Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke

because he was smiling when he opened the door in his boxer undershorts. Behind him Mapes was eating a sandwich in his robe at a wet bar. The linen and covers on the king-sized bed were in disarray, and the hallway that led into another bedroom was littered with towels, wet bathing suits, and beer cups.

    Vidrine’s smile collapsed, and his face suddenly looked rigid and glazed. Mapes set his sandwich in his plate, wet the scar on his lower lip as though he were contemplating an abstract equation, and moved toward a suitcase that was opened on a folding luggage holder.

    I heard the chain clink and sing through the air, felt it come back over my head again and again, felt their hands rake against the side of my face; my ears roared with sound a rumble deep under the Gulf, the drilling-rig floor trembling and clattering violently, the drill pipe exploding out of the wellhead in a red-black fireball. My hand was bitten and streaked with rust; it was the color of dried blood inside a hypodermic needle used to threaten a six-year-old child; it was like the patterns that I streaked across the walls, the bedclothes, the sliding glass doors that gave onto the courtyard where azalea (petals floated on the surface of a lighted turquoise pool.

CHAPTER 4

    Alafair woke up with an upset stomach the next morning, and I kept her home from school. I fixed her soft-boiled eggs and weak tea, I then took her down to work with me in the bait shop. The sun had | come up in a clear sky that morning, and the trees along the dirt road were bright green from the rain. The myrtle bushes were filled with purple bloom in the sunlight.

    “Why you keep looking down the road, Dave?” Alafair asked.

    She sat on one of the phone-cable spools on the dock, watching me unscrew a fouled spark plug from an outboard engine. The canvas umbrella in the center of the spool was folded, and her Indian-black | hair was shiny in the bright light.

    “I’m just admiring the day,” I said. I felt her looking at the side of my face.

    “You don’t feel good?” she said.

    “I’m fine, little guy. I tell you what, let’s take a ride down to the store and see if they have any kites. You think you can put a kite up f today?”

    “There ain’t no wind.”

    “Don’t say ‘ain’t.’ “

    “Okay.”

    “Let’s go get some apples for Tex. You want to feed him some apples?”

    “Sure.” She looked at me curiously.

    We walked up to the truck, which was parked under the pecan I trees, got in, and drove down the road toward the old store at the four-corners. Alafair looked at the floor.

    “What’s that, Dave?”

    “Don’t mess with that.”

    Her eyes blinked at my tone.

    “It’s just a chain. Kick it under the seat,” I said.

    She leaned down toward the floor.

    “Don’t touch it,” I said.

    “It’s dirty.”

    “What’s wrong, Dave?”

    “Nothing. I just don’t want your hands dirty.”

    I took a breath, stopped the truck, and went around to Alafair’s side. I opened her door and lifted the loops of chain off the floor. They felt as though they were coated with paint that had not quite dried.

    “I’ll be right back,” I said.

    I walked down on the bank of the bayou and sailed the chain out into the middle of the current. Then I stooped by the cattails in the shallows and scrubbed my palms with water and sand. Dragonflies hovered over the cattails, and I saw a cottonmouth slide off a log and swim into the lily pads. I pushed my hands into the sand, and water , clouded around my wrists. I walked back up onto the bank with my hands dripping at my sides and wiped them on the grass, then I took a cloth out of the toolbox and wiped them again.

    The ramshackle general store at the four corners was dark and cool inside, the wood-bladed ceiling fan turning over the counter. I bought a sack of apples for Alafair’s horse, some sliced ham, cheese, and French bread for our lunch, and two soda pops to drink out on the gallery. The sun