Lousiana Hotshot

know that he did. He drank and helled, I guess. He led Miz Clara a merry chase. Maybe there wasn’t much more to it than that.”
    “Then why doesn’t anyone talk about him? You just said you could remember things. What things, Corey? I need to know. Do you realize I didn’t even know his name before yesterday? Isn’t that a little weird? Having a father so bad you don’t even mention his name in the family?”
    “If you didn’t know his name, it’s your own fault. It’s on your birth certificate.” He was back to his old supercilious self, the Corey she knew so well.
    “Corey, if I mention him, Miz Clara goes through the roof.”
    “Well? She was married to him— what do you expect?”
    “Aunt Carrie too.”
    “Look, all I can remember is being miserable. All of us being miserable. I can’t really remember details.” He shrugged and looked very sincere. She knew he was lying. “I can’t help you, Sandra.”
    “Corey, please. Please.” She hadn’t dreamed she was going to beg. “I really need you to try.”
    “Why?” he said. “Why all of a sudden?”
    “Oh. Well, that’s a good question. Something really strange happened to me. I went to a funeral. Now, I’ve never been to a funeral in my life and yet, it felt like I had. I could remember things about a funeral, like I knew I’d been to one. And there was something else— I mean, something
really
weird.”
    He was sitting up straight now, had lost his wary look. Something she’d said had piqued his interest.
    “Well. I started crying. I mean crying and crying and crying, like it was my own funeral, the minute they started playing the first hymn.”
    He started laughing.
    “What?”
    He was roaring, out of control.
    “Corey, what the hell is wrong with you?”
    “I’m sorry.” He was coming around, starting to pull himself together. “I’m sorry, really. It’s just that… that music. It’s happened to me a million times.”
    She was offended. “Well, I hope for your sake, you haven’t been to a million funerals.”
    “Only four or five. But I cried at every one of them.”
    “Cried how much, Corey?”
    “What kind of question is that?”
    “I mean, a little bit or a lot?”
    “Oh, you know. Teared up.”
    “Listen, Big Brother, I’m talking buckets. The Mississippi River.”
    “Oh, please.”
    “Okay, the Atchafalaya.”
    To her surprise, he actually cracked a smile. He almost never laughed at her jokes. In fact, it always seemed to her he disapproved of them, considered them somehow a sign of her frivolous nature. “Look, you must have been under pressure.”
    “Okay, don’t take me seriously. Nobody else has. But I’m telling you something. Something happened to me at that funeral. I had some kind of flashback. I’m not a baby anymore. I have a right to know what happened.”
    He crossed his arms and stared straight ahead, lips together as if honoring a long-ago promise to keep them that way.
    I’ll wait him out,
she thought.
I’m not going to blink first.
    And finally, still not looking at her, he spoke to the wall. “I guess you do,” he said. “I guess you do.” He spoke so gently he hardly sounded like her brother.
    Fully five minutes had passed by then, so much time she couldn’t remember what he was responding to. “I do what?”
    “You’ve got a right to know.”
    Her stomach did a somersault. A bullfrog or something leapt into her throat and clogged up her breathing. “Tell me,” she said, and was surprised to hear no sound at all. She knew she had moved her lips.
    “I’ve got to get a drink.” He rose, went into the kitchen, and started rattling ice cubes. “You want one, too?”
    “No, thanks.” She felt icily calm. Detached. She just sat there while he made himself a tall cold one, not thinking anything, not seeing anything, not moving, suspended in space.
    He was drinking scotch, she thought; anyway, something tawny. He took a sip, and she could have sworn he made a face, as if he didn’t really enjoy it. She realized he wasn’t much of a drinker, that she must be putting him through a version of hell if he felt he had to do something he didn’t like in order even to talk. But she rationalized that it had to be done— she couldn’t continue to live like this.
    When he could look at her, he said, “Look, he’s dead.”
    “Dead?” It was what she was looking for, but it seemed anticlimactic. Was this all there was? “What’s the big deal if he’s dead?”
    He gave