Louisiana Bigshot

betrayal—a pattern repeated over and over. First by someone she loved and trusted; later by Clayton herself, and finally by others she loved and trusted.”
    His eyes traveled to the back of the church, and for a moment Talba thought he was looking at Jason. But surely not—no one would be that tacky.
    “From the moment of that first horrible brutality—you in this congregation all know whereof I speak—from that moment on, our daughter Clayton lost her faith in human nature. And with that she lost her way. And she never found it again.” Here, his voice dropped and he bowed his head, as if he were talking about someone who’d become a triple murderer.
    Talba whispered, “What’s he talking about?”
    Jason’s forehead furrowed. “I have absolutely no idea.”
    “Our daughter was lost to us from that moment. She never came back to our town; or to her loving family; or to God. All because of the destructive act of one violent human being, our daughter was lost—to drugs, to drink, to depravity—and later to false gods and golden idols.”
    Talba wanted to scream. She wanted to jump up and shout the man down. Jason was pale and his mouth was tight, moving slightly at the corners: he was fighting the same thing she was. Neither could say anything, and both knew it.
Mary Pat, please!
she thought.
Stop this unctuous asshole. Get up and say who she really was. Don’t let these people get away with this crap.
    But there was never a place in the service where friends were invited to talk. Midway through the tooth-grinding banalities about how “our daughter” had suffered one disappointment after another, and then at last “one final betrayal” and was “driven to take her own life,” Jason took Talba’s hand and tried to break every bone in it. Talba didn’t even ask him to let up. Focusing on the physical pain was better than giving way to the psychic pain.
    She tried to tune it out—thought about how glad she was that she’d come. Jason could have reported this, but she’d never in a million years have pictured anything nearly so extreme, no matter what he said.
    And then she thought about killing the minister. In the end, she made a vow—to right this wrong; the wrong done in the pulpit this Saturday morning. She still only half believed Babalu had been murdered, had yet to get outraged on that account. But this was beyond outrage. This was not salt but fire and acid in the wound.
It must be avenged,
she thought, much as the Reverend Scruggs might have.
    Jason kept getting redder and squeezing her hand harder; Talba hoped he’d hang onto his temper. He made it, just. When the last note of the last hymn had been sung, he said, “Who the hell does that asshole think he is? He just crucified her.”
    As far as Talba was concerned, that was old news. “What on earth do you think happened to her? Could she have gotten pregnant or something?”
    “I have absolutely no idea. Come on, we’re going to the cemetery.”
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Low-profile seems like the way to go—or as low as you can manage when you’re an inkspot on a white sheet.”
    He didn’t smile. “I’m going. They aren’t getting away with this.”
    She shrugged. “Let’s go together then.”
    Once they were in Jason’s car, she started in. “Listen, you aren’t planning to do anything, are you?”
    “I’m going to punch ’em out. Methodically. One by one. Men, women, and children.”
    “Jason, do you want me to work on this case? Do you really think a single one of them’s going to talk to me if you make the slightest ripple? The best thing you could possibly do is impress them with what a gentleman you are.” He didn’t answer, which gave her more time to think about it. “Besides, Babalu would have wanted it that way.”
    He hit the steering wheel with a fist. “Yeah. I guess she would.”
    In the end Talba was glad they’d gone. Not that many people had. Just the immediate family, Mary Pat, a black woman—the maid, Talba thought—and six or eight other people, all of whose lives, from the looks of them, revolved around the local country club.
    In the sun and the quiet, she was able to dissociate herself from the horror of the church and really say good-bye to her friend. She took pleasure in watching Jason introduce himself to each member of the family and tell them how much he’d loved their daughter. King Jr.—Big King, they probably called him—looked as if he’d been