Was it an apparition? A grown feu follet? Maybe. Coon studied the man who was busy with his pot.
Coon couldn’t make out Sonnier’s face, but he knew it was him.
“Qui t’après faire icite?”1 Coon asked, wanting to know what Sonnier was doing in the land of the living.
Sonnier kept his head to the pot. Coon knew not to ask a second time. Not with Sonnier. Sonnier was known to hear everything from an ant scratching its feet to tugboats a hundred miles away in the Mississippi. So Coon waited for the answer.
“J’ai venu pour te ’oir,”2 Sonnier said in a low, gravelly voice.
“Quoi moi fait?”3 asked Coon, childlike.
Sonnier laughed but didn’t look at his great-nephew.
“You did everything and nothing at the same time. Tout que chose et rien au même temps,” Sonnier indicted, but Coon didn’t understand.
He took a few steps closer, coming out from the woods into the clearing.
“Fais pas ça!”4 Sonnier ordered.
Coon stopped. Sonnier didn’t want to be bothered and Coon wasn’t going to push it, John Frenchy or no John Frenchy.
“Donnez-moi c’est montre,”5 Sonnier said, raising a bony black finger at the Patek Philippe on Coon’s wrist. Coon quickly took off the watch and threw it near Sonnier, but Sonnier did not lower his finger. Coon knew what Sonnier wanted. He took off the gold tiepin, opal ring, and bracelet, and slung it all over to Sonnier.
Sonnier nodded. “Bon.”
Coon waited as Sonnier leaned over and grabbed Stein’s gold particulars. Sonnier inspected the items with smell, taste, and bite, then threw them in the pot, saving the opal ring for his pinkie.
Sonnier finally stood and faced Coon, eye to eye.
“T’oublié?”6 Sonnier asked.
Coon took a bow. Sonnier followed suit, then they clasped hands and began a coordinated vodou salut on the cold forest floor.
There was a problem that needed to be worked out between Sonnier and Coon. And only Bébé Blanc would bear witness to its solution.
Minutes later, Coon took off through the woods and didn’t stop until he reached the small jail alongside Highway 190 in Elton, miles away. Winded, he hunched over to catch his breath, then looked up at the small jail and laughed uncontrollably. He could still see his older brother Pa-June sticking his arms out of the jail window trying to grab a knife that the sheriff held out to him for amusement. The small jail was loaded with Atakapas from a nearby reservation who got out of line on Saturday nights. Pa-June regularly went to jail on Saturday nights in the 1940s, and the sheriff always got a kick out of starting a fight between Pa-June and whoever was locked up with him.
Yet Coon just continued laughing hysterically at the empty, abandoned jail as night fell in Jefferson Davis Parish. He didn’t even notice that he had pissed on himself—too consumed with nervous laughter and relief to properly weigh the debt.
On that cold night in 1963, John Paul Boudreaux made an error in earnest, seeking the divine for the most selfish of reasons. He was lonely.
* * *
1. “What are you doing here?”
2. “I came to see you.”
3. “What I do?”
4. “Stop that!”
5. “Give me that watch.”
6. “You forgot?”
sixteen
burn to shine (le char et la souris)
Houston, Texas, c. 1984
Once during noon Mass, Black Jesus showed up at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church, reeking of Tanqueray and Aramis cologne. He was shaving in the water fountain behind the sacristy. I saw him. He had on the robe and sandals just like the pictures, except his hair was nappy as hell. He asked me to be an altar boy and told me Santa Claus was a fake. I got a whipping when I told Mother, not because she thought I was lying. She was pissed that I said our Lord and Savior’s hair was nappy.
Jesus wept, then bought some relaxer.
Years later . . .
Kinda pitch-black.
Aramis cologne.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“Hey, hey. Ti’ John.”
“Hey, Father Jerome. Can I holla at you for a minute?”
Pitch-black.
I peed in the water fountain at school while the fourth and fifth graders had assembly at St. Andrew’s. Free to Be . . . You and Me. I took the meaning a little too literally. While Rosey Grier was telling us that it was all right to cry, I stood on a chair and painted my initials with urine in the fount. Rosey was a bitch or a liar. I just couldn’t see his big ass crying. There’s only so much a fifth grader will believe, and after that dice scene with Father and that Sonnier dude at Lil’ Aubrie’s, I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. At every turn, some grown-up was shattering myths left and right. Easter Bunny. Tooth Fairy. Santa Fraud. The whole lot of them were peddled to kids with promises of candy and toys and coins under a pillow, and I had never seen one of them. Fuckin’ frauds. But Black Jesus and Sonnier? They were real, at least to me.
Father Jerome chuckled when I told him about Black Jesus and Sonnier as we walked around the parish hall parking lot for confession while he smoked a cig. By now the parish was his. He owned it. He chain-smoked. He shadowboxed most days at noon, wearing khakis and a white tee until both were drenched. He played music a lot, usually soul and jazz. And he’d jog in the mornings while imagining he was playing a trumpet. Miles Davis on “Gabriel’s Horn.” “Ave Maria” in B flat with Tony Williams on skins, Ron Carter holding down the bass, and Hancock on the eighty-eights.
“Is there such a thing as spirits?” I asked.
“Of course,” Father Jerome answered.
“Do they look like Sonnier?”
“Usually you can’t see them.”
“But I saw Sonnier, he black and got straight hair like my daddy.”
“Well . . .” He shrugged. I think he didn’t know the answer or he wasn’t saying.
“In the CCE book they show the angels and the angels are white. Is that what spirits look like?” I asked. A fair question.
“Ti’ John, I believe spirits come in all colors,” he answered.
“Like crayons?”
“Yeah, like crayons.”
“So why the CCE book only show the white crayons, I mean angels?” I inquired. “Nobody even uses the white crayons.”
“Who knows?” he said.
Apparently not him. He didn’t know much that afternoon. Because I was a repeat offender, the Free-for-Me-to-Pee incident cost ten Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and one Act of Contrition. Not that pricey, considering I wasn’t required to tell the teacher or Mother. I told you Father Jerome was cool.
After stopping by Ralston Liquors for a pint of Chivas Regal and smokes, Father Jerome drove me home. I noticed his gold crucifix ring was gone. A light ring circle on his pinkie suggested that the ring had been recently removed. I mean, damn, J.C. has things to do, I thought. Father Jerome must’ve forgot to put it on. Such piety.
For two weeks I searched for the Burning Wood Man, Sonnier. I wanted to know why he was following me. Father kept a tight lip and claimed ignorance when asked about it. But you said it, Daddy, I protested. Yet he shrugged. I say a lot of things when I’m drinking, Sonny. But he knew. He just wouldn’t say.
My circle of friends at St. Andrew’s had expanded since that day in the office with Mike. Of course there was Russell, but also Mike’s younger cousin, Ricky, and another younger kid named Patrick. We had one semester of elementary school left until middle school. Our interactions were PG, parent-friendly outings like Chuck E. Cheese’s and day trips to AstroWorld. Mother saw to it that none of my St. Andrew’s friends would ever come to my house to play or spend the night. She never said it, but it was understood. And strangely, I didn’t mind.
Mike and Ricky lived in impressive homes in Third Ward with the big trees. Patrick lived in Hiram Clarke, a very quiet, black, middle-class neighborhood that had a lot of pretty girls with curfews. R
ussell lived in Meyerland with the white folks. There was more to see at their homes. Less danger. Either way, those guys didn’t need to come to South Park because shit was about to hit the fan.
Two days after Father told me to ball up my fist after leaving Lil’ Aubrie’s, I started a war with Joe Boy. He lived across the street and I would be in middle school next school year. Some shit was going to have to change before I’d recite my first sixth-grade Pledge of Allegiance.
Since the first day I stepped on Ricky Street, I’d been a target and even before then. It was the light-skinned thing. And of course, it’s not like I had any say in the matter. God puts us in the oven and watches soaps, Mother said. Sometimes He changes the channel or His favorite daytime drama will come on and He forgets what’s in the oven, so people come out looking different. Like cookies or corn bread, it all depends on how you like it. That’s how she explained it to me after she caught me in the bathtub filled with dirt, brown liquid shoeshine, chocolate milk, and hope, wishing I could get darker so the older boys wouldn’t pick on me and call me “white boy.” Don’t laugh, I was six years old. And you know what I asked Santa Claus for Christmas that year? A return trip to the muthafuckin’ oven. Actually, compared to many of my couzains in Louisiana, I was kinda dark, particularly among my Lemelle relations. But it didn’t matter. In Texas, I was light-skinned. It wasn’t my fault, but explain that to South Park. Sure, the girls would pick me to play house and doctor, but the minute that was over, there’d always be a collection of darker boys waiting in the wings for my ass. So I’d just cover my face and take it.
But middle school was coming and I-be-damn if I was gonna get picked on in middle school. That could be catastrophic. I could be a victim for the rest of my life. So I decided, maybe foolhardily, to take on my number one nemesis, Joe Boy.
Summer Sorties for the Communications Guy with the Antenna
At 2:00 P.M. on a clear summer’s day, hot air boiled the bayous, giving St. Augustine’s beard a jaundiced hue, maligning spring flowers until they were reduced to hateful peat, and sucking the air from small animals seeking a shady respite. Hell complete. Hell for the living. Alas, the singing cicadas whose bellyaching reports that all is not lost. The adamant cicada, who insists that life goes on in Hell or at least noontime in the summer months of Houston, which is about the same thing if you’re outside or your AC is broken. Yet the cicada reminds us that we will survive the fire. Just wiggle your belly and make a prayer.
On the eve of the first battle, Mother fried pork chops for supper. Knowing that the next day I would begin my campaign, I loaded up my plate, figuring I’d need all the energy I could muster for ’morrow. I should’ve known better.
Pork gives me strange dreams. That night I dreamt that I was a sniper scoping a brown bunny at the beach on Galveston Island. I couldn’t get the shot off in time because a storm was moving ashore quickly from the angry Gulf. The bunny was stationed in a lifeguard tower with a bolt-action rifle and scope. The bunny spotted me as dark, low clouds rolled in with rough, high surf. It should have been over. I should have shot the bunny. Lord knows the bunny had cause to shoot me. But the bunny jumped into a golden raft and paddled into the rough sea against the strong waves, then turned around and stared at me as it floated away. I didn’t follow. I didn’t have the will.
When I awoke the next morning, I felt a warm wet patch in my drawers. I knew damn well I hadn’t peed in the bed. Despite my proclivity for public urination, I had long ceased the habit of pissing my bed. Upon further investigation I discovered that I, John Paul Boudreaux, Jr., FMC, had in fact experienced a wet dream. It was official. I was no longer shooting duck water. I ceremoniously slid off my underwear while humming “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then secreted my new merit badge in the closet. This had to be a good sign. Right?
Saturday, Holiday
A roach is such a brave, stubborn creature. Reckless but committed. Too committed, maybe. It crawls the inches, pulled by a desire to know. Sometimes they die. Other times they live but move forward nonetheless. A roach does not crawl backward. Maybe it physically has the ability for reverse, but nobody told the roach, so it moves forward, sideways occasionally, but always forward. Come hell or high water.
The corner of Ricky Street and Clearway Drive right by the dead end. Touch in the street, tackle in the grass.
High noon.
The cicadas were loud. High-pitched, monotonous droning like a drumroll at a military execution greeted me as I stepped out of the house. Father sat on the back of his pickup whittling a long branch. He didn’t say anything. Captured in an opiate haze from painkillers balanced with a cup of café noir, he was almost comatose or, rather, a volcano waiting to explode. Oro Iná redux. Red-hot cayenne nestled in sauce rouille over rice. Eat it and you need water. Don’t eat it and you starve because that’s supper and there ain’t leftovers.
On the corner, the guys were playing. I approached—
“Can I play?”
“Fuck you, white boy,” said Joe Boy before drilling the ball into my chest. My entire upper torso was on fire, but I sucked it up and picked up the ball. I drilled it back at him, but he caught it and walked heavily toward me, then started punching me in the chest. I turned my head quickly. Father was watching. Then Joe Boy slapped me and returned to the game.
I walked home with my head to the ground, trying not to cry. I avoided Father and went straight to the backyard and up a tree. I cried.
“Bring your ass down here,” Father yelled as he hobbled into the backyard. I came down quickly, eyes still avoiding him. But it didn’t matter, one leg or not. He beat the shit out of me with the long branch.
That night, listening to the train and the mouse, I snuck out my bedroom window and watched Ms. Johnson nod off on the toilet. Nobody came to my aid against Joe Boy, I reflected. Not even Raymond Earl. Yet the cicadas had shifted to their night melody. Lève-toi, they sang gently. Sonnier didn’t help either. Could he? And why did Father beat me? I didn’t have any answers, so I peed under Ms. Johnson’s window.
seventeen
dandelions
When blacks folks bow down in labor, we usually acknowledge God’s power, but sometimes we try to get a peek into Hell to determine if the grass is greener down below. Few people smile while bent. More people smile when erect and staring at the heavens. Still we prostrate and profess what we see when our backs are bent. Colored backs. Brown backs. Red backs. Copper backs. Black backs. Black backs bent over for peas, potatoes, rice, greens, cotton, and the sharp white rocks on the railroad tracks of Mykawa Road.
Each of us was filling white plastic five-gallon buckets with the blanche missiles. It was Raymond Earl’s idea. Booger came along because Harris County psychiatric officials were at his house trying to take his momma away.
I looked down the steel tracks, which squiggled from Satan’s trick. No one said a word; the only sounds were foot to rock and rock to bucket. We’d been at it for over thirty minutes, quiet, bending, sweating. Not one word. The same way Father described harvesting peas, cotton, and rice when unseasonable frost threatened late-blooming crops in Basile. Not even a song to remove one’s mind from the toil of a hard crop and regular visits by watermelon-scented water moccasins. Actually, they smelled more like rotting watermelons, a bizarre fruity musk like an infant’s toe cheese or a Bomb Pop napping in day-old dog shit. Yeah, I knew the smell because my bucket was half filled when I noticed one staring at me about six feet away by the gully. La serpent. Raymond Earl threw a rock at it and it slithered away. We continued until a Santa Fe Rail regular interrupted, pulling shipping containers marked “SeaPort” and a few tanks from LouAna Oil Mill.
This was the furthest I had walked from home. Damn Ricky Street. I was at least two miles away from my porch.
“Man, yawl know Ronnie fucked his dog?” Booger said, finally breaking the silence.
“Nawh-unh,” Raymond Earl replied, scratching a new mosquito bite.
But Booger was adamant�
�
“We was at Muscle’s house playing basketball and Eddie and dem started fuckin’ wit’ him about it. But he didn’t say nuthin’. Then that nigga’s lil’ brother, Santana, came by, and Eddie was like ‘Say, Ronnie, your brother’s the one who told us.’ And Ronnie got all mad and shit and started whippin’ Santana’s ass, talkin’ ’bout he be talkin’ too much,” Booger reported.
“Man, that don’t mean nuthin’. Eddie always talkin’ shit,” Raymond Earl argued.
“Nawh, but that ain’t it. Later on, I was smokin’ fry1 with the Corduroy Brothers—” Booger continued.
“Nigga, quit lyin’!” Raymond Earl barked.
“Let him talk, dawg,” I said, handing Raymond Earl a red Now and Later.
“Thank you. I walked by Ronnie’s house and I could hear his momma whippin’ his ass,” Booger offered.
“Whose ass? Ronnie?” I asked.
“Nawh, nigga. Santana. That nigga’s momma was on the same shit. ‘You be talkin’ too much, Santana. That’s family business, don’t be tellin’ our business all over the damn place,’ ” said Booger.
“Oh shit! It’s true,” said Raymond Earl.
“That’s what I’m tryin’ to say,” said Booger.
We fell over laughing. Of course we were repulsed, but we weren’t shocked. There was always a nasty rumor or two floating around the hood, most of which were true, but nobody ever did anything about it. Ronnie already had a reputation for molesting little boys younger than him. He’d fool kids into following him into the woods, then threaten them if they didn’t give him head. It was always some younger kid who didn’t really play outside on Ricky Street, like Donnie Carter or those people who lived by Boobie on Rue Street. Usually a kid who didn’t have a big brother or a man in the house. I told you Ronnie was fucked-up, a certified psychopath with a method and a target group. But nobody reported him. Nobody ever called HPD or Child Protective Services. He just fucked little boys and went on his merry way. I guessed he was moving on to canines now.
Red Now And Laters Page 17
