..... Willie couldn't remember where he'd lost his Mama's soul.
..... He checked his bed first. Then under her bed, face stuck through the dusty ruffle. Then behind his naked bookshelf. Under the potted ferns and crumbling spice garden. Beneath his gun safe and its canopy of porn mags. 
..... He swore to himself over and over that he would not cry, as he checked that she wasn't pinned in the frame of their shotgun house's turquoise doors. He cursed instead, glancing guilty at the icons of St. Catherine and St. Maria who stared at his ransack of Mama’s vanity. And when he rummaged through the towering pots she'd use for crawfish boil, Willie was quiet, wary of startling away any miracles, knowing in his heart that if her soul was anywhere, it would be with her kitchen.
..... It wasn't. Willie sat among the pots. He bent forward, head and shoulders sliding into the largest. 
..... He was still there, hiding from a world without Mama, when his phone rang for the twentieth time in a row.
..... He went into the living room as he pulled the phone from his pocket. Sprawled on the rainbow rug, cheek against the mangy velvet arm of her chair, he answered. It was Harold, of course.
..... "Where you been, Willie?"
..... "Looking around. I lost Mama."
..... "She in the funeral home, cousin."
..... "I know. I mean I lost her picture."
..... "You got plenty of pictures of her, dog. Man up."
..... Willie bit back the urge to tell Harold he was wrong—that there were many photos, even an old poster of Mama from her tap-dance days, but only one mattered. Only one was her soul: She and an 8-year-old Willie with Lake Pontchartrain glimmering blue and gold with noon behind them, their brown arms' embrace framed by the white fish market pier planks stretching in heavenly stairs behind them, their smiles pristine. His small fingers gripped her hug crossing his chest as if, in that kind of August, it could make them truly weightless.
..... "Nothing like that," Willie said.
..... "Whatever. Keep looking around. But when it gets dark, we going out to look for payback."

..... Sunset came through the wall in marmalade strings when Willie failed for his fourth time to patch the bullet holes. The usual reasons defeated him.
..... He set the sealant and brush down next to the little patches of plywood. His watch distracted him, and a glance at it revealed Harold was only an hour away. No sense trying to patch the plywood now. He wanted to do it right when he did it. That's what stalled him every time.
..... Willie hunkered by the holes and examined them. Questions flocked: Should he plug them outside, or in? Assuming inside, should he cut the plywood to fit the hole, or just patch it over? And where should he brush the sealant—on the wood or on the hole? 
..... Each time he'd gone at the holes, these debates had sent him stalking away in frustration. Now, it had his head in his hands.
..... It wasn't because he was cheap. Yes, he was waiting to buy the turquoise paint until the holes were patched, but you couldn't call him cheap. He'd paid for the aluminum pearl-tinted coffin Mama was laying in, for her spider-web veil and makeup instead of grease paint. He'd paid for the Dorgenois Street Players to play at her procession. He'd even paid for a horse and hearse carriage.
..... It was, Willie realized, quite the opposite of cheap. He treasured those holes.
..... Even Mama's murder was part of her.
..... Willie wanted to preserve every part he could. They were all stitches in a larger memory that he could hide under and, with his eyes closed, almost smell her. 
..... Only one memory was a ghost: That she died slow and alone in their home, and her killers were still alive.
..... The Pastor's wife had scrubbed Mama's blood from the floorboards. The police had taken her bloodstained throw rug. Her lavender shampoo scent would fade from the crown of the armchair. Her Gold Bond would dissolve from her shoes. She would evaporate from Willie's world.
..... The boys who shot her instead of Willie would go on touching, laughing, leaving their mark.
..... Willie sat against her chair with the sealant drying in the open can, knowing if he waited long enough, Harold would show up to see to those boys.

..... An hour later, Mama was even less there, and Willie was not ready.
..... He'd eaten the last of the Pastor wife's gumbo, cold from the tin. His stomach still felt like an empty fist, his head full of the recipes lost with Mama.
..... He'd dressed in black sweats, black ball cap; blacked his shoes with latticed laundry marker strokes. He thought he could tear up, burn, mismatch any and all of his clothes now and no one would care.
..... He strained out a crap, because he didn't want to shit himself like a baby at his first shooting, like Mo Service had. He trimmed his nails with sewing kit scissors. He stared down mirrors.
..... Willie searched for Mama's soul under the bathroom sink, and in the stove grease pan, and in the hole in the front patio eave where they'd found a wasp nest one summer and sprayed it out with Windex, taking turns spraying and fleeing in circles and laughing, until the wasps were wet and dead and they were never stung.
..... Willie told himself twenty times that he would not go with Harold to kill those boys, as Mama would have wanted.
..... When Harold, knocked, grinned his gold grill in greeting and asked Willie, "You ready?" Willie said, "Yeah," and walked out of Mama's house without locking the door.

..... In the back of Harold's rickety Civic, Willie traced his fingernail along the metal grooves of the Colt and stared at the smears of passing streetlights in the rain.
..... "This how we do it?" he asked Harold and T-Murder, glancing at them slumped in the front. "Just drive in circles?"
..... "You got something better to do?" Harold said. 
..... "No."
..... Harold just took another right, streetlight glimmer playing murky on his eight faux gold rings as he worked the wheel. T-Murder tapped more ash onto the passenger window’s rim, blew a carpet of Kool smoke out its crack. Willie waited and struggled not to squirm.
..... The Civic had its own atmosphere, like Willie was adapting to a colony on another world: A place where life breathed weed reek, citrus room spray and old french fries. A planet of wet darkness where light floated by like undersea life or glowed angular from the silent radio. A world of smoke and nerves and waiting.
..... "Takes a long time," Willie said.
..... "It takes a long time," Harold said.
..... "Where these fuckers at? We know?"
..... "We know," Harold looked in the rear-view for the first time. His eyes were the red of old stop lights. Their dark centers looked immune to sleep. "You want to know?"
..... "Yeah," Willie said, gripping the Colt.
..... "They're at one of their sister's houses. Her track team came in first in the state-wide. They celebrating."
..... "Oh."
..... "You afraid?"
..... Willie was. But he also felt the worst fear—losing Mama—was already done. So how afraid could he be?
..... "Not really."
..... "You walk right up and pull on those fuckers, you won't have to worry about tagging no bystanders."
..... Willie said nothing. Harold went back to driving. Another five minutes' silence passed until T-Murder spoke up through his tenth Kool.
..... "There they is on the right."
..... The car slowed. Willie's heart sped. He laid the Colt in his lap and sat on his hands, as if it would keep him pinned and prevent his pulse from knocking him through the roof. Its beat felt like Mama shaking him from one of the nightmares he had when he was starting Middle School.
..... It told him no. Over and over again, no.
..... "Get ready to bust out the door," Harold said.
..... Willie tightened his teeth, as if Harold would hear the message of his pulse if he opened his mouth. He stared ahead at the four boys strolling down the rainy street, all back slaps and laughter. He shoved his hands deeper under him.
..... He felt something there—thin and hard.
..... Willie pulled it loose and looked at it.
..... "I'm pulling over behind that truck," Harold said.
..... Willie hardly heard, staring at the recovered photo, lost in study of Mama's soul: The sun, the lake, the arms, the teeth, the two of them. It was a window so vivid, he felt that if he were small enough, he could crawl into it and escape there forever.
..... "You get out," Harold said.
..... Willie knew he'd never be small enough. And Mama would never be back.
..... He had to get big enough to fill her absence.
..... "Get out," Harold said. Brakes sighed the Civic to a stop behind a black truck. Harold looked at Willie. "What you got there?"
..... Willie pinched the photo closed and held it away from him.
..... "Something better off lost."
..... Harold popped the Civic locks. Willie opened his door and didn't flinch at the rain and approaching laughter that hit him. T-Murder blew smoke after him.
..... "I'll pick you up on the other side," Harold said, pointing ahead beyond the truck. "Go get your own ass lost."
..... Willie dropped the photo and lifted the gun and walked toward the laughing boys to do just that.