The truth is, when me and Bandy first get off the plane and this old lady is waiting there with her two canes, one in each fist, I’m kind of scared of her. She’s so wicked old and the canes look like weapons. Like hitting sticks. This really ancient lady, small and hunched with her hitting sticks. Her skin like the skin on milky hot chocolate when you blow across the top, all wrinkled and folded back on itself. Even her perfume smells like old flowers or something.

More than anything I want to get back on the plane and go home, but then the old lady says something that changes my mind, at least a little bit. Standing there kind of wobbly on her canes but smiling like the sun peeking through a cloud, she goes, “Young man? Seems I been waiting all my life to meet you, though I didn’t know you existed, or what yo name might be. The Good Lawd has given me a great gift. Thank you Lawd! Praise be! Zane Dupree, you are welcome in my home today and always will be. Mmm, mmm, mmm.”

You can’t be afraid of a person who says that. You just can’t. Plus Bandy likes her—right away he rolls over and shows her his tummy, so that’s another thing in her favor.

“Hello to you, too,” she says, scratching behind his ears with the tip of her cane. “Let me guess, this dog part terrier and the rest nobody quite sure, is that about right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

“Can you drag your bag and that little dog, too? Taxicab waitin’ on us.”

When we first walk out of that terminal into the heat of the city it’s like whoa, are they kidding? This has to be a joke. I’ve never been anywhere that’s so unbelievably hot and humid. Like the sky is sweating and everything smells kind of stinky and moldy and wet.

That’s when I start to think of New Orleans as Smellyville. I didn’t know it then, but the wet and stinky part was about to get much, much worse.