His mother had tied a dishrag in a knot. “Paul fell down as soon as he got into the kitchen. He was talking, but we couldn’t get him to stand up, and then he started shaking and sweating, so we called the ambulance. Let’s go out front.”

In a minute Paul’s sister pulled up in her dusty truck and they rode to the hospital, pacing the emergency room for an hour before a doctor came out, a Lester Cox, the same doctor that had sewn her up.

“I called the doctor in Lafayette,” he told them. “Mr. Thibodeaux is still suffering from that trauma of a few months ago.” He watched them carefully through his wire-rim glasses, looking as though he was about to tell them something important. “You can’t expect a man who’s had his brain cooked to work like a new man. When he came around, he told me he’s been working three days straight.” The little doctor shook his head. “He can’t handle that yet. His heart rate’s high, his liver counts are all screwed up, and we’ll have to keep him overnight at least to straighten out his electrolytes and run a few more blood tests.”

Colette picked up an arm and let it slap against her leg as though punishing herself. She had pushed him too hard and would have to make it up to him. But even as she thought this, she wanted to go home and think up another way for them to prosper—a crawfishing venture, maybe, now that they had some money for traps and bait and sacks. “Can I see him?”

“One at a time. Just a little while. He’s in one eighty-six.”

When she went in, he tried to smile. “Lo.”

She walked up to the bed and looked at him, at the two drips in his arm. “I got the money from Oudry’s,” she said. He didn’t respond, though he kept looking at her.

“What you looking at?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You too sick to look at me like that.”

He closed one eye. “How’s this?”

She walked to the window and pulled the blinds. “I got this idea. If we took the whole sum and put it into a used motor for that little twelve-foot johnboat, Abadie could show me where to set crab traps and a route of trotlines for catfish. Oudry’s buys from two other women who fish, and he tells me they clear a hundred dollars a day when they can go out.” She had the wad of bills held out to him like a folded green tongue. “Since I’d be using your boat and your half of the money, I’d split the profits with you.”