Courir De Mardi Gras

by Lynn Shurr

  ****

  All week long, they shared the intimacy of two people keeping a secret. Once, she’d had a friend who had gotten pregnant. They kept the secret for a month until the girl made her decision and married the father. All during that month, the two of them would smile suddenly at each other and squeeze hands at odd moments to give reassurance everything would turn out right. She found herself doing this with George, and he responded with quick hugs.

  To her relief, no more discrepancies turned up in the inventory, though she did come across some touching items while doing Virginia Lee’s room. A little section of her files covered her collection of figurines. All of them were gifts from George, starting when he was six years old and continuing up until the year of his mother’s death. The first figure listed—a pottery milkmaid, real discount store junk with sloppily painted features and “Made in China” stamped on the base. Virginia Lee duly noted the value as one dollar and the source as “Georgie.”

  The last figure in the collection, a contemporary Royal Doulton porcelain lady executing a graceful curtsy, Virginia valued at $250, a gift “from George.” By the time Suzanne checked off each card, her eyes had misted over for the small boy giving his first gift and the young man spending $250 he could not afford on his dying mother. That evening when she had a nightcap with George in the Eastlake Room, Suzanne pressed his hand two times and sighed once, wishing she felt more than sympathy for this really nice guy. George kissed her on the forehead outside her bedroom door when they went upstairs for the night.

  No one would call George a talker. During their evenings together, he perused the newspaper or buried himself in some incredibly boring accounting magazine. She read a paperback romance she’d brought along for pleasure and sipped her drink. Now and again, she studied the portrait of Jacques St. Julien astride his white horse. She could make better sense of it now because an early Mardi Gras approached.

  The little town came alive with excitement over the Courir. According to Birdie, the riders met every night at Joe’s Lounge, planned their costumes and their route, arranged for the band, the chicken gumbo supper, and the fais-do-do where everyone danced until midnight. Suzanne could see an aura of that excitement and joie de vivre in the painting. What a shame that men who were good to their wives and mothers were seldom interesting. Why couldn’t she fall in love with a sweet kind of fella instead of a rat like Barry Cashman? She had no answer to that.

  ****

  George took her along the next Sunday when he went to get a chicken for the gumbo. He claimed he hated the Courir, a bunch of drunken rowdies, he said sounding like an old man. But the riders were sure to come to Magnolia Hill anyhow and would tear up the lawn with their horses if he had no chicken to throw. He overpaid an elderly black woman on St. Julien Street for an old rooster whose left eye had been pecked out by a younger rival. George fed the bird lavishly on cracked corn for its remaining two days of life.

  As for Suzanne, she craved some excitement and a little escape from heavy secrets and troubled finances. On Mardi Gras Day when every business in Port Jefferson put up its shutters and closed down, she watched from Virginia Lee’s window for the approach of the Mardi Gras riders. When they came, they came grandly, charging down the shell drive on horses, black, bay, and pinto, their Capitaine riding a big palomino, leaving behind their slower entourage of wagons and a couple of tour buses. By the time the riders circled the house, the wagons had pulled up—one for the band, one for the beer and other beverages, and one for the captured chickens, donated sausage, and bags of rice and flour.

  She went down to the kitchen door to join George. He wore a big flannel shirt, baggy jeans, and wrap-around sunglasses as if he were also in disguise. Clearly, he did not enjoy the event. The Dugas Boys pumped out the Mardi Gras song which they must have played dozens of times that day judging by the number of live chickens in the coops and the coolers full of frozen ones. The riders dismounted and began a burlesque dance.

  Suzanne recognized Hippo Huval by his girth. He wore a maternity top and had a blond wig set in curlers atop his head. Big blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and big red lips adorned his mask. He linked arms and spun ponderously with one of the white-faced clowns having the squatty build of the Patout family. Cowboys and Indians in half masks cavorted together. Keeping order and looking fine in his purple cloak and gray Stetson hat, the Capitaine sat astride his palomino horse by the beer wagon and watched the festivities.

  When the performance ended, Birdie handed over a five-pound bag of rice one of the clowns heaved on top of the others in the supply wagon, and George reluctantly released the one-eyed rooster from its wire cage. Pandemonium broke out as the riders tried to catch that very canny bird. The rooster headed around the house, zigzagging and evading capture. Not wanting to miss a minute, Suzanne followed the chase.

  Once around the building, the rooster fluttered up to the gallery railing and threatened his pursuers with raised hackles and a vicious beak as they tried to shinny up the pillars. The lightest of the Patouts standing on a burly brother’s back nearly reached him. The bird took off, crashed onto the head of Hippo Huval, and after a brief entanglement with the curlers, launched himself into the thicket of magnolia clumps. The riders were on his tail when they stopped dead in their tracks. The rooster gave a triumphant crow from the top of a tree, and a white horse appeared, galloping up the hill from the bayou, its rider dressed all in black from boot toe to gauntlet to the tip of the plume on his hat. Under the hat, a piece of cloth tied pirate-style covered his hair. The upper half of his face hid behind a half mask trailing a swath of inky satin over the rest of his features. Through the holes in the mask, the eyes shone preternaturally blue. Across his broad chest, a golden bugle hung. The wind lifted the rider’s cape, and the lining furled back over his wide shoulders like wings of red flame. He scattered the gang of chicken catchers as easily as a hurricane wind hurls clouds and rode straight for Suzanne. He reached down and heaved her across the saddle.

  She shrieked in the spirit of the moment and asked breathlessly, “Are we going behind the barn for a kiss?”

  The lips pressing against the black cloth did not smile. The dark rider wheeled the horse, cantered down the hill, and raced along the soft edge of the bayou. At first, Suzanne thought what a great story she’d have to tell Dr. Dumont and her friends back home, but when Magnolia Hill vanished behind its trees, and the saddle horn began to dig into her ribs, she suggested, “Don’t you think we should go back now?”

  He did not reply. Silently, he rode on.

  “Okay. Enough is enough. Take off the mask, and let’s go home.”

  No answer.

  She began to struggle a little to see if she could slide off the saddle without killing herself. The rider stopped abruptly, pulled her up and around and tight against his hard chest. He kissed her so suddenly and thoroughly her lips bled slightly when she bit herself. Later, she would notice the bruises the bugle made on her breasts.

  “Come on, man! You can do that some other time,” a voice called from a copse of basswood. A huge black man pushed through the bushes. He wore a pirate’s striped shirt spanning a very buff chest and a red bandanna with eyeholes cut in the fabric. One gold earring dangled from a long, brown lobe. The dark rider tossed Suzanne to him, and the pirate tied her hands loosely behind her back before she even considered fighting. As she gathered air for a scream, the accomplice gagged her lightly with a cotton scarf.

  Her feet remained free. She could still kick—but this was a joke, a Mardi Gras farce concocted over beer in Joe’s Lounge. Let’s scare the newbie. They would probably take her downtown where the entire population of Port Jefferson gathered to await the riders’ return and have a good laugh. So, she did not even consider striking out when they carried her to the boat.

  Once aboard, she was simply too frightened to struggle. The boat, a shallow, narrow old Cajun pirogue, was not much better than a hollow log, worse in fact. Though the weather had been good lately, the ba
you still ran high and rough with eddying, muddy water. She lay very still exactly as the pirate told her to do. The dark rider said nothing, though his very blue eyes glittered beneath the mask as he looked at her body.

  The three started down river, the water moving them swiftly. The two men had trouble steering with their paddles in the strong current. Sooner than Suzanne thought possible, they reached the line of deserted warehouses along the Port Jefferson bank.

  “Over there!” shouted the pirate, gesturing to one derelict building. The dark rider shifted his weight abruptly and dug in with the paddle. The pirogue turned broadside to the heavy flow and flipped. As the river sucked her under, Suzanne heard the pirate scream, “Gawd! I can’t swim.”

  Chapter Eight

  Linc’s story

  Linc and George St. Julien met freshman year at college, but knew of each other way before that. The Port Jefferson Capitaines and the St. Mark Eagles didn’t play basketball in the same league, not by a long shot, but as star players, Linc St. Julien and George shared the headlines of the Sentinel’s sports section often enough before they ever met in reality. After graduation, both signed on with the state university.

  The big southern universities had finally figured out how great desegregation could be. Tall, black guys made up ninety percent of the recruited freshman basketball squad. They wanted guys like Linc St. Julien for sho’, and those black b-ball players needed scholarships and were glad to get them, all tough boys from public schools who wanted out of whatever ghetto or backwater they came from—all except George, him being a privileged sort of kid and so very white.

  The mistake made in the room assignment in the athletes’ dorm was natural enough. Both came from Port Jefferson; both were named St. Julien; both were cursed with weird names their mothers thought up in revenge during long and uncomfortable pregnancies. So, they’d been christened George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, like it or not. The clerk assigning the dormitory rooms wasn’t much of a sports fan and thought she had done a real favor, putting cousins or even twins together. Maybe, she just found the coincidence funny.

  Fortunately, George St. Julien’s parents, strange folks, did not see fit to get George settled at the university. They gave their son the keys to a new convertible, a pat on the back, a peck on the cheek, and sent him off alone with his belongings to the U.

  Linc’s mama spent two hours checking under the cots for dust and bedbugs, putting underwear in the dresser, and hugging and kissing on her only son with tears rolling down her cheeks, before she finally got out of the dormitory and on her way home. About fifteen minutes later, George walked in, carrying his genuine leather luggage. Two tall guys, one black, one white, staring at each other, saying nothing. Then, George threw one case on the free cot and started to unpack. About five minutes after that, Dean Emmet burst into the room apologizing to George all over the place.

  “George St. Julien, grandson of my late good friend, the senator! If I had seen the dormitory assignments earlier, you would not have been placed with this, ah…this gentleman. I believe we have a private room available over in the new building. Shut that suitcase and come with me.”

  The dean was all over George like white on rice, tugging on his arm, his old bulldog jowls quivering and dripping saliva like a hound worrying a big knuckle bone. George stood there immovable.

  Linc knew enough to stay out of the whole business. What did he care where the white dude slept? Up ’til that remark about the new dorm, this place didn’t seem too shabby. Now, he saw it with new eyes. A second later, he saw the rich white kid in a new way, too.

  George said, “If it’s okay with the other gentleman, I’ll stay here,” quietly, just like that.

  Linc kept his mouth shut and nodded, nearly breaking up when the dean recovered and backed out of the room while making some cryptic remark about what Huey Long had done to get votes. From that moment on, Linc knew George St. Julien was okay, but it took the other fellows on the squad a while longer to figure that out.

  The first week or so of practice, the coach just studied each guy’s styles, running the new recruits through drills, splitting them up this way and that. When he called out the first string of the junior varsity squad, George ended up the only white boy in the lineup. Coach placed him as a guard. Linc got center, his old high school position. He wondered how George felt losing the glory spot to a black man. If he was mad, it didn’t show.

  Two other dudes, both black, both centers on their hometown teams, played forward also. They couldn’t keep themselves from roughing up George a little bit, tripping him up now and then, trash talking, calling him Georgie, the Friendly Ghost. Later on when they began to appreciate George for feeding them all those free balls, they confessed they wanted him to look bad so that a buddy of theirs, Lyle Woodrow, would be moved up to first squad. Well, Lyle bombed out on booze and drugs his sophomore year, but George stayed on right along through the championships junior and senior years. Part of his nickname stuck, too. Now, they called him Ghost, the only white guy on the all black starting team, the one who could slip in and steal a ball like he was invisible.

  Being right out of high school, the guys might be forgiven for not seeing much in George at first. They played hard body ball in those public schools. None of the players knew the meaning of finesse until they got to State. Oh, George had done fine as a center for preppy St. Mark’s. He had half a dozen inches on the rest of the boys, but here at State, the guys were all of a height, and George was no pusher. His real strength lay in being wherever a ball got handled sloppy. He’d sort of glide in and hand it off to the forward in the best position. Before the other team knew what happened, the ball headed the other way. He made the whole team look great.

  That got George the respect he deserved because he was kinda hard to like at first. No riot in the locker room, he spent the weekends working on computer programs and advanced algorithms. He was some kind of math genius, at least compared to Linc St. Julien. Most of the team members majored in PE and spent a few hours each fall getting registered in the required courses taught by the easiest profs. One or two of the smart ones, besides George, took communications courses or business classes in case their basketball careers didn’t work out. But, Linc St. Julien could not fail, no sir, not with George passing him balls to drive up the score, point after point.

  Another thing about George no one could figure out was how someone with so much skill on the court never learned to dance, or how anybody on a winning basketball team couldn’t make it with the ladies. About the end of sophomore year, Linc, out of the goodness of his heart, decided to help Ghost with his social skills. First, he tried to convince Ghost to learn how to dance. “Gotta dance to get those girls,” he would say. He could tell George heard and took an interest because his ears turned red, the only part of his face not hidden by a math book.

  “Why, I hear your daddy is the best dancer at the fais-do-do, a hit with all the ladies. I bet you have his talent hidden somewhere in that long, lean body of yours.”

  “I don’t dance,” George said, and he never did.

  Linc had no idea then how it was between George and his daddy, but he began to figure it out. He could tell, though, George still had an interest in the girl part, so he fixed him up with his wild cousin, LaDonna.

  LaDonna was real light-skinned and had dated white boys before. The talk around Port Jefferson said she took after her mother, Auntie Cerise, in more ways than one way, but Linc’s mama wouldn’t hear that kind of talk. She said it cast aspersions on her brother, Uncle Jack, a nice, caramel-colored guy. As a kid, Linc imagined Uncle Jack being cut up by little silver spurs in his side every time someone cast aspersions on his wife or daughter. Deep inside, he doubted he and LaDonna were blood relations. She was too easy to be kin to his mama. So, he didn’t feel too bad about fixing her up with George.

  They had some times with LaDonna being a real warm woman, and George, so grateful he’d let Linc and Doris use the convertible while h
e and LaDonna stayed in the room. When Linc left for the U, Doris, his high school sweetheart, did not take any chances on losing him. She enrolled at Southern close by, desegregated but still mostly black. She majored in Home Economics because she had faith in the power of Linc St. Julien. She wanted to be his wife and a mother by the time he made the majors, not a teacher or a practical nurse who had to earn a living.

  A couple of times, Linc suggested they use the room while George and LaDonna took the convertible, but Doris said no. Definitely, she was the kind of girl a guy married, and well, if a man needed to find a little relief elsewhere now and again because of her being so strict, it was her own fault, Linc figured. Only a man of stone could watch George and LaDonna go at it and get none himself.

  That didn’t last though. The novelty of dating a six foot five white boy wore off over the summer for LaDonna, especially when he started talking marriage. Nothing scared LaDonna, not even Mrs. Jacques St. Julien. She might have accepted one of those pitiful proposals that went on all June, July, and August if she had been ready to settle down, but LaDonna had lots of corn to put up before she closed the kitchen. She went off to learn to be a dental assistant and left George alone at the start of junior year.

  Still, he and Linc had an unforgettable season. George, not a man to mix up sex with the really important things in life, played as good as ever. The sports pages said Linc St. Julien was on fire. They both got a chance to start with the seniors and stayed on all the way to the national championships. Women crawled all over them, black women, white women. Then, Cherry Fontaine, who sort of specialized in winning athletes, discovered George. She’d been dating a senior who got benched early in the season with an injury. George took his place in more ways than one.

  Cherry was a redhead, though that term didn’t do her justice. Really, she had auburn hair, that rich red-brown color that usually comes out of a bottle. Maybe hers did, too, but the shade sure looked good on that long mop of curls hanging down below her shoulder blades in little twists and turns a man just naturally wanted to wrap himself in. Cherry did not go out for cheerleading, but she should have. She jiggled in all the right places when she cheered George on from the stands. Must have made her old boyfriend want to puke to watch it.