Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke Page A

was brilliant on the white shale parking lot, and through the trees across the road I could see a Negro man cane fishing in a pirogue close in to the cypress roots.

    We went back to the house, and Alafair helped me weed my hydrangea and rose beds. Our knees were wet and dirty, our arms covered with fine grains of black dirt. My flower beds were thick with night crawlers, all of them close to the surface after the rain, and when we ripped weeds from the soil, they writhed pale and fat in the hard light. I knew almost nothing of Alafair’s life before she came to Annie and me, but work must have been a natural part of it, because she treated almost any task that I gave her as a game and did it enthusiastically in a happy and innocent way. She worked her way through the rosebushes on all fours, pinging the weeds and Johnsongrass loudly in the bucket, a smear of dirt above one eye brow. The smell of the hydrangeas and the wet earth was so strong and fecund it was almost like a drug. Then the breeze came up and blew through the pecan trees in the front yard; out on the edge of the trees’ shade my neighbor’s water sprinkler spun in the sunlight and floated across my fence in a rainbow mist.

    They came just before noon. The two Lafayette plainclothes detectives were in an unmarked car, followed by the Iberia Parish sheriff, who drove a patrol car. They parked next to my truck and walked across the dead pecan leaves toward me. Both of the plain-clothes were big men who left their coats in the car and wore their badges on their belts. Each carried a chrome-plated revolver in a clip-on holster. I rose to my feet, brushing the dirt off my knees. Alafair had stopped weeding and was staring at the men with her mouth parted.

    “You’ve got a warrant?” I said.

    One of the plainclothes had a matchstick in his mouth. He nodded without speaking.

    “Okay, no problem. I’ll need a few minutes, all right?”

    “You got somebody to take care of the little girl?” his partner said. A Marine Corps emblem was tattooed on one of his forearms and a dagger with a bleeding heart impaled upon it on the other.

    “Yes. That’s why I need a minute or so,” I said. I took Alafair by the hand and turned toward the house.

    “You want to come in with me?”

    “Lean up against the porch rail,” the man with the matchstick said.

    “Can’t you guys show some discretion here?” I said. I looked at my friend the sheriff, who stood in the background, saying nothing.

    “What the fuck are you talking about?” the tattooed man said.

    “Watch your language,” I said.

    I felt Alafair’s hand close tightly in mine. The other detective took the matchstick out of his mouth.

    “Put your hands on the porch rail, spread your feet,” he said, and took Alafair by her other hand and began to pull her away from me.

    I pointed my finger at him.

    “You’re mishandling this. Back off,” I said.

    Then I felt the other man shove me hard in the back, pushing me off-balance through the hydrangeas into the steps. I heard his pistol come out of his leather holster, felt his hand clamp down on my neck as he stuck the barrel of the revolver behind my ear.

    “You’re under arrest for murder. You think being an ex-cop lets you write trie rules?” he said.

    Out of the corner of my eye I saw Alafair staring at us with the stunned, empty expression of a person wakened from a nightmare.

    They booked me into the parish jail on top of the old courthouse in the middle of Lafayette’s original town square. The jail was an ancient one, the iron doors and bars and walls painted battleship gray. The words “Negro Male” were still faintly visible on the door of one of the tanks. During the ride from New Iberia I had sat handcuffed in the back of the car, asking the detectives who it was I had killed. They responded with the silence and indifference with which almost all cops treat a suspect after he’s in custody. Finally I gave up and sat back