Eye of the Cricket Read Online Free PDF Page A

was all just a hallucination. Or one of the dreams that ripped me from sleep at three in the morning.
    I remember how light gleamed and swam in the bottles behind the bar as I turned to him. I've always wondered, I told him.
     When they earned you off to the madhouse. People said it was because you threw a baby out of an upstairs window.
    You know well as I do, young man, people be likely to say anything. 'Sides, it was one of them skinny close-built houses down
     on Jackson. Woman in the next house, she saw what was happening and jus' put her arms out and caught that baby.
    You miss it? I said.
    The music?
    I nodded.
    Everything done changed now, son. Tell you the truth, most days I miss the barbering more.
    Then he was gone.
    I walked down Claiborne, past the smell of yet more frying shrimp, to Loyola and then to the library, where I spent the afternoon
     reading Borges and watching people board and dismount buses outside.
    Fleeing reality?
    You better believe it. Feeling its hot breath on my neck.
    I remember how intense, how alive, things became as the sun sank low. Tables, chairs, corners of shelves, roofs across the
     street—all trembled, faintly luminous, as though fragments of sunlight, reluctant to let go, still clung to them. Lambent.
    But it was not only the visual world that came so strangely into focus. Moments before the library closed, I heard a reference
     librarian's voice as she spoke into her phone half a building away: "Here's the information you requested, sir. He died in
     Concord, at 7:05 A.M., May 21st, 1952. That's right, 7:05. You're welcome."
    Out, then, into the waiting, impatient street.

4

    "I'LL HAVE THE red beans and rice," Richard Garces said. "Please tell me they're not left over from Monday." Monday was traditionally
     washday in old New Orleans,fix-aheadpots of red beans and rice simmering on the stove. Many restaurants carry on the tradition.
     It's a city that embraces tradition.
    "Tuesday, at the latest," Tammy said. One high, jean-clad hip went higher as she rested hand and order pad on it "No reason
     you'd notice, but we do move a little slow around here."
    They barely moved at all. Moochie's reminded me of those time capsules they used to bury back in the fifties, full of artifacts:
     a newspaper, recordings of popular songs, comic books, Kool-Aid packets, a nylon scarf, souvenir ashtrays. Neon clocks and
     beer signs hung on the walls. Formica, fake-wood paneling and bright plastic everywhere. Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and Jimmy
     Reed on the jukebox.
    We did our best, Richard, Don Walsh and myself, to get together like this at least once a week. Have dinner, talk things over.
     Sometimes it would get put off week after week, other times it might happen every day or two. Over fiveor six years, I guess,
     it averaged out.
    "And to drink?" Tammy said.
    "Coffee."
    Don ordered rigatoni, salad with Italian. "And a beer. Any kind." I looked at him. He shrugged.
    I asked guiltily for a large Caesar. Blood work on my two most recent hospitalizations, over a year ago, had shown high cholesterol,
     but I tried not to think about it.
    Iced tea now, coffee after.
    "Tammy. How's Byron?" Richard said.
    She had started away towards the kitchen, a turn, two steps; and now turned back. Hip again rising as she shifted weight onto
     one leg. A kind of all-purpose gesture for her, at the same time confiding and defensive.
    "He's fine. Said to tell you hello in his last letter, now that I think about it."
    "Still in Atlanta?"
    "Oh yeah. Couldn't haul him out of there with a team of Clydesdales."
    At college in the sixties, both of them impossibly young, Richard (as they used to say) had brought Byron out—or they'd brought
     one another out Then they'd openly lived together for a number of years. Something people throw parties and send out invitations
     for, nowadays. But back then that sort of thing was your own personal Pearl Harbor. It was underground nuclear testing in
     your backyard, Commie