by Chris Wiltz
She was wasting time. She thought about going back to Coconut Grove to get her things, but only briefly before she began to walk up the beach to the front of the hotel to look for a cab. This was going to have to be a different kind of freedom. Like the Janis Joplin song—nothing left to lose. From what she’d heard, she’d be in the same boat as most of the people in New Orleans.
Two
Earlene Dick sat in the front of a flat boat that crawled through duck salad and alligator weed in a shallow pond, fogging the humid night air with its thick, foul-smelling smoke. The boat’s engine sat up high out of the water and could have been a large lawn mower motor given how it sounded. It was attached to a hydraulic pump and powered a large steel wheel, rather than a propeller, that pushed the boat through ankle-deep mud at the bottom of the shallow pond. The only sound Earlene could hear over its loud drone was the sonorous call of the bullfrogs.
A fat cushion of clouds hid the stars. Every now and then the full moon burned through and illuminated the small levee separating the pond from the adjacent rice field. The headlamp Earlene wore kept the black water lit. A water moccasin slid past the boat. Behind the snake, coming up on the left, two eyes glowed red just above the water line. She leaned forward, careful to keep her light on them, and as the boat drew level, she reached out and plucked the frog from the water. The frog tried to make himself skinny so he could slip through her grip and leap to freedom, but Earlene’s hand closed firmly around his bulging stomach. Through his sleek skin, not slimy in the least, she could feel the crawfish he’d swallowed whole. She held him over the side of the boat while he peed. No matter what, the frogs always seemed to be smiling. She’d have let him go if it weren’t for Raymond, her brother, and her boyfriend Daniel, who were in the boat with her. And her plan, which had been two years in the making.
Earlene had chosen June 1, the opening day of frog season in southwest Louisiana, as the day she would end her life. She got a thrill thinking of it in such harsh, dramatic terms. Earlene Dick of Mamou would be dead.
“Lookit little sister,” Raymond yelled as she reached over to put the frog in the nearly full mesh sack hanging from the boat’s console. “Biggest frog of the night.”
Daniel, a frog in one hand, moved up behind Earlene and wrapped his other hand around her breast, jiggling it. “That’s not the only thing she’s got that’s the biggest,” he yelled back to Raymond.
With her forearm, Earlene pushed his hand away. She hated the way they talked about her as though she wasn’t there. The talk, of course, was mostly lewd and crude. For once, she held her tongue. This would be the last time she had to hear it.
Raymond’s headlamp spotted a frog close to the bank of the far levee. He guided the boat toward it, and when it got too shallow, he waded out into the water. Earlene pulled the end of a pint of generic bourbon she’d taken from her father’s stash out of her bag. Earl stayed too drunk to miss it. She gave it to Daniel, then held it out to Raymond as he clamored over the side of the boat with the frog.
“I got a full Wild Turkey in the truck,” she told them. She knew that would get them moving. Otherwise, they might want to start another sack, and Earlene still had something she wanted to do before she ended it all.
They had one frog-hunting ritual left to perform before they left the pond. Earlene turned to face the front of the boat. Raymond pulled roughly at the top of her T-shirt. A frog slid down her back got hung up on her bra, then jumped around, trapped inside her tucked shirt. When they were kids Earlene used to scream as if they were murdering her. The past couple of years, ever since she’d come up with her plan, she just pulled her T-shirt out of her jeans and yelled at whoever had done it to grow up. Tonight she didn’t say a word. She lifted her shirt and let the frog jump into the black pond water.
“What the shit you do that for?” Raymond yelled, greedy for every last frog he could get at the end of the night. He leaned over and pinched her upper arm so hard she knew she’d have a whopper of a bruise. Her arms were covered with purple and yellow marks. But, again, she didn’t yell. She wondered if Raymond would be sorry tomorrow. Probably not.
“Let’s go drink some Wild Turkey,” she said. He gave her a look of fury and jerked the boat across the pond diagonally in the direction of Daniel’s pickup.
At the house, they hung the sack of frogs under the shed and sat out beneath the huge oak tree to drink. Earlene knew the pint would have to be gone before she and Daniel could get rid of Raymond. He was on the outs with Bernie Habetz, his girlfriend and Earlene’s best friend, which was just as well, since if Bernie had been with them she would have known Earlene was acting odd.
Earlene drank more than she wanted just to kill the bottle faster. She wanted to make love to Daniel one more time before it was all over. She still loved him but not as she once had. He wanted to get married, but she didn’t want to become the wife of a rice farmer. It’s what her father had been before her mother died and he’d sold the farm to his brother. Now he was drinking up the money while Raymond paid to borrow land from Uncle Dudley and grow his own rice, struggling for every dime, and he didn’t even have a family yet. Daniel would be better off, working his father’s land and flooding the fields to make crawfish ponds after the government told him he couldn’t grow any more rice. Then he’d sell the crawfish in the spring, and Earlene would spend every summer frying the frogs they caught in the crawfish ponds, no doubt a brood of brats around the kitchen table. No way she could live that life.
***
Raymond finally staggered off, barely conscious, banging the screen door loud enough to wake the dead. No lights came on, so Earl had probably passed out on the sofa in front of the TV. Earlene and Daniel crawled into the back of the pickup, under the camper top. She helped him pull off his cowboy boots. They managed to pump up the air mattress, but by the time they were finished it was the only thing pumped.
“In the morning, Earlene,” Daniel whispered and released a truckload of alcohol fumes. “Wake me up before you go.”
She traced his spine down his long muscular back. She’d told him she had to work the 7:00 a.m. shift at the grocery store where she stuffed boudin sausage and made andouille po’boys for lunch. No one would miss her until they missed their fried frog-leg supper that night.
Earlene waited until Daniel started making soft snuffles, blowing air with a “puh” after each one. Another reason not to marry him: He was going to rumble like a Harley before he was thirty.
She kissed his forehead and ran her fingers through his mink-like black hair, then she was over the tailgate and creeping into the house through the back door. She heard voices, the TV, its volume turned low. The only light in the house was from the screen. The living room smelled like a closed bar, stale smoke and recycled alcohol vapors. Earl was draped over the sofa, one hand dangling above an ashtray full of butts. He’d been watching a Western, the only movies he really liked, with the exception of Patton. Earlene turned the volume up a tad.
She hit the bathroom first. From under the sink she took out a large box of Tampax. She’d hidden her money in it, the only place she could think of that Raymond and her father, with noses like bloodhounds, wouldn’t sniff out the cash. It had taken her two years to save $2400. Twenty dollars a week like Baptists tithing.
From under her bed Earlene slid a suitcase she’d packed six weeks ago, though the contents had changed several times since. She winced at the scraping sound it made over the floorboards, as heavy as if a body had been stuffed into it. Carefully, she maneuvered it through the doorways, stopping in the living room with a thought to kiss her father good-bye. But if he woke up for even a few seconds she might not be able to walk away from his sad brown eyes. She went on through the kitchen, banging the suitcase against a chrome dinette chair. This was followed by a loud exchange of gunshots. Earlene froze. She didn’t think she’d turned the TV up that loud. She heard Earl stirring on the sofa and jumped when he yelled out, “Keep it down, will ya?” She waited,
but just as she moved, Earl called, “Earlene, is that you?” When he didn’t get an answer, he said, “Goddamn kids,” in his surly way. She hated it when he cursed. The sofa creaked as he turned. After he settled down she took her time getting through the back door and down the steps.
At the end of the concrete patio Earlene passed the sack of frogs, the plastic-coated mesh tight against their soft white bellies. A few throats pulsed here and there; by morning they would appear comatose in their captivity. She took the bag down and with a knife she found in the shed, cut open the top. She watched the frogs wobble and hop in drunken zigzags across the concrete and into the grass, off in search of another pond and another meal until the next time they were mesmerized by the drone of a boat engine and the hard glare of a frogger’s headlamp.
Maybe there was a lesson here about not getting mesmerized by bright lights and the unfamiliar noises men make. She shook the last frog free of the bag and considered it the last act of her life in Mamou.
***
Peewee Meeker turned on his car lights and flashed them at Earlene as she walked along the side of the road. She dropped the huge suitcase in the tall grass as though trying to hide it. He’d scared her.
He stopped on the shoulder and got out of the car to put the suitcase in the trunk of his Malibu. He was the only male Earlene knew who didn’t drive a pickup.
“I thought you were going to wait for me in the parking lot at school.” Mamou High, their alma mater.
“I’m sorry, Earlene. You were late. I got worried.”
“I said I’d meet you around two. It’s two fifteen. That’s still around two.”
“Sorry.” Peewee lived up to his name, meeker than anyone ought to be.
Behind the steering wheel, Peewee looked shrunken, like a kid. He was half a head shorter than Earlene and fit into her shadow; twenty-two years old and he still had acne. Tonight he’d glued his hair back with some kind of smelly pomade or maybe he’d slapped on a cheap after-shave.
“What’s that smell?”
“Canoe.” When Earlene wrinkled her nose, Peewee said, “I’ll smoke a cigarette.”
Earlene watched him light up. No matter how old he was, she decided, he’d always look as though he was trying to be cool when he smoked. But when it got right down to it, Peewee had been the only person she trusted enough to ask for a ride to Lafayette. If she’d have asked Bernie, there’d have been a million questions, then before she could get on the bus, Bernie would have flapped her mouth to Raymond. Friendship changed after your best friend fell in love with your brother.
Peewee didn’t ask questions; he was too glad to be in Earlene’s company. He’d had a thing for her since grade school, from the time they both started taking a lot of abuse because of their names, Peter and Dick. They couldn’t beat people up the way Raymond did. They avoided each other because together they were the Penises. Even Raymond laughed. But it had created a bond between them so that by the time Peter became Peewee, because of its supposed size, and Earlene developed a couple of attributes that made the boys think of her in an entirely new way, they became friends. Raymond asked her why she still fooled around with the little pipsqueak. Earlene didn’t bother to tell him that Peewee was into something other than football, sex, and hunting.
He was into music. He had some nice jazzy piano music playing. Earlene asked him what it was. “Ellis Marsalis,” he told her.
They were cutting it close to go through Rayne to Lafayette, but Earlene wanted to see the frog murals one more time, the last time. The closer they got to Rayne, the slower Peewee drove.
“We’re not gonna make it if you don’t kick the speedometer up, Peewee.”
“Sorry, Earlene.” The car shot forward.
“You don’t have to apologize every time I say something.”
She’d have sworn he almost said “I’m sorry” again. She supposed she shouldn’t protest since he was the only penis-equipped person she’d ever heard apologize—so much that it could be aggravating. He rolled his hand through the air, an I’m-sorry gesture if ever she’d seen one.
“I been thinking, Earlene.” He backed off the gas, as if he couldn’t talk and accelerate at the same time. “I’m taking you this far. Just let me take you where you’re going.”
She didn’t answer. They were in downtown Rayne, empty as a church on Saturday night, coming up on the bullfrog that looked as though he were jumping off the wall of the building at you. Her favorite, the frogs in court, the judge frog wearing a long curly white wig, a whole jury of frogs, was painted on the wall of the courthouse. Peewee stopped in front of it.
Earlene stared at the mural. “Let’s go,” she said abruptly, sorry they’d come through Rayne. Nothing was going to stop her, sure as hell not premature homesickness.
They drove a few blocks, but she couldn’t shake it. They passed the Chamber of Commerce. The big billboard had a light burned out, but she knew what it said, “Rayne. Frog Capital of the World. Home of the Rayne Frog Festival.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She could see RAYNE written on the inside of her eyelids. A thought came to her that edged out all her anxiety. Rayne. She could call herself Rayne.
For months Earlene had been looking for a new name. She wasn’t starting her new life with the old one. Since Raymond was first-born, she’d asked her mother any number of times why she just couldn’t have name him Earl Dick, Jr. and gotten it over with. Her mother said she didn’t understand it either, so wistful sometimes that Earlene thought she must have had a lover name Raymond who’d either died or jilted her.
She’d be Rayne. Or Raynie. She needed a last name. She’d had a Marilyn Monroe fixation since she’d been a child. A few years ago when her mother was talking about Jeanne Moreau it had occurred to Earlene that all the most famous actors had names that ended with an “o” sound—Monroe, Moreau, Harlow, Brando, Garbo, DeNiro, Pacino, Paltrow…. She wanted her new last name to end with an “o”. Like LeBeau. Too masculine. Thibodeaux, too Cajun. Theriot, same problem. LeVeau, pretty, but veau in French had something to do with cows. From a dick to a cow. Not great.
“You hear what I said, Earlene?”
“Yeah. But you’d never make it to work on time. I’m going to California.”
“Bullshit!” He turned up the sound. “That’s George Porter.” He punched the next track. “Dr. John,” he said and punched the next one. “Kermit Ruffins.” He called out the names of the groups, “Walter Wolfman Washington. Papa Grows Funk. Los Hombres Calientes. Johnny Vidacovich. John Boutte. Dumpster Funk. Rebirth Brass Band. Clint Maedgen.”
“Haven’t heard of half of ’em,” said Earlene.
“But you will. It’s all New Orleans music. That’s where you’re going—New Orleans. It’s where your mother wanted to go. The most glamorous city in Lou’siana. If she’d’ve gone there, she never would’ve married a rice farmer. Remember? You told me everything she ever said.”
“I never should have told you anything.”
“Well, you did, and I’m still the only one who knows, right? But, what, are you crazy? Why are you going now?”
“What do you mean?”
“June first, you know, hurricane season? The place could disappear off the face of the earth this time.”
“Then I’ll just disappear with it, Peewee. You’re not going to talk me out of it, so let’s not talk until we get to Lafayette.” She turned up the volume, folded her arms, and stared straight ahead.
Peewee maintained silence for all of ten seconds before he turned the sound down. “Let me take you down there. I won’t needle you.”
“Raymond’s going to beat the shit outta you, and you’ll tell him where I am.”
“He’ll have to beat me unconscious. Come on, Earlene, how would he ever figure I know? I mean…” He flipped his hand toward her, then himself. “Huh?”
He had a point.
“What about your parents? Where do they think you are?”
“Out. Driving around, hangin
g out. Are you kidding? They don’t give a shit where I am as long as I’m out. If I’m out all night, they’ll hope I’m knocking someone up.”
Kids in Mamou lived at home until they got married. By day Peewee sold guitars at Savoy’s. At night he stayed in his bedroom, wore earphones, burned CD mixes, practiced guitar riffs. A loner. A weirdo.
“You really won’t make it to work tomorrow, Peewee.”
“I took the day off.”
She gave in. He gave her a crash course in New Orleans music for the next three hours, until they got off the spillway and the sun was barely lighting the sky on the eastern horizon. From the Interstate, passing through the Metairie suburb, they could see the backs of storm-scarred shopping centers, gaudy billboards for casinos in Biloxi, some that leaned at awkward angles, a few large pieces of twisted steel that came from—where? There was a church with its steeple hanging upside down, and as they got into the city, the rubble, the vacant houses and boarded up buildings, the scalped Superdome.... It was a city she could see had been changed by a horrific event, and she didn’t know what it had looked like before. Her stomach lurched with the strangeness of it all, with the uncomfortable feeling that the city she was moving to was not the same city Earlene had wanted to make her new home.
Then she remembered she wasn’t Earlene. She was Raynie…
