(two months later)
Daniel agreed to go to Louisiana with Aaron, provided they only stay long enough to get the mysterious “gift” Louise Rivard had for them. Then, they were off to the Bahamas for a week of bonefishing.
To everyone’s surprise, Daniel really had resigned from his medical practice. It had taken two months to tie up all the red tape. And Aunt Mel really was entertaining an offer for the air shipping business.
Now he and Aaron had decisions to make about the rest of their lives. Where better than out on a boat with a fishing rod in one hand, a cold beer in the other, basking in the warm sun?
Better that than the cold glacier he had been contemplating.
They boarded an Alaska Airlines flight headed for Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, and almost immediately began running into people who knew their Southern kinfolks. Especially the apparently notorious Louise Rivard, known to one and all as Tante Lulu, even though tante translated to “aunt” in Cajun.
Kinfolks? Did I say . . . uh, think kinfolks? See, already I’m talking like a redneck. Next I’ll be saying y’all and darlin’ and “pass me the grits.”
“I remember the time Tante Lulu entered a belly dancing contest when she was eighty years old. And won,” a Delta Airline attendant told Aaron at a stopover in Seattle. Aaron had been flirting nonstop with Vanessa between her hostessing duties while Daniel tried to sleep.
“My PawPaw swears by Tante Lulu’s rheumatiz potions,” Frank Guidry, the pilot, who was “born on the bayou,” confided to Daniel. “The old lady is a first class traiteur, y’know. A folk healer.”
Daniel knew, and barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes.
“If you ever need a lawyer, check out Lucien LeDeux,” a fellow passenger, a gray-haired businesswoman from Baton Rouge, advised from across the aisle. She had a silver pin that said “Proud to Be a Cajun” on the lapel of a neat, rose-colored suit. “He’s known as the Swamp Solicitor. Slicker than spit on a doorknob, he is. In a good way,” she’d added at the apparent expression of distaste on Daniel’s face.
Okaaay.
The desk clerk, Linda Jo Dupuis, at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel where they stayed that night, had taken one look at the register as they’d signed in and exclaimed, “LeDeuxs! I dint think there were any more of you stud muffins left. Are you two as wild as the rest of the LeDeux men?”
“Yes,” Aaron answered before Daniel could react.
No filters! People below the Mason-Dixon line appeared to have no filters on their mouths. And his brother was no better!
Linda Jo was six-foot tall. Although she wore a conservative black, belted dress, it was sleeveless, exposing the biceps of a linebacker and tattoos up one side and down the other of her muscular frame. She looked as if she could handle any old wild thing that came her way, man or animal.
Good thing I decided to quit medicine. I’d never be able to hang my shingle here, unless I want to be known as the Stud Muffin Doctor. Holy crap!
“Are you here fer the weddin’?”
“What wedding?” Aaron asked.
“Are you kiddin’? Half the wimmin in Dixie are cryin’ the blues, as we speak. Everyone knows that Tee-John LeDeux is gettin’ hitched t’morrow. He was the wildest of the LeDeux bunch, guar-an-teed. Unless . . .” Beulah eyed him and Aaron speculatively.
Daniel answered before Aaron could this time. “No! We’ll leave that distinction to our . . . um . . . to John LeDeux.” Daniel still couldn’t believe he had half brothers, let alone say it out loud. Including, presumably, this John person. And at least three others, besides! And those were only the “legitimate” ones.
The porter, who carried their luggage to the room, having overheard the conversation at the reception desk, surmised, out loud, that Valcour LeDeux might have fathered up to a dozen children in all. Once again, Daniel mused that people here in the South seemed to have no reservations about discussing personal matters, even with strangers.
But, really, hadn’t their father ever heard of condoms?
They drove their rental car into Houma late the next morning and got directions to Tante Lulu’s home at a beauty salon owned by their half sister Charmaine LeDeux Lanier. They’d tried calling Tante Lulu last night and this morning, but all they’d gotten so far was her answering machine: “Hi, y’all. This is Tante Lulu, as if ya dint know. Tee-hee-hee. Leave a message or call me back. Iffen this is an emergency, and ya need some herbs quick like, jist come on by and get ’em from mah pantry. Buh-bye!”
That is just great! Drive-by prescriptions!
Charmaine wasn’t in her shop, but a huge framed photograph of her hung in the foyer, taken a long time ago when she’d been Miss Louisiana. A good-looking woman, Daniel had to admit, especially in that skimpy white bathing suit, and despite all the big fluffy black hair, which must have been the style back then, at least for Southern belles. “Why did they wear high heels with bathing suits in competitions back then?” he asked Aaron as they returned to the rental car. “I mean, how many women do you see walking around the pool in high heels?”
“Because high heels make a woman’s butt stick out and her boobs arch up, kind of perky like,” Aaron answered with a grin. Aaron knew lots of interesting crap like that.
The drive down a two-lane road that ran parallel to a bayou was like a trip back in time to the 1950s. The only station they were able to get clearly on the radio played a weird kind of French music. Cajun, they presumed, with its unique twang. “Jolie Blon” or some such thing.
Old wooden signs planted in the ground must have been repainted over the years, otherwise they would have been rotted away. The jingle on these particular ones read:
“His cheek”
“Was Rough”
“His chick vamoosed”
“And now she won’t”
“Come home to roost”
“Burma-shave.”
There were old trailers with disabled appliances in the front yards, but bigass satellite dishes on the roofs and shiny new, expensive pickup trucks in the driveways. Here and there a general store advertised a mixed bag of goods and services, such as fresh okra, squirrel meat, haircuts, and live bait, all in one place. A taxidermist, who was also an undertaker, had a stuffed alligator hanging from a sign in front. But then there were quaint homes on stilts at the edge of the water, and the occasional old plantation, some restored to their former beauty, others falling prey to the encroaching jungle-like vegetation.
Because their rental car had a faulty air-conditioning system, they’d been driving with the windows open. Heat shimmered over the slow-moving, dark bayou waters. The high humidity seemed to magnify the vibrant colors of lush foliage and caused the white clouds overhead to writhe and swirl constantly, a phenomenon explained by Aaron who was somewhat of a weather authority, being a pilot. When Daniel got back to Alaska, he was never going to complain about the cold again.
Seen from the air yesterday, the Southern Louisiana bayou country had looked like one of Aunt Mel’s lace tablecloths. Better yet, like an illustration of the vascular system of the human body, veins and arteries going this way and that, except that here it was hundreds, maybe thousands, of different streams twisting and turning through the land. Up close, the landscape was even better. The scenery was an amazing assault on the senses, both visual and otherwise. Swarms of insects. Butterflies of every color and size imaginable. That fishy mud smell in the streams, along with decaying vegetation, offset by the almost overwhelmingly sweet aromas coming from flowers the size of saucers. A great blue egret stood, one-legged, on a partially submerged cypress log, its long neck and bill extended, waiting for its next meal to appear. A deceptive calm enveloped the area, deceptive because the area was teeming with all kinds of dangerous animals. The creepy live oak trees dripping gray moss helped to paint a picture of both peace and peril.
Daniel had to admit to being enthralled. He hadn’t expected to like the bayou country. He still wasn’t sure that he did. But a sense of coming home filled him the deeper they got into Cajun land. And Aaron felt it, too. He could tell by the way Aaron’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and the rapt look Aaron kept darting his way as if to say, “Can you believe this?” Maybe there was something to that genetic memory crap some folks claimed to exist.
They found Tante Lulu’s home on Bayou Black a short time later, and Daniel was pleasantly surprised as they pulled onto the crushed shell driveway. Instead of the trailer on concrete blocks he’d been halfway expecting (yeah, he was guilty of a little cultural bigotry, or maybe it was low expectations because of the way his mother had been treated), there was a trim little cottage covered with climbing roses, a penned-in vegetable garden, and a life-size statue of a saint standing in a circle of pansies. And a ten-foot, armor-plated alligator sunning itself in the backyard!
“Holy frickin’ Dixie!” Daniel exclaimed as they both rolled up their automatic windows, which immediately turned the inside of the car into a sauna. “What the hell is that?”
“An alligator,” Aaron answered.
“I know it’s an alligator. What’s it doing here?”
“Well, the bayou is only a hop, skip and a gator jump down the lawn,” Aaron pointed out.
“Don’t be a wiseass. What are we gonna do?”
Aaron laid on the horn. “We’ll see if Louise Rivard is home, first of all.”
“And let her come out and handle the alligator?” Daniel asked.
“You have a better idea?”
He didn’t.
Aaron laid on the horn a few more times, but there was no movement from within the house. Even though it was only eleven a.m., the old lady must already be at the wedding.
“Guess we should have asked at the beauty salon where this wedding was going to be held,” Aaron said.
“Or we could just go back to the hotel, relax by the pool, and come back tomorrow,” Daniel contributed.
“Nah. Since we’re already here . . .” Aaron pressed on the horn and didn’t let up for a couple of seconds. Aaron knew very well that he probably wouldn’t be able to talk Daniel into returning on this fool’s errand again, if they left now.
Meanwhile, they both watched with fascination as the huge reptile raised itself on short stubby legs and started ambling their way, faster than you would expect a creature of a thousand pounds, give or take, to move. When it got closer, it opened its mouth, displaying enormous piano-key size teeth, and let loose with a mighty bellow which caused them both to jump in their seats. By now, sweat was rolling down their foreheads and necks, and not just because of the humidity.
“Oh, shit! That gator roar was probably a broadcast to all his fellow gators up and down the bayou, ‘Hey, everyone, check out these two idiots in a metal coffin’,” Daniel pointed out.
“Don’t be such a killjoy. This is fun.”
“Are you nuts? Let’s get out of here.” Aaron had turned off the engine when they’d stopped because the vents were just blowing hot air. Did gators eat metal? This one looked as if it could devour a bus, let alone a little Camry.
Just then, there was a knock on the passenger window which about caused Daniel to have a heart attack. He turned, halfway expecting to see a herd of alligators, but instead saw an old man wearing denim overalls, the kind with shoulder straps, and no shirt, but heavy work boots, trying to get his attention. He had a garden rake in one hand and a cigarette with a long ash in the other.
Daniel rolled his window down halfway. “Hurry up and get in the backseat before that alligator gets any closer.”
“Huh? Why would I do that? Thass jist Useless.” The guy sure was brave with only a yard tool for a weapon. You’d think he was carrying a rifle or something. Daniel would, if he lived here, which, God forbid, he ever would.
“It won’t seem useless when that creature gobbles you up,” Daniel said.
The old codger looked at him as if he was crazy, then cackled at some hidden joke. Hidden to Daniel, anyhow. He didn’t see anything funny in this situation.
The old guy took a long draw on his cigarette, blew out a smoke ring, then dropped the butt to the driveway, stomping it out with his boot. “Useless is the gator’s name. All he wants is some Cheez Doodles.”
Daniel and Aaron’s jaws dropped as the man went over to a metal garbage can beside the house, took out a handful of the cheese snack and tossed them toward the backyard. The gator immediately turned and trotted away, eating a row of the orange crunchies on its way.
“Have we landed in Wonderland yet, Alice?” Daniel asked his brother.
“I think so.”
“I get first dibs on being the Mad Hatter.”
“No kidding. You’re already a little bit mad.”
“And getting madder by the minute. This ranks up there with one of your top ten crazy-ass ideas, Aaron. Even worse than the time you talked me into zip-lining off that cliff during a hailstorm.”
“It wasn’t hailing when we started.”
“Honestly, let’s get out of Dodge. We came, the old lady wasn’t here, no reason why we should hang around. Let’s forget this whole thing.”
“And you think Aunt Mel will be satisfied with that explanation?” Aaron asked him.
They both knew the answer to that.
The gator, having had its treats and presumably not considering the two scaredy-cats in the car to be tasty, went for a swim. The danger gone for the moment, Aaron and Daniel got out of the car.
The old guy returned and extended a hand. “I’m Jackson Dufrene, Tante Lulu’s neighbor. Kin I help you fellas?”
They introduced themselves and shook the man’s hand.
“Well, Tante Lulu’s off ta the weddin’, of course. She’s been gone since dawn, had ta have a finger in all the doin’s, lak always. Over ta the bride’s house, first off, no doubt, then over ta Our Lady of the Bayou Church fer the services. The reception’s bein’ held up yonder at the Terrebonne Country Club. Ya kin find her there, guar-an-teed. Guardin’ the Peachy Praline Cobbler Cake she made special fer the weddin’. Five tiers!”
Way too much information! “Oh, we wouldn’t intrude on a private event like that,” Daniel said. “We’ll just go back to our hotel and—”
“Pooh! They’s prob’ly five hundred people gonna be there. Folks comin’ ta see that rascal Tee-John get hitched from all over the world. Even New Jersey. One or two more won’t make no difference. Besides, you two are fam’ly. Where’d ya say you two was from?”
“Alaska,” Aaron said with a wink at Daniel. They had a pretty good idea what was coming next.
“Alaska! Well, doan that beat all? Doan suppose ya live in igloos up thataways anymore?”
“Not lately,” Aaron said with a straight face.
“How do you know we’re family?” Daniel asked.
“’Cause ya said yer last name was LeDeux. And ya look jist lak yer papa, thass how. Valcour LeDeux, the no-count, good-fer-nothin’ bastard, ’scuse my French, breeds good-lookin’ chillen with like features. Wild as kudzu in a garden patch, all of ’em, but I ain’t got no more young girls at home to warn offa y’all.”
Daniel should have been affronted by the man’s words, but what could he say when Aaron just chuckled like a moron.
Thus it was that Daniel found himself, an hour later, with his brother Aaron, about to gatecrash the tail end of a Cajun wedding reception. In hotter than frickin’ hell Louisiana. Where the bridegroom was none other than their supposed half brother John LeDeux. And the hostess of this shindig was none other than the notorious Tante Lulu, whom Aunt Mel had told them about.
They had to park about a half mile away in an overflow lot. Old Jackson might be right about how many people were invited to this reception. Daniel had attended big weddings in the past, but he’d never heard of anything this big. You’d think the bride and groom were royalty or something. Cajun royalty. The William and Kate of the bayou.
Shiiit!
One saving grace was that, from this distance at least, it appeared that the bridal party was the only one in tuxes and gowns. Others were dressed in everything from semi-formal wear to what Aunt Mel would have called church clothes. He and Aaron wouldn’t stand out too much . . . him in a button-down shirt, khakis, and loafers, and Aaron in his usual denim and boots, with a T-shirt that said, “Alaska Air Shipping.” Okay, maybe Aaron would look like a hick, but he wouldn’t.
The crowd filled a huge reception hall, its various side rooms, and spilled out onto several patios that overlooked a golf course. Tents had been erected in the back where it looked as if food would be served buffet style. There was a drink tent, as well, which is where he and Aaron headed. Drink of the day was oyster shooters, which he and Aaron declined in favor of longneck bottles of cold beer. Manna in this heat! Strangely, no one else seemed to mind the high temperatures. At least, they weren’t sweating like pigs, like he and Aaron.
“Let’s go inside, find some air-conditioning,” he suggested, though with this many bodies, he doubted there would be much relief.
The closer they got, the louder the band. More of that twangy Cajun music like they’d heard on the radio. Once inside, they made their way toward the dance floor where a dark-haired man in a tux walked around a wide circle, holding hands with a dark-haired woman in an old-fashioned lace wedding gown. The bride and groom.
“What is it?” Daniel asked an elderly woman next to him.
“La Fleur de la Jeunesse. The Flower of Youth.” The woman sighed. “They doan hardly sing the old songs like this anymore, but Tante Lulu insisted, and that was that.”
Tante Lulu again! That woman sure gets around!
The five-piece band was situated up on a dais at the far end of the massive room. The band’s singer, who wore some kind of washboard contraption over his chest, wailed out the seemingly sad lyrics in Cajun French, followed by an English translation.
“J’avais promis dans ma jeunesse.”
“I promised in my youth.”
“Que je m’aurais jamais marier . . .”
“That I would never marry . . .”
“C’est aujourd’hui qye na tete est couronnée.”
“But today my head is crowned.”
“Et mon Coeur est omé d’un bouquet.”
“And my heart is crowned with flowers.”
“Adieu la fleur de la jeunesse.”
“Goodbye to the flower of youth . . .”
Meanwhile, the bride and groom, still walking the wide circle, were joined by others from the bridal party, then their guests. A long snake of couples circling the room.
But then the band morphed into a different song, this one more upbeat, and the bridal couple began to slow dance in the middle of the dance floor, she with her arms looped around his neck, he with his hands on her hips, almost cradling her butt. They smiled at each other as they swayed to the music. Occasionally, when the crowd clapped, they kissed. They were good dancers. Soon the dance floor was filled. Much laughter and a rebel yell here and there. These were people who enjoyed a good time.
“This really isn’t the right time for us to be connecting with family,” Daniel said.
“You’re right,” Aaron conceded. “Let’s get out of here.”
They set their empty bottles on a table and were about to wend their way back through the crowd when, in a break between songs, they heard a high-pitched female voice exclaim behind them, “Oh, my God!”
They turned as one to see an old woman, no more than five feet tall, in a calf-length red gown, rushing toward them on what appeared to be red orthopedic shoes. A cap of gray curls covered her head, and dangly diamond earrings flashed in her little ears. She wore fake eyelashes. A smear of bright red covered her thin lips, which suddenly spread into a wide smile. She was eighty, if she was a day. Or more.
It had to be the notorious Tante Lulu.
Coming closer, she spread her arms wide in welcome.
What? Are we supposed to hug her, or something?
Yes, Daniel soon realized as the little person, whose head came only to his chest, took his face in both hands and tugged him downward so that she could kiss him on one cheek, then the other.
Daniel would have bolted if he could have.
Actually, she smelled good. Like vanilla and peaches. And he found himself returning the hug.
“Welcome, welcome,” she said.
She did the same to Aaron, who exchanged a puzzled look with him over her shoulders. Who does she think we are?
“Doan even try ta deny yer more of that Valcour’s chillen. And twins! Oh, Lordy, what am I thinkin’? Ya mus’ be the boys from up Alaska way? I’m so sorry ’bout yer mother.” She hugged them again.
Daniel was feeling really uncomfortable, especially since people around them were starting to stare with curiosity. ‘Uh, I know this isn’t really the right time, but I understand you have something for us. Maybe you could just tell us where it is, and we’ll be on our way.”
“We kin take care of that later.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes at her. “I thought it was something important.”
“It is important. Doan rush me.”
Taking each of them in hand, she began to lead them through the crowd. “Come, come,” she said, “we will go talk, private like, in the sittin’ room.”
“Is our father here?” Daniel asked right off.
“Pfff! That Valcour, he’s off on a cruise with his wife Jolie. Prob’ly afeared he’d be asked ta pay fer the weddin’. Not that the ol’ buzzard don’t have more money than he deserves. I gotta warn ya right now, yer papa is so crooked he could swallow nails and spit out corkscrews. The man’s been down in the sewers so long he knows the rats by name. But he ain’t nothin’ but a fart in a windstorm when ya get right down to it.”
Enough with the metaphors. We get the picture.
“Doan ya be worryin’ none ’bout that.”
I wasn’t. To tell the truth, Daniel was having trouble following her train of thought. And talk about TMI.
“You got other fam’ly here, boys.” She squeezed their hands, as if they’d been worried about lack of family. He had no time to correct that impression, though, because she was motioning for them to sit on one of the couches in the small room, and she sat on the other couch.
“You mus’ be Daniel, the doctor,” she said to him, “and you mus’ be Aaron, the pilot. Yer Aunt Mel tol’ me ’bout you boys. Ya kin call me Tante Lulu, like everyone does.”
He wondered idly what Aunt Mel had said that would allow Tante Lulu to identify them so easily.
“I kin tell by yer sad eyes the troubles ya seen lately,” she told Daniel. “Yer aunt sez ya been depressed and are gonna quit medicine.”
It appeared Aunt Mel had a bigger mouth than he’d realized.
“Ya do know that depression is a no-confidence vote in God, dontcha?” She gave him a stern look, then reached forward and patted his knee. “I prayed ta St. Jude fer ya, and here ya are. Hallelujah! You jist watch now. Happiness has a way of sneakin’ in through a door ya dint know ya left open.”
She smiled then.
Daniel had no idea what he was supposed to say to that. And Aaron wasn’t helping at all by commenting to the old lady, “Amen!”
Just then, the door opened and a woman peeked in. “Sorry to interrupt, Tante Lulu, but the caterer has a question about the crawfish.” The woman was stunning. Tall, even taller with strappy black high heels, a long mane of auburn hair, and a killer body in a form-fitting green halter dress, that ended just above the knees. She must be at least five-ten in her bare feet, judging by his own six-foot-two. The freckles that covered much of her body only seemed to add to her allure.
Tante Lulu stood and said, “Boys, this is Samantha Starr, a friend of the fam’ly. Samantha, this is Aaron LeDeux. He’s an airplane pilot. And this is Daniel LeDeux. He’s a doctor, retired at the moment.”
Samantha nodded at Aaron, but she frowned at Daniel. Because he was a doctor, or because he was retired, he wasn’t sure. In any case, she’d already turned, giving Daniel a full-blown view of her backside, which was amazing. A slim waist and wider hips, giving her buttocks sort of a heart shape. And it moved when she walked away. Up, down, up, down.
Tante Lulu stood, about to follow, but the old bird noticed the direction of his stare, and remarked, “Thass what I call a hot cha-cha hiney.”
Aaron burst out laughing, and Daniel found himself blushing.
Tante Lulu asked the oddest thing then. “Ya got a hope chest yet, Daniel?”
And thus began their new life in the South.