Free Half of Paradise by James Lee Burke Page B

feet to keep warm
.
    Doc Elgin said to take one when I need a push it ain’t happy stuff I seen niggers taking cocaine and it comes in a powder and it gets them high and you can tell when they’re on it by their eyes her eyes were shrunk up like pinpoints and I started to ask her if Elgin done that too but I didn’t because she said not to talk about him no more the skin on her breasts looked thin and milky like a candle flame was behind it and you could see through it I could feel it coming on inside me and I held the back of her legs and felt it swell and burst and then she started it over again
    whistle blowing down the line and I watch the sun plunge out of the sun across the fields and the crimson evening fade behind the trees

TOUSSAINT BOUDREAUX
    There were two trucks backed up to the loading ramp on the side of the warehouse. The side street was dark except for the glow of light that shone through the open freight doors of the building. A sign above the door said Bonham Shipping Company. A white man and a Negro were bringing out crates and loading them in the trucks. Bonham, the light tan Negro who looked like a Baptist deacon, stood on the ramp. Toussaint waited beside his truck and watched the loading. His arm was in a black sling. The driver of the other truck, a white man, sat in his cab behind the steering wheel. He wore yellow leather gloves and an army fatigue cap and smoked a cigarette without taking it out of his mouth. There were ashes on the front of his shirt.
    “You been working here long?” Toussaint said.
    “A while,” he answered, without looking at him, his gloved hands resting on the steering wheel.
    “You got any notion where we’re going?”
    “Bonham will tell you,” he said, still looking straight ahead.
    “I asked you.”
    “I don’t know.”
    Toussaint turned away and looked up at Bonham on the ramp. He was dressed in a brown suit, with a good shoeshine, and his glass ring and rimless glasses glinted in the light from within the building. The last of the crates was loaded. One of the men closed the truck doors and locked each one with a heavy padlock. Bonham came down the ramp.
    “Take highway ninety straight to Mobile,” he said. “There’s a street map of the city in your glove compartment. The place where you’re supposed to go is marked in red pencil.”
    “Who’s going to pay me the other hundred dollars?” Toussaint said.
    “My partner in Mobile will give it to you as soon as you get to his warehouse.”
    “I’ll follow you,” Toussaint said to the other driver.
    “Go on ahead,” Bonham said. “I have to talk with him about something.”
    “He knows the road better than me.”
    “It’s a good road all the way. You won’t have no trouble,” the other driver said.
    “What about the weigh stations?”
    “You’re under the load limit. The police won’t bother you,” Bonham said.
    “I ain’t got any shipping papers.”
    “They don’t ask for them unless you’re over the limit,” Bonham said.
    “Go ahead. I’ll be right behind you,” the other driver said.
    Toussaint climbed up in the cab and took the black sling off his arm so he could shift gears. He started the engine and put the truck in low and drove down the side street away from the warehouse. He turned at the intersection and headed towards the highway. He watched for the other truck in the rear-view mirror. Toussaint didn’t like the way Bonham and the other driver had sent him ahead. There was something wrong about it. Why would they send me on alone with a load of stuff that must be worth plenty, he thought. I could hide the load and drive the truck into the river and they’d never see me again.
    Bonham was careful enough at first. He wouldn’t tell me where I was going until the last minute, but now he sends me on by myself. And why did he need two drivers? He could put all them crates in one truck. He didn’t need me. He hires a one-arm man out of a poolroom for no reason. It