Gabe sets out on foot, and follows the Abbeville Highway west out of town. In leaving town to the north or south, it’s a gradual transition from city to countryside; city buildings give way to the larger outskirts homes, which themselves give way to mills, sugar plants, sand pits, and refineries, until finally there’s nothing left but a landscape of swamp and field. In going westward out of town, though, the change is abrupt: cross over the Old Spanish Trail and all of a sudden there’s nothing but field, road, and moonlight, every now and then a live oak adrip with Spanish moss.
Gabe walks quickly, anxiously. The Abbeville isn’t a well-traveled highway, especially at night, yet every time a vehicle does pass, Gabe scrambles down the road’s slight embankment and crouches low enough so he can’t be seen.
The Cunninghams live a couple of miles outside town and down a dirt road off the Abbeville that runs parallel to the Armenco Branch Canal. Gabe turns with some relief onto this road and slows his pace. To his left is the canal; off to the right a sweeping plain of sugarcane stretches into the night, the grasses still and silent. Gabe’s been to the Cunninghams’ farm only once, last spring, when all the boys went out to shoot the Beretta 22-gauge Buddy’s daddy bought in Baton Rouge, but he’s come to the canal plenty of times with a fishing rod. Gnarled wax myrtle and prickly fans of dwarf palmetto grow along the water’s edge, which tonight is loud with the music of amphibians: the bullfrog’s bass honking, the tree frog’s strumming call, the high-pitched percussion of the southern cricket frog. Buddy Cunningham says his daddy can catch the canal’s bullfrogs with his bare hands and most nights they eat them fried. Gabe wasn’t sure whether to believe this until Buddy brought some of the meat to school in his lunch pail, and if it wasn’t frog, it wasn’t any other kind of meat Gabe recognized.
He follows the road between canal and field until it ends in the clearing where the Cunningham homestead stands. The house is an old dogtrot, and there are people sitting out on the porch, dark shapes from a distance. Chickens wander freely in the driveway, where a run-down pickup and a rusted jalopy are parked; the birds go wild as Gabe walks toward the house.
The figures on the porch turn at the squabbling commotion, and their features come into focus as Gabe nears. Both of Buddy’s parents are out there; and Amos Hicks, who used to run a sundries store in town; and a fourth man Gabe doesn’t recognize. They’re all in wooden chairs, the fourth man sitting on his backward, all of them fanning themselves with scrapped shingles, watching. Gabe is again possessed of the odd sensation that he’s not moving of his own volition so much as being moved.
“What have we here?” Mr. Cunningham says, when Gabe has reached the edge of the porch. He rights his tipped-back chair, but he doesn’t stand up. Perspiration glistens on his forehead.
“Whattya doin here, Livingstone?” This voice comes from a doorway off the porch, where Buddy has appeared. He’s wearing the same overalls he was this afternoon, and dirt is still smeared across his forehead from when he earlier slid face-first into home. He was out. “Huh?” he demands.
“Hey, Buddy.” Gabe nods at Buddy, then at his parents. “Mr., Mrs. Cunningham.” He clears his throat. “Thought if it was OK I’d go with y’all tonight,” he says. “Over to St. Martinville see that nigger fry.” He feels his face grow hot, saying this last.
Mr. Cunningham snorts. “Oh you did, did you,” he says. He lifts an eyebrow and looks over at Buddy. “You been running your mouth, boy?”
Buddy grimaces and holds his arms over his chest. “Kiss off, Livingstone!” he shoots at Gabe. Then, “Ain’t been talking,” he says to his father. His tone is petulant.
“You said your daddy was gonna go over see that nigger fry!” Gabe exclaims, feeling his face grow ever hotter. “Said you were going, too.”
“Oh, I’m a go see that nigger fry all right,” Mr. Cunningham says. “Ain’t gonna miss that more’n I’m gonna miss my whiskey come evening. But ol’ Buddy, here—” He looks at the boy in the doorway. “Dint know ol’ Buddy here was planning to come along.”
“Well, I am,” Buddy says.
Father and son hold each other’s gaze, their faces hard. But then Mr. Cunningham’s face softens. He nods. “All right,” he says, and an eyebrow lifts again.
Buddy opens his mouth in surprise.
Mr. Cunningham mimics his son’s expression. “I said all right,” he says. “You want to go, we go.”
“’Bout Livingstone?” Buddy asks, suspiciously.
Mr. Cunningham regards Gabe quietly. “Well, now, why does Livingstone want to go?” he asks.
Gabe hesitates. “My pa won’t take me,” he finally answers.
“There room in the truck?” This is the man Gabe doesn’t know; his voice is low and gravelly.
“Boys really want to come, we kin take the car. Ain’t that right, Amos?”
“Reckon that’s all right,” Amos Hicks says.
Through all of this Mrs. Cunningham has sat stony and expressionless; now, she stands and wordlessly walks inside. The men watch her go. At the thought of his own mother, Gabe is seized by a pang of guilt. But just briefly, because the man with the gravelly voice begins to speak.
“Livingstone,” he drawls. He’s a large man, his long body fairly draped over the back of his chair. It looks, beneath him, like the chair of a child. He looks at Gabe appraisingly. “You the DA’s boy?”
The question makes Gabe uneasy.
“Hmm?” the man prompts.
“Yes sir.”
“Bold man,” the man says. “Fine lawyer.” Gabe feels a surge of pride that is quickly tempered by the sickening effect of the man’s next words. “Got that nigger just what he deserves.”
The image of his father at the dinner table—the transformed version—flashes before him now, and though he tries, Gabe finds he cannot picture the father that he knows, or the one he thought he knew.
Mr. Cunningham speaks next. “Heard he took a little convincin’, myself,” he says, to the tall man. “Though I s’pose that don’t change the outcome.”
“Best hush on that, Walt,” Amos mutters.
“What y’all talking about,” Buddy demands, from the doorway.
Mr. Cunningham pushes back his chair and stands. “Lawyer talk,” he says. “Ain’t important.” He looks at his watch. “I reckon we best go. Pope’s waitin’ on us for a ride over, and he ain’t the real patient type.”