the cabin. 'How the hell can we trust him?'
'He didn't molest me, he just...'
Before she could finish, the door flew back, giving her a start, and a lean old man appeared framed in the light. 'Who's there?' he asked, looking out over Jocundra's head, then down and focusing on her. Gray streaks in his shoulder-length white hair, a tanned face seamed with lines of merriment. His trousers and shirt were sewn of flour sacking, the designs on them worn into dim blue words and vague trademark animals. He squinted at her. 'That you, Florence?'
'It's Jocundra Verret, Mr Brisbeau,' she said. 'I've got a friend with me.'
'Jocundra?' He was silent, the tiers of wrinkles deepening on his brow. 'Well,' he said, 'better you come in than the damn skeeters.'
He had them sit on packing crates beside a wood stove while he boiled coffee and asked Jocundra about herself. The cabin was exactly as she remembered: a jackdaw's nest. Waist-high stacks of yellowed magazines along the walls interspersed by even taller heaps of junk. Dented cookware, broken toys, plastic jugs, boxes, papers. Similar junkpiles occupied the room center, creating a miniature landscape of narrow floorboard valleys meandering between surreal mountains. Beside the door was a clothes-wringer, atop it a battered TV whose screen had been painted over with a beach scene. The wood stove and a cot stpod on opposite sides of a door against the rear wall, but they were so buried in clutter they had nearly lost their meaning as objects. The walls themselves were totally obscured by political placards and posters, illustrations out of magazines, torn pages of calendars. Layer upon layer. Thousands of images. Greek statues, naked women, jungle animals, wintry towns, movie stars, world leaders. A lunatic museum of art. Mildew had eaten away large areas of the collage, turning it into gray stratifications of shreds and mucilage stippled with bits of color. The light was provided by hurricane lamps - there must have been a dozen - set on every available flat surface and as a result the room was sweltering.
Mr Brisbeau handed them their coffee, black and bittersweet with chicory, and pulled up a crate next to Jocundra. 'Now I bet you goin' to tell me why you so full of twitch and tremble,' he said.
Though she omitted the events at the motel and in Salt Harvest, Jocundra was honest with Mr Brisbeau. Belief in and acceptance of unlikely probabilities were standard with him, and she thought he might find in Donnell a proof for which he had long been searching. And besides, they needed an ally, someone they could trust completely, and honesty was the only way to insure that trust. When she had done, Mr Brisbeau asked if he could have a look at Donnell's eyes. Donnell removed his glasses, and the old man bent close, almost rubbing noses.
'What you see wit them eyes, boy?' he asked, settling back on his crate.
'Not much I understand,' said Donnell, a suspicious edge to his voice. 'Funny lights, halos.'
Mr Brisbeau considered this. 'Days when I'm out at the traps, me, even though ever'ting's wavin' dark fingers at me, shadows, when I come to the fork sometimes the wan fork she's shinin' bright-bright. Down that fork I know I'm goin' to find the mus'rat.' He nudged a bale of coal-black muskrat skins beside the stove. 'Maybe you see somethin' lak that?'
'Maybe,' said Donnell.
Mr Brisbeau blew on his coffee and sipped. He laughed. 'I jus' tinkin' 'bout my grand-mere. She take wan look at you and she say, "Mon Dieu! The black Wan!" But I know the Black Wan he don't come round the bayou no more. He's gone long before my time.' He squinted at Donnell, as if trying to pierce his disguise, and shook his head in perplexity; then he stood and slapped his hip. 'You tired! Help me wit these furs and we fix you some pallets.'
The back room was unfurnished, but they arranged two piles of furs on the floor, and to Jocundra, who was suddenly exhausted, they looked like black pools of sleep in which she could drown.
'In the mornin',' said Mr Brisbeau, 'I got business wit ol' man Bivalaqua over in Silver Meadow. But there's food, drink, and me I'll be back tomorrow night.'
He glanced quizzically at Jocundra and beckoned her to follow him into the front room. He closed the door behind them.
'Wan time I get crazy wit you,' he said, 'and twelve years it takes to forgive? Don't you know,