DR08 - Burning Angel by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

over the dock. I had never known his age, but he was an adult when I was a child, as black and solid as a woodstove, and today his stomach and chest were still as flat as boilerplate. He had farmed and trapped and fished commercially and worked on oyster boats all his life, and could carry an outboard motor down to the ramp in each hand as though they were stamped from plastic. He was illiterate and knew almost nothing of the world outside of Iberia Parish, but he was one of the bravest and most loyal men I ever knew.
    He began wiping the dew off the spool tables, which we had inset with Cinzano umbrellas for the fishermen who came in at midday for the barbecue lunches that we sold for $5.95.
    “You know why a nigger'd be setting in one of our boats this morning?”
    he asked.
    “Batist, you need to forget that word.”
    “This is a nigger carry a razor and a gun. He ain't here to rent boats.”
    “Could you start over?”
    “There's a high-yellow nigger wit' slacks on and shiny, pointy shoes,”
    he said, tapping his finger in the air with each word as though I were obtuse. “He's setting out yonder in our boat, eating boudin out of a paper towel wit' his fingers. This is a nigger been in jail, carry a razor on a string round his neck. I ax what he t'inks he's doing. He look up at me and say, ”You clean up round here?“
    ”I say, “Yeah, I clean trash out of the boat, and that mean you better get yo' worthless black ass down that road.”
    “He say, ”I ain't come here to argue wit' you. Where Robicheaux at?“
    ”I say, “He ain't here and that's all you got to know.” I say, “Vas ten, neg. ”That's it. We don't need them kind, Dave.“
    He used a half-mooned Clorox bottle to scoop the ashes out of the split oil barrel that we used for a barbecue pit. I waited for him to continue.
    ”What was his name?“ I said. ”What kind of car did he drive?“
    ”He didn't have no car, and I ain't ax him his name.“
    ”Where'd he go?“
    ”Wherever people go when you run them down the road with a two-by-fo'.“
    ”Batist, I don't think it's a good idea to treat people like that.“
    ”One like that always work for the white man, Dave.“
    ”I beg your pardon?“
    ”Everyting he do make white people believe the rest of us ain't got the right to ax for mo' than we got.“
    It was one of those moments when I knew better than to contend with Batist's reasoning or experience.
    ”Someting else I want to talk wit' you about,“ he said. ”Look in yonder my shelves, my pig feet, my graton, tell me what you t'ink of that.“
    I opened the screen door to the shop but hated to look. The jar of pickled hogs' feet was smashed on the floor; half-eaten candy bars, hard-boiled eggs, and cracklings, called graton in Cajun French, were scattered on the counter. In the midst of it all, locked in a wire crab trap, Tripod, Alafair's three-legged coon, stared back at me.
    I picked him up in my arms and carried him outside. He was a beautiful coon, with silver-tipped fur and black rings on his tail, a fat stomach and big paws that could turn doorknobs and twist tops off of jars.
    ”I'll send Alf down to clean it up,“ I said.
    ”It ain't right that coon keep messing up the shop, Dave.“
    ”It looks to me like somebody left a window open.“
    ”That's right. Somebody. “Cause I closed every one of them.”
    I stopped.
    “I didn't come down here last night, partner, if that's what you're saying.”
    He straightened up from a table, with the wiping rag in his hand. His face seemed to gather with a private concern. Two fishermen with a minnow bucket and a beer cooler stood by the door of the shop and looked at us impatiently.
    “You wasn't down here last night, Dave?” he asked.
    “No. What is it?”
    He inserted his thumb and forefinger in the watch pocket of the bell-bottom dungarees he wore.
    “This was on the windowsill this morning. I t'ought it was some-ting you found on the flo',” he said, and placed the oblong