They Called Me an Abomination and Ordered Me Killed, So I Came Back as the Wolf They Buried novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Cane

The cane was leaning again.

I saw it from the bay door on Sunday morning with my coffee.

The field behind my shed runs a quarter mile to the next levee, eight-foot stalks heavy at the top, and they were bending toward me, all in a line, in a wind that was blowing the other way.

The farmers in Pierre Part call it a quirk of the levee.

They say the water pulls the wind funny.

I had stopped looking at it years ago.

I looked at it now.

"Mama," Bastien said behind me, "the cane's doing it again."

"I know, baby," I said.

"Is it going to fall on us?"

"No," I said.

His small face tipped up at me.

"Then why's it do that?"

I did not have an answer.

I never had.

I put the coffee down and walked him to the end of the lane, where the church van picks up the Pierre Part children for Sunday school, with the dog trotting behind.

The old woman who has driven the van for thirty years leaned out the door.

"Odalie, there's a truck full of men sitting on the levee by your place," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"You know them?"

"A little."

She squinted at the levee.

"They look hungry."

"They are," I said, and I waved the van off.

Then I went down to the levee road, because I had spent a long night looking out the kitchen window at a black truck parked in front of the St. Joseph church, and I had made a decision about it around three in the morning.

I took a thermos of coffee and two dozen boudin links from the shop on the corner, wrapped in butcher paper.

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