The Town of Erath fluttered cosmetically with red, white and blue. Fireworks exploded in the streets, leaving blue gun smoke clouds among the excited children. His sons too were excited as he drove the truck over the railroad tracks that ran down the center of town. They glanced around wildly, wide-eyed, unable to absorb all the sights, all the excitement.
Minos Lancon gave each boy a little folding money. He did not begrudge the boys anything and would never consider not supporting them. The problem was that Louisiana courts lumped child support with alimony. That was good for his income tax return but it pained Minos to pay alimony, even one dollar, and he was never quite certain which of his dollars went to the boys.
His lawyer said if Marie would just move in with that driller from Michigan, he could stop the part of the payments they considered alimony. There was no daughter involved so Minos would have no objection to another man living in her house. He had taught the boys all they needed to know already.
Dane, the youngest, was quiet and delicate. He took after his mother. Minos didn't understand him. No one understood him. He kept to himself. Minos could never teach him the way he could teach Darrell, the oldest.
Minos helped them spy the Tilt-a-Whirl, Ferris Wheel, Bumper Cars, Space Walk, Fun House, freak shows with a giant mummy and a man who ate glass. Then he pulled up the truck. That's when he saw the Vietnamese.
Like always, they were in a group. An old mama-san with the shiny black pants and the delicate white shirt to her knees. Wooden sandals. The others dressed mostly like white people. A little nigger-loud, though. Minos nudged Darrell's shoulder. Darrell saw them, rolled down the window, started barking very loud. Like an old hound dog.
Dane blushed.
"What the matter for you, you?" Minos chided. He was addressing Dane. "They eat dog, them. Ainh?"
Dane shrugged, face down.
"So bark, you!" Minos ordered. But Dane did not bark. His face, reddening even more, stayed downcast.
"Feet-dumb-ease!" Darrell yelled as the Vietnamese entered the carnival crowd. It was something he had come up with himself. Minos chuckled although he knew it was crude in the way 'dumb' started with a 'd' and if it were 'numb' the boy had come up with it would have been more accurate, more like the way they said it themselves: 'Veet-nahm-ease'. The boy was young. You had to cut him some slack.
He told them to have a good time and to get back to their mother's house early. Now he was done with them until morning. At home, he settled himself in front of the television set with a TV dinner and whiskey chased by beer.
He fell asleep with the set still on. The sputter-buzz from the hazy-lit television did not wake him. A jingle of spurs woke him. He felt he was not alone. He switched off the set. The house was in full darkness. He felt the presence.
He saw the figure. Huge. Standing in a darker shadow. Broad, tall, heavy shouldered, a misshapen head. Minos had weapons handy. He got the M-16 from the closet, inserted a clip and locked it in place. By the time he got the muzzle around the corner, the figure was closer. There was no question of missing. In one burst of brilliant flashes, he put all twenty rounds into the chest area.
The den exploded in an angry growling of searing orange flames. In the strobe light effect of the muzzle flashes, he saw to his horror that the figure was a man with a wide-brimmed hat. A white man dressed in fringed buckskin. Pistols and a small hand-axe stuck beneath his belt. Face framed by braids, a beard. Eyes calm, unconcerned. The intruder viewed Minos with unveiled contempt. Through the acrid, gunpowder mist, the stranger seemed to take on his own light. A light all about him but neither from within nor from without.
Hand to the belt. The axe. Minos stepped back, slipped on shell casings. The tomahawk came hurtling, spinning toward him. Carrying with it the same glow of the stranger. Colliding the razor edge against the lethal barrel of the assault rifle. The gun wrenched from Minos's hands, itself aglow now until both weapons disappeared in the darkness. Sinking into the depths of the dark, mud-bottom lake of night.
"Ain't right neighborly, podnah. That there mare's leg don' make a body feel welcome. I seed hoosgows taste better t' the gut 'an thissern."
The stranger did not speak French, nor did he speak American. He communicated colloquially in both tongues at once. Texas twang. Minos saw him clear as daylight. All the way down to the silver studs on the bell-bottom trousers and the hand-tooled boots. The stranger advanced swiftly. A cat in the forest. The jangle of the broad rowels of the silver spurs. Minos could not move. He was rooted among the spent shell casings of the M-16.
"Mais … ainh … who you are, you?" he managed before the stranger's hand on his chest sent him sliding backwards like his feet were on greased rails until he tumbled into his easy chair. Fully reclined. Feet up. Arms stuck to the rests like murderers strapped to the electric chair.
"Texican," the stranger said loudly and proudly. He sat at the edge of the cold hearth and by touching his fingers to the ashes produced a fire that roared in layers like a well-stacked set of logs springing from the air itself. He removed the sombrero and repeated a little more slowly, seriously, "Texican."
"Me, I ...." The stranger's hand, gloved but with the right index finger of the glove cut away, shot up between them and Minos was silenced. Physically silenced. Something invisible held still the tip of his tongue.
"You ain't important. You listen."
The stranger sat more easily on the ledge of the hearth and removed the sombrero, tossed it to the floor where it came to rest like a glowing pool. "I come here after Goliad, brung my missus an' the younguns. Warn't fer the younguns, I'd a been there yit. Texas jes got a bit too bloody fer my taste what with the younguns an' all. So I up an' hitched up the wagon and we put up the canvas an' I got 'em all the way overn ter Grand Cheniere afore that marsh lay out affronter us. Had some terrible things ahappening behint me an' that there marsh, she looked pretty good t' my sore eyes."
The Texican reached into the fire and from the dead ashes beneath the lines of flames, without apparent pain, he plucked a living coal. He lit a cigar, pungent smoke.
"Lef' em there, I did, an' rid on down that there ole beach line, the way ole Jake Cole done when he brung them cattle on inter Pea-can Island. I made the island right easy 'nough an' carved meself a stake. Time I got back ter Grand Cheniere, my younguns a'ready was a-talking that French l'il bit. Fer me, shucks, warn't whole lot diff'er'nt from Messkin. Picked 'er up right smart an' had muhself a right fine life on that there island. Was easy, don't you see."
The stranger stood, took up his sombrero, set it on his head and adjusted the neck string.
"You gonter hafter mend yore ways, Lancon," he said. "Er yore liken ter get trawled up one day an' stept on fer trash. But, now, beer an' whiskey. But I got hyer some firewater liken ter nothin' you evern got down yourn gullet. Messkins calls 'er mezcal."
The stranger took from a pouch at his side a warped bottle of clear liquid which he tilted up and drank. The liquid gurgled downward, large bubbles bursting inside the bottle to take up the space. He drank until there was only one swallow left.
"Yourn," the stranger said, handling over the bottle. Minos discovered he could use his left hand. He took the bottle. It was warm, throbbing. "Drink!"
The mezcal choked him, potent with fire. Something in the liquid slipped from the bottle and through his mouth, right over his tongue and down his throat, small and hard and slick.
"You got yerself the worm, Cajun!" the voice boomed. "You got the worm!"
Minos, nauseous, closed his eyes.
Oom-pah-pah!
He opened them. The music was coming from outside. A band outside. A very large woman stood before him.
She was not fat. She was muscular, tall. Very blonde. Blue eyes and ruddy checks. Middle aged. Arms and shoulders as powerful as a man's. Boisterously feminine. Under each arm was a wooden keg. She laughed a deep hearty laugh.
"He ish avake!" she shouted with obvious pleasure. Minos glanced toward the door, planning an escape, but he was still bound to the chair. "Der mushik? Dafs der Oaktuber Feshtifull, yah! Chuly in here, Oaktuber ow dere."
She laughed again and pounded one of the kegs to the floor beside his chair. The other one she set on an end and sat. From the shadows she plucked the tomahawk. The small, pointed end smashed a hole in the top of the keg. Gunpowder! She spilled a little fuse line. She left a little ignition pile at the end of it on the floor.
"Ist gemütlichkeit? Vatch dish," she said grinning. "Dish ish fun, yah?"
She held up a finger and fire sprang from the tip.
"Ish goot, yah?"
She lit the fuse. Minos struggled but he was still bound tight. He closed his eyes, turned to mutter swiftly his Act of Contrition. No explosion. First one eye, then the other. The flame sputtered in place one inch from the keg. She laughed, clapped her hands.
"Vas joost to make you lish'en. Der talk. Yah. Alle vas beginnin' in der Reformation. Ach! You don't effen know what vas der Reformation. Vas bad, vas terrible. Zwie hunnert year de vahrs! Ve vash in der Strasbourg. Know vere ish der Strasbourg? No. Vhat you don't know ish … ish … enorm. Vell vash no goot in Strasbourg. Ve vent from Strasbourg to Paris. Den, ven I vasht born, ve vent to der Deutche. Vhat you call der Teche.
She hesitated, seeing his surprise at the name of the famous bayou.
"Vell, vhat you think ish Klienpeter, eh? Or ish Shoeffler, or ish Dubs vhat you call Toups. My name ish Heimendinger, Greta Heimendinger."
"Und ve come into der Deutche country vhen dere vas nobody dere but der Indyans. Yah. Der Ceti, der Men-Red-All-Over. Dey vas goot, dem Indyans. I like."
Now her voice rose like an organ in a vaulted cathedral.
"Und I like der Frenchmen, und der 'Cadiens, und der.. .der Neger, vhat you call der niggers. Ve like all der people, yah. Und vhen ve come, before der 'Cadians mit dere cowsen, dey vas joost der Churmans, Deutchen, vhat vas liffing to stay. Ve saft der St. Martin from der famine, und our vettern, our cousins, dey saft New Orleans, too, mit food for to eat instead of tobacco for to make dash geld der munny.
"So! You not bad man, you joost der nichtswisser, und dat I don' know vhat vay to tell you vhat ish. Und you joost ein skinny man, yah. Der talk, it make t'irst."
So she stood, took from beneath her ample bottom the second keg. She smashed a hole in the top and held the keg high, the golden frothy liquid spilling into her mouth and down her neck and breasts. She drank gallons. Then she handed it to him. His arms without obedience to him took the keg and tilted it up and he tasted the stong, unpasteurized, room-temperature German beer.
Laughter. The keg lifted from him. Last sight her standing before him, hands on hips. Laced bodice bulging about her body, laughing loudly. Grinning. Cheeks rosy. Eyes blue. Blonde hair sweaty with celebration.
His eyes closed. It seemed they only blinked, but suddenly everything around him changed. The man standing before him was tall and slender, with shirt of lace gathered at his throat. Coat and top hat black. Trousers fawn-colored, tucked into soft, suede boots.
"Are you finally awake? Finally? Good. I'm going to make this very brief, I don't like to wallow in this sort of company, although I admit all these devices here, they do have their advantages. In my time we were forced to use slaves in order to live as God intended those of our station to live. Slaves can be abominable. Body lice, for instance. Constantly treating them for body lice."
He clapped his hands, which were gloved in white. A smalI black boy detached himself from the shadows behind the man and brought out a tray with a bottle of wine already opened and two crystal goblets. The boy swiftly retreated.
"Not that I give a damn about their body lice. Wouldn't go near one of them if I didn't have to. One must keep one's servants de-loused in order that one keep his own house that way. Other problems, too. But I'm going to get out of here very fast, very fast indeed."
He drank from the glass, held it to the light of the fire so that the rosy oblong light spilled across his face. He sighed.
"The baron's best," he said almost reverently. Then he turned an angry look on Minos. "You're not nearly worth the trouble, you must understand. You were quite right to be rude to those Vietnamese. Your instincts are perfect. It is amazing, quite amazing, that a cur … that's right, a mongrel like you has even the slightest smidgen of aristocratic bearing."
The apparition quaffed the wine and poured another. It was as if the blush of the wine now spread across his face from within. He smiled warmly, but to himself.
"Ah, yes. Well, the Acadiens, they were mongrels themselves, don't you know. Seventy-five years or so of breeding with Indians and Irishmen and Scotsmen. And in Normandy before they left, why they'd as soon mate with boars or bulls, I do believe."
He put the glass down on the tray and stood very straight. Before resuming the narrative, he placed his open hand upon his own breast. It was a gesture of self-love.
"I," he said, pausing dramatically, "am called François Jaubert Gaston Bourbon d'Autre Rive, Marquis du Pontverre. And it is I and those of my class who were forced by the vagaries of fortune to leave our own France to that Corsican barbarian Napoleon and the Republique, we who have suffered! Acadians! Bah! I spit on them!"
He spat on the floor. He smoothed his hair. He replaced the top hat. Composed himself.
"My pardon. You see what this place will do to one of gentle bearing? It sucks away decorum from a nobleman. But what did the Acadiens have to lose? Some pig-sties? A manure farm? Who cares? My smallest estate in the Loire supported eighteen families. Listen, you talk about bloodshed, did you see what that upstart did to Europe?"
With nods of his head, he answered his own question. Then he poured another glass and drank. He used the empty glass to punctuate his words.
"And the worst of it is that I had to come into this country, with these snakes and mosquitoes and ruffians and buffoons, never to return. Never to return! Don't let them fool you, it is only the gentile, the sensitive classes who suffer. The uneducated dolts do not even know how to suffer properly. They make a mess of it. No, no, that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is having to give the last glass of this wine to a mule … that is right, you heard me correctly. I said mule ... a mule like you!"
With that Monsieur le Marquis du Pontverre, poured a glass, handed it to Minos, watched him drink it and with a toss of the hand promptly disappeared.
The wine was warm and strong, a rich, red, nourishing matrix. He watched the fire die down upon the invisible logs and branches. Watched the shadows deepen. It became his own house again. But when he tried to move, he found he still could not.
"And the wine, it did not work?"
The voice came from a corner where Minos had hung an old meat scale for decoration. Following it came a young man of medium height, of slender build but heavy, muscled thighs. He was dark, with straight, brushed hair and a waxed handlebar moustache. He smiled, looking Minos straight in the face. He sat on the hearth, braced his hands on his thighs.
"En boca cerrada no entran moscas."
After a pause he translated, "Into a closed mouth flies do not enter. It is something we said in Spain. Then we said it here. Spain or here, what is the difference? People say things, they do things, life goes on. I am called Francisco Javier Romero y Ruiz. Mucho gusto. All this talk of suffering! Well, of course, I missed all that in Europe about Napoleon. But I saw it here."
He slapped his thighs and settled an elbow on a knee to hold his head in his hand.
"First we fought the British at Baton Rouge, then at Mobile and Pensacola when I was hardly older than that vulgar boy of yours. We won that one, for us and the Americans, a lot of good it did us. Then again at the Villere place near New Orleans. I was fifty-five by then, not as you see me now. But this thing of war, this is nothing, this is something you do now and then so that you can get on with living. This was not a country to suffer in. This was a country to spread yourself for life. I had slaves, many of them. I am not ashamed. Neither were they ashamed. We worked the field together. Indians. Some of them farmers, too. Hunting, music, dances. Hombre! That was a time! A time."
He silenced. Lost in pleasant thought.
"But that was then and this is now. For better or worse. More binding than any marriage, the divorce from life is death. There weren't many women here, some were brought from France, but not for we Spaniards of the Pais d'Atakapas, we of the prairies and the marshes and the swamp. If you found a woman and could marry her, you did not think of putting her away. You thought perhaps of outliving her, as I did three good mothers of my children. There was grief, fevers and such. Normal disappointments, but there is no joy without grief. The world is in balance, man! Remember this!"
Then he stood and came to Minos and seemed about to clap him on the shoulder. But instead he took from the shadow of the mantel a bottle of amber liquid.
"Jerez," he said jubilantly. "Cognac ... well, the French insist the word belongs to them. So call it brandy. Brandy from Jerez de la Frontera, España. Andaluz. I was amused that the wine did not work. The French think they know of wine, but they are fools. Fools and snobs. Those from France. Not our Frenchmen of the bayous, they are men. I think you know what I mean. The soil does it to us. To live here, you must change. Here. Drink."
He clinked two glasses together, two small, cylindrical glasses, and handed one to Minos.
"Salud!" he said robustly, then quaffed it. Minos did the same. The brandy rumbled in his gullet. It went down smoothly but with such potency that he was forced to exhale sharply. Ready to belch fire. "The sun of Spain! Adios."
Minos felt a swirl. Alone. The chair spinning counter-clockwise on his left shoulder. Spinning. A whirlpool. Faster until the shoulder was just a point inside a blur. The blur a whirr, a mix of colors. Speed and movement created matter. He slept.
No sound woke him. Silence woke him. House stuffy, hot. Steamy humid. Atchalafaya Basin mid-summer.
The man stepped forward, into a pool of light. Loincloth, hide sandals, a spear and spear-thrower. Long-bladed knife sheathed in the belt beside a flintlock pistol. Tall and blacker than the night, with head held noble high. Nostrils flared, scenting. Voice deep, resonant, arresting.
"l am called Long-Spear-Thrower. Slave to the white man in his fields and in his house. But in the swamp, deep among the red people of the shadows, I am a prince. Inside myself I am but free. I am a hunter who knew the souls of the forest living and dead."
The Negro crouched. Eyes darted to every shadow while hands fitted the spear into the thrower, the atlatl. Now from the depths of darkness came an eerie, anguished, angry growl.
The black panther came from a far corner of the living room. Eyes glowed like yellow-green coals. Haunches gathered. A hissing snarl and the great cat sprang.
The spear whistled the moan of a lonely wind, thunked! the chest. Spitting and sputtering, screeching like a locomotive, the panther somersaulted, writhing in the air. It never hit the floor. Dead in the air, all disappeared; cat, spear, blood, all gone. Long-Spear-Thrower came toward Minos.
"Know this, white man. This land is mine. I bled and sweated into it. I lusted on it, died and was buried and gave strength to it. This land is..." he straightened, hand fanned open between them, the word coming in a passionate whisper, "... mine."
The eyes seemed to burn into Minos. Minos could not break the stare. The Negro continued to look upon him as he took out a gourd, sipped from it, handed it to him.
"You've never before taken drink after a black man," the Negro said, "But you will drink this now."
And indeed, Minos took the gourd. He drank deeply of the thick dark potion.
"Kolobi," the Negro said, calm and satisfied. "Africa."
It seemed the potion never reached his stomach, as though it passed through his sinuses to his brain direct. The African became a shadow and then darkness, itself. Darkness invaded all of Minos' awareness. Then there was no awareness. Nothing except the tugs on his trousers.
"Monsieur? Monsieur!" the voice was very young, a child. "Much time we do not have, monsieur. Please do not make sleep."
The room was very bright from many points of light like candles. The boy was dressed in brown homespun with wooden shoes stuffed with moss and a ragged straw hat. He looked very sad.
"Who are you, son?" Minos asked. The boy was about the age of his youngest, Dane.
"I call myself Ambrose, monsieur. I am a 'Cadien. Sometimes, people, they do things that hurt me, when I never did anything bad to them, monsieur."
The boy seemed about to cry.
"Who? Tell me who did that to you," Minos said, leaning forward. He was unbound.
"Many people, monsieur, in Maryland. In France. Even here. I do not understand."
"Some people are stupid," Minos said.
"It seems that way sometimes, monsieur. Of course, I am but a child. I do not understand. I once enjoyed the snow, monsieur. I had a sled. But a pirogue, it is a sled upon the water, is it not?"
"Well, I don't..."
"Life was beautiful in Acadia," he said, La vie était beau a I'Acadie. "But the Englishmen, they came and took us and made us sit on rock for days, monsieur. I caught a cold. My maman, she was so afraid. She thought they would kill us. Kill us at sea. Like pirates. But they did not. We traveled so far, monsieur. And no one ever wanted us, monsieur. We were unwanted. Have you ever been unwanted, monsieur?"
"Yes," Minos said. He was thinking of his wife. "Oui, oui."
"Me, too," the boy said, moi aussi. He came to Minos, put his hand upon a shoulder although Minos could not feel it. "But you seem very nice. You seem to understand so well."
"I understand not being wanted," Minos said.
The boy's large, brown eyes seemed sadder than before.
"Will you give me something to drink?"
"Yes, but of course, monsieur. Look." The boy pointed through the eastern windows. "The sun. Another day and a better one. Coffee for the morning, monsieur. Coffee for a better day."
And with that he waved his hand and the hearth was ablaze with breakfast cooked in cast iron vessels upon oak and pecan brands. Venison sizzled beside eggs. Fried cornmeal couche-couche crackled in a pot. A kettle steamed with rich coffee smells. But Minos could not stay awake. He watched the fire and the boy and the coffee fade before his lowering lids.
The coffee that he smelled in the morning, when the sun was fully risen, was from his automatic coffee-maker, which he had set the night before. A banging at the door. Azalie's shrill voice.
"Open this door! Open it!" his ex-wife demanded in French.
His head ached when he shook it. But he could sit upright, lean forward. He could put his hands to his head to ease the ache. No bullet holes, no tomahawks, no kegs of powder, beer. No spent shell casings on the floor. No spears, no panthers. Nothing.
Azalie burst through the door like water when he opened the lock. She was red-faced angry and had both the boys in tow, pulling them in by their ears.
"Drunk all night, ainh? Won't answer you tallyfone, ainh? What you going to do 'bout this?"
She pulled the boys forward and held them out by their ears. They were bruised. Eyes blackened.
"What you going to do? Ainh?" she demanded. "Me, I tell you what, yeah. You get you gun and you ..."
"My gun," Minos said, for an instant even forgetting about the boys. He went to the closet, opened the door, rummaged behind the old clothes hanging for camouflage against burglars. The M-16 was there, freshly cleaned, no mark of the tomahawk on the barrel.
"Good!" Azalie said. Go get them Feet-numb-ease and ...."
"What you talking 'bout, you?" Minos demanded, the fog in his head clearing before a hot morning wind.
"Them feet-numb-ease, them. They beat you boys up, yeah."
Calmly, Minos put the gun back into the closet, closed the door.
"For what?" he asked quietly.
'"For what?' For what you mean 'for what ?"'
Minos did not respond to her. Very slowly and gently, he bent forward to look his youngest son straight in the eye.
"For what, my boy?" he asked softly.
"Darrell barked," Dane said. Minos nodded. He sighed.
"Well," he said resignedly in American, "Us, we can't treat people like that no more, no."
"Ainh?"
Dane's mouth dropped open. Azalie and Darrell stared at Minos in disbelief. Minos took his sons' hands in his own.
"Let's go talk to them Vietnamese, us. They speak French, yeah, some of them. They had a hard time 'til they came to God's country, them. Watch. You going to see. This ain't nothing, no. Them black eyes, they go 'way, yeah. Them Vietnamese, they going to be some friends."
None of them had ever seen Minos like that. It surprised them so much they slapped their foreheads with the heels of their hands.