I pulled onto the gravel parking lot and waited to see what the driver in the Jeepster would do. He slowed abreast of me, his long hands on the top of the steering wheel, and stared intently out the passenger's window. His face, forehead, and neck were streaked with thin scabs, as though he had walked through a nest of rust-colored spiderweb.
I wanted him to stop, to open his door, to confront me with his injury and his anger. I wanted to see a weapon in his hand and feel that adrenaline surge, that violent sanction, that lights and clarifies the mind and resolves all the complexities.
But Harry Mapes was holding all the good cards. Harry Mapes had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and he knew that you don't change the terms of your situation when your Gatling guns are locked in on a solitary pajama-clad target in the middle of a glassy rice field.
He turned into the parking lot and parked by the front door, where three Indians in work clothes were drinking canned beer next to a truck. He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter before he got out of his Jeepster, then went inside without looking back at me.
By the time I got back to Missoula that night Alafair had already had her supper at the baby-sitter's, but I took her for a late snack at a pizza place called Red Pies Over Montana. She wore her soft denim jeans with the elastic waistband, patent leather shoes with white socks that were now gray with dust from the playground, and her yellow T-shirt printed with a smiling purple whale and the words "Baby Orca" on it. Her cheeks were spotted with red pizza sauce. Through the restaurant window I could see the stars over the mountains.
"Dave?" she said.
"What is it, little guy?"
"When we going back home?"
"Don't you like it here?"
"I want to see Tex. Maybe Batist needs us at the shop. He can't read."
"You don't have to read to sell worms and shiners."
"Nothing here is like it is at home."
"It has a lot of good things, though, doesn't it?"
"I miss Tripod. I miss Clarise. It's cold at night."
I brushed her shiny black hair with my hand.
"It won't be long. You'll see," I said.
But my assurance was an emotional lie. I didn't know when we could go back. I wasn't sure if I ever could. That night in the dark, with the door open between our bedrooms, I heard her saying her prayers by the side of the bed, then climbing in under the covers.
"Dave?"
"What?"
"Are people trying to hurt us? Is that why we had to move?"
I got up and walked barefoot into her room and sat on the edge of the bed. Her face looked round and tan in the moonlight through the window. Her blanket was pulled up to her chin.
"Don't think like that, Alf. Nobody wants to hurt guys like us. We're good guys," I said.
"Think of all the people who love you. Batist and Clarise and your friends and teachers at school. They all love you, Alfie. And I love you most of all."
I could see her wide-spaced teeth and the brightness of her eyes when she smiled up from the pillow.
But her thoughts were not far from my own. That night I dreamed of South Louisiana, of blue herons standing among flooded cypress trees, fields of sugarcane beaten with purple and gold light in the fall, the smell of smoldering hickory and pork dripping into the ash in our smokehouse, the way billows of fog rolled out of the swamp in the morning, so thick and white that sound a bass flopping, a bullfrog falling off a log into the water came to you inside a wet bubble, pelicans sailing out of the sun over the breakers out on the Gulf, the palm trees ragged and green and clacking in the salt breeze, and the crab and crawfish boils and fish fries that went on year-round, as though there were no end to a season and death had no sway in our lives, and finally the song that always broke my heart, " La Jolie Blonde," which in a moment made the year 1945. Our yard was abloom with hibiscus and blue and pink hydrangeas and the neighbors came on horseback to the fais-dodo under our oaks.
The next morning I got a call from Tess Regan, the third-grade teacher and assistant principal at Alafair's school. She said she had a one-hour break at eleven o'clock, and she asked if she could walk down to the house and talk with me.
"Is there something wrong?" I said.
"Maybe it's nothing. I'd rather talk to you about it at your house."
"Sure. Come on down."
A few minutes later she knocked on the screen door. She wore a pale green cotton dress, and her auburn hair was tied back with a green kerchief. I could see baby powder on her freckled shoulders.
"I hope I'm not bothering you," she said.
"No, not at all. I have some iced tea made. It's a beautiful day. Let's have some on the porch."
"All right," she said. The corners of her eyes wrinkled good-naturedly at the deference to her situation as a layperson in a Catholic elementary school.
I brought the tea out on the porch, and we sat on two old metal chairs. The light was bright on the lawn and the trees, and bumblebees hummed over the clover in the grass.
"A man called earlier," she said.
"He said he was a friend of yours from Louisiana. He wanted to know where you and Alafair lived."
"What was his name?"
"He wouldn't give it."
"Did you tell him?"
"No, of course not. We don't give out people's addresses. I told him to call information. He said he tried, but your number was unlisted."
"It isn't, but my address isn't in the phone book, and information usually won't give out addresses. Why did the call bother you?" I leaned slightly forward.
"He was rude. No, it was more than that. His voice was ugly."
"What else did he say?"
"He kept saying he was an old friend, that it was important he talk with you, that I should understand that."
"I see."
"Alafair said you used to be a police officer. Does this have something to do with that?"
"Maybe. Could you tell if it was long-distance?"
"It didn't sound like it."
I tried to think. Who knew that Alafair went to a parochial school in Missoula? Darlene, perhaps. Or maybe I said something to Clete. Or maybe the person called New Iberia and got something out of Batist or Clarise. Then he could have phoned every Catholic elementary school in town until he hit the right combination.
"What was the first thing this guy said?" I asked.
Her mouth was wet and red when it came away from her glass. Her green eyes looked thoughtfully out into the sunlight.
"He said, 'I'm calling for Dave Robicheaux,' " she said.
"I told him I didn't understand. Then he said it again, 'I'm calling for Dave.' So I said, 'You mean you're delivering a message for him?' "
"Then he knew he'd found the right school."
"What?"
"He's a slick guy."
"I'm sorry if I handled it wrong," she said.
"Don't worry about it. He's probably a bill collector. They follow me around the country." I smiled at her, but she didn't buy it.
She set her iced tea on the porch railing and sat with her knees close together and her hands folded in her lap. She dropped her eyes, then looked up at me again.
"I'm probably being intrusive, but you're in some trouble, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Who is this man?"
"I'm not sure. If he calls again, though, I'd appreciate your letting me know."
"Is he a criminal?"
I looked at her face and eyes. I wondered how much of the truth she was able to take. I decided not to find out.
"Maybe," I said.
She pinched her fingers together in her lap.
"Mr. Robicheaux, if he's a threat to Alafair, we need to know that," she said.
"You have an obligation to tell us that, I think."
"This guy didn't have a Texas accent, did he?"
"No. He didn't have an accent."
"A couple of guys have a beef with me. Maybe he works for one of them. But their beef is with me. It's not going to affect anything at your school."