Louisiana Bigshot

entail a loss of dignity she wasn’t ready for. The last thing she wanted was to make a spectacle of herself.
    Everyone was staring at her anyway, or at Jason and her together—the cheating boyfriend and the black PI who’d caught him out and then hooked up with the enemy. She questioned her good sense in coming.
    The funeral was held in one of those smallish brick churches so common in small Southern towns. Though she’d been raised Baptist, Talba couldn’t remember ever being in a white Baptist church. She’d been to one other funeral in her adult life, and it was that of a white person, but the church was Methodist, much larger and more urban. From the outside, she’d seen hundreds of little churches like this one and, now inside, she noted quickly that it held no surprises. As she’d expected, it was as plain and clean as a house in the suburbs. The pews were even made of the same light-colored oak you’d find in a new tract house.
    So as to create as little stir as possible, she and Jason sat in the back. From their exile seats, they watched the family file in six strong, faces stern, jaws set. No tears that Talba saw. “The dad’s named King and the mom’s Deborah,” Jason whispered. “Mary Pat filled me in. Then she had a sister, Hunter—weird name for a girl.”
    “No weirder than Clayton.” If they’d been alone, she would have added, “What is it with white folks?” But this didn’t seem the right place.
    “The brother’s King the Third.”
    “Don’t tell me—they call him Trey.”
    “You got it. I don’t know his wife’s name.”
    “Looks like Hunter’s divorced.” She had a toddler with her but no man. The little girl was the only one in the family who wasn’t decked out in black or navy. In her little pink dress, she looked like a Californian loose on the streets of New York. “What kind of person brings a baby to a funeral?” The music started before Jason could answer the question, and by the third or fourth chord, Talba was sobbing. This had happened to her before, much to her dismay, at that other funeral—and she hadn’t even known the deceased. It was just a phenomenon before, an oddity she couldn’t explain, but this was true sadness, genuine feeling for Babalu and for other losses as well; she knew that. The music had the power to bring it all up. The feeling of being an observer was gone, as was everything, even the church, everything except the great waves of grief rolling out of her. So much for dignity.
    She was sobbing so loud she would have been embarrassed if the music hadn’t been louder still. When the hymn was over, she moved away from Jason slightly and worked on paring it down to a sniffle. The last thing she wanted was for him to put his arm around her. “Let us pray,” she heard the minister say, and she took the opportunity to look over the crowd, which now stood blind and vulnerable, its collective eyes closed.
    Once again, no surprises. It was a well-dressed, mostly white crowd, but there were a few people of color—more than Talba thought there’d be. The Patterson family maid was about all she’d expected. Mary Pat was near the front, wearing an olive dress with a double-tiered skirt and a lot of amber jewelry. There was always somebody who didn’t own funeral clothes—if she’d thought about it, she’d have picked Mary Pat.
    A couple of celebrities studded the crowd—United States Senator Susan Schultz and gubernatorial candidate Buddy Calhoun, whom Talba intended to vote for. In addition, she recognized John Earl Macquet, a New Orleans businessman whose wife had recently died of the classic pills-and-alcohol one-two punch. Friends of the family, probably.
    She couldn’t see the Pattersons all that well with everyone standing, but so far as she could tell, they were running true to stereotype. Deborah was one of those birdlike women with the perfect figures and the ever-so-smooth coiffures. King was a big man, blustery looking, with white hair. King Three was overweight, Hunter a little frazzled; there had to be more, but from a distance, that was it. They sang another hymn and sat down.
    “We’ve come to say good-bye to our daughter, and sister, and friend, Clayton Patterson,” the minister said, and Talba thought crankily,
Tell me something I don’t know.
But she hardly bargained for what came next. “Clayton was a person who never had a moment’s peace in her poor, sad young life. It was a life of attack and