Purple Cane Road

"I've witnessed two executions. I wish I hadn't. You put your hand in one and you're never the same," I said.

"A long time ago my daddy said I was go

I looked beyond him, out on the dock, where his friends were drinking can beer under the canvas awning. One of them was a small, sun-browned, mustached man with no chin and an oiled pate and the snubbed nose of a hawk.

"That's Sookie Motrie out there. I hear he's the money behind video poker at the tracks," I said.

"It's all a trade-off. People want money for schools but don't like taxes. I say use the devil's money against him. So a guy like Sookie gets to be a player."

When I didn't reply, he said, "A lot of folks think Earl K. Long was just an ignorant redneck. But Earl did good things people don't know about. A whole bunch of Negro women graduated from a new nursing program and found out right quick they couldn't get jobs nowhere. So Earl hears about it and says he wants a tour of the state hospital. He pumps hands all over the building, sticks his head in operating rooms, flushes toilets, then gets all the hospital's administrators in one room and locks the door.

"He says, 'I just seen a shameful spectacle here. Y'all got white nurses hand-waiting on nigra patients, carrying out their bedpans and I don't know what all, and I ain't go

"The next week the state hospital had two dozen black nurses on staff."

"Makes a good story," I said.

"Stories are all the human race has got, Dave. You just got to find the one you like and stay with it," he replied.

"Are you going to execute Letty Labiche?"

He replaced his hat on his head and walked down the slope to rejoin his entourage, jiggling his hands in the air like a minstrel man.

14

FARTHER TO THE SOUTH of us, in the working-class community of Grand Bois, a young attorney, two years out of law school, filed suit on behalf of the local residents against a large oil corporation. The locals were by and large Cajuns and Houma Indians, uneducated, semiskilled, poor, without political power, and bewildered by the legal apparatus, the perfect community to target as the open-pit depository of oil sludge trucked in from a petroleum treatment plant in Alabama.

Company officials didn't argue with the contention the pits contained benzene, hydrogen sulfide, and arsenic. They didn't have to. Years ago, during a time of gas shortages, the U.S. Congress had granted the oil industry blanket exemptions from the regulations that govern most toxic wastes. Secondly, the state of Louisiana does not define oil waste as hazardous material.

The state, the oil corporation, and the community of Grand Bois were now in court, and Co

Two of those Grand Bois families had moved to New Iberia and were now living up on the bayou road, not far from Passion Labiche's nightclub. On Monday Helen Soileau was assigned to drive Co

Later she told me of Co

It had rained hard that morning, then the sun had become a white orb in the center of a windless sky, evaporating the water out of the fields, creating a superheated dome of humidity that made you feel like ants were crawling inside your clothes.

The air-conditioning unit in the cruiser began clanking, then gasped once and gave out. Co

Her assistant paused a moment in his monologue, then cracked a mint between his molars and began again.

"Why don't the people of Grand Bois move to a place where there's no oil industry? Get jobs as whalers in Japan. Could it be they've done scut work all their lives in the oil industry and couldn't fix ice water without a diagram?" he said.

He took the silence in the cruiser as indication his point was not understood.

"The Houma Indians have a problem with oil waste. But they want to build casinos and addict their own people to gambling. I think the whole bunch is ripe for a hydrogen bomb," he said.

"I don't want to add to your irritability, Malcolm, but would you please shut up?" Co

"Y'all want something cool to drink?" Helen asked.

"Yes, please," Co

They pulled into Passion's nightclub just as a storm cloud covered the sun and the landscape dropped into shadow. Inside, electric fans vibrated on the four corners of the dance floor, and an ancient air-conditioning unit inserted in a sawed-out hole in the back wall blew a stream of refrigerated coolness across the bar.

Co

Helen whistled through the door that gave onto the cafe side of the building.

"Hey, Passion, you've got some customers in here," she called.

Co

"Letty Labiche's sister owns this place. You know her?" Helen said.

"No."

"From the way you looked, I thought you recognized the name or something."

"Yes, I did recognize the name. That doesn't mean I know her," Co

"Yes, ma'am," Helen said.

"I'd like to leave now," Co

"I thought you wanted a cold drink."

"I just wanted to get out of the heat a few minutes. I'm fine now. We should make at least one other stop today," Co

"Too late," her assistant, Malcolm, said, gri

"Could I hep y'all?" she asked.

"Sorry, miss. I'm so dry I'm a fire hazard. I left the money on the register," Malcolm said. He opened a long-neck bottle of beer for himself and stepped back from the foam as it slid over the neck.

Passion rang up the purchase, her back to them. "Sorry I couldn't get over here to wait on y'all," she said.

Co

Passion turned and placed a quarter and two dimes in front of the male assistant. Then her eyes fell on Co

"You all right, ma'am?" she asked.

"Yes. Why do you ask?" Co

"On days like this the tar on the road melts. You look like you got dehydrated. I got some aspirin."

"Thank you. I don't need any."

Passion started to turn away, then a look of vague recognition swam into her face.

"I seen you somewhere before, ma'am?" she asked.

"Perhaps. I'm the attorney general."

"No, I seen you in an old photograph. Or somebody sure do look like you. You got nice features. They don't change with time," Passion said.

"I'm sure that's a compliment, but I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's go

Co

"It was very nice meeting you," she said, even though they had not exchanged names or been introduced by a third party.