Heaven's Prisoners by James Lee Burke Page A

‘hot sauce.’ How come she know that, Dave?”
    “The Spanish language has a lot of words like ours.”
    “Oh,” he said, and was thoughtful a moment. Then, “How come that?”
    Annie came through the door and saved me from an impossible discussion. Batist was absolutely obsessive about understanding any information that was foreign to his world, but as a rule he would have to hack and hew it into pieces until it would assimilate into that strange Afro-Creole-Acadian frame of reference that was as natural to him as wearing a dime on a string around his ankle to ward off the gris-gris , an evil spell cast by a traiteur , or conjuror.
    Annie stayed with me through the evening while the light softened on the trees outside and the shadows deepened on the lawn, the western sky turned russet and orange like a chemical flame, and high school kids strolled down the sidewalks to the American Legion baseball game in the park. Through the open window I could smell barbecue fifes and water sprinklers, magnolia blossoms and night-blooming jasmine. Then the sky darkened, and the rain clouds in the south pulsated with white streaks of lightning like networks of veins.
    Annie lay next to me and rubbed my chest and touched my face with her fingers and kissed me on the eyes.
    “Take away the ice bag and push the chair in front of the door,” I said.
    “No, Dave.”
    “Yes, it’s all right. The doctor said there was no problem.”
    She kissed me on the ear, then whispered, “Not tonight, baby love.”
    I felt myself swallow.
    “Annie, please,” I said.
    She raised up on one elbow and looked curiously into my face.
    “What is it?” she said.
    “I need you. You’re my wife.”
    She frowned and her eyes went back and forth into mine.
    “Tell me what it is,” she said.
    “You want to know?”
    “Dave, you’re my whole life. How could I not want to know?”
    “Those sonsofbitches put me on my hands and knees and worked me over like they would a dog.”
    I could see the pain in her eyes. Her hand went to my cheek, then to my throat.
    “Somebody will catch them. You know that,” she said.
    “No, they’re hunting on the game reserve. They’re mainline badasses, and they don’t have anybody more serious to deal with than a dry cleaner in a sheriff’s suit.”
    “You gave it up. We have a good life now. This is the place you’ve always wanted to come back to. Everybody in town likes you and respects you, and the people up and down the bayou are the best friends anyone could have. Now we have Alafair, too. How can you let a couple of criminals hurt all that?”
    “It doesn’t work that way.”
    “Yes, it does, if you look at what’s right with your life instead of what’s wrong with it.”
    “Are you going to push the chair in front of the door?”
    She paused. Her face was quiet and purposeful. She turned off the light on the bedstand and pushed the heavy leather chair until it caught under the doorknob. In the moonlight through the window her curly gold hair looked as if it were flecked with silver. She pulled back the sheet and took away the ice bag, then touched me with her hand. The pain made both my knees jump.
    I heard her sigh as she sat back down on the side of the bed.
    “Are we going to fight with each other when we have a problem?” she said.
    “I’m not fighting with you, kiddo.”
    “Yes, you are. You can’t turn loose of the past, Dave. You get hurt, or you see something that’s wrong in the world, and all the old ways come back to you.”
    “I can’t help that.”
    “Maybe not. But you don’t live alone anymore.” She took my hand and lay down beside me again. “There’s me, and now there’s Alafair, too.”
    “I’ll tell you what it feels like, and I won’t say any more. You remember when I told you about how those North Vietnamese regulars overran us and the captain surrendered to them? They tied our hands around trees with piano wire, then took turns urinating on us. That’s what