Crimson Bayou

by C. L. Bevill

  John Henry’s eyes went to the pirogue with the well-endowed woman on the stern, and his eyes widened. But he didn’t say anything.

  “Okay,” Robert started, all seriousness now. “You pick a gal to use, Mignon. I know you ain’t been in one of these before.”

  Mignon pointed at the one with flames, and Robert nodded approvingly. “You dump her in, make sure she’s upright in the water. We don’t need no incidents tonight. Hee-hee-hee.”

  John Henry started to move in to help, and she waved him aside. “I can do it,” she said.

  Bending at the waist, Mignon flipped the boat into the water with enthusiasm, if not with the same expertise as Robert. The result was the same. Robert called, “You’re going to climb in, just like you was stepping down an escalator at Macy’s.”

  Mignon spared Robert a brief look. “I prefer Bloomingdale’s,” she said primly and tried not to smile when Robert laughed at her. Then she held one of the pier supports while she stepped down. There was a low seat built into the back third of the pirogue. She held onto the support with one hand and found her balance.

  “Go ahead, sit down,” Robert advised. “It’ll be easier to get used to it.”

  “What about the rope?” she said, eyeing the rope still tied to the pier support.

  “Mr. John Henry shall get that for us,” Robert announced grandly. “Once we sure you ain’t going for a swim with the fishes. There’s catfish in these waters that run up to ten feet.” He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Although, I heard tell that there’s a giant one over to Twilight Lake that will eat you if you fall in. Like to catch that one myself.”

  “John Henry?” Mignon said hesitantly, staring at the black bayou waters around her.

  John Henry chuckled. He began to pull apart the knot that attached the pirogue. “He’s pulling your leg, Mignon. Just relax and get the paddle out. It’s on the inside, attached with Velcro.” He stopped and gazed intently at the knots there. “Robert, why do you need a rope for the pirogues if you leave them out of the water?”

  “Wind blows them in,” Robert said, “and they float right off if we don’t tie ‘em down. They pretty light for boats. Some of them not more than fifty pounds. A hundred years ago we would have used a dugout tree. We would have used fire to hollow this old bear out and made a boat that wouldn’t have sunk if the Titanic had hit it. Now we use lauan and plywood to make it. Makes it light as can be, so we can tote it through the bayou if we has a mind to do such a thing. But we can also take it hunting. Some of these fellas take it a step further and fiberglass it. They put end hatches on it so as they can stow their fishing gear. Shoot. They put enough work into it as to make their girls right jealous. Ain’t cost much either.”

  “You don’t worry about someone else stealing them,” Mignon said, while she shifted her weight in the pirogue, trying to find her balance.

  “With these paint jobs, they’d have to take them to a whole ‘nother state,” Robert said. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, we get out the shotgun.”

  John Henry paused in the action of turning over a third pirogue. The one he’d selected was a little larger, which he had chosen because of his own size. It was painted with vivid black and red faces that screamed like demons burning in hell. “You tie the knots on these pirogues?” he said, and Mignon caught the interest in John Henry’s voice.

  “On some of ‘em.” Robert nodded firmly. “A fella learns all about knots in the navy, don’t ya reckon? Some of these peoples, they don’t know the right knot to tie to make sure their little slice of heaven don’t go meandering down the bayou and get et by Monsieur Cocodrie.”

  John Henry had messed up the rope that connected the one he’d chosen to the dock and he looked at it curiously. “What did I do wrong?”

  “That, mon ami, was a figure eight loop. On account of the rope we use today. I would have used a basic bowline knot, but it can slip. A figure eight is a mite more complicated. It can be tied in the middle of a rope so that ifin you need such a thing, it won’t slip. A handy little bit knowledge to have in your pack of tools.”

  “Huh,” John Henry said, finally freeing the rope and tossing it into the bow of his pirogue. “I learned how to shoot down airplanes and build bridges across rain-swollen rivers. Trust the army to forget about knots.”

  “That’s why the navy whups the army’s butt every time,” Robert said absolutely. “Now, Mignon,” he added as John Henry swung into the little craft, “we going down the bayou.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Friday, March 14th

  My mother owns a bakery shop. Yummy, yummy.

  My father drives a garbage truck. Yummy, yummy, pew.

  My sister talks on the phone all day. Yummy, yummy, pew, la de la de la de dew.

  My brother is a cowboy. Yummy, yummy, pew, la de la de la de dew, roll ‘em up, stick ‘em up, bang, bang.

  My auntie is an operator. Yummy, yummy, pew, la de la de la de dew, roll ‘em up, stick ‘em up, bang, bang, your number please.

  My uncle is a strangler. Yummy, yummy, pew, la de la de la de dew, roll ‘em up, stick ‘em up, bang, bang, your number please, uh oh.

  - Children’s hand-clapping rhyme

  The action that moved the little pirogues was remarkably easy for Mignon to master. She’d never been in a canoe before but that was what Robert and John Henry compared it with. “I’ve never been on a horse either,” she snapped, a little nervous after seeing a cottonmouth swimming through the water close enough to look her in the eye.

  “Don’t mind the snake,” Robert said. “He won’t bother you none ifin you don’t bother him.”

  “Huh,” Mignon snorted. “That’s not what happened the last time I saw one of those.”

  John Henry chuckled. Robert raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “I reckon you’ll tell me that story some other time then,” he said finally.

  Mignon was concentrating on guiding the little boat where Robert was going. It was a smooth, repetitive act. Stroke three times on one side. Stroke three times on the other. Guide the pirogue where Robert’s was going. An extra stroke on one side made it go in the other direction. It wasn’t hard. She balanced herself by sitting precisely in the middle, her feet bracing her by remaining flat-footed a shoulder’s width apart on the floor of the boat.

  “Pretty soon,” Robert judged, “you’ll be a better seaman than I am.”

  “Won’t the people who own these be bothered that we borrowed them?” Mignon said.

  “Nope. Sort of communal property. I hear tell that it’s like that in China some places. They gots bicycles you just up and borrow and leave it in another stand for someone else to use. It kind of be like that. They tend to migrate back to the right dock because everyone knows which belongs to who. Although I be inclined to know who be using mine of late.”

  “Why’s that?” John Henry called.

  Mignon took the opportunity to look around. The light was beginning to dim, and the shadows lengthened into black walls through which they unerringly passed through onto the next section of purpling light that was rapidly dwindling. The sky had been a brilliant shade of bright blue but now was gradually changing into a field of indigo upon which diamonds had been carelessly strewn across. With an indrawn breath, she realized how beautiful the bayous were. The dimension of the cypress trees in this area were so thick she couldn’t reach around them with her arms nor with the assistance of someone else’s arms. With garments of Spanish moss, the trees walked like immense beings across the surface of the inky depths, lost in pools of water lily pads that covered a vast area like an odd green carpet.

  She heard Robert’s reply to John Henry, but Mignon wasn’t concentrating on his words.

  “Someone done scratched up the bow, like they dragged it through sawbriars or some such thing. They might have been gnawing on the stem for all I know. I never saw the like.”

  “It doesn’t look damaged to me,” John Henry said back.

  “That’s on account of I
took care of it. Used a little filler to even it out, then sanded it, and painted it. Bright and perty. Took me half the day to get it the way it was. Then I had to seal it again. Had to drive to Shreveport for the right kind of paint, too, to make sure it was leakproof. Ifin you let a littlest bit of rot in the wood, you can kiss your girl bydie-bye on both cheeks. She disappear faster than a cheap whore in a vice raid. Uh…” Robert hesitated with a wary glance at his cousin. “Don’t mean no disrespect, Mignon.”

  As they worked their way deeper into the bayous, Mignon became aware of a distant thumping noise as if jungle drums were being pounded. They crossed into an area where the bayou was like a wide creek, and the land on either side had started to rise. The sounds began to get louder, and it became apparent that they were intermixed with people laughing and talking.

  Then it became obvious to Mignon why they had had to come in pirogues or boats of some kind. The bayou spread out again, widening up and encompassing a quarter mile of growth in every direction. There was a series of houses built on stilts in the depths of the bayou. Little docks stuck like accusatory fingers into the water and had an array of boats. There was even an airboat perched half on the shore next to one of the decks. “That legal, John Henry?” she asked quietly, as her pirogue bumped up against a dock support.

  John Henry let out a low groan. “Probably not. But don’t worry about it, Mignon. Probably a lot we’ll see tonight isn’t exactly legal. And as you can see, I’m not even carrying my gun.”

  “Hey,” she said with amusement. “Didn’t you tell me to always carry my Beretta when I’m in the bayous?”

  There was something like a grumble under John Henry’s breath that she didn’t catch.

  “What was that, John Henry?” she persisted.

  Robert laughed. “I think he be eting crow. Not the best of tasting of dishes, but it’s common among menfolk.” He added playfully, “It shore don’t taste like chicken.”

  There was a zydeco band. Fiddlers vied with steel drums, a washboard musician, an accordion, and two guitars. They weren’t particularly accomplished, but they were enthusiastic. They had been the origin of the rhythmic thumping she had heard earlier.

  A group of men were barbequing on half-drum grills filled what looked like a ton of charcoal, grilling what looked like an entire cow. A group of women were boiling crawfish and setting up a long table with food. Steamed and buttered corn on the cob sat next to a giant casserole dish of fried okra. There were lima beans, three bean salad, and pinto beans. Fried chicken was covered by a simple cloth. A batch of fried fish was carefully arranged on a huge platter. A plethora of drinks were cooling nearby in washtubs full of ice.

  Robert climbed out of his pirogue and dragged it up onto the shore, not minding in the least that he’d gotten wet from the knees down. “Hey, ya’ll!” he yelled. “Look who I brought! It’s our cousin, Mignon Thibeaux, and her beau, John Henry.” He peered around and found one particular man. “Say Fred, you recollect John Henry, don’t you? He done arrested you last winter. What’d you go and do?”

  Fred was a sheepish-faced man in his forties. His olive-tinted skin and black hair gave his heritage away, and Mignon examined him with minute interest. “I done watered my dope in the middle of a drought,” he yelled back cheerfully. “Sheriff saw the green part ten miles away.”

  “So what you doing out, Fred?” John Henry asked good-naturedly. He didn’t seem to mind being in the company of someone he’d arrested, and Mignon was wide-eyed.

  “Good lawyer, that,” Fred yelled to him. “Come get a beer, lawman! We got moonshine here what will make your toes curl like that witch in The Wizard of Oz.”

  John Henry stepped out of his pirogue and tugged it ashore. Robert had turned to Mignon with a grin. “You getting out, little miss cousin?”

  Mignon eyed the black water distrustfully. “You remember that cottonmouth?” she said. “I don’t think I like the thought of—” John Henry took a step toward her, swooped with powerful arms, and brought her out in a sinuous motion. He deposited her on shore and then dragged her pirogue to a position beside his.

  Fred apparently had thought a little about what he’d said and yelled, “Uh, no moonshine here, John Henry! Aunt Betsie wouldn’t dare bring her thousand-proof rotgut ‘round where the sheriff would be! I was just pulling your leg!”

  “I’m sure I won’t see a bit of it!” John Henry yelled back amicably.

  A thin woman who looked to be in her late forties approached Mignon. Her hair was dark brown with strands of gray intermingled within and was coiled up on her neck in a neat chignon. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that said “Keep smiling. It makes people wonder what you’ve been up to.” She said, “My name is Thereze Dubeaux. I’m Robert’s mother.” She reached over and grasped Mignon in an inescapable bear hug that made her instantly aware of the relationship between mother and son. “I’m real glad you came today. I’ve been meaning to get out your way, but I’ve been a mite peckish and ain’t up to snuff.”

  Over Thereze’s shoulder she saw that John Henry was smiling indulgently at her, and like Thereze’s T-shirt, she wondered exactly what the hell he was up to. Thereze glanced over her shoulder at John Henry, and her nose wrinkled a little. She leaned her head in and whispered, “He’s a big ‘un. My husband, Martin, was a big ‘un, too.” She released Mignon only as far as one arm and directed her toward the houses. “Come and sit down with me, and we’ll talk about your mama. I know Robert said he was real sorry ‘bout not making the funeral. Truth be he couldn’t have made it even if the admiral had flown him back. They was in the Gulf, and Robert got me a map to show me just where that be.”

  Mignon couldn’t help her smile as she walked away with Thereze. The woman was as friendly and gregarious as her son.

  “And me,” Thereze went on blithely, “well, let’s just say I ain’t been feeling right. I had Erasme’s son, Jeffrey, take me to the doctor five times that month, and Jeffrey is the worst driver I ever met.”

  Looking around, Mignon said, “You have to go by pirogue to where a car is?”

  “Sort of. I just take the power boat, dear. That pirogue just wears a gal out. Robert thought you’d like to see what old school was like.” Thereze giggled. “Robert’s a fella that’s full of tricks.”

  With a last look over her shoulder, Mignon saw that John Henry had waded into a group of the Creoles with a beer in one hand and an animated expression on his face that said he was doing just fine.

  “Don’t you worry none about him,” Thereze assured her. “I know Creoles are right uppity, but you’re one of us. And well, so is he, at least as long as he be with you.”

  “He won’t be looking for illegal things tonight,” Mignon said slowly.

  “I know, chère. I voted for him last time. Ifin he arrests someone tonight, we just throw him in the bayou.” Thereze giggled again.

  But Mignon was wondering if that was what they did with all the people who crossed them. She could see the connection had escaped Thereze, and she wasn’t about to bring it up.

  Inside a little house on stilts, Thereze directed Mignon to a kitchen chair and set about making a little pot of coffee on a propane stove. “We don’t get much out this way.” She indicated the kitchen light above. “Electricity but no running water. No natural gas.” She nodded her head with a smile. “I do get satellite. My dish is out back. You know they have a channel that shows old soap operas on it twenty-four hours a day?”

  Examining the room around her, Mignon listened to the words but almost tuned them out. She’d seen a dozen of these little houses. More shacks than anything else, they were built by the owners and generally not very well. This one was just as small. It had a bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen, and the last two were pretty much one and the same. But it smelled like spices, and Mignon saw a little candle burning nearby. It was also as neat as a pin. A bookshelf jammed with books sat against the far wall. The television was small and covered with a knitted cozy. The co
uch, which was actually a loveseat, was worn but covered with crocheted doilies. The kitchen had a small countertop that was clean but carefully stuffed with pots and pans, each stored with maximum usage of space in mind. The table was a small metal one with two mismatched chairs. Surfaces were devoid of dirt and sparkled with cleanliness.

  Mignon sat there and felt a little ashamed of herself for her errant thoughts. Once, she had been poor as a church mouse. Just because she had been fortunate to be the flavor of the month for the artistic world didn’t mean that she had the right to look down on anyone else. “Why do you live out here, in the bayou?” she asked slowly, trying to keep judgment out of her voice.

  Thereze looked surprised. She shifted the pot of coffee on the propane burner and made a thoughtful noise in her throat. “I guess you wouldn’t understand that, little Mignon.” She smiled at what she’d said. “I seen you once. When you were knee high to a grasshopper. Martin brought us to see your mama, and there you was playing in the yard, maybe four years old. With that red, red hair. You and your mama be the only ones in the family with that color. No doubt you got it from your mama and your papa, of course. Although Ruff’s was darker.” She paused. “We never did know what happened to you after Garlande vanished.”

  Her words trailed off as she poured two cups and presented one to Mignon. Thereze sat carefully, and Mignon was reminded that the older woman was sick in some fashion. She bent as if she were thirty years older than she was, and her face contorted with the effort.