Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke

the trees and blooming hyacinths on the far side seemed to go in and out of focus. I saw a cottonmouth coiled fatly on a barkless, sun-bleached log, its triangular head the color of tarnished copper in the hard yellow light. Sweat ran out of my hair, and I felt my heart beating against my rib cage. I snicked the mailbox door shut, got into my truck, and headed down the dirt road toward New Iberia. When I bounced across the drawbridge over Bayou Teche, my knuckles were white and as round as quarters on the steering wheel.

    On the way back from the school the spotted patterns of light and shadow fell through the canopy of oaks overhead and raced over Alafair’s tan face as she sat next to me in the truck. Her knees and white socks and patent leather shoes were dusty from play on the school ground. She kept looking curiously at the side of my face.

    “Something wrong, Dave?” she said.

    “No, not at all.”

    “Something bad happen, ain’t it?”

    “Don’t say ‘ain’t.’ ”

    “Why you mad?”

    “Listen, little guy, I’m going to run some errands this afternoon and I want you to stay down at the dock with Batist. You stay in the store and help him run things, okay?”

    “What’s going on, Dave?”

    “There’s nothing to worry about. But I want you to stay away from people you don’t know. Keep close around Batist and Clarise and me, okay? You see, there’re a couple of men I’ve had some trouble with. If they come around here, Batist and I will chase them off. But I don’t want them bothering you or Clarise or Tripod or any of our friends, see.” I winked at her.

    “These bad men?” Her face looked up at me. Her eyes were round and unblinking.

    “Yes, they are.”

    “What they do?”

    I took a breath and let it out.

    “I don’t know for sure. But we just need to be a little careful. That’s all, little guy. We don’t worry about stuff like that. We’re kind of like Tripod. What’s he do when the dog chases him?”

    She looked into space, then I saw her eyes smile.

    “He gets up on the rabbit hutch,” she said.

    “Then what’s he do?”

    “He stick his claw in the dog’s nose.”

    “That’s right. Because he’s smart. And because he’s smart and careful, he doesn’t have to worry about that dog. And we’re the same way and we don’t worry about things, do we?”

    She smiled up at me, and I pulled her against my side and kissed the top of her head. I could smell the sun’s heat in her hair.

    I parked the truck in the shade of the pecan trees, and she took her lunch kit into the kitchen, washed out her thermos, and changed into her play clothes We walked down to the dock, and I put her in charge of soda pop and worm sales. In the corner behind the beer cases I saw Batist’s old automatic Winchester twelve-gauge propped against the wall.

    “I put some number sixes in it for that cottonmouth been eating fish off my stringer,” he said.

    “Come see tonight. You gonna have to clean that snake off the tree.”

    “I’ll be back before dark. Take her up to the house for her supper,” I said.

    “I’ll close up when I get back.”

    “You don’t be worry, you,” he said, dragged a kitchen match on a wood post, lit his cigar, and let the smoke drift out through his teeth.

    Alafair rang up a sale on the cash register and beamed when the drawer clanged open.

    I put everything from the mailbox in a large paper bag and drove to the Iberia Parish sheriff’s office. I had worked a short while for the sheriff as a plainclothes detective the previous year, and I knew him to be a decent and trustworthy man. But when he ran for the office his only qualification was the fact that he had been president of the Lions Club and owned a successful dry cleaning business. He was slightly overweight, his face soft around the edges, and in his green uniform he looked like the manager of a garden-supply store. We talked in his office while a deputy processed the wrapping paper,