"Something bad happen, ain't it?"

"Don't say 'ain't.' "

"Why you mad?"

"Listen, little guy, I'm going to run some errands this afternoon and I want you to stay down at the dock with Batist. You stay in the store and help him run things, okay?"

"What's going on, Dave?"

"There's nothing to worry about. But I want you to stay away from people you don't know. Keep close around Batist and Clarise and me, okay? You see, there're a couple of men I've had some trouble with. If they come around here, Batist and I will chase them off. But I don't want them bothering you or Clarise or Tripod or any of our friends, see." I winked at her.

"These bad men?" Her face looked up at me. Her eyes were round and unblinking.

"Yes, they are."

"What they do?"

I took a breath and let it out.

"I don't know for sure. But we just need to be a little careful. That's all, little guy. We don't worry about stuff like that. We're kind of like Tripod. What's he do when the dog chases him?"

She looked into space, then I saw her eyes smile.

"He gets up on the rabbit hutch," she said.

"Then what's he do?"

"He stick his claw in the dog's nose."

"That's right. Because he's smart. And because he's smart and careful, he doesn't have to worry about that dog. And we're the same way and we don't worry about things, do we?"

She smiled up at me, and I pulled her against my side and kissed the top of her head. I could smell the sun's heat in her hair.

I parked the truck in the shade of the pecan trees, and she took her lunch kit into the kitchen, washed out her thermos, and changed into her play clothes We walked down to the dock, and I put her in charge of soda pop and worm sales. In the corner behind the beer cases I saw Batist's old automatic Winchester twelve-gauge propped against the wall.

"I put some number sixes in it for that cottonmouth been eating fish off my stringer," he said.

"Come see tonight. You gonna have to clean that snake off the tree."

"I'll be back before dark. Take her up to the house for her supper," I said.

"I'll close up when I get back."

"You don't be worry, you," he said, dragged a kitchen match on a wood post, lit his cigar, and let the smoke drift out through his teeth.

Alafair rang up a sale on the cash register and beamed when the drawer clanged open.

I put everything from the mailbox in a large paper bag and drove to the Iberia Parish sheriff's office. I had worked a short while for the sheriff as a plainclothes detective the previous year, and I knew him to be a decent and trustworthy man. But when he ran for the office his only qualification was the fact that he had been president of the Lions Club and owned a successful dry cleaning business. He was slightly overweight, his face soft around the edges, and in his green uniform he looked like the manager of a garden-supply store. We talked in his office while a deputy processed the wrapping paper, box, note, and hypodermic needle for fingerprints in another room.

Finally the deputy rapped on the sheriff's door glass with one knuckle and opened the door.

"Two identifiable sets," he said.

"One's Dave's, one's from that colored man, what's his name?"

"Batist," I said.

"Yeah, we have his set on file from the other time" His eyes flicked away from me and his face colored.

"We had his prints from when we were out to Dave's place before. Then there's some smeared stuff on the outside of the wrapping paper."

"The mailman?" the sheriff said.

"That's what I figure," the deputy said.

"I wish I could tell you something else, Dave."

"It's all right."

The deputy nodded and closed the door.

"You want to take it to the FBI in Lafayette?" the sheriff said.

"Maybe."

"A threat in the mails is in a federal area. Why not make use of them?"

I looked back at him without answering.

"Why is it that I always feel you're not a man of great faith in our system?" he said.

"Probably because I worked for it too long."

"We can question these two guys, what's their names again?"

"Vidrine and Mapes."

"Vidrine and Mapes, we can let them know somebody's looking over their shoulder."

"They're too far into it."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

"Dave, back off of this one. Let other people handle it."

"Are you going to keep a deputy out at my house? Will one watchf Alafair on the playground or while she waits for the bus?"

He let out his breath, then looked out the window at a clump of oak trees in a bright, empty pasture.

"Something else bothers me here," he said.

"Wasn't your daddy killed on a Star rig?"

"Yes."

"You think there's a chance you want to twist these guys, no matter what happens?"

"I don't know what I think. That box didn't mail itself to me, though, did it?"

I saw the injury in his eyes, but I was past the point of caring about his feelings. Maybe you've been there. You go into a police or sheriff's station after a gang of black kids forced you to stop your car while they smashed out your windows with garbage cans; a strung-out addict made you kneel at gunpoint on the floor of a grocery store, and before you knew it the begging words rose uncontrollably in your throat; some bikers pulled you from the back of a bar and sat on your arms while one of them un zippered his blue jeans. Your body is still hot with shame, your voice full of thumbtacks and strange to your own ears, your eyes full of guilt and self-loathing while uniformed people walk casually by you with Styrofoam cups of coffee in their hands. Then somebody types your words on a report and you realize that this is all you will get. Investigators will not be out at your house, you will probably not be called to pull somebody out of a lineup, a sympathetic female attorney from the prosecutor's office will not take a large interest in your life.

Then you will look around at the walls and cabinets and lockers in that police or sheriff's station, the gun belts worn by the officers with the Styrofoam coffee cups, perhaps the interior of the squad cars in the parking lot, and you will make an ironic realization. The racks of M-16 rifles, scoped Mausers, twelve-gauge pumps loaded with double-aught buckshot,.38 specials and.357 Magnums, stun guns, slap jacks batons, tear gas canisters, the drawers that contain cattle prods, handcuffs, Mace, wrist and leg chains, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, all have nothing to do with your safety or the outrage against your person. You're an increase in somebody's work load.

"You've been on this side of the desk, Dave. We do what we can," the sheriff said "But it's not enough most of the time. Is it?"

He stirred a paper clip on the desk blotter with his finger.

"Have you got an alternative?" he said.

"Thanks for your time, Sheriff. I'll think about the FBI."

"I wish you'd do that."

The sky had turned purple and red in the west and rain clouds were building on the southern horizon when I drove home. I bought some ice cream in town, then stopped at a fruit stand under an oak tree by the bayou and bought a lug of strawberries. The thunder-heads off the Gulf slid across the sun, and the cicadas were loud in the trees and the fireflies were lighting in the shadows along the road. A solitary raindrop splashed on my windshield as I turned into my dirt yard.

It rained hard that night. It clattered on the shingles and the tin roof of the gallery, sluiced out of the gutters and ran in streams down to the coulee. The pecan trees in the yard beat in the wind and trembled whitely when lightning leapt across the black sky. I had the attic fan on, and the house was cool, and I dreamed all night. Annie came to me about four A.M." as she often did, when the night was about to give way to the softness of the false dawn. In my dream I could look through my bedroom window into the rain, past the shining trunks of the pecan trees, deep into the marsh and the clouds of steam that eventually bleed into the saw grass and the Gulf of Mexico, and see her and her companions inside a wobbling green bubble of air. She smiled at me.