“Worked offshore, same as me. Hardworking guy, Claude. Marie, she worked, too, took in ironing.”

But mostly, from what the two neighbors say, Claude was an absentee father. Working for Anadarko meant six-week stints on oil rigs in the Gulf, followed by three weeks at home. “When he was home, he wasn’t really home that much. He was out fishing or shrimping.” Ralph laughs. “Most of the time with me.”

“Did Byron go along?”

“Nah. He got bored. He’d rather stay home with his mama.”

“Did they go to church? I heard something about Byron being a boy preacher.”

“My goodness, yes,” Dora says. “They’s churchgoers all along, mind you, but after little Joe died, Byron really got religion.”

“A transformational experience,” Ralph says.

“A what?” Dora asks. “Where’d you get that?”

Ralph blushes. “Bible study. That’s what they call it – like Paul on the road to Damascus. When Joey drowned, the idea is, that must have set Byron to thinking about his mortal soul.”

“I don’t know about any transformation,” Dora says, “but that boy did catch the preaching bug. Byron – he’d be preaching to anyone who’d listen, standing on the bridge, even thumping a Bible down by the wharves when the shrimp boats come in. Marie was havin’ fits about it, the kind of men you got down there. Drunk and all, you know. But Byron – you couldn’t stop him.”

“He was even getting a reputation as a healer, right, Ralph?”

“Absolutely. Folks said he had a calling.” Ralph pauses, then resumes. “It was bullshit, of course. But he had a following, no question about that. He was quite the little showman.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “What kind of ‘showman’?”

“Oh, for instance, he give a sermon one time ’bout shirking responsibility. He’s talking ’bout Pontius Pilate, and he’s got this big clear bowl of water on the altar, and he’s steamin’ on about how Pilate washes his hands of the matter… ‘Jesus Christ is just not any of his business.’ And little Byron, he lathers up with soap as he’s preachin’ and sticks his hands in that water and the water turns bloodred, and a big oooooooh goes up, you know – I mean damn! It’s right dramatic. Byron, he raises his hands and they’re dripping ‘blood’ and he’s thundering on about how Pilate cannot wash away the blood on his hands.”

“A trick.”

“Some kind of gizmo soap is what Claude told me, but it gets your attention, know what I’m saying? He had all kinds of stuff like that. Snap his fingers, big puff of smoke comes up. And then that thing with the puppy happened, and-” He turns to Dora. “Didn’t they bounce him out of the church?”

“What ‘thing with the puppy’?” Pinky asks.

“This was later,” Dora says, “when he was a teenager.”

But I’m not listening. I’m thinking of the boy preacher with his hands dripping “blood.” The boy preacher snapping his fingers to puffs of smoke. The boy preacher doing magic tricks.

The seven-year-old Byron the Great, honing his skills even then. Images of the Gabler twins come into my mind. In their costumes. The police photo of Clara Gabler’s lower half. I think about the Ramirez boys. One of them dismembered. The Sandling kids climbing ropes and doing “exercises.” Why? To what purpose?

A real showman.

When I think about what this psycho has in mind for my sons…

“You all right?” Pinky asks.

“More iced tea?” Ralph suggests.

I shake my head. “I’m all right.”

“What’s this about a puppy?” Pinky asks.

Dora frowns. “You mind if I smoke, Ralph?”

“It’s bad for you. But go on.”

“That puppy,” Dora says. “Oh, my Lord. That’s when we knew the boy was really crazy.”

“Put an end to his preachin’ days, too,” Ralph adds.

“What did he do?” Pinky asks. “Torture the poor critter?”

“Worse than that,” Ralph says.

“What could be worse than that?”

Ralph lets out a sigh, rocks back in his chair. “It’s Christmastime. And maybe this is hindsight, but what folks say now is that Byron was getting a little scary. No one can put their finger on it, but he put folk on edge. You just plain didn’t want to be around the boy. He’s still preaching a lot, but when he’s not preaching, he disappears entirely for hours and hours. He’s what?” He turns to Dora. “Fourteen?”

Dora nods.

“Marie – she’s worried,” Ralph continues, “says he’s got some kind of secret place, she don’t know where he goes or what he gets up to.”

“And the boy next door,” Dora says with a shudder, “gets a puppy for Christmas.”

“Now, remember how Dora said Byron got everything he ever wanted?”

Pinky and I nod.

“But there’s one exception,” Ralph tells us. “Marie – she’s got the asthma, bad, and she can’t have no animals. Set her wheezin’, send her to the hospital, you know? So Byron couldn’t have no puppy or kitten, not even a hamster.”

“What happened is this,” Dora says. “Little Emory Boberg, the kid next door on the other side? He gets a puppy for Christmas, a little golden lab, cutest little thing. And he’s out walking this little pup past Byron’s trailer, and Bryon asks can he play with it.

“Emory doesn’t want to, but he’s scared of Byron – so he hands him the leash. Byron gave him some money, sent Emory down to the 7-Eleven to get Slurpees for the both of them. As soon as Emory’s out of sight, Byron digs a hole in the yard and buries the puppy up to its neck. Now, if I’d been here, maybe I coulda stopped it, but I was off to Lafayette at my sister’s.”

“Byron tried to explain this later,” Ralph says. “Some lame-ass story about how the pup keeps slippin’ his collar and puttin’ him in the ground is Byron’s way of keeping him from runnin’ off. While Byron does his chores. Like he couldn’t wait ten minutes for Emory to come back. Like anyone believes Marie really told him to mow the lawn – it’s December. Anyways, he gets the power mower from the shed and begins to cut the lawn.”

“Oh,” Dora says, putting her head in her hands as if she can’t even stand the memory. “Lord.”

“Little Emory comes back just in time to see Byron cut right over the puppy’s head. I’m down here when Emory lets out this horrible scream. And me and whoever else is around, we come running. It’s just a geyser of blood. You can’t imagine.”

“He mowed the dog’s head off?”

“So, Emory’s mother, she calls the police. And they come. And no one’s buying it when Byron insists it was just an accident.”

“He was charged with malicious mischief,” Dora adds.

“And what happened to him?”

“Nothing. He got off with counseling. The Bobergs moved away as soon as they could.”

“Word got out,” Ralph says. “That Boudreaux boy ain’t right. Got a screw loose, maybe more. Parents told their kids to stay away from him. The church wouldn’t let him preach no more.”

“A little while after that, Byron dropped out of school,” Dora says. “And that’s when he started hanging around down in Morgan City.” She stubs out her cigarette. “Hooked up with that nigger witch doctor.”

I’m so put off by the racism I want to leave. I stand up, but Pinky ignores me. “You got a name for this guy?”

“I already told you,” Dora replies. “How would I know something like that?”

“I think I know who it is,” Ralph says, “but I don’t know his name. You go down around that area in Morgan City and you ask, and somebody will tell you where to find him. Hell, folk come all the way from N’Awlins to see him, get a number or who’s gonna win the Final Four. He’s world-famous, that fella.”

“Just… uh… ask for ‘the witch doctor’?” Pinky says. “That gonna do it?”

“Well,” Ralph says. “They don’t exactly call themselves witch doctors. They got some voodoo name for it what I don’t remember. Higgan? Hungin?”

“Houngan,” Pinky says.

“That’s the one. And see, there’s more than one o’ these guys over there in the city. The guy Byron took up with after the puppy thing? Ask for the one with no upper lip.”