Eye of the Cricket

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The storm came in over the lake, bowing the shaggy heads of young trees and snapping branches off the old, blowing out of Metairie where the white folks live. In my own backyard a hundred-year-old water oak at last gave in, splitting in half as though a broadsword had struck it, opening like a book.

I sat with my back bent over the worn mahogany curb of the bar. A glass of bourbon sat before me, its outer surface smeared and greasy to the touch. A young roach circled water pooling about the glass.

Astonishingly, what had begun as a letter to an old friend, to Vicky in Paris, had become the opening pages of a novel. The first real writing I'd done in over four years, though a novel not so much new as reimag-ined. And so I had moved from lined legal pad and kitchen table to a long-neglected computer out here in the slave quarters behind the house.

I paused a moment, sipped at bourbon. It was midnight, it was raining. I glanced out the window and went on.

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