“Hey, Grand-père.”

The old man turned from the stove and arched an eyebrow. “Ey, T-Bub.” He shook his silver head. “Ey, T-Bub.”

“What’s wrong?” He sat down at a small table near the varnished window frame.

“Mrs. LeBlanc called me and told me Colette was out with another man at the Big Gator this weekend sometime. I think it was Saturday night. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Me? She’s the one stepping out.”

His grand-père sat down across from him and narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t combed his hair yet and looked like some windblown oysterman just landed from the Gulf. “You didn’t talk to her? You didn’t find the guy and whip his ass?”

Paul put his hands on the table and swung his head. “Aw, we having some problems. You know. And it’s my ass-whipping tendencies that she’s pissed off about.”

“When you got problems, you solve ’em.” The old man opened a hand toward the window. “I can’t understand you children nowadays. You all like a bunch of marshmallows. They’s nothing to you.”

Paul closed one eye. What his grand-père told him hurt. “Aw.”

“Aw,” the grand-père mocked. “Prettiest girl in the parish and you just throwing her away like that.”

“She wants me to change.”

“Change! Hell, boy, you got to change your drawers in the town square if it means keeping your wife.” He banged his coffee cup on the table in disgust.

“I’m not sure she’s worth keeping. She cramps my style, you know?” He thought of her hair. He didn’t believe what he’d just said.

“Your style?” He pronounced the word slowly, dragging out the s. “What kind of style you got? All you do is read machinery books and hang over the piss trough at the local dance hall.”

“Hey, I came to visit. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay, new topic. Your wife, she’s going to California on tomorrow night’s train.”

“What?” He was reaching for an ironware cup of coffee his grand-père was handing over, and he dropped it on the table with a bang. “Get me a rag. What?”

His grand-père mopped at the coffee, keeping it from streaming onto the floor. “You heard me. She told Melinda Ongeron in the bathroom at the Big Gator that she was tired of living in Tiger Island, yeah. She wanted to see another part of the world.”

“California!”

“That’s a long way off, T-Bub.”

Paul raised a hand and let it fall. “California. Where is that?”

* * *

At eight-thirty he was hiding around the corner of the little yellow stucco railroad station, out of sight of Colette and her mother and father, who were standing at trackside talking and now and then glancing toward the east. He looked west, past Railroad Avenue’s sleepy wooden houses, their tin roofs turned to pewter in the moonlight. He didn’t want her to leave Tiger Island, but he didn’t know how to ask her to stay. He thought and thought for words. When he saw the station agent come out with orders for the engineer tied to a stick, he knew he had to try something.