by Tom Cooper
The township also came to life. In backyards skiffs were reared up on cinder blocks for repairs. Along dock pilings nets were stretched like colossal webs and shrimpers worked at mending them with spidery fingers. The talk in the Barataria buzzed about the imminent shrimping season: where the shrimp would be, how long the season would last, who would catch the biggest hauls. No matter what they said on television, no matter what crap BP said in their commercials, everyone knew the oil was still in the water and would be for a long time. But people were buying Louisiana shrimp and oysters again and it seemed that Jeanette had already weathered the worst.
Wes worked day and night to have the boat done by the end of April. Late one afternoon he’d just finished painting the boat’s name on the stern—Cajun Gem—when his father stepped up beside him and looked over the boat.
“I’ll trade you my boat for this one,” he said. He drank from a sweating bottle of Abita beer.
“I bet you would.”
“That cypress smells good.”
“It does.”
“What else you gotta do with it?”
Wes took a beat to respond. “I think it’s done.”
His father nodded, hands on his hips. “Then let’s take her out.”
“Now?”
“Sure.”
“Paint’s still drying.”
His father laid his palm on the hull. “Feels pretty dry to me.”
“I want to look it over.”
“You’ve been looking this thing over for three fuckin’ years.”
Wes picked at his eyebrow. “I don’t wanna rush.”
“Three years ain’t rushing.”
“It’s got no gas in it.”
His father fought back a grin, enjoying Wes’s unease. “I put gas in it last night.”
Wes shook his head and eyed the boat doubtfully. “We don’t even have a trailer big enough. How would we get it to the water?”
“Same way they used to back in the day.”
Wes’s father called Teddy Zeringue and Davey Morvant. Wes called his friends Archie and Donny. Soon there were twelve people in the backyard. Twenty. Forty. Faces Wes had known his whole life, friends and neighbors. Chuck Jones, George Ledet, Elmer Guidry. Several guys Wes knew from high school, and a few brought their brothers and sisters. Wes saw Lucy Arcinaux, the jolie blonde he’d dated for a few lucky weeks. Young mothers brought their screaming and giggling toddlers. Long-necked beers were passed around as the crowd gathered in the rusty light of the evening sun.
After a while Wes climbed the port ladder and everyone gathered under the boat and took its weight on their shoulders. Together they counted to three, their voices loud and roaring, one voice. With a mighty shove they heaved the Cajun Gem off the oil drums. Then the tide of people carried Wes and his boat. Across the yard, past the house, into the street and toward the bayou. They passed houses where people stared from their porches, and some of them crossed their yards and joined the crowd. The Thibodaux, the Joneses, the Theriots. Soon there were fifty people, then seventy-five, loud and laughing and joking, carrying the one-ton boat down the two-lane street.
It was almost gloaming when Wes standing on the bow could see the glowing mirror-gray water of the bayou. The crowd carried him across a field of bulrush and bright blue dayflowers. They crossed the narrow hem of shoreline and in their clothes waded into the water with the boat on their shoulders like venerators in a solemn rite. At first Wes was worried that the boat would sink as soon as they let it go. He was filled with relief when the Cajun Gem floated sure and free on the water.
Wes started the engine and it sounded with a loud purr. He geared the boat and eased into the bayou. It was growing dark, but there was still enough daylight to see the faces in the crowd watching him as he drifted away. He spotted his father, but Wes was already too far out to read his face. He knew him only by the wiry shape of his body, the hunched set of his shoulders. What did you call feeling nostalgic for a moment before it was over? He didn’t know, but he felt that feeling now as he cast further out into the Barataria. As he drifted farther he couldn’t tell one face from another, nor soon after that man from woman, then man from child, until finally he was so far away that who he was looking at could have been anyone. Anyone at all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my brother Michael Cooper for your very early readings of this book, and for your indispensable advice. Thank you to my partner, Kathy Conner, for the same. Both of you made this novel what it is. I’m lucky to have such kindred spirits by my side. Thank you to my grandparents, rest in peace, for all those trips to the bookstore and for so many other things. Thank you to old friends Joe Capuano and Claudia Sanchez and Richard Pearlman for sticking around all these years. Thank you to new friends Joe Wall and Brigette Paladon and Tyler Shepard for always lending a willing ear. Thank you to Reggie Poche and Cass Cross for your perspicacious readings of my early drafts. Thank you to my mentors for your wisdom and encouragement. Thank you to my agent, Lorin Rees, for believing in this book from the beginning. Thank you to Nate Roberson for the same. Thank you to Danielle Crabtree, Rachel Rokicki, Jay Sones, Rebecca Welbourn, and the rest of the team at Crown for working so tirelessly on my behalf. Thank you, reader.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Cooper was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and now lives in New Orleans, where he writes and teaches. His fiction has appeared in dozens of magazines and anthologies, including Oxford American, Gulf Coast, and Mid-American Review. The Marauders is his first novel.
