by Sandra Hill
Daniel didn’t know what was more outrageous. That Tante Lulu, who had to be ninety if she was a day, read Cosmo, or that she was discussing his virility, or lack thereof.
But her brain had already veered in another direction. “You can leave, Daniel.”
As if I need her permission!
“Aaron will stay with me.”
Aaron’s face took on an expression of alarm.
Good!
“Aaron kin come back ta town with me when Charmaine comes ta pick me up. I gots ta introduce him ta his neighbor first.”
“You do?” Aaron asked.
And wasn’t it odd that she needed to introduce just Aaron, not the two of them? Not that he wanted to be included in any of her plans.
“Yep. Del Dugas. A farmer about a half mile away. Old man Dugas bought the farm back fifty years or so, but he died five years ago leavin’ the place ta Del.” She was grinning at Aaron as she spoke.
Aaron looked as if he was about to puke. “You think I would be interested in a farmer? I’m not gay.”
Tante Lulu chuckled. “Ever’one this side of the Mason-Dixon line knows that. Yer brother, on the other hand . . . Ooooh, I forgot. I brought you boys a house-warmin’ gift.” She pointed to the far end of the ground level verandah where a dismantled St. Jude birdbath sat in the shadows. He knew it was St. Jude because everyone who ever met Tante Lulu found out within minutes that he was her favorite saint. A regular fan club she had going. The statue would probably be six feet tall. “Charmaine helped me unload it. I figger ya kin put it in the rose garden.”
“What rose garden?” he and Aaron both asked.
“The one over there,” she said, pointing to a jungle on the east side of the house, opposite from the garconniére. “Also, before ya start, mebbe ya should hire Jem Hawkins, the snake catcher.”
It would seem Tante Lulu had her finger in a lot of restoration pies. Surprise, surprise. And was it a coincidence that the folks she talked into restoring these old dumps . . . uh, plantations . . . were usually dumb Yankees? No surprise there, either.
“Jem’s nickname is Stinky ’cause he allus smells like swamp water, bless his heart,” Tante Lulu continued. “Stinky sez ya got twelve different species of snake colonies here.”
Oh, that was just what Daniel needed to hear! Aaron wasn’t too thrilled, either. “We have colonies?” he choked out.
Then Tante Lulu, whose brain skittered from one subject to another like popcorn over an open fire, turned to Aaron again. “Mebbe ya oughta go comb yer hair and tuck in yer shirt afore we go over ta the Dugas farm. If ya wanna ask fer a date, ya gotta be spiffied up a bit. But not all freaky neat lak Daniel. Ya gotta be laid-back cool. Lak that Matthew McConaughey fellow in the car ads, or Richard Simmons, of course.”
McConaughey, Daniel could see, but the other? It boggled the mind, but Tante Lulu considered the reclusive exercise guru to be a “real hottie.” She’d told them so on more than one occasion.
“I can get my own dates, thank you very much,” Aaron said.
“Did I fergit ta tell ya . . . Del is short fer Delilah?”
Daniel couldn’t believe how much he was enjoying his brother’s discomfort, even if the old bat had called him “freaky.”
“Delilah?” Aaron frowned. “No, you didn’t mention that the farmer was a lady. But I’m still not—”
“Oh, and it’s not the usual kind of farm.”
He and Aaron exchanged glances, knowing there was bound to be a zinger to come.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What does the sweet Delilah raise on her farm?” Aaron asked with a sigh of resignation.
“Alligators.”
ZING!
“Ya ever seen a lady wrestle an alligator?”
DOUBLE ZING!
Daniel had to see this! No way was he heading back to his bayou fishing camp now. He got his jollies any way he could these days (translated: not very often), and watching Tante Lulu pull off a love connection for his brother promised to be amusing, especially when her Cajun cupid’s dart involved a female alligator wrestler. Oh, boy! This was almost as good as the time Aaron had a blind date with a mortician.
Aaron, who was usually game for anything new, was muttering, “Not a chance!” Daniel wasn’t at all surprised to hear his brother claim a sudden emergency and hightail it off the plantation.
Leaving Daniel with the cagey matchmaker from hell.
Chapter Six
Who says busybody is a bad word? . . .
Louise Rivard’s niece Charmaine was driving her home to her cottage on Bayou Black after visiting the “boys” at Bayou Rose. Watching the passing scenery through her open car window, Louise mused that she must have traveled this way ten thousand times, maybe fifty thousand, her humble home having been in the Rivard family for generations. It was a ride Louise always enjoyed.
The memories . . . ah, the memories this road evoked! Many of them involved her fiancé Phillipe Prudhomme and warm summer days in his old Triumph sports car, the radio blaring out “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” That was 1942, of course, after Phillipe got drafted into the war. The Big War. Phillipe, bless his soul, died on D-Day.
Enough of that! Otherwise, she would be weeping. Even after all these years.
The landscape along the two-lane road which ran parallel to her beloved bayou was like a step back in time. Old peeling billboards and painted wood Burma Shave signs that had been restored by some misguided parish historical society member. Really, there had to be more important relics of the past.
She sighed and continued to watch the passing scenery in silence. Cajun style houses, including some on stilts, and the occasional rice plantation from another era. A few shanties and run-down trailers. Boudreaux’s General Store, the fish and bait shop whose owner also sold Avon beauty products, a landscape company that had a special running on crushed oyster shells and mulch, some small, blue-collar cottages, like hers, that had been built a long time ago by men and women involved in the fishing industry, whether in the swamp or out on the Gulf.
The best thing of all about living here in Southern Louisiana was the lush flowers and trees that grew in the sub-tropical climate. Magnolias the size of dinner plates, picturesque live oak trees dripping gray Spanish moss. Fruits and vegetables that grew so well that a person didn’t hardly need to go to the grocery store. And of course there was the ageless, coffee-colored bayou stream.
“You’re awful quiet today, auntie,” Charmaine said suddenly.
“I was just thinkin’. Nothin’ important,” Louise said. “But there is somethin’ I wanna discuss with you. Charmaine, honey, we gotta have us a powwow.”
“Lawdy! A powwow?”
Ignoring Charmaine’s question, Louise mused, again, on another subject now. I must be in a musin’ kind of mood today. “Funny, ain’t it, how over the years so many people come ta refer ta me as Tante Lulu, or Aunt Lulu, that I think of mahself in the same way?”
“That, and busybody, bless yer heart, auntie.”
“Yep. An’ they say it lak it’s a bad thing. ‘You old busybody!’ Frankly, I’m more pee-owed at bein’ called old.”
Charmaine arched her brows at her. No one could do a good eyebrow arching better than Charmaine. Hers were “artificially enhanced.”
“Doan ya get me started on the age bizness. Yer only as old as ya feel, and I’m feelin’ ’bout forty and frisky.”
Charmaine arched her brows again, but the girl knew enough not to say anything.
Anyone under fifty was a girl to Louise.
Charmaine was probably thinking “Lawdy!” That used to be Louise’s favorite expression before Charmaine took it over. Let her! She’d be taking over a lot more than that before long, if Louise had her way. But she wasn’t about to say that out loud . . . yet. Instead, she said, “I know I got a few years under mah girdle, but I doan let that get me down, lak some folks with puffy lips and foreheads so tight they cain’t hardly blink.”
“Don’t look at me. I haven’
t had any work done.”
“I was thinkin’ ’bout Flora Mae Benoit. When I saw her goin’ ta communion at Our Lady of the Bayou Church, I almost fell off mah pew. Fish lips! Thass all I’m gonna say on the subject. And didja watch them Academy Awards las’ time? Half the actresses, and even some of the actors, looked lak their skin was pulled off their faces and tied in the back with a rubber band. One clip, and there’d be skin flyin’ everywhere. The idjits are allus lookin’ fer the fountain of youth, when they’s already drownin’ in the fountain of dumb.”
Charmaine blinked at Louise’s long tirade, then asked, “Auntie, yer so skinny. Why would ya be wearin’ a girdle?”
As if that’s the most important thing I just said! Didn’t the girl listen?
“Ta hold up mah folds, silly. When ya get old, yer skin kinda sags inta folds, dontcha know? Not that I’m old, mind you. Jist ripe.”
“Lak a peach?” Charmaine giggled.
“Zackly!”
“A peach with folds?”
“Well, mebbe more lak an orange. All those dimples. Some folks sez cellulite is jist butt dimples, what spread to yer thighs.”
Charmaine grinned and shook her head, as if Louise were hopeless.
She wasn’t. There was method in her madness. Always had been.
How did they get on the subject of age, anyhow? Well, she couldn’t blame Charmaine. Not really. For some reason, Louise’s mind seemed to bounce from one subject to another these days, like fleas on a mangy dog, and she needed to speak what popped up at the moment, lest she forget. Usually, she then forgot her original thought. Oh, right. Now, she remembered. “Back ta our powwow . . .”
“A powwow? Lawdy!” Charmaine said, and she didn’t mean it in a nice way.
Lawdy was a strange kind of word. Louise realized that she missed it. The word could mean, “Lawdy, that is such a good idea!” Or “Lawdy! Are you crazy?”
“Are we gonna enter a belly dancin’ contest again?” Charmaine asked. “We haven’t done that in ages, but I don’t think I’m in shape for that anymore.”
Hah! Who is she kidding?
Charmaine had been Miss Louisiana at one time, and even now, in her forties, she looked darned good . . . and knew it. Today, she wore a red halter top that stopped just above her belly button where a little diamond stud sparkled, like a blinking neon sign saying, “Look at me! Look at me!” Her white capri pants might have been painted on, they was so tight. There were no panty lines, for sure, and no shadow at the crotch. She must be wearing a thong, or maybe she got one of them Brazil thingees that were offered by one of the five beauty salons and the ranch spa that Charmaine owned.
Louise was thinking about trying one herself (the Brazil thingee, not the thong. Thongs jist got caught up in her crack). But she had this odd reservation about being hairless down there. Some folks made sure they always wore clean underwear in case they had to make a sudden trip to the emergency room. She, on the other hand, didn’t want to arrive at the Pearly Gates and have to explain to St. Peter why she . . . (Well, you get the picture.) Better yet, how would she explain it to Phillipe? The only Brazil they knew about back then had been the country . . . and Carmen Miranda. In those days, women just sprinkled on a bit of talcum powder . . . snow on the forest, so to speak . . . and that was that. In any case, she didn’t have much left down there anyhow.
Back to Charmaine. Her dark brown, almost black, curls were piled on top of her head (The higher the hair, the closer to God, dontcha know?) in a deliberately sexy mess, and she had a bunch of gold chains with dangly pearls hanging from her ears like chandeliers. Her white wedgie sandals, on top of all that hair, made her about six feet tall. A self-proclaimed bimbo with class, that’s what Charmaine always said. That, and bimbo with a brain. Same thing.
Daniel LeDeux about went bug-eyed when Charmaine had first stepped out of her car back at the plantation. Charmaine had that effect on men, all men, but especially her husband Rusty. That would be Raoul Lanier, who had to be the best-looking man in Louisiana. Whoo-boy! Louise even got a tickle down yonder looking at him. When he walked down the street in those tight jeans and scuffed boots and cowboy hat, the ladies about swooned. Not that he noticed. The boy . . . who was on his way to fifty now, too . . . had eyes only for Charmaine, which was as it should be. While Charmaine’s favorite expression was “Lawdy!”, Rusty’s was “Mercy!” and he was usually saying it when he saw his wife in one of her get-ups.
“No, we are not entering any more belly dancing contests,” Louise said. “Not that I couldn’t. The last time we did any belly dancin’, you decided ta become a ‘born again virgin.’ And ya married fer the fifth time.”
“I only had four husbands, Rusty being mah first and last,” Charmaine said indignantly. Her many marriages were a sore point with Charmaine. “And the other three didn’t count since it turned out mah first divorce from Rusty was never valid.”
“Don’t be pitchin’ a hissy fit. I was just teasin’.”
“Are we gonna put a voodoo curse on someone, then? Powwow sounds sort of hoo-dooey.”
Louise gave her the stink eye. Charmaine knew better than that. Being a devout Catholic and even devouter follower of St. Jude, Louise didn’t believe in none of that voodoo-hoodoo.
Louise swatted her on the arm with a bunch of cattails she’d picked down by the bayou at Bayou Rose just before they’d left. Cattails were good for just about anything in her traiteur business . . . a natural antiseptic, pain reliever, blood coagulant, and so on, but they also made good eating, her favorite being the roots sliced raw into salads.
There wasn’t much that Louise didn’t know about bayou plants and how they could feed and heal the human body. She’d learned at the knees of her mother and grandmother, who had been folk healers, too.
“Sorry,” Charmaine said, even though she didn’t mean it, not one bit. Else, she wouldn’t be grinning her way like a drunk possum. “But, ya gotta admit, auntie, Native American powwows do usually involve singin’ and dancin’ jist lak voodoo rituals.”
“Powwow also means a planning session. I do declare, Charmaine, cain’t ya jist listen?”
“I’m listenin’. And stop shakin’ those cattails around. Yer gonna make a mess in mah car.”
Hah! The inside of Charmaine’s ess-you-vee was messy enough as it was with her makeup case and a Charmaine’s Health Spa carry bag on the console between them, and odds and ends of beauty salon pamphlets and samples and such lying on the floor and backseat, even clipped to the sun visor and in a cup holder. Despite those scented products, the vehicle smelled a bit like cow poop which was understandable, considering that Charmaine lived on a ranch. In fact, the car doors on both sides had the logo “Triple L Ranch” imprinted on them.
“Time fer some matchmakin’,” Louise declared. “Thass what we’re gonna powwow about. I been hearin’ thunderbolts in mah dreams, which is a sure sign love is on the horizon. Plus, I’m bored.”
Charmaine pulled into the crushed shell driveway of Louise’s cottage, which originally was built in the old Cajun style . . . an exterior of half logs with a chinking of bousillage, or fuzzy mud, a mixture of clay, Spanish moss, and crushed clam shells. Later, the structure had been stuccoed over. Then last year, she’d painted it a pretty yellow color with green shutters and a green metal roof. The colors made her happy.
Rock-edged flower beds surrounded the house, and a wire-mesh fence enclosed neat rows of her vegetable and herb gardens. And then there was a stretch of lawn that led down to the water’s edge, centered by a St. Jude birdbath and a spreading fig tree heavy with ripe fruit that would soon have to be picked. She saw many fig dishes on her horizon: roasted figs with shallots, fig jams and preserves, and her MawMaw’s fig cake topped with caramel icing and chopped pecans. She even liked figs in her salads, along with the slivers of cattail roots. Yum!
This place had been a refuge for Louise after Phillipe’s death, but also to all those who’d come under her maternal wing in the decades si
nce.
Useless came shuffling up the lawn, seeming to sniff the air.
“Doan be givin’ the critter no Cheez Doodles t’day. He’s gettin’ fat.”
“A fat alligator?”
“Uh-huh! I need ta find that boy a girlfriend, and it ain’t gonna do no good if he’s got a big ol’ gut. René thinks Useless is a young fella of about thirty. Gators live ta be fifty or so, y’know. Mebbe even a hundred. Of course, that was before that Swamp People show on TV what makes all Cajuns seem lak dumb rednecks. They’s gonna make gators as extinct as dinosaurs.”
Charmaine rolled her eyes and grabbed for Louise’s carry bag. “Lawdy!” she exclaimed as they both exited the car, Louise using her cattails to shush away the gator. “What have you got in this bag? It’s so heavy.”
“Nothin’ special. Mah makeup. Mah herbs. Mah wallet. Mah cell phone. Mah revolver.”
“Whaaat? I thought Luc confiscated that weapon.”
“He did. I bought another one. A gal cain’t be too careful with all the druggies around t’day. Besides, it came in handy las’ week when I had ta shoot a water moccasin in mah shower. By the by, kin Rusty come by one day and repair a broken tile fer me?”
“Sure. But why didn’t ya just whack it with a shovel, lak ya taught us ta do?”
“’Cause it was bigger than mah shovel. I wasn’t takin’ no chances. What if it weren’t totally dead from mah whackin’ and I tripped over mah St. Jude doorstop and then it bit me? I could be deader’n a swamp stump before anyone came and found me.”
“Tante Lulu! That’s dangerous. I worry about you being here all alone.”
Louise admitted, “It might not have been a water moccasin. It was prob’ly a water snake. But it was big.”
Charmaine’s mouth was gaping open. But then she snapped it shut and asked, “Who’s your matchmaking target this time . . . I mean, who needs matchmaking? Daniel, or Aaron? Or is it Simone LeDeux, that cop we met at Tee-John’s wedding before she went off to Chicago. I heard she’s back in town.”
