“I know.” He put up a hand as though to say, Enough.

“It was all at once, right?”

“Not really. She’d had several little strokes over the past four months. She didn’t want us to tell Colette, you know?” He arched his left eyebrow.

“Aw, man.”

“That’s right.” He came in close, bobbed his head to the side. “What’s up with you and Colette? That your loaf in the oven?”

“Yeah. I want to patch it up. But…” He shrugged.

“T-Bub. Colette is my sister and I don’t pretend to understand her. She can’t let herself be satisfied with anything. At least most of the time.” He leaned in closer, almost whispering in his ear. “If she wasn’t pregnant, I’d tell you to get out of it. Just walk. But now, I got no idea.”

Paul made a face, but before he could reply, his uncle Simon grabbed his arm and pulled him out to the porch, where he plied him with questions about his skiff engine. A half hour later he went in, talked, drank coffee, ate sandwiches, and waited for Colette to come into the room. He thought how her dissatisfaction would become general, more complex, because of her mother’s death. He waited until sunset, but she had gone and left her brother to shake the last hands, to say the last good-byes.

*   *   *

The next morning he visited his sister and her husband, Nan and Raymond, and let her children climb over him like puppies. He stopped by his brother’s house. His brother was now out of a job and running crawfish traps. Driving by LeBlanc’s, he tried not to look at the weeds and the rust. All day he looked for a job, but the places that were still open had on skeleton crews and weren’t hiring. He tried at Ramosville and across the river in Beewick, but he could tell by the thin traffic and the many FOR SALE signs in front of houses that luck would be scarce. The welders had all moved away or were running trotlines. The machinists were at home on welfare, watching television, listening for the phone. At sundown, he dropped in at the empty Little Palace, and the bald, stubby bartender stopped wiping the counter and said, “Here comes the rush.”

*   *   *

That same morning Colette went out onto the front porch and sat in her father’s glider, looking up at the beaded-board ceiling and the little bit of millwork between the roof supports. She closed her eyes and imagined she could feel her hair kink up in the humid air. From across Perrilloux Street she heard the scuff of shoes and looked to see Mrs. Fontenot, Paul’s neighbor, coming toward the house. She shuffled up to the steps and called out, “Ey, Colette, I just walked over to say I’m sorry to hear you mamma passed.”