Infinite Us(70)

We started walking again after Sylv caught my head shake but he pulled me closer, weaving us through the crowd with glancing this way and that to keep a look out for anything worrisome that might headed toward us.

"I don't like it. Leaving," I said, waving a wet hand at the crowd and weather. "Something's percolating. More'n just the storm." A heavy shudder took over my body then and I fought to push it down. "I feel deep inside."

For a second Sylv watched me, pulling me from the street and the screeching tires of a rusted Chevy when it came too close to the sidewalk. "Aw, hell, girl, you just mooning over Dempsey Simoneaux."

Until he mentioned Dempsey I hadn't exactly put my thoughts on him. He'd slipped in and out of my concentration while I stayed with Mrs. Matthews. It was his smile mostly and the memory of his sweet, full mouth that kept me wondering how he'd fared since Mama sent me to Treme'. I'd spent most of my nights worrying that his daddy had decided Dempsey was a liar and went at him with a belt for talking against Joe Andres. 

"You hear anything of him?" I asked Sylv, not caring when he rolled his eyes like I was stupid for keeping my thoughts on Dempsey. When my brother ignored me, I pulled him off the sidewalk to huddle next to me under a broken awning with sheets of water spilling from an opening between two thick boards. Not like it made much of a difference. We both were soaked. "Tell me what you've heard."

"I ain't seen him." Sylv tried ringing out his jacket, cursing to himself when a big splatter of water fell onto his head.

"You lying to me."

"Damn, Sookie, so what if I am?" He threw down the jacket, giving it a kick for good measure before he jerked me back onto the sidewalk. "The both of you are itching for trouble, courting it like it won't be ruin of both of you."

"Sylv … " I waited, ignoring his stupid try at changing the subject.

"I ain't seen him at all since Mama told him to get … "

"But?"

Two fat hustlers, I suspected some of Ripper's old henchmen, walked in front of Sylv, eyes narrow, gaze heavy on the pair of us as we headed into the thick of the Quarter where everyone seemed to be leaving. But we waved them off, more worried about the weather and getting to Mama and Aron in time than over two fat bullies who I bet couldn't keep up with us if we was to take off running.

"Sylv," I said when we glanced at each other, silently deciding we needed to hurry down the sidewalk.

He didn't look at me when he spoke. "Bastie said she saw a whole mess of Mr. Simoneaux's white men all gathered together this morning when Ethel came to get her. Policemen too, and not Parish either. They was New Orleans cops."

"Did she see Dempsey?" I watched my brother as he moved through the crowd and didn't like how light his skin looked just then, as though something set in his throat and he didn't want to let it out. That look on his face made something thick and knotted clot the air in my throat.

"No," he finally said, taking my hand to tug me along quicker. "She said she hadn't seen him for a week."

Dempsey was the sweetest boy I'd ever known and he was the only one I'd ever let get close enough for a kiss. I thought maybe, despite the hurry in our steps and the wild noise around us, despite the trouble we were likely all in because of his daddy, that maybe, if our world had changed, that Dempsey would be the boy I'd get a chance to be with. Maybe forever.

We made it two blocks from Mama's shop where the sidewalk was thinner and the crowd moved slower. I followed Sylv without really thinking of where we were going or why the streets were filling up with water. It sloshed around our ankles as we scurried.

"Sylv … " I started, pulling on his arm to make him stop but my brother's arm tightened and his whole body went straight as the blade of a knife.

"Son of a bitch." Sylv didn't curse often. Bastie had always made sure we kept our tongues civil, but just then, watching wide-eyed as a few blocks away Mr. Simoneaux and a half a dozen policemen stormed into Mama's shop, I thought maybe Bastie wouldn't mind so much.

Things went muddy then. Dark and thick as though the water around us came straight from the Manchac and not the Mississippi. Sylv took off, running toward Mama's small shop and he got tussled and pushed back as Mr. Simoneaux stood next to a large truck with a shotgun on his shoulder and Joe Andres at his side. As I got nearer and spotted Uncle Aron and Mama screaming at three policemen, wrestling with them as they fought the rising water on their calves and the men screaming about prohibition and illegal contraband, I could just make out the shape of a boy sitting in the cab of Mr. Simoneaux's truck.