"I'm going to take you somewhere we can finally be happy." He squatted so that they were eye to eye. "You have to trust me to do what's best for you," he murmured in French, the language they had sometimes spoken at home in New Orleans but never in Chicago. Speaking the words in French strengthened them somehow, and she knew they were final. He touched her hair before he stood and whispered, "Je t'aime." "Je t'aime."

On his feet again, he turned to Clarence. "You could come with us," he said in English. "At least until things are safe here."

"Nah. I guess I'll just stay and watch a while longer. Never saw colored men fighting back before. Never thought I'd live to see the day when we could. If I die watchin'?" Clarence grinned. "It'll be a fine day to die."

"Suit yourself. Just watch from inside." Rafe extended his hand. "You're a good friend. I'll write and let you know where we are once we get settled."

Clarence shook his hand. "Nickel girl's the grandbaby I never had. I'd do anything for her." Clarence ruffled her hair. "Now don't go getting your papa's shirt all wet. You two get out of here while it's still quiet."

"I'll go out first to be sure. Nicolette, stay here and wait until I motion you to come."

She didn't want her father to leave her behind, but she had no choice. She stood with Clarence's hands on her shoulders and watched as Rafe opened the door and slid into the darkness. She watched through the crack as he descended the steps. The night was still quiet when he got to the gate and eased it open. She could hardly see him as he surveyed the street. Their new Ford was parked half a block down from Clarence's apartment, under the drooping limbs of a giant elm. Rafe started toward it, stopped, then turned and motioned for her to join him.

"'Bye." She kissed Clarence's cheek. "You be careful."

She followed her father's path as quietly as she could. Halfway to the gate, she heard a noise and stopped to listen. It was the quiet hum of a motor. She looked to her father for guidance, but he motioned her on. At the gate, she stumbled in the darkness, but caught herself before she fell. When she straightened, she saw a shape moving slowly down the street. It took her precious seconds to realize that it was an automobile with its headlights off. It took her more seconds to realize that her father was waving her back toward the house.

Just as she turned to flee, the automobile gunned its engine. The sudden flare of headlights lit the street. The automobile roared toward them. She saw her father caught in the beam, and she heard a shout.

"This one's for you, Cantrelle!" A gunshot punctuated the words.

She stood, horrified, as her father fell. The automobile slowed as it pa.s.sed him, and another shot rang out. Then it roared away. Terrified, she ran toward him. "Papa!"

He raised his head. "Go back! Get in the house!"

She couldn't abandon him. The auto was gone, and she was sure her father had been shot. He managed to get to his feet and start toward the elm for cover. She kept running until she had covered half the distance. Only then did she realize that the auto had turned into a side street and was coming toward them again.

She stopped, confusion and horror blocking all thought. The headlights pinned her to the spot. She saw a leering smile, and the outline of a man's hat.

She couldn't move. She was afraid to run, and too confused to seek cover. "You, too, you little yellow b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" A bullet whined as it plowed into the ground at her feet.

"No!" Rafe reached her before the automobile did, and she fell under the weight of his body. She heard more gunfire, louder than she had ever known it could be. She felt her father stiffen, then go limp. There was a loud explosion, then another. She screamed and clawed, trying to free herself so that she could help him, but he was too heavy to move.

"Papa!" She tugged at his shoulders.

Rafe's weight was lifted from her, and Clarence knelt by her head. "Are you hit?"

"Papa!"

"Nickel, were you hit?" He touched her face, as if he expected to find blood. But the only blood on her was Rafe's. She pushed Clarence's hands away and sat up. Her father lay beside her, lit by the glare of flames. His eyes were closed.

"They torched the house," Clarence said. "The neighbors', too. We got to get out of here now."

She looked around wildly. Clarence's porch was already in flames. People were pouring into the street. There were screams from the apartment above Clarence's as the residents scrambled to escape.

"Papa!" She bent over her father. "Papa!"

"He's gone, Nickel. He was. .h.i.t bad, and he wouldn't want you to stay here and die with him."

She fought off Clarence's hands. "No, he's not dead! He's not!" She shook her father's shoulders.

"He's dead!" Clarence tried to pull her away. "Come on, now. We got to get out of here."

"But he wasn't dead," Nicky told Phillip. "Not yet. I bent over him and put my face right up next to his."

Tears slid down her cheeks. For a moment, she couldn't go on. She felt Phillip take her hand and squeeze it. They linked fingers, just as she often had when she walked with her father.

"He opened his eyes." She looked up at her son. "He wasn't surprised he was going to die, Phillip. I could see that, even then. It was like he had always known life was going to end like that for him. He looked at me, and he said..." She turned her head and stared out the window. "He said, 'You are the best of us both."'

Phillip squeezed her hand and went on squeezing it until she could speak again.

Finally she nodded. "Then he died."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

There were children on Belinda's front porch, children dressed as clowns in simple homemade costumes of purple and gold. At first Phillip thought they were just some of the little girls who frequented her life, until an older woman with tired eyes and badly processed hair joined them.

"Is Belinda home?" Phillip started up the stairs. He had never met any of Belinda's family, but he thought this might be one of her married sisters.

"No one by that name here." The woman looked suspicious, but Phillip had gotten suspicious looks since leaving Nicky and Jake's house that morning. He hadn't seen another man in town wearing a sport coat. Had he been dressed as Satan himself, no one would have given him a second look.

He had chosen Mardi Gras day to see Belinda again-a decision that had appealed to him, because he still wasn't sure what he would say to her. Immersed in the noise and confusion of the day, he thought he might be able to feel his way through their reunion. He was a journalist, a man so intimately familiar with words that he ought to have a thesaurus stored inside him. But he still didn't know how to tell her what he was feeling. About her. About his life and who he was. About their future-or even if they had one together.

He paused on the top step, because the woman was moving swiftly toward him, as if to head him off.

"Belinda Beauclaire," he said. "This is her house."

"Uh-uh. This is my house." She barred his progress with wide hips.

It had been only weeks since Phillip had seen Belinda and lived right here with her. For a moment, he was as suspicious as the woman's eyes. "How long have you been here?"

"I don't see why I got to tell you."

"Look, a friend of mine, Belinda Beauclaire, lived right here just a few weeks ago. I need to find her."

"I live here now."

Frustration filled him. "Did you just move in?"

The woman shrugged.

"Miss Beauclaire done moved away," one of the little girls said.

The woman waved her hand to shush her. "You better get on," she told Phillip. "Ain't none of our concern."

"Look, I'm not going anywhere until you tell me where she is. I've got to find her."

The woman pursed her lips and folded her arms.

It had never occurred to Phillip that Belinda wouldn't be right here waiting for him to return. For the first time since he'd seen the children on the porch, he realized that he might not find her at all. He could wait until the holiday was over and go to her school, but what if she'd left town? What if her destination was confidential? Few people here knew him or knew about their relationship. Who would he go to for information?

Belinda had always been there for him.

Now she wasn't.

His feelings must have shown in his eyes, or maybe the woman had just gotten tired of him standing there. Her sigh was appropriately world-weary. "She be down on Claiborne today."

"Claiborne?"

"You not from here, are you?"

"My mother is Nicky Valentine. I visit here a lot." He was ashamed to use Nicky this way, but only a little. If anyone could open doors, it would be Nicky.

"Belinda's staying with a friend. Don't know where, exactly. You ask down on Claiborne, you find her soon enough." She pointed to the left.

"Thanks. I really appreciate it."

"You wait there." The woman went inside and returned a few moments later carrying a handful of gaudy gla.s.s beads. "Put these on."

He took them reluctantly.

"Put 'em on," she ordered. "You Nicky Valentine's boy, you got to look like you part of things."

From the moment he went out into the streets that morning, Phillip hadn't wanted to be part of things. Mardi Gras had always seemed a colossal waste of time to him. He had never been sure that there was anything to celebrate here. Everywhere he looked, he saw walls that all the Joshuas in the world couldn't tumble. Even the parades were segregated, with Rex and other krewes representing the white elite, and Zulu, a Negro krewe in satirical blackface, slyly spoofing the pomposity of Rex.

He strung the beads around his neck anyway and unb.u.t.toned the top two b.u.t.tons of his shirt. At the car he ditched his sport coat, then locked the doors. Claiborne was a fair hike, but walking seemed easier than driving through the crowds. The trip to Belinda's-or what had once been Belinda's-had been just short of suicidal.

Why had she given up her house? By most standards, it wasn't much, half of a double, with small rooms and no hall. But it was hers, paid for with a job she loved, decorated in colors that would always make him think of her, firmly rooted in a neighborhood where she was loved and respected. There she had taught her heritage cla.s.ses, watched over the children who played on her street, sat on her porch in the spring when the jasmine was a cascade of fragrant yellow stars.

And why hadn't she gotten word to him that she had decided to move? Surely, despite the way they had parted, she knew he would be back.

He needed her today in a way that he'd never let himself need anyone. He needed to tell her what he'd learned about his family. She was the only one who would understand his confusion. Belinda would feel what he had felt upon learning the way that his grandfather had died. He could count on that. He could count on her.

A day hadn't pa.s.sed since he'd seen her last that he hadn't wanted to pick up the telephone and tell her that and more. He had spent months away from her in the past, but after their relationship had become established he had believed deep in his heart that he could always come back to New Orleans and take up where they had left off. Now he no longer knew that, and there was a large empty s.p.a.ce inside him where that certainty, that foolish, arrogant certainty, had been.

He stopped on a corner to get his bearings. The houses bordering the intersection were Southern-shabby, weathered by tropical sun and overgrown with foliage that appeared to snake and twine around doors and windows as he looked on. There were people everywhere, and a low, constant thrumming that seemed to come directly from the earth under his feet.

Something not quite music, more like a litany, poured from a run-down bar in the middle of the next block, a bar like so many throughout the city. The building was compact and, from all visible evidence, jammed beyond capacity. Sound spilled out of the windows, and on the sidewalk in front of the bar, groups of men took up the cadence.

Phillip wanted to find Belinda; he didn't want to stop and see what was happening. He had no interest in local celebrations, or in the fights that would most likely ensue from the lethal mixture of alcohol and testosterone. But the sound coming from the bar was so compelling, he found himself standing still to listen.

There were drums beating, drums like those he'd heard in small African villages. Men's voices chanted words he couldn't understand, and the sound filled the street. Children strutted to its beat or clanged soda bottles together in support. Mothers with babies in their arms clapped their hands and stomped their feet.

The chanting grew louder, the words still foreign to him, nonsense syllables strung together with an odd, raw intensity. He didn't know how long the chanting had been going on. It built subtly but steadily, and he suspected it had been building that way for hours. He found himself swaying to the beat; then he found himself moving closer.

He lost track of time as the chanting and the music continued to crescendo. He was caught in something that went beyond a day or even a season. The cadence was as old as Adam's heartbeat, as sensuous as Eve and as tempting as forbidden fruit. Then the bar door was flung open, and a man in the beaded and feathered costume of an Indian emerged.

The crowd that had gathered outside the bar parted respectfully to give him plenty of room. There was loud appreciation for the exquisite beauty of the costume, which was a brilliant burst of scarlet and turquoise. The man wearing it stood tall and silent; then he started forward, dramatically scanning the area.

"He the spy boy."

Phillip turned and looked at the young man who had come up to stand beside him. He was a teenager, lithe and athletic, whose only attempt at a costume was a satin bandit's mask riding high on his forehead. "Spy boy?"

"Yeah. He the spy boy for the Creole Wild West."

"What's that?"

"You not from here?"

For the second time that morning, Phillip owned up to it.

"They an Indian tribe. Mardi Gras Indians."

Phillip remembered having heard something about the Mardi Gras Indians, but he hadn't understood it, and he hadn't cared. "What's that, exactly?"

"Just one of the tribes. We got lots of 'em."

There was another burst of appreciation, and another man in costume stepped out of the door. His costume was not as elaborate, but he carried a staff, decorated top and bottom with feathers of the same scarlet and turquoise.

"He the flag boy." The young man danced from side to side with the beat of the chanting, which still echoed from inside the bar. "He carry the flag all day. The spy boy watches to be sure no other tribes around. You keep watching. You learn what's what." He went off to join other boys his age on the corner.

The costumes grew steadily more elaborate, until at last, with a huge burst of sound, the last man of fewer than a dozen stepped out. The crowd roared their approval. The costume and matching headdress were spectacular, but the man wearing them was more so. Phillip calculated what the suit and the headdress must weigh, and how much strength the man needed just to walk. But he didn't walk. He glided. He strutted. He was as regal as any European monarch.

The Indians began to sing as they moved off down the street. The others, not in costume, followed at a respectful distance, but as the Indians sang and chanted, the crowd joined in on the chorus.

The young man who had instructed Phillip pa.s.sed by to catch up with the foot parade following the Indians. He grinned at Phillip. "You like that suit? That's the chief. He got a heart of steel."

"Who makes the costumes?"

"Suits. They make 'em. Every st.i.tch. Every year's different, too."

The Indians disappeared around the corner, but the beat continued. Music spilled from windows and in front of houses where impromptu bra.s.s bands blew one-of-a-kind refrains. Phillip walked up a street the Indians hadn't taken, dodging wrestling children and scolding mamas. Crowds overflowed from doorways, and parties flourished on porches and driveways.

The crowd grew larger as he neared Claiborne, and the beat intensified. It was still early, but the heat had intensified, too. He was part of a great surge of people, but he was aware of how alone he really was. All around him people were celebrating together. Masked friends greeted each other in the melee, and grandmothers, aunts and uncles corraled and carried children to share the burden. He was apart from it all, yet he was being swept into the very center of it.

He had come to find Belinda because he thought he wanted solace. Now he realized it was something more he required. He wanted her. The whole woman. The companion. The lover. He wanted to share the strange exuberance of the day, a day that was slowly seeping over him-despite his own melancholy-like a bath of warm honey. He wanted to tuck her securely beside him while they drank in this unique outpouring of culture. The word lonely lonely had never existed in any significant way for him, but it did now. had never existed in any significant way for him, but it did now.

On Claiborne he was swept along by the crowd as he crossed to the neutral ground, the local term for the wide strip of land between the traffic lanes. It was heavily forested with live oaks, and overnight it had developed into a settlement of blankets and picnic tables. Transistor radios countered the steady rhythm of shouts and laughter, and battered horns and saxophones reinforced the din.