Chapter Eight

Linc’s story

Linc and George St. Julien met freshman year at college, but knew of each other way before that. The Port Jefferson Capitaines and the St. Mark Eagles didn’t play basketball in the same league, not by a long shot, but as star players, Linc St. Julien and George shared the headlines of the Sentinel’s sports section often enough before they ever met in reality. After graduation, both signed on with the state university.

The big southern universities had finally figured out how great desegregation could be. Tall, black guys made up ninety percent of the recruited freshman basketball squad. They wanted guys like Linc St. Julien for sho’, and those black b-ball players needed scholarships and were glad to get them, all tough boys from public schools who wanted out of whatever ghetto or backwater they came from—all except George, him being a privileged sort of kid and so very white.

The mistake made in the room assignment in the athletes’ dorm was natural enough. Both came from Port Jefferson; both were named St. Julien; both were cursed with weird names their mothers thought up in revenge during long and uncomfortable pregnancies. So, they’d been christened George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, like it or not. The clerk assigning the dormitory rooms wasn’t much of a sports fan and thought she had done a real favor, putting cousins or even twins together. Maybe, she just found the coincidence funny.

Fortunately, George St. Julien’s parents, strange folks, did not see fit to get George settled at the university. They gave their son the keys to a new convertible, a pat on the back, a peck on the cheek, and sent him off alone with his belongings to the U.

Linc’s mama spent two hours checking under the cots for dust and bedbugs, putting underwear in the dresser, and hugging and kissing on her only son with tears rolling down her cheeks, before she finally got out of the dormitory and on her way home. About fifteen minutes later, George walked in, carrying his genuine leather luggage. Two tall guys, one black, one white, staring at each other, saying nothing. Then, George threw one case on the free cot and started to unpack. About five minutes after that, Dean Emmet burst into the room apologizing to George all over the place.

“George St. Julien, grandson of my late good friend, the senator! If I had seen the dormitory assignments earlier, you would not have been placed with this, ah…this gentleman. I believe we have a private room available over in the new building. Shut that suitcase and come with me.”

The dean was all over George like white on rice, tugging on his arm, his old bulldog jowls quivering and dripping saliva like a hound worrying a big knuckle bone. George stood there immovable.

Linc knew enough to stay out of the whole business. What did he care where the white dude slept? Up ’til that remark about the new dorm, this place didn’t seem too shabby. Now, he saw it with new eyes. A second later, he saw the rich white kid in a new way, too.

George said, “If it’s okay with the other gentleman, I’ll stay here,” quietly, just like that.

Linc kept his mouth shut and nodded, nearly breaking up when the dean recovered and backed out of the room while making some cryptic remark about what Huey Long had done to get votes. From that moment on, Linc knew George St. Julien was okay, but it took the other fellows on the squad a while longer to figure that out.

The first week or so of practice, the coach just studied each guy’s styles, running the new recruits through drills, splitting them up this way and that. When he called out the first string of the junior varsity squad, George ended up the only white boy in the lineup. Coach placed him as a guard. Linc got center, his old high school position. He wondered how George felt losing the glory spot to a black man. If he was mad, it didn’t show.

Two other dudes, both black, both centers on their hometown teams, played forward also. They couldn’t keep themselves from roughing up George a little bit, tripping him up now and then, trash talking, calling him Georgie, the Friendly Ghost. Later on when they began to appreciate George for feeding them all those free balls, they confessed they wanted him to look bad so that a buddy of theirs, Lyle Woodrow, would be moved up to first squad. Well, Lyle bombed out on booze and drugs his sophomore year, but George stayed on right along through the championships junior and senior years. Part of his nickname stuck, too. Now, they called him Ghost, the only white guy on the all black starting team, the one who could slip in and steal a ball like he was invisible.

Being right out of high school, the guys might be forgiven for not seeing much in George at first. They played hard body ball in those public schools. None of the players knew the meaning of finesse until they got to State. Oh, George had done fine as a center for preppy St. Mark’s. He had half a dozen inches on the rest of the boys, but here at State, the guys were all of a height, and George was no pusher. His real strength lay in being wherever a ball got handled sloppy. He’d sort of glide in and hand it off to the forward in the best position. Before the other team knew what happened, the ball headed the other way. He made the whole team look great.

That got George the respect he deserved because he was kinda hard to like at first. No riot in the locker room, he spent the weekends working on computer programs and advanced algorithms. He was some kind of math genius, at least compared to Linc St. Julien. Most of the team members majored in PE and spent a few hours each fall getting registered in the required courses taught by the easiest profs. One or two of the smart ones, besides George, took communications courses or business classes in case their basketball careers didn’t work out. But, Linc St. Julien could not fail, no sir, not with George passing him balls to drive up the score, point after point.

Another thing about George no one could figure out was how someone with so much skill on the court never learned to dance, or how anybody on a winning basketball team couldn’t make it with the ladies. About the end of sophomore year, Linc, out of the goodness of his heart, decided to help Ghost with his social skills. First, he tried to convince Ghost to learn how to dance. “Gotta dance to get those girls,” he would say. He could tell George heard and took an interest because his ears turned red, the only part of his face not hidden by a math book.

“Why, I hear your daddy is the best dancer at the fais-do-do, a hit with all the ladies. I bet you have his talent hidden somewhere in that long, lean body of yours.”

“I don’t dance,” George said, and he never did.

Linc had no idea then how it was between George and his daddy, but he began to figure it out. He could tell, though, George still had an interest in the girl part, so he fixed him up with his wild cousin, LaDonna.

LaDonna was real light-skinned and had dated white boys before. The talk around Port Jefferson said she took after her mother, Auntie Cerise, in more ways than one way, but Linc’s mama wouldn’t hear that kind of talk. She said it cast aspersions on her brother, Uncle Jack, a nice, caramel-colored guy. As a kid, Linc imagined Uncle Jack being cut up by little silver spurs in his side every time someone cast aspersions on his wife or daughter. Deep inside, he doubted he and LaDonna were blood relations. She was too easy to be kin to his mama. So, he didn’t feel too bad about fixing her up with George.

They had some times with LaDonna being a real warm woman, and George, so grateful he’d let Linc and Doris use the convertible while he and LaDonna stayed in the room. When Linc left for the U, Doris, his high school sweetheart, did not take any chances on losing him. She enrolled at Southern close by, desegregated but still mostly black. She majored in Home Economics because she had faith in the power of Linc St. Julien. She wanted to be his wife and a mother by the time he made the majors, not a teacher or a practical nurse who had to earn a living.

A couple of times, Linc suggested they use the room while George and LaDonna took the convertible, but Doris said no. Definitely, she was the kind of girl a guy married, and well, if a man needed to find a little relief elsewhere now and again because of her being so strict, it was her own fault, Linc figured. Only a man of stone could watch George and LaDonna go at it and get none himself.

That didn’t last though. The novelty of dating a six foot five white boy wore off over the summer for LaDonna, especially when he started talking marriage. Nothing scared LaDonna, not even Mrs. Jacques St. Julien. She might have accepted one of those pitiful proposals that went on all June, July, and August if she had been ready to settle down, but LaDonna had lots of corn to put up before she closed the kitchen. She went off to learn to be a dental assistant and left George alone at the start of junior year.

Still, he and Linc had an unforgettable season. George, not a man to mix up sex with the really important things in life, played as good as ever. The sports pages said Linc St. Julien was on fire. They both got a chance to start with the seniors and stayed on all the way to the national championships. Women crawled all over them, black women, white women. Then, Cherry Fontaine, who sort of specialized in winning athletes, discovered George. She’d been dating a senior who got benched early in the season with an injury. George took his place in more ways than one.

Cherry was a redhead, though that term didn’t do her justice. Really, she had auburn hair, that rich red-brown color that usually comes out of a bottle. Maybe hers did, too, but the shade sure looked good on that long mop of curls hanging down below her shoulder blades in little twists and turns a man just naturally wanted to wrap himself in. Cherry did not go out for cheerleading, but she should have. She jiggled in all the right places when she cheered George on from the stands. Must have made her old boyfriend want to puke to watch it.

Cherry had no major. She switched about every semester. Maybe, she majored in finding a rich husband because she took courses sure to be full of men, a semester of computer science, then sixteen weeks of biology where the pre-meds studied. About the time the grades came out, she’d switch again. Cherry ended up in pre-law. She never got her degree, but she did get her a lawyer.

That man could have been Ghost. He had a habit of wanting to marry every girl he took to bed, all two of them. So, he hauled Miss Bounce-and-Jiggle home to meet Mother. A freakin’ disaster. Virginia Lee served tea and cucumber sandwiches in the parlor, and the girl asked for a Pepsi. Even a black boy knows better than that. You eat what’s served and say thank you in a fancy house like that, at home, too. Mrs. St. Julien tested Cherry on genealogy with the old “I’m descended from George Washington” bit, and Cherry said, “Really? That’s so cool.” At least, the bubblehead knew she failed the interview and announced their breakup while George still tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

Cherry went on to taking engineering classes and dating the ace pitcher of the baseball team. Just as well for her. That year George’s daddy died riding home drunk after the Courir de Mardi Gras. He made the rest of the riders go to Mass, but for the first and last time, the Capitaine stayed on at Joe’s Lounge and got stinking. Coming home, he tried to take a fence on a tired horse in the dark. Real bad judgment there. They found him, neck at a funny angle, all tangled up in his gold and purple cape. His white horse grazed right beside him, reins dangling, ground-tied the way western mounts are trained, a nice help if the man can crawl back into the saddle.

After the funeral, all the worms started coming out of the woodwork at Magnolia Hill. Seems old Jacques did most of his dealing on a handshake and a man’s word. “You bring me fifty dollars cash each month, Rastus, and you can stay in that rat trap I own down in the Hollow as long as you live,” he’d say, or something like that. Should have been as long as he lived.

When old black grannies and decrepit winos started showing up at the kitchen door on the Hill with soiled, wrinkled twenties in their hands, Miss Virginia, a true friend of the poor, started evicting. She wanted everything done proper, down on paper, and collected through her designated agent on Main Street. Those houses in the Hollow stood empty for a long time. During his last term, George needed a scholarship to return to college. You better believe he got it.

The U geared up for another hot season, only George roomed with someone else, which wasn’t his fault. After his daddy died and Cherry took an interest in baseball, George began spending weekends at home after the season ended. But, plenty of girls wanted a piece of Linc St. Julien, and the room stood empty. Doris, being quick, saw the problem at once. With only one more year of school to go, she didn’t plan on losing her man now. By May, Doris had gotten herself pregnant. Okay, Linc got her pregnant, his fault, too.

Now the only thing Linc’s Mama didn’t like about Doris was her religion. Doris came from a family Catholic through and through, her people being descended from St. Julien slaves like Linc’s own daddy and never having seen the light. His Mama said no one ought to listen to that man in Rome, but to pray directly to Jesus like a good Baptist. Whichever way they thought, the answer came out the same. Doris said no abortion. Linc’s Mama said listen to Jesus. Their wedding took place in June.

As newlyweds, they lived in Port Jefferson that summer. George stayed down in the Hollow a lot, trying to fix up his mother’s rent places, but Port Jefferson isn’t New York City. No one liked or trusted Virginia Lee. She got no takers on the property. George hung out at Linc’s mama’s house, spending plenty of time on the screen porch, eating yam pie, and drinking iced mint tea. Doris stayed trim and pretty during those first months, and the newlyweds had a perpetual summer honeymoon going on.

George liked their company, but he stayed in the Hollow for a purpose. Not to say he used people, but he used his brains. He had some of those rent houses filled by September. Papers had to be signed, and the rents went higher for the improved property, but he sealed the deal with a handshake. George asked Linc’s Mama to act as his rental agent until he could graduate.

In the fall, Mr. and Mrs. Linc St. Julien got a little apartment of their own near the university, and George found a new roommate. Agents came waving big money around, tempting the big star forward to quit school and sign a contract with one of the NBA teams. But, Mama, the school teacher, said, “No way.” That college diploma might mean everything some day. Her son would play out his senior year.

Doris picked basketball season to really pop out. She came to every game and sat in front looking like she had stole the ball and hid it under that stretchy pink top she sewed herself. The guys razzed Linc a little about Doris until they saw it threw his game off. Then, they let up, but the opposing teams caught on and said things that pissed him off so bad he couldn’t see straight to shoot.

The Ghost, though, just kept feeding Linc the ball nice and regular until he got him settled down. Wasn’t the best year, but the U made it to the regional championships, only not the Final Four this time around. That showed come draft pick time. Linc St. Julien didn’t go as anybody’s first pick, but he got a good enough offer to step up to the big leagues. He didn’t blame the baby either for not getting a better placement. When little Tiffany came with her milk chocolate skin, big brown eyes, and velvet hair, her daddy wanted to make it as a star more than ever.

George “Ghost” St. Julien had some good offers, too. When Linc left for training, he wanted to say to his friend, “May all your troubles be little ones like Tiffany,” but knew they wouldn’t be. George turned down the contracts and went back to Port Jefferson to see his mother through the first of her leukemia treatments because she begged him to do it. He passed the CPA exams and set up his office in one of the family’s rent buildings on Main Street. Virginia Lee decorated the place. He checked in with his rental agent about the problems she noted on houses in the Hollow and told her she had done a fine job, but he would be collecting the rents himself now. Without saying it, Odette St. Julien knew the people at the Hill could not afford her agent’s fee anymore. Strange times when the rich become poor.

Old Jacques never had a sick day in his life and didn’t believe in health insurance. Hell, he had wealth and good luck. And, he died early and easy. George carried the insurance the athletes were required to take, but that didn’t cover his mama. She wasn’t old enough for Medicare and way too proud for Medicaid. They would have had to sell the Hill and declare bankruptcy to get it, anyhow. Virginia Lee lingered on and on.

Being men, George and Linc didn’t keep in touch much except for the phone call about the bombshell Doris dropped at Tiffany’s first birthday party when she said, “And Mama’s giving you a new baby brother or sister in about seven months.” Doris found that a cute way of telling her husband. No way was Linc ready for another child. But when Crystal came along so tiny and delicate compared to Tiffy who, truth be told, had big bones like her daddy, he couldn’t blame that child either.

Linc blamed himself that his career didn’t go as well as it should. Now, Linc St. Julien was just one big man among a hundred big men. Lots of times he didn’t start a game. Lots of times, he didn’t get in a game. But when he went back to Port Jefferson and sat sipping a brew on the porch with George, he knew he had no troubles at all compared to his friend.

It seemed like George was turning gray, oh, not along the scalp line, but in his personality. Say “How about a little one-on-one.” And he’d answer, “I’m not in your league anymore, Linc, old buddy,” and have one too many beers. Linc’s mama said George came to shoot baskets alone at the tattered hoop screwed to their garage, one ringer after another until little boys began to keep count. He’d give them a few pointers, and then go back alone to the Hill and his sick mother.

George took to slicking back his hair like his daddy used to with cream stuff. He even used the same cologne. Old Spice, maybe. Could be he thought this would remind his clients of the kinship or his renters of their lease, but it didn’t help his looks any. Maybe George’s old lady mother was trying to make her son over into a man like his daddy, but one she could control. Couldn’t say anyone in the Hollow grieved when Virginia Lee died, though Odette St. Julien said everyone should pray for her soul.

By then, Linc came back to Port Jefferson for good. About the time Doris told him—this time there was nothing cute about it—that their number three daughter was on the way, he began feeling a little desperate. He made good money, but not great money, and keeping up the life style in a big city sure took its share. The signing bonus dribbled away, and his investments could only be called limited.

He asked George to find him some land in the country for his retirement. That much got bought and paid for. George served as his agent locally, but no one offered any big endorsements for a second-string player. Working hard on his game that year, Linc got it together. “Most Improved Player” they called Linc St. Julien. The next year, he started for the team, and Doris started on giving him a son, Little Linc. But, his knees didn’t last. He blew out one, then the other—another career down the crapper.

That PE diploma his mama insisted on came in handy when the great basketball star had to go over to Port Jefferson High and beg for a job. He got on as a gym teacher and assistant basketball coach, glad to have the work. Not too much later, the high school made him head basketball coach. Lucky, and luckier to have George St. Julien as his friend, too. George saw to it that a brick house in the country got built with the last of the NBA contract money. He might have put in a word at the school board office, but he wouldn’t tell if he did. Most of all, George never mentioned Linc’s last big game except to say, “Tough break about the knees, but it’s good to have you home again.”

He owed George for that and for saying “if it’s okay with the gentleman,” freshman year. He owed the man for never razzing about Doris and her yen for motherhood. He owed his bro for all the basketballs he handed off to the star to dunk and dazzle the scouts in the stands. Linc owed George and wanted to do something for him. That’s why he butted in when he got his mama’s call, her all excited.

“Did you meet the nice girl working for George at the Hill?”

“No, Mama.”

“Well, she’s just right for him,” his mama went on. “And maybe George hasn’t noticed that yet.”

Linc stopped her right there. Mama’s definition of a “nice girl” was any polite female who went to church regularly, not George’s type at all. He liked those wild women.

“I’ll check her out, Mama,” he promised. “But I don’t think….”

“I know what you think, Mr. Abraham Lincoln St. Julien. You think she’s fat or ugly. Well, she isn’t. She’s nice looking, bright, and has a mind of her own, or I never would have met her. Now you just work on George. He might need a little help on this one, and he isn’t getting any younger.”

Linc gave up. “Yes, Mama.”

****

Naturally, Doris thought fixing George up was a great idea. She thought everyone should be married and have four kids. She wanted to invite the both of them to Sunday dinner, but George needed to be sounded out first. He hadn’t said a word about this girl as they watched the game the night before.

The two of them sat on the patio having a drink before dinner. The kids played on the gym set, and Doris fried up that special chicken of hers. Linc brought the subject around to women, and they talked about their old college days.

“I hear Cherry married a New Orleans lawyer, but sleeps with a pro football player. LaDonna doesn’t have the energy to do it anymore since she had the twins, or so she tells my mama. Good thing you got away from them both, Ghost, my man.”

“Yeah,” George said like he didn’t agree.

“Hear you got a good looking woman staying up at the Hill right now. Anything happening?”

“Nope.” George nursed his beer and looked away. Right then, Linc knew there was something in what his mama said.

“You never had any trouble finding women in the good old days, Ghost.”

“Everybody loves a sports hero, Linc.”

“You’re the same fine dude you always was, man.”

George belched for an answer.

“So when you’re not a hero, you just have to put a little more effort in it. Do something romantic. And Gawd, get your hair fixed.”

“My dad did just fine with his hair this way.”

“You’re not your daddy.”

“Don’t I know it? You should see the way Miss Suzanne Hudson ate up that portrait of my old man on his white horse. I hate horses.”

“But you can ride, can’t you? All you rich kids learn to ride.”

“Yeah. I learned to ride on this nasty, little sonofabitch pony my dad picked out especially for me. My feet practically dragged on the ground. I went over that boneheaded bastard’s head so many times I thought it was the only way to dismount.”

“Take her riding if she’s into mounted men.”

“It’s not just the horse. It’s the cape, the hat, the eyes, the leer, the whole goddamn style of that kind of man. I haven’t got it.”

“So get it.”

“It’s not for sale, and I couldn’t afford it even if it was.”

“I don’t know about that. Look, try the obvious stuff first. Have lunch together. Invite her out to dinner. Try dancing. If that doesn’t work, I have a plan.”

Doris sent George home with some fried chicken and yam pie for his “friend.” No surprise that the obvious didn’t work because George had no confidence in himself anymore when it came to women. Seven years of nursing the ice queen had seen to that. He called saying his spontaneous arrival home for lunch with hot French bread hadn’t worked out too well.

“Yeah, right. Nothing says romance like bread, George.”

“She was upset over a letter in the mail.”

“From a man?”

“I guess. I don’t know.”

“Great! She’s on the rebound. You were always the best with the rebounds, George. Did you ask her out?”

“I was going to. I will.”

“Look, it wouldn’t hurt to tell her some of your problems without getting too wimpy. Women love to dish out sympathy.”

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“Then, we’d better work on my plan. Mardi Gras is coming up. You go into the city to one of those big costume places and get yourself a cape, a plumed hat, the whole bit. I’ll work on the white horse, one you won’t be afraid to ride.”

“This is ridiculous, Linc.”

“If they want to be carried off on a white horse, then carry them off on a white horse. No wonder I was the one who always had to call the shots. You have no imagination, George.”

“I’ll feel like a fool.”

“So long as you don’t act like one. Now get on it!”

“Right, Coach!”

****

George loosened up the next few days, especially after the brawl at Joe’s Lounge. He didn’t look like a man who kept in shape because he nearly always wore a suit that sort of hid his physique. He had that long kind of muscle, not the type that gets bulky. Linc and George, the two of them worked out with the weights and played ball as often as they drank beer at Linc’s house. The strength of George’s right arm must have come as a real shock to the Patout boys. How cool it would have been to see those rednecks pee in their pants, but blacks knew to stay out of Joe’s Lounge. Still, getting drunk and flattening three Patouts probably did not improve George any in Suzanne Hudson’s amber eyes. Passing out from a bad wound might, but passing out drunk had never been high on Doris’ list of romantic ways to end an evening. Suzanne probably felt the same.

Plans moved ahead. George got the costume, a real beauty, all black with just a red cape lining. The costumer called it the Devil’s Horseman model and altered it for George’s length free of charge since he would be buying, not renting. The Ghost looked fantastic in that outfit except where the frame of his glasses showed above the black satin mask.

“Take off the specs, George.”

“I won’t be able to see.”

“Whatever happened to those contacts you wore when we played ball, the ones with the blue tint that drove the women wild?”

“In my dresser, I guess. Mother said I didn’t look like her son with those things in my eyes. I guess they were a little bizarre.”

“Find them, or get another pair.”

He tried to argue, but Doris barged into the garage just then to get Misty’s bicycle. She gasped and put a hand to her throat, then relaxed. “Oh, George, if I hadn’t seen those glasses I wouldn’t have known it was you. You look so dashing. Getting ready to take Suzanne to Mardi Gras?”

Then, she turned on her husband. “Why don’t we ever go to Mardi Gras anymore?”

Part Two of the plan was thought up right then—the part that turned out to be such a bad idea.

“Sure, baby. Why not? Can you make me a pirate costume?”

“Not like that. That’s professional sewing,” Doris said fingering George’s cape like she could hardly keep her hands off him. “Would you just look at this heavy scarlet lining? I like the way they sewed on the braid to cover the seam when they lengthened the arms and legs. Very nice—like something you’d see at one of those fancy masked balls they have in New Orleans.”

“No, no, honey, I don’t need anything like that. I’ll just put on some jeans and a tight striped shirt. You make me a mask out of a bandanna, and I’ll wear one of my gold earrings from back in the days before I became a teacher. We can dress the whole family up the same way and take in the parades in Lafayette.”

Doris liked the idea. Anything that included all the children softened her up.

“I only want to be back to see the Courir de Mardi Gras ride in, baby.”

“That bunch of drunken cowboys!”

“This year is going to be special.”

“Well, I can tell that,” Doris replied, flirting her eyes over George one last time as she wheeled the trike out for Misty.

By the time Doris left, George convinced himself to wear the blue contacts. Having a gold bugle slung across his chest would be a nice touch, too. Tiffy demanded five dollars for its rent and another dollar to get the bugle shined. She warned that any dents or scratches were taken very seriously by the conductor of her drum and bugle corps at Port Jefferson Elementary School. If the instrument came to any harm, she’d charge extra big time, Uncle George or no Uncle George.

“Yes, ma’am,” everyone answered to that.

****

Linc found a white horse of sorts, one George could handle with no problem. The animal usually pulled Alcide Porrier’s vegetable wagon, but during the winter off-season, Puffy went out to pasture for a month or so. His harness sores healed over, and his ribs almost became covered in fat again. The horse wasn’t a problem, but striking a deal with Alcide Porrier came hard.

“Mr. Alcide, I’d like to borrow your horse for the Courir.”

“Don’t no black man ride wit’ da Mardi Gras in Port Jefferson.”

Being a basketball coach in a small town had its advantages. Mr. Alcide could have been ruder.

“For a white friend, and he wants a white horse. Only Puffy looks a little yellow to me around the mane and tail.”

“Oh, we can bleach dat out, you got da money for da bleach.”

“And he looks a little thin.”

“Oh, we can feed him up wit’ oats, you got da money for oats.”

“Can he run, a little ways anyhow?”

“Ever seen a Cajun horse can’t run?”

“Guess not. We’ll need a saddle, a nice saddle.”

“I can get a nice saddle if you got da money for a nice saddle.”

“Fifty dollars the best I can do, man.”

“Dat horse eat lotsa oats ’til den.”

“Sixty and you be sure to get the yellow off him.”

“Seventy-five, I shine da saddle, too.”

“Done! Why you call him Puffy anyhow?”

“Oh, he puff up some when you put da saddle on. For five more dollar I make sure dat saddle’s real tight.”

Not wanting to spoil George’s entrance if the saddle slipped, Linc paid out another five dollars. He picked up the tab for everything over the fifty dollars George contributed. That costume set Ghost back, but the shop wouldn’t alter without purchase.

****

Part Two of the plan came absolutely free. What a great inspiration. Uncle Jack had a boat, a big, old-timey pirogue made from a hollowed-out cypress log that he’d lend. What could be more romantic than being abducted by a handsome stranger and paddled down the bayou to a secret destination?

This deserted cotton warehouse downtown had a broken lock. So, maybe every kid in the Port who wanted to sneak a drink, smoke pot, or make out, knew about the place, but for sure, Suzanne Hudson did not. An anonymous tip to the sheriff saying druggies were using the place would make the law walk through the building prior to Mardi Gras and get rid of any undesirables. Then, clean up a corner, stick a few candles in bottles for atmosphere, lay down some nice, soft blankets, stash some wine and chocolates, pack some clean clothes for the morning after, and put a new lock on the door—a perfect spot for a little Mardi Gras nookie.

George had to take things from there. He could pull off the mask and say, “Ha, ha, it’s me.” That would be like him. Or he could leave it on, untie Suzanne, and proceed to romance her from there. Or he could leave her tied up and…. Damn! The thought gave Linc the hots for Doris. The kids could go visit their grandmother this afternoon. What a crying shame and a pity George had no imagination. A good guy, but he might not be able to bring this off.

Mardi Gras day, the plan started off well. Puffy flatfooted along the river bank with his saddle still in place and George still in that saddle. Suzanne, slung over the white horse, had her cute little ass in the air, wiggling like she wasn’t really scared at all, which she wasn’t supposed to be.

Both George and the horse looked a little sweaty. After all, Puffy had been tied up out of sight below the ridge all morning, then asked to charge up a slope on short notice. George, to bring off the quick change, wore two sets of clothes most of the day so he only had the cape, mask, bandanna, gloves, and hat to slip on when ready to go. He put in the contacts and wore sunglasses to greet the riders of the Mardi Gras. Those blue, blue eyes sure looked wicked staring out from the black mask. He made an impressive move when he crushed Suzanne to his breast, as they said in those bodice-rippers Doris is always reading—and bruised her lips with his—okay, sometimes she read the good parts aloud to get things started in the bedroom—but George had no time to waste. Those crazy cowboys from the Courir might be following.

With Puffy tied a tree to keep him from wandering, Suzanne got hauled to the pirogue. She had a real solid heft for a girl, like maybe she worked out in a gym. She could have escaped if she’d put any effort into it, but tied real loosely, she didn’t panic and went along with the joke.

George goofed when the water carried the pirogue past the warehouse and toward the bridge into full view of the town and everyone gathered on Main Street for the fais-do-do and gumbo supper. He tried to cut to shore too fast. Not all his fault, though. A pirogue is a bitch to steer. The last time Uncle Jack took anyone out in the boat, he made all the passengers wear life vests because, he said, the pirogue could get a little tippy. A little tippy, hell! Where were those life vests when the boat turned over?

“Gawd, I can’t swim!”