“One or two more kicks and everything was incinerated. I turned and looked at Jasmine, expecting some wise remark, but all I saw was a sort of dreamy thoughtfulness in her face.

“Then she said:

“ ‘You know, boy, you really have me thinking about it. You should be more kind to a woman my age. You scamp. You think I don’t have any feelings like that just ’cause I rocked your cradle?’

“ ‘How kind can I get?’ I asked. ‘You think I take up with just anybody?’

“Her expression never changed. She looked fine in her tight jeans. Her Afro was clipped close and the shape of her head and her face was beautiful.

“She lived like a nun. I knew that for a fact. There had been no men at all in her life since her husband died years ago. And her sister, Lolly, had had three husbands.

“ ‘I’m crazed,’ I said, staring at her, staring at her buxom breasts and her small waist. ‘I have these visions; what am I supposed to do about it, what does Rebecca want of me? I saw Rebecca up there. I don’t understand. Maybe they’ll find out I’m crazy. I know one thing though.’

“ ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

“ ‘That I’ve got you on my mind bad, Ms. Café au Lait. I don’t want to sleep with the dead.’

“Silence from her and then a partial smile, an uncharacteristic smile. Very slowly she ran her eyes over me, from toe to head.

“I felt my cock getting hard.

“The fire had consumed just about everything.

“The men had closed the tomb. She had the little casket under her right arm. Everybody was hot and sick and cursing and batting at the bugs, and the sun was flashing in the trees, and the water stank of things rotted, things dying.

“That’s what it was about the swamp. Of course things were being born and things were thriving and marvelous creatures lived in the treacherous slime, but more things were rotting and suffering for lack of sun, and it was death that had the upper hand, and death you smelled in the black water.

“We left the island.

“ ‘Better to drink this beer up home,’ said Clem, ‘where Mamma can cook us up some food. I’m starving.’

“We were all pretty damned drunk before we got home, and under the influence I’d made one or two bad turns which might have kept us lost for hours.

“As it was, we made it back before dark, and after I took the longest piss of my life I went down with the casket and the shovel to the little cemetery.