Half of Paradise

by James Lee Burke

  “What happened?” he said.

  “He busted his hand.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  Toussaint held it up.

  “Where’s the ring doctor?” Ruth said.

  “He’s coming,” Archie said.

  “We’ll get an X ray at the hospital and see how bad it is,” Ruth said.

  “It’s a compound fracture,” Archie said. “He’s bleeding under the skin.”

  “I’m sorry, Toussaint. I had it arranged with the promoters for you next month.”

  “He’ll get another chance. The money boys are watching him.”

  “They thought you’d make a good drawing card to fight an out-of-town boy.”

  “How’s Pepponi?” Toussaint said.

  “He was all right after he got up. You just took the wind out of him,” Ruth answered.

  Archie cleaned the blood out of Toussaint’s eye with a piece of cotton.

  “Here’s what I owe you for the fight,” Ruth said.

  “There’s a little bit extra to hold you over. Tell the doctor to send his bill to me.”

  “I ain’t asking for no handout, Mr. Ruth.”

  “I know you’re not. I always give a boy something extra when he gets hurt and has to lay off a while.”

  Ruth tucked the money in Toussaint’s robe pocket.

  “When your hand is all right come down to the arena and we’ll see what we can do,” he said.

  Ruth left the room. The ring doctor came in and put Toussaint’s hand in a temporary sling. He cleaned the cut over his eye and closed it with twelve stitches. Toussaint dressed without showering, and he and Archie drove to the hospital for an X ray. The intern said that he had broken several bones in the back of his hand and it would take a long time to mend. The intern set the hand in an aluminum brace that was shaped to the curve of the palm and fingers and didn’t allow any movement of the fractured bones. Archie drove Toussaint to his flat.

  “Ruth meant it about you coming back to the arena when your hand is well,” he said.

  “The doctor told me I got to wait six months before I fight again.”

  “What about your job on the docks?”

  “They ain’t hiring one-arm men to handle freight.”

  Toussaint lived in a tenement building a few blocks from the warehouse district. He went up the narrow stairway through the darkened corridor to his room. The room was poorly furnished, and dingy like the rest of the building, with a tattered yellow shade on the window, a single bed with a brass bedstead, a wall mirror and a scarred chest of drawers by an old sofa that was faded colorless; the wallpaper was streaked brown by the water that seeped through the cracks every time it rained. He turned on the single bulb light that hung by a cord from the ceiling. He took off his sling to undress, and rinsed his face in the washbasin. He looked in the mirror at the row of black stiches across his eye; one side of his face was swollen into a hard knot. He showered, turned out the light, and went to bed.

  Outside in the alley he heard drunken voices and the rattling of garbage cans. He looked up through the darkness and thought of his home in Barataria, south of New Orleans. He wondered if he would ever go back. A woman yelled for the drunks to be quiet. Toussaint rolled over in his bed and closed his eyes. He thought of himself on the deck of a trawler with the nets piled on the stern and the steady roll of the Gulf beneath his feet, the horizon before him where the dying sun went down in the water in a last blaze of red, the smell of the salt and the seaweed and the sound of the anchor chain sliding off the bow. He turned in his bed and couldn’t sleep. He remembered the tavern where they used to go after coming into port. It was a good place with a long polished bar and small round tables covered with checkerboard cloths. They served boiled crabs and crawfish, and you could get a plate of barbecue and a pitcher of draught beer for a dollar. It was always filled with fishermen, and Toussaint would stand at the bar and talk and drink neat whiskey from the shot glasses with water as a chaser.

  The next morning he looked for a job. He tried the state employment agency first. The only jobs to be had were those of bellboy, bus hop, and janitor. He went to warehouses, trucking firms, auto garages, and was told that there was either no job to be had, or to come back when his hand had healed. The third day he went to a clothing store on Canal that had advertised for help in the stockroom. Toussaint applied and got the job. When he reported for work he was shown where the brooms, mops, dustpans, and cleaning rags were kept, and was told to mop the floor of the men’s and women’s restrooms. He left the store and looked for another job. A week passed and he found nothing. The landlord of his building asked for the rent, which took Toussaint’s last twenty dollars. He rode the streetcars and buses and walked over most of the city to find work. He went to a private employment agency. They said he might try cutting lawns; there wasn’t much else for a man in his condition.

  Two weeks later he was sitting in the pool hall, reading the want ads in the newspaper. All the tables were being used. A man with a cigarette between his teeth sat down on the bench beside him. It was one of the hustlers who had tried to get him into a game the afternoon of his last fight.

  “Out of work?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “See anything in the paper?” Toussaint looked towards the pool tables.

  “I see you got a bad hand. Work must be hard to get.”

  Toussaint folded his paper and put it on the bench.

  “If you’re looking for a job maybe I can fix it up,” the hustler said.

  “You run an employment agency?”

  “I got a friend that needs a guy to drive a truck.”

  “You drive it for him.”

  “I make my bread in other ways.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “That’s him by the horse board.”

  “I don’t know him,” Toussaint said.

  “He don’t know you either.”

  “Say what you got on your mind or go back to your friend.”

  “He needs a driver and he figured you might want the job.”

  “That ain’t telling me nothing. What’s he want to hire me for?”

  “This is a special kind of trucking service. He don’t take on union drivers.”

  “What’s he hauling?”

  “That’s what the union asks,” the hustler said.

  “And his drivers don’t ask nothing.”

  “You got it.”

  “I want to ask him some questions.”

  “He ain’t used to it.”

  “Get off it, boy. He wouldn’t have sent you over here to hire a one-arm man unless he needed a driver pretty bad.”

  “You’re cool, daddy.”

  They went over to the man by the horse board. He was a well-dressed, light tan Negro with thick, rimless glasses. He looked like a Negro preacher, except for the glass ring on his little finger.

  “This guy might want to be a truck driver,” the hustler said.

  “Did Erwin explain it to you?”

  “What are you hauling?” Toussaint said.

  “You make an out-of-state delivery. I take care of the rest.”

  “What’s the pay?”

  “A hundred dollars.”

  “I want two hundred if I’m carrying a blind load.”

  “I don’t pay a driver more than a hundred.”

  “Get somebody else, then.”

  “A hundred now, and a hundred when you get there.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “You’ll learn that tonight. Erwin will give you the address of the warehouse.”

  “Is this a one-man job?”

  “Another truck will go with you.”

  “What is it? Whiskey?”

  “Give him the address, Erwin.”

  The hustler tore open an empty cigarette pack and flattened it against the wall and wrote something on it in pencil. He gave it to Toussaint.

  “Here’s your bread ticket, daddy,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Bonham Shipping Company,” Toussaint read. “Are you Bonham?”

  “Yes. I am. Pick up the truck at nine.”

  “You ain’t give me the money yet.”

  “He’s real sharp, ain’t he, Mr. Bonham?” the hustler said.

  AVERY BROUSSARD

  It was night and the moon was high, and Avery sat on a log in the clearing while Tereau took the coffeepot off the fire. Tereau was three parts Negro, one part Chitimacha Indian, and he made the best moonshine in southern Louisiana. No one knew how old he was, not even Tereau, but a Negro must live very long before his hair turns white. He had fought sheriffs and federal tax agents to keep his still, and some people said that he carried a double-edged knife made from a file in his boot.

  Tereau poured coffee in their cups and added a shot of whiskey from the pint bottle he carried in his coat pocket. They were waiting for the bootleggers who were to slip through the marsh in an outboard and meet them. The mules and the wagon were off to the side of the clearing by the trees, with the heavy kegs of whiskey loaded on the bed. Avery took another shot in his cup.

  Tonight ain’t a good time to be drinking too much corn,” Tereau said.

  “What happened to the bootleggers?”

  They’ll be along. There’s a lot of moonlight. They got to be careful.”

  “Do the state police ever catch any of them?”

  “Sometimes, but they usually get rid of the whiskey before they’re caught. It don’t take long to dump them barrels overboard.”

  Tereau rolled a cigarette and handed the package of rough-cut string tobacco to Avery.

  “Them bootleggers don’t take much chance,” Tereau said. “They’re always moving and they got nobody except the state police to look out for. I got to worry about federal tax agents. They never give up looking for my still. Every month there’s a couple of them wandering around in the marsh trying to find it.”

  Avery laughed.

  “They almost got me once,” Tereau said. “When I leave the still I run a ball of string around it in a big circle, about a inch off the ground. One day I come back and the string was slack on the ground. I snuck around to the other side and seen one of them tax people hid behind my boiler. I went and got my brother and two cousins and we brung the wagon up close to the still, then I sent my brother down to the tax fellow’s car. It was parked about a mile away on a side road. My brother stuck a match in the horn button to keep the horn blowing, and the tax fellow took off to see what the matter was, and while he was stumbling through the briars we took the still to pieces and loaded it on the wagon and moved the whole outfit to the other side of the marsh.”

  “You crazy old man,” Avery said.

  “I don’t see no old men around here.” Tereau puffed on the cigarette and flicked it into the fire.

  “Why’d you want to come with me, Avery? You ain’t never been one to break the law,” he said.

  “Since they took the farm I got nothing else to do. Breaking the law seems like a good enough way to pass the time.”

  “If you don’t end up busting rocks on a work gang.”

  “They never caught you.”

  “That’s because I been at it a long time. My grand-daddy taught me all the tricks when I was a little boy. When he was a young man he sold moon to both the Confederate and Federal army, except he might have added some lye or fertilizer when he sold it to the Yankees. I hope you ain’t planning on making this your life’s work.”

  “You’d put me out of business.”

  There was a rustle in the bushes, and two men came into the clearing. They were bootleggers who picked up Tereau’s whiskey to run it through the marsh downriver to Morgan City, and eventually to New Orleans and the dry counties in Mississippi. The whiskey was sold for four dollars a gallon at the still and twelve dollars a gallon at the retailers. It was clear and tasted like Scotch, and sometimes coloring was added and the whiskey was sold with a bonded Kentucky label, although its maker had never been out of Louisiana. The bootleggers were sunburned, rawboned men; their hands and faces were smeared with mud and handkerchiefs were tied around their necks to protect them from the mosquitoes; they were dressed in heavy work trousers and denim shirts with battered sweat-soaked straw hats. They were from the Atchafalaya basin, where there is nothing but lowlands, swamps, mud-choked bayous, scrubby timber so thick it is almost impassable in places, and swarming clouds of mosquitoes that can put a man to bed with a fever.

  The bootleggers came into the light of the fire. Their names were LeBlanc and Gerard. LeBlanc was the taller of the two, with an old army .45-caliber revolver stuck down in his belt. He was dark and slender, and his eyes were bright in the light. Gerard was thick-necked, unshaved, with heavy shoulders that were slightly stooped; he had long muscular arms and a crablike walk. He cut a slice off his tobacco plug and dropped it into his mouth.

  “You all are late tonight,” Tereau said.

  “We had to take the long way,” LeBlanc said. “State police is on the river.”

  “We’re going to have to change our pickup night. They got it figured when we move our stuff,” Gerard said.

  LeBlanc looked at Avery.

  “Who’s the boy?” he said.

  “He’s all right,” Tereau said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Avery Broussard.”

  “I reckon Tereau told you it ain’t good to talk about what you see in the marsh at night,” he said.

  “He told me.”

  “Tereau says he’s all right,” Gerard said.

  “Sure he’s all right,” LeBlanc said. “I’m just making sure he understands how we do things down here.”

  “He knows,” Tereau said. “Where’s the boat?”

  “Down in the willows. We got it covered up good,” Gerard said.

  Avery looked at the wild stare in LeBlanc’s eyes.

  “There’s too much moonlight. You can see us for a half mile on the river. We had to come down the bayou,” LeBlanc said.

  Tereau went to the wagon to get tin cups for their coffee. “I got some rabbit. You want to eat?” he said.

  “We ain’t got time. It’s about four hours till dawn. We got to reach Morgan City before daylight,” LeBlanc said.

  They sat down on the log while Tereau filled their cups. LeBlanc stretched out his legs and removed the pistol from his belt and placed it on the log.

  “Do you use that thing?” Avery said.

  “They ain’t nobody around to say I have,” he said. He picked it up and rolled the cylinder across his palm. “I got it in the army.” He snapped the cylinder open into a loading position and snapped it back again. His eyes were hard and distant as he looked into the fire. “They teach you how to shoot real good in the army. I was a B.A.R. man. I could knock down nips at a thousand yards with a Browning.”

  Gerard stood up and threw the rest of his coffee into the fire. “We better get moving,” he said. LeBlanc continued to stare ahead with the pistol in his hand. Gerard nudged him with his foot. “Come on, we better move. We still got to load the boat.”

  LeBlanc rubbed the oil off the pistol barrel on his trouser leg. He put the gun on half cock and slid it back in his belt. He still had that same hard, distant look in his eyes. He finished his coffee in one swallow and got up and went over to the wagon to count the kegs of whiskey with Tereau.

  “Don’t get him talking about the army no more,” Gerard said to Avery. “He ain’t been right since he come back from the war.”

  “Did he ever use that gun on anybody?”

  “I don’t ask him no questions. He knows his job, and what else he does ain’t my business. The only time I got to watch him is when we have a scrape with the law. Soon as he thinks they’re around he takes out his pistol and puts it on full cock. His eyes get like two pieces of fire when he sees a uniform.”

  Avery looked over to the wagon. Tereau was fastening the tailgate after LeBlanc had climbed down from the bed. The mules shuffled in their harness.<
br />
  “What happened to him in the army?” Avery said.

  “He was in the South Pacific about a year. He even got decorated once. Then one day he tried to shoot his commanding officer and deserted. They found him about a month later and put him in the stockade. He went kind of crazy in there. They sent him to a hospital for a while, but it didn’t do no good. They finally give him a medical discharge because there wasn’t nothing else they could do with him.”

  Gerard took the coffeepot off the iron stake and poured the coffee over the fire. The coals hissed and spit as the fire died and the clearing darkened except for the light of the moon. He pulled the iron stake out of the ground and kicked dirt over the faintly glowing embers.

  “Don’t let LeBlanc worry you,” he said, and went over to the wagon in his slow, crablike walk, his shoulders slightly rounded, with the iron stake and coffeepot in each hand. Avery followed.

  “Twenty-five kegs,” LeBlanc said.

  “I reckon you want some money,” Gerard said to Tereau.

  “I reckon you’re correct, Mister whiskey runner,” Tereau said.

  Gerard loosened his shirt and unstrapped a money belt from his waist. He propped one foot on the hub of the wagon wheel and counted out the money on his thigh. He put the bills in a stack and handed them to Tereau and strapped the belt around his waist again.

  “When you going to start putting my name on the labels?” Tereau said.

  “Soon as you start paying federal taxes and we both go out of business,” Gerard said.

  “I hear something out there,” LeBlanc said.

  They listened for a moment.

  “I don’t hear nothing,” Gerard said.

  “It’s out on the river somewheres,” LeBlanc said.

  “There ain’t nothing out there. We got rid of the police three miles back.”

  LeBlanc moved his hand to the pistol and looked off into the darkness. “There’s something wrong,” he said. “Everything is going wrong tonight. I can feel it. There’s too much moonlight, and there’s somebody out on the river.”

  “There ain’t nobody out there.”