I didn’t have to ask Sylv much more about what Uncle Aron said: Dempsey always ended up in the treehouse back of Mimi Bastien’s swamp house when things at his place were bad. Some nights he snuck away from Manchac where his daddy’s land touched up against my granny’s place and bummed a ride to the city because he needed to see a friendly face. Least that’s what the fool always said. We all did our part to watch over Dempsey because his own people wouldn’t. Sometimes he hid for days and days inside Mama’s tiny shop. Sometimes Uncle Aron got him a room at the brothel over on Bourbon because the woman running the place was sweet on Aron. They liked his light eyes, they said, how they looked almost green.
“Bad this time?”
Sylv shook his head, nodding toward the end of the street like he wanted to get out of the sun. “Aron said it looked like a split lip and a nice shiner on his eye.”
“Damn his daddy.”
My brother agreed, nodding once like he had every other time Dempsey ran away from the fine house his mama and daddy lived in with him and his hateful brother Malcolm. His mama especially hated that Dempsey liked sleeping in the treehouse or on a cot in Bastie’s pantry instead of their fancy place with the big columns and wrap-around porches.
“You throwing something around in your head. I can see the gears working extra hard.”
It was just like Sylv to have thoughts that he ought not let out his mouth, but my brother, pain in the backside that he was, had a heart. It wasn’t completely wrecked just yet by the city, and what it was having no daddy to speak of and a mama who worked so hard, sometimes we went days without seeing her. Right down to his marrow, my big brother cared a whole lot about his folk and loud coonass boy or not, Dempsey was our folk.
“That man Dempsey’s daddy?” Sylv said. I stared right back at him, not bothering to answer the fool because he knew I knew who Dempsey’s daddy was. Everybody on the Manchac did. Mr. Simoneaux could scare the devil and have him running off with his tail wound around his pitchfork. But Sylv would have his say no matter that he probably wasn’t saying nothing I didn’t already know. “Everybody knows there ain’t a drop of good in him.”
“That ain’t a secret.”
“So, little sister, what I’m saying to you is that you might wanna be careful.”
He didn’t seem to like the look I gave him or the way I shook my head like he made no damn sense to me at all. But Sylv wouldn’t let things lie. Not there. Not, I guessed, when it came to Dempsey Simoneaux and his hell-bound daddy.
“Listen to me a little bit.” He took my arm, tugging me near a big magnolia tree with fat, sweet-scented blossoms peppered on every other limb. Small gnats flew above our heads and I swatted at them, mainly to encourage my brother to get on with his lecture. “This mess with you and that white boy, wasn’t nothing to it when we was all little.”
“Don’t start with that stuff again.”
Sylv’s grip on my arm got tight and I stood up straighter, giving him a frown as a warning. He stared a little bit before he dropped my arm, shoulders lowering because he knew he couldn’t boss me. “I’m not sayin’ you need to steer clear of him, Sookie, God knows that boy needs somebody to keep him alive.”
“But?” The frown stuck and I added a slow arm cross to keep the warning between us.
“Lord, girl, you smarter than this.” Sylv rubbed his damp face again, tamping off the sweat that had collected against the back of his neck. “Dempsey’s good people, we all know that, but his daddy and that no-account brother of his, ain’t. It’s one thing with him nosing around the treehouse or tagging after us when Aron needs a hand-delivering the hooch, but Sookie, you ain’t little anymore and neither is he.”
My face heated and I looked away from my brother, not wanting to see the look in his eyes; not sure if he’d pick on me or warn me for all the times I looked a little too long at Dempsey Simoneaux. “You ain’t got to tell me my business, Sylv. I know just how old I am.”
“Yep, you do, and so does Dempsey.”
He came to my side, turning my shoulders so that I faced the square. In the middle of that thick crowd, Ripper leaned against a brown brick building, hat tilted up as he watched all that was happening thick in the square. But he shifted his head down, listening when one of his bad-seed boys nodded toward me. That hat went further back as Ripper moved the numb of a cigar to the corner of his mouth.
The look on Ripper’s face made my skin crawl, made me itch to be back at Bastie’s farm just so I could swim in the lake and be rid of the feeling of that man’s hard eyes on me. Looking like he wanted to see more of me. That look made my stomach twist.
“Dempsey ain’t the only one, little sister. Ole Ripper sees it and he’s looking damn hard and he’s a useless bully. You think Dempsey’s daddy and brother don’t see it too? You think every man in the city don’t?”
“I stay away, Sylv.” I turned back from the Square, from the eyes that stuck to me like a fly trapped on sticky paper. “I keep to Mama’s kitchen and only go out with you or Aron or Dempsey and even when I don’t, I stick to the tree lines.”
“That’s not good enough. Not when every dirty man in the city, white, black, or whatever else, looks hard at you.” My brother nodded like he’d had his say and I needed to mind it. “You stick too close to Dempsey and he’s gonna get ideas.”
I opened my mouth, about ready to tell Sylv to shut it up, but then, I knew I couldn’t. It would be a lie denying what Sylv said and he’d know it the second I opened my mouth. I knew what he meant. Dempsey had already gotten ideas. We both had. He’d held my hand just last week when Aron and Slyv walked in front of us back to Bastie’s farm after the parish priests held a picnic down by the lake. I’d liked the way Dempsey ran his thumb over my knuckles, how my palm smelled like the sugar cane he’d cut down for me as we walked back.
“Nothing…” I swallowed, wanting the words to stay down in my throat. But Sylv’s eyes went hard, a little worried, and I couldn’t keep a thing to myself. “Nothing happens with us. Nothing bad.”
He nodded, scrubbing his chin with his thumbnail as he led me away from the Squareand the crowd. We weren’t in a hurry to get back, not when the day was running hot. Not when Mama was sure to have us back in the heat for more deliveries.
“I like Dempsey. He’s a nice fella and he ain’t nothing like his kin. That’s a good thing, but sis, you got to be smart.”
“He needs us, Sylv. If we weren’t around, who’d clean him up when his daddy gets means and drunk and beats on him? Who’d hide him when the beatings are bad?”
“You ever think maybe it’s us that gets Papa Simoneaux mean? You ever think that crazy white man beats on Dempsey because he don’t stay with his own people?”
It might have been that. God knows I’d heard that hateful man screaming at Dempsey about being with the likes of us before. I’d heard the nasty things he’d called us and the things Dempsey’s mama sometimes said about my Bastie and my mama. Hateful, all of them, but especially when they’d catch us swimming near the dock that splintered our two properties. Especially when Dempsey would run off to keep from getting beat on—and he always ran to us.