first.”
“Where does he think Boggs is?”
“He say he keep talking about the Italians, how they owe him a lot of money, how they gonna take care of him, how if Tee Beau smart he stay in New Orleans and sell dope. All the time Tee Beau sitting in back, scared that man gonna find out he ain’t killed you in the coulee.”
“Tell him to call me at home. I’ll write down my number.”
“He gonna find out where that man at first.”
“No, he shouldn’t do that.”
“That little boy got courage,” Tante Lemon said. “People ain’t never see that in him. All they see is a little throwaway baby in a shoe box, him. Like when he took Mr. Dore car. He ain’t stole it. Our track was broke and I didn’t have no way to go to the Charity in New Orleans. Me going blind, couldn’t see to light my stove in the morning. He come flying round the corner in Mr. Dore car, couldn’t even drive, smash right over the church mailbox. Po-licemens come out and put handcuffs on him, shove him in their car with their stick like he’s a raccoon. Ain’t nobody ever ax why he done it.”
“You tell him I said to stay away from Boggs. That’s not his job.”
“That ain’t what you said before,” Tante Lemon said.
“I didn’t tell him to go looking for Boggs.”
“No suh, you say Tee Beau he’p you find that man, you he’p Tee Beau,” Dorothea said. “That’s what you tell me at the juke, out there in your car, out there in the rain. When I tell that to Tee Beau I say I don’t knows what to think. He say Mr. Dave a white man, but he don’t never lie.”
Then both of them looked at me silently in the half-light of my living room. Tante Lemon’s frosted turquoise eyes were fixed on me with the lidless glare of a bird’s.
A therapist once told me that everyone has a dream box in his head. He said that sometimes an event provides us with a rusty key to it that we can well do without. Jimmie Lee Boggs had turned all the tumblers in the lock, and I discovered that, like a perverse nocturnal demiurge, he had taken my ten months in Vietnam from me, reactivated every fearful moment I had lived through, and written himself into the script as a player.
The sun is hot in the sky but I cannot see it through the thick canopy of trees overhead. The light is diffused a yellow-green through the sweating vegetation, as though I am looking at it through water. The trunks of the banyan trees are striped with moisture; the blades of elephant grass, which can leave your skin covered with paper-thin cuts, are beaded with wet pinpoints of light. I lie flat on my chest in the grass, and the air is so humid and superheated I cannot keep the sweat out of my eyes—my forearm only rubs more sweat and dirt into them. I can feel ants crawling inside my shirt and belt, and ahead of me, where the elephant grass slopes down to a coulee, a gray cloud of mosquitoes hovers over a dead log, and a red centipede, as thick as a pencil and six inches long, is wending his way across the humus.
I can smell the sour odor of mud, stagnant water in the coulee, the foul reek of fear from my own armpits. An eighteen-year-old kid nicknamed Doo-Doo, from West Memphis, Arkansas, lies next to me, his bare chest strung with bandoliers, a green sweat-soaked towel draped from under the back of his pot.
His ankle is broken, and he keeps looking back at it and the boot that he has worked halfway off his foot. His sock looks like rotted cheesecloth. The whites of his eyes are filled with ruptured blood veins.
“They got Martinez’s blooker. Don’t go out there, Lieutenant. They waiting for you in the tree line,” he says.
“They’ll hang him up in a tree.”
“He at the bottom of the ditch. You cain’t get him out. They waiting for you, Lieutenant. I seen them.”
The rivulets of sweat leaking out of his pot and running down his face and shoulders look like lines of clear plastic against his black skin.
I crawl on my stomach through the grass
“Where does he think Boggs is?”
“He say he keep talking about the Italians, how they owe him a lot of money, how they gonna take care of him, how if Tee Beau smart he stay in New Orleans and sell dope. All the time Tee Beau sitting in back, scared that man gonna find out he ain’t killed you in the coulee.”
“Tell him to call me at home. I’ll write down my number.”
“He gonna find out where that man at first.”
“No, he shouldn’t do that.”
“That little boy got courage,” Tante Lemon said. “People ain’t never see that in him. All they see is a little throwaway baby in a shoe box, him. Like when he took Mr. Dore car. He ain’t stole it. Our track was broke and I didn’t have no way to go to the Charity in New Orleans. Me going blind, couldn’t see to light my stove in the morning. He come flying round the corner in Mr. Dore car, couldn’t even drive, smash right over the church mailbox. Po-licemens come out and put handcuffs on him, shove him in their car with their stick like he’s a raccoon. Ain’t nobody ever ax why he done it.”
“You tell him I said to stay away from Boggs. That’s not his job.”
“That ain’t what you said before,” Tante Lemon said.
“I didn’t tell him to go looking for Boggs.”
“No suh, you say Tee Beau he’p you find that man, you he’p Tee Beau,” Dorothea said. “That’s what you tell me at the juke, out there in your car, out there in the rain. When I tell that to Tee Beau I say I don’t knows what to think. He say Mr. Dave a white man, but he don’t never lie.”
Then both of them looked at me silently in the half-light of my living room. Tante Lemon’s frosted turquoise eyes were fixed on me with the lidless glare of a bird’s.
A therapist once told me that everyone has a dream box in his head. He said that sometimes an event provides us with a rusty key to it that we can well do without. Jimmie Lee Boggs had turned all the tumblers in the lock, and I discovered that, like a perverse nocturnal demiurge, he had taken my ten months in Vietnam from me, reactivated every fearful moment I had lived through, and written himself into the script as a player.
The sun is hot in the sky but I cannot see it through the thick canopy of trees overhead. The light is diffused a yellow-green through the sweating vegetation, as though I am looking at it through water. The trunks of the banyan trees are striped with moisture; the blades of elephant grass, which can leave your skin covered with paper-thin cuts, are beaded with wet pinpoints of light. I lie flat on my chest in the grass, and the air is so humid and superheated I cannot keep the sweat out of my eyes—my forearm only rubs more sweat and dirt into them. I can feel ants crawling inside my shirt and belt, and ahead of me, where the elephant grass slopes down to a coulee, a gray cloud of mosquitoes hovers over a dead log, and a red centipede, as thick as a pencil and six inches long, is wending his way across the humus.
I can smell the sour odor of mud, stagnant water in the coulee, the foul reek of fear from my own armpits. An eighteen-year-old kid nicknamed Doo-Doo, from West Memphis, Arkansas, lies next to me, his bare chest strung with bandoliers, a green sweat-soaked towel draped from under the back of his pot.
His ankle is broken, and he keeps looking back at it and the boot that he has worked halfway off his foot. His sock looks like rotted cheesecloth. The whites of his eyes are filled with ruptured blood veins.
“They got Martinez’s blooker. Don’t go out there, Lieutenant. They waiting for you in the tree line,” he says.
“They’ll hang him up in a tree.”
“He at the bottom of the ditch. You cain’t get him out. They waiting for you, Lieutenant. I seen them.”
The rivulets of sweat leaking out of his pot and running down his face and shoulders look like lines of clear plastic against his black skin.
I crawl on my stomach through the grass
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