Eye of the Cricket Read Free Page B

not like them. You're still out there. Always have been."
    "Not for a long time."
    He shook his head. "I read your books. Some of them are hard to find."
    "Some of them probably ought to be a lot harder."
    "They tell the truth, Mr. Griffin. That's important."
    "Yeah.... I used to think so too."
    "That they tell the truth, or that it's important?"
    "Both." I looked out my so-called (soi-disant) window, a sliver of glass set sideways just inches below the seven-foot ceiling. Rain had slowed to a drizzle; there was even
     a hint of sunlight "You want to get some coffee?"
    "I'm from New Orleans, Mr. Griffin. I'm always ready for coffee."
    "Able to find a chink in your tight schedule, then?"
    "Well, I tell you. Right now you are my schedule."
    We crossed from the campus to a corner grocer that had four-seater picnic benches set up in the back half of the store and
     from ten till they ran out served some of the best roast beef po-boys, jambalaya and gumbo in town. Most of the kids stuck
     to burgers and fries. A student once told me that she'd lived off burgers since she was fourteen, never ate anything else.
    As always, Marcel's was a thicket of noise: formulaic greetings (How it is, 'S up, All right!) as people came and went, the singsong of conversations at tables, orders taken on the bounce and passed off to the cooks in
     verbal shorthand, music from portable radios the size of cigarette packs or toolboxes, the occasional shrill, monotonous Morse
     of a beeper.
    We got coffee in thick-walled mugs and snagged a table just as two business types, coatless but wearing short-sleeve blue
     dress shirts and ties, were getting up. Delany wiped off the table with a napkin, piled everything on the tray they'd left
     behind and took it to a hand-through window near the back. Both the window's broad lip and a steel cart alongside were ajumble
     with bowls, trays and cups.
    "So just what is it I can do for you?" I said as Delany sat across from me. Over his shoulder I read the wall-mounted menu,
     one of those black boxes with white plastic letters you snap in, like setting type. Halfway down, they'd inn out of O's and
     substituted zeros. Sandwiches were offered on Bun or French bred. Elsewhere there were curious gaps and run-ons.
    "Youfind people."
    Sometimes, yes. But as I'd told him earlier, not for a long time now. I'd let teaching become my life, drifted into it because
     the currents were flowing that way. I wondered again how much of our life we really choose, how much is just following chance
     road signs.
    "I take care of my family," Delany said. "Financially, I mean. My father disappeared when I was four. The other kids' fathers—I
     have one half brother, fifteen, two sisters, eleven and eight—they disappeared a lot faster. I look out for them all."
    A familiar story, though never one the conservative axis with its one-size-fits-all "family values" wanted to hear. The poor,
     the fucked up, disadvantaged and discarded, are an awful lot of trouble. If only they'd behave.
    "And your mother?"
    "She's still with us. Alive, I mean. It's been hard for her, she's..."
    "Used up."
    "Yeah. I guess that says it, all right."
    "She the one you wanted to see me about?"
    He shook his head. Looked over to the line by the counter. "More coffee?"
    I pushed the cup towards him and he brought it back full, with just the right amount of milk. He'd watched me closely earlier,
     but I hadn't thought much of it at the time. This peculiar intensity hovered about him anyway, as though details were a lair
     where the world lived, coiled like a dragon; as though everything might depend on our noticing, on our taking note.
    "My brother," he said. "Half brother,really.Shon: like John with a sh. Older girl's Tamysha, with a Y. One of the nurses named her that when she was born. Little one's Critty—god knows where that came from. Anyway."
    He took a mouthful of coffee, held it a moment, swallowed.
    "One day last week, Thursday, Shon leaves for school