bank and crouched behind a log and shot at them until they retreated from the bluff out of sight. The log was a cypress trunk that had washed over the bank in a flood and had been left when the water receded. The trunk was eaten by worms. A bullet splintered against it and filled his face with slivers of wood. A trooper had climbed down into a wash and was shooting at him from his flank. Toussaint fired back and saw a puff of dust jump up behind the trooper. He shot again as the man crawled rapidly back to the bluff and took cover. He sighted his rifle across the log and waited. They weren’t going to try again. They were going farther down the bluff to slip across the river bottom and flank him. He ran up the levee and down the other side into the woods. His face stung and bled slightly from the cypress splinters. He had been lucky. If they had been more careful they would have taken him.

He continued due west, pausing at intervals to fire at the police. He came out of the woods at evening and crossed a railroad embankment. He could see the swamp ahead of him. He saw the oaks with the moss in their limbs, and the cypress with their trunks swollen out at the waterline, and the alligator grass and bamboo and willow trees, and the white cranes that flew above the gray of the treetops.

The troopers had finally closed the rectangle. He broke through the underbrush, holding the Winchester at port arms, and started up the slope in a full run towards the marsh. It was almost dusk, and if he could reach the top of the rise without being hit the troopers would have to wait until morning before they tried to take him again. There was a rifle report behind him and a bullet slammed into the dirt by his feet. He hunched his shoulders and zigzagged from side to side as two more shots rang out. They were getting closer. He knew they were missing their mark by only a couple of inches whenever he heard that hollow throp near his head. He stumbled and fell, landing on his elbows so he wouldn’t drop the rifle. He dug his boots in the ground and lurched to his feet. There were more shots behind him, but they were shooting too fast now to be accurate. He thought his lungs would burst before he reached the top of the slope. He dove headlong over the crest and lay panting in the weeds.

They had stopped shooting. Toussaint raised his head just enough to see a dozen men spread out in an even line behind the undergrowth. The swamp was to his back, and there were two deep clay gullies that flanked each side of the crest. He had been in this part of the country before. The state had used convict labor to sandbag the levee when the river overflowed a year ago. He had deliberately chosen this particular place to make his stand. He could knock them down one at a time if they tried to move up through the gullies. He didn’t think they would come up behind him. The marsh was twelve miles across, and it would take more than a day to get a flatboat through, because there was only one channel and it was shallow and choked with logs and sandbars. They could enter the marsh farther down on this side and try to circle him, but there were many quicksand bogs and deep holes and he doubted if they would risk losing any men in the water.

They would come in the morning. They didn’t have machine guns now, but they would have them in the morning and the sun would be at their backs. They had it all in their favor, but he would make their job hard. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and spread it neatly on the ground. He counted out his cartridges on the handkerchief. Fifteen, plus nine in the magazine. He wouldn’t waste a round. He would wait until they came into full view (and they would have to) before he shot. He put the shells back in his pocket. The bluing of the rifle was worn off. There were specks of rust along the barrel. He rubbed the thin rust off with the palm of his hand. He opened the breech and wiped it and the action clean of grit with his handkerchief.

The afterglow of the sun faded to darkness. He heard a truck grinding in low gear through a field opposite him. They were bringing in more men and guns. He thought about water. He could go without food, but he would have to have something to drink in order to last through the next day. The July sun would beat straight down into his eyes until afternoon. Toussaint crept down the backside of the slope to the edge of the marsh. He would take a deep drink now, and just before daylight he would take off his shirt and soak it in the water so he could suck the moisture from the cloth throughout the morning. The water was thick with lily pads and reeds. He cleared the scum off with his hand. It wasn’t good to drink from the swamp, but he had no choice. He could bear the mosquitoes, the hunger, and the long hours without sleep, and if he didn’t become sick he could make his fight a good one. The water tasted sour in his mouth. He climbed back up to the crest and lay down, cradling the Winchester in the crook of his arm. A fire was burning down the slope. They were making coffee. He could see a man shadowed against the light throwing sticks in the fire. The range was too far for an accurate shot, and Toussaint would not have fired, anyway. He would wait and give them their chance in the morning.

He waited on his stomach in the dark for dawn to come. He weakened during the night and there was a hard cramp in the lower portion of his body. The swamp water had been bad and he was beginning to feel its effect. He felt light-headed, and the campfire in the distance was blurred and out of focus. He pressed his fist in the pit of his stomach to ease the pain. God, don’t let me pass out, he thought. Let me be ready for them in the morning. I got to be at my best tomorrow. This is the end of the line and it’s got to be right. I’d rather turn this gun on myself than have them come up here and find me passed out.

He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and shook his head. His mind cleared for a moment, then something twisted inside him like a piece of hot metal. He clenched his teeth to keep from crying out. He had had dysentery in the camp, but not this bad. He gripped his stomach so tightly that his fingernails tore through his shirt. The pain was getting worse. That was the way swamp fever was. It came in spasms. One minute his forehead was hot as an iron, and then he would be shivering with cold.

If only he had a blanket. Or a big, warm quilt like the one he and his brothers slept on behind the French Market in New Orleans. He was thirteen then and the twins were a year older. They came to town on the weekends and stayed behind the Market where the trucks were unloaded. It always smelled of dead fish and rotting vegetables. At night they went down to Bourbon Street and danced on the sidewalk for the tourists. One of his brothers beat on a cardboard box while he and the other brother clapped their hands and sang.

The tourists threw their nickels and dimes on the pavement, and he hated them for it. He even hated himself when he stooped to pick them up and say Thank you, suh. Yes, yes, thank you, suh. My daddy don’t have money to put clothes on our back and we got to crawl around on our hands and knees to scrape up your pocket change, but thank you anyway.

After the Quarter had closed for the night they went back to the French Market and counted their money in the dim light of the streetlamp. He felt ashamed when he saw his brothers laugh and shake the change in their hands. They would turn up their palms for the white man’s tip the rest of their lives. When they went to sleep he hid his face in the quilt and cried.

Toussaint rolled over in the grass and unhitched the top button of his trousers to ease the knotted ball in his abdomen. The campfire burned lower as the night passed. He bit his lips and his face strained as he tried to straighten his legs. The pain was spreading into his loins. The crickets and the nightbirds were quiet, and he could faintly hear the troopers talking. He thought of Billy Jo and Jeffry, and he wondered if the police would return him to camp in the back of a pickup truck with a tarpaulin over him. Evans would uncover him, and everyone in gang five would stand motionless and sullen and look down at him while the captain made his speech, and Daddy Claxton would cough up phlegm and spit, and Brother Samuel would stand with his straw hat over his ears and pray something about devil warts and the Black Man, and maybe somebody would turn aside and get sick, and Evans would pull the tarpaulin back over him and the truck would drive off and he would roll back and forth with the motion of the truck until it stopped and they put him in a box which would be picked up by the state health board and either buried in the parish cemetery without a headstone or turned over to the medical school.

It was nearly dawn. The eastern sky was rose-tinted with the morning’s first light. He pumped a shell into the chamber of his rifle and shifted himself so he could watch the troopers. The slope was covered by a mist from the marsh. His clothes were wet from the dew. His body ached terribly, and he felt like water inside, but the worst part of the fever was over. His head was clear and he would be ready for them when they came.

The sun was red and just above the horizon. The mist over the slope began to thin as the morning became less cool. The troopers were gathered in a circle while the parish sheriff spoke to them. Off to one side a man held the dogs by their leashes. Toussaint squinted down the slope; he couldn’t mistake the cork sun helmet and the sunburnt face. It was Evans. The sheriff left the other men and walked to the foot of the rise. He was within range of Toussaint’s rifle. He put his hands on his hips and glared up at the crest.

“Come down, Boudreaux.”

Toussaint chewed a weed between his teeth. You got courage, he thought. I could bring you down like a coon in a tree.

“I gave you your chance,” the sheriff said, and went back to the troopers. They moved up to the base of the slope. Toussaint sighted at a man’s throat to allow for the drop of the bullet and fired. He ducked his head just as a burst from a machine gun raked the crest. He ejected the spent cartridge and rolled sideways. They would be waiting for his head to appear at the same place. Two troopers tried to get farther up the rise. They wore campaign hats and Sam Browne belts. He shot at the first one and watched him grab his knee and tumble back down the slope. The other trooper kept coming. He was a heavy man and his face was sweating from the effort. Toussaint worked the lever action and hit him in the chest. He spun around and dropped on his back. He tried to sit up and pull his revolver from his holster. His rifle lay behind him. He fell flat again with his mouth and eyes open, staring at the sky.

Toussaint wished he had a bolt action rifle. It was hard to shoot from a prone position with the Winchester. A deputy fired from behind a log with a machine gun while another trooper ran for the gully. The deputy fired until his clip was empty, the bullets cutting pockmarks in the dirt, ripping up divots of grass around Toussaint’s head. Toussaint waited until the hammering of the machine gun had stopped. He put the V of his sights on the campaign hat that showed just above the log. He shot and the hat flew in the air, and he turned his rifle on the trooper in the gully. He missed and the trooper slid back down the clay embankment to safety, then the firing stopped altogether.

Evans came out from behind the truck with the dogs. They were going to turn them loose. Evans released the two German shepherds and kept the bloodhound on its leash. The dogs charged up the hill towards Toussaint. They were fine animals and he didn’t want to hurt them. Only a man like Evans would turn his dogs loose to get killed, he thought. He pulled back from the crest, standing erect, and held the rifle by its barrel. He swung and hit the first dog across the muzzle with the stock. The dog flipped sideways and lay quivering on the ground. There was a split along its jowl that ran back to the thick gray-black fur around the neck. The second dog bounded over the crest and tore into Toussaint’s legs. He kicked and pounded its neck with the rifle butt. The dog’s jaws were locked around his ankle, cutting to the bone. He inverted the rifle and shot it through the back. The bullet broke the dog’s spine, and he had to shoot it again to put it out of pain.

He limped back to the crest and took his position. The troopers had moved up the gullies while he fought the dogs. The firing was heavy and it came at him from both flanks. The acrid smell of burnt powder filled the air. He took the last cartridges from his pocket and pushed them down into the magazine. He crawled to the edge of one gully and tried to hold them back. There was a shot behind him, a whine like a bullet ricocheting off rock, and suddenly his stomach was aflame. His eyes throbbed and he couldn’t breathe; he was spitting blood. He held his forearm across his belt line, his rifle in one hand, and stumbled away from the crest to the water’s edge. He fell in a sitting position with one leg bent under him.

This is it, he thought. I ain’t got to go no more. The wound in my side turns the grass to red. He saw the troopers come over the rise, silhouetted against the sun. He could see Evans among them, as though he were looking at him through a long tunnel. He could have raised his rifle and shot him, but he knew it would do no good. There would always be another Evans and another after him. Toussaint was very tired. I wish I could lie in the corn and look up through the stalks. His head sagged on his chest, and he fell backwards in the leaves with his arms stretched out by his side.

J.P. Winfield

He had a morning appointment with the doctor. He took a cab to the doctor’s office and gave his name to the nurse and read the newspapers in the waiting room while she told the doctor he was there. Later the nurse took him into a small white room that had the depressing antiseptic smell of a hospital to it. The doctor came in a few minutes later. He was slight and dark featured and he had a gray mustache and his hair was beginning to thin along his forehead.

“What’s the trouble?” he said.

“I want a checkup.”

“Is it anything in particular?”

“I blacked out a couple of times,” J.P. said.

“Under what circumstances?”

“I just blacked out.”

“Take off your shirt.”

The doctor listened to his heart and breathing with the stethoscope.

“Do a couple of knee bends,” he said.

J.P. did them. The doctor listened some more with the stethoscope.

“Let’s check your blood pressure.”

He wrapped the rubber tourniquet around J.P.’s arm and pumped it up with the rubber ball in his hand.

“It’s high,” he said.

“How much?”

“Considerably more than it should be. Did you know that you had a heart murmur?”

“No.”

“I want to make a cardiograph test.”

“What’s that?”

“It will tell us more about the condition of your heart.”

“How bad is a murmur?”

“It depends. It might mean you have to take things a little easier.”

J.P. put his shirt back on.

“Do you drink excessively?” the doctor said.

“No.”

“Are you taking any kind of drugs?”

“Barbiturates.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“Who prescribed them for you?”

“Another doctor.”

“Why do you need them?”

“I’m a singer. I keep late hours.”

“You’ll have to stop taking them. Your blood pressure is too high.”

“What will happen if I don’t stop?”

“They can put a severe strain on your heart.”

“Can you give me that test now?”

“Tell the nurse to make an appointment for you tomorrow. I can’t give it to you this morning,” he said. “Don’t take any barbiturates today, regardless of whether you have a prescription or not.”

“It’s a habit with me. I can’t get rid of it just like that.”

“You’ll have to unless you want to seriously damage your health.”

It was raining when J.P. returned the next afternoon. The sky was yellow from the rain, and the trees along the street were wet and very green. He went into the office and put his hat and raincoat on the rack. He went into the small white room and lay on the table while the doctor put the recorders on his chest. When the test was over the nurse came in and removed them. She and the doctor left the room. J.P. dressed and sat on the table. He looked out the window and saw the rain falling on the street out of the yellow sky. There was a magnolia tree in the yard by the side of the building, and the white petals of its flowers were scattered on the grass. The doctor came back in and closed the door behind him.

“I can’t tell you much more than I told you yesterday,” he said. “The murmur isn’t a bad one, but you will have to be careful.”

“About them barbiturates. I been taking them a long while. It ain’t easy to stop right off.”

“You might try a withdrawal period.”

“Ain’t there a treatment to let you down easy?”

“Is it only barbiturates you’re worried about?”

“I done told you.”

“You should commit yourself to a hospital if you’re addicted to anything stronger.”

“I ain’t taking nothing else.”

“I could get you into a private hospital.”

“Listen. You’re supposed to help my heart.”

“There’s nothing to do for a murmur. I can only tell you not to put a strain on yourself. Will you let me contact a friend of mine who treats narcotic cases?”

“No,” J.P. said.

“Then good day, sir.”

J.P. left the office and walked out on the street in the rain. He caught a taxi and rode back to the hotel. He listened to the tires roll along the wet concrete. He thought about what April had told him of her hospital cure. Six months to a year in a small room without any furniture except a bed that was bolted to the floor, and the shock treatments when they turn the high-pressure hoses on you or strap you to a table and run an electric current through your body, and when they gradually reduce your dosage of narcotics and then one day shut you off completely and you start the nightmares and your nose runs and you get sick if someone talks of food and everything inside you goes crack like a broken plate. Then someday you would get out and think you were clean, and like April you would be on it again in a couple of weeks. He couldn’t do it, he thought. It was too much. The taxi arrived at the hotel. He stepped out on the curb and stood under the colonnade out of the rain and paid the driver through the window. A year of treatment and it would start all over. He couldn’t beat it, and that was the end of that.

A week later was election day. Lathrop’s ticket won the Democratic primary by the largest majority in the state’s history, and the opposition was considered fortunate to have taken four parishes in the southern part of the state since it took none in the north. J.P. was at the hotel that evening, and April, Seth, and Hunnicut were listening to the returns over the radio in the next room. Seth opened the door that joined the two rooms. He had a glass of bourbon in his hand, and his face was red. He came over to the bed where J.P. was resting and put his hand on J.P.’s arm.

“Abraham Lincoln took the state,” he said.

“I ain’t interested,” J.P. said, opening his eyes.

“A bonus and free nigger pussy for us all.”

“Pour me a drink. There’s a glass on the table.”

Seth went to the other room and brought his bottle back. He clinked the lip of it on the glass and poured.

“I’m going to get me a big redheaded nigger woman,” he said.

J.P. sat up in bed and took the drink. He put on his shoes, leaving the strings untied, and went over to the ice pitcher on the dresser and poured some water in the glass.

“Mr. Lincoln has promised free nigger pussy to all white male voters,” Seth said.

“Did the sonofabitch really take the whole state?”

“He missed it by four parishes.”

“Is J.P. up?” April said from the next room.

“He ran off with a nigger woman,” Seth said.

“You’re very cute,” she said, still in the other room.

“He was with one of them big redheaded ones.”

“Why don’t you go somewhere else?” she said, now standing in the doorway.

“Your wife don’t want me, J.P.”

“Let it alone,” he said.

“Have a drink with us,” Seth said.

“Please leave,” she said.

“Sit down and drink some of Lathrop’s bourbon.”

“Tell him to leave,” she said to J.P.

“I offered her a drink.”

“You’re a drunk pig,” she said.

“My, my.”

“Tell him to get out, J.P.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Both of you make me sick,” she said.

“You better go, Seth.”

Seth went to the door and toasted them with his glass.

“Peace be with you, my children.”

April shut the door after him and put on the latch chain.

“I can’t stand that ass,” she said.

“Do you have any whiskey?”

“No.”

He called down to the bar for a bottle. A few minutes later a Negro porter knocked on the door. J.P. took the bottle and tipped him.

“Are you going to sit around and drink all night?” she said.

“For a while.”

“I’m sick of this place. Take me to a movie.”

“I’m leaving town in an hour,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m going back home for a few days.”

“What in the world for?”

“I ain’t been there since I went to work for Hunnicut.”

“I’m not going to stay here by myself.”

“Do what you like.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

“You wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“I’m sick of this hotel.”

“Hunnicut will take you to a movie.”

“It’s not fair to go off and leave me alone. You didn’t even tell me.”

“I’m going to pack my bag,” he said.

He opened his suitcase on the bed and took some clean shirts out of the dresser drawer.

“Damn you,” she said.

“Let’s don’t have no arguments tonight.”

“You have to be back for the show Saturday.”

“I’ll be here.”

“I’m going with you. Anything is better than staying here.”

“It’s a little hick town south of the Arkansas line, and you’d be ready to leave five minutes after you was there.”

He wrapped the bottle of bourbon in a soft shirt and put it in the suitcase. He phoned the desk clerk and told him to send up the porter. The Negro came in and took the suitcase out.

“I got to go now,” J.P. said.

“Don’t you want to stay and do something nice?”

“Goodbye.”

He carried his guitar with him in its gray felt cover and caught the nine o’clock train at the depot. It was an old train that pulled mostly freight to a few towns along the state line; it carried only two passenger cars hitched to the rear before the caboose. He sat in the front car in one of the leather seats, and felt the train jolt under him and the couplings bang as it moved out of the station past the lighted platform and baggage wagons and into the yards through the maze of tracks and the green and red signal lamps on the switches, and on past where other trains were pulled off on the sidings and the water tower and the board shacks with their roofs blackened by the passing locomotives. He looked out the window into the dark and saw the lighted glow of the city against the sky far behind him.

There were just a few people in his car. He took his suitcase off the rack and went into the men’s room. A gandy-walker was sleeping on the seat by the window. He wore overalls and heavy work shoes and a trainman’s cap. There was a lunch pail by his foot. He had a faded bandanna tucked into the bib of his overalls. He slept with his mouth partly open, and his face was unshaved and sunburned. J.P. opened his suitcase and took out the bottle. He mixed a drink with water in a paper cup. The gandy-walker woke up and went to the basin to wash his face. He sat back down and took a sandwich from his lunchpail and began eating. J.P. asked him if he wanted a drink.

“Yeah buddy,” he said.

He unscrewed the top from his coffee thermos and held it out for J.P. to pour.

“Have a sandwich,” he said.

“No, thanks.”

“Go ahead. My old lady makes up more than I can eat.”

J.P. took the sandwich. It was a piece of cold steak between bread.

The trainman was eating and drinking and talking at the same time.

“You’re the fellow that got on with the guitar I seen you on the platform,” he said. “Go get it and let’s play a tune.”

“It’ll wake up the people in the car.”

“We can go out in the vestibule. It ain’t going to bother nobody.”

“You want another drink?”

He held out the red thermos top while J.P. poured.

“Go get the guitar. I play a little bit myself.”

“All right.” J.P. pushed aside the curtain that hung over the door of the men’s room and went back into the car. The lights were down, and the few people in the car were sleeping. He took the guitar off the rack and unzipped its cloth cover. He put the cover on the seat and went back to the men’s room.

“You don’t mind, do you?” the trainman said. “I’d like to hear some music before I get off at the next town.”

J.P. got his bottle, and he and the trainman went out to the vestibule. The area between the two cars swayed back and forth with the motion of the train. They could hear the wheels clicking loudly on the tracks. The door windows had no glass in them, and the wind was cool and smelled of the farmland. They could see the fields of corn and cotton in the night under the moon, and a pinewoods that stretched over the hills into the dark green of the meadows.

“Play if you want to,” J.P. said, handing him the guitar.

“You sure you don’t mind? Some fellows don’t like other people picking their guitar.”

“Help yourself.”

“You know ‘Brakeman’s Blues’?”

“Play it.”

The gandy-walker held the fingers of his left hand tight on the strings and frets and strummed with the thumb and index finger of his other hand. He propped his leg on the metal stool that the conductor used to help passengers off, and rested the guitar across his thigh.

He played quite well. J.P. listened and drank out of the bottle. Through the window he could see the black-green of the pines spread over the hills and the moon low in the sky and there was a river winding out of the woods across a field and he saw the moonlight reflecting on the water.

“You do all right,” J.P. said.

“I reckon you can pick, yourself.”

“Play another one.”

“No, I’m getting down pretty soon.”

“Take a drink.”

“Much obliged,” he said. He drank out of the bottle. “Play one yourself. I’d like to hear.”

J.P. took the guitar from him. He leaned back against the wall of the vestibule, slightly bent over the guitar, and moved the callused tips of his fingers over the frets. The trainman drank from the whiskey and listened.

“That’s good. You got a nice style,” the gandy-walker said. “I ain’t heard good twelve-string guitar like that in a long time.”

J.P. set the guitar down and took a drink.

“You must be one of them professionals,” the gandy-walker said.

“I used to be a farmer.”

“You from around here?”

“A little further north. Up by Arkansas.”

“I worked in Arkansas. I railroaded all over the country. I was all the way to California once. I heard a lot of good picking, but you’re good as any. Where did you learn?”

“From a bum in a Salvation Army camp.”

“Is that a fact?”

“He didn’t own nothing but a five-dollar pawnshop guitar, but Jesus he could play. He come up to the house one day and asked for a drink of water and directions to the camp. I give him some meat and biscuit, and about a week later I was walking past the camp to the store and I seen him sitting under a tree with his guitar. He called me over and said he was going to teach me to play. I didn’t pay him no mind, and then he started playing and it was like nothing I ever heard. I went down to see him every evening for almost a month, and he’d let me keep the guitar overnight to practice with. Then one day he grabbed a freight and I never seen him again. He was the best, though. I never heard nobody except Leadbelly that could play as good.”

J.P. and the trainman both took a drink off the bottle. It was good whiskey. They were nearing a town. The train whistle blew at the crossing, and the red signal light was swinging mechanically from a wood post by the side of the road and a bell was clanging to warn the automobiles. Another train sped past them in the opposite direction, and the noise was loud in the vestibule. The gandy-walker tried to say something and had to stop. He picked up his lunch pail and pointed out the door. The other train finally went past.

“I get down here,” he said when it was quiet again. Thanks for the drink.”

“You bet.”

“Close the door after me. The conductor don’t like it open.”

“Sure thing.”

“So long, buddy.”

“So long,” J.P. said.

The gandy-walker swung the vestibule door inward and put his feet on the single steel step. The train was in the yard now and it was not moving very fast, but it was still dangerous to step down unless you did it right. He stood backwards on the step and held to the handrails with the handle of his lunch pail hooked over his thumb. The gravel bedding next to the track rushed by the open door. He eased one foot back and let it barely touch the ground, the rocks skipping up under his shoe, and put his weight down agilely and released his hold, and then he was gone into the dark somewhere behind the last lights of the train.

J.P. stood alone in the vestibule and thought of the tramp that had taught him guitar, and he thought of the songs he had wanted to write which would probably never be written. He thought of Woody Guthrie, an Okie who bummed his way across the Dust Bowl to California during the depression with thousands of others to live in the Hoovervilles and tarpaper shacks and to ride the rods with never enough to eat and to get thrown in jails by town constables who feared a man with a hole in the bottom of his shoe. Guthrie wrote ballads about the Okies and America, and he drifted across the nation from the West to the East Coast and all the time he was writing and singing songs about the things he saw, and other people were singing them in the Hoovervilles and tarpaper shacks, and he never copyrighted what he wrote and his music about the diamond deserts and the redwood forests and the New York island got him almost nothing. And there was Joe Hill, who had belonged to the I.W.W. and sung the songs of the working class that fought outside the factories with axe handles and lengths of pipe when striking was considered Red and the beginning of revolution, and Joe Hill was an I.W.W. spreading revolution and anarchy and his songs were sung by the Marxists, so he was stood against a wall in the Utah penitentiary and shot to death. J.P. thought about Jimmie Rodgers, a railroader from Meridian, Mississippi, who was the finest country guitarist of his time, and who had to quit railroading and make a living by singing when he contracted tuberculosis. But his songs were about the great trains that rolled from California to Texas and he was never able to get away from his life as a railroader. His last days were spent in a New York recording studio where he made records and became sick with fatigue and slept on a cot until he died.

J.P. looked out the window into the dark. The train was past the station now, and he was out in the country again with the cool night air blowing in his face, the moon rising through the clouds above the green hills. He wondered at what point in his life everything had slipped loose and why he had never written the song about the train that came out of the woods in the late evening with the red sun just above the trees; and why hadn’t he written about the heat lightning flashing in the east and the rain falling slowly on the young cotton with the white and red flowers showing along the tops of the rows, and the nigger funeral marches down by the river where the dead were buried on a mud flat that was washed away once a year by the flood? He had never written anything except a campaign song for Jim Lathrop, and now with a heart condition and a cocaine habit there wasn’t much time left for writing.

It was still dark when he arrived in town and stepped down on the platform from the train. He carried his suitcase and guitar through the waiting room and out the other door down the front walk towards the town square. The morning was cool and dark and there was just a thin ridge of blue light on the horizon. He crossed the street and walked a block to the square, and he saw the old brick courthouse set up high on the lawn and the luminous face of the clock on the steeple, and there were big shade trees in front and wood benches where the farmers came to sit on Saturdays, and around the four sides of the square there were hardware and drygoods stores and barber shops and feed suppliers, and everything was quiet now and the trees looked black on the lawn and he could hear a cat-squirrel chattering.

He went to the hotel on the corner and took a room over the street. He lay on the bed and watched it grow light until he fell asleep. When he woke at ten o’clock, the sunlight was bright through the window and he had slept with his clothes on. The ceiling fan was turning slowly over his head, but the room was becoming hot as the sun got higher, and he changed his shirt and went out to a café to eat breakfast.

J.P. had no family to speak of. His father had been a tenant farmer who brought his family down from Arkansas during the depression, and after he had located them on a seven-acre company farm he put his single change of clothes in a cardboard suitcase and caught a bus out of town and no one saw him again. The mother worked the fields with the children and sold eggs and butter at back doors in town, and she died two years later from cancer, for which she never had treatment. J.P. and his sister were raised by the older brother, and they continued to live on the seven acres of burnt-out land that would not yield enough cotton to come out with a profit at the end of the year, and when J.P. was almost grown the brother became involved with a Negro woman and was found dead on a country road one night with razor cuts all over his body, and although several Negroes were arrested and one was executed no one was ever sure who had done it. The sister stayed on another year, and one time J.P. caught her laying in the woods with a man, and he beat the man senseless with a stick and dragged her home and locked her in the bedroom, and she got out during the night and he called the sheriff to bring her back and this time he kept her locked in for three days and she got out again and the last he heard of her she was working in a brothel in Little Rock.

So he had no one in town to go see and he didn’t really know why he had come, except that he was sick of his wife and vitamin tonic and nigger politics.

He ate an order of eggs and bacon and drank a second cup of coffee. He paid the check and walked down the street to the barbershop. He looked at the courthouse and the trees and the green lawn in the sunlight. The barbershop had a candystriped pole in front of it and an awning that stretched out over the sidewalk. Two men sat in the shade on wicker chairs. The cement by their feet was stained with tobacco juice. J.P. went into the shop and sat in one of the chairs along the wall and picked up a newspaper. There was only one barber, and he was shaving a large fat man in the chair. There were some other men sitting in the chairs farther down the wall.

Look, it’s J.P., someone said. It sure is. I didn’t recognize you. Hey boys, it’s J.P. How are you all doing? We didn’t figure to see you back here no more. I’m just visiting a couple of days. Hey, fellows, come on in and see J.P. You don’t look like the same fellow. He’s been running with them rich women. We been hearing about you. You gone right up to the top. Me and the old lady listen to you every Saturday night. There was a piece about you in the town paper a while back. I was saying to my old lady we used to shoot pool together down at the billiard hall. You fellows look like you’re working hard. Farming ain’t no good no more, J.P. A man does just as good setting in the barbershop. You sure done all right for yourself. Tell us about some of them rich women. I’m married now. Did you hear that? Old J.P. has got hisself a woman. I bet that don’t keep him out of trouble. Let’s go down to the billiard hall and I’ll buy the beers. Come with us, Sam. I got to keep the shop open for these loafers to set in. Ain’t one of them got six bits in his pocket for a haircut. Sam ain’t changed none, has he, J.P.? Let’s get a beer. He’s a buying.

The six of them went to the billiard hall two doors down from the barbershop. There were four pool tables inside and one billiard table, and a long bar with a foot rail ran the length of the room, and there were places to play checkers and dominoes. The room was dimly lighted except for the electric bulbs in the tin shades over the tables, and the fans attached to the walls oscillated back and forth and cleared the smoke from the air. They stood at the bar and J.P. ordered the beers and paid for them. The bottles were sweating and cold, and the beer tasted good. They had another round and J.P. paid. The men he was with were farmers who seldom farmed; they spent their time in the billiard hall or in the barbershop or sitting in front of the courthouse and sometimes in jail. He didn’t remember all of their names and there was a couple of them who had recently come over from a pool table and were now drinking that he didn’t know at all.

“You remember when we used to go see Ella across the river?” a man named Clois asked. There was a stubble of beard on his face and he wore overalls; he had never worked since he had learned how to switch a pair of dice in a game and not get caught. “We was inside with her and her old man come home and we had to crawl out the back window and hide in the cotton field because he was looking for us with a horse quirt.”

“I reckon J.P. is getting his share now,” another man said.

“Didn’t you hear him say he was married?”

“That don’t keep a good man from tomcatting.”

“Is you going to be in the movies, J.P.?”

“I ain’t figuring on it,” he said.

“He’s got plenty of what he needs right here.”

“You fellows have another beer. I got to run along.” He put two dollars for the next round on the bar and finished his beer.

“He’s a going to see old Ella, I bet,” a man said.

“She’s still out there. A dollar a throw,” Clois said.

“Come on back later. We’re going to have a game in back.”

“You all are too sharp for me,” J.P. said.

“Listen to that. He used to roll sevens like there wasn’t no other numbers.”

“See you later,” J.P. said.

“Tell Ella we’re coming out to see her,” Clois said.

J.P. left the billiard hall and walked down the street towards the hardware store. The sun was above the courthouse now, and the day was getting hot. The shade trees across the street shadowed the lawn, and some old men sat on the benches out of the heat whittling shavings on the grass and spitting tobacco juice and watching the people move along the sidewalk. He went into the hardware store and bought some light fishing tackle — a detachable cane pole that came in three sections, twenty feet of six-pound test line, a wood float, some number four hooks, a piece of gut leader, and several small weights. The clerk wrapped the cane pole up and put the rest of the tackle in a paper bag.

J.P. hired one of the town’s two taxis and rode down to the river where it made a bend by a deserted sawmill and the logs were jammed up along the shore under the overhanging trees. He walked down the green slope of the bank and looked out over the water, red from the clay and swirling in eddies around the logs across the river there were more trees and some Negro shacks and a pirogue was tied by its painter to a willow tree and pulling in the current. He laid his tackle down in the grass and found a piece of board to dig worms with. He squatted on the ground and dug in the soft dirt around the roots of a tree, sifting the dirt through his hands and picking out the worms one by one and putting them in a tin can. The worms were small, not like the big night crawlers he used to look for with a flashlight behind the barn at home. He scooped some dirt and leaves into the can and sat down under a tree on the bank and inserted the joints of the detachable pole into each other. Letting out the twenty feet of line, he tied a knot one foot from the end of the pole and another right at the tip to even out the pull of a fish along the whole cane. He slipped his float up the line and plugged the wood stick in the hole to keep it secure, and put on two small weights and mashed them tight on the line with his teeth, and tied the gut leader and the hook with a slip knot at the end. He threaded a worm carefully over the hook, not exposing the barb, and dropped the line into the water between the logs where the catfish nested.

The wind was cool coming through the trees, and he sat in the shade and looked at the sun reflect on the water. The river had overrun the bank around the sawmill and the outer door to the logging chute was partly under water and wood chips stacked in a pile by the wall were lapped over and pulled out in the current. He could see the gars turning in the water, their backs and tails just fanning the surface, and he picked up his line and moved it to another place between the logs and then the cane jerked hard in his hand and the float went under. The line was taut and pulling from side to side in the water as the catfish tried to tangle it in the logs. J.P. stood up and pulled the catfish out of the river, swinging him in the air clear of the logs onto the bank beside him. The fish flipped in the grass with the hook protruding from the corner of his mouth and tangled himself in the line. J.P. lifted him up carefully, putting his fingers behind the stingers, and removed the hook. It was a mud cat, pale yellow from living on the bottom of the river, with whiskers and a wide-slitted mouth. J.P. cut a forked twig from a bush and shaved it clean of bark and sharpened one end to a point. He ran the pointed end through the fish’s third gill and out the mouth and dropped him in the water and stuck the other end of the twig firmly in the side of the bank. The fish ginned the water with his tail and tried to get off the twig.

J.P. put another worm on the hook and threw his line out among the logs. He caught three sun perch, another catfish, and two cottonfish which he threw back. He wanted to catch some bass but it was too early in the year. The time to catch bass was in the early fall when the weather was cool and he could go upriver in a boat beyond the sawmill to those deep ponds cut back in the bank and surrounded by trees and the water was dark and still. About evening he would fish the reeds with a flyrod and the fly would rest motionless on the surface and he would snap it back over his head and whip it dry in the air and cast again; there would be a flick of silver in the water when the bass hit and the rod would throb in his palm, and he would take up the slack in the line with one hand and use the automatic reel with the other. The bass would fight hard and finally J.P. would dip him out of the water with his net and put him in the straw creel in the bottom of the boat.

He caught two bullheads, and it was late afternoon and the sun was red in the west over the green of the trees. He took the forked twig out of the water and slid the fish off and laid them on the bank. He cleaned the perch first, scaling them and leaving the heads, and then he cleaned the catfish. He slit their stomachs open from the gills back to the tail and scooped out the entrails and threw them in the river, then he snapped the heads off cleanly by breaking the vertebras backwards; then he cut two long slices along the dorsal fin from front to back and peeled the skin off in strips. He washed each of the fish in the water and wrapped them in the paper sack his tackle had come in.

He walked the two miles back to town along a dirt road with trees and fields and farmhouses on each side. The sun was now setting and the day had become cool and the wind dried the sweat on his neck. There were a few rain clouds beginning to build and the sky looked green, the way it does before it rains at evening during the summer. The fish felt moist in his hand through the paper sack. He wanted to come back tomorrow and fish farther upstream for the bass, even though he knew it was too early. He looked at the sky and hoped that the rain would only be a shower so the fishing would still be good the next day. He walked into town and stopped at a café and had the cook prepare the fish for him. They were fried in cornmeal, and he ate them with his hands, the grease hot on his fingers, and drank two bottles of beer. He gave the cook a dollar and paid for the beer and picked up his pole, which he had left outside, and went to the hotel.

It started to rain after he reached the hotel, and he looked out his window and watched the water streak down the glass and the evening twilight diminish from green to lavender and the neon sign come on over the billiard hall. The street and the high sidewalks and the courthouse lawn and the one-story brick buildings were empty of people. The afterglow of the sun faded in the wet sky, and the small crack of red in the clouds low on the horizon sank out of sight, then it was dark.

He went down to the billiard hall, since everything else in town was closed after seven o’clock except the gas station, the café, and a couple of taverns. He went inside and drank a beer at the bar. Some of the men he had been with earlier were still there. He listened to the crack of the billiard balls and the squeak of the cues being chalked and the cursing when someone missed a shot. Clois, the man who could switch a pair of dice in a game or make them walk up a backboard and come back sevens so often that he was required to throw with a cup, come over to J.P. and asked him to join the others in back.

“What are you playing?”

“Craps. We never play nothing else,” Clois said. “Like the nigger says, them galloping dominoes ain’t done me wrong yet.”

They walked the length of the bar past the pool tables and went through a door in the back. There was a room bare of any furniture with no windows and a single light bulb with a green shade like those over the pool tables. A dirty blanket was spread on the floor, and six or seven men were kneeling around in a circle and one was bouncing the dice off the wall back onto the blanket.

“Mind if me and J.P. gets in?” Clois said.

The men looked at them and then back at the game. The man who was shooting smacked the dice off the wall.

“Ain’t you fellows ready to let some more money in the game?” Clois said.

“Shut up. Can’t you see I’m shooting?” the man with the dice said.

He hit them off the wall again and crapped out.

“All right. You done made me lose my point. You can get in now,” he said.

“Whose dice?” Clois said.

“You got money?” a man said.

“What the hell do you think I come in here for?”

“Put it on the board.”

Clois dropped two crumpled one-dollar bills on the blanket and took the dice.

“None of your stuff, neither. This is a straight game,” the man said.

“I ain’t pulling nothing on you boys,” Clois said, and rolled his sleeves up over his elbows.

The bets went down on the blanket. Clois knelt on one knee and rubbed the dice between his hands. J.P. watched and didn’t bet. Clois rolled.

“Six is my point. Right back the hard way,” he said, and put two more dollars on the blanket. He cracked the dice between his palms. “Come on, cover it. I ain’t got all night.”

He shot four times. His shirt collar was damp with sweat. There were small beads of perspiration over his face and in the stubble of his beard. He retrieved the dice and on the fifth throw he made his point.

“Thirty-three, the hard way,” he said. He picked up the bills and put them in front of him. “Shooting it all.”

The others covered him. He rolled a seven.

“Let it ride,” he said.

He made three more passes and he had a good pile of bills and change in front of him.

“I’ll shoot five this time,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” a man said.

“The dice ain’t good forever.” He picked up all the money except a five-dollar bill and put it in his pocket. He bounced the dice off the wall.

“Boxcars. You get some of your green back,” he said.

“You always drag at the right time,” a man said.

“It’s part of knowing how to play.”

“Give me the goddamn dice,” the man said.

“You fellows don’t know how to lose.”

“You talk too much.”

“Roll the dice.”

“You want in, J.P.?” a man said. “All right.”

He knelt in the circle with the others and put three dollars in the center of the blanket. He rolled a four.

“Little Joe at the cathouse do’,” Clois said. “I’m betting he makes it.”

“Put your money down, smart man.”

“Ten bucks. Give me three to one,” Clois said.

“You’re on,” the man said.

J.P. made it on the second pass. He let his money ride and crapped out. The bartender brought in a tray of sandwiches and beer. One of the men put a bill on the tray. The dice came around to J.P. again and he shot five dollars and threw a three.

“I ain’t hot tonight,” he said.

“You ain’t made your point yet. You still got another shot,” Clois said.

“Shooting ten,” J.P. said.

“Fade,” a man said, covering his bet.

He rolled an eleven and doubled his money. He shot the twenty and doubled again.

“I’ll drag half of it,” he said.

“Let it ride,” Clois said. “You can break the game.”

“I ain’t hot.”

“You done made two passes.”

“Dragging half of it,” J.P. said to the others.

“You ain’t making no money like that,” Clois said.

“I ain’t feeling it tonight.”

“One more pass and it’s eighty bucks.”

“Shut up and let him play,” a man said.

“Coming out,” J.P. said.

He crapped out on a deuce. The other men split up the twenty dollars he had left remaining on the blanket. J.P. put the rest of the money in his wallet.

“You quitting?” Clois said.

“I reckon.”

“Wait a minute. I’ll go with you.”

Clois picked up the bills in front of him and folded them neatly and put them in his shirt pocket and buttoned it. The others didn’t want him to leave. He was ahead a good bit.

“That’s too goddamn bad,” he said, looking at them with his dull gray eyes. He and J.P. left the room.

They drank a beer at the bar and watched the pool games. It was still raining outside. The light from the neon sign was red and green on the front window.

“Let’s go out on the highway,” Clois said.

“Are they still doing business out there?”

“The sheriff raided it a while back but it’s open again now. They caught one of the church deacons trying to zip up his britches and hide in a closet. I reckon they figure they better not raid it no more unless they want to find the preacher and the mayor next time.”

They finished the beer and went outside in the rain to Clois’s car, a 1941 Ford with a smashed fender, one headlight, and a broken back window. They drove down the main street out of town with the windshield wipers switching against the glass and the rain falling in the light of the single headlamp. Clois opened the glove compartment and took out a half-empty pint of bourbon and unscrewed the cap and drank. He passed it to J.P. They went on for several miles and turned off the highway onto a dirt road, the mud and the gravel banging under the fenders. There was no moon, and the fields on each side of them were wet and dark. Ahead, there was a large two-story white house that was set back from the road with nothing around it. It looked like one of those big frame farmhouses built during the early part of the century. The shades were drawn, and there were two cars parked in the yard. Clois stopped by the side of the house, and they got out and walked through the rain to the front porch and knocked. The door opened a small space and a dark-haired woman of about forty-five looked out at them. She had a gold tooth and her face was thin-featured and pale. She opened the door wider and let them in.

“Good evening, Miss Sarah,” Clois said.

“Wipe your feet before you track up my rug,” she said.

“You remember J.P., don’t you?”

“I don’t keep count of who comes in here. You still got mud on your feet.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sony.”

They went through the hallway into a big living room that was lighted by a single lamp in the corner. The only furniture was a sofa, a scarred coffee table, and a few uncomfortable chairs. Three women sat on the sofa, and there was a drunk oil-field worker in one of the chairs trying to make another woman sit on his lap.

“Business ain’t too good tonight,” Clois said.

“Do you want something to drink?” Miss Sarah said.

“I don’t reckon.”

She looked at him hard.

“A couple of beers will be all right,” he said.

She went into the back of the house and returned with two bottles.

“That’s one dollar,” she said.

He gave it to her. J.P. looked at the women on the sofa. Two of them looked old and a little used. The third, a big blond woman, sat at one end. She wore white shorts and a silk blouse, and she had good thighs and her breasts were heavy and loose, and he could see that she wore no underwear. He put his beer down on the table and went in back with her.

Her room was near the back porch, and he could hear the rain falling against the side of the house. She turned on a table lamp and tilted the shade so that most of the light would fall in the corner away from the bed. She undressed without looking at him or speaking. Her breasts were very large. She lay down on the bed and put a pillow under her.

It had stopped raining the next morning, and the sun was bright outside the hotel window when he awoke. He thought about the prostitute from the night before, and for a moment he wanted her again. There was a bad taste of whiskey in his mouth. He went into the bath and brushed his teeth. He had gone back to the billiard hall with Clois after they left the brothel, and both of them had gotten drunk on a bottle of cheap bourbon, and now he was thirsty and dry inside. He drank too much water from the tap and it made him dizzy again. He went back to bed and lay on the cool sheets under the ceiling fan and put the prostitute out of his mind and didn’t think of anything except the coolness around him. He slept for a while and awoke and the fan was turning over him, its long flat wood blades making a flicking circle of shadow and light on the ceiling. The breeze felt very good and he went to sleep again. By noon he was feeling much better, and he showered with cold water and went out to eat.

Later, he returned to the hotel and picked up his fishing tackle. He felt pleasant after eating, the day was fairly cool from last night’s rain, and the whiskey taste was gone from his mouth. He walked the two miles along the farm road to the river, with the fields of cotton and corn and watermelon and the red dirt land on each side and the Negro shacks and the big cotton gin made from tin and the pine and oak trees that grew back from the river bank in the distance. He walked through the trees to the river, and the ground felt soft under his feet. He saw an armadillo move through the grass looking for insects; its hard armored shell was hunched on its back, and it had a spike tail and a small head with little ears and shrunken black eyes. He remembered when he used to hunt them with a .22 after the rains.

He came out of the trees by the sawmill. The river was higher than it had been yesterday, and it swirled around the door of the logging chute that hung open in the water. He looked along the bank for grasshoppers, but the grass was too wet for them to be jumping. A Negro boy of about fourteen came down the bank on the other side of the river and got into the pirogue tied to a willow tree. He wore a ragged wash-faded shirt and short pants that hung to his knees. He sat in the stern of the pirogue and pushed it out in the current from the bank with the paddle. J.P. called to him.

The boy stroked across the river and held the boat steady in the back current along the bank by sticking the paddle in the soft clay at the water’s edge.

“You want to make fifty cents?” J.P. said.

“What I got to do?”

“Let me use your boat for a while.”

“My daddy don’t let nobody else use it.”

“Then I’ll give you the fifty cents to row me down to the ponds.”

The boy looked at him, unsure.

“You want the fifty cents, don’t you?” J.P. said.

“Yes, sir. I wants it, but I don’t want no whipping when I get home.”

“Come up here and help me dig some worms.”

“Yes, sir.”

The boy got out of the boat into the shallows and dragged the bow onto the bank. He took the bailing can from under the seat and squatted on his haunches by J.P. and helped him dig in the ground. They filled the can with worms, and the boy got into the pirogue’s stern and took up the paddle while J.P. slid them off the mud back into the water and jumped in. The boy swung them into the current and headed downstream towards the ponds. There were oaks and cypress on each side of the river leaning out over the water. It was cool in the shade of the trees, and when they went around a bend close to the bank the overhanging moss swept across the bow of the boat. J.P. put his pole together and fixed his line as they neared the place where the river widened and cut back into the ponds. The water was dark from the rain. He could see the gars breaking the surface with their backs. He hoped there were none around the ponds. The fishing was never any good when the gars were near, since they preyed on smaller fish. The boy paddled them into a cove that was fairly large and shaded by the trees. The water was covered with lily pads along the bank, and they rose and swelled in the waves from the boat. The boy grabbed a willow limb and pulled them close to the bank and tied the painter to the trunk of the tree. J.P. threw his line near the lily pads. Bass always stayed in the shady places in hot weather. The boy touched him on the back and pointed to the bailing can with the worms. He had a throw line in his hand with three hooks and a lead washer for a weight. J.P. handed him the can. The boy baited only one of his hooks and let the line hang over the side down in the mud. He waited a few minutes and pulled his hook out of the water and spit on the bait and put it back in again. It was a Negro superstition. They believed that fish would bite if you spit on the hook, even a bare one.

They fished for an hour and a half. J.P. caught one sun perch and one smallmouth black bass. It had rained too much for the fishing to be any good The boy caught a gar. The line was wrapped around his wrist, and it cut his skin when the gar hit and started to run. The boy pulled with both hands, the veins standing up hard in his wrist, as the gar thrashed the water with his tail and tangled himself in the line. The boy got him against the side of the boat and held him partly out of the water and got his pocketknife open with one hand and worked the point into the weak spot in the back of the gar’s neck where the armored skin joined the head. He pushed the knife to its hilt and pulled it free and then plunged it in again. The gar snapped his long pointed jaws at the line, and then his body went weak when the vertebra was cut and his tail stopped ginning the water. The boy pulled the gar into the boat by the gill and laid him in the bottom. He smiled at J.P. His face and neck were beaded with sweat, and a thin rivulet of blood ran down from his wrist over the back of his hand. He took the knife off the board seat and cut down the back of the gar and pulled the hard skin away, then he slit open the belly and scooped out the entrails and threw them onto the bank. He let the head remain. The gar was a big one even after he had been dressed. The eyes looked like glass now and the jaws were open, exposing the long rows of teeth. The boy would take him home and his family would barbecue the meat over an open fire on a spit. J.P. had never tasted gar; only Negroes would eat it (along with mullet and cottonfish and coon and possum), but they said it was good. The boy was quite happy. He rowed them back down the river and talked about the fish. He asked J.P. if he had ever seen one that large. J.P. said he hadn’t. The boy was very pleased and he wanted to give J.P. part of the meat.

He paid the boy and gave him his tackle since the fishing would not be any good until a few days from now when the water went down, and he would have to return to the show before then. He went back to the hotel and read the newspapers in the lobby for a while. He ate dinner at the café and walked down the street as the glow of the late afternoon sun lessened to twilight and the faint evening wind blew through the trees on the courthouse lawn. He had nothing to do except shoot pool with Clois and the others or get drunk or go whoring, and he didn’t feel like doing any of it.

He caught the night train to the city. As he rode through the dark fields, he realized that his hometown held nothing for him anymore. Time had removed him and it would not allow him to go back. The fishing had taken him back for a short while to the way things had been two years ago, but he knew now that he existed only in the present moment of the wheels clicking over the tracks, and time would carry him farther away from the world of small towns and Saturday night whorehouses and the red clay cotton fields and the nigger funeral marches and fishing for bass in the ponds during the early fall.

He was hopped when he arrived back in the city. He had opened one of the white packets from his suitcase on the train, and he stayed high on cocaine and whiskey for the next two days. He slept little, and he lost any sense of night and day. Later, he could not remember how much he had taken or drank. He walked the streets all one night, and was asked to leave a bar after he became involved in an argument with another man. He picked up a prostitute, although he didn’t recall it afterwards, and she rolled him for his watch and wallet. On Saturday he was with April in their room, and he hadn’t changed clothes or shaved since he had gotten off the train. His shirt was soiled and there was a thick feeling in his head.

“You’ve got the show tonight,” she said. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? Listen to me.”

He wanted to get out of the room. He didn’t know how he had gotten there, anyway.

“Don’t give a goddamn,” he said.

“You let those hicks know what you are and you’re finished.”

“Kick the habit with Live-Again.”

“Oh, you stupid—”

“Sonabitch said something in a bar.”

“Will you please listen to me? You have to go to the auditorium at eight o’clock.”

“I ain’t going.”

Virdo Hunnicut didn’t see him that night, or he would not have let him go onstage. J.P. had shaved and put on fresh clothes, but there were razor nicks on his face and his blank eyes showed that he was still high and his fingers couldn’t find the right chords on the guitar. April talked to the director, and they decided to let him sing without his guitar and to use the band for accompaniment.

“What the hell is this? Give me my goddamn guitar.”

“Your wife thought it might be better if you just sang tonight,” the director said.

“I ain’t singing with no band.”

He went on the stage and the lights were hot in his face and made his eyes water. He heard the people applauding for him, and then the auditorium became quiet and he was standing behind the microphone with the guitar in his hand. The director was saying something to him in a hoarse whisper from the wings. Go on, man. They’re waiting for you. Still he didn’t begin. He looked out at the audience for almost a half minute. There was the scraping of chairs and a few coughs in the silence. Some of the people thought it was a joke and part of the show. For God’s sake, do something, the hoarse whisper said. Those who thought it was a joke laughed, and then the laughter stopped and it was silent again. The building was hot and poorly ventilated. He started to sing. His voice sounded strange and far off. He hit the wrong notes on the guitar and he couldn’t remember the lines to the song. He stopped playing and looked out at the audience. His face was sweating from the heat of the lights. Get him off there, a voice from the wings said. He started to play again and it was worse than before. He suddenly became aware of where he was, and he tried harder to get the song right. He was singing the words faster than the tempo of the guitar. His throat went dry and his voice cracked. Then he heard someone in the audience; it was a single sound from one person, not loud, but it carried through the auditorium: “Booooooooooh.”

Avery Broussard

Early the next afternoon he had dinner with Suzanne at her apartment. It was on the second floor of an old white brick building on Dauphine. The red of the bricking showed through where the paint had flaked away, and there was a balcony around the courtyard and a big willow tree by the iron gate; the flower beds in the court were planted with Spanish daggers and jasmine and oleander, and the interior was furnished from antique shops in the Quarter with dark handcarved wood chairs, an old Swiss clock, French curtains, and a folding Oriental screen decorated with dragons and embossed birds separated the living and dining rooms. The back room where she worked had a skylight that was stained green by moss and rainwater and there were big glass doors that opened onto the narrow brick-paved street below. There were reproductions of Cézanne and Velázquez and Goya along the walls and a charcoal sketch of a street scene near St. Louis Cathedral was attached to her easel, and five or six pastels of other scenes in the Quarter which she sold to the tourists in Pirates Alley were spread out on her table.

She wore a white dress and her hair was dark like her eyes, and her figure was fine to look at. She served the food from the kitchen, and there were drops of perspiration around her temples. As she reached across Avery to set his plate he could see her dress tighten across her breasts and he thought of the first time he had taken her fishing in the rowboat and they had put into the bank, and he had to look away from her. She put a slender green bottle of Barolo wine in front of him and two glasses. There was an empty wine bottle with a wicker basket around it in the center of the table and she had burned red candles down over it until the sides were thickly beaded with melted tallow. She put a fresh candle in the top and lighted it and sat down across from him and served the spaghetti and the light of the flame reflected in her eyes and made them look darker.

“Don’t you like it? I think it’s one of the best in the Quarter,” she said.

“What?”

“The apartment.”

“Yes.” He was still thinking about the way her dress tightened.

“I knew you would like it. I furnished it myself. It was a mess when we first took it. I think it must have been a brothel. Strange men knock on the door sometimes and we have to convince them that we’re not running a business.”

He poured the wine for her. She sipped it and looked at him over the top of the glass. He tried not to think about the times they went down the bayou in the rowboat. He knew she would know what he was thinking, and their conversation would become strained and he would blurt out something and both of them would be embarrassed. He felt her dress brush him under the table. He pulled his foot back under the chair self-consciously. They finished eating and went into the living room. They took the wine bottle and the glasses with them. He sat down on the sofa while she opened the doors to the balcony to let the breeze in.

“What did you do in Spain?” he said.

“I studied in Madrid most of the time. It’s so lovely there, even though it’s not Spain. You have to go out in the country to see Spain. I went to some of the small villages to paint. The people are terribly poor, but they’re friendly and simple and they like Americans. I got some wonderful sketches in Granada and Sevilla. The old Moorish buildings are like lacework, and the cafés and parks are splendid.”

She sat down on the sofa beside him. The wind was cool through the open door. She ran her fingers over the stem of the wineglass.

“Would you like to go out?” he said.

“Let’s stay here.”

“Won’t your roommate be home?”

“She has a date with some graduate student from Tulane.”

He could feel it growing inside him. He wanted to hold it back but he knew he wouldn’t be able. He looked at her fingers on the wineglass. She set the glass on the table and put her hands in her lap. She crossed her legs and the edge of her slip showed at the knee. He watched her hand curve around the wine bottle as she picked it up to pour in his glass. He leaned over and kissed her. She put her palm lightly on the back of his neck. He could smell the slight scent of perfume in her hair. She turned her face up and he kissed her again. He couldn’t stop it now. He tried to pull her down on the sofa. She pressed one hand against his chest.

“You knew it would be like this when I came over,” he said. He still held her.

“You can’t drop something for three years and then pick it up again just like that.”

“You want it as much as I do.”

“Yes. But we can’t. Please, Avery.”

“It’s all right.”

“No. Please.”

He kissed her and held himself close to her and ran his hand along her thighs. He heard her breathing increase.

“You’ll hurt both of us,” she said. “You must know that. We’ll both feel bad about it when it’s over.” Her eyes were wet. She relaxed and didn’t try to push him away anymore. He put his hand inside her blouse and felt her breasts. He unbuttoned the blouse and tried to pull it back off her shoulders. “Let me up. We can’t do it here,” she said.

He had to wait a moment in order not to embarrass himself before he could stand up and follow her into the bedroom. His shirt stuck to his back with perspiration. She drew the curtains on the window and undressed and lay on the bed with her hair spread out on the pillow. Her skin was white and her waist was slender and she wore the gold cross and chain around her throat, and when he looked at her he felt something drop inside him. He lay beside her and kissed her. She reminded him of how she had looked the night they had the argument in Biloxi.

“I’m sorry to hurt you,” he said.

She put her arms around his neck and held her cheek to his.

“I always loved you. I was never as happy as when I was with you,” she said.

“You’re a swell girl.”

“Do it to me. I want you so badly.”

“You won’t cry anymore?”

“No. I promise. It was just because I didn’t want everything to turn out bad again. Oh, Avery.”

“Does it hurt you?”

“It’s lovely. I’d forgotten how good it is. Do you still like me?”

“You’re wonderful. Was there anyone between?” he said.

“No.”

“You’re my lady.”

“I was always your lady.”

“My darling lady.”

She kissed him hard on the mouth and he felt her body tense as her arms tightened around his back.

“Hold me. Do it harder. Oh Avery darling hurt me please hurt me. It’s so good. My lovely sweet darling hold me. I love you terribly.”

They lay in bed and drank wine and smoked cigarettes. He pulled her to him and kissed her on the cheek and bit the lobe of her ear. The back of her neck was damp. She held herself close to him and put her forehead under his chin.

“I’m sorry for the way I acted,” she said.

“You don’t feel bad about it?”

“Of course not. Do it to me once more.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“I could never be tired of this.”

“Your roommate might come home.”

“We have time. Let me do it to you. We’ve never done it like this. I want to do it every way we can.”

She changed her position. He looked up at the gold cross swinging from her throat and her hair on her shoulders.

“Am I good like this?” she said.

“It’s fine.”

“I want to always make it good for you.”

“You’re nice inside,” he said.

“You’re being bad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I want you to be bad. I want you to say bad things.”

“I like your thighs,” he said.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Very much?” she said.

“I love your thighs.”

“Now you are treating me bad.”

“I do love you.”

He pulled her down on him and felt the softness of her breasts against him and rubbed his hands over her back and down the insides of her legs. She propped herself on her arms again and smiled down at him, and he looked at the whiteness of her breasts and the curve of her neck and her dark Creole eyes and then he held her very tightly and he felt his loins grow warm and then hot and everything went out and away from him. She leaned down and kissed him and then lay beside him and put her arm across his chest. He felt empty and cool inside, breathing her perfume and the smell of her hair, and he didn’t want to move or get up or even talk.

“We’ll have to get dressed, darling,” she said later. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s go to a hotel.”

“It’s too late. You have to work tomorrow.”

“Lock your roommate out,” he said.

“You’re unkind.”

“Your roommate is unkind.”

“We’ll go to a hotel tomorrow evening and stay together all night.”

“Do you promise?” he said.

“We can get some good wine and you can drink and I’ll take care of you.”

“You’re my wonderful lady.”

“I’ll always be your lady.”

They dressed and she made up the bed and combed her hair. She took the two glasses and the wine bottle into the dining room and put them on the table.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night. I love you.”

“You’re very pretty.”

“Come over as soon as you get off from work,” she said.

“Will you keep your promise?”

“Yes. Kiss me good night.”

“Pretty lady.”

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night.”

He met her at the apartment the next evening, and they had dinner at a small French restaurant on Burgundy Street that had red-checkered cloths on the tables, and they sat at the bar and ate oysters on the half shell and drank beer, and the Negro waiter opened the oysters with a knife and squeezed a lemon on the muscle and if it didn’t twitch he threw it away and opened another. They bought a bottle of Liebfraumilch from a package store and they stayed in a hotel outside the Vieux Carré and she was there beside him whenever he wanted her. They finally went to sleep after midnight, and he awoke later and felt it grow in him again. Her body was cool from the breeze through the window and her legs were long and white. They lay undressed on top of the sheets with the green wine bottle in an ice bucket by the side of the bed, and when the sky turned dark blue just before morning he didn’t want to see the sun come up and the night to end.

The following afternoon he had to check in with the parole board, and afterwards they went to the beach and rented a cabana under some palm trees. They watched the waves roll up on the sand and the crimson sun going down beyond the water’s edge and a single sailboat with a red sail tacking in the wind. They brought their bathing suits and dressed inside the canvas cabana, and after dark they went swimming in the surf. The moon reflected off the water and the palm trees hissed in the breeze. In the distance they could see the glow of the city. She ran through the breakers and swam out quite far from shore and then swam back and knelt in the shallows, sitting on her heels, laughing and panting for breath, with the small waves breaking around her waist. They went back to the cabana and lay down in the sand. He kissed her on the mouth and smelled the salt in her hair. The moonlight came through the open flap of the cabana and shone on her ankles, and he wanted to do it right there but there were other people farther down the beach.

“As soon as we get home,” she said.

“What will we do with your roommate?”

“We’ll send her out.”

“You’re getting cruel also,” he said.

“She won’t mind. She’s quite nice.”

“I don’t like her.”

“You don’t know her.”

“I don’t like her, anyway. She stays home too much. Tell her to have an affair with someone,” he said.

“Wasn’t it nice in the hotel? Let’s go there again.”

“I don’t get paid until Saturday.”

“I have money.”

“You always have money,” he said.

“Daddy spoiled me. I want you to spoil me too.”

“I’ll spoil you in a particular way. Will you really ask your roommate to go?”

“Yes, darling.”

“I’ll spoil you the rest of the night.”

“I wish we could always be in bed and do good things to each other,” she said.

“We could close the flap now.”

“Those people might come by.”

He slipped the strap of her black bathing suit off her shoulder and put his hand on her breast.

“You’re taking advantage,” she said.

“I’ll do other things when we’re in bed again.”

“We’ll do them together. But not now.”

“You have nice breasts.”

“Oh, Avery.”

“They are.”

“You’re terrible.”

“Do you like me terrible?” he said.

“Yes. I love it.”

He unrolled the canvas flap over the door opening, and as they dressed he looked at the smooth curve of her waist and the indentation of her stomach when she bent over to get her sandals, and he felt that same feeling of something dropping inside him. They rolled their bathing suits in a towel and walked up the beach along the white sand by the edge of the surf towards the lighted walkway and the amusement park where her car was. A few hundred yards behind the beach they could hear the music from the carousel and see the brightly lit Ferris wheel revolving against the sky. They stopped at one of the open-air stands in the park and drank a beer with the sea breeze blowing in from the Gulf. Her car was in the darkened gravel parking lot, and he drove them back to town. It was the same low-slung, wide-based, Italian sports convertible that she had gotten for her graduation from high school. It had four forward gears, and when he stepped on the accelerator he could feel the guttural roar of the exhaust through the steering wheel and the power of the take-off pressed him back comfortably in the thick leather of the seat. She sat close to him with both her hands on his arm and her cheek on his shoulder and her wet hair whipping behind her in the wind. They drove along those wide curving cement drives outside New Orleans that wind through groves of oak and cypress trees with the moss hanging in the branches, and the night air smelled of lilacs and jasmine and freshly cut grass.

They were alone at the apartment and they made love in her bed. She got up to make sandwiches in the kitchen and she brought them back on a silver tray with two iced drinks of cognac and orange juice. They ate the cold chicken sandwiches and drank the brandy and then did it again.

“Am I making you too tired?” he said.

“Don’t be silly. It gets better every time.”

“The cognac makes it better.”

“Darling?”

“What is it?” he said.

“Can those parole board people do anything to you?”

“Why do you ask that now?”

“I was worried about it. I know you don’t like to talk about it, but I worry.”

“I just have to go see them once a month.”

“You looked angry when you came out today,” she said.

“I get sick at my stomach every time I go in there.”

“Don’t do anything that would make them send you back. I couldn’t stand it.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m sorry for talking about it. I know you hate it,” she said.

“It’s all right.”

“Does it bother you much?”

“No,” he said, thinking of the nightmares he had been having in which he was back in the work camp, expecting to wake to the morning whistle for breakfast and roll call and then the ride in the trucks out to the line.

“I know it bothers you. I can tell,” she said.

“You’re a good lady.”

“I wish I could take it all away. Do you think about it when you’re with me?”

“I think about your thighs.”

“Always think about my thighs.”

“I like to stay between them.”

“Tell me something else.”

“You have good hands,” he said.

“Do you really forget the work camp when you’re with me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad. I want you to be happy. We can stay in a good position and you don’t have to think about anything except me.”

“Can you do it again?”

“I’ll do it any time you want me.”

“I want you all the time,” he said.

“Tell me bad things. I want you to. I think I’m becoming degenerate.”

“Is it good?” he said.

“It’s wonderful. Do it hard. Make me hurt.”

“You’re worse than I am.”

“Is there any other way to do it?”

“Not that I’ve thought about.”

“We’ll find new ways,” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

“Let’s drink some more cognac and make it nicer. Good Lord, I know I’m becoming degenerate.”

“Do you want some cognac?” he said.

“Yes. You can feel the fire go down inside you. Will you mind if I leave you a minute? I’ll be right back.”

She returned with the square, dark-colored bottle and filled each of their glasses half full. She sat beside him and drank hers down fast. It was strong brandy and it made her eyes water.

“Can you feel it get hot inside you?” she said. “Isn’t it nice? I’m going to have some more.”

“You’ll be tight.”

“Will you like me better?” she said.

“I like you any way.”

She drank more of the brandy and set the empty glass on the floor by the bottle.

“God, that’s strong,” she said.

He kissed her mouth and neck.

“I’m sorry. You’ve been waiting,” she said.

“I love you very much.”

“I’m so happy with you, Avery.”

He kissed her again and he felt the coolness of her arms around his neck and then it began to swell inside him and he held her very tight with his face in her hair and he felt it go through his body and his entire existence was concentrated in that one moment and he could feel the muscles in the back of his legs quiver and then he was quiet and relaxed inside, and they went to sleep.

They saw each other every evening, and sometimes they stayed in the apartment or checked into a hotel outside the Quarter or went dancing or went to the parties that one of her friends gave, and one time when the pipeline shut down for a couple of days because of rain and Avery was free they spent the night in a small guest house down by the beach and he rented some flounder gaffs and flashlights and they hunted along the edge of the surf for the flat-sided fish lying in the sand, he barefoot and in dungarees and stripped to the waist and she in toreador pants with a white blouse held closed by a knot tied at the stomach; and he cleaned the fish on the beach and built a fire from pieces of driftwood while she opened two bottles of beer from the cooler they had brought with them. He fixed the fish on sticks, and they baked them over the fire and peeled them off in strips to eat. They sat in the sand, still warm from the day’s sun, and drank another beer. There was no one else on the beach, and they put out the fire and undressed and went swimming. Later, they walked along the edge of the water and hunted for seashells with the surf rolling over their bare feet and the moon low on the horizon and the sky clouded from a thunderstorm that was building in the Gulf.

They went to a party one Saturday night and left early. It was like the other parties they had gone to. The rooms were crowded with people, and there was a progressive combo trying to play above the noise; the bass player passed out in the hallway, and Wally, the redheaded, blue-eyed Cambridge boy with a taste for Scotch, gave an imitation of a Baptist preacher. Someone opened the door of a bedroom at the wrong time and there was a scene and a girl began crying and left by herself since her date had been one of those in the bedroom. The people in the upstairs apartment knocked on the walls and floor, and Wally went out and came back with a bum he had found in Jackson Park and the bum got sick in the flower bed of the courtyard and Wally was told to leave by the hostess. The knocking on the walls and floor continued, and finally Avery and Suzanne left by the side door without saying good night to anyone and walked down the quiet cobblestone street in the dark and breathed the cool night air. They stopped in a bakery and bought some pastry and went to her apartment to make coffee.

She fixed café au lait in the kitchen and brought the coffeepot and the hot milk out on a tray and they drank it in the living room and ate the pastry.

“Did you mind leaving the party?” he said.

“Not if you wanted to go.”

“I like it better here.”

“I like it too,” she said.

“Who is Thomas Hardy?”

“He was an English writer.”

“Somebody asked me if I’d read him.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I didn’t keep up with professional baseball anymore,” Avery said.

She put her napkin to her mouth as she laughed.

“I know who asked you,” she said. “It was the little buglike fellow with the baggy trousers. He’s Wally’s roommate. He pays the rent for both of them. He thinks Wally is a talented writer.”

“Is he?”

“He never writes anything,” she said.

“What does the bug fellow do?”

“Reads Thomas Hardy, I suppose.”

She poured more milk and coffee into his cup.

“Could you ask Denise to go out for a while?” he said.

Denise was Suzanne’s roommate. She was a pleasant, intellectual girl, and she would have been attractive if she didn’t wear a wash-faded pair of slacks and an unpressed blouse stained with paint all the time.

“She’s painting in the back room now,” Suzanne said. “Some woman is paying her twenty-five dollars to paint a portrait from a photograph.”

“Would she mind leaving for an hour?”

“I couldn’t ask her to. She’s been very good about everything, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to stop work because of us. She needs the money badly.”

“Do you want to go to the horse races tomorrow? The park is open for the season now,” he said.

“Let’s go to Tony Bacino’s. I’ve always wanted to see what it was like inside.”

“What is it?”

“One of those nightclubs where men dress up like women,” she said.

“I’d rather see the horses.”

“Don’t you want to go?”

“No.”

“Denise went one time. She said she saw two men dancing together. God, what a sight. Can you imagine it?”

“Do you want to go out to the park?” he said.

“I’ll go anywhere you ask me to. Are you angry?”

“Why would you want to see men dressed like women?”

“I don’t know. I was teasing. Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“We’ll watch the horses and have a lovely time.”

“Could you pick me up at my room? They run the races in the afternoon and we’ll be late getting out.”

“We’ll do something first, won’t we?” she said.

“Yes. That’s always first.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. They walked together out to the balcony and looked down over the iron railing at the flagstone courtyard with the moonlight on the flower beds. The white paint over the bricking of the walls looked pale in the light, and away in the distance they could hear the jazz bands playing on Bourbon. It was getting late and he kissed her good night and walked down Dauphine towards his rooming house.

On Sunday afternoon she was parked in front of the rooming house in her sports car when he got back from work. She smiled when she saw him. His denims were stiff with dirt, the skin of his face was stained from the black smoke that comes off a fresh pipe weld, his crushed straw hat was frayed at the edges and the brim was turned down to protect him from the sun. There were two thin white circles around his eyes where he had worn the machinist’s goggles while cleaning the slag out of the welds, and his shirt was split down the back from being washed thin. He talked with her for a moment at the car and went up the front walk and across the veranda into the house. He showered and shaved and changed clothes and came back to the car. She slid over on the seat and he got behind the steering wheel.

They drove to the apartment and parked the car in the brick-paved alley behind the building, and later they went to the park. The best racing in New Orleans was at the Fair Grounds, but it was open only in the winter season, and the races at the park were generally good. They sat close down in the stands near the track. The sun was in the west above the trees on the other side of the park, and the track was a quarter-mile smooth brown dirt straightaway. At one end was the automatic starting gate, and the three-year-olds were being lined up for the second race. The silk blouses of the jockeys flashed in the sun and the horses were nervous in the gate just before the start. Then the bell rang and they burst out on the track and charged over the dirt, still damp from the rain, and the mud flew up at their hoofs; they stayed close together at first and then began to spread out, the jockeys bent low over their necks whipping their rumps with the quirts, and as they neared the finish a roan had the lead by a length and Avery could see the bit working in its mouth and saliva frothing into the short hair around its muzzle while the jockey whipped its rump furiously, his knees held high and the numbered sheet of paper pinned to his blouse partly torn loose and flapping in the wind. They thundered over the finish line under the judges’ stand, the clods of dirt flicking in the air, with the roan out ahead by a length and a half, and the jockeys stood up in the stirrups and tightened the reins.

“Isn’t it exciting?” Suzanne said. “I’ve never been before. It takes your breath away.”

“Do you like it?” he said.

“Very much. Why didn’t we come before? Can we bet?”

“If you want to.”

“How much do you bet?”

“Anything.”

“Bet two dollars for me in the next one,” she said.

“On which horse?”

“Any one. You decide.”

Her eyes were happy, and she wore a white dress with a transparent lavender material around her shoulders, and she had on one of those big white summer hats with the wide brim that Southern ladies used to wear to church on Sunday.

“Let’s bet on that one,” she said. The black one. Look how his coat shines. Isn’t he handsome?”

Avery left the stands and bet her money and two dollars of his own at the window.

“I bet it across the board,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“You collect if he wins, places, or shows, but your odds go down.”

“I know he’s going to win. Look at him. He’s beautiful. Watch how the muscles move in his flanks when he walks.”

They were taking the horses down to the starting gate.

“I wish I could paint him,” she said. “Have you ever seen anything so handsome? Does a horse like that cost much?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if Daddy would buy one for my birthday.”

“What would you do with him?”

“I don’t know. But God he’s gorgeous. I’d love to own him.”

The horses were in the gate now. The black one tried to rear in the stall and the jockey had trouble keeping him calm until the start.

“What’s the matter with that man? Doesn’t he know how to handle horses?” Suzanne said. “Why are you laughing?”

“It’s nothing.”

“There they go. Oh, they’re pushing him into the rail.”

“It just looks that way from here.”

“It’s unfair. He’s getting behind,” she said.

“He’s no good on a wet track. Watch how his legs work.”

“What’s wrong with his legs?”

“He doesn’t have his stride.”

“That’s silly,” she said. “What does a wet track have to do with anything?”

“Some horses can’t run in the mud.”

“He’s dropped back to fourth.”

The horses crossed the finish line in front of them. Suzanne looked disappointed.

“He’d do all right on a good track,” Avery said.

“I’d still love to own him. How much would he cost?”

“Around a thousand dollars. Maybe more.”

“Will he run in another race?”

“Not today.”

“Let’s come out next Sunday and see him again. Will he be here?”

“Probably,” he said.

“Oh, good. The track will be dry and he’ll win next time.” She looked happy again.

“Are you glad you came?” he said.

“Of course, darling. I always like the places you take me.”

“In the winter we can go to the Fair Grounds. They have some of the best horses from over the country there.”

“What happened to the mare you used to own?”

“She died in foal,” he said.

After the races they drove to the beach and went swimming. The sun had set and the afterglow reflected off the water in bands of scarlet, and then it was dark with no moon and the white caps came in with the tide and roared over the sand. The water was too cold for them to stay in long, and they lay on the beach and looked out towards the black horizon and the black sky.

Later, the moon came out and the sand looked silver against the black of the water. The wind was getting cool and everyone else had left the beach. She was shivering a little from the cold. Avery put his shirt over her shoulders.

“Do you want to go?” he said.

“Only if you want to.”

“You’re cold.”

“I feel fine,” she said.

“Let’s go back to town.”

“Hasn’t it been fun today?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe Denise will be gone when we get back,” she said.

He had to check in with his parole board the next afternoon. The board was located in an old office building built of weathered gray brick, and the plaster in the hallways was cracked and the air smelled close and dusty. He sat on a bench in the outer office with three other men and waited his turn to see the parole officer. The man next to him had a fat coarse face with large red bumps on his nose. He wore a windbreaker that had a ring of sweat around the collar, and his slacks were worn thin at the knees and his brogans had been scuffed colorless. He held his hat in his hand between his legs. There was a dark area around the crown where the band had once been. He cleared his throat and looked around for a place to spit. He emptied his mouth into his handkerchief.

“They ain’t even got a fucking spittoon,” he said.

The secretary looked at him across the room.

“Where was you?” he said to Avery.

“In a camp.”

“I was at Angola.” He looked at Avery as though expecting an answer. “I was there twice.”

“Fine place, Angola.”

“Better than one of them fucking camps.” He blew his nose on the handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

“What was you up for?”

“Transporting whiskey.”

“Ain’t they a trash can over there?”

“No.”

“Ain’t even got a place to spit. The bastards,” he said.

Avery went in to see the parole officer, a sallow middle-aged state appointee in an outmoded business suit with big lapels and an off-colored bow tie. His coat hung damply from his shoulders. His eyes were yellow-green and his face was slick with perspiration. He had Avery’s file open on the desk before him. He unclipped a sheet of paper from the rest and read over it.

“You’ll have to get your employer to send us another letter,” he said.

“I already had him send one.”

“Yes. I have it right here, but it’s not notarized. It has to be notarized by a state notary.”

“It says I’m working steady. That’s what you wanted to know, wasn’t it?”

“It’s not a legal document without an official seal. Anyone could have written this letter.”

“Where can I get it notarized?” Avery asked.

“He has to sign it in front of a notary.”

“He might not want to write another letter.”

“We can’t accept this one.”

“Could you phone out to the main office? They’ll tell you that I’m working.”

“We have to have an employer’s letter for the file.”

“All right. I’ll ask him again.”

The official crumpled the sheet of paper and threw it in the wastebasket. He thumbed through the rest of the file and his yellow-green eyes went over each page.

“Are you still living in the same place?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Have you been going to any bars or keeping late hours?”

“No.”

“Are you associating with anyone who has a criminal record?”

“I told you these things the last time I was here.”

The official repeated his question without looking up from the file.

“I don’t know anyone with a criminal record,” Avery said.

“That’s all. Get your employer to write a notarized statement this week or you’ll be listed as unemployed.”

“What will that mean?”

“Your case will go before the board for review. You can’t stay out on parole without an honest means of support.”

Avery left the building and walked down the street to the drugstore on the corner. He could feel his temples pounding with anger. He looked up the number of his crew foreman in the telephone book. He didn’t know the foreman well and he didn’t want to ask a second favor of him. Also, the foreman had been hesitant in writing the first letter, because he hadn’t known that Avery was an ex-convict when he hired him on the job. Avery phoned him at his home. The foreman sounded irritated and he didn’t understand why another letter had to be written. At first he said he didn’t have time to see a notary, but he finally agreed and said that he would post the letter that week.

After he left the drugstore, he caught a streetcar to the Vieux Carré and walked along the streets in the summer evening to Suzanne’s apartment. Denise told him that she was out shopping in the stores and she wouldn’t be back for another hour. He went down to the sports parlor on the corner and bought a newspaper and read the ball scores. He sat in one of the chairs along the wall by the pool tables. Three men were playing a game of Kelly pool. He bought a beer at the bar and watched the game. There was a table free and he played a game of rotation by himself. He shot a second game with a merchant sailor from Portugal. The sailor spoke bad English and he used much obscenity when he talked, but he was good with a cue and he paid for the game even though he had won. Avery folded his newspaper and drank another beer at the bar and went back to the apartment. The cool dank smell of the sports parlor with its odor of draught beer and cue chalk had taken away the parole office, and he felt good walking down Rampart with the sun low over the buildings and the Negro children roller-skating on the sidewalk and the old women on the balconies calling to one another in French.

He saw Suzanne going up the steps to her apartment as he entered the courtyard. She had several boxes in her arms. She wore high heels and a dark suit and a small white hat with a white veil.

“Hello,” she cried. “Come up and see what I bought.”

He followed her up the steps and into the living room. She left the doors open to the balcony. She looked out of breath. She threw the boxes on the couch and tore them open and pulled out the new dresses amid the rustling of the tissue paper.

“Do you like them?” she said. “God, what bedlam. I’ll never go shopping at five again. I’m sorry I’m late. Where have you been?”

“The parole board and the pool hall.”

“Oh? Did anything happen?”

“No.”

“Did you have to talk with that same little man you told me about?”

“He’s been assigned to me as my counselor on readjustment.”

“Poor darling. You must be tired. Do you want a drink?”

“Do you have a beer?”

She went into the kitchen and got one out of the icebox and opened it. The foam came over the lip of the bottle.

“Did you meet any literary people at the pool hall?” she said.

“A Portuguese sailor.”

“Has he written anything?”

“Only on bathroom walls.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to a pool hall. What’s it like?” she said.

“Most of the upper-class people from the Quarter are there.”

“They’re lovely company.”

“Is Denise in?” he said.

“I don’t know. Denise!”

She looked in the bedroom.

“She must have gone out with that Tulane boy.”

“Let’s go to bed.”

“That’s a subtle way of putting it,” she said.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

“I’ve wanted you all day, too. It must be true that once you get in the habit of it you can’t do without it.”

“Do you feel that way?” he said.

“I don’t think I could go a week without you.”

“We won’t ever have to go without each other.”

“We’ll always be together and nothing else will matter,” she said.

He drank down the foam in the bottom of the bottle.

“Do you want another one?” she asked. “Let’s go to bed. We’ll go out and drink beer afterwards.”

“I know a German place we can go to. They have beer in those big mugs with the copper lids.”

They went into her bedroom and she slid the bolt on the door. She drew the French curtains on the big window overlooking the courtyard. He watched her undress.

“We have such good times, don’t we?” she said.

“We always will.”

“We won’t get tired of each other like married people do, will we?”

“No.”

“We’ll have each day like this. Always and always and always,” she said.

“Are you very happy?”

“You make me happy in a nice way.”

“You’re getting to be a bad girl.”

They lay on the bed. She put herself close and tongue-kissed him.

“How do you like me best?” she said.

“We’ll take turns. Am I too heavy for you?”

“Ummmm. This is fine.”

“Could we get an apartment together?”

“I’ve thought about it, but it would get back to Daddy and I don’t want to hurt him.”

“It’s hard with Denise around.”

“She said she might find another place. Poor thing, I guess we’ve almost driven her out. But wouldn’t it be nice? I’d have the apartment to myself, and you could come over and we could do it anytime we wanted. Again and again and again with no one to bother us.”

“When is she leaving?”

“She isn’t sure yet.”

“Could we let her find us in bed?” he said. “That should hurry things up.”

“Stop being mean.”

“She’s nice, but it will be better when she’s gone.”

“You can come here after work, and we’ll undress and lie in bed and you won’t have to go home. Won’t it be wonderful?”

“Yes, it will.”

The last rays of the summer evening fell through the crack in the French curtains and the room became dark.

J.P. Winfield

Virdo Hunnicut was furious. His tie was pulled loose from his shirt collar, and he paced up and down the room talking loudly and jabbing his finger at J.P. to emphasize a point.

J.P. sat in the chair with only his trousers and undershirt on. His bare feet looked yellow on the rug. The razor nicks on his face were thinly flecked with blood, and his eyes were sunken. His hair was uncombed and it hung down over his forehead and ears. There was a throbbing pain in the back of his head; when he moved he felt something shoot through his neck and shoulders hot like ice. He heard Hunnicut speaking from afar. He tried to remember what had happened last night. He remembered going on the stage, and then somebody had booed and the curtain had been drawn and Seth was trying to pull him into the stage wing by his coat sleeve. Or was it April? It was like that bitch to do something like that. What was Hunnicut saying now? He didn’t give a goddamn, really. He wished Hunnicut would take a bath before he came into the room. He’d have to leave the window open all morning to get the stink out.

“—you’ll be finished, out on your ass in the street. I fired that goddamn stage manager for even letting you go on—”

Why didn’t he shut up, the fat unwashed bastard?

“Do you hear me? Open your eyes and look at me. We’re going to make an announcement over the air that you were sick last night. You had pneumonia but you wanted to go on anyway because you love the hicks so much. I’m going to wait a month and put you on the show again, but if you make another hophead performance like that you’re canned for good. Are you listening?”

Go fuck yourself.

“I don’t know how I picked you up to begin with,” Virdo Hunnicut said.

“Stop your goddamn shouting. I had my fill of it this morning,” J.P. said.

“I put you on top and you blow it.”

“I made a bundle for you.”

“You wasn’t nothing but a poor white trash farmer when you went on my show.”

“Listen, I ain’t — get the hell out of here. You’re stinking up the room.”

“What? What did you say?”

“You’re stinking up the room.”

Hunnicut’s face reddened. The sweat rolled off his neck onto his shirt. Everything about him was sweaty. His slacks stuck to his legs, and even his tie was damp. His face was strained with anger.

“You’re finished,” he said. “You take yourself and your cocaine and your slut wife with her douche bag and get out of town because I’m through with you. I’ve had enough. You ain’t worth the spit on a sidewalk. I don’t know how I put up with you this long. Go up to Little Rock and Nashville and see if they’ll give you a job when they find out you’re a junkie. I’m glad to get shut of you.”

Hunnicut walked out of the room, leaving an odor of sweat in the air behind him.

J.P. sat in the chair and felt the throbbing pain in his head increase. He couldn’t see clearly to the opposite side of the room. He wanted to get up from the chair and walk to the bed to lie down, but when he moved the pain dropped down in his neck and shoulders and he remained still. He wondered if he had said too much to Hunnicut. Pack your cocaine and your douche bag wife and get out of town. The stinking bastard. Don’t want junkies in Nashville and Little Rock to sell glow-in-the-dark tablecloths painted with the Last Supper. What about big-print Bibles miracle water actual photographs of Jesus books on faith healing flower seed egg formula vitamin tonic cut-out pictures of your favorite country singers? Snowbirds ain’t wanted. The pain in my head swells and lessens and swells again. My fingers twitch and the cigarette in my hand burns down to my knuckles. Got high Wednesday or Thursday night. Can’t remember after. My watch. Where the hell is my watch? Bitch of a wife probably sold it for a shot. If she ain’t spreading her legs for Doc Elgin. Back home we’d go after him with a gelding knife. Hopping a man’s wife for drugs. Couldn’t get in a whorehouse with a fist full of green. Eyes aching, feel full of sand like I looked at a welder’s torch too long. I need a drink or powder to get flat again and lie in bed with a soft-belly woman on top of me. That blond-headed whore up home with the rain falling outside. Tried to get her hot. You can’t get a whore hot. You hear stories about a fellow getting one hot and she keeps asking for more and then he gets it free whenever he wants. They ain’t got no interest in it. Even though they give you better loving than them tight-leg bitches that think they’re giving you something if they let you have a couple of inches. Take some snow now and a little whiskey and then go over to Jerry’s and get fixed up for the afternoon. Wonder if Hunnicut meant it. Who gives a goddamn? The unwashed bastard.

April comes into the room and stops behind my chair. We look at each other’s reflection in the dresser mirror. She is beginning to swell with child. Her dress is too tight. She don’t want to wear one of them maternity things. Don’t want to believe the baby is there. She told me she’d like to have a miscarriage. When she gets high she pretends she ain’t knocked up. I see the lines around her eyes and neck. Said she was twenty-seven. Must be older by ten years. Older than me. Hard to tell. She’s been jazzing since she was fifteen. First time in a woodshed with her uncle. She ain’t going to look good pregnant. Probably get fat and swole up like a sow. Wonder if she’s laying anybody besides Elgin. She always smells like she’s rutting when she takes off her pants. She ain’t going to get no more laying with a swole belly. A man don’t like to climb over a baby to get to it. She’s got a look in her eyes. She’s on it. She walks past my chair and out of the mirror and sits on the side of the bed and takes off her shoes. Her eyes stare at me flat. Sunday morning. She was over at Elgin’s. Prayer meeting with a needle in the tangle of sheets.

Need to dress and catch air before she starts talking. One paper of snow wrapped up in a sock in the drawer. I got to walk across the room and get it and cut out. She pulls her skirt over her knees and lays down in bed. She ain’t got any pants on. Rutting. I walk to the dresser jesus my head throbbing like the marrow of my skull brittle and cracked dust breathed into my brain and the pain drops down my back and circles my chest. Untwist the sock and tear the paper open. Put the powder under the tongue and wait. I feel it sucked into the skin taste it in the throat. Bitch was wrong. Never had to mainline. Ain’t going to neither. It don’t hurt you under the tongue. Niggers do it all the time. Don’t bother them none. You’re okay if you don’t jab it in the arm. Troy was hypo. Snow ain’t no different than getting drunk. Remember when I got tight on moon once. I could smell it in my sweat the next day. It ain’t no worse than moon. It don’t drive you blind or insane. Feel it spreading through my head and chest. Put on my shoes and shirt and get a drink at the bar and go down to the depot. Honey-colored hair. A little overweight but it makes it better.

“What did Virdo say?” April said. Her voice was slow and far away.

“He says I’m through.”

Her eyes turned from the ceiling and looked at him and blinked.

“I’m through,” he repeated.

“What?”

“He called me white trash.”

“He’s not going to fire you. He told me so.”

“Ask him again.”

“He’s just going to leave you off the show for a while.”

“I ain’t taking no more insults from him.”

“Don’t be foolish. I talked with him. He’s not going to fire you, and that’s all there is to it.”

She’s really hyped, he thought. She sat up on the bed with her skirt over her knees. Her eyes blinked at him again.

“We talked it over. He said he would give you another chance. Why did you tell me you were through?”

He buttoned his shirt and laced his shoes and didn’t answer her. The pain in his head and body had lessened. The fingers of his right hand twitched as he tied his shoe string.

“Why did you tell me those things?” April said.

He left the room without putting on his coat or tie. He rang for the elevator and waited. It didn’t come. He heard April open the door of the room.

“Where are you going?” she said. “Come back and explain to me why you said Virdo fired you.”

He walked down the stairs to the lobby. He had to pause at the second flight and rest. The twitching in his fingers spread to the muscles of his arm. He walked two more flights and stopped again. He leaned against the wall and breathed hard. He felt his heart twist from the strain. Didn’t have no sleep, he thought. I’ll sleep this afternoon and let the whore fix me up. Makes a man right. Cleans the fatigue out of him. I need another piece like that blond slut back home. Should have gone to see her again before I left. He went down the last flight to the lobby and entered the bar.

The bartender was chipping up a block of ice in the cooler. The pick splintered a few pieces of ice on the floor. The bottles behind the bar were covered with a white sheet. There was no one else in the room save a Negro who was wiping off the tables with a rag. J.P. asked the bartender for a straight whiskey.

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s Sunday. We can’t serve drinks until after one o’clock.”

“Give me a bottle to go.”

“We can’t do that either, sir.”

He left the hotel and walked down the sidewalk in the sunshine to the cabstand. He rode out to Jerry’s Bar behind the depot with the hot summer wind blowing in his face through the car window. He ran his fingers along his jaw and felt the dried blood of the razor nicks flake off as he touched them. He looked down at his shirt. It was the same one he had taken off last night. There was a small drop of blood on the soiled collar. The cab drove through the train yard over the railroad tracks and stopped in front of the bar. The electric sign over the door with the shorted-out letters buzzed loudly. He paid the driver and went inside. Jerry was behind the bar.

“Good morning, Mr. Winfield,” he said. The bald spot in the center of his head shone dully in the light. He had an ingratiating mercantile manner that made J.P. want to spit. “What will you have?”

“A straight.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jerry put the jigger on the bar and filled it from a bottle that had a chrome spout fixed to the top. J.P. drank the bourbon neat and had the jigger filled again. The whiskey burned the inside of his stomach. He didn’t remember when he had last eaten.

“I want a girl for the afternoon,” he said.

“Talk to my wife. She takes care of all that.”

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs.”

J.P. started towards the back.

“Mr. Winfield, you didn’t pay for your drinks.”

He reached in his pocket for his wallet and found that he didn’t have it.

“Give me a blank check and a pen,” he said.

“We don’t cash checks as a rule, Mr. Winfield.”

“Don’t you think it’s good?”

“It ain’t that. I know it’s good coming from you, but Emma don’t like me taking checks from nobody.”

“You ain’t running the only cathouse in town. You want me to go somewhere else?”

Jerry took the empty jigger off the bar and looked up the stairs at the back of the room.

“All right. I’ll cash it for you. But don’t let Emma know about it,” he said.

J.P. wrote out a check for a hundred dollars. Jerry took out for the two drinks and placed the rest of the bills and a couple of coins on the bar. J.P. folded the money and put it in his pocket. The room smelled of sawdust and flat beer.

Emma, the bartender’s wife, met him at the top of the stairs. She was big for a woman, and she had masculine features and thick muscular arms. She looked at him with her opaque colorless eyes.

“You pay here before you go any further,” she said.

J.P. took some money out of his pocket, counted it, and gave it to her.

“Where is Honey?” he said.

“She’s got a customer. You want to wait?”

“No.”

“Go into that room on the right. I’ll send a girl in.”

He went into one of the bedrooms. The single window was boarded on the outside. The only furniture was a wood chair, a large double bed that was covered with a spread tucked in tightly on all sides, and a night table ringed with glass stains with a tin washbasin on top. There were cigarette burns on the floor, and a half-empty glass of beer on the windowsill. There was a lipstick print on the rim of the glass. He turned on the overhead light and looked at the cracked wallpaper and the stains on the bedspread and he turned it off again. He sat in the wood chair and took his package of cigarettes out of his pocket. It was empty. He crushed it and threw it on the floor.

The door opened and the girl came in. She was thin and tall with long straight black hair, and she looked as though she had been up all night. She had on light blue shorts and a knitted sweater without sleeves. Her mouth was thin like a spinster’s, and she used her lipstick to make her lips look larger. She undressed by the bed and put her clothes on the chair. She looked at the crushed cigarette package on the floor.

“Say, this room ain’t a garbage can,” she said.

“Get in bed.”

“Listen. We have to keep our rooms clean. Miss Emma don’t like them dirty.”

“You ought to set fire to the whole goddamn place, then.”

“Wait a minute, mister. I’ve had a hard night. I don’t have to put up with any stuff from you.”

“I ain’t come in here to talk about your dirty floor. Get on the bed,” he said.

“I have to look at you first.”

A half hour later he sent down for a bottle. The girl asked for beer. She said whiskey made her sick. She got drunk very easily, and she talked obscenely while they made love. She hadn’t taken off her lipstick and she smeared it on the side of his face. He felt the whiskey go through his body, and he had that same thick feeling in his head of the night before, and the strain of the alcohol and sexual labor made him short of breath. He wished he had taken another girl. She had had only three bottles of beer, but she was very drunk. He drank down the whiskey and felt it hit hot in his stomach. The girl opened another beer and smoked a cigarette. She got up once to use the bathroom. They could hear the music from the jukebox down in the bar and she popped her fingers in time to the tempo. After a while she became half asleep, her mouth open, and lay relaxed on the bed and didn’t move her body with his.

“Go tell that woman to send in another girl,” he said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Just tell her to bring someone else in, and you can take the day off.”

“What’s wrong with me? You want a special kind of jazzing or something?”

“I didn’t pay you to fall asleep.”

“You must think you’re some kind of wonderful lay. I’ve had better lays from a sixteen-year-old boy than you. You don’t even know how to get it in.”

“Get the hell out.”

“I hope somebody else gives you a good case of clap, you bastard,” she said.

She put on her light blue shorts and knitted sweater and house slippers and left the room. A minute later somebody knocked on the door.

“Put something on. It’s me,” Emma said.

J.P. got up from the bed and slipped his trousers on. He felt dizzy when he stood up. Emma came in and shut the door behind her.

“What’s the trouble?” she said.

“Bring Honey in.”

“What’s wrong with the girl I gave you?”

“I don’t like her,” he said.

“I ain’t had any complaints about her before.”

“Send me another girl. I done paid for the afternoon.”

“It will cost you twenty-five dollars more,” she said.

“I already give you fifty.”

“You paid for Rita.”

“What difference does that make?”

“If you want somebody else you got to pay again.”

“The bitch went to sleep on me,” he said.

“She’s one of my best girls. I never had no complaints.”

“She sleeps with her mouth open.”

“A man told me last night she was the nicest lay in the house. Her customers don’t complain,” she said.

“I didn’t hire a wore-out whore that can’t stay awake.”

“If you’re one of these flip guys with different tastes you can go down the street. They’ll take care of you. I run a respectable place. There’s others waiting for this room that will pay extra to have Rita.”

She folded her heavy arms across her breasts and looked at him.

“All right. Here. Tell Honey to come in,” he said, giving her the money.

“She’s in another room now. You’ll have to wait a few minutes.”

After the woman had left he poured a glass of bourbon and sat in the chair and drank slowly and looked at his bare yellow feet on the floor. His fingers shook slightly on the glass. He thought about Honey and her soft belly and pink breasts. He had made love to the first girl twice, and he should have felt spent, but he could feel it go through him again, weak in the loins and the pit of his stomach, and he put the tip of his tongue between his teeth when he thought about it. He drank down the whiskey and filled the glass again. The bottle was two-thirds empty. He tried to remember what had taken place the last three days. Everything was confused in time, and he couldn’t concentrate on any one thing long without its becoming confused with something else. He knew that something had happened in a bar somewhere and there had been a fight. Maybe someone had taken him outside and rolled him. His watch. Yes, and his billfold. That had been it. There was a fight and he had been rolled. Saturday night he had been on the Jubilee. That was last night. He didn’t have his guitar with him or he could have played right. They had given him one of them goddamn electric things that sounded like somebody was twanging on a strand of baling wire. The only person who could use an electric guitar was Charley Christian, and he was dead. A man gave a guitar its tone. It didn’t need nothing else but the man playing it. J.P. could hear and feel the rosinous squeak of his fingers working over the frets and the chords vibrating through the dark wood.

The girl he had wanted came into the room. She had on a pink robe and sandals. Her hair had dark and light amber streaks in it. He expected her to smile or to make some show of recognition when she saw him. She didn’t speak, and her pale blue eyes looked at him for a moment and then turned away blankly as she took off her robe and dropped it over the brass bedstead.

“Miss Emma said you give Rita some trouble. This is just a straight date without no trouble, hear.”

“I didn’t bruise nothing of yours the last time I was here,” he said.

“Miss Emma says you give Rita a bad time.”

“I didn’t pay for no drunk whore to yawn in my face.”

“Well, I don’t want no trouble. Rita says you were acting flip. I give a straight lay and that’s all. You go see one of the other girls if you want something else.”

“Do you remember me?” he said.

“Lots of fellows come in. They’re one and the same to me, honey.”

She lay down on the bed in a receptive position. She rubbed the insides of her thighs with her palms. He poured a drink in his glass from the fifth and drank it down.

“Let’s go, honey. There’s others waiting,” she said.

“Get on top.”

“That means you got a complex about your mother.”

“Watch it.”

“Some fellows want to lay their mother and they don’t know it. I read it in a magazine once.”

“Get on top and do what you’re supposed to,” he said.

“I know my job. You don’t have to worry about that.”

She got on top of him and smiled stupidly. She raised up on her knees and then sat back. She touched him and adjusted herself again, supporting herself with one arm, and sat once more on his legs.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she said.

“It’s the whiskey.”

“You give Rita all you had. You ain’t got another lay in you,” she said.

“Wait a minute. I’ll be all right. I was all right before you come in here.”

“Are you saying you can’t get nothing on for me?”

“No. It’s just the whiskey. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

“Come back tomorrow,” she said.

“I hired you for the afternoon.”

“You ain’t got it to put in, honey.”

“I paid seventy-five dollars for you and that other bitch, and you ain’t taking off.”

“You see me tomorrow night and I’ll give you one free.”

“You bitch,” he said.

“Take it easy.”

“You ain’t cutting out on me.”

“I’m not going to stay here and play hand games for you, mister. When you can get something on come back and I’ll take care of you.”

She took her robe off the bedstead and started to put it on. He sat up and pulled it off her. The sleeve caught on her arm and ripped at the shoulder. She grabbed the robe in both hands and jerked it away from him and got off the bed.

“All right, flip man,” she said. She pushed a buzzer on the wall by the light switch and put on her robe. Her shoulder showed at the rip in the seam. He got off the bed and came towards her. She pushed the buzzer again.

“I’d like to watch him beat the piss out of you,” she said, and went out the door.

“You goddamn whore.”

He put on his shirt and trousers. He felt shamed and enraged at the same time. His head spun when he reached over to pick up his shoes. He forgot to put on his socks. He wanted retribution against the two prostitutes and the madam. They had gotten him for seventy-five dollars. He was going out in the hall and either make the girl return to the room or get his money from the madam. Back home they’d burn a whorehouse down with coal oil if a man got treated like a nigger. They’d put the whores in jail and let any bum with a dollar in his overalls lay them. Said she’d gotten better jazzing from a sixteen-year-old. I could split her in two. I ain’t going to take no insults from a bunch of whores.

The door opened and a big man whom he hadn’t seen before walked in. The man had a flat, scarred face and tattoos showed through the black hair on his arms. The hair on his chest curled out over the top of his shirt. He had a short wood club in his Sand the handle wrapped with black tape and a hole drilled in the end filled with lead. Emma stood behind him in the doorway. Her hard eyes looked over the man’s shoulder at J.P.

J.P. backed away and got his knife out of his pocket. He opened the single blade and held it before him. He had seen a knife fight in a poolroom once and he remembered to keep the knife at an upward angle to parry a thrust or blow. He tripped backwards over the chair. The big man flicked the club across J.P.’s hand and knocked the knife to the floor. J.P. felt the bones in the back of his hand break, and a pain shot up his arm into his shoulder. He held his wrist with his other hand, and the man hit him across his good arm. He fell back against the boarded window and dropped to the floor. His trousers came loose and uncovered his buttocks. The pain was more than he could bear. His mouth opened and the muscles in his stomach tightened and convulsed. He felt that his arms were jerking without control when he tried to move them. The room was pink like blood diffused in water.

“The sonofabitch,” Emma said.

“Do you want to put him in back?” the big man said.

“I knowed he was going to cause trouble when he first come in here.”

“He don’t look like much now,” the big man said.

“I give him the two best pieces in the house, and he gets one of them drunk and he tells Honey he can’t get nothing on for her.”

The man picked up the knife off the floor and folded the blade and put it in his pocket.

“Give me the stick,” she said.

She leaned over J.P. and hit him across the jaw with the club. His face snapped sideways against the floor. His eyes were still closed and his mouth was open and a mixture of saliva and blood drained out on the hard-grained wood. His expression didn’t change. His broken hand had begun to swell.

“Put him behind the tracks,” she said. “Maybe one of the bums will give him the kind of swish action he wants.”

The big man picked J.P. up over his shoulder and carried him through the hallway and down the stairs. Honey stood in the doorway of the kitchen, smoking a cigarette, and watched them. She picked her teeth with her fingernail. The man took J.P. out the back door towards the railroad tracks. The brambled area behind the building was littered with broken glass and refuse that had overflowed the garbage cans. The man carried him over the tracks and the gravel bedding to the jungle. The trees and grass were powdered with dust from the passing trains. The man put J.P. down and went back to the building.

J.P. lay on his stomach with the side of his face in the dirt and his arm twisted under him. A train roared by and the ground thundered under him, although he was only vaguely aware of it. He slipped in and out of consciousness; he was at the bottom of a dark place without pain, and then the yellow light of afternoon came into his mind and he felt he could open his eyes but the bone-throbbing pain in his hand began and he choked on the blood in his throat and fell away into nothing again.

Two men walked through the dust-covered trees and brush. One of them was thin and suntanned with a sharp, lean face. He had only one eye; the iris of his blind eye was broken and its color had run out into the cornea. His hair was stiff and uncut, and he wore a pair of pin-striped trousers that were shiny from wear. The other man was smaller and thinner than the first, and his trousers sagged on his buttocks. He had a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth that had gone out, and his teeth were brown with rot. There was a needle hole in his arm which he had gotten when he sold blood at the blood bank. He followed the man with one eye through the trees. He took a sip off a bottle of port and screwed the cap back on and put it in his pocket. He didn’t want the first man to see him drinking. They were supposed to share the bottle. They stopped when they saw J.P. on the ground. The man with one eye touched J.P. with his foot.

“Let’s get going. I don’t want to get found with no dead man,” the one with the rotted teeth said.

“He ain’t dead. A dead man don’t bleed. Don’t you know that?”

“He must have fell off the train.”

“Look at them shoes. He ain’t no bum.” He had to turn his good eye around to look at the other man. He took off J.P.’s shoes and sat on the ground and put them on his own feet. “Go through his pockets.”

“Let’s go. There might be some dicks around.”

“You want another bottle, don’t you? Get his money.”

“They lock you up for keeps in this fucking town.”

“There ain’t no dicks around.”

The smaller man went through J.P.’s trouser pockets. He felt the loose bills but he didn’t pull them out.

“He ain’t got nothing,” he said.

“See if he’s got a watch.”

“He ain’t carrying nothing, I tell you.” He waited until the other man turned his good eye down to tie his shoes, and then he tried to get the bills out of J.P.’s pocket without being seen.

“You lying bastard. Give me that. I ought to beat the crap out of you.”

“I was going to give it to you.”

“Shut up.”

“You spent all the last money we got at the blood bank on a whore.”

“So what?” the man with one eye said.

“It was half mine.”

“You’d be in jail in Baton Rouge if I hadn’t talked the dicks out of it and told them we’d clear town.”

“Let me have half of it.”

“I’ll give it to you later.”

“You’ll get juiced with a woman and I won’t see none of it.”

“I let you carry the port, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but—”

“I don’t let nobody give you no shit, do I?”

“What if the dicks grab you and I get away? I don’t get no dough.”

“You tried to steal it from me. That don’t give you no rights.”

“Come on, Jess.”

“Piss on it. Let’s get out of here.”

They walked off arguing through the trees.

J.P. became completely conscious late that afternoon. His eyes opened and he looked at the ants crawling on the ground and the tin cans and bits of moldy newspaper. He pulled his arm out from under him. The back of his hand was swollen and purple. He sat upright and let the hand lie limply in his lap. He felt something hard roll inside his mouth and spit the broken tooth on the ground. He looked at it dumbly and touched the side of his face with his good hand. The pain ripped along his jawbone and into his ear. When he swallowed some blood it made him retch, but he could only heave dryly, out of breath, the muscles in his chest and throat straining violently from the effort. He saw his bare feet and the old pair of shoes the tramp had left. He stood up, holding his bad hand at the wrist, and looked around. The blood raced in his head and everything went out and away from him and blurred and then came back again. He didn’t know where he was. He walked through the dust-powdered trees and knocked against the trunks with his body, and the branches swung back against his face. He had to get someone to help him before he passed out again. He could die out there and no one would find him until the smell got so bad that the parish health man would be sent out to investigate it. He stepped on a sharp rock and bruised his foot. He looked through the trees and saw the railroad tracks, and on the other side, the brothel. He was in the jungle behind the tracks. They had worked him over and dumped him in the jungle. That big sonofabitch with the flat scarred face. J.P. thought of what he would do in retribution to the man and the madam and the two prostitutes. He became confused and thought he was back home. He saw Clois and the other men from the billiard hall and himself packed in a coupé at night with the cans of coal oil on the floorboards, riding out in the country to the brothel; they would park the car on the road and move quietly up to the building and saturate the porch and the walls from the cans and set a torch to it. He could see the building burn against the dark sky and the whores climbing out the windows and the big man with the club rolling on the lawn trying to put his clothes out.

He walked in an uneven line to the railroad and crossed the tracks. The rocks cut his feet. The sun was low in the sky, and it shone just above the freight cars in the yard. He heard a whistle blow in the distance. He went through the vacant field by the side of the brothel to the street. He stepped on some thorns and he could hardly bear to put his weight down on his feet. His breath rasped in his throat and there was a close feeling in his chest. He held his hand by the wrist, and when he walked the movement made his whole arm throb. He came out of the field onto the dirty side street that ran past the train yard in front of the brothel. There was nobody on the street. He saw a brakeman locking the door on a freight car in the yard. An automobile came down the street, and as it passed J.P. waved his arm to stop the driver. The man looked at him strangely and drove on.

Goddamn lousy bastard.

A few minutes later J.P. lay on the sidewalk unconscious. He didn’t know that he had had a heart attack. He hadn’t had time to think about it. He felt his heart twist inside him, and there was one great pain that exploded in his chest, and then the cement rushed up to hit him and that was all. A taxi that had just let down a man at the brothel stopped and the driver got out and came over. He knelt on one knee beside J.P. and felt his wrist for the pulse. He went back to his cab and called the dispatcher at his company on the radio and told him to send an ambulance. The sun went down, and one of the locomotives in the yard was pushing a string of freight cars off on a siding. A Negro boy walked down the street, throwing a baseball up in the air and catching it in a fielder’s glove. He stopped on the other side of the street and looked at the cab-driver and J.P. The long cream-colored ambulance glided down the street with the siren low and parked by the curb. The two attendants took the stretcher out of the back and put J.P. on it and strapped down his legs and chest with the cloth belts. They put him into the ambulance, and one rode in back with him and the other drove.

They took him to the emergency receiving room at the charity hospital, which was an old building in the poor section of town built by Huey Long during the depression. There was a big green lawn in front and trees along the walkway and the walls were orange like rust. The emergency room was overcrowded, and the nurse told the ambulance driver that all the doctors were busy at the moment and they would have to put J.P. in an oxygen tent and wait until the intern on the floor was free. There were two Negroes in the waiting room who had been cut in a razor fight, an emaciated three-year-old girl, and a man with a compress on his head who had been hurt in an auto accident.

The ambulance men pushed the stretcher down the hall on its rubber wheels to one of the rooms with an oxygen tent. The ambulance men were tired and they wanted to put J.P. in the tent and go to coffee before they were called out again. Having been exposed to death often, they had learned that the end of man’s life is as significant and tragic as water breaking out the bottom of a paper bag. The doctors worked on J.P. for several hours. Two of the heart chambers had ruptured and filled and couldn’t expel the blood back into the arteries. One of the doctors suggested opening the cavity and massaging the heart, but there wasn’t a surgeon available at the time who could perform the operation. J.P. died alone in the room shortly after midnight, and when the nurse found he was dead she called the intern and the body was removed, because the space was needed for others.

Avery Broussard

It was Friday evening and they were having a barbecue and beer party at the apartment. The afternoon sun had already died in the west as he walked down Dauphine, and the old stucco buildings and the iron-railed balconies stood out against the acetylene-blue glow of the sky after dusk. He had gotten a haircut and a shoeshine at the barbershop, and he felt good after the day’s work on the pipeline. He walked under the green colonnade in front of a corner grocery store and went inside and bought twelve bottles of beer in a paper bag. An old man was selling the Picayune, and there was a hurdy-gurdy playing on the other side of the street. Avery carried the beer in the sack down to the apartment and went through the gate under the willow tree into the courtyard.

Suzanne was cooking chickens on a small portable barbecue pit she had set up on the flagging. She wore a blue and white summer dress, and there were drops of perspiration around her temples. She had borrowed some Japanese lanterns from a friend and had strung them over the court. There was a large tin tub of crushed ice and beer by the stone well. Several other people sat in deck chairs or on the steps, sipping highballs and drinking beer and talking. Wally was telling a couple that the Paris Review had accepted two of his poems and that the Atlantic Monthly was considering one of his short stories. He was drinking Scotch and soda, and his face was flushed and his English accent kept becoming more pronounced. Avery went over to Suzanne and smiled at her and put the bottles in the crushed ice. She had washed her hair the night before and it was loose and soft around her shoulders.

“I was waiting for you,” she said.

“We worked overtime today.”

“You look nice.”

“I had a haircut.”

“Taste the sauce.”

He tasted it with the wooden spoon.

“C’est pas trop chaud pour toi?” she said.

“I thought you had forgotten French.”

“Dis moi de la sauce.”

“It’s good.”

The light of the paper lanterns, which swung slowly in the breeze, flickered on her face. Her dark eyes were bright and cheerful. Her arm brushed against him and he wished they were alone and not at the party. He opened a beer and drank out of the bottle. She took a sip and turned the chickens on the grill. The grease dripped down into the fire and sputtered on the coals. Wally came over with a highball glass in his hand.

“Hi, fellow. What did you bring?” he said.

“Dago red. Would you like some?”

“There’s a bottle of Vat 69 upstairs in the cabinet,” Suzanne said.

“Were you speaking French?”

“I don’t know any French,” Avery said.

“Seriously. Can you speak French?”

“We were practicing our Church Latin. We’re thinking of taking holy orders,” Avery said.

“That’s right. You are a Catholic, aren’t you? Denise told me. I say, have you read any of Joyce?”

“Why don’t you get another highball, Wally?” Suzanne said.

“What do the Jesuits think of Joyce?”

“I didn’t go to school under the Jesuits,” Avery said.

“You look like a Jesuit. Melancholy eyes and that sort of thing.”

“For heaven’s sake, Wally. Get a highball,” Suzanne said.

“I’ve been doing some work on the Trinity theme in Ulysses. I think Joyce was actually orthodox in his Catholicism. Tell me, do Catholics really have to accept all of the Nicene Creed?”

“I’m not Catholic,” Avery said.

“Suzanne’s roommate told me you were.”

“Wally, go upstairs and get the Scotch. I’d like a drink, too,” Suzanne said.

“I’m sure there’s a relation between the Trinity and the Bloom family.”

“Who is the Bloom family?” Avery said.

“Isn’t it true that you’re Catholic?”

“No.”

“You are, aren’t you, Suzanne?” Wally said. “Once in a while.”

“Well, do you have to accept all the Nicene Creed?”

“I suppose. What does that have to do with anything?”

Wally forgot why he had asked. He began talking about Baudelaire.

“I’ve been reading him in French. You lose a lot in the translation,” he said. “Have you read The Flowers of Evil in French?”

“I read Ring Lardner and Rudyard Kipling my last year in high school,” Avery said.

“You don’t consider Lardner a serious writer, do you?”

“I’d like a highball. Would you fix me one, Wally?” Suzanne said.

“Do you really compare Lardner with someone like Baudelaire?”

“I liked his short stories,” Avery said.

“Tell me if you think Lardner could be compared with any French writer of worth.”

“You’re tight,” Suzanne said.

“I just want to know if anybody can believe Ringgold Lardner was a good writer.”

“If you won’t get the Scotch, open a beer for me, please,” she said.

“Lardner never wrote a decent page of prose in his life,” Wally said.

“Wally, will you please be quiet.”

“And Kipling, for God’s sake. Can you tell me of anyone more undeserving who has received as much attention?”

Avery looked at his whiskey-red face and didn’t say anything. A young man came over from the steps and put his arm on Wally’s shoulder. He winked at Suzanne.

“Come talk to us, old sock,” he said. “We want to hear about your poems.”

“They’re completely worthless.”

“Also about your short story in the Atlantic,” the young man said.

“It’s worthless, too. The Atlantic has a policy of not publishing anything of merit.”

“Come sit down and have a Scotch with us,” the young man said. He was a portrait painter who had done well with the Saint Charles Avenue upper class. His hair was black and he had a good suntan and his teeth were white when he smiled.

“Stop this goddamn patronizing attitude,” Wally said. “If there is anything I can’t stand, it’s to be patronized when I’m drunk.”

The others in the courtyard stopped talking and looked at Wally. The young portrait painter felt that attention was being focused on him, also. He smiled and put his hand on Wally’s shoulder again. His teeth shone, and he gave an appearance of composure and easiness of manner.

“I’m not patronizing you,” he said in a low voice, smiling.

“Do you know one thing about the amount of work that goes into a good piece of fiction?”

“Come over and tell us about it.”

“Do you think that painting some aristocratic pig on Saint Charles is art?”

“Now look, Wally.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ll discuss it with you when you’re not crosseyed.”

“You don’t know anything about art, whether I’m sober or not.”

“Let’s have a drink. This is rather pointless, isn’t it?”

“Hell it’s pointless. I want to know right now if you think painting these pigs is art.”

Suzanne turned to Avery and spoke quietly. “Take him outside for a while. I’ll serve dinner.”

“I’m going out for cigarettes. Do you want to come?” Avery said to Wally.

“How am I in any way involved with your smoking habits?”

“I thought you might like to take a walk.”

“All right. I know I’m obnoxious. I’ll leave,” he said. “I apologize, painter. You’re an artist. Your pigs will be hung in the Louvre someday.”

They went out of the courtyard into the street. They walked along the sidewalk in the dark under the balconies and colonnades in front of the apartments with the trees hanging over the walk, the tattoo parlors, antique shops, the small lighted restaurants with the steamed windows, the ten dollar a week rooming houses that catered to the Tony Bacino clientele, the pool halls and bars and Salvation Army missions, past the girls who stood in the darkened doorways and smiled woodenly, and across the street to the grocery store on the corner with the big screen doors and the green shutters and coarse-grained floors and the rusted Hadacol sign and the glass cases of chewing tobacco and cigars.

Avery bought a package of Virginia Extra and poured the tobacco into the wheat-straw paper. He and Wally walked back towards the apartment. Avery struck a match and lighted the cigarette and watched the paper curl away from the flame.

“How do you feel?” he said.

“Nonrepentant,” Wally said.

“You made it a little hard on Suzanne.”

“I didn’t mean to, old pal. My bile is directed only towards pretentious painters. I can’t tolerate that fellow. He’s such a goddamn boor.”

“Do you think you can go back in now?”

“I’m in excellent shape. By the bye, can we forget that Lardner business?”

“Sure.”

“I know I’m bloody insulting when I get on the grog.”

“Forget about it.”

“It’s merely that I don’t like Kipling or Lardner. Neither of them could write. I can’t understand how these people are given attention.”

“Do you want a smoke?” Avery said.

“Lardner wrote Saturday Evening Post fiction.”

Avery walked on listening and not answering.

They passed a package store just before they got to the apartment.

“I say, could you let me have a couple of dollars?” Wally said. “I’m out of booze and I don’t like drinking off the others all evening.”

Avery gave him the money. Wally bought a pint bottle and put it in his coat pocket, and they went back into the courtyard. The guests were eating the barbecued chickens from paper plates with their fingers, and Suzanne was serving several other people who had just arrived. Avery looked at her damp temples and the way her body moved against her dress. He took a beer out of the tub of crushed ice and opened it. The foam came out over the top of the bottle and slid down the side onto his hand.

“How is he?” she said.

“Still plastered.”

“Get a plate. You haven’t eaten anything.”

“Can we be together later?” Avery said.

“We’ll have to go somewhere else. Denise is going to be home.”

“Let’s go to the beach.”

“All right. Maybe everyone will leave early.”

“We can rent the beach cabin,” he said.

“Ssssh.” She smiled.

“They can’t hear us. Wally is talking too loud.”

“We’ll have to get him to leave early, too. He’s always the last one to go. He spent the night on our sofa one time.”

“Maybe we can send him home with the painter. They seem to get along well.”

“Excuse me a minute, darling. I have to go upstairs and get some more chickens.”

“I’ll help you.”

“I can do it by myself.”

“I’ll help you, anyway,” he said. She smiled back at him.

They went up the stone steps to the apartment. When they were inside he closed the door behind them. He kissed her on the cheek and mouth in the darkened living room.

“Ummmmm,” she said. “You’re nice.”

She put her arms around his neck and held him close.

“Do you think they would miss us for a few minutes?” he said.

“Oh, darling, wait until tonight.”

“It would only take a few minutes.”

“We can’t. Someone might come in.”

“Let’s stay at the beach house all night, then.”

“Won’t you be too tired to work tomorrow?”

“We probably won’t get to work a full day. It’s supposed to rain.”

“We haven’t gotten a whole night together in a long time. Won’t it be lovely?” she said.

“Do you think the others will go home early?”

“I’ll ask Denise to suggest that everyone go to that cellar place on Burgundy.”

“Will they do it?”

“I think so. It’s one of those sandal and beard places. It’s artistic to be seen there.”

He kissed her on the neck and held her and put his face in her hair. He felt the smoothness of her body against him.

“I want you so much,” she said.

“You’re a precious lady.”

“I love you terribly.”

“Can’t we go in the other room?”

“It will only be a couple of more hours.”

“We haven’t had each other in four days.”

“I know, darling. But it will be so good tonight. Let’s wait.”

He kissed her cheek again and bit the lobe of her ear.

“We have to go back,” she said. “Stay a little longer.”

“I have to cook.”

“Let’s don’t go to any more parties for a while.”

“All right, darling.”

“We’re around other people too much.”

“We won’t go to any more parties unless you want to, and we’ll only see each other.”

“Do you mind not seeing anyone but me?” he said. “Of course I don’t. We have good times together.”

“Don’t go back yet.”

“We have to. Be good and help me carry the food down.”

They went down the stone steps to the courtyard. The light from the Japanese lanterns fell on the oleander and jasmine and Spanish daggers in the flower beds. There was the whisper of silk and petticoats, and the quiet talk of couples in the shadows, and the clink of ice in cool glasses of gin and quinine water. Avery reached his hand down into the tin tub and took out one of the last bottles of beer and opened it. The cap clicked on the flagging of the court. Suzanne stood under the willow by the iron gate to greet some people who had just come in. She came over to Avery.

“We’ll have to get more beer,” she said. “Can you go down to the grocery store?”

“It’s closed now.”

“That place on Esplanade is still open. Go in the car.”

“Where are the keys?”

“Upstairs, I suppose. You don’t mind going, do you? I’d ask Wally, but he’d never come back.”

“When are they going to leave?”

“It won’t be long. I’ll talk with Denise. Be a good darling.”

Avery went upstairs and got the keys and came back down and started out the courtyard.

“Where are you going, old pal?” Wally said.

“To get beer.”

“Is it all right if I go along? That painter has started talking again. I swear to Jesus I can’t tolerate listening to that fellow.”

“I’m only going to be gone a few minutes.”

“Maybe he will have left when we get back. If he’s still here I think I’m going to hit him.”

“You’d better come with me.”

“Rather. I’m not keen on getting into a bash with such a disgusting fellow.”

They went around the side of the building to the cobbled alley where the car was parked. Avery started the engine and drove out onto the street with the convertible top down and pressed on the accelerator. The exhaust roared against the pavement and echoed off the quiet buildings. The car, low-slung and flat with a wide wheelbase, could turn a corner with a slight twist of the steering wheel.

You couldn’t use all the gears except on the highway; and when he pushed down on the gas he felt the power pull him back in the leather seat. They went to the grocery store on Esplanade and bought a half case of beer. They put it on the front seat between them. Wally opened one of the warm beers on the bumper of the car by putting the cap against the metal edge and knocking it down with the palm of his hand until it popped loose. The beer foamed up over the front of his coat. He upended the bottle and drank fast, his throat working, to avoid spilling any more. Avery put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb and made a right turn into the Quarter.

“One-way street,” Wally said.

Avery stepped on the brake and put the car in reverse. He backed into a driveway to turn around. The exhaust throbbed against the stucco wall of the building. An automobile was coming down the street towards them. Avery waited for it to pass before he pulled out. It stopped in front of them and blocked the driveway. The headlights went out, and Avery saw the city police emblem on the door. He could hear the police calls coming over the mobile radio inside. The officer got out and walked towards them. He had a flashlight in his hand.

“Put the beer under the seat,” Avery said.

“There’s no room.”

“Cover it with your coat.”

Too late, old pal.”

The officer shone the large three-battery flashlight at them and into the car. The bottles were amber in the light. The officer was young and looked as though he hadn’t been on the police force long. He wore a tight, well-fitting light blue shirt and dark blue trousers with a black stripe down the side. He had a pistol and holster on his hip and a thick leather belt with the.45 cartridges protruding through the loops and handcuffs in a black leather case and a short billy with a spring and a lead weight in it. He was tall with dark hair and athletic features. There was a pair of sunglasses in his shirt pocket.

“Do you know this is a one-way street?” he said.

“I didn’t see the sign,” Avery said.

The officer shined the light on the bottles.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Not in the car.”

“Let me see your driver’s license, please.”

Avery took out his billfold and opened the celluloid viewers.

“Take it out of the wallet, please.”

Avery gave it to him. The officer looked at it under the flashlight.

“This expired last year, Broussard.”

“I didn’t look at the date on it.”

“I say, I’m the only one drinking, officer. This fellow is quite all right,” Wally said.

“You’ll have to come down to the station with me.”

“I’m not drunk,” Avery said.

“You have liquor in your possession and you’ve been drinking.”

“Look, couldn’t you give me the ticket and let it go?”

“Both of you get in my car, please.”

“I say,” Wally said.

The officer opened the door for Avery to get out.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“You can’t get me on a D.W.I. I’m not drunk.”

“He’s disgustingly sober,” Wally said.

“Don’t make it hard on yourself, Broussard.”

“I haven’t had more than four beers this evening.”

“Get out of the car.”

“I’m not going to jail for a D.W.I.”

“You just have to go to night court and pay your fine.”

“We’re absolutely broke. That means the can, doesn’t it?” Wally said.

“Come on, Broussard.”

“All right, but I want a test. Do you understand? I’m not going to jail on a drunk charge.”

“Have you been in jail before?”

“No.”

“Put away your beer and come along, too,” he said to Wally.

“Righto. Just a moment. I never leave an unfinished drink about.” Wally drank down the last of the beer in the bottle.

“I want the test right away. As soon as I get in the station,” Avery said.

“You’ll get it.”

“No jail, either. You understand.”

“Both of you get out.”

“Let go of my shoulder,” Avery said.

“I told you to get out.”

“Take your hand off me.”

“You’re making trouble for both of us. Now climb out of there.”

Avery knocked his hand away.

“All right, stand up,” the officer said. “You heard me. Put your hands against the car.”

“Isn’t this a bit absurd?” Wally said.

“Put your hands on the car and lean on them, Broussard.”

Avery stood with his feet wide apart and his weight on his arms. The officer shook him down carefully. He kept one leg inside Avery’s as he patted with his hands along his trousers so he could kick his feet out from under him if he attempted anything.

“You’re next. Lean against the car,” he said to Wally.

“You haven’t any abnormal complexes, have you?”

“Do what I tell you.”

Wally turned around and placed his hands on the car fender. The officer searched his pockets.

“Get in the back seat of my car,” he said.

The inside of the police car was fitted with a thick wire screen which was attached to the roof and bolted to an iron bar that ran along behind the driver’s seat so that the driver was protected from anyone behind him. Wally and Avery got in, and the officer pulled the car up to unblock the driveway and went back to move Suzanne’s sports car out into the street and park it by the curb.

As they rode down to the police station Avery began to feel afraid. It was an empty sick feeling in his stomach, the same sick feeling he had when he was taken to the work camp on the train in handcuffs and a prison guard met him and the deputy sheriff at the depot and they drove down the dirt road in the pickup truck and he had looked out the window and had seen the white barracks through the pines and the denim uniforms of the men and the high fence with the strands of barbed wire at the top. He felt in his pocket for his cigarettes and found that he had only the package of Virginia Extra he had bought earlier in the evening. He tried to roll a cigarette and the tobacco shook out of the paper. He took a cigarette from Wally, but the smoke tasted bad in his mouth. He tried to remain reasonable and to think of the best thing to do, and then he knew that there was nothing to do; they had him and maybe they would fine him and let him go, or someone might check and discover that he was an exconvict, and that would mean the jail without bond and a trial for parole violation and then the ride on the train back to the work camp and two more years on the gang.

They walked up the steps of the police station, a brown brick building with yellow shades on the windows. There was a big marble corridor inside and spittoons were placed along the walls, and at the end there were two varnished swinging doors with panes of frosted glass in them. Wally and Avery and the officer went through the doors into a large room where there were several desks, filing cabinets, spittoons, and telephones. There were only two men at the desks. One of them was in uniform. The officer told Avery and Wally to sit down on the bench by the wall and wait. Avery rolled another cigarette and the tobacco fell out the ends, and when he lighted it the paper flared up and made the smoke hot in his throat, and finally the cigarette broke apart in his hand. The officer made out his report and started to leave.

“Am I being charged with a D.W.I.?” Avery said.

The policeman didn’t answer him and walked back out through the wood doors.

The officer in uniform at the desk came over to them with some papers and a fountain pen in his hand. He had a square, blunt, red face and brown hair that had begun to thin and recede at the forehead. He sat down beside them on the bench and crossed his leg and held the papers on his thigh to write.

“What is your name?” he said to Wally.

“Wally Laughlin.”

“Age.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Why did you give the officer some trouble?”

“I assure you I didn’t. The fellow seemed intent on making a fool of himself.”

“That’s enough of that.”

“What am I being charged with?”

“You’re not charged with anything. You can go if you like. Just try to cooperate with the police next time.”

“Why was I brought down here?”

“You’d better go, son.”

“Do you want me to do anything?” he said to Avery.

“What time is night court?”

“Eleven o’clock,” the officer said.

“Go tell Suzanne what happened. Ask her if she can raise the fine,” Avery said.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay around?” Wally said.

“Just see Suzanne.”

“We’ll get the car and come back before eleven.”

“Thanks.”

“Take care.”

“So long.”

Wally went out through the doors, which swung back behind him.

“How do you want to enter your plea?” the officer said, his red, square face looking at Avery.

“What are the charges?”

“No license, going the wrong way on a one-way street, and driving while intoxicated.”

“I’m not drunk. I wasn’t drunk in the car.”

“Do you want to plead not guilty?”

“The officer said I would get a test.”

“A test won’t tell us anything now. You might be sober at the station, but that don’t mean you weren’t tight earlier.”

“That man knew I wasn’t tight.”

“You had liquor in your possession.”

“Where did the other officer go?”

“Out on call.”

“If I plead not guilty and he’s not in court, that means I get off, doesn’t it?”

“It will be better for you to plead guilty. You’ll only get a fine that way.”

“I’m not getting caught for a D.W.I.”

“All right, son. Not guilty. Were you ever arrested before?”

“No.”

The officer wrote on the papers held against his thigh.

“Whose car were you driving?”

“My girl’s.”

“What is her name?”

“Is that important?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Suzanne Robicheaux.”

“We’ll have to check you through for a previous violation.”

Avery felt that sick empty feeling in his stomach again. The officer gave the papers to the detective at the desk and asked him to check Avery’s name through their records. The detective was dressed in a pair of unpressed slacks and an open-neck sports shirt, and his undershirt showed at the top of his chest. He had a cold and he blew his nose often on a soiled handkerchief. There were deep pockmarks in the back of his neck, and his skin was coarse with large pores. His eyes squinted as he read the papers on his desk and he held the handkerchief to his nose with both hands and blew. He turned around in his chair and looked at Avery, wiping his upper lip with the handkerchief.

“Are you Broussard?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Where is that list of resident parolees the parole board sent us?” he said to the officer in uniform.

Avery felt everything go weak and sick inside him.

“It’s in my desk. What do you want it for?”

“I thought I saw this guy’s name on it,” the man with the handkerchief said.

The officer in uniform took the list out of his desk drawer and looked through the names.

“Broussard, Avery. On parole for two years,” he read. His blunt red face looked at Avery. “Let’s go upstairs, son.”

“Is that where the jail is? Am I going into the drunk tank?”

“You shouldn’t have broke parole.”

“It’s the drunk tank and then back to the pen. Is that it?”

The man with the handkerchief blew his nose loudly.

“You want me to take him up?” he said.

“No. I’ll take him.”

“A girl is going to be here in a little while. Can I see her when she comes?” Avery said.

“You’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Visitors are only allowed in the afternoon.”

They went out the side door of the room into another hallway and rode upstairs in the elevator. The officer slid back the elevator door and they entered the third floor of the building which served as the jail. The corridor ran in a rectangle around the building, and there were four rows of cells facing the outside walls. There were dim ceiling lights along the corridor that were protected by wire screens. Avery could hear the men in the cells snoring or talking in low voices. There was a sound like a man retching, and someone coughed and cleared his throat of phlegm and spat through the bars on the floor. The officer unlocked one of the cells, and Avery walked into the darkened room, with the three iron bunks fixed to the wall and the obscene words burned on the ceiling with matches and the tobacco spittle and cigarette butts on the floor. A man with some torn newspaper in his hand was relieving himself on the toilet. Another man slept in one of the bunks with his back turned towards them and a striped pillow without a case over his head. The officer clanged the door shut behind Avery and went back down in the elevator.

The man who had been on the toilet stood up and buttoned his trousers. He was rawboned and tall, and his hair was gray and his face pallid. One of the straps of his undershirt was frayed almost in two. He walked barefoot across the concrete floor of the cell and sat on his bunk.

“You got any cigarettes?” he said.

Avery looked out the bars across the corridor through the window. He could see the night glow of the city and hear the sound of the automobiles below.

“Hey, you got any cigarettes?” the man said.

Avery threw him the package of Virginia Extra. The man took out one of the very thin yellow-brown wheat-straw papers and poured the tobacco neatly and rolled it into a cylinder between his thumb and fingers.

“You in on a stew-bum?” he said.

“Parole violation.”

“What have you got left?”

“Two years.”

“Hell, I got ten to fifteen facing me. I’m really fucked.”

I’ll probably go back on the same gang, Avery thought. We’ll cut cane and clear fields of stumps and dig irrigation canals, and Evans will be there with his sunburnt face and sunglasses and khaki uniform and pistol, and we’ll line up for mess and roll call and somebody will get time in detention for talking in line, and on Sunday we’ll clean the barracks and Evans will make inspection, and on Monday we’ll start all over again. He thought of the homosexuals who always made advances to the new men in camp, and the sound of the man in the next bunk masturbating in his sleep, and the phlegmy hacking cough of Daddy Claxton, and the inevitable talk about women and sadism and escape, and the story everyone told about the convict who had tried to climb over the barbed wire on top of the fence and how he had been caught in the lights and the guards had cut him to pieces with the shotguns and everyone was made to come out and see it after it was over.

“Bang on the door for the hack,” the man said. “I got the cruds. There ain’t no more newspaper.”

“Shut up, will you,” the man who had been sleeping in the bunk said.

“I got to shit. I ain’t got no more paper.”

“You kept me awake all night.”

“I told you I got the cruds. It ain’t my fault.”

“Do it through the bars. They’ll bring you some paper.”

Avery closed his eyes and tried to think of Suzanne and the past months. He tried to think of her dressed in the big white Sunday hat and the white dress with the transparent lavender material on her shoulders, and of the times they had been in bed together; but he couldn’t keep the thought of her in his mind, and nothing seemed real to him except the jail and returning to the work camp. He listened to the men arguing in the dark.