| |
Morgan City, Louisiana, USA
4th of February, 10:00 a.m. (GMT-6)
––––––––
Peter Fontenot was filling up the gas tank and doing the last round of checks before putting the airboat in the water. He usually let it rest for the winter, but his grandmother was a formidable woman. Grand Maman Fontenot, the matriarch of the family, was not a tall or big woman, but she had rule of the roost. When she told him to get the boat ready, he got the boat ready.
When she exited her house, she had three people in tow: a tall, pretty Latina with dark hair and dark eyes in the company of two black men. The older one was on the stout side and the younger was big, like some sort of ebon Thor.
Grand Maman Fontenot came to the water’s edge and gave him instructions, “Chère, you’re gonna take these folks up to Bayou Chene, wait for them do their business, and bring them back.”
“Oui, mémé,” he answered obediently and waited for the litany to begin.
She circled the boat with a critical eye. It looked fine, but looks could be deceiving. “Have you checked it for leaks?” she began.
“She’s holding air like Tati Lenora,” he tried to insert some humor at the expense of his least favorite aunt, but Grand Maman would not be so easily derailed.
“Are the poles and lines good?” she steamed forward.
“Checked them myself as I pulled them out of storage,” he verified.
She raised a well-shaped eyebrow. “And the engine?”
“She purrs like a kitten,” he attested.
“Are you gassed up?”
“Oui,” he answered simply. He knew she was running out of fuel if she was asking the softball questions.
“Even the back-up can?” she persisted.
Peter nodded once. “Like you always tell me to.”
She knew he must have forgotten something and ran through her mental list one more time. “What about the rifle in case of gators?” she added after some thought.
“With extra bullets,” he replied in the call and response tradition.
She ended the interrogation with a satisfied “bon.” He bent down so she could kiss him on both cheeks. “Be careful, mon cher,” she affectionately gave him her blessing.
“Oui, mémé,” he matched tone for tone.
Then, Grand Maman Fontenot did a 180, literally and figuratively. “Clarence, if there is one hair out of place on this boy’s head, you will have to answer to me. Understood?” she fiercely addressed Morris.
Peter watched silently as his five-foot-tall gran grew two feet in mood. He knew that voice and when he was a boy, it was usually followed with a switch. No one gave a whooping like Grand Maman Fontenot. She was both angry and disappointed, although with hindsight, he’d always deserved it. He had heard it been said many a time that he was a naughty and willful child.
Morris gave the petite matriarch a sincere look. “I would walk through fire first,” he declared as he brought her hand to his lips. She grinned and fought off a giggle as he planted the gentlest of kisses on it. Peter was not entirely comfortable with what was going on but said nothing. Even in her golden years, Grand Maman Fontenot was her own woman.
She regained her composure and handed a basket to Martinez—food was too important to entrust with men. “For when ya’ll get hungry. I packed enough for everyone, and there’s bottles of water in there too.”
“Thank you, Ms. Fontenot,” Martinez replied politely with a slight curtsy. “I’ll be sure it gets back to you.”
Grand Maman Fontenot liked manners. “Peter, why can’t you find a nice girl that respects her elders?”
Peter knew there was no right answer to the question and just let it slide. Instead, he said, “We better get going if we want to get back before dark.”
LaSalle helped him position the boat so it was mostly in the water and facing the right way. He stepped on deck and helped Martinez and Morris board before loading their gear. For someone so tall and swole, he was surprising agile and sure-footed on the flat-bottom boat. Peter sat on top where he could keep watch for obstacles in the water while his passengers took the seats below where the wind would be less rough. The engine roared to life, and the seasoned boatman steered her the rest of the way into the water.
Ms. Fontenot waved them off and watched the airboat shrink from view before heading inside. She told herself that Peter knew the bayou like the back of his hand and Clarence wouldn’t let anything happen to him, but a grandmother worries.
Peter didn’t open up the engine until they were in open water. Airboats were noisy as hell and didn’t provide any cover to those on board, but they could go just about as fast as a same-sized motorboat and would never get stuck on vegetation or the shallows. Peter maintained full throttle, as there was no risk of overheating in this weather and there was nothing about the ensemble that said to take the scenic route.
The airboat was propelled by a column of air generated by a giant fan in back and steering was a matter of directing the airstream with an oversized joystick. For something so simple, it took a skilled hand to operate well. There were no signs, buoys, or flags to guide the way, but Peter knew which bends to follow and which branches to ignore. He’d ferried people to Bayou Chene many times because it was deep in the heart of Atchafalaya Basin. There were no roads going there and if someone wanted to visit, it had to be by boat.
Bayou Chene was first settled by the Cajuns in the 1830s, named after the oak trees that used to litter the place. The Cajuns made the most of the low-lying wetlands others seemed to avoid. They engaged in agriculture, hunting, fishing, cypress logging, and harvesting Spanish moss. Whatever they needed, they either got from the swamp or bought with money earned from its fruits. They built a good life there, and in its heyday, Bayou Chene had homes, schools, churches, grocery stores, and even a post office.
In an effort to minimize the flooding of the Mississippi River in the early twentieth century, the government started diverting water into the Atchafalaya River. By making it a spillway, the isolated wetland was precipitously introduced into a larger network of waterways that deposited large amounts of silt annually. As a result, the careful ecological balance of the Atchafalaya Basin was irreparably changed and the flooding there only got worse.
As traditional Cajun life became more untenable, people left Bayou Chene until there were no more residents at all. Its last living year was 1955, and each flood season brought more sediment. Currently, Bayou Chene was under twelve to eighteen feet of dirt, but it was never forgotten. Each September, its former residents and their descendants took to their boats and made an annual pilgrimage to swap stories, food, and fellowship on top of the remains of their home in the bayou.
The one surviving landmark that hadn’t yet yielded to the Mississippi’s silt was a lone gravestone in the Methodist Cemetery. That was where Peter was headed. He slowed the engine as he passed the three-way meet; there were no brakes on airboats and he didn’t have a reversible propeller. There were no docks or pull-ups this deep in the bayou and he glided the boat right onto the bank as gentle as rocking a baby to sleep.
As soon as he cut the engine, Morris checked the time. His grandmother wasn’t lying—Peter had got them there in no time flat. LaSalle started unloading the gear while Martinez fished out Tupperware containers of food and bottles of water for them and left the rest in the basket on the boat.
Morris drew the young man aside to have a word. “I wanna go over a few things with you while we’re gone,” he said in low tone with just a little dollop of his will. Peter suddenly felt very honored; he was being taken into confidence instead of just being told what to do.
“First, no matter what you see or hear—or think you see or hear—stay on the boat. If we need you, someone will come back and fetch you. Second, we should be done well before four, but if we are not back by then, I want you to leave. You are not to be here after dark if we have not returned by then.”
Peter bobbed his head up and down; there was something a little shady about the situation and he knew better than to ask. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
“Say it back to me, so I know you know,” Morris coaxed him. He’d made Ms. Fontenot a promise and he intended to keep it.
Peter thought it a strange request but humored the old man. “I will stay on the boat no matter what, and if ya’ll don’t return by four, I’m to head home without you.” As he spoke the words, he knew them to be true—that was exactly what he was going to do.
“Good man. Your grandmother was right—you are sharp.” He clapped him on the back and disembarked. “We left you the basket in case you get hungry.” Peter watched them walk away, deeper into the city buried under silt.
Much had changed since Morris had last set foot on Bayou Chene. What used to be lakes were now forest and all the oaks were gone, replaced with the sandy-soil-loving willow. Even the water was the wrong color. He set his mental map on where he remembered the Methodist church being and intuited the path.
“This way,” he motioned and they headed further inland. Martinez and LaSalle followed, keeping the chatter to a minimum lest they distract him. It didn’t take much to draw Morris into conversation. He stopped abruptly and spun in place, giving his brain time to confirm what his feet already knew. “Here,” he said definitively. LaSalle pulled out the trenching shovel, while Morris and Martinez unpacked the rest.
The plan itself was straightforward: lure Hugo Dubois out to the bayou and de-poltergeist him. Once he was no longer a malevolent undead being, the going would get a lot easier. They had spent yesterday evening going over contingencies and making preparations. Martinez had picked up the walkie-talkies from the Acadian Village, LaSalle metaphysically deodorized the iron band with baking soda, and Morris made holy water in the bathtub, much to Martinez’s surprise.
LaSalle made quick work of the trench, keeping the circle a tight three feet in diameter. The circle was meant to hold the poltergeist—the smaller the area, the less energy it could draw from its surroundings. However, it had to be big enough to chalk the runes and accommodate the three of them standing around it to power the ritual.
Once he was finished, Martinez took over. Even though she was the newest to practicing the arts, Morris said she had the best penmanship of the bunch, although she was pretty sure he was just testing her. The air was still, making it easy for her to chalk the perimeter and runes with a field pen. The refillable chamber was packed with powdered chalk—the kind used at sporting events—and the blunt narrowed tip was ideal for precise deposition of a generous amount of chalk.
She took her time to get it right the first time; the circle wouldn’t keep the poltergeist in if she made an error, and there was no easy way to erase a mistake under the circumstances. When she was finished, the white lines and symbols stood out against the dry dark soil. When neither LaSalle nor Morris could find fault with it, they poured salt and holy water into the shallow trench and placed the ring inside the circle as well as a bunch of walkie-talkies with the transmitting buttons taped down. The trap was set; now to bait it.
LaSalle opened his violin case and passed the bow over the block of resin before doing a quick tuning. This was the only speculative part of the plan. Morris liked Martinez’s Pied Piper idea, but there was no way to knowing where to go to catch Dubois’s ear. Then he remembered the walkie-talkies. If Zoe Miller heard the music in hers through Eva Chapman’s, it meant there was a connection—however brief or tentative—between the two devices and the poltergeist. Of course, there had been no way for Martinez to know which walkie-talkies were the ones Chapman and Miller were using that night, so she just took them all. Brute force solutions were still solutions.
The librarians seemed to think it was at least theoretically possible, which was enough for them to proceed. The circle would work regardless how Dubois got there and it was the fussiest part. Once the circle was perfect, there was no harm in trying persuasion over coercion. If the walkie-talkie gambit failed, Morris now knew enough to summon Dubois directly into the circle, but that would regrettably set them on a path of forceful resolution. He wanted to avoid that if possible. Conflict was significantly more draining, but it always made for a solid plan B.
Morris turned to LaSalle. “You ready?” LaSalle cracked his neck and nodded. They each placed a Babel lozenge in their mouth and took their positions around the circle.
LaSalle abutted the end of the violin to his chest just below the collarbone. The old-time music he was going to play wasn’t about complicated finger or bow techniques that required a classical stance. It was about keeping the music going and feeling it in your soul. He went inside himself to a place of love and longing where music and magic mingled. He tapped his foot on the ground and the beat pulsed through his body and the bayou. Then he picked up his bow and drew it across the strings along with his summoned will.
He pulled long strokes in the Nova Scotia tradition rather than the more rhythmic, three-finger slide used in Creole style. It was the difference between white and black French music. While they shared many of the same tunes, themes, and traditions, they were definitely played with distinct accents. Hugo Dubois was Acadian from the old country; this was what would call to him.
The notes were haunting and lyrical, dripping with beautiful melancholy. With each long draw, Martinez was sure he was going to run out of bow before he changed directions. He went through the melody once on the violin and changed to chording as he broke into song. There were multiple versions of Oh Pa Janvier, but this one was closest to Zoe Miller’s description. His sweet, clear tenor soared over the violin chords.
Oh Pa Janvier, donne moi Pauline
Oh no Pauline, Pauline est trop jeune
Oh Pa Janvier c’est la seule que moi je peux aimer
Ouais, c’est la seule que moi je peux aimer dans tout le pays
Oh Pa Janvier donne moi Pauline
Tu vas me faire mourir si tu me la donnes pas
Parce que je l’aime trop, j'aime trop Pauine
Oh Pauline ma chere tite Pauline
Qui moi j’aime autant
Oh Pa Janvier tu me fais trop du mal
Quand tu me refuses, tu me refuses mais Pauline
Oh Pa Janvier tu me creves le coeur
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye pour toujours.
Though he sang in French, Martinez understood each phrase and stanza. Oh father winter, give me Pauline. She’s the only one I can love in the whole country. You’re gonna kill me if you don’t give her to me because I love her too much. You hurt me too much when you refuse me Pauline. Oh father winter, you break my heart.
The sky darkened and the wind picked up. Martinez kept an eye on the chalk; the runes and circle were still intact despite the flecks of white fluttering in the air. The walkie-talkies started to crackle with static but the circle was still empty.
When LaSalle finished his verse, he resumed the melody on the strings until the poltergeist was with them. It was a whirling force of rage that was roughly the shape of a man, but its features were distorted, constantly writhing and never knowing stillness.
As soon as it appeared, it tried to leave the circle but found the way blocked. Then it tried to retreat into the land of the dead, but found himself forced to manifest in the mortal realm. It howled in anger, pressing against the unseen forces that caged it in.
Morris held up his large silver cross and rang his ritual bell. The small chime was louder than all the poltergeist’s screams, and brought a moment of utter silence to that patch of Bayou Chene. The poltergeist turned to Morris, its face solidifying, and he instantly recognized those eyes.
“Hello, Mr. Dubois,” his powerful voice resonated and shook the trees. “I’ve been looking for you for a while. I’m so glad you could join us.”