Thrown-away Child

can’t help but bein’ this all-day cop in a twenty-four-hour town. No more than he can help bein’ the only cop who knows how every life’s maybe not valuable, but how every life’s a big deal. My friend Hock — well, he ain’t a easy man, Pretty.
    Ruby thought, Where’s Hock right now? Off somewhere with my old prom date—who after all these years carries me in his heart. If pretty is a minute, you’re a whole hour. Most men would do the decent thing and become jealous of a sweet-talking beau. But not my Irish. No, Hock and old Booger, they go off gallivanting together...
    Oh, he’s a man of so many bad habits. He sleeps on his back with his mouth wide open, for instance. But I only have to nudge him, and Hock turns onto his side and his mouth closes up and the chainsaw stops, at least for a while. Likewise, haven’t I nudged him along on a fair number of cases?
    Well—slap!—that’s it. There is no living with Neil Hockaday unless I’m actively involved in his sentimentality, his rare notion that every life is a big deal. If * have to sit between the mayor and the commissioner some day in a church pew... God help me, I want a part of myself to be in that box along with my Hock.
    So—what’s my part in this thing that Hock is helpless to ignore? This murder in the local news, down by the levee where Mama and Daddy were once upon a time the pride of the Flaggs, this terrible murder with cousin Perry somehow in the wings?
    I can start by talking to Teddy the Torch, that’s what I can do. If anybody knows about backstage New Orleans, it’s Teddy...
    Ruby returned to the parlor and asked Mama for Teddy’s telephone number.
    “Hush yourself and sit down here beside me, girl. Look what’s coming up on the TV.”
    “Mama, you were never one for daytime TV.” Ruby sat on the couch. “You’d always be in the kitchen in the morning, reading your precious Times-Picayune.”
    Violet pressed two fingers to her lips, saying nothing.
    “And now—welcome back to ‘Good Morning, New Orleans,’ ” said a new but similarly empty face. This was a TV morning talk show host from central casting, a white male variety by the name of Jim: leading-man slender, brown hair carefully layered and lacquered, glassy blue eyes, square jaw dimpled, baritone TV voice utterly free of local color. He spoke from a raised camera set: shag carpeting, potted ferns, two wicker chairs with a table and coffee service in between, the GOOD MORNING, NEW ORLEANS logo as backdrop. Jim of the square jaw said, “All right, folks, it’s time now for City Beat, with my co-host—Jan Flagg. Let’s all give a big, warm welcome to Jan.”
    Ruby turned to her mother. “Jan?”
    “The TV station think that name sound more classy—and white. But you talk to Janny next time, don’t be making her feel bad and say I ever tell you that.”
    Cued to applause, the audience did its duty. Jim rose from his wicker chair as Janice Flagg flowed onto the set in a creamy silk suit, chunky gold jewelry, and blazing smile. She was greeted with “Morning, Jan” and a buss on the cheek.
    “Well, well—there’s a big leap for New Orleans,” Ruby said, hands on her own cheeks, gaping at the televised interracial embrace, quick and juiceless as it was.
    Violet shrugged. “That don’t mean hell’s froze over quite yet. You still never likely to see it the other way ’round on the TV. Shoo, I don’t got to go back in my mind too many years to when a colored gent give some white lady a little no-account peck and they call it rape, haul him out to the woods, and string him up.”
    Meanwhile back in television land, Jan Flagg was taking her applause and close-up as naturally as a Hollywood movie queen sashaying down an aisle full of velvet ropes and paparazzi. When Jim sat down again in his wicker chair, Jan did likewise in hers.
    “Coffee?” Jim held a silver pot poised over the cup and saucer on his co-host’s side of the table.
    “Oh yes, and thank you so much,” Jan purred. Female sighs could be heard from the studio audience. “Make it sweet and light.”
    Ruby asked, “They do this gooey-gooey bit every day?”
    “Make you want to gag, I know. That’s show biz.”
    Coffee and repartee complete, Jan Flagg flashed camera number two her cutey-pie, over-the-shoulder smile. Then she straightened her shoulder pads, swiveled around in her chair, and crossed her legs as the camera trolley advanced. She waited for the Teleprompter cue, then