"Do you know who they were, their names?"

"Them kind ain't got no names. They just drive their car up when she get off work and that po' girl get in."

"I see. All right, Jennifer, this is my card with my telephone number on it. Would you call me if you remember anything else that might help me?"

"I don't be knowin' anything else, me. She wasn't goin' to give the name of some rich white man to an old nigger."

"What white man?"

"That's what I tellin' you. I don't know, me."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying."

"You don't understand English, you? Where you from? She say they a rich white man maybe gonna get her out of sellin' jellyroll. She say that the last time I seen her, right befo' somebody do them awful t'ings to that young girl. Mister, when they in the bidness, every man got a sweet word in his mouth, every man got a special way to keep jellyroll in his bed and the dollar in his pocket."

She threw the bucket of clear water on the glass, splashing both of us, then walked heavily with her brushes, cleaning rags, and empty bucket down the alley next to the bar.

The rain fell through the canopy of oaks as I drove down the dirt road along the bayou toward my house. During the summer it rains almost every afternoon in southern Louisiana. From my gallery, around three o'clock, you could watch the clouds build as high and dark as mountains out on the Gulf, then within minutes the barometer would drop, the air would suddenly turn cool and smell like ozone and gun metal and fish spawning, the wind would begin to blow out of the south and straighten the moss on the dead cypress trees in the marsh, bend the cattails in the bayou, and swell and ruffle the pecan trees in my front yard; then a sheet of gray rain would move out of the marsh, across the floating islands of purple hyacinths in the bayou, my bait shop and the canvas awning over my boat-rental dock, and ring as loud on my gallery as marbles bouncing on corrugated tin.

I parked the truck under the pecan trees and ran up the incline to the front steps. My father, a trapper and oil-field roughneck who worked high on the derrick, on what they called the monkey board, built the house of cypress and oak back in the Depression. The planks in the walls and floors were notched and joined with wooden pegs. You couldn't shove a playing card in a seam. With age the wood had weathered almost black. I think rifle balls would have bounced off it.

My wife's car was gone, but through the screen door I could smell shrimp on the stove. I looked for Alafair, my adopted daughter, but didn't see her either. Then I saw that the horse lot and shed were empty and Alafair's three-legged coon, Tripod, was not in his cage on top of the rabbit hutches or on the chain that allowed him to run along a clothesline between two tree trunks.

I started to go inside, then I heard her horse paw the leaves around the side of the house.

"Alafair?"

Nothing.

"Alf, I've got a feeling somebody is doing something she isn't supposed to."

"What's that, Dave?" she said.

"Would you please come out here and bring your friends with you?"

She rode her Appaloosa out from under the eave. Her tennis shoes, pink shorts, and T-shirt were sopping, and her tanned skin glistened with water. She grinned under her straw hat.

"Alf, what happened the last time you took Tripod for a ride?"

She looked off reflectively at the rain falling in the trees. Tripod squirmed in her hands. He was a beautiful coon, silver-tipped, with a black mask and black rings on his thick tail.

"I told him not to do that no more, Dave."

"It's 'anymore.' "

"Anymore. He ain't gonna do it anymore, Dave."

She was grinning again. Tex, her Appaloosa, was steel gray, with white stockings and a spray of black and white spots on his rump. Last week Tripod had spiked his claws into Tex 's rump, and Alafair had been thrown end over end into the tomato plants.

"Where's Bootsie?"

"At the store in town."

"How about putting Tex in the shed and coming in for some ice cream? You think you can handle that, little guy?"

"Yeah, that's a pretty good idea, Dave," she said, as though both of us had just thought our way through a problem. She continued to look at me, her dark eyes full of light. "What about Tripod?"

"I think Tripod probably needs some ice cream, too."

Her face beamed. She set Tripod on top of the hutches, then slid down off her horse into a mud puddle. I watched her hook Tripod to his chain and lead Tex back to the lot. She was eleven years old now. Her body was round and hard and full of energy, her Indian-black hair as shiny as a raven's wing; when she smiled, her eyes squinted almost completely shut. Six years ago I had pulled her from a wobbling envelope of air inside the submerged wreckage of a twin-engine plane out on the salt.

She hooked Tripod's chain on the back porch and went into her bedroom to change clothes. I put a small amount of ice cream in two bowls and set them on the table. Above the counter a telephone number was written on the small blackboard we used for messages. Alafair came back into the kitchen, rubbing her head with a towel. She wore her slippers, her elastic-waisted blue jeans, and an oversized University of Southwestern Louisiana T-shirt. She kept blowing her bangs out of her eyes.

"You promise you're going to eat your supper?" I said.

"Of course. What difference does it make if you eat ice cream before supper instead of after? You're silly sometimes, Dave."

"Oh, I see."

"You have funny ideas sometimes."

"You're growing up on me."

"What?"

"Never mind."

She brought Tripod's pan in from the porch and put a scoop of ice cream in it. The rain had slackened, and I could see the late sun breaking through the mist, like a pink wafer, above the sugarcane at the back of my property.

"Oh, I forgot, a man called," she said. "That's his number."

"Who was it?"

"He said he was a friend of yours. I couldn't hear because it was real noisy."

"Next time have the person spell his name and write it on the blackboard with his number, Alf."

"He said he wanted to talk with you about some man with one arm and one leg."

"What?"

"He said a soldier. He was mixing up his words. I couldn't understand him."

"What kind of soldier? That doesn't make too much sense, Alf."

"He kept burping while he talked. He said his grandfather was a Texas ranger. What's a Texas ranger?"

Oh, boy, I thought.

"How about Elrod T. Sykes?" I said.

"Yeah, that's it."

Time for an unlisted number, I thought.

"What was he talking about, Dave?"

"He was probably drunk. Don't pay attention to what drunk people say. If he calls again like that when Bootsie and I aren't here, tell him I'll call him and then hang up."

"Don't you like him?"

"When a person is drunk, he's sick, Alafair. If you talk to that person while he's drunk, in a funny way you become like him. Don't worry, I'll have a talk with him later."

"He didn't say anything bad, Dave."

"But he shouldn't be calling here and bothering little people," I said, and winked at her. I watched the concern in her face. The corners of her mouth were turned down, and her eyes looked into an empty space above her ice-cream dish. "You're right, little guy. We shouldn't be mad at people. I think Elrod Sykes is probably an all-right guy. He probably just opens too many bottles in one day sometimes."

She was smiling again. She had big, wide-set white teeth, and there was a smear of ice cream on her tan cheek. I hugged her shoulders and kissed her on the top of her head.

"I'm going to run now. Watch the shrimp, okay?" I said. "And no more horseback rides for Tripod. Got it, Alf?"