Then as suddenly as it had come, the mist evaporated from the road and the tree trunks and the bayou's placid surface as though someone had held an invisible flame to it, and the night air was again as empty and pristine as wind trapped under a glass bell.

In the morning I made do with mechanical answers in the sunlight and cleaned the terminals on my truck battery with baking soda, water, and an old toothbrush.

Hogman called the next afternoon from the movie set out on Spanish Lake.

"What you want out at my house?" he said.

"I need to talk with you about the lynched black man."

"I done already tole you what I know. That nigger went messin' in the wrong place."

"That's not enough."

"Is for me."

"You said my father helped your mother when you were in prison. So now I'm asking you to help me."

"I already have. You just ain't listen."

"Are you afraid of somebody, Sam? Maybe some white people?"

"I fear God. Why you talkin' to me like this?"

"What time will you be home today?"

"When I get there. You got your truck?"

"Yes."

"My car hit a tree last night. It ain't runnin' no mo'. Come out to the set this evenin' and give me a ride home. 'Bout eight or nine o'clock."

"We'll see you then, partner," I said, and hung up.

The sun was red and half below the horizon, the cicadas droning in the trees, when I drove down the lane through the pecan orchard to the movie set on Spanish Lake. But I soon discovered that I was not going to easily trap Hogman Patin alone. It was Mikey Goldman's birthday and the cast and crew were throwing him a party. A linen-covered buffet table was piled with catered food, a huge pink cake, and a bowl of champagne punch in the center. The tree trunks along the lake's edge were wrapped with paper bunting, and Goldman's director's chair must have had two dozen floating balloons tied to it.

It was a happy crowd. They sipped punch out of clear plastic glasses and ate boiled shrimp and thin slices of boudin off paper plates. Mikey Goldman's face seemed to almost shine in the ambiance of goodwill and affection that surrounded him.

In the crowd I saw Julie Balboni and his entourage, Elrod Sykes, the mayor of New Iberia, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, a couple of Teamster officials, a state legislator, and Twinky Hebert Lemoyne from Lafayette. In the middle of it all sat Hogman Patin on an up-ended crate, his twelve-string guitar resting on his crossed thighs. He was dressed like a nineteenth-century Negro street musician, except he also wore a white straw cowboy hat slanted across his eyes. The silver picks on his right hand rang across the strings as he sang,

Soon as day break in the mornin' I gone take the dirt road home. 'Cause these blue Monday blues Is goin' kill me sure as you're born.

"You ought to get yourself a plate."

It was Murphy Doucet, the security guard. He was talking to me but his eyes were looking at a blond girl in shorts and a halter by the punch bowl. He ate a slice of boudin off a toothpick, then slipped the toothpick into the corner of his mouth and sucked on it.

"It doesn't look like everybody's broken up about Kelly Drummond's death, does it?" I said.

"I guess they figure life goes on."

"You're in business with Mr. Lemoyne over there, Murph?"

"We own a security service together, if that's what you mean. For me it's a pretty good deal, but for him it's nothing. If there's a business around here making money, Twinky's probably got a piece of it. Lord God, that man knows how to make money."

Lemoyne sat by the lake in a canvas chair, a julep glass filled with bourbon, shaved ice, and mint leaves in his hand. He looked relaxed and cool in the breeze off the water, his rimless glasses pink with the sun's afterglow. His eyes fixed for a moment on my face, then he took a sip from his glass and watched some kids waterskiing out on the lake.

"Get something to eat, Dave. It's free. Hell, I'm going to take some home," Murphy Doucet said.

"Thanks, I've already eaten," I said, and walked over to where Hogman sat next to two local black women who had been hired as extras.

"You want a ride?" I said.

"I ain't ready yet. They's people want me to play."

"It was your idea for me to come out here, Sam."

"I'll be comin' directly. That's clear, ain't it? Mr. Goldman fixin' to cut his cake." Then he began singing,

I ax my bossman, Bossman, tell me what's right.

He whupped my left, said, Boy, now you know what's right.

I tole my bossman, Bossman, just give me my time.

He say, Damn yo' time, boy,

Boy, you time behind.

I waited another half hour as the twilight faded, the party grew louder, and someone turned on a bank of floodlamps that lit the whole area with the bright unnatural radiance of a phosphorus flare. The punch bowl was now empty and had been supplanted by washtubs filled with cracked ice and canned beer, a portable bar, and two white jacketed black bartenders who were making mint juleps and martinis as fast as they could.

"I've got to head for the barn, Hogman," I said.

"This lady axin' me somet'ing. Give me ten minutes," he said.

A waiter came by with a tray and handed Hogman and the black woman with him paper cups streaming with draft beer. Then he handed me a frosted julep glass packed with shaved ice, mint leaves, orange slices, and candied cherries.

"I didn't order this," I said.

"Gentleman over yonder say that's what you drink. Say bring it to you. It's a Dr Pepper, suh."

"Which gentleman?"

"I don't rightly remember, suh."

I took the cup off the tray and drank from it. The ice was so cold it made my throat ache.

The lake was black now, and out in the darkness, above the noise of the revelers, I could hear somebody trying to crank an outboard engine.

I finished my drink and set the empty glass on the buffet table.

"That's it for me, Sam," I said. "You coming or not?"

"This lady gonna carry me home," he said. His eyes were red from drinking. They looked out at nothing from under the brim of his straw cowboy hat.

"Hogman-" I said.

"This lady live down the road from my house. Some trashy niggers been givin' her trouble. She don't want to go home by herself. That's the way it is. I be up to yo' office tomorrow mornin'."

I tried to look into his face, but he occupied himself with twisting the tuning pegs on his guitar. I turned and walked back through the shadows to my pickup truck. When I looked back at the party through my windshield, the blond girl in shorts and a halter was putting a spoonful of cake into Mikey Goldman's mouth while everyone applauded.

It rained hard as I approached the drawbridge over the bayou south of town. I could see the bridge tender in his lighted window, the wet sheen and streaks of rust on the steel girders, the green and red running lights of a passing boat in the mist. I was only a few minutes from home. I simply had to cross the bridge and follow the dirt road down to my dock.

But that was not what I did or what happened.

A bolt of lightning exploded in a white ball by the side of the road and blew the heart of a tree trunk, black and smoking, out into my headlights. I swallowed to clear my ears, and for just a second, in the back of my throat, I thought I could taste black cherries, bruised mint leaves, and orange rind. Then I felt a spasm go through me just as if someone had scratched a kitchen match inside my skull.

The truck veered off the shoulder, across a collapsed barbed-wire cattle gate, onto the levee that dissected the marsh. I remember the wild buttercups sweeping toward me out of the headlights, the rocks and mud whipping under the fenders, then the fog rolling out of the dead cypress trees and willow islands, encircling the truck, smothering the windows. I could hear thunder crashing deep in the marsh, echoing out of the bays, like distant artillery.