Black Mustard: Justice by Dallas Coleman

Black Mustard: Justice
    Dallas Coleman
    “Put ‘em in youse pocket, mon ‘tit fils. Thems etrangers, there, they won’t take you ‘way.”
    Gran’me’ handed him a handful of teeny tiny black seeds, some of them trying to fall from his fingers. She wrapped her gnarled hands around his and hissed. “Non! No droppin’ ‘em, ‘tit. Not in the house. No inviting the boogies.”
    Lord. Gran and her hoodoo. “Oui. Oui. I ain’t gon’ drop ‘em.”
    Eloi shoved the seeds in the pockets of his good jeans, next to his lighter and the gris-gris bag his sister’d brought this morning. His hair was slick with the huile de chance Mamma’d brought over at first light.
    You’d think he was dyin’ or something, ‘stead of going to the courthouse.
    Still, all the magic might could help, huh? Leastways a little?
    It weren’t everyday a La Bauve got called before the judge, and Lord knew his type didn’t fair so well locked away.
    “Don’ you worry on it none. Me, I got the hoodoo. Ain’t gon’ be none of mine own in the jailhouse.”
    “No. I ain’t done nothing bad.” Nothing much, really. Maybe a little beating up on thems that deserved it, but just ‘cause folks had schooling didn’t make it all right to be wicked with a scared ‘tit monde of a gal. She’d not been even old enough to drank, and still she was there cryin’ with them four big old boys grabbing at her. He’d jus’ cleaned house over to the club, hadn’t he? Grabbed the bat from up under the bar and went to town. Hells, if he wasn’t no swamp baby, he’d not even be in this fix.
    He’d be a damn hero.
    All the women in his whole life were in the room now, five of ‘em watching and wringing their hands -- from Gram’me’ down to baby Minnie, who was jus’ in the high school, black eyes huge in her sixteen year old face.
    “Lawds, y’all. I ain’t gon’ be gone for long.” Hells, he was the workin’ one, him and Lucy, but Lucy had a no-account man of her own and five little boys. Zenobia was the only one of ‘em worth a nickel, but that Baton Rouge nursing school cost all she had and some Eloi had, too. She’d done drove in last night, to pray over him and wash his hair with holy water.
    “No, sir. Them lawyers, we ain’t letting them have at you.” Mamma’s eyes was lit from inside, fear and worry burning her. Didn’t Eloi feel bad for it, too. He was the good ‘un. The solid one. The man that brought the money home, wasn’t he?
    But that gal he’d saved, she’d been right and truly scairt and he had to help her out, didn’t he? Yes. Yes, sir.
    He just wished like anything that he’d figured out them boys was big money and old Creole before he beat ‘em.
    Not a mudbug like him, lord no.
    “I gotta go, now. I won’ be long.”
    Please, Jesus. Make it so.
    He reached into his pocket, touched his lucky lighter, them tiny seeds rolling ‘round.
    He couldn’t be long.
    His womenfolk needed him bad.
    ***
    “You tell me that little fuck’s going to the pen, going to take it up the ass.”
    Loic looked over at Danny Roubichoux, then met Danny’s daddy’s eyes, the senior Mr. Daniel Roubichoux, whose spending money was, as Mr. Plante had explained to him, more than a piss ant baby-faced lawyer like himself might ever have a chance to see in his whole worthless life. They sat in the hallway -- the Roubichoux and Gordon Maille, whose mother’s response to both her son having his arm broken and the accusation of rape was to write a check and tell Gordon to ‘keep us out of it, boy’.
    “We’ve got a rock-solid case, Dan.”
    Dolly Franks hadn’t pressed rape charges after all, not against Danny or the Maille boy, either one. Loic didn’t suppose he could blame the girl, not really. The check they’d handed her had a lot of zeros on it, enough zeroes that Loic de Hiver sort of felt sick about it.
    The La Bauve man, though, he wasn’t going to be offered hush money, no sir. That man was going to be hung out to