by Sandra Hill
Long ago, Filipino and Chinese immigrants came to Southeastern Louisiana, bringing their shrimp harvesting techniques to this new world. One particularly colorful practice had involved the drying of shrimp, keeping in mind that there were no refrigerators at that time for freezing. When the shrimp had been dried on platforms over the marshes in direct sunlight, being turned often until they were the perfect dryness, the men and women and children would dance on the shrimp to separate the hulls and heads. It was a practice that was soon adopted by the Cajun fishermen.
When the owner of the plant had put on some rowdy Cajun music and asked for volunteers from her class to “come dance the shrimp,” no one would step forward. At fourteen, the girls were too shy, and the boys worried that dancing would make them look like fools. In the end, Justin raised his hand, to the snickers of his classmates. After having his bare feet wrapped in burlap and his pant legs rolled up, Justin had jumped up on the platform and begun to dance rhythmically in tune to the music, stomping his feet, rolling his hips, spinning. When his eyes caught Emelie’s, he beckoned her with wagging fingers to join him. “Come, chère, it’s fun.”
At first, she’d resisted, but then she heard someone remark behind her, one of the mean, popular girls whose name Emilie couldn’t recall now, “Pfff! Who would dance with such trash? His father’s in Angola, and his mother is a hooker.” Raising her chin high, Emilie had stepped forward, shrugged off her sneakers, put on the burlap wraps, and let Justin help her up onto the platform. After that, she’d tuned out the crowd, her focus being on the music, “Big Mamou,” blasting from a loudspeaker, her hands held in Justin’s, the sun beating down on them, and pure joy. Until the day she died, she would remember the smile on Justin’s face. They’d been friends before, but that day they fell in love. The following year his father died in prison and not long after, his mother had died in some Miami brothel.
Tears streamed down her face as she tossed the packet in a nearby trash basket.
She gasped as she saw what lay at the bottom of the box, and her tears turned to sobs. With shaking hands, she lifted the tiny baby sweater of the softest yarn, hardly bigger than her widespread palm, the one and only item she’d bought for her baby… the baby that died before it was born.
Emelie’s heart was breaking all over again.
Chapter Seven
The bayou twists and turns were nothing compared to the twists and turns in his sorry life…
Cage arrived back at the cottage by midafternoon to find his grandmother taking a nap. She’d left the old Bakelite Motorola radio on in the living room at low volume. It was playing a soft ballad in French. Only in bayou country would you find radio stations that played the old songs in their original Acadian French dialect.
Of course, once he’d stepped inside, the birds started squawking and talking and setting up a general ruckus. He was teaching one of them to say, “Hoo-yah!” If he had a way to carry it back, he might even keep that one in his Coronado condo. But no, he was away too much to have a pet of any kind. Even a bird.
He set some of the paperwork he’d gotten from the doctor on the 1930s-era enamel kitchen table, which was already set for dinner with woven place mats and the old Fiestaware plates that were part of a set that had been a wedding gift to MawMaw and PawPaw all those eons ago. As a boy, he’d loved them because they were such vivid colors.
On the stove, cooking at a slow simmer, was his favorite dish, red beans and rice. Well, the rice—about a gallon of it—was already cooked and set aside on the counter in a covered casserole. In the cast-iron pot were the red beans that had no doubt been started early this morning, right after he’d left, with the traditional Holy Trinity of Cajun cooking—onions, bell peppers, and celery—as well as andouille sausage, which he hadn’t tasted in so many years, he couldn’t recall. And for his benefit, she’d probably given the dish an extra douse of Tabasco, best known as Cajun Lightning. His mouth watered at the tempting aromas. He couldn’t help himself. He stirred the pot with a wooden spoon and took a taste.
In the old days, before automatic washers and dryers, red beans and rice was the Monday meal in all Cajun households, according to MawMaw. The meal was easy to prepare and could cook all day while the housewife did the family laundry. Today, it was a staple on every Cajun restaurant’s menu.
There was a note taped to the cypress cabinet. Taking a nap. Not to worry. I’m feeling fine. Your boss called. Nice fella, Commander MacLean. Stir the beans.
He put the milk and beer in the fridge, but left out a bottle for himself. Going out on the porch, he saw about fifty animals rush to line up on the steps behind the child gate.
When they realized that he wasn’t about to give them midday snacks, they went back to the yard, or settled down on the steps to rest.
He was going to have to take care of these animals ASAP. In fact, he pulled a small notebook and pen from his back pocket and sank down on an Adirondack chair with a groan and carefully propped his feet on the banister. His knee was aching like a bitch. He’d done too much walking.
But what a day!
He sighed and let himself relax, taking in his surroundings.
Many folks said that the bayou was a touchstone for those who had left and ultimately came back. Cage felt it, deep in his soul. Sure as sin, he still had bayou mud in his veins.
Cage had dated a Realtor at one time who claimed, “If you are lucky enough to live on water, you’re lucky enough.” How true! Even here where the conditions were a far cry from the waterfront estates his Realtor friend had been thinking about. Maybe more so.
The scents, the sounds, the smells were so unique to the bayou, it was hard to describe them to outsiders. Even the colors were magnified by the humidity and tropical sun.
Not that it was hot today or humid, it being February with mild temperatures, but he knew too well what summers were like. Lazy, sweaty days filled with wonder for a young boy, despite the swarms of insects, especially those bothersome no-see-ums that got everywhere, even the mouth if a person wasn’t careful. Too hot to do anything but toss a line baited with cow lip to catch the crawfish, best known as mudbugs, that flourished here.
And if you were poor, as they had been, and couldn’t afford even cow lips or chicken necks, a leafy branch could be dipped into the slow-moving, coffee-colored waters, and come up with crawfish clustered in its midst. A memory came to him all of a sudden, so powerful he flinched at the pain in his gut.
He must have been five years old, or less. Standing at the edge of the bayou, right down there where a rotting pirogue lay under an aged tupelo, he saw in his mind’s eye himself as a young boy standing next to a tall man. Black hair. Handsome, he’d heard some people say. Wearing a white T-shirt and faded jeans. Barefooted. The man was hunkered down, teaching the little boy how to remove the squirming crawfish quickly from the branches before they could get away. The white bucket next to them was half-full. When the little boy had succeeded in plopping a particularly big one into the bucket, he’d looked up to the man for approval. Laughing, the man had picked up the boy and stood, hugging him warmly. “Way to go, mon petit ange!” Probably the last time anyone referred to him as an angel. Burrowing his face into the man’s neck, the boy smelled cigarettes and Old Spice.
To this day, Cage couldn’t stand the scent of that aftershave, and he’d never smoked.
It had been his father, of course. A man Cage never, ever allowed himself to think about. The memories were too painful.
Cage shook his head and built an invisible wall around his thoughts, keeping out certain subjects and certain events. A defense mechanism he’d learned early on. But he realized in that moment before he shut down, as he swiped a tear from his eye, that it wasn’t just Emelie that had kept him from returning to the bayou.
Taking a swig from his longneck, Cage tapped his pen on the notepad and thought instead about all that he needed to do. He began writing.
To-Do List:
1. Get rid of animals.
3. Hire housecleaner and yard man.
His grandmother’s house—a cottage, really—had only two bedrooms… and would require only a few hours a week to maintain, although a couple good full days at first. The windows hadn’t been cleaned in ages. He usually wouldn’t have noticed that kind of thing, but when he’d glanced out his bedroom window this morning to check on the weather, he’d thought there was fog, but it was only a film of dirt.
As for the yard, Belle’s two boys were supposed to come out here on Saturday, day after tomorrow, and help him clean up all the crap and debris. He was going to borrow a pickup truck from one of Tante Lulu’s nephews to haul the junk to the dump. He would have started already, but other jobs seemed to gain more priority, such as repairing the threshold on MawMaw’s bedroom door; she’d complained about tripping over it. And the gate on the chicken coop needed to be fixed to keep the squawking critters confined. Then he’d spent hours trying to corral the birds. Boy oh boy! The guys back at the base would have had a laugh if they’d seen him chasing chickens. If he’d had a rifle handy, he would have shot every one of the blasted tail feathers. Only later did his grandmother tell him that, if he’d waited until dark, they would roost, and he could have used a flashlight and quick hands to gather them up.
4. Make a schedule of MawMaw’s medical appointments.
5. Find a physical therapist to work on my knee while I’m in Louisiana.
6. See if MawMaw has a will, or any instructions for what happens when… well, eventually.
God, he hated thinking about details like that, but he had no idea if she wanted to be cremated, donate her body to science, or be buried next to PawPaw. One thing was for sure—come hell or high water, he was going to be here.
7. Ask MawMaw if she has a bucket list.
He had to smile at that. MawMaw would probably say she already had a bucket, thank you very much. But really, did she want to see the Grand Canyon? Go to the Grand Ol’ Opry? Watch one last Mardi Gras parade? Jump out of an airplane like the older George Bush had?
Hell, who was he kidding? He knew what she wanted. A baby. And probably her only grandson happily married. Not necessarily in that order.
Which caused him to think of Emelie, of course, something he’d been avoiding ever since he left her place hours ago. There was an ache in his heart, like a stone, just picturing her.
Luckily, his cell phone rang just then.
“LeBlanc here.”
“Hey, Cage, how you doing?” It was Commander MacLean.
“So-so.”
“Your grandmother?”
“Stage four, lung cancer.”
“Ah, man! I am so sorry.”
“I talked to her oncologist this morning. She’s refusing any more treatments. So it could be months, or even a year.”
“We need to talk about that.”
“Yeah. Listen, Commander, I have to stay with her. If it means giving up the teams to do that, I will.”
“Now don’t jump the gun. We’ll work something out. First off, you have six weeks’ liberty coming to you. Not to mention medical leave.”
He hoped that wouldn’t be near enough time.
“You wouldn’t be able to go active anyhow. You’d just be twiddling your thumbs here in the office or out training BUD/S.”
Yeah, that’s what I want. Training grunts.
“Maybe when you have things settled with your grandmother, you can go out on some short ops, then return there.”
It would have to be in the early days. He assumed he would be needed nonstop toward the end. He hated thinking about practical things like that. Morbid, that was how it felt.
“How’s your knee, by the way?”
“Okay. I’m going to line up a physical therapist here. I think there’s a rehab center in Houma.”
“This is what we’re gonna do. You take care of what you have to there. I’ll have my assistant or one of the guys from your team give you weekly updates on what’s going on here. If there are materials you need to study, we’ll send them. Do you have a secure computer there?”
“I have my laptop, but I might need some upgrades…”
“If you need help, I can send Geek.” Geek was Darryl Good, a computer genius and one of his best buddies.
“That would be great. I’ll let you know if I have a problem. At the least, I’ll probably need Geek to walk me through some stuff.”
After exchanging some news and laughing at his commander’s version of what his wife, Hilda, and his kids had been up to lately, Cage pressed the off button and drank the rest of his beer. He could hear his grandmother moving around.
“Hey, darlin’,” he said when he went inside. “How you feelin’?”
“Jist fine. You hungry?”
“As a bear.” He noticed that she did look better, and she wasn’t using oxygen at the moment. Instead, she was padding around the kitchen with ease in a pair of comfortable house slippers. But she didn’t ask about his visit to her doctor; she knew what he’d learned today.
“I made your favorite.” His grandmother squeezed his arm and walked over to the stove.
“I noticed.”
“Didja call yer boss?”
He nodded. “He called me. I can stay here as long as I want. So you’re stuck with me, baby.”
Her face brightened before she swatted him with a dish towel. “I’ll give ya ‘baby’!” But then, she added, “I doan want ya ta think ya gotta babysit me here. You have a job ta do.”
He patted his bum knee and said, “I can’t go on active duty now anyhow.”
She motioned for him to sit at the table and handed him a St. Jude paper napkin. A gift from Tante Lulu, he imagined. Once she’d served them both and sat across from him at the small table, she bowed her head and prayed, “Bless this food, Lord, and my grandson for sharin’ it with me. Amen.”
He was about to dig in when he heard a car pull onto the clamshell driveway at the side of the house. Before he had a chance to get up, he heard the car door slam, the sound of crunching shells, the animals setting up a ruckus, and a male voice swearing, “Holy shit! It’s a damn zoo here.” A pounding up the steps and across the porch, then knocking at the screen door and coming in at the same time was none other than his frickin’ cousin.
“Bernard!” her grandmother exclaimed, leaning up for the bum-who-married-Cage’s-girl to kiss her cheek.
“Aunt MaeMae! I was just drivin’ by on my way home and thought I’d stop by to visit.” She wasn’t really his aunt. More like his grandmother and Cage’s grandmother were third cousins.
“Just drivin’ by on your way to Lafayette?” Cage asked incredulously. That was where Bernie’s family home and business were located.
MawMaw tsked at Cage for his rude question.
And Bernie just ignored him.
“I heard my favorite aunt was feeling under the weather, and I brought you some flowers. My mother always said you can’t go wrong with roses.”
His favorite aunt, my ass! After all these years, the bastard shows up here, just when I’m here. Bernie is up to something.
All the time Bernie was speaking, his grandmother was putting the flowers in a mason jar with water, and Cage kept glaring at the bastard, who continued to ignore him. “Is that red beans and rice, Auntie? It smells like heaven. I haven’t had good red beans and rice since my dear mother passed, bless her heart.”
His dear mother had been a world-class bitch. Snooty. Country Club type. Never had anything to do with Cage’s family. And now Bernie was showing up, like family? I don’t think so!
“I declare, a lady cain’t never have enough flowers,” his grandmother, the traitor, was saying. “Sit yerself down, honey. I’ll set you a plate.”
Only after Bernie had dug in heartily did he turn to Cage. “I heard you were back in town, Justin. How’re things goin’?” Bernie was as Cajun as Cage, but he sounded like a Yankee academic. Which he very well was. Sort of. Having graduated
from Princeton with high honors before taking over his dad’s pyrotechnic business.
“Just dandy,” Cage replied.
Bernie was no fool. He knew Cage was pissed at him. Still, he persisted, “Actually, I need to talk to you about something, cuz.” Bernie’s face was red as a beet, and he distractedly pushed his black pop-bottle glasses up farther on his nose.
Cage couldn’t imagine what Bernie would have to discuss with him. And where did this chummy cuz crap come from? They were not close and never had been. Before Cage could control his fool tongue, he blurted out, “I hope it’s not about your ex-wife.”
“What?” Bernie appeared startled at the remark. “Oh. No.” But then he paused. “Have you seen Em yet?”
Not that it was any of his business, but Cage admitted, “Yeah, I saw her this morning.”
His grandmother gasped and put a hand to her heart. “Ya did?”
Now why would his grandmother have that reaction?
“Her dad’s gonna have a shit fit,” Bernie commented, then apologized for his language, “Sorry, Auntie.”
The odd thing was that Bernie didn’t appear surprised by Cage’s answer or threatened in any way. Bernie just stared at Cage, and adjusted his slipping glasses again.
But then Cage remembered something. “By the way, MawMaw, Em said the strangest thing today. Did you and PawPaw refuse to give her my Navy address after I enlisted?”
“Um,” his grandmother, who was never at a loss for words, said.
He cocked his head to the side, “Did you tell her that I ordered you not to give her my address?”
His grandmother and Bernie exchanged a meaningful glance. Meaningful to them, not him.
“Well, that I can answer. We never said you gave us orders,” she said, and before he could question her further, she stood. “But remember, ya did tell us never ta mention her name again.”
“That was after I heard about the wedding.” He gave Bernie a disgusted look. “I got the distinct impression from Em that she was referring to some other time, like right after I left.”
