Thrown-away Child

Tyler’s body was disfigured. I’m talking real, real bad…”
    I remembered what Eckles had said. Cletus got him whacked real good... Got him creamed in the gut. And when I asked what this meant, I remembered Mueller putting the muzzle on his partner, and snarling. Obstruction of justice ain’t a particularly pleasant thing, 'specially when I’m the obstructee.... Don’t be getting any strange notions about messing around in case, Detective Hockaday.
    “Second place, sending around two walking pork chops like Mueller and Eckles to bring in a usual suspect like Perry Duclat! Hell—it seem like to you they was carrying out serious detective work?”
    “No. It was more like Mueller and Eckles were trying to scare Mama into saying something to Perry that would be sure to send him underground, get him out of the picture.”
    “Could be. Also could be that Cletus Tyler ain’t going to be alone in the way he got killed.”
    “You’re talking serial killer here?”
    “Somebody took a hot iron to Cletus Tyler, probably after they killed him. They branded him with something I know sure as my own name is a message to a certain underground.”
    “Message?”
    “Moms.”
    “Moms what?”
    The letters — M, O, M and S.”
    “An acronym?”
    “That’s right. Like your SCUM squad up in New York.”
    “Let’s have it. What’s M-O-M-S stand for?“
    “Nothing polite society want to know about, and that includes black and white.”
    “Don’t make me guess, Claude.”
    “Mutants, Orphans, and Misfits.”
     

TWENTY-THREE

     
    Sister was saying how the rain gives no relief.
    Rain comes up fast and furious after a low rumble, she was saying. It paints everything gray. Then it seeps into the New Orleans dirt. Not dirt like the kind in other cities up beyond the delta, not anything that could rightly be called by any other name—earth, soil, ground. Just plain New Orleans dirt, the kind that never stays around, the kind that slips through your fingers and toes and flies away in the wind.
    New Orleans does not sit upon the dirt, Sister was saying. That would be unreliable and most impractical, the nature of New Orleans dirt being what it is. New Orleans is a city floating on the mouth of a river.
    And see how the dead have no holes in which to rest in peace. See how their bodies are cremated every day—some of the rich and most of the poor. Oh, and then thousands of the rich and memorable are sealed UP to rot in stately tombs. Many thousands more, Memorable but not rich, lie in the mausoleums, each occupying a little steel box—each box part of a long tier of cupboards with marble doors and italicized names stamped into brass plaques.
    But there are no holes in the dirt for the city’s dead. Sister was saying, you do not bury the dead in the dirt of New Orleans, only the living.
    That is why the rain is unrefreshing. Because it marries cloudburst and delta humidity and dirt that ought to be flying away into an overpowering aroma. It is on such rainy days that the general smell of New Orleans decay is so sadly strong.
    Sister was saying, the smell of death comes quicker in a watery grave.

    All this Sister Constance told him after Perry merely mentioned how it would be impossible for him to return to the shed behind Nikki’s Dockside Club on account of his dread fear of rats coming after worms fleeing the rain-soaked dirt. He meant nothing untoward by saying so. She believed he was telling her the truth—which he was, for she had become his daughter; he, her fatherly avenger—and that no liar was required as guarantor of his own veracity. And so, having nowhere safe to stay the night, Sister provided him refuge in the Land of Dreams Tabernacle. And told him about rain.
    And about the first time it happened to her.

    It was back when Sister’s folks were having hard times and had to live for a while in a house rented to her mama’s old maid aunt, Hassie Pinkney. She was mostly called by her real name then, a name she liked—Connie. It was Auntie Hassie who eventually got her called Sister, dragging her to church all the time, telling people her little niece had demons inside of her.
    Connie was ten. But if a stranger with something shameful on his mind saw her walking along up on Tchoupitoulas Street he would have thought she was old enough.
    One day she heard her Great Aunt Hassie tell the ladies washing their clothes at the levee, There go little Connie, now ain’t she just a piece of jailbait?