by Jay Harez
“Celia died right around Christmas that year. Millie said she could never go back to the mine and Yvette had a good sense for business so the two of them took over the restaurant. You should stop by during the day if you’re going to be around. They still got the best boudin in the parish,” he said.
“Santi drank himself to death not long after the incident. He lived alone and it was weeks before anyone discovered his body. By then the nutrias had been at him for a while. DeMarco got arrested in New Orleans with an underage transvestite prostitute. He was murdered in prison a few years later.”
“After I graduated I came home to find the little one-armed girl in my house cooking and cleaning as if she was born there. She had grown quite a bit and looked to be around eleven or twelve by then. I can’t explain it. It was a hard sell to some of the local folks but I raised her as best I could on my own. I saw the clerk from the Hoggly Woggly for a while but eventually she moved to Austin. She said it was too weird around here for her,” he concluded.
It was almost two a.m. when he finished telling me his story. As a writer I was fascinated by the premise - it was bizarre and a bit farfetched but it wasn’t impossible. I considered how much of the story might be true and I knew I’d never know, but I wondered. I did know I could take the story, embellish it a little, and make it into a decent read.
While I was sitting there contemplating my future royalties a black Jaguar pulled up and a one-armed woman wearing black Ray-Bans stepped out. Again, it was still dark.
“Old man are you bending the ears of the tourists again?” she asked.
“Well youngster it’s past my curfew and you don’t want to get caught outside in the early hours around here let me tell you,” he said.
The woman helped him into the Jag and they left.
I realized then that I should probably just write the story as it was told to me.
END