Chapter 5: The Fifth Stool

Gaston sent the driver away with a message.

"Tell Ledoux he'll hear from us."

Then he put Emile in the back of a black truck with his three brothers and drove west for two hours.

Emile slept with his head on Thibault's shoulder and woke up in Lafayette.

The Theriot place sat at the end of a gravel road, behind a stand of live oaks and a bayou the color of strong tea.

A big white house with a deep porch.

A long red barn with a satellite dish on the roof.

"Home," Fabien said, and handed him a coffee.

It was the first thing anyone had given him all day that wasn't a command.

Emile held it in both hands and looked around.

There was a pickup with a dented fender and a rope swing over the water.

A dog the size of a pony slept in the sun.

"That's Biscuit," Sylvain said. "He doesn't bite."

"He's not a dog," Thibault said cheerfully. "He's a hazard."

Rehearsal was in the barn.

Emile had never seen a studio like it.

The old rafters were hung with sound baffles, and a stage at one end was lit by work lamps.

Four stools stood on it, among the guitars and the drum kit.

A fifth stool stood off to the left.

It was empty, with a battered fiddle leaning against it and a strip of masking tape on the seat.

The tape said *M.*

Emile stopped walking.

"Who sits there?" he said.

"Nobody," Gaston said, a little too fast.

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