he father's milk delivery route in the Garden District; then the lavender sky began to darken and swallows spun out of the shadows and when the lights in the upstairs apartments came on I could see the alcohol gradually go out of Clete's eyes, and I shook hands with him and drove back to New Iberia.
When I got home from the office the next afternoon, Alafair was sitting in the swing on the gallery, snapping beans in a pot. Her face was scratched, and there were grass and mud stains on her Levi's.
“You look like you rode Tex through a briar patch, Alf,” I said.
“I fell down the coulee.”
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“How'd you do that?” I leaned against the rail and a post on the gallery.
“A dog got after Tripod. I ran over in Mr. LeBlanc's yard and tripped on the bank. I fell in a bunch of stickers.”
“The coulee's pretty steep over there.”
“That's what that man said.”
“Which man?”
“The one who got me out. He climbed down the side and got all muddy.
He might buy Mr. LeBlanc's house.”
I looked over into the neighbor's yard. A realtor I knew from town had just walked from the far side of the house with a clipboard in his hand. He was pointing at some features in the upstairs area, talking over his shoulder, when my eyes locked on the man behind him.
“Did this man say anything to you?” I said.
“He said I should be careful. Then he got Tripod out of the willow tree.”
“Where's Bootsie?” I said.
“She had to go to the store. Is something wrong, Dave?”
“No. Excuse me a minute.”
I went inside and called the dispatcher for a cruiser. Then I went back out on the gallery.
“I'm going next door. But you stay on the gallery, understand?” I said.
“He didn't do anything wrong, Dave.”
I walked across the grass toward my neighbor's property and the man with miniature buttocks and ax-handle shoulders and chunks of lead for eyes.
He was dressed in a pale blue summer sports coat, an open-collar white shirt with ballpoint pens in the pocket, gray slacks, shined brown wingtips that were caked with mud around the soles; except for the stains on his clothes, he could have been a working man on his way to a fine evening at the track.
The realtor turned and looked at me.
“Oh hello, Dave,” he said. “I was just showing Mr. Pogue the properly here.”
“I'd like to thank the gentleman for helping my daughter out of the coulee,” I said.
“It was my pleasure,” the man with the buckshot eyes said, his mouth grinning, his head nodding.
“Mr. Andrepont, could I talk with him in private a minute?” I said.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
“It'll take just a minute. Thank you,” I said.