Juanita and Bridget have been here before,
it’s built in at ground level: call it
the Shady Grove factor. To come from
such utterly different worlds (to hell with
the neighbours, the bourgeois decorum)
is all quite delightful – except
when it isn’t. And party nights out in
the Swamp are a case in point.
Every six months or so, therefore, they . . .
what? ‘Quarrel’ isn’t the right word exactly.
But the discord’s a worry and its roots descend
deep into places where neither of them
wants to start digging. Briefly, Juanita
will not go to Shady Grove. The scene
in the Swamp makes her shy and self-conscious
(‘common touch’ not being one of her gifts).
Bridget, she rightly assumes, feels judged, but
the best that Juanita can do is plead weakness:
‘Darling, you know what it’s like for me.
The Argentinos won’t show up, Jonah and Sigrid
aren’t going. Who do I talk to? You’ll have
your friends, with their drugs and the rest of it.
I’ll just be tied to your skirts, feeling wooden.’
All of which is entirely true, and none
of which Bridget is ready to listen to.
‘Please, Juanita, just this once. I know
you don’t want to but . . .’
Just this once?
Juanita catches herself, but barely. ‘It’s just
me, cariño. Honestly, you’ll have more fun
without me.’
‘I won’t!’
‘You will! I’ll wait up
for you.’ And so on, mechanically, rising
and falling, like carousel ponies: the Belle
of the Boglands, Ms Bridget O’Dwyer, and
the esoteric Ice Queen of Plaza Güemes.
The bayou thang. It’s mostly a joke, but
no one has ever told Leo the Crab Man.
He putters about in his Florida fanboat;
he lards his speech with creolisms; and
by the time Bridget has made her way home
from her unsatisfactory debate
with Juanita, he is well into fixing
the lavish confection which long ago
earned him his nom de guerre, that staple of
southside party fare that is Leo’s notorious
paddlecrab gumbo. A sawn-off 44-gallon
drum does duty as a fat-arse kettle.
‘Smells good, Leo,’ Bridget says. And truly,
just for the moment, it does: pork sausage,
celery, green pepper, fennel, commingling
their juices enticingly. It’s only those damned
crabs, bitter and fleshless, which Leo
invariably adds by the bucketful – ‘Look at
the meat on those critters, cher!’ – that scare
away all but the most drunk, or kindly.
This evening, however, relief is at hand:
Leo’s new friend is on board to restrain him.
Spawned in a tract home in Natchitoches,
schooled in the dive bars of Baton Rouge,
Willow Durst may be a hippie flake but she
knows her Rockin’ Dopsie from her Boozoo
Chavis. She’s also coming to grips with Leo:
‘Come on pumpkin, we’ve got all those fish heads
and scallops and clams, you can hold the crawdads.
Just for me? Hey, tell you what’ – hoisting
the bucket of grumpy crustacea – ‘let’s
go and drink some of Bung-Eye’s hooch!’
Which is what they do. And as the twilight
thickens, and the tide starts to fill beneath
Bung-Eye’s deck, Willow stealthily decants
the vital ingredient into the swamp.
Beneath the shoreline macrocarpas – wired
with spots and fairy lights – improvised trestle
tables sag beneath mountains of assorted
kai. Down the track comes Captain Blood with a
wheelbarrow, toting a massive kingfish.
Barbecue-meister Wiki Laulala tends
to a hogget on a charcoal spit. When
Marigold arrives, on dusk, she unloads a
brace of smoked kahawai and a carton
of melons. From the vantage point of his
mistress’s shoulder her feathered familiar
peers left and right. ‘Has my friend been
forgiven, then?’ Bridget inquires. But Chuck
is in no mood for pleasantries. ‘¿Dónde está
el maldito mestizo?’ the parrot demands,
and by way of reply, along the gangway from
Bung-Eye’s cabin, bouncing on his three good
legs, comes the mongrel in question, his ancestral
foe. ‘Boof!’ remarks Homebake, provocatively –
and bolts, with the bad-tempered bird in pursuit.
‘Come on darling, let’s get you a drink,’ suggests
Bridget. They settle themselves on her deck,
observing the revellers gradually filling
the party zone, while the sunset deepens,
first salmon, then scarlet, then cooling
to ash as a velvety darkness seeps
out of the mangroves. ‘So, then – no Juanita
tonight,’ says Marigold, finally. ‘Is that okay?’
‘I guess so. I don’t know,’ says Bridget.
‘Why can’t I simply roll the dice? Women,
men, the Swamp, the city – Jesus, girl, just
pick a side! Is it greed, I wonder? I tell you
what, though – I’m damned if I’m going to feel
alone at my own party.’
‘You’re not alone,
babe. I’m flying solo, too, remember?
I’ll be your date.’
They mark the deal with
a smooch, a hug, a toast, and then bestir
themselves. For the driving rattle of Groober’s
banjo has just been joined by a squalling fiddle.
‘That,’ says Bridget, ‘must be Constable Dave.
‘Come on, my gorgeous date. Let’s do it.’
On the grassy bank down by Cooch and
Groober’s, spilling up over their duckwalk
and deck and onto Leo’s pontoon (rafted
up alongside), the party is finding its sea legs
in double quick fashion. Raucous hillbilly
dance music helps and the Shady Grove Allstars
are giving it heaps. Most of whom, by this
stage, need no introduction:
Ladies and Gentlemen –
all the way from the Swordfish Club, on tea
chest bass, that’s Paulie Laulala! On washboard,
Koro Bill. Strumming guitar tonight, Mr
Frank Hortune. In the bottle-green shades,
on piano accordion, everyone knows
Manfred Singleton; likewise our hard-working
string-players, Groober and Dave. Then there’s
the big guy expertly steering his golf
buggy into the firelit circle, nobody’s fool
on the blues harmonica – from the Pearly
Shells Rest Home, it’s Wayne the Larger!
And last but not least, with his mandolin
dwarfed in his meaty paws as he chops out
the backbeat, please give it up now for
Slippery Bob (an ordinary picker
but the finest meth cook on the island).
A roster of venerable hoedown standards
soon has the place in a thirsty sweat.
‘Arkansas Traveler’, ‘Nine Pound Hammer’,
‘Big Sandy River’, ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’:
anyone who says you can’t boogie to
bluegrass doesn’t know the good folks of
Shady Grove – or the strength of Bung-Eye’s
feral tequila, travelling hand to hand
in a three-litre juice bottle. Crawling
out of their caravans, their yurts, their coal
bins, their shipping containers, from their
cardboard huts in the bamboo thickets, from
their shanties of plywood and rusty iron,
they’ve come – the Southside rank and file,
every last woman, man and mutt – to join
and testify together at this ramshackle
outdoor cathedral of Good Clean Fun.
There must be a God. Just listen to that
stomp! Just check out those beards and
bandanas and bush shirts, the fishnets
and ponchos, the white Affco gumboots,
heaving together in their boggy esprit
de corps. Through a haze of weed and tobacco
smoke, of biker sweat and spitroast fumes,
the lonesome sounds of Appalachia
weave their counterfactual joy.
When Groober calls a five-minute breather
his Allstars dematerialise. For the sensible
(e.g. Koro Bill, taken in hand by his sensible
spouse) there’s time to pile up a plate of kai
and tame the effects of Bung-Eye’s ’shine.
Manfred and Groober share a sensible joint.
But Slippery Bob lights out for his vehicle –
hotly pursued by a vigilant Cooch,
by Wayne in his golf cart, by Constable
Dave, by Paulie and (Fuck it all, why not?)
Frank. ‘Buckle in. Next stop Breakdown City,’
says Manfred, drily. Groober nods. ‘You mean
Dave and his bloody landspeed-record
fiddle tunes? There should be a Law . . .’
For now, however, as Bridget and Marigold
join the pickers around the bonfire,
everything’s calm. On Marigold’s shoulder
Chuck appears to have fallen asleep. Likewise
his adversary, draped on a haybale, head
laid serenely in Bung-Eye’s lap. Yet one ear
still twitches. And Groober need no more than
plink-plonk his way through a certain key phrase
to find the mutt quivering beside his knee
in the pitch perfect likeness of a dog
being good. ‘Shall we do the song, then?’
(With a tasteful squeeze of accordion
and spectral plucking . . .)
Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you
Ow-wowww you rolling river!
Oh Shenandoah, wow-wow-owww-woo-woo
Wow-woww, I must oo-woooo
Across the wide wow-woo-woooo!
Tears stream from underneath Manfred’s glasses;
Bung-Eye struggles vainly to conceal his pride.
Even the somnolent bird can’t deny it:
‘¡El mestizo canta con gran duende!’
Here and there the implacable physics
of dissipation exacts its toll. Not so much
among the drug-deranged pickers: well
after midnight the tempos bear witness
to the virulence of Slippery Bob’s
wares. The fan base, however, begins
to erode. Mud-wrestling, bullshitting,
losing the car keys, sedentary drinking
account for their share; broken boot-heels,
twisted ankles . . . Even Bluey Winters
runs out of puff. A wiry old coot with a
flaming mohawk, Bluey (knocking on
85) is famed for his kindness,
his priapism, and the brio
of his antic bush carpentry. He is credited
too – collaboratively, with his
winsome enabler Vanessa Thrush –
as author of some of the freakiest dance
moves ever attempted this side of the island.
But could it be Bluey is feeling his age?
With Bridget and Marigold, Leo and Willow,
observing like dowagers from Bridget’s
deck, the couple nurse drinks and make low-
voltage chatter. Even so, Bluey soon
warms to a signature theme.
‘Read your Lawrence,
boys and girls – and stop watching porn,
you’ll over-think it. In through the cunning
and out through the titties! The Dao of
Rooting? It’s all about Chi.’ His lover
extends a prehensile arm and winches
him in by his scrawny neck. ‘Nice in theory,
Rooster Boy’ – laughing, teasing his
scarlet comb – ‘but there’s not been much
peace in the barnyard lately.’ ‘That’s a bit harsh,’
Bluey says. But he beams like the Buddha.
Now down the jetty comes June Te Patu.
Bridget, easing her chair back, stands up to
greet her. ‘Lovely party, Bridget dear. But
this old lady needs her beauty sleep. Koro’s
still going. I wonder’ – this to Marigold –
‘darling, would you mind?’ Three handsome
women (and one dozy parrot) make their way
up to the dusty road. Bridget hands June
into Marigold’s truck, then circles round
to the driver’s window. ‘Promise me you’ll come
straight back.’ ‘Of course I will. I’ll take Chuck home,
but an hour at most, okay? I’m still your date!’
Bridget watches the plume of dust as it
bubbles along the chalky road, drifting,
almost imperceptibly, spilling
out over the mangrove flats. The full
moon, sailing clear of the pine trees,
glares down bright enough to read by.
Kānuka gives off its summery heat smell,
perfumed, off-dry: ginger and honey.
Up here – even with all the bikes and vehicles
bunched along the verge – the party sounds,
the hints of light, arrive as if from miles away.
Crickets louder than the music. Louder
than someone shouting, drunk and happy.
An hour at most, Marigold promised, and meant it.
The problem, however, is Auntie June:
inevitably she has picked up a
whisper, and now she requires to hear it
from the horse’s mouth. Accompanied, as
might be imagined, with hoots and cackles
and good-natured chidings, the drowned-poet
story must be told in June’s kitchen
with pikelets and serial cups of tea.
When at last she gets back to the Swamp
she finds the party in its twilight.
A dozen-odd bodies are slumped round
the fire, there’s laughter from Bung-Eye’s
kitchen. And yes, there’s still music.
But even here the ranks have thinned:
no sign of Dave or Slippery Bob; Big
Wayne nodding off at the wheel. No
Frank either: it’s Manfred and Groober
with Koro noodling on Frank’s guitar,
a whacked-out, spacey and structureless jam
to gladden the heart of the dopiest
Deadhead . . . which might well be Marigold –
just her thing – were it not for the pulse of anxiety
drumming in her abdomen. And written, it
must be, all over her face, so that looking
up Manfred reads it at once; with the tilt of
an eyebrow he points her to Bridget’s boat.
In the shadow of Leo’s water tank Marigold
freezes. The cloudy flask, and this –
initially, hopelessly – is her only thought,
could almost be the moon reflected mistily
in the rising tide. But the real moon’s light
is too concise for the comfort of ambiguity:
there is no mistaking the Zippo flame,
no disguising Frank and Bridget,
no unseeing the river of smoke that
drains from his mouth into hers. The pale
arc of Bridget’s throat; his face in shade;
the glass bowl fuming. And Marigold
trapped in the shadows, aghast and ashamed.
She can no more step forward, declaring
herself, than if she were watching them
making love. As she buries her face in
her hands she can still taste the sweetness.