Felix is a small coffee-colored man. He and Pinky talk in an impenetrable Creole patois. Felix draws a crude map. And then we’re back in the Bimmer, driving past a bank thermometer that reads one hundred one. For a second, I wonder if that’s the temperature and the humidity.

“That thing about the lip,” Pinky says. “If you don’t happen to believe in zombies, they’s another explanation. Seen it before. That kind of mutilation can happen when a fellow gets caught fooling around with somebody’s daughter or wife. Father, husband – he mess up the man’s face, make him ugly so women stay away.”

“Well, at least that’s straightforward.”

At the Morgan City High School, someone is mowing the grass in the football stadium. A banner affixed to the fence advertises: OPENING GAME AUG 28. The man on the mower is bare-chested and gleaming with sweat. A bandana tied into a do-rag covers his head, and a little umbrella attached to the mower shades him as he rolls along. It’s hard to believe anybody would want to play football in this heat, but the opening game is less than a month away. Just past the school, a bunch of kids in practice jerseys stand outside a snow-cone stand that advertises SNEAUX BALLS.

“Felix said we should take a present to Diment,” Pinky says, turning a corner and pulling up in front of a liquor store. “Says the doctor has a fondness for rum.”

And then we’re on our way again until Pinky stops at a crossroads and consults the map. There’s a little wooden shack on the right, nearly swallowed up by the surrounding vegetation. The place looks as if it’s about to fall down – but there’s a bright red pickup out front and a new satellite dish protruding from the roof.

“Let’s see,” Pinky says. “I think here’s where we go to the right.”

A few more turns and we’re on a dirt road. After a mile or so, we pull up in front of a nondescript rectangular concrete building. The front yard is dirt, with a few patches of weeds and tire ruts full of standing water. One small window seems to have been added post-construction, crudely jammed into its space. The building would look like a storage shed, except for the “door,” which consists of strings of plastic beads. I’ve seen doors like this before in Africa. The beads let the air in but keep the flies out. More or less.

“This is it,” Pinky says, executing a little drumroll on the dash. “Chez Diment.”

“Right.”

We step out into the sledgehammer heat. Pinky hits a button on his key and the car lights flash.

There’s no place to knock on a beaded door, so Pinky pushes the beads aside and sticks his head in. “Hello?”

“Come in then,” a voice calls from some distance.

It’s dark inside and even hotter than it was outside. Stifling. Airless. Behind the smell of dust and eucalyptus oil is the olfactory funk of human bodies, a whiff of excrement, urine, and sweat. In the moments it takes my eyes to adjust, I become aware of sounds in the room, labored breathing, snuffling, and coughing. Someone moans. Then the dozen or so humps on the floor resolve themselves into people – mostly children from the size of them.

“I heard about this,” Pinky says. “It’s a clinic. A voodoo hospital, like.”

My immediate reaction – and I’m ashamed of it – is to breathe shallowly.

“This way,” a robust voice calls from the back of the room. I can just make out an open door, and through it, the twinkle of colored lights, the kind you string on a Christmas tree. I follow Pinky through the corridor between the patients, whose hospital beds consist of straw mats on the floor.

“This way, this way,” the voice says.

And then we pass through the open door into a separate room. It’s about half the size of my room at the Omni and it’s illuminated only by the string of lights and three or four votive candles. Facing me is a kind of altar, a stepped affair crowded with objects. My eyes skim over them: a baby’s rattle, a black comb, statues draped in beads, bottles holding liquids, ropes tied in intricate knots, crosses, many bound up with layers of string, a painted skull, various bundles of cloth tied with string, flowers, tickets (also tied up with string), brightly colored jugs draped with beads, icons of the Virgin and Child with auras of gold, plastic icicles, Matchbox cars, a small soccer ball, plastic dolls, a photograph of JFK, a wooden carving of a madman in a tuxedo puffing on a cigar.

There are five folding chairs in the room and in one of them is Doctor Diment, himself. His teeth and eyes seem to glow in the dark. The missing lip is unnerving because all his upper teeth are visible, like the teeth of a skull. “Welcome,” he says, in his rich voice. “The white man, and the not-so-white man.” He chuckles.

“Pinky Streiber,” Pinky says. “And this is Alex Callahan.”

We shake. “Mr. Streiber,” Diment says, “you so white, you almost a light source, you.” A chuckle. “Sit down and tell me what Doctor Diment can do for you.”

I hand him the bottle of Appleton rum, and he regards it and gives a little formal nod of his head. “Thank you. Appreciate it.” Another warm chuckle. “The good stuff. You spoil me for my clairin.”

“That’s rum, too,” Pinky explains to me. “Kind of white lightning.”

“You know the local way,” Diment says. “You translate for your friend. That’s good, you help your friend. But which one of you need the doctor’s help, you?”

I wipe my forehead. Sweat begins to trickle down my back. I nod. “I’m interested in Byron Boudreaux. They say he was a friend of yours. I’m trying to find him.”

“By-ron,” Diment says with a sigh. “By-ron, he’s not having any friends.”

“We heard you knew him,” Pinky says.

“Let’s have a drink,” Diment decides. He twists off the cap of the rum bottle and takes a long swig, then passes it to me. Even in the half light, I can see the spittle on his chin. The spittle, the missing lip, the coughs and moans from the back room – I don’t really want to drink from the bottle. But somehow, I know I have to. I take a long slug. The rum burns, in a pleasant way, all the way down. Pinky declines and hands the bottle back to Diment.

I can see the doctor better now that my eyes have adjusted. What I see is a very thin man (AIDS?) wearing a dirty white tank undershirt and a pair of ripped khaki shorts. He wears an old pair of plastic flip-flops on his feet.

“What’s your interest in Byron?” he asks. And then he holds up his hand, palm out. “No, don’t tell me now. Let’s look at the cards.”

He pulls out a deck of cards and deals onto a little table in front of him. There is some sequence involved, every fifth or sixth card being separated from the deck. Then he picks up the hand he’s dealt himself. When he fans the cards out, they’re so old and flexible that they fall over the back of his knuckles. I wonder if I’m hallucinating. The cards remind me of Salvador Dalí’s limp and drooping clocks. Diment supports the cards with his left hand, forcing them upright, and regards them with a squint. “Okay,” he says, pushing them back into a stack and placing them facedown on the table, “now you tell me your interest in Byron.”

“I think he’s kidnapped my sons, my two boys.”

“Yes?”

“I think he plans to kill them.”

“Hmmmmmmm.” He fingers his mutilated lip.

“I need your help…”

“I tell you this much,” Diment says. “Byron, he comes to me after he killed that little dog. You hear about that?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, wouldn’t no one talk to him after that. The parents, they tell their children stay away. Byron’s church – they turn their back on the boy. He finds me one night in the cemetery, making a veve. He’s interested; I tell him a few things. Next day, he come after school to help me out here. He do the errands for me, clean the clinic, even wipe the shit off the poor ones in there.” He nods toward the room. “In return he wants to learn what I know. The ways of the world.”