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fine.”
    “I’ve got a son,” Dan said.
    “Yessir.” Blanchard put the photograph back in its place next to a small Lucite cube that had a little plastic American flag mounted inside it. Written on the cube in red, white, and blue were the words I Supported Desert Storm. “You wait about nine more years, you’ll see Yance Blanchard breakin’ some passin’ records at LSU, I guarandamntee it.” He swiveled his chair around to where a computer screen, a telephone, and the intercom were set up. He switched the computer on, pressed a few keys, and black lines of information appeared. “Okay, there’s your file,” he said. “You a Cajun, Mr. Lambert?”
    “No.”
    “Just wonderin’. Sometimes you can’t tell who’s a Cajun and who’s not. Alllllrighty, let’s see what we’ve got here. Carpenter, are you? Employed at A&A Construc— oh, you were employed at A&A Construction until November of last year.”
    “The company went bankrupt.” He’d told Mr. Jarrett about it, of course, and it had gone into his file.
    “Construction bidness hit the rocks, that’s for sure. You free-lancin’ now, is that it?”
    “Yes sir.”
    “I see Jarrett was lettin’ you slide some months. Delinquent two payments. See, that’s not a good thing. We can let you get by sometimes if you’re one payment behind, but two payments is a whole different story.”
    “Yes sir, I know that, but I … kind of had an understandin’ with Mr. Jarrett.”
    Even as he said it, Dan knew it was the wrong thing to say. Blanchard’s big shoulders hunched up almost imperceptibly, and he slowly swiveled his chair around from the computer screen to face Dan. Blanchard wore a tight, strained smile. “See, there’s a problem,” he said. “There is no Mr. Jarrett at this bank anymore. So any understandin’ you might’ve had with him isn’t valid as far as I’m concerned.”
    Dan’s cheeks were stinging. “I didn’t mean to be—”
    “Your record speaks for itself,” the other man interrupted. “Can you make at least one payment today?”
    “No sir, I can’t. But that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. If I could … maybe … pay you fifteen dollars a week until a job comes along. Then I could start makin’ the regular payments again. I’ve never been so long between jobs before. But I figure things’ll pick up again when the weather cools off.”
    “Uh-huh,” Blanchard said. “Mr. Lambert, when you lost your job did you look for any other kind of work?”
    “I looked for other jobs, yeah. But I’m a carpenter. That’s what I’ve always done.”
    “You subscribe to the paper?”
    “No.” His subscription had been one of the first items to be cut.
    “They run classified ads in there every day. Page after page of ’em. All kinds of jobs, just beggin’.”
    “Not for carpenters. I’ve looked, plenty of times.” He saw Blanchard’s gaze fix on his snake tattoo for a few seconds, then veer away with obvious distaste.
    “When the goin’ gets tough,” Blanchard said, “the tough get goin’. Ever hear that sayin’? If more people lived by it, we wouldn’t be headin’ for a welfare state.”
    “I’ve never been on welfare.” The pain flared, like an engine being started, deep in Dan’s skull. “Not one day in my life.”
    Blanchard swiveled to face the computer’s screen again. He gave a grunt. “Vietnam vet, huh? Well, that’s one point in your favor. I wish you fellas had cleaned house like the boys did over in Iraq.”
    “It was a different kind of war.” Dan swallowed thickly. He thought he could taste ashes. “A different time.”
    “Hell, fightin’s fightin’. Jungle or desert, what’s the difference?”
    The pain was getting bad now. Dan’s guts were clenched up. “A lot,” he said. “In the desert you can see who’s shootin’ at you.” His gaze ticked to the Lucite cube that held the plastic flag. Something small was stamped on its lower left corner. Three words. He leaned