"I look Italian? Zeroski is Polish, you moron. Poles ain't Italians," Joe said.

Legion rose from the table and walked to the screen door, where Baby Huey stood frozen, his eyes wide at the scene taking place in front of him.

"Come inside," Legion said.

Baby Huey opened the screen and stepped out of the darkness into the white radiance of the lantern on the table. The muscles in his back jumped when the screen swung back into the jamb behind him.

"On your knees, nigger," Legion said.

"My uncle owns the nightclub. He knows where we're at," Baby Huey said.

"That's good. He come here, I'll shoot me two niggers 'stead of one," Legion said.

Baby Huey bent slowly to the floor, his knees popping, sweat breaking on his brow now, his gaze sliding down the length of Legion's body.

Legion screwed the barrels of the shotgun into Baby Huey"s neck and looked at Joe.

"T'row your li'l gun down and get on your knees, or I'm gonna blow the nigger's head off. Look into my eyes and tell me you don't t'ink I'll do it, no," he said.

Joe Zeroski let the.38 shells spill from his hand onto the floor, then tossed the revolver to one side and got to his knees.

Legion Guidry stood above him, his stomach and loins flat, his khaki shirt tucked tightly inside his western belt. He reached behind him and removed his straw hat from the back of a chair and fitted it on his head so that his face was now in shadow. He drank from his whiskey bottle and spread his feet slightly and cleared his throat.

"What you t'ink about to happen? Bet you didn't t'ink a day like this would ever come in your life, no," he said.

Then he unzipped his fly.

"How far you willing to go to keep a nigger alive?" he asked, pressing the shotgun harder into Baby Huey"s neck, his eyes riveted on Joe's.

Joe felt himself swallow, his hands balling at his sides.

Legion's finger was wrapped tightly inside the trigger guard on the shotgun. The back of his hand was spotted with sun freckles, his cuff buttoned at the wrist, his veins like pieces of green cord. Joe could smell the nicotine ingrained in his skin, the boilermakers that still hung on his breath, the raw odor of his manhood that seemed ironed into his clothes.

Joe Zeroski felt his heart thundering, then a rage well up in him that was like a fire blooming in his chest. His face grew tight and his scalp seemed to shrink and shift against his skull, his eyes bulge in their sockets, with either adrenaline or fear, he would never know which. "Go ahead and shoot, you worthless cocksucker. Me first. 'Cause I get the chance, I'm gonna tear your throat out," he said.

He heard Legion Guidry snort. "You t'ink pretty high of yourself, you. I wouldn't dirty my dick on a dago or a Pollack," Legion said, drawing his zipper back into place. "Give me your car keys."

"What?" Joe asked, staring up in disbelief at the mercurial nature of his tormentor.

"I'm taking your car to find my whore. I don't find my whore, I'm gonna come after you for my forty dollars. Next time you want to pretend like you a New Orleans gangster, remember what you look like right now, on your knees, next to a nigger, just about an inch from sucking a man's dick. Tell yourself later you wouldn't do it, no. Believe me, I wanted you to, you would, you," he said.

Legion collected Joe's automobile keys and his.38 revolver and shells. Minutes later, Baby Huey and Joe watched him drive away in Joe's automobile, the radio playing, Legion's hat and tall frame silhouetted against the front window. Baby Huey could hear Joe breathing in the darkness.

"You saved my life, Mr. Joe. I cain't believe you told him to shoot. That's the bravest thing I ever seen anybody do," he said.

Joe waved his hand to indicate he did not want to hear about it. Baby Huey started to speak again.

"Hey, forget it," Joe said.

"What we gonna do now?" Baby Huey asked, looking up the dirt track through the woods.

"It wasn't him beat my daughter to death," Joe said.

"How you know?"

"He don't have no feeling about people. It wasn't him. The ones to be afraid of are the ones got feelings about you. That's a sad truth, kid, but that's the way it is," Joe said.

CHAPTER 22

But Baby Huey Lagneaux's encounter with Legion was not over. Toward closing time that night, after he had returned to his uncle's club, he glanced through a back window and saw Joe Zeroski's automobile parked at the cafe next door. He called a telephone number Joe had given him, but there was no answer. He went out the back door of the club and crossed the parking lot and looked through a side window of the cafe.

Legion was eating at a table by himself. At the next table was a group of shrimpers who had just come off the salt, hard-bitten men in rubber boots who hadn't shaved for weeks and who filled the air with cigarette smoke and drank mugs of beer while they ate platters of fried crabs with their fingers.

In his mind's eye Baby Huey saw himself confronting Legion, here, in public, demanding the keys to Joe Zeroski's car, somehow regaining a degree of the self-respect he'd lost when a shotgun was screwed into his neck and his bowels turned to water. He entered the cafe's side door and stared at Legion's back, at the untrimmed locks of hair on his neck, the power in his shoulders, the way the bones in his jaws stretched his skin while he chewed. But Baby Huey could not make his feet move any closer to Legion's table.

Then Tee Bobby Hulin came through the front door and sat at the counter, within earshot of the shrimpers, some of whom must have recognized him as the man about to go on trial for the rape and murder of Amanda Boudreau. At first they only looked at him and whispered among themselves; then they seemed to ignore him and concentrate on their food and beer and the burning cigarettes they left teetering on the edges of ashtrays. But willingly or not, their eyes began to drift back to Tee Bobby, as though he were a troublesome insect that someone should swat.

Finally one of the shrimpers turned in his chair and aimed his words at Tee Bobby's back: "You ain't got no bidness in here, buddy. Get what you need and carry it outside."

Tee Bobby stared at his menu, as though he were nearsighted and had lost his glasses, his hands clenched on the corners, his spine and shoulders rounded like a question mark.

The same shrimper, silver and black whiskers festooned on his jaws, made a soft whistling sound through his teeth. "Hey, outside, bud. Don't make me walk you there, no," he said.

Legion had set his knife and fork on the rim of his plate. He half-mooned one of his nails with a toothpick, his back hard as iron against his khaki shirt, his eyes studying Tee Bobby's profile. Then he rose from his chair and walked to the counter, the board floor creaking with his weight, the inside of his hands as yellow and rough as barrel wood under the overhead light. "Get up," Legion said.

"What for?" Tee Bobby asked. His gaze lifted into Legion's, then his face twitched, as though he recognized a figure from a dream he had never defined in daylight.

"Don't you let them men talk down to you," Legion replied, and pulled Tee Bobby off the counter stool. "You stand up, you. Don't you never take shit from white trash." The shrimpers looked blankly at both Tee Bobby and Legion, confused, unable to connect the indignation of the towering white man with a diminutive black musician who only a moment ago had been an object of contempt. "Y'all looking at somet'ing? Y’all want to go outside wit' me? How 'bout you, yeah, big mouth there, the one telling him to carry his food outside?" Legion said.

"We ain't got no problem with you," one of the other shrimpers said.

"You better t'ank God you don't," Legion said.