When, she returned from the bathroom, her face was fresh and composed and her eyes were rekindled with an ethereal blue light.

"My, I didn't realize it had gotten so late," she said. "We must be running, Weldon."

"Give it a minute. Bobby's not going anywhere," he said.

But he wasn't looking at her. His eyes were still on Vic Benson, who was hunkered forward on the folding chair under the oak tree, drinking another glass of whiskey as though it were Kool-Aid.

"I don't want him to think we've forgotten his birthday," she said.

"Maybe he'd like for you to forget it, Bama. Maybe that's why he has the wrinkles chemically rinsed out of his face," Weldon said.

"I think that's an unkind remark to make, Weldon," she said.

But he wasn't listening to her.

"You know, the old fart did a lot of bad things to us," he said. "But there's one that always stuck in my mind." He shook his head back and forth. "He caught me whanging it when I was about thirteen, and he clipped a clothespin on my penis and made me stand out in the backyard like that for a half hour."

"Hey, ease up, Weldon," Lyle said.

"I insist that we not continue this," Bama said.

Bootsie was already excusing herself from the table, and I was looking at my watch.

"You're right, damn it," Weldon said. "Let's drive the nail in this bullshit, give Bobby his present, then come back for some serious drinking."

Weldon got up from his chair and walked toward the tree under which Vic Benson sat.

"What are you going to do?" Lyle said. Then, "Weldon?"

But he paid no attention. He was talking to Vic Benson now, his back to us, his big hands gesturing, while Benson looked up at him silently. Then Benson set his glass down and rose to his feet. Clemmie poured the water from the caldron into the fire pit, and steam billowed out of the bricks and drifted across Benson and Weldon's bodies.

We couldn't hear what Weldon said, but the puckered skin of Benson's face was pulled back from his mouth in a leer of teeth and blackened gums, and his thin shoulders were as rectangular and stiff as if they were made of wire.

Then Weldon walked back to the bar, pulled a sweating bottle of Jax out of the ice bin, and cracked off the cap.

"Quit staring at me like that, Lyle," he said.

"I ain't here to judge you," Lyle said.

"What'd you think I was going to tell him?" Weldon said.

"You got a lot of anger. Nobody can blame you for it."

"I offered him a job," Weldon said.

"Doing what?"

"Roustabout, driving a truck, whatever he wants to do. I also told him no matter what he decides the past between him and us is quits."

"What'd he say?" Lyle asked.

Weldon blew little puffs of air out his lips.

"I already forgot it," he said. "I tell you what, though. If I were you, I'd either buy that man an airplane ticket to Iraq or put bars over his doors and windows."

After Bama and Weldon were gone, Vic Benson stared at us for a long time from under the tree, then he turned and mounted the stairs to the garage apartment. The trees were deep in shadow, and down the street, against the lavender sky and amid the flights of swallows, you could see the sun's last red light reflecting on the chrome-plated cross atop Lyle's Bible college.

We were leaving also when we heard someone start a car engine immediately below the garage apartment.

"What's he doing with Clemmie's car?" Lyle said.

We turned and saw Vic Benson backing an ancient, dented gas guzzler, with red cellophane taped over the broken taillights, out the driveway. Smoke poured from under the frame.

"Oh, boy, I got a bad feeling," Lyle said.

He headed for the garage apartment, and I followed him.

We found Clemmie in her small living room, sitting very still in a lopsided stuffed chair, her right hand balanced carefully in the palm of the other, as though any movement would put her in peril. Her rouge was streaked with tears, and her nostrils and mouth were smeared with blood and mucus. Two fingers of her right hand were as bulbous as a oons at the joints.

"What happened?" Lyle said.

"He say, 'Ginune your car keys, you nigger bitch." I say, 'You ain't getting them. I work hard for my car. I ain't giving it to no nasty white trash to drive round in." He hit me in the face with his belt, hard as he could. I tried to run and throw my keys out the do', but he twisted them outta my hand, broke my fingers, Rev'end Lyle, just like twigs snapping. Then he spit in my hair."

Her shoulders were shaking. You could smell smoke, perfume, and dried sweat in her clothes. Lyle wet a towel and blotted her face with it. I lifted her hand and set it gingerly on the arm of the chair. A silver ring with a yellow stone was almost buried in the flesh below one knuckle.

"We'll take you to the hospital, Clemmie, then we'll get your car back," I said. "Don't worry about Vic Benson, either. He's going to be in the Baton Rouge city jail tonight. Do you know where he was going with your car?"

"He axed where that park at," she said.

"Which park?" I said.

"The place where Mr. Weldon gonna go see Bobby Earl. He got a pistol, Rev'end Lyle. He gone back in his room and come out with it, a little shiny pistol ain't no bigger than yo' hand. He say, "You go down there and tell them people 'bout this I'll be back and cut off yo' nose." That's what he say to me."

Lyle stroked her hair and patted her shoulders. I told Lyle to take her to the hospital, and I used the phone to call the Baton Rouge police department.

Outside, I asked Bootsie to wait for me, then I headed for the car. I didn't expect Batist to follow me.

But he did. And in so doing turned the two of us into a historical footnote.

CHAPTER 17

I tried to dissuade him, too, as he stood with his huge hand on the door handle, about to get in the passenger's seat.

"It's just not a good idea," I said.

"You t'ink I scared, Dave? That's what you t'ink after all these years?"

His flower-print tie was knotted wrong; the top button of his white short-sleeved shirt had popped off; his seersucker slacks were stretched as tight as cheesecloth on his muscular thighs and buttocks. I don't think I ever loved a man more.

"Batist, there's some low-rent white people there," I said.

"There's places I still cain't go, huh? That's what you tellin' me, Dave, and I don't like to hear that, me."

"I'm asking you to stay with Bootsie, Batist."

"I ain't stayin' here no rno'. You don't want me wit' you, I'll walk back down to Catfish Town. Vall can pick me up on your way back home."

I looked at the injury in his face, and I remembered my father admonishing me never to treat a brave man as anything other than a fire walker, and I wondered if I was guilty of that old southern white conceit that we must protect people of color from themselves.

"Well, I think the city cops will probably grab the old man before he does any more harm. But let's check it out, partner," I said. "It's really just the roller-derby crowd with a political agenda."

"What?"

"Never mind."

We drove back down Highland, through the LSU campus, to the park where Bobby Earl's constituency had come out in force. Amid the pin oaks, the pine and chinaberry trees, against the backdrop of tennis courts and a dusty softball diamond and picnic tables, it looked like a festive and innocent celebration of the coming of summer. A Dixieland band thundered under a pavilion; black cooks in white uniforms turned flank steaks on a huge portable barbecue pit that had been towed in on a truck; the back of the speaker's platform was lined with a thick row of American flags, and under trees that were strung with red, white, and blue bunting children raced breathlessly across the pine needles and queued up for free lemonade and ice cream.