by Lisa Wingate
I’d figured out some things while I was on the bus. Mona, who right now was trying to take over the map, was Pastor D.’s big sister, and she had two grown boys, the older one being Ernest, who’d rescued us. Between Pastor D. and Mona, they ran this outfit, which Mamee would’ve called a Creole church. Being Cajun, Mamee lived alongside lots of folks who called themselves Creoles. They cooked different from the Cajuns, and the ones that talked French spoke it in a different way, and of course they looked different, the Creoles counting their ancestors as some combination of French, black, Spanish, and maybe some Creek, Cherokee, or Seminole even. They farmed rice and knew the bayou just like the Cajuns did.
Mona reminded me of Mamee, some. Her and Ernest and Pastor D. had the sound in their voices that seeps out of the bayou. Their words ran together like a tide, ebbing in and out, soft and pretty.
There was eighteen families in their little flock, give or take. They lived mostly on little rice farms not too far from Mamee’s country. The oldest member was Mona’s mother, Obeline, and she was ninety-four. The youngest was a baby everyone just called Happy, and then there were all sorts of folks in between, and every kind of pet you could dream up, from turtles to a Chihuahua dog with flowered swim trunks on. They were all members of the Holy Ghost Church, and after sitting through Hurricane Rita and getting flooded out by Ike, they’d made up their minds that come another hurricane, they were all packin’ up and gettin’ out together. All told, they had a church bus, a van, some cars, and Ernest’s furniture delivery truck.
I got up and tiptoed across the room to look at the map with them and see if I could help. When you end up under the manure pile, you might as well start shoveling, I always say.
It didn’t take long, standing there by the door, to figure out we were all under the manure pile together. With some reckoning, we decided we were fifteen miles or so off the highway. Ernest’d hiked a mile each way, and he didn’t find anyplace to use a phone or get help.
“It’s jus’ trees down and mess wash up all over the road,” Ernest said. “No way we gonna drive out.”
Pastor D. muttered something in French that sounded like Dee-accord, then studied the map with a big ol’ frown. “No way we gonna drive anywhere, anyway. The church van, she outta gas, and the big bus almost there, too. I’m’ma say, we gotta get some help in here, dee-accord?”
Ernest scratched his chin where a little beard was starting to grow. “Could be days before anyone come down this road—trees and branches laid out everywhere, far as the eye can go.”
Mona rung her hands, her long gold fingernails—somebody’d done a nice manicure on her with the little glue-on rhinestones on every tip—leavin’ little scratches in her skin. “We only got food and water to las’ a day. And the bébés, they gonna need milk. I’m’ma say, we gotta make a plan now.”
We all stood there thinking, and finally the only idea anyone could come up with was that Ernest’d walk one way until he either found help, or a phone, or could get a signal on his cell phone, and his brother, who they called Bluejay (and he did have the prettiest eyes colored blue-gray, just like a jay’s wing) would head out the other way.
Bluejay traced a finger on the map, giving his mama and his brother a worried look. The new little baby, Happy, was his, and I reckon he felt a powerful need to get that baby to someplace safer than this. Over in the corner, Bluejay’s wife was trying to keep the baby warm. I watched them, standing by the altar rail under the window light, and all of a sudden, I had a vision. That railing and the light made me think of Daily Baptist Church, back home.
I grabbed a pen and started writing the phone number for the Daily Café on the edge of the map. “Listen, you get to where you can use a phone, you call this number and tell them what’s happened to us, where we’re at, and that Donetta said round up some chain saws and come quick. Tell them Donetta said so, understand?” I wrote the number a second time, then tore off the corners of the map and handed one to each of Mona’s sons. “You get that message out, and they’ll come for us.”
Ernest and Bluejay gave their mama one last hug, Pastor D. prayed over them, and off they went, opposite ways down the road. They were both jogging at a pretty good clip, Ernest with his hound by his side. They didn’t go far before the mist swallowed them up. Standing there with the damp sinking into my bones and scrap elms split like toothpicks all up and down the road, I wondered if we’d ever get out of that place.
The morning went by slow and way too quiet. We got towels and loose boards and swept up the broken glass the best we could, but everyone had to be careful moving around, which was hard on the kids, who were just about happy as puppies in a bucket. They couldn’t go outside, because snakes’d come up out of the creek next door, and there were boards with nails sticking out, and twisted pieces of tin everywhere. Through the afternoon, we all just sat around watching the door, waiting and hoping for news, time ticking by slower than you’d ever believe it could.
Finally, Sister Mona stood up by the altar rail and said, “Come on. We gonna get on our feet, here! We gonna praise God. We all right, sha, and the storm, she done pass by, and the river, she don’ overflow us. Amen?”
“Amen!” Brother D. called. He was just coming from working on the bus outside. Brother D. swept his hands in the air, like he was picking those people off the floor. “And all the Lord’s people say amen.”
There was a weak round of amens, and everybody dragged themselves to their feet. Imagene, Lucy, and me got up because we figured we’d better, and after a minute, Kai got up, too. She stood there looking kind of unsure and uncomfortable with her arms crossed over her stomach and her blond hair wrapped close around her face. Sister Mona started to hum “I’ll Fly Away,” and then in a minute, others joined in. Pretty soon, they got to clappin’ and swayin’, and all taking different parts of the music, we were having us a old-fashioned singin’, raising the rafters. Before I knew it, I got caught in the rhythm, and I was swayin’ and clappin’ right along. I closed my eyes and I forgot all about where I was, and it felt like a pretty good day. My spirit was light and my heart was smilin’, and then I thought, You know what, Netta, it is a good day. You woke up, and you’re still here, and listen to that music!
When the sound finally died away, I thought I heard somethin’ outside. It was far off, and I couldn’t make it out for sure. It stopped, then started again, then stopped. Finally, I moved over closer to the door to check that I wasn’t imagining it.
I did hear somethin’. Way off in the distance.
Humming, and buzzing, and chugging, loud then soft, then loud again.
A chain saw, clear as day.
Chapter 12
Kai Miller
The chain saws were drawing closer, but after an hour of standing by the door listening, I could tell that, in spite of Donetta’s assurances that we’d be rescued any minute, whoever was coming up the road was making painfully slow progress. One of the scouts who’d left that morning came back at three in the afternoon, after having hiked six miles up the road before being stopped by a flooded creek where a bridge was out. “No way cross that mess,” he reported. “That creek, she runnin’ like a river. De’pouille! I’m’ma hope Ernest got out. You hear a word from him?”
“Non.” Mona shook her head. “But we hearin’ chain saws come this way, and Ernest gonna be right along with ’em. You gonna see.” Flapping her hands, she shooed two little boys who were listening to the chain saws and trying to work their way out the door. “Out’cha now. You go out there, the Rugaru, he gonna come grab you up, carry you off down the slew.” She raised her hands over her head, snarling like a boogeyman, and the boys’ eyes widened. I knew the story of the Rugaru. Working outdoor concerts and carnivals, and hanging around carnies, I’d heard about every monster-slash-ghost story ever invented.
“I seen the Rugaru.” Bluejay’s voice took on an air of drama, and he cast a sideways wink at Donetta and me. “He gone-on down the river in a pirogue, this way.”
Stretching out his arms and spreading his feet, he pretended to be balancing in a moving canoe. “Rugaru, he big like a tree, covered in the moss, he is.”
The story, or his pantomime of a moss-covered boogeyman, triggered a memory. My father collected the carnies’ horror stories like exotic treasures. Future song ideas, he called them. He had a habit of acting them out at bedtime for our entertainment. His performances drove my mother crazy, because a scary story or two was all it took to keep Gil awake all night. Even so, for reasons my mother and I could never understand, Gil never stopped begging for one more ghost story or Bigfoot tale.
“I bet Pecos Bill, he bigger than ol’ Rugaru,” the older boy ventured, nodding at Donetta. “Pecos Bill so big, he ride the tornado.”
“That so?” Bluejay crossed his arms over his chest, squinting at the boys and then at Donetta. “He so big as that, cher? You think that Pecos Bill, he can lasso ol’ Rugaru?”
Donetta turned her attention from the chain saw sounds, pretending to consider the question with gravity. “Way-ul, I’d have to thank about tha-ut.” Compared to the rapid cadence of Bluejay’s words, hers dragged like a cassette tape playing too slow. “What do you thank, Kai?” She nudged me, inviting me to get in on terrorizing the children.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, still remembering Gil. What possessed my father to tell those stories when he knew Gil would end up curled in my bed all night, checking the window every half hour for signs of Bigfoot?
Donetta seemed disappointed that I didn’t want to join in. “My mamee used to tell me about the Rugaru. I don’t know if him and Pecos Bill ever did meet—Pecos Bill bein’ more of a west Texas fella and all. He liked the dry country, pretty much.”
“I say Pecos Bill, he gonna whip the Rugaru,” one of the boys insisted. “Lasso him right up, skin off all that moss on Rugaru’s hide.”
Chewing a chipped red fingernail, Donetta considered the contest of tall tales. “Way-ul, I’d have to say I bet he could, too, but what with all the weather we been havin’, I imagine ol’ Pecos Bill’s laid out flat sleepin’ somewhere, after havin’ to lasso all them tornados last ni-ight and get ’em put up in the barn. It might take him a day or two to get after that Rugaru fella. I wouldn’t get too close to the door if I was you kids. No sir, I wouldn’t.”
The boys’ eyes widened, then they giggled and squealed and ran away. I was glad the boogeyman story time was over without my having to contribute. Not to be a party pooper or anything, but it reminded me too much of Gil.
Bluejay wagged a finger and winked at us. “You gals bes’ watch out for that Rugaru.”
I nodded, and Donetta swished a backhand. “Oh, hon, I’m too old and fat for any old swamp monster to carry me off.”
Bluejay’s lips parted in a wide smile. “Eiii-eee! What? Forty ain’t old. There was a lady over forty won the swimmin’ Olympics.”
Donetta giggled and blushed. “You know I ain’t forty.”
Bluejay grinned, elbowing me. “Forty’s what I figure, don’ you, sha?”
Donetta swatted the air, “Oh, you. Honestly. Kai, hon, you don’t even have to answer that. Lyin’ is a sin. Bluejay, you better get on over there and take care of that sweet little baby. He’s been givin’ his mama fits all mornin’. Must be he takes after his daddy.”
She slipped an arm around my shoulders as Bluejay left to check on his baby. “We might as well go sit down, hon. Whoever that is with the chain saws, they’re still a long ways off.”
“Guess so,” I agreed, and we walked to the opposite wall to sit down. Next to us, Obeline, who at ninety-four seemed too old and frail for a situation like this, was sitting on a cooler, rocking a toddler who’d been fussy all day. Watching her hands gently stroke the baby’s arm, it occurred to me to wonder whether Grandmother Miller had ever comforted us like that. My father had let it slip a time or two that shortly after I was born, I’d been left for some months with Grandmother Miller during a period of time when, in his words, my mother couldn’t handle it. Logic told me that my grandmother must have taken care of me then, perhaps even rocked me as Obeline was doing now, but the picture wouldn’t form in my mind the way I wanted it to.
“The lil’ fella sure looks happy enough now,” Donetta remarked, leaning over and lightly stroking a finger along the baby’s cheek.
Obeline smiled. “I midwifed lotta little bébés, and my mère, she a midwife way back when I’z a little bougalee. In the old day, Mère deliver almost all the bébés on Landee Bayou. The doctor, he sixty mile away, somebody gotta bring them bébés into the worl’, sha.”
Donetta’s attention snapped from the toddler to Obeline. “My mama’s people come from down around that way. They farmed rice near the bayou on a road that went across an old iron bridge. Did you ever know any Chiassons?”
Obeline laughed. “Oh, honeychil’, lotta Chiassons down in that bayou. Shake a tree ’round there, you find Chiasson, ’n Guilbeau, n’ Thibedeaux, n’ Terrebonne come down like rain.”
“I guess they would.” Donetta’s disappointment was palpable, so that I felt it myself and wondered at the cause of it. Surely she didn’t think the odds were very good that in the middle of a hurricane evacuation we’d happen to run into people who knew her family. “Mamee always called their place the Dogleg Bayou. Did you ever know it?”
Obeline’s lips parted contemplatively, and she studied Donetta through bottle-bottom glasses. “Everybody know the Dogleg, sha. The water there crook way, way up in like a hound dog hind leg.” She illustrated the shape with her hands. “Oil comp’ny, they drain that out long time ago. No bayou at the Dogleg no mo’, and all them farm, they gone.”
Donetta’s face slowly fell, and I felt her body sink against mine. “Those places are gone?”
Obeline nodded as the baby’s mother came and gently lifted him from her lap. Pushing off her seat, the old woman stood with a grunt, her thin bowed legs widening to steady her body. “The rice farmers, they move on downwater. The oil patch, she good to the rich man. Not so good to the rest.” She stood a moment longer, squinting toward the altar railing, scratching her head. “I’m’ma think that was the Dogleg they drain. I’m’ma think it was …” Sighing, she scrubbed her forehead with her fingertips, then shook her head and wandered away.
Donetta sat looking at the floor, her shoulders rounding forward.
“I guess that wasn’t good news,” I said finally.
Pressing her lips together, Donetta pushed fallen strands of red hair into what was left of a lopsided rat-up. “Oh, I should’ve expected it, I guess. A place don’t stay the same when you’re away from it fifty-odd years. It’s just that one of the things I really wanted to do this trip was see if I could find out about my mama’s people. Guess I thought they’d all be sittin’ there waitin’ for me to wander back. Guess I should’ve known better. Reckon that’s why I never said anything to Imagene and Lucy about it.”
I suddenly understood Donetta’s hope-against-hope that we’d find someone here who knew her family. Occasionally, when I saw a traveler with a guitar case, or when a carnival came to Perdida, or when there was an outdoor music festival, I caught myself eyeballing strangers, imagining that I’d spotted my father. “I don’t think it’s silly,” I offered, and she gave my hand a squeeze, then wiped mascara smears under her eyes.
“You’re a sweet girl, Kai. I sure wish we’da got to take that cruise on your boat. I was gonna sign me up for the dancin’ class. Guess that was a silly notion at my age.”
“I help teach ballroom dancing on ship sometimes. It’s never too late to take it up again.” I nudged her shoulder, coaxing the way I would have with passengers on a cruise. Sometimes they were hesitant at first, and our job was to bring them out of their shells.
“Pppfff!” she spat, then giggled ruefully. “When I was a young gal, I could sure cut a rug, though. Back before I got married and such.” For some reason, before I got married had all the enthusiasm of a funeral march. Unhappy marriages were one
of the things I saw plenty of on ship. I’d learned to recognize the symptoms. It was none of my business, of course.
“When you finally do go on your cruise, you definitely need to do the dancing class.”
Her lips twisted to one side, then sank. “I doubt we’d do all this again. I reckon we’ll just get our money back from the travel insurance and stay closer to home. We come into a shade more adventure than we planned for, this time. If I ever get Imagene back to Daily, I don’t reckon she’ll ever leave the county again. Least not on one of my harebrained plans.” Donetta looked like a kid who’d just unwrapped the last box under the Christmas tree and found socks in it. “I was dumb as a post about that computer—all puffed up like a banty rooster because I knew how to use it, and the fact was I didn’t know a thing. I wanted this trip to happen, and I wasn’t gonna take no for an answer.”
“You can still have your trip.” Why I felt the need to play Merry Sunshine, I wasn’t sure, but Donetta with a frown just seemed wrong. “As soon as we get somewhere, I’ll help you re-book your reservation. You could get a better trip, maybe with more ports, even. You didn’t miss much in Mexico this time of year. It’s still hot in September.”
Her answer was a headshake and a sigh and a pause in the conversation.
Something glistening near my feet caught my eye, and I stretched, picking up colorful glass shards and dropping them in my palm. Perhaps when—if—I made it home, I’d work them into one of my creations—a wire-wrap candleholder, maybe, or a picture frame.
Donetta patted my shoulder as I tucked the bits of glass into my duffle bag. “You’re a sweet girl, Kai. What kind of name is that, anyway? Kai. It’s different. That a family name?”