Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Jolie Blon's BounceBy James Lee BurkeSimon & Schuster AudioCopyright © 2002James Lee BurkeAll right reserved.ISBN: 9780743524605Chapter OneGrowing up during the 1940s in New Iberia, downon the Gulf Coast, I never doubted how the worldworked. At dawn the antebellum homes along EastMain loomed out of the mists, their columnedporches and garden walkways and second-storyverandas soaked with dew, the chimneys and slateroofs softly molded by the canopy of live oaksthat arched over the entire street.The stacks of sunken U.S. Navy ships laysideways in Pearl Harbor and service stars hunginside front windows all over New Iberia. But onEast Main, in the false dawn, the air was heavywith the smell of night-blooming flowers andlichen on damp stone and the fecund odor ofBayou Teche, and even though a gold service starmay have hung in a window of a grand mansion,indicating the death of a serviceman in thefamily, the year could have been mistaken for1861 rather than 1942.Even when the sun broke above the horizon andthe ice wagons and the milk delivery came downthe street on iron-rimmed wheels and the Negrohelp began reporting for work at theiremployers' back doors, the light was neverharsh, never superheated or smelling of tarroads and dust as it was in other neighborhoods.Instead it filtered through Spanish moss andbamboo and philodendron that dripped with beadsof moisture as big as marbles, so that even inthe midst of summer the morning came to thosewho lived here with a blue softness that dailytold them the earth was a grand place, itsdesign vouchsafed in heaven and not to bequestioned.Down the street was the old Frederic Hotel, alovely pink building with marble columns andpotted palms inside, a ballroom, an elevatorthat looked like a brass birdcage, and a saloonwith wood-bladed fans and an elevated,scrolled-iron shoeshine chair and a long,hand-carved mahogany bar. Amid the palm frondsand the blue and gray swirls of color in themarble columns were the slot and racehorsemachines, ringing with light, their dullpewterlike coin trays offering silent promise tothe glad at heart.Farther down Main were Hopkins and RailroadAvenues, like ancillary conduits into part ofthe town's history and geography that people didnot talk about publicly. When I went to theicehouse on Saturday afternoons with my father,I would look furtively down Railroad at the rowsof paintless cribs on each side of the traintracks and at the blowsy women who sat on thestoops, hung over, their knees apart under theirloose cotton dresses, perhaps dipping beer outof a bucket two Negro boys carried on a broomhandle from Hattie Fontenot's bar.I came to learn early on that no venal ormeretricious enterprise existed without acommunity's consent. I thought I understood thenature of evil. I learned at age twelve I didnot.My half brother, who was fifteen months youngerthan I, was named Jimmie Robicheaux. His motherwas a prostitute in Abbeville, but he and I wereraised together, largely by our father, known asBig Aldous, who was a trapper and commercialfisherman and offshore derrick man. As childrenJimmie and I were inseparable. On summerevenings we used to go to the lighted ball gamesat City Park and slip into the serving lines atbarbecues and crab boils at the open-airpavilions. Our larceny was of an innocent kind,I suppose, and we were quite proud of ourselveswhen we thought we had outsmarted the adultworld.On a hot August night, with lightning ripplingthrough the thunderheads over the Gulf ofMexico, Jimmie and I were walking through acluster of oak trees on the edge of the parkwhen we saw an old Ford automobile with twocouples inside, one in the front seat, one inthe back. We heard a woman moan, then her voicemount in volume and intensity. We staredopenmouthed as we saw the woman's top half archbackward, her naked breasts lit by the glow froma picnic pavilion, her mouth wide with orgasm.We started to change direction, but th