Chapter 5: Strawberries at Three

The French Market produce yard never sleeps at three in the morning.

Trucks backed up to the loading bays with their lights on.

Forklifts beeped across the concrete, and a radio somewhere played accordion music.

The men unloading crates of lettuce and onions nodded at Tommy and said, "Mr. Tom."

Not one of them looked at me.

"Don't mind them," Vince said, with his hand at the small of my back. "They've seen worse than a woman in a jacket."

Tommy walked ahead of us through the yard without a word.

He unlocked a steel door at the far end of the loading dock.

We went into a small office with a desk, a filing cabinet and a window onto the lot.

In the corner stood a folding cot with an army blanket tucked tight, and a shaving kit on a crate beside it.

That was all.

"This is where you sleep," I said.

"Most nights."

"You have a house in Gentilly."

"I have a house," Tommy said.

He did not explain it, and I did not push.

I put my hand flat on the blanket.

It was cold, and the corners were tucked tight.

"Show me the cold room," I said.

Vince whistled softly.

Tommy took a ring of keys from his belt and led us down a concrete corridor to a heavy steel door with a long handle.

He pulled it open, and the cold came out in a white breath.

Inside, the room was thirty-eight degrees and full of pallets.

Flats of strawberries from Ponchatoula were stacked to the ceiling, bright red under the hard white light.

The whole place smelled of sugar and cold dirt.

Tommy shut the door behind us.

The latch thunked home.

For a moment nobody spoke.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Anything," Vince said.

"The night of the funeral, I sat up in my kitchen until it was light."

I looked at Tommy.

"I thought one of you would come. Either of you. I left the porch light on."

The cold room hummed around us.

Tommy's jaw worked.

"Celie."

"You didn't come that night, and you didn't come to the grave, and you didn't call for a year."

"Not tonight," Tommy said, very low.

"Why not?"

"Because I'll say it wrong. And because I want to do something else with you first."

His eyes were dark and steady and full of something I could not name.

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