Blue Bayou

by JoAnn Ross

  “Lagniappe means ‘something extra.’ ”

  “That's exactly what it means.” She smiled at him in the mirror. “You're so smart.”

  His brow furrowed. “What if I was only smart at Fox Run? What if the kids in my new school know more than I do?”

  “Your test scores were great, darling.” Hadn't she, on the school counselor's advice, allowed him to skip third grade? “You'll do fine here.”

  “What if they don't like me?”

  “Of course they'll like you. And you'll have your cars to break the ice.”

  “Yeah. I will,” he said, seemingly relieved. “Grandpa's really going to live with us, too?”

  “Absolutely.” Dani refused to consider the prospect of her father rejecting the home she intended to make for them all.

  Judge Victor Dupree had always wanted to control everything and everyone around him, which is probably partly why he became a judge in the first place. She'd often thought it was also one of the reasons her mama had run away when Dani had still been in diapers. If there was anything Lowell's untimely death had taught her, it was that life was too short to hold grudges. She and her father had already lost enough years they could have been a family. Her son was going to know who and where he'd come from if it was the last thing Dani did.

  And if Daddy doesn't like it, tough.

  Thunder rumbled a low warning in the distance. A flash of lightning forked out of darkening clouds, and the wind picked up, rustling the cane stalks.

  “Is a hurricane coming?”

  “Oh, I'm sure we don't have to worry about that.” Dani flipped on the windshield wipers.

  “Are you sure? I saw the signs,” Matt said over the drumming rain on the station wagon's metal roof. “The evacuation route for when there's a hurricane.” Even being more than a year younger than most of his classmates, he was the best reader in his fourth grade. There were times, and this was one of them, that wasn't necessarily a good thing.

  “It's just a little afternoon rain, sweetie.”

  “Too bad.” He pressed his nose against the window. “It'd be cool to call Tommy and tell him we were in a hurricane.” Tommy had been his neighbor and best friend in Virginia.

  “I think I'd prefer we pass on that excitement.”

  “It'd still be neat.”

  A siren screamed over the crash of another thunderclap. The flashing lights in the rearview mirror yanked Dani's attention from her dreary thoughts as she glanced down at the speedometer, which revealed that she was going well within the speed limit.

  “Are we getting a ticket?”

  “I don't think so.” She certainly hoped not. The last thing her checkbook needed was a traffic fine and an increase in her insurance premium. She pulled over to the shoulder, breathing a sigh of relief as the red car belonging to the parish fire chief tore past.

  Unlike so many of the strip towns which had sprung up to serve the farming and shrimping south Louisiana population, Blue Bayou had been painstakingly designed by a wealthy planter who'd visited Savannah for a wedding and had so admired that city's lush green squares and gracious architecture, he'd returned home and formed a partnership with one of the gens de couleur libres —free men of color—an architect who shared his artistic vision.

  Together they changed the rustic fishing town named for the blue herons which nested on the banks of the bayou into a planned hamlet which, although the town's name of Bayou Bleu had been anglicized over the years, remained an example of the short-lived period of booming antebellum prosperity.

  As Dani crossed the old steel bridge leading into town, the gaslights along oak-lined Gramercy Boulevard— which was actually a narrow cobblestone street—flickered on, yellow shimmers through the falling rain, which she was glad to see was letting up as the storm passed on toward New Orleans and Mississippi.

  Returning to this hidden corner of Louisiana was like going back in time. Not just to Dani's more recent personal past, but to a romantic era far more distant. It took no imagination at all to hear the clatter of horses' hooves on the cobblestones or the rustle of petticoats skimming the brick sidewalk lined with leafy trees and planters overflowing with color.

  Some things had changed since the last time she'd been home, which had been for her father's trial seven long years ago. Lafitte's Landing, the old restaurant, dance hall, and gathering place, was closed; the drugstore where she and her girlfriends would perch on vinyl-seated swivel stools and moon over Johnny Breaux as he'd build hot fudge sundaes was now an Espresso Express, and Arlene's Doll Hospital had become a video rental store.

  But Cajun Cal's Country Café still advertised the Friday night fried-fish special; they were still perming hair at Belle's Shear Pleasures, though according to the white script painted on the window, Belle had added pedicures, and the Bijoux Theater still dominated the corner of Maringouin and Heron. They also still had live entertainment on Sunday nights. According to the marquee, this week's singer was billed as The Chanteuse Acadienne, Christy Marchand.

  Blue Bayou was a pretty, peaceful town where children rode bikes down quiet, tree-canopied streets, where mothers pushed baby carriages, and the residents sat on front galleries beneath lazily circling ceiling fans to sip sweet tea in the afternoons and watch their neighbors.

  It was the kind of small rural southern town where Andy Griffith could have been elected sheriff, if Andy had only spoken French. Dani hadn't realized how much she'd missed it until she'd come home.

  The lush green town square was flanked on one end by the Church of the Holy Assumption, its twin Gothic spires lancing high into the sky. The silver rain clouds had gathered around the stone towers like pigeons flocking together for the night.

  The opposite side of the park was anchored by the majestic Italianate courthouse, boasting tall stone steps, gracefully arched windows, and lacy cast-iron pilasters. It had served as a hospital during the War Between the States, and if one knew where to look, it was possible to find minie balls still lodged in the woodwork.

  A red, white, and blue Acadian flag hung below the U.S. and state flags on a towering pole, and a bronze statue of Captain Jackson Callahan—a local boy who'd risen above his Irish immigrant status by joining the mostly Irish 6th Louisiana Volunteer Infantry known as the Confederate Tigers—graced the lawn.

  The soldier who'd begun the war as Private Callahan had fought in virtually every Eastern front battle from the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 under Stonewall Jackson to the hand-to-hand warfare at Fort Stedman, amazingly returning home in one piece after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in 1865.

  The fact that the former ragtag orphan, who'd grown up wild and barefoot in Blue Bayou's Irish swamp, had, by means of battlefield promotions, returned a captain, had been considered by many to be a miracle.

  “That's a cool horse,” Matt said.

  “I always thought so. A lot of people believe that touching his nose before entering the courthouse brings good luck.”

  “Can we try it?”

  “After we get moved into the apartment, we'll come back,” Dani promised. Unfortunately, the horse she'd so loved to sit on as a child hadn't worked its lucky magic for her father.

  It was in this courthouse that Judge Victor Dupree had sat on the bench for decades, earning a reputation as a hard-line law-and-order advocate whose tendency to throw the book at those convicted in his courtroom had earned him the nickname of Maximum Dupree. It was also in this courthouse he'd been convicted of bribery and perjury and sentenced to seven years in Angola prison.

  Dani couldn't resist glancing up at her father's courtroom window. Her heart hitched; tears misted her vision. Blinking to clear her gaze, she reminded herself of the list she'd made while sitting in her kitchen in Fairfax. Her first priorities were to get settled into their new home and enroll Matt in school. Next she'd reopen the library. Then, once those items had been crossed off, she'd tackle the problem with her father.

  Fortunately, the storm had passed quickly.
Only the occasional drop of rain splattered on the windshield. She turned off the wipers, deciding to take the fact that she wouldn't have to be lugging things into the apartment in a downpour as a portent of more good luck.

  The library was two blocks away, on Magnolia Avenue. Dani could have driven there blindfolded. She turned the corner, only to find the street blocked by barricades and the patrol car she'd feared earlier, its emergency lights casting the scene in a surrealistic blur.

  This couldn't be happening! She stared in disbelief as she watched the arcs of water spraying from shiny brass nozzles onto the top floor of the three-story redbrick building with the wood and brass Blue Bayou Library sign on the lawn. Men in helmets and heavy yellow jackets dragged heavy hoses, wielded axes, and shouted out orders.

  “Wow. Is that our apartment?” Matt asked.

  Dani didn't immediately answer. She could barely breathe.

  “Wait here,” she said. “I'll be right back.”

  “But, Mom . . .”

  “I said, wait here and do not get out of this car,” she instructed in the no-nonsense I'm-your-mother-and-you-will-obey-me tone she hardly ever had to use with her normally obedient son. “Do you understand me?”

  “Geez, yeah. You don't have to yell.”

  “I'm sorry.” She leaned back and cupped his freckled face between her palms. “I'm sorry I snapped at you.”

  “Don't worry, Mom.” His defensive mood passed, as swiftly as the earlier storm, and he gave her a reassuring smile. “Everything'll be okay.”

  It was the same thing he'd said the day the moving men had taken his father's things from their house. Her husband had always chosen his career over his family. And in doing so had inadvertently created an intensely strong bond between his wife and son.

  “I know, darling.” Dani gave him a quick kiss, ruffled his hair, reminded him once again to stay put, then waded into the breach.

  The fire had drawn a crowd, the spectators watching her dreams go up in smoke with the same fascination they might gather at a train wreck. Dani's feet crunched on the broken glass strewn over the slickly wet pavement like shards of ice. A sooty-faced fireman sat on the wide running board of the fire truck, drinking in hits of oxygen.

  “What happened?”

  He lifted the mask. “Dunno. Probably a lighting strike.” His red-rimmed eyes swept the scene as he stood up and fastened his yellow helmet. “Or electrical.” They both looked up at the flames licking from the shattered windows. “That's up to the fire marshal to determine.”

  Sparks wheeled like orange stars in the darkening sky as he clapped down his face shield and walked away.

  Dani's hammering heart sank to her wet sneakers. Just when she didn't think she could feel any worse, she viewed a man wearing the brown uniform and shiny badge of authority swaggering toward her and imagined she heard the warning rattle of a snake's tail over the roar of water. Which was ridiculous. Blue Bayou's sheriff had never been a man to give his adversary any warning.

  “Well, if it ain't little Danielle Dupree.” His belly strained against the front of his khaki uniform, spilling over his belt. There were dark circles of sweat beneath his arms and red hot sauce stains on his brown tie. He was, Dani thought, the antithesis of Andy Griffith. “Fancy meetin' you here.”

  The smile beneath his shaggy black mustache held more smirk than warmth. If an alligator could smile, it'd look like exactly like Sheriff Jimbo Lott.

  “Sheriff Lott.” Voice mild, she resisted rubbing the tension knotted at the back of her neck.

  “Any special reason you're at my fire scene?”

  The flat-lidded reptilian gaze crawling over her managed to be both sexual and detached at the same time. He'd looked at her the same way years ago, when he'd caught her with Jack out at the Callahans' camp and forced her to get dressed in the glare of his patrol car's spotlight.

  When she couldn't quite restrain an involuntary shiver at both the memory and the intimidation in those hooded eyes, his thick lips curved in another sly innuendo of a smile.

  “It happens to be my fire scene, as well.” Her eyes stung from the smoke. “I was supposed to be moving into that apartment tonight.”

  “That a fact?” He didn't sound surprised. “Guess that apartment wasn't as bad as some of them shacks out in the swamp, but it sure don't seem much like a place a U.S. congressman's widow would wanna live, either.” The flashing lights from the fire trucks shadowed, then highlighted a cruel, self-indulgent face and weak double chins. “Looks like its gonna end up one helluva mess. Lucky you hadn't moved your stuff in yet. Would've been tragic if that fire'd started later tonight, when you and your boy were sleepin'. Y'all would've been lucky to escape alive.”

  She'd never fainted in her life, but as she imagined Matt trapped in the third floor apartment with those hungry flames and that suffocating, stinging smoke, Dani's head began to spin.

  “Yep,” he continued as she braced a hand against the side of the fire truck and fought against the swirling vertigo, “too bad you've come all this way, only to have to turn right around and go home.”

  She drew in a breath that burned. “This is my home, Sheriff.”

  “You've been gone from Blue Bayou for a lotta years, Missy. And it's not like you've got family here, with your daddy locked away up in Angola. Things change, even in these backwaters. Power shifts. Ever hear the old sayin' 'bout folks not bein' able to go home again?”

  “Yes.” The challenge was a like a cold wet slap in the face. Dani welcomed the anger that steamrollered over her earlier shock. She tossed up her chin. “I've just never believed it.”

  She was about to cut this unsatisfactory conversation short when someone called her name. Turning around, she saw Nate Callahan leap the black-and-white police barricade. He could not have been more welcome if he'd been wearing a suit of shining armor and riding astride a white stallion.

  “Are you okay?” He took both her hands in his, comforting her the way he once had so many years ago, after his brother had broken her heart.

  “I'm fine,” she lied. “But I should get back to Matt.” Another window exploded; shards of glass rained down.

  “More'n likely your boy's having himself a high old time,” Lott drawled. “Never did meet a kid who didn't get off on fires.”

  Dani speared the sheriff with a disgusted look, then turned her back on him.

  “Why don't you introduce me to your son?” Nate suggested mildly, ignoring Lott as well.

  Her throat was raw from smoke and pent-up emotion. As he put a steadying hand around her waist, walking back with her to the wagon, Dani tried not to weep.

  What on earth was she going to do now?

  The first thing was get hold of herself. This wasn't the end of the world. She'd think of something. After all, hadn't she'd surprised a lot of people, including herself, by not crumbling when Lowell had left her?

  She'd picked herself up, turned her part-time library work into a fulfilling career, and had been in the process of building a new life for herself and Matt when that damn piano had changed things yet again.

  Dani stiffened her resolve and pasted a reassuring look on her face for her son. This fire was admittedly a setback, but nothing she couldn't overcome. She would not allow herself to think otherwise.

  Watching the genuine warmth with which Nate greeted Matt, Dani wasn't surprised he'd grown up to be mayor. He'd always been the boy everyone gravitated to at parties, the one all eyes automatically went to when he was out on a ball field, either tossing spiral passes or diving off third base to steal a home run from an opposing team's batter. By the time he was nominated for senior class president, not a student in the school considered running against him.

  All the girls had harbored crushes on him. All but her. Dani only had eyes for his brother, Bad Jack.

  “Looks like we've got ourselves more company,” Nate observed as a pink Cadillac with mile-long tailfins harkening back to Detroit's glory days pulled up, Elvis's Blue Suede Sh
oes blasting from the radio.

  A woman in her sixties, sporting a towering birdnest of orange hair, climbed out of the driver's seat. A cartoon drawing of a fighting crawdad standing on its tail, claws outstretched in a boxer's stance, adorned the front of her purple caftan. Red plastic crawdad earrings flashed with hidden battery-operated lights. Orèlia Vallois was a retired nurse who'd worked in her physician husband's office; Dani could not remember ever seeing her in traditional nurse's white.

  “Why, if it isn't pretty little Danielle Dupree, come back home where she belongs,” the deep contralto boomed out.

  Orèlia had always been one of Dani's favorite people. Warm-hearted and outspoken, she'd gone out of her way to treat Judge Dupree's motherless daughter special. She was also one of a handful of people who knew Dani's deepest, darkest secret.

  “It's so good to see you,” Dani said, grateful for a gift in the midst of disaster.

  “It's grand to have you back home again. Comment c'est?”

  “It's not exactly a banner day.”

  Behind the rose-tinted lenses of rhinestone-framed cat's-eye glasses, dark eyes, enhanced with a bold streak of purple color that matched the caftan, offered a warm welcome. “Viens ici, bébé, an' give Orèlia a hug.”

  After nearly squeezing the breath out of Dani, Orèlia gave her a quick once-over, then studied Matt, who was observing the gregarious nurse as if she were some sort of wondrous alien from a Saturday morning cartoon. Dani knew he'd never seen anything like Orèlia Vallois in Fairfax County.

  “An' this must be your darling fil.”

  “This is Matt.” Dani placed a hand atop his head, absently smoothing the cowlick. “Matt, this is Mrs. Vallois.”

  “Hello, Ma'am” he answered with his best Fox Run manners.

  “Aren't you the mos' handsome young man Blue Bayou's seen in a long time.” She pinched Matt's cheek. “You have your maman's mouth, Monsieur Matthew.”