Chapter Three

Suzanne’s story

Full of honey, biscuits, and hot coffee, they waded across the flooded gravel to George’s gray sedan. The ground had reached a degree of saturation possible only in Louisiana. At least the rain had stopped pouring down for the moment. She’d shared breakfast with her boss across the small oak table in the kitchen. George read the sports section of the Port Sentinel that Birdie brought in with her. Suzanne skimmed a stack of his mother’s note cards. Then, they went on their way to town in a companionable silence associated with long-married couples like her parents. What an unsettling thought. If she wanted this kind of dull man, she could have married Paul. Suzanne began to babble to fill the void by the time they reached the traffic light at the foot of the hill.

“Is the library open this early? Could you call the bank and make sure I can get into the safety deposit box?”

“The library is always open. Knock on Miss Clara’s door, and she’ll let you in. I called the bank yesterday.”

“Good. Then I can start on the history and check over the documentation on the parlor furnishings.”

“You won’t find much in the library. If you want history, I’ll take you to meet my aunts. They know all there is to know about Port Jefferson. Come by my office at noon.”

“The same aunts who put up the historical marker?”

“The same.”

“Fine. A little oral history would make the paper more lively.” And probably inaccurate, her inner curator thought.

George dropped her off in front of the library, a little frame building appearing to be a converted garage. Up close, she saw that it was. A hand-lettered sign read “Knock next door if you need to use the library.” She rapped on the indicated door and explained her visit to a lean woman, still in a robe and curlers, but cordial nonetheless.

“So pleased to meet you. I’m Clara Huval, the branch assistant here in Port Jefferson. We’re only a little branch, but I can get you anything you need from the parish library or even the university.” After making sure the street was clear of people, she scuttled over to the door of the branch and unlocked it.

“Make yourself at home. I’ll be over directly,” she trilled.

Inside sat a desk with one chair and a computer monitor, a library table with four chairs, a rental book collection of best sellers on its own cart, enough paperback racks filled with romances and mystery novels to supply a Walmart, a few sets of encyclopedias, and an outdated atlas. A disconnected public terminal occupied a small table shoved up against the wall and hemmed in by the spinner racks.

Suzanne discovered the very small non-fiction section in the back corner. There, marked with a prominent “LA” on the spine, she found a parish history in a sturdy red binding. As the introduction noted, the book had been compiled by a retired schoolteacher, who’d dedicated it to her former students. The table of contents promised a whole chapter on Port Jefferson. She settled down at the library table and read until Miss Clara, fully groomed with a slash of red lipstick adorning her face, and completely dressed in a dark green jumper and crisp white blouse, came in bearing coffee on a tray.

“I was just about to have to have my second cup. Won’t you join me?”

Suzanne did, full of guilt, feeling that at any time a university guard would ask her to take the beverage outside the library. Miss Clara finished her coffee, dusted the shelves, checked in a small stack of paperbacks that had been slipped though the slot in the door overnight, then settled down to a novel off the rental shelf. About mid-morning, she made more coffee, watered the plants, and rearranged the picture books very quietly and with great respect for her only patron’s studies.

The parish history, though blandly written, said a great deal, especially if one read between the lines. It contained a nice map of the early land grants stretching in narrow sections back from Bayou Brun. Each family had an access to the lifeline of the river. The St. Julien holdings extended more broadly than most, reaching 250 arpents into the raw land. Other sections were held by Huvals, Sonniers, and Patouts, and for the Badeaux and Dugas families. The Jeffersons had not yet arrived. Huval’s Ferry possessed the only notable buildings in town.

All this changed around 1840 when Eli Jefferson came to town and bought out the Huvals, all but the square containing the ferry station and roadhouse. He subdivided the section into lots along the only road to the ferry. Down by the river, warehouses sprang up along with a cotton gin. The Sonniers traded their section for a lot to build a general merchandise emporium. Plots were set aside for a public school and the Methodist church. The Patouts sold off their land and opened a smithy. The Dugas family went into the feed and seed business. Eli Jefferson grew cotton on his own land, ginned cotton in his own mill, and shipped cotton on his own steamboats. Magnolia Hill raised its white pillars above Bayou Brun on the acreage that had been Huval’s wood lot. Meanwhile, the St. Julien strip remained blank except for a small X denoting a house a half-mile from the bayou.

Then the War—the one still being talked about and studied in the South—came to Port Jefferson. Yankees “ravaged” the town according to the author, Miss Juliette Mouton, and took “all that was of value”, using Magnolia Hill as their headquarters. During Reconstruction, the town endured the disgrace of having a black mayor, but prosperity returned when the cotton bloomed again and the steamboats ran.

Changes appeared on the St. Julien property. A Catholic church and parochial school, a city hall and infirmary rose on donated land. Valorous Confederate veteran, Victoir St. Julien, succeeded the Reconstruction mayor. He went on to the state senate while his brother, Felix, ran the town. He invested in land to the south and in railroad stocks. He became rich when the tracks fortuitously cut across his distant property. Steamboats went out of style; the boll weevil arrived causing as much damage to the economy as the Union Army. Magnolia Hill was sold intact as a virgin to Victoir St. Julien, who gave it to his son as a wedding gift. That son went on to the state senate, and his grandson became a personal friend of Huey Long.

The chapter ended with a disappointing segment on the development of the yam industry, which restored Port Jefferson to some of its former glory. Even Miss Mouton could not rave about the yam.

Around eleven, a mother and child entered the library to get some picture books. The small boy filled every inch of the building with his noise, and the mother, briefly introduced as a second cousin to Miss Clara, began a long conversation about Aunt Tillie’s surgery. Suzanne asked for permission to check out the history book. Miss Clara allowed this after a short call to George confirming her identity. She gave her address as “Magnolia Hill,” and that was sufficient.

Concluding a morning spent hunched over Miss Mouton’s book, Suzanne welcomed the mile walk down Main Street to the bayou. She stayed on the right side where most of the public buildings with the exception of the school had sprouted on St. Julien property. On her side of the right-of-way, she sauntered past St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and its appendage, the parochial school, where idle swings and dejected seesaws sat unmoving under the gray skies like sinners doing penance until recess. Stepping off of the high, broken cement sidewalk, she crossed a grassy patch fronting a private home set back among its live oaks and veiled by Spanish moss. An old-fashioned shingle on the gate of the white picket fence read, “Jefferson Sonnier, M.D.—Office in Rear.”

Suzanne clambered up and across the boardwalk of a destitute dress shop with “Gone Out Of Business” soaped on its window. The buildings across the street shared the same erratic paving and just slightly more prosperity. A single car sat before a store and faced in the wrong direction along the railing where mules once munched corn on Saturday afternoons. Protruding bricks on the façade spelled out “Sonnier’s—1854”, but a metal sign screwed into the wall informed the public the building was now the Purvis Pharmacy.

She paused for a moment to watch an old black man sitting in the window of the last and only occupied store along her side of the boardwalk. He leaned toward the grimy glass to get more of the day’s watery light on his work. In and out, he wove white oak splints into a basket of immense size, choosing a cane now and again from a heap at his side. Behind him like a wicker mountain a pile of finished products rose—cotton baskets, egg baskets, flower baskets, and lidded hampers, a wide selection for a small clientele. The shop had no name. It lacked a doorknob and latch as if no one would come here to steal, and if they did, they would leave in disappointment. The weaver never looked up though Suzanne stood close enough to the window to see the spaces amid the tight, white knots of his hair.

Thinking those baskets would add a nice touch to Magnolia Hill’s kitchen collection, she crossed Main at St. Julien Street to get to the First National Bank of Port Jefferson. The old building, solidly supported by six stumpy columns, still gave off an affluent Victorian air, though no other person stood in line before the teller’s wrought iron cage. Just inside the door, an anxious manager sprang from his desk behind a railing and seized her hand.

“Welcome to Port Jefferson. Ernest Prevost, branch director. How may we serve your banking needs?”

“I believe Mr. St. Julien called yesterday. I’m Suzanne Hudson. I came to check the records in his safety deposit box.”

“Oh. Yes.” The small mouth under the thin moustache quivered with disappointment. “I’ll get my keys. Perhaps you would care to open a checking account while you’re working in town,” he suggested as they walked toward the vault over chipped but highly polished marble floors. Mr. Prevost paused and nodded at the view from one barred window.

“We’ve never closed, not even during the Depression. Only a few incompetent farmers lost their land. Port Jefferson really had no need for that.” He pointed across the street.

The window framed another bank, the Farmer’s Savings and Loan Association. The competition housed itself in an Acadian-style cottage with a shake roof and deep porch under the overhang. A few unoccupied rockers painted the same gray as the railings and uprights gave the building a comfortable rural atmosphere. An incongruous electronic sign on a thick pole flashed the time, then the temperature, then the message, “Farmers—we understand your business.”

“I’ll only be staying a short time, and I do have a checking account in Philadelphia. Will I have any trouble cashing checks locally?”

“No, oh, no. Glad to serve you in any way we can.” Mr. Prevost unlocked the gates separating the safety deposit boxes from the rest of the room and seated her in a cubicle for privacy. He placed a rather large box in front of Suzanne and backed away with a salaam-like bow. “Happy to help. Glad to help. Call when you want to leave.” The gate clicked behind him.

Within the box lay a treasury of documentation. The first pieces, yellowed with age, were bills of lading from the Jefferson Steamboat Line. A marvelous brown-inked script described the contents of each crate brought up the river over several years to furnish Magnolia Hill. As she suspected, the Renaissance dining room set and the Belter settee and side chairs were original to the house along with most of the imported goods designed for the public rooms of the mansion. No mention of bedroom furnishings, which had most likely been in the family or produced locally. Several tester beds, trundles, armoires, miscellaneous washstands, and chamber pots were mentioned in the inventory at the time of the sale to Victoir St. Julien.

Suzanne believed her transitional bedroom harbored what remained of the oldest furnishings. The St. Juliens in a burst of redecorating and bad taste had purchased the ornate gothic half-tester. Yes, a bill of sale confirmed that. The rest of the papers were contemporary, copies of purchases, some Xeroxed, made by Virginia Lee St. Julien over twenty years as she built her collection. She’d bought the Jenny Lind crib as one of her first acquisitions. In the bottom of the box, Suzanne found a curiosity—a sales receipt for the gilt clock on the parlor mantel. That object had been sold ten years ago to Dr. J. Sonnier for the sum of $10,000 and repurchased for $1.00 five years ago. Both amounts seemed extreme, one inflated and one gratuitous. The story of that clock might be a piece of local history to be had from the great-aunts.

She summoned Mr. Prevost and asked his permission to use the office copier to photograph the oldest and most interesting documents. He refused any offer to pay for the service, despite a longing look thrown at the few dollars she held out. The bank manager assisted with the copying personally and gave directions to George’s office, as if any were needed. All that mattered in Port Jefferson lay along Main Street.

The clock on Farmers Savings and Loan read 12:10. Suzanne jaywalked across the road where a few cars and a pickup truck had come to life at the noon hour. George stood locking the door of a prim little dwelling with a lace of gingerbread trim hung across its eaves and a once red tin roof, its paint fading off into a gentle pink. The office sat on its own patch of lawn, brown from a late frost at this time of year, but showing promise around the roots of a naked althea bush where the first tips of narcissus pushed out of the soil. Charmed by the idea that the flowers would bloom in February, she remarked on the buds, but George passed if off as “nothing special about that.” She thought he might be angry about her tardiness and apologized.

“Doesn’t matter. The aunts are happy to have the company. It’s not too far to walk.”

She had to concentrate on keeping up with those long legs and got only an impressionistic look at the other end of Main Street. They passed one exceptionally old house with whitewash flaking off the mud and moss bousillage between the crossed timbers of the walls. A sign designated it as the Port Jefferson Museum, but George, looking back over his shoulder, called it the old St. Julien place. Just when it seemed as if he would stride at top speed into the bayou, her guide took an abrupt right turn on Front Street. To the left, she could see the Roadhouse Restaurant with its curiously Dutch-looking stepped façade and beyond that, a row of red brick warehouses. The drawbridge on the bayou rose upward for the passing of a pleasure craft, and delighted, Suzanne paused to watch. George strode on, ignoring another “nothing special” in his life. She scurried to catch up.

He arrived ten paces before her on the porch of another of the white gingerbread houses abounding in varying states of repair all over the town. This one, freshly painted, had a broad-bosomed verandah and a congenial lap in the form of a porch swing. It held the hem of its skirt above the mud on brick pilings discreetly hidden behind latticework. The dry brown stalks of hydrangeas promised more camouflage of the bricks by summer. George knocked while Suzanne seated herself, panting, on the swing. The shade covering the etched glass panel in the front door fluttered upward, and the two aunts flew outward grabbing George’s collar and pulling him down to peck at his cheeks like tiny sparrows attacking a hawk. Then, they turned on Suzanne.

“Oh, Georgie, you’ve winded her. Poor child!”

“It’s all right,” Suzanne puffed. “Aerobic exercise, good for the heart.” A summer as a tour guide and a winter as a student had left her in worse condition than during her earlier lifeguarding days.

“Come in, come in. Dinner is ready. Sally will serve as soon as you’ve caught your breath.”

Though one had aged thin and bowlegged and the other obese and humpbacked, each aunt grasped an elbow to raise her from the swing. As an afterthought, George, who was erasing little smears of pink and orange lipstick from his face with a white handkerchief, introduced the ladies.

“My great-aunts, Miss Esme St. Julien, Mrs. Letty Dugas. Aunt Esme, Aunt Letty, this is Suzanne Hudson, the student who is doing a history of Magnolia Hill.”

He pushed his enormous glasses back up the bridge of his nose, raked his creamed, disheveled hair into place, and opened the door for the women to totter through. They went directly past the parlor and into the dining room where four places were set at a mahogany table, not as old, but every bit as massive as the one at the Hill.

“Shall we talk while we eat? I do love good dinner conversation,” said the spare, spritely aunt in the pink polyester pants suit. “Ring the bell, Letty.”

Plump Letty in her blue polyester pants suit clinked a small silver bell by her place at one end of the table. The louvered door to the kitchen opened slowly as a black maid with limbs as thin and twisted as licorice whips backed in holding a serving tray. She appeared to be as ancient as the great-aunts.

Suzanne jumped up. “Let me help you!”

“When I can’t do my job no more, I’ll up and quit, go home and die, you hear?”

The aged servant pushed out her flabby lips over toothless gums. Her yellowed eyes glared from red-rimmed sockets. Suzanne sat and allowed Sally to serve her.

Fortunately, a brisk dinner conversation covered her faux pas and gave her an excuse to pick at the food and take large gulps of instant iced tea between mouthfuls. Pieces of the dry pot roast stuck in her throat, and she could not bring herself to do more than push the grayish canned peas with their flecks of salt pork around on her plate. The best of the dinner, a mass of sticky candied yams, made the sweet tea seem sour. Each time she finished her beverage ancient Sally reappeared with a pitcher to fill the glass. She figured the elderly servant must spy through the kitchen louvers. Asking questions helped to cover her lack of appetite for the meal.

“I noticed this morning that most of the commercial development is on the old Jefferson property, while the St. Julien side is mainly public and residential property.”

“The St. Julien side. Oh, that describes it perfectly, doesn’t it, Letty?” Miss Esme said.

Letty nodded her large head into her double chin. “That’s just how it was. You see the outsider, Eli Jefferson, came here around 1840 looking for a place to grow and ship cotton. He went to Pierre Huval who owned the inn and the ferry and said, ‘Let me buy your land, and you’ll get rich off the steamboat trade when my gin starts operating and shipping.’ Then he went to the Sonniers who had a nice, well-run place and said, ‘Sell me your land, and I’ll set you up to run a store since I can see you’ve got the talent for it.’ And he went to the Patouts and said, ‘Your mules are the best shod in the parish. Sell me your land, and I’ll help you get a smithy started. A lot of trade will come with the wagons bringing cotton, the women coming to shop, and so on.’”

Miss Letty paused to shovel up some yams, and Miss Esme stepped into the narrative like a scrawny tag-team wrestler. “Well, Josephe St. Julien saw what was happening, and when Eli Jefferson came to him, he said, ‘I got six living children and six healthy slaves to work my land. I don’t need your help. And one more thing, my Phillippe is to marry Babette Huval. Where are they going to farm with you buying up all the land?’ ‘They can farm in hell for all I care,’ said Jefferson. That started the feud. Phillippe and Babette had to share the St. Julien land and house until they could build one of their own. The two wives arguing made Josephe’s life a misery. They say he sent two daughters off to the convent just to prevent their marrying into any of the families who had sold out. The other two he drove to dances in Opelousas to be sure they would find a husband elsewhere. The younger son drowned in the bayou, and that let Josephe pass his property on intact to Phillippe, but he made his son swear never to sell to a Jefferson. Phillippe let his hogs and chickens dust on Main Street and never whitewashed his house to spite all the merchants that Jefferson controlled, but his son, Victoir, got the revenge.”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Letty, “but it was not revenge, just a sharp head for business, I say. Victoir studied Eli Jefferson’s methods all his life, and when the time came he knew what to do. Both his brothers died in the War of the Rebellion, his sister was carted into Opelousas and married off. He had land in the center of town. First, he donated some to the Catholic Church, and all the priests told the people how devout he was. Then, he gave his former slaves small holdings on the edge of his property and asked the priest to marry them to his Negresses exactly like white people. At the wedding, he said, ‘You are free men and women now. Go and be thankful.’ They were so thankful all four families took the name St. Julien.”

“Not because they shared our blood, you understand. They were merely being grateful,” interrupted Miss Esme.

“Yes, well. So Victoir St. Julien built a political base?” Suzanne prodded.

“Exactly.” Miss Letty took over. “When he ran for mayor at the very end of Reconstruction, he had the black vote and the Catholic vote. The only folks left to vote for Jefferson’s grandson were a few Americans, the non-French, you see, and a handful of Methodists.”

“Do you know anything about the big railroad deal?”

“Victoir St. Julien worked his way up to state senator. He had power, but not the kind of money Eli Jefferson had in the bank. Victoir ran the town, but Eli Jefferson owned it, and at nearly eighty years of age, showed no sign of giving it up. Then, through his political connections, Victoir got wind of the new railroad. He knew the lay of the land, knew the tracks would pass on flat country to the south not up here in hill country. Rail is faster, rail is cheaper than the steamboat, you see. He bought the right land and made a fortune when the tracks crossed it.”

“He put Eli Jefferson out of business?”

“Oh, yes! And out of his house, too.” Miss Esme clapped her frail hands with joy. “And then, he gave Magnolia Hill to his own son, the second Josephe, for a wedding gift. Wasn’t that marvelous?”

“But didn’t he ruin the town as well?” Suzanne questioned. Feeling on shaky ground, she looked across to George for support, but he seemed absorbed in chewing a bite of the leathery pot roast into a digestible mass and stirring his peas and yams together with a fork. An old story heard many times held no interest for him.

“Oh, no! The railroads and the boll weevil ruined Port Jefferson,” Miss Esme asserted.

“Now that we’ve got yams, times are better,” Miss Letty added, forking more of the orange potatoes between her jowls.

“We were both born at the Hill. Granddaddy Josephe would not have it any other way,” Miss Esme chimed in, shooing the subject away from yams and back to happier times. “I do believe we spent more time there growing up than we did in this house. Granddaddy gave elegant weekend parties, all those politicians and their ladies, fancy dress in the evenings, rowing on the bayou in the afternoons, picnics, riding, all so fine.”

“If Daddy had lived, we would have gone to stay on the Hill permanently, but he passed on of pneumonia when he was still only the mayor. Brother, that’s Georgie’s grandfather, got to the senate. He got the big house, too.” Miss Letty savagely sawed at a piece of the pot roast.

“He was a personal friend of Huey Long, you know,” offered Miss Esme.

“He dragged the family down to Huey’s level, Esme. The St. Juliens ‘just plain folks’, indeed! Those dreadful dresses Beatrice bought at Sonnier’s and having themselves photographed eating in the kitchen, horrible, just horrible! All the money in the world, and they let the Hill go to pieces.”

“Now Letty, you’re still sore because Fred cut you off when you insisted on marrying Henry Dugas.” Appealing to Suzanne, Esme said, “He called it a traitorous act to marry into one of those families who sold out to Eli Jefferson.”

“At least I had the spine to do it! I didn’t let Fred or Granddaddy turn me into a nun or a spinster school teacher.” Miss Letty’s round face turned a dangerous shade of purple.

“That’s just not true! My beau died in the World War.” Miss Esme paled. She tugged on the zipper at the throat of her pink tunic, but it seemed to be caught in the fabric.

Again, Suzanne looked to George for help. He’d cleaned his plate. He rose and bent over Aunt Esme, brushing her sunken cheek with his lips. He did the same to Aunt Letty, pressing his lips to her fleshy jowls.

“I have to get back to the office. Ya’ll have a nice visit with Suzanne.” Nodding to his hired historian, he said without expression, “Stop by the office if you want a ride home.”

Then, he deserted her in the midst of the battle. “Coward!” she wanted to shout after him. An unexpected ally appeared in the form of Sally. “Ya’ll want coffee now?”

“In the parlor, Sally,” Miss Letty indicated.

“Yes, in the parlor,” Miss Esme echoed, entirely recovered from her brief fit.

Evidently, the two old women adhered to the old code of not arguing in front of the servants. With a silent truce called, they retired to the parlor. Sally appeared with her tray and stood holding it while Suzanne took a demitasse and added sugar. Still, the servant continued standing right in front of her.

“Take a cookie,” she said in disgust, as if a Yankee didn’t know a thing about fine manners. Suzanne selected a gingersnap with a burnt bottom. Sally moved on to serve Miss Esme.

Miss Esme took her cup and cookie. “Sally has been with our family since she was fourteen. She still does all the cooking. Isn’t she a marvel?”

“Definitely,” Suzanne quickly agreed.

“Why, when Letty and I attended St. Joseph’s, she would bring our lunch to the school yard on hot days so we needn’t walk home in the heat and dust. It always came on a covered silver tray, cooling things like cucumber on bread and butter and a bucket of cold lemonade. She’d wait under the trees while we ate, then take the bucket and things back home.” Esme sighed over the good old days and nibbled at her charred cookie.

“Sally does the cooking because Esme never learned how. She was too genteel.” Miss Letty raised her cocktail sausage-sized pinkie in the air.

“You did learn to cook and look at you now!” Miss Esme counterattacked.

“Tell me about the historical marker,” Suzanne intervened. “I understand you are responsible for it.”

“Oh my, yes!” Miss Esme’s face filled with delight again. “We thought up the words, and Brother put up the money. Bronze casting is very costly, you know.”

“She left off Eli Jefferson and put in the yams,” Letty responded.

“It was too expensive to have both, and ‘yam’ is a shorter word than ‘Jefferson’, that’s all,” Miss Esme explained.

“Brother wouldn’t pay for ‘Jefferson’, you mean. Now I say when a feud is over one hundred fifty years old, it has got to stop. Why, Henry and I were just like Romeo and Juliet.”

“Big, fat Juliet, little, skinny Romeo,” Esme taunted like a schoolgirl. “Traitor to the family!”

“Now look here, Esme, I tried just as hard as you to get the name of this town changed to St. Julien.”

“But Georgie’s mother stopped us. What a terrible woman!” Miss Esme leaned confidentially toward Suzanne. The cuff of her pink polyester tunic took a dip in the coffee cup she held in trembling hands. “A disappointed woman.”

“Well, we were all disappointed in Jacques. We thought Nephew would come back from Vietnam covered with medals and follow in Victoir St. Julien’s footsteps. He looked so handsome in his naval officer’s uniform. All his brothers who hadn’t gone to college were just plain foot soldiers who got drafted. Jacques enlisted, but he went and brought home that woman from Virginia. The only thing she liked about this place was Magnolia Hill,” Miss Letty continued.

“Oh no!” cried Miss Esme. “She liked one other thing.” The sisters cackled like co-conspirators, both of them turning pink.

“Jacques was surely a womanizer. He seemed happy to spend his days living off the rents and investments and chasing skirts. Then, he’d go to Joe’s Lounge and drink and tell all about his conquests.”

“A trial to his family, a trial to his wife. Maybe that’s why she turned so mean,” Letty continued.

Suzanne wondered if Dr. Dumont knew about Jacques St. Julien’s reputation on his own turf.

“That’s just family talk. Women loved Jacques, and the men liked him, too. Wasn’t he elected Capitaine of the Courir de Mardi Gras when old Alonzo Guidry died? You say you and Henry wanted to end the feud. Jacques was the one who did it, I say. He drank with the Huvals and the Patouts and the Badeaux boys every night at the Lounge. They got along fine. I think Virginia turned ugly when they took out her female organs. That causes early change of life, you know,” Esme whispered. Suzanne did not contradict her.

Esme continued working on her theory. “Virginia Lee came here and found out she had married a ‘coonass.’ Forgive me, Letty. I hate that word, too. Cajun was bad enough, then people like the Jeffersons brought back ‘coonass’ from overseas after the war. We should be called Acadians as in that lovely poem, Evangeline by Longfellow,” she instructed Suzanne. “I always had my students read it and memorize the prologue. Are you familiar with the poem, my dear?”

“Eighth grade English. ‘List to a tale of love in Acadie, home of the happy.’ Yes, I am.” Suzanne suppressed a wince brought on by middle school memories of Miss Farrell cramming epic poetry into adolescent brains. Secretly, she loved the poem and doted on Romeo and Juliet, but who wanted to be teased? She could see Miss Esme gave her a gold star smile for her knowledge.

The former teacher went on talking. “Do you know, I never use the word nigger because I know how ugly words hurt?”

“That’s not what soured Virginia Lee. It was discovering when her money ran out she had to stop buying those fancy antiques because Jacques wouldn’t raise the colored folks’ rent or put anybody out of business. He just let things keep rolling downhill. And he slept with every woman he laid hands on except his wife.” Letty made her comment more graphic by snatching at her own large breasts straining the stretchy blue fabric of her top.

“Oh, Letty. You can be so crude. We have a guest here.”

“No one thinks anything of it now! Look at this young woman sleeping up at the Hill with Georgie, not a chaperone on the premises.”

“Well, they aren’t sleeping together. Georgie is such a good boy. He painted our house last fall.”

“How would you know? They could have met on one of his business trips. Maybe, this history thing is a hoax. He might be his father’s son in disguise.”

Suzanne finished her coffee in one gulp and rose. “Excuse me, but I have a lot of work to do at the house.”

“There, now you have embarrassed our guest, Letty.”

“Forgive me, my dear. Georgie is a nice boy, but let’s face it. All men are animals underneath. You just forget I said anything and do your job at the Hill.”

Suzanne accepted the apology gracefully, but still insisted she had to leave. Esme trailed her out on to the porch. “Do, do come again. For coffee. Please. Next week.”

“If I can,” she promised and started off along Front Street.

At a safe distance from the storm center, she slowed down and began to take in the scenery she’d missed on her headlong walk two hours before. Below the drawbridge on the opposite side of the river, a large hollow live oak stood, green in winter, but with a gap in its trunk large enough to hide a man. A stout knotted rope hung from its lowest branch out over the water. The rain-swollen bayou reached to within a foot of the rope, but she suspected in summer when children swung out over the river and played in the hollow, the water ran much lower. Beyond the tree, a house with a screened porch sat safely raised on its brick pilings. She took in the serenity of the scene and a deep breath of the mild January air. Acadie, home of the happy, indeed. The sun came out, brightening the bayou from a sullen gray to a pale, sparkling brown.

She continued down Front Street past Main and the Roadhouse still serving a few late diners. The warehouses beyond decayed by the bayou, the edges of their soft red bricks sloughing away into dust, their high, small-paned windows milky like cataracts or black and blind where young boys practiced rock throwing. Tucked among them, the infamous Joe’s Lounge flourished under a yellow neon sign hanging out over the street where the road turned to gravel. Tempted, Suzanne opened its red metal door. Dark and abandoned at midday, midweek, a fat bartender washed glasses by the light of the beer signs.

She made her way to the bar through a maze of small tables with four upturned chairs crowning each one.

“Could I have a Coke, please? With plenty of ice.”

“Don’t you see dat sign, cher?”

Among the display of bottles fronting the mirror behind the bar, a taped message read, “No Ladies without Gents.”

“It keeps down da fights, you see. We ain’t one of dem city singles bars, no. If a guy brings a lady, well, we don’t ask do she come from a good home. But, no mother’s son ever come in here and got rolled if it wasn’t his own damn fault. On Fridays and Saturdays, we got da best Cajun music in da state. You get yourself a man, honey, and come back den. Be glad to serve you.”

“But no one else is in here, and I really need something to wash down my lunch. Please!”

He started moving his bulk around the bar as if he were going to bodily remove this annoying Yankee girl. Rolls of fat undulated softly beneath his Lite Beer T-shirt as he made headway. She tried another tack.

“You see, I’m doing research on Port Jefferson, and everyone said you have to go to Joe’s Lounge. They have the best bands in Louisiana. Are you Joe?”

“Me? No! Dere ain’t no Joe, no more.” The bartender’s big belly quivered with laughter as if she had tickled him in the stomach, but he stopped advancing. “Me, I’m Hypolite Huval. ‘Hippo’ people call me. Guess you can see why. I own dis place now. Used to have da Roadhouse, but one of da young Sonniers bought me out to fix it up fancy. Old Joe, he was ready to retire down by Grand Coteau wit’ his daughter, and I had to have me a place, so I bought him out. Bon, no? Old Joe’s been dead, I t’ink, since some time last year. You gonna put Joe’s Place in da city papers, cher?”

His pudgy fingers pulled on the soft drink tap and extracted an extra-large Coke onto half a glass of crushed ice. “On da house,” he said, pushing it toward Suzanne.

“Actually, I’m not with a newspaper. I’m staying up at Magnolia Hill while I prepare a booklet on the house and town.” She half expected the friendly Hippo to repossess the drink. “I understand Mr. Jacques St. Julien came here often.”

“Near every night. You be sure to mention dat. Here’s where da men meet to plan da Courir de Mardi Gras, and Jacques, he was da Capitaine.”

“Tell me about the Courir.”

“Well, I can’t. It’s a secret society like da Masons, you see. Womens ain’t supposed to know not’ing about it.”

“I understand.” She thought “male chauvinist pigs,” but didn’t say it.

“But you come back wit’ a date on Saturday night and dance. I always say, me, free drinks to anyone from da Hill, but George ain’t sociable like his daddy. He don’t even ride wit’ da Mardi Gras.”

“Then tell me about Jacques.” It would take a while to swill the Coke she’d begged. To leave after her victory seemed out of character for a journalist who was going to put Joe’s Lounge on the map.

“Oh, Jacques, he was da best of all da Capitaines in all my years. When he blew dat horn, all dose riders had better saddle up or he’d fight ’em, and he stayed sober so he could do dat. Mais cher, he let you have some fun, too. Sometime, he ride off wit’ one of da pretty girls on his horse. Da mamas would cry and pray ’til he brung her back, but dey was only gone jus’ a minute. Maybe he kiss her out around da barn, dat’s all. Rest of us do da Mardi Gras song and dance for da old and ugly ones to make ’em feel good. We have a little beer, chase da chicken for gumbo, and move on when Jacques tell us. He gallop us into town, stirring up dust and scaring dose old roosters, and we dance and eat and drink ’til midnight. Den, he make us all go to Mass.”

Hypolite sighed deeply. “Now dey want to let the womens ride. Man, dat’s da end of a real good time. I mean you could piss off da side of your horse, and everyone laughed. Can’t do dat wit’ womens along.”

Wondering why any female would want to ride, drink beer, and chase chickens all day, Suzanne almost sympathized, but her mother’s feminist upbringing held her back. How much more appealing to be carried off on a white horse for a kiss behind the barn than to be one of the boys, but to each her own. She finished enough of the enormous drink to be polite and said good-bye and thanks to Mr. Hippo who shouted after her, “Y’all come back Saturday.” Between coffee with the St. Julien sisters and Saturday night at Joe’s Lounge, her social calendar was certainly filling up.

She rounded off the afternoon by exploring another of the side streets, appropriately named St. Julien, running alongside the old basket maker’s shop. Behind the row of shops lay a pleasant residential strip of small white, blue, and pale yellow cottages. The road sloped gradually downward, the housing having less paint and more peeling the lower the street went. Trailers sat in the yards behind gray wooden shanties. She passed the Pilgrim Baptist Church with its one pane of stained glass shining like a ruby in the forehead of a Buddha over the narthex.

Suzanne experienced the same feeling of anxiety she might have if she’d wandered innocently into the black ghetto of Philadelphia, but no one threatened her. The elderly sat on porch steps or tended the remnants of their winter gardens. Tiny, dark children stared as she passed, but the elderly nodded pleasantly enough.

The sky clouded over again and grew as black as her surroundings. She had no desire to bring attention to herself by returning the same way she’d come, but St. Julien Street appeared to have no crossroads. The street transformed into a rural route where a few shabby lounges hugged a curve in the road.

Resigned, she crossed the street, and marched purposefully up the other side as if she were late for a very important engagement. Most of the children had gone inside when the weather threatened. She approached the Pilgrim Baptist Church when the deluge let loose. In moments, water cascading down the decline lapped over the low curbs. She shoved the parish history book under her top to protect it, but her shoes grew soggy. Her hair plastered to her skull in wet ringlets. She kept walking directly into the rain, back toward the security of Main Street. A woman, middle-aged and medium brown, hailed her from a screened porch where she sat watching the storm.

“Come on in, come on in! Get yourself out of that rain.”

Suzanne hesitated and then made her way up the walk and the three cinder block steps leading to the porch. Her hostess wore a brightly striped caftan over her ample body and covered her gray hair with a stiffly styled black wig.

“I saw you pass and wondered what would happen to you when the storm broke. It wasn’t likely you were visiting anyone on this end of town. Why, you looked as out of place as a crawfish in an oak tree. I saw that once back in the big flood. Come in and dry yourself. I’m Odette St. Julien.”

“Suzanne Hudson. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Just being Christian. Let me make you some hot mint tea. Take off those wet shoes and get a towel out of the bathroom to dry that hair.” She hesitated a moment, then suggested cautiously, “You could put on my robe hanging there on the peg. It’s clean. I have an electric dryer, and we could get the wet out of your clothes.”

Suzanne put on the warm, red flannel robe even though it wrapped twice around her and padded barefooted into the living room where she exchanged her dripping clothes for the cup of mint tea and a seat on the sofa. Despite the sagging porch and flaking paint that made Mrs. St. Julien’s home blend with the rest of the neighborhood, the interior was clean and cozy on this dreary day. A burnt orange area rug covered the gray linoleum of the floor, and a hand-knit afghan of umber, green, and yellow yarns fanned across the divan. A large single room air conditioner, not operating this moist January day, filled one window. An immense television took up most of the wall opposite the sofa.

The air conditioner served as a stand for potted plants: begonia slips wintering over in small clay pots; an avocado grown from seed in a Mexican jar; broad-leaved house plants set in baskets like the ones the old man wove. The television had its own burden of framed photos: large and small snapshots of children and grandchildren; a very tall young man in cap and gown; a couple with the bride in white lace, the groom in a tuxedo; and one that looked like a black and white publicity still of a sports figure kneeling by a basketball. She got caught examining them more closely when Mrs. St. Julien returned with her own cup of tea.

“There now. Let’s have our tea and talk while your things dry.”

She could hear the whir of the dryer and the clanking of the zipper of her jeans against the drum coming from the kitchen. The air smelled pleasantly of perfumed dryer sheets. She and her hostess settled comfortably on the sofa.

“You have a handsome family.” Suzanne nodded toward the framed pictures. She’d seen her activist mother do this countless times to set people at ease when she went out soliciting for her favorite charities. In this case, her daughter was the object of charity.

“My daughter, Harriet. My son, Lincoln.” Her hostess rose, gathered an armful of the photos and brought them to the coffee table where the teacups sat.

“They’re both school teachers. I’m a retired teacher myself. Harriet has two sons, and Linc, he got a boy on the fourth try. This is Linc and Doris on their wedding day. And these are my grandchildren.”

She handed Suzanne a multiple portrait frame stuffed with school and baby pictures. “Harriet’s boys, Ohin and Salim. Those names mean ‘chief’ and ‘peace’ in some African language. They laughed at me for naming them after Harriet Tubman and Abraham Lincoln. At least those people were Americans. And here’s Linc’s girls, Tiffany, Crystal, and Misty, and the baby, George Lincoln, Little Linc we call him. Here’s my boy when he played basketball for the NBA.” She showed the glossy still with obvious pride.

“Your son was the Lincoln St. Julien,” Suzanne said, mentally thanking Birdie for the information and trying to remember what NBA stood for, not that it mattered. The word basketball gave her the clue.

Mrs. St. Julien’s brown face brightened with pride. “That’s my son. He played with the NBA five years before his injury. He coaches at the high school now. When he was making all that big money, he wanted me to have a new house and a big car, but I said to save for the future because you never know what plans God has for a person. Besides, I like it just where I am. He got me that big TV and the air conditioner even though my old set still worked fine, and I’ve been used to the heat all these years. Well, truth to tell, I’m glad I have them and gladder still he saved his money so he and Doris could build a nice place for their family in the country. I’m too old for change.”

Mrs. St. Julien paused a moment as if she were aware she monopolized the conversation in a typical proud parent way. “Rain’s quitting,” she said almost regretfully. “You want me to call you a taxi? There’s just the one in Port Jefferson, and Willie sometimes takes a while to get here, especially if the streets are flooded. Are you visiting family, honey?”

Suzanne hesitated. She had no idea how staying in a big white mansion would be taken by a person like Mrs. St. Julien—politely no doubt. Oh well, the words “Magnolia Hill” had opened the library, the bank, and Joe’s Lounge to her. She tried the magic words once more. “I’m staying at Magnolia Hill.” And received an instantaneous reaction.

“Then you’re George’s special visitor. I’m so happy he finally brought a nice woman to stay at the Hill. You’re a sweet girl, and he’s such a fine young man. I’m sure you two will hit it off. I can’t understand why he hasn’t brought you to see me sooner. When he and Linc were playing ball together, George spent more time down here than up at the Hill. And when Linc went away to play for the big leagues, George would bring me flowers on my birthday from the both of them. Look here.”

She went to stand by a large ficus tree in a wooden tub filling one corner of the room. “George gave me this one Mother’s Day when Linc was away. It’s almost as tall as he is now. I remember…”

Mrs. St. Julien sat on the sofa to do her remembering. “I recall the weekends those boys would come home from college when they weren’t playing ball. That wasn’t often, not often enough for a mother. When they were here, I thought I’d have to go on food stamps to feed the both of them. George’s favorite was yam pie. He would eat the whole thing and wash it down with a quart of milk right out of the carton. I’d say didn’t his mama teach him better manners, and he’d just grin at me and say I’d have to teach him. Yam pie! I have one in the refrigerator. You take it to George and tell him he’s been a stranger. Now let me check your clothes and call that cab.”

“No cab! Really, I’d rather walk,” Suzanne intercepted. How would she explain showing up at George’s office with a yam pie in hand? “You do know I’m simply doing research at the house? I only met George, Mr. St. Julien, a few days ago.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. I hoped he was going to settle down when Birdie mentioned he had a girl staying up there. I guess I would have heard from Linc if George had found someone special,” she called from the kitchen.

Mrs. St. Julien returned, smoothing the wrinkles out of the still-warm clothes with her hands. Suzanne went to change. When she returned, Odette St. Julien had the pie covered with aluminum foil and ready to go, but she held it back a moment.

“It’s a pity for George, always getting mixed up with the wrong women. Between us, I thought he was going to marry Linc’s cousin, LaDonna Williams. No big thing in the city, but that would have set the kettle to boiling in Port Jefferson. They were seeing each other in college. I wasn’t supposed to know, but Harriet told. LaDonna ran a little wild back then. I was just getting ready to say something about how that relationship was bad for both of them and all of us,” she gave a general nod to the vicinity of St. Julien Street, “when they broke it off. Then, LaDonna married that boy from Metairie and took a weight off her folks’ mind. He’s a dentist, and their twins have settled her down a bit. That’s just between us, you understand.”

Suzanne gave her promise. Really, who did she have to tell except Birdie, and Birdie probably knew already. Mrs. St. Julien walked her out to the porch steps and gave her the pie. “Tell George to return the plate in person. You are welcome any time, too, dear.”

She waved and started up St. Julien Street. Yellow school buses dropped batches of children along the way. They flowed past her, some shucking shoes and wading barefoot in the puddles, brown feet in brown water, none pausing to stare because they were at the busy age and had homework or odd jobs to do, a television program to catch, a basketball game to get started. With the library book tucked under one arm, Suzanne moved against the dark tide back to Main Street.

She loitered on Main long enough to arrive at 4:45 on the steps of George’s office. All too aware her clothes looked as if she’d spent the afternoon curled up in the trunk of a car and her hair had puffed out around her face like a giant dandelion going to seed, she balanced the pie on one hand and knocked with the other. A white woman well past forty answered the door.

“Yes?” She eyed Suzanne as if she might be an itinerant pie salesman whose goods were suspect.

“I’m Suzanne Hudson. I’m supposed to meet Mr. St. Julien for a ride back to Magnolia Hill.”

“Yes. I’m sorry to keep you standing on the porch. We do have a policy about solicitors coming to the door.” She stood aside to let Suzanne pass. “You aren’t exactly as Mr. St. Julien described. He said you had a very businesslike demeanor.”

As hard as she tried not to, Suzanne blushed with embarrassment.

“I’m Lonnie Breaux, Mr. St. Julien’s secretary.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure,” Suzanne said in her toniest up-east accent. Miss Breaux took a turn blushing as she shook hands formally. Still holding the pie in one hand, Suzanne thought she’d brought the whole situation off rather well.

A dark walnut desk dominated the outer office. Straight-backed chairs with needlepoint cushions waited for clients and blended nicely with the old pine flooring and wavy glass in the small panes of the windows. An old upright typewriter would not have looked out of the place on Miss Breaux’s desk, but she had a sleek, black computer, this being a business and not a museum.

The door to the inner office was closed, but George must have heard the conversation. He looked out, said Miss Breaux could leave a little early, he would lock up, and ducked back as if a secret society met inside. Lonnie Breaux pulled on the white cardigan sweater hanging on the back of her chair, told Suzanne what a pleasure it was to have met her, and departed.

George emerged from his inner sanctum a few minutes later. Before she could present him with the pie, he said, “Did you do something to your hair this afternoon? It looks all fluffy.”

Her mother always said it was a high compliment and a minor miracle when a man noticed a change in a woman’s appearance. At the moment, Suzanne disagreed. The pie was so handy, but the impulse to lob it in his face passed. Really, he seemed clueless and completely sincere.

“I got caught in the rain this afternoon. My hair does this when it’s wet—without conditioner—instant frizz. But, I did meet the nicest woman who took me in and dried me off, Mrs. Odette St. Julien. She sent you this pie and said you were to return the plate in person.”

Since she held his favorite treat, she expected some expression of delight or gratitude. Instead, she received a minor explosion. “You went walking in Coon Hollow alone!” He stared at her rumpled clothes as if they were evidence of an assault.

“I was trying to get the feel of the town, and I thought St. Julien Street might have a family connection.”

“It does. That’s where Victoir St. Julien’s settled his former slaves. Don’t do that again.”

“You go there,” she retorted.

“I’m a man.”

She looked him up and down as if she doubted his statement. Hmmm, his eyes turned a darker, stormy gray when angry, and George’s shoulders filled out his suit very well when he pulled himself up to his full height instead of slumping forward.

“This is incredibly Old South of you, George, ah—Mr. St. Julien. Look, nothing happened. I met a lovely woman. We had tea. I came here. Okay?”

“Listen to me. Those dives at the bottom of the hill are hangouts for dopers, crackheads, and petty thieves. People like that would snatch the purse of a stranger in a minute, do worse if they were high on something. Heaven knows, they prey on their own, Suzanne—Miss Hudson. Being a Yankee you wouldn’t understand,” he said as if this constituted an apology.

“Mr. St. Julien, I’ve spent the last several years living in Philadelphia where, I can assure you, we have crackheads and purse snatchers in abundance. Racial relations there are probably a thousand times worse than in Port Jefferson. We even have a serial killer of young women on the loose, and see—” She had craned her neck back to stare him in the eyes and started to feel the strain. Lowering her gaze, Suzanne twirled around with her arms spread wide. The pie, forgotten her moment of anger, nearly slid to the floor. She caught it in both hands.

“See, I’m still in one piece.”

“More than I can say for that pie.”

“Here. Enjoy!” She thrust the pie at him.

George seized it in his large hands. He raised the aluminum foil covering. The filling had split and slumped to one side of the crust. He took a deep breath that strained the buttons of his jacket.

“I asked you to call me George. Suzanne, if you want to visit Mrs. St. Julien again, it would be my pleasure to take you. If you need to do research in the Hollow, I would like come along. I would be happy to escort you anywhere in Port Jefferson.”

She suspected this speech to be some kind of southern bullshit meant to undermine the autonomy of women, but she seized the opportunity anyhow.

“There is a place you could take me—Joe’s Lounge on Saturday night. The music is supposed to be great.” Suzanne definitely did not want him to think she had designs on his body, though he was broader through the chest than she’d first thought. His height disguised its breadth.

“I guess it is if you like Cajun and country. I can’t take you. I won’t be around much this weekend.”

“Some other time, then,” she answered curtly. She’d find someone else to take her.

“Shall we go?” He held the door to the office open for her despite juggling the pie and his briefcase.

The silence deafened all the way back to the Hill. She noticed for the first time the road leading to Magnolia Hill was named Jefferson Street. A few premature, paper white narcissus bloomed in a sheltered spot, but she did not bother to point out any of these observations to George. One minute he was a geek accountant, the next, a MCP, male chauvinist pig. Her mother taught her that term. Still plenty of them in the world, Mom said. Then, he put on the Southern gentleman act. She really did not care much for George St. Julien—even if Birdie and Odette thought he’d hung the moon over this tiny town.

She took her dinner in her room that night, despite the fact that Birdie set two places in the formal dining room. Best to put her relationship with George back on the professional track and establish some distance. Now that she’d cooled off, she gave him points for forbearance and manners. As her employer, he could have told her to catch the next plane north.

When Suzanne came downstairs in the morning, all of the yam pie had vanished. She’d wanted to try a piece never having any since in Philly cheesecake ruled. Birdie, a little miffed, too, said Mr. Georgie had passed over her nice, hot dinner in favor of the pie and a whole quart of milk. He could have saved pieces for her and his houseguest. Suzanne added greed to the side of the list of things she did not like about George St. Julien.