"Why did you lie back there?" Annie said.
"I'm not sure."
"Dave..."
"She's probably an illegal. Why make problems for the nuns?"
"So what if she's an illegal?"
"Because I don't trust government pencil pushers and paper shufflers, that's why."
"I think I hear the voice of the New Orleans police department."
"Annie, immigration sends them back."
"They wouldn't do that to a child, would they?"
I didn't have an answer for her. But my father, who had been a fisherman, trapper, and derrickman all his life, and who couldn't read or write and spoke Cajun French and a form of English that was hardly a language, had an axiom for almost every situation. One of these would translate as "When in doubt, do nothing." In actuality he would say something like (in this case to a wealthy sugar planter who owned property next to us), "You didn't...