Louisiana Lament

alarm went off. Maybe she would talk to that judge today. One thing was sure—she was going to talk to somebody in Clayton. In fact, everyone she could pin down, even for a minute.
    She made herself some oatmeal, thinking of her niece—her littlest “sister”—and of the poem and what it meant. She didn’t know half of what it meant, and she might not find out for years. That happened a lot. What she did know was that writing it had made her calm again. For the past few days—ever since Babalu’s funeral—she’d been in a strange state of heightened feeling, almost of desperation, and the poem had somehow snapped her back into harmony. She wondered if clarity came with that.
    Whether it was false security or not, she felt strong and competent as she drove to Clayton, able to meet these white people on their own turf and make them sorry for what they’d done. That was what she wanted more than anything. To clear her friend’s name among her own people. And yet why should she? she wondered. They were so unequivocally not worth it, she’d have laughed if anyone else had made the same confession.
    Here was what she thought: if Donny Troxell hadn’t attacked Clayton—and Clayton herself had told Donny’s father he hadn’t—then the people most likely to know anything (other than the defense lawyer) were the ones in the house at the time.
    But what a lovely time she was going to have with
them!
Already they just adored her.
    She put off talking to them by going to the library again, reading up on the Pattersons and their doings.
    She’d sure been right about that country club thing. Well, the paper didn’t actually say those words, but it had them going to parties and chairing events, even, in some cases, working for a living.
    She already knew King was a banker; it developed that Trey was a lawyer, and Deborah, Mrs. Patterson, actually dirtied her own hands with honest labor—or something approaching it. She was a decorator. There were even quite a few clips on Hunter, the little sister—not that she worked for a living, but she did have an interest. She was an actress in local productions, and a pretty girl too. She’d once been married, though she might not be now. Her wedding picture, taken only four years ago, showed a baby version of Clayton.
    The person who was most in the news was Deborah. She was not only on every board in town, she was a member of every multifaith organization as well. Which meant she was a church lady. And not the nice kind, Talba surmised, like Miz Lura. The scary kind, like Sister Eula.
    The person least in the news was Trey’s wife, who only appeared once, on her wedding day. Lonna, her name was. Talba kind of liked it. It wasn’t pretentious, like Hunter or Clayton.
    Or Pontalba.
    Whom to approach? she wondered. The no-doubt racist dad? The good ol’ boy son? Both of them had had their pictures in the paper with animals they shot and fish they caught. Talba didn’t take this as a good sign.
    The impeccably groomed, model-of-rectitude professional-woman church-lady mom? The notion was a bit on the terrifying side.
    And the daughter-in-law hadn’t been there.
    That left pretty young Hunter. Because she was young and had an interest in the arts, Talba thought she might have some affinity with her. On the other hand, she was twenty-four, according to the local rag. That meant she’d have been only eight when her sister was assaulted.
    Still, Talba thought. Still. She might have heard people talk. And if she remembered that night, she’d remember it well.
    Talba had arrived with everyone’s address in hand, already gleaned from online sources. She drove to Hunter’s house but, for some reason, couldn’t bring herself to go in. The mellowness of the early morning hadn’t yet left her, and she had a need to absorb this young woman, to try to get some sense of her, before presenting herself.
    The house itself was modest. The husband, if he was still around, probably wasn’t much older than she was, just starting his career. There were curtains at the windows, but they seemed normal ones, not those balloon pouf things white ladies loved so much. The neighborhood was pleasant which, in Talba’s opinion, meant it had trees that had had time to grow a while.
    Talba sat for about fifteen minutes, not sure whether she should make this a kind of surveillance or just go knock on the door, when it opened and out popped Hunter herself, in white capris and a tank top,