Free Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn

Creoles and French and Eyetalians speaks around here. And the people is different, way different."
    David carefully put a heaping spoonful of ice cream into his mouth, the last in the plate, smoothing it, rounding it off with his lip, leaving some in the bowl of the spoon so it would last longer.
    "You mean the Professor's white, but he ain't New Orleans white. That what you mean, Gramp?"
    Li'l Joe sighed, then smiled at the boy. "Reckon you could say that, son." He pushed his half-eaten plate of ice cream across the table. "Here, baby. Finish it for me. My teeths can't stand no more of that cold."

CHAPTER 6
    Bjarne Knudsen had known for a long time of the dream that sustained Joseph Champlin, that made his job with Zeke Jones bearable, that sent him out to play a gig on nights when his body ached with fatigue because he had worked at hard labor since dawn. The Professor tried to slow him down, to show him that the human body can absorb only so much without harm, but Li'l Joe would only smile and say, "Reckon I'm just hardheaded like my ma says." It was why happiness and relief brought the big Dane storming across the room to envelop his friend in a bear hug and pound him on the back when the little man said: "Looks like I found it, Prof. Looks like I found me the house and the li'l piece of property where me'n' Geneva and the chile can live, with room for my ma as long's she's alive."
    Sipping beer, seated across from the Professor, Li'l Joe said: "It ain't no great shakes. And it ain't finished. Just the outside walls and the inside framework. Fellow that owned it, e's in the penitentiary. His lawyer, he's trying to get the property for his fee, but I got me a real-estate agent and we're going to work it out somehow so's I pays a down and then something every month, and after a while I gets title. I got friends'll help me work on it, musicians, fellows scratching for a dime when they ain't playing. They'll help for whatever I can pay 'em." His thin face almost vanished in a smile. "It's got gas connections and drains all in it, so's someday when I got the money we can have an inside bathroom. You want to know something, Prof? All the years of my life I been living in the great city of New Orleans, that's something I ain't never had."
    Later he said: "Fellow what owns the house, he put an old piano in it. They calls him 'Cat.' Cat Masterson his name is. He's a real fine musician. I've heard him plenty times. It's about all he lives for, his music and his daughter. She's near fifteen but she ain't real bright. Guess they calls 'em retarded, but she's a real nice girl. That piano's the onlies' thing in the house. Ain't even no walls on the inside, but he got him a second-handed piano and put in it."
    "Are you sure, Li'l Joe, he won't want it when he gets out?"
    "Ain't sure of nothing except it's going to be a mighty cold day in hell the day he gets out."
    "What did he do? Why is he there?" Knudsen was sorry he had asked the question the moment the words had crossed his lips. He knew now, always, the kind of answer he would get to a question like that by the way the spirit, the essence, of Li'l Joe Champlin withdrew behind a blank brown mask, behind eyes grown dull and without expression.
    "Didn't do nothing you could fault him for really. Nothing more'n what any man would do. Lost his head and went after a guy for trying to force his daughter, guy what ran a laundry next door; he caught him trying to get in the bed with his daughter one night when he come home early. Heerd her screaming when he come in the courtyard. Cut the guy bad. Didn't know what he was doing, I guess. Onlies' trouble is the guy was white. They tells me, them what's got friends in the penitentiary up there, he's going queer in the head. He's got —he's got—I can't call it right, but it means he can't stand to be shut up in no small place. Now they got him in solitary."
    "Claustrophobia," said the Professor. His voice was dull and sick-sounding. He ran a