by Gerald Duff
Velma Doucette began telling Mike Gonzales the same thing she’d already said to me about how to act when living in a room of her house, and I acted like I was listening to it again. She added this time some directions about letting her know our schedule of days we’d be in town so she could get supper tended to right every time. She didn’t ever want to waste a mouthful of food or time preparing it, she said, and both of us nodded and said we understood that down to the bone. She was interested in where Mike Gonzales was from and what he called himself, and I could see her relax when he said he was Cuban.
“I knew that,” she said, “since Mr. Bernson had told me a Rice Bird player from Cuba was probably going to want to room in my house. But let me tell you, I was surprised to see you when I first laid eyes on you. I said to myself ‘redbone,’ and not to say anything against redbones, since I’m Cajun myself and been around redbones all my life, but that complexion they got can fool you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mike said. “You the second or third person since I got here that’s asked me if I’m redbone. I guess it must be a lot of them around here in Louisiana.”
“We’ve got a lot of every kind of person here, specially in Acadia Parish and all the other parishes around it,” she said. “People here is like a big old stew in South Louisiana. Better than that, it’s like a dish we eat here called dirty rice. Did you boys ever hear of that?”
“No, ma’am,” we both said together.
“You got to get used to it, if you’re going to spend anytime in this part of Louisiana. It’s made up of a lot of different kinds of meat parts and whatever else comes to hand. It can be real spicy, and when you first look at it, you think it’s something that might be dangerous to eat too much of. But it smells and tastes real good. You’ll have the chance to eat a lot of it here. Now, one more thing,” Velma Doucette said, looking from one to the other of me and Mike, her eyes sharp the way they were when I’d first met her. “Y’all met my daughter when she let you in the house.” We nodded.
“She’s about to finish her high school program this month, and she’s going to go off to Lafayette and make a secretary once she’s out of Blessed Sisters Academy, she says. Of course, I’d like to see her stay with the sisters, if she feels Our Father’s call. She’s real smart and a real lively young lady. She’s got a future ahead of her, and I require that anybody who rooms in my house has to respect her and not bother her.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” Mike Gonzales said. “I went to school at the Christian Brothers in Cuba, and I learned how to act from them.”
“That’s a wonderful thing to hear, Mr. Gonzales,” Miz Doucette said. “Do you happen to be Roman Catholic in faith and upbringing, too, Mr. Batiste?”
I admitted to her that no, I wasn’t, but that I had sisters of my own back home and I understood and appreciated what she was saying
“Well, that’s good, as long as we understand each other about that matter. Now there’s no need to say a thing to Teeny about what I’ve been telling you,” our landlady said. “We’ll be ready to eat in about thirty minutes.”
Back in our room, I let Mike know which bed I was using and where to put his goods when they got there. He’d said the bus he’d rode had misplaced his suitcase, but they’d promised him it’d be there the next day. I asked him if he’d boarded that bus in Cuba. He didn’t answer that, but asked me what dirty rice tasted like, and I told him I didn’t know. Then he read the saying on the wall out loud, the one hanging over the bed I’d be sleeping in.
“I need thee every hour,” he said and looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “So you got little sisters of your own at home,” he went on. “And Miz Doucette’s little girl puts you in mind of them.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And you’re from Cuba.”
“You got it,” he said.
“Where in Cuba you from?”
“Mobile,” Mike Gonzales said and started laughing.
“Is that where the Christian Brothers taught you all about the Roman Catholic church and all?”
“Yeah, that part is right,” Mike said. “I went to school with the mackerel snappers for a good long while. That’s where I learned my reverent ways.”
“Don’t laugh too loud in here,” I told him. “I expect that ain’t allowed.”
“Why is she named Teeny? Can you tell me that, Gemar?”
“I tell you what,” I said. “I think that Dynamite Dunn can tell you the answer to that puzzle later on tonight at that frog place he’s been talking about.”
“You suppose he knows Teeny?”
“I imagine he’s wanted to for a while,” I said. “Let’s go eat that supper that Miz Doucette’s been cooking. It’s been a long while for me since breakfast.”
“Let me tell you one more thing first,” Mike Gonzales said. “I’m proud and happy to be rooming with a left-handed pitcher who loves his little sisters. And who’s a Indian, to boot.”
“Right back at you, redbone,” I said. “Maybe you can tell me how Catholics do their religion when you find the time.”
“Catholics would call me doing that giving you instruction, Gemar. All right, we can work on learning how to worship proper together, and maybe you can show me how to wait on a change-up and where to swing at a curve that breaks in the wrong direction.”
“Hush,” I said. “Don’t be laughing so loud.”
• • •
After Miz Doucette fed us supper, we got ready to go to the Green Frog. I don’t remember what I had to eat that first supper at Miz Doucette’s, so I expect it wasn’t anything I hadn’t had before that night. Probably some kind of beans and potatoes and cornbread and a little bit of meat.
As I ate, I caught myself looking around now and then to see if Teeny Doucette would show up again, but she didn’t. I can’t tell you if I wanted to see her then or not. I both did and I didn’t. It was like being somewhere deep in Lost Man Marsh in the Big Thicket and seeing a real pretty snake that takes your eye. You want to pick it up to take a good close look, but you’re afraid it might be one that’ll leave you bit and worried about poison.
Mike Gonzales did bring up her name when we were walking in the direction Dynamite Dunn had told us to take to get to the Green Frog, but I didn’t want to start talking about her nor the way she looked. So he let that drop.
It was getting good dark when we saw the sign up ahead that Dynamite told us to watch for. There was a couple of regular light bulbs fixed on the top of a picture on a piece of wood of a big frog with his mouth wide open, his tongue stuck way out and a fly caught on the tip of it. The place was easy to see, and the Green Frog was the first honky-tonk in Louisiana I went inside of.
“That frog looks satisfied,” Mike Gonzales said. “Look at his eyes how he’s grinning.”
“Yeah, but that fly don’t appear to be enjoying things too much,” I said.
We’d been hearing music coming from the Green Frog well before we got to the door, and when we opened it, the sound coming out of the building was strong enough you could almost see it. For sure, you could feel it. It was like walking into a gust of wind that had all of a sudden blew up when you hadn’t been expecting it, and it made you want to lean into the breeze to get enough purchase to keep going.
It was dark inside the honky-tonk, too, darker even than it’d been outside when we were walking up the street in the early night. After I got inside I had to stop and look around me to get my bearings before going any further. A bunch of folks was milling around, talking and laughing real loud and swigging away at bottles of beer and whatever they had in the glasses in their hands. The music was coming from a bunch of men up in one corner of the room, strumming guitars and playing fiddles and hammering on drums, with one man working a small sized squeeze-box back and forth. A man standing in front of the ones making the music was singing in a l
anguage I hadn’t heard before, and I figured it had to be French. I heard Dynamite Dunn hollering at us to come over to where he was sitting at a table.
When I got close to where Dynamite was sitting, I saw that there was a woman in a chair across from him, and she was leaning way forward in her seat and twisting a long strand of her hair around a finger. She looked like she was in danger of falling over any minute.
“Sit down, you rookies,” Dynamite said. “Did you eat your supper yet?”
We told him we had and sat down. “This lady here is named Pearl,” Dynamite said. “And she is just like her name. She is a precious gem. I dare you to tell me she ain’t, Gemar.”
“What kind of a name is Gemar?” the woman said, saying each word slow and careful like it hurt her mouth. “Is it some kind of a foreign name or just another label for a coon-ass?”
“Gemar ain’t no coon-ass,” Dynamite said. “Be nice now, Pearl. His folks was here even before the coon-asses arrived. Ain’t that right, Gemar?”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“I might not know what this Gemar fellow is, but I know what the other one sitting there is,” the woman called Pearl said, pointing toward Mike Gonzales with the finger she’d been wrapping her hair around. “He’s a redbone. Look at them high cheekbones and that black curly hair. He probably never been more than five miles from Mermentau in his whole life.”
“You got me,” Mike said. “I’m just what you said. Redbone down to the marrow inside.”
“See,” the woman said to Dynamite, rising from the table and catching the edge of it to help her stand all the way up. “I’ve been telling you I know these jaspers the Rice Birds bring in here. I’m not going to sit here. I have been around too long to be fooled.”
“Pearl,” Dynamite said. “You are before God right about that. You have been around too long.”
“Yep,” she said. “I have and I’m going to toddle off. So long, you sorry-ass Rice Birds.”
“Gentlemen,” Dynamite said as we watched Pearl work her way hand over hand from one table to the next. “That lady going there is one of the fans of our baseball team, and y’all will doubtless be seeing her again.”
“She just put her hand right in that man’s glass,” Mike said. “Lucky she’s a woman. He might’ve decked her the way she’s acting.”
“Let me get you two children a beer,” Dynamite said.
“How old you got to be to drink beer in Louisiana?” Mike Gonzales said.
“Old enough to ask for it,” Dynamite said, “and be able to hold the bottle up to your mouth on your own.” He gave a laugh at what he’d just said and then shook a finger back and forth in front of his face. “Wait. Naw. I take that back. Because I have seen more than once a baby’s mama hold her bottle of Jax up to the young’un’s mouth so he could take a swig at it.”
“Maybe I’m old enough to have my own bottle then,” Mike said. “Is that what you’re drinking? Jax?”
“It is,” Dynamite said. “And I can testify to how it’s helped me over the years. Oh, the relief it provides when taken as a fortifier.”
In a minute or two, a woman wearing a short dress and carrying a tray came by our table and Dynamite told her to bring him a beer and two more for me and Mike. Back in Texas, I had taken the odd drink or two when somebody on the reservation offered me one. I didn’t really like the taste of it, particularly the kind generally drunk by Alabamas and Coushattas in the Nation. Nobody in the Nation ever drank beer if they could get anything else stronger.
So when the woman came back with the bottles of Jax beer, I sipped away at mine like I was drinking red soda pop. That wasn’t the way Dynamite Dunn and Mike Gonzales drank theirs, though.
“Let me ask you something, Dynamite,” Mike said. “I’ve heard of slot machines before, but I ain’t ever seen one. Is that what all that is over yonder up against the wall?” He pointed toward a line of people, mostly men, all sticking coins in machines in front of them and pulling down a handle every time the money hit bottom. Now and then somebody would holler out.
“I forget how ignorant you boys coming into Louisiana for the first time always seem to be,” Dynamite said. “Yessir, that is before God a bunch of slot machines those folks are working on, and vice versa. And you ought to bow your heads every time you hear somebody pull that arm down and holler or cuss at what happens when they do it.”
“Why’s that?” Mike said and tilted his bottle up to get at the last little.
“That’s what makes the eagle scream on Friday, that’s why. Or least gives him the chance to scream, if things are going right. Them machines right over yonder, that’s what owns the Rayne Rice Birds and the Opelousas Indians and the Crowley Millers and the Alexandria Aces and the whole damn Evangeline League. You owe them babies the very fact you might get to play baseball and get paid for doing it.”
We all turned and regarded the line of slot machine players for a space, me sipping at my Jax a little at the time and the other two shaking their Jax bottles from side to side as if they could make some more beer form up inside if they handled the containers just right.
“How can the slot machines own a baseball team?” I asked.
“Here is a lesson for you, Gemar,” Dynamite said, looking around for the woman who’d brought the beer to the table. “There ain’t no way for folks to get more money out of a slot machine than they put into it. That’s a fact. I’m talking about the long run, now, not some five-dollar pay off, see. It’s a steady income out of them machines, and that income goes into the pockets of the same people that owns all the Evangeline League teams. So a few of them nickels and quarters the fools over there are slamming into the slot machines makes up what we all get paid for paying baseball.”
“Huh,” Mike Gonzales said. “Do we get paid in change every Friday? I’d a whole lot rather get folding money.”
“I see I hadn’t got time to explain it all to you, the way money works in Louisiana,” Dynamite said. “Damn, where is that woman with the Jax? Let’s just put it this way. In Louisiana, the ordinary fellow is not disposed to know how to handle money. See, money goes in the machines, and a little comes out, but not much. It stays where you put it. Most of the coins end up with Tony Guidry and Legon LeBlanc and Fleance Boudreau and Nips Petry and all the rest of them boys that own everything and everybody in the Hot Sauce League. A little leaks out to the ballplayers and the managers and the rest of all us working sons of bitches, and it all keeps flowing just as smooth as water when there ain’t no stoppage in the pipeline. They get theirs, we get ours, and finally Huey gets his. Everybody stays happy.”
“Huey?” I said. “Is he a Rice Bird?”
“Naw,” Dynamite said and laughed real big. “He’s the Kingfish. He’s at the end of that pipeline, when all that money gets to where it’s going, after the siphoning off is over with and everybody’s done got his full share.”
“The Kingfish,” Mike Gonzales said. “Is that another team in the Evangeline League I ain’t heard about?”
“The Kingfish is the whole damn team in Louisiana,” Dynamite said. “He tells everybody where to play. I guess where y’all are from, you ain’t used to having a government like we got, one that works on the pipeline principle.”
About then, the woman brought three more bottles of Jax, but I didn’t need one yet, so I gave that extra one to Mike. He appeared glad to get it.
“So this Kingfish is a man?” he said. “That’s what you’re saying.”
“The Kingfish is THE man, son,” Dynamite said, “and the last thing he’s worried about is a nickel or a dime or a quarter. He’s got his mind always set on what’s coming and how much it’s going to amount to when the counting is all done. And let me tell you, hoss, he forevermore knows how to tally it all up. No matter who throws the dice and how they land, the Kingfish knows what them dots
add up to.”
By then, I had about finished drinking all the beer in my bottle of Jax, and I figured now was the time to get Dynamite to talking about the landlady’s daughter. Judging from the rate he was going through the bottles the woman in the real short dress was bringing him and Mike Gonzales, he wouldn’t be interested in much more than getting his next set of drinks lined up. If he operated the way I’d seen people back on the reservation carry on once they’d got the right amount of drink in them, all Dynamite would be wanting to do was maybe start singing out loud, or beginning to dance, or more likely looking for somebody that needed whipping. So I tried to find a way to ease into talking about what was on my mind, Teeny Doucette.
“Has Miz Velma Doucette got just the one child?” I said.
Dynamite set his bottle down on the table and lowered his head. “It didn’t take long, did it, Gemar?” he said.
“Didn’t take long for what?” I said, leaning back in my chair like I was trying to see around him to watch something happening among the crowd of folks feeding money into the slot machines at the far wall.
“You know what I’m talking about. And so does Mike over there sucking on that bottle of Jax. I’m talking about the way she looks at you the first time she lays eyes on you, like you’re the one she’s been wanting to meet up with and talk to for the longest time, and now you have finally showed up. And she can’t wait to let you know how glad she is to see you at long last.”
“Well,” I said, feeling myself giving in, “I guess so.”
“I guess you do guess so, pitcher,” Dynamite said. “I expect you think the way she looked at you and talked to you that you got a reason to feel encouraged. You imagine if it’s starting out as strong as that first look she gives you promises it might that it could be clear sailing ahead for you.”