• Thirty-three
The Black Ghost crossed the Texas–Louisiana line on the bridge over the Sabine River. A few minutes later, Shep decided to switch from his recorded playlist and search for a radio station.
“This is for old times’ sake.”
He went to the AM dial, and the plaintive, high nasal whine of sung Cajun French crackled through the speakers as the singer wailed the time-honored classic “Jolie Blonde.”
“Dat sound like da Hackberry Ramblers,” Shep mused. “An’ why not start our time in Cajun country with a little ‘Jolie Blonde’.” Shep sang along for a few bars of the melancholy refrain. “Jolie blonde, jolie fille, tu m’a quitté pour t’en aller.”
Merlin looked at Shep with mild amazement as he heard him sing in Cajun French for the first time in his life. He nodded in silent assent, taking in the experience now that he was not in his home country. The next song was a contemporary rendition of the plaintive murder ballad “Les Oiseaux Vont Chanter” by the Red Stick Ramblers, and Shep and Merlin listened to it like it was a requiem.
Within an hour’s time, they were off the interstate and motoring through the flat, water-sliced terrain of deep Southwest Louisiana—cayenne pepper country. As they approached the flashing lights of a country crossroads, Shep announced, “Okay, now we gonta make a stop.” Merlin looked at the little gas station and saw a faded hand-painted sign that read: “P’tit Pirogue’s Pump n’ Run.”
Merlin said, “But this looks like a gas station.”
Shep said, “It is.”
“But I thought you said we were gonna get boudin and cracklins.”
“We are.”
“But it’s a gas station.”
“One thing you got to know, Magic Man, is that things in South Louisiana are not always as they appear. A lot a times, if it’s a gas station, it’s kind of a restaurant, too, or at least it has a kitchen and a coupla tables.”
“Oh!” Merlin said, now regarding the ramshackle petrol dispensary with wonder.
Shep pulled up to the gas pump and a scrawny, sun-burnished man with a pronounced limp on his right side emerged from the doorway shouting salutations as soon as he saw Shep emerge from the driver’s side of the Black Ghost.
“Eh la bas! Pasteur! Il y a très longtemps, cher!” the small overall-clad strip of human beef jerky enthused.
“Eh, Boudreaux!” Shep responded with equal vigor, and they greeted one another with a kind of simultaneous handshake and hug.
“Whatchoo doin’ down in the home country?”
“Ma sweet cousine tole me the fishin’ switched on.”
“So you up and leff work?”
“Yeah, hell yeah. Got my priorities, cher.”
“Hanh! You right on that one! Hey, who’s your fishin’ buddy?”
“Merlin, I got someone I want you to meet,” Shep yelled in the direction of the open driver’s side window as he prepared to refuel the El Camino.
Merlin dislodged himself from the passenger side bucket seat, opened the wide muscle car door, and stood to present himself to Shep’s friend. On seeing Merlin, Shep’s friend exclaimed, “Oooo, cher, tu a porté avec toi un vrai bigfeet paramafait!!”
“Mais non, Zimou, he ain’t no Bigfoot. This ma fren Merlin McNaughton. They call him the Magic Man.”
Merlin dutifully presented his right paw to shake hands, and the diminutive Cajun beheld it with wonder as he extended his own leathery hand in greeting.
To Merlin, Shep said, “Dis here my ole fren—but still not dat ole—Onézime Boudreaux.”
Boudreaux raised his gaze to Merlin’s bespectacled eyes and said, “Magic Man. Bienvenue. My friends call me Zimou. Since you wit’ Shep, you can call me Zimou, also too.”
“Okay, thank you,” responded Merlin with his signature mannerliness.
“Now afta da tank is full up and you boys done waterin’ the yard, come inside. You got perfect timing for rolling up on the P’tit Pirogue.”
“Whatchoo got, Zee?”
“All ahm sayin’ is you gotta come see.”
“Okay, you gotta deal.”
The bathroom was out of order, so Shep and Merlin relieved themselves near an elevated propane tank out of the sight of passersby. They used a faucet, industrial soap, and some rags hanging on a nail to wash and dry their hands before heading for the station’s office.
On entering, they were overpowered with a host of savory aromas announcing that one was in deep Cajun country. The air was thick with cayenne pepper, garlic, and roasted meat smells. Standing atop a little wooden box behind the counter, the now elevated Onézime Boudreaux commanded the room with the authority of a Michelin-starred chef or maybe even some kind of Cajun culinary evangelist.
“Step raht up,” Zimou adjured the two unlikely wayfarers.
Shep led the way and Merlin followed. The counter was faded white linoleum, chipped at the edges and worn through at its center. From a small steam table behind him, Zimou removed the lid from a metal container and used tongs to retrieve a couple of hot boudin links. He put them on butcher paper, stood back, and crossed his arms.
“Fresh made today,” Zimou said.
“Ooo, yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Shep replied.
“You ain’t seen nothin’, yet!”
Zimou produced a grease-stained paper grocery bag folded at the top.
“Diss from a big cochon de lait soirée just last night.”
He dried the tongs with a clean rag and pulled out a couple of big pieces of spiced and roasted-to-a-crisp pork cracklins.
“Now, this don’t come around every day!” Zimou announced.
“Hoo! Thassa rare delicacy indeed!” Shep picked up the banter.
“Try some,” commanded the high priest of the P’tit Pirogue.
Zimou broke off a couple of morsels from one of the big pieces. “Seulement des petits morçeaux,” he added.
“Come on up, Magic Man! Let’s check this out!”
Merlin moved to the counter at Shep’s side, and they each tried a piece. Merlin’s eyes grew to fill almost the entire aperture of his glasses. Shep just closed his eyes in a delirium of rendered porcine skin and fat ecstasy and said, “Now dat taste like home.”
“These are the best pork rinds I’ve ever had.”
“Bite you tongue!” said Boudreaux. “These are real Louisiana cracklins! Pork rinds is them little crottins you buy in a plastic bag at the truck stop.”
“Then they’re the most triumphantly excellent cracklins I’ve ever tasted!” Merlin averred with an equally triumphant smile.
“Now you got dat right. Triumphally excellent. I’m gonna file that one away for when I need it,” Shep offered.
“Okay, mon frére,” Shep said to Zimou, “sold.”
“You fellas want what I got right here on the counter?” asked Zimou.
“Double it,” Shep said and looked at Merlin, who had his quizzical look working.
“Ah, triple it.”
“Triple?!”
“Hey, tree’s a lucky number. You got enough?”
“Yeah, man!”
Zimou sacked up the order. He sliced part of a white onion and put it in a small Styrofoam bowl, covered it, and added it to the contents of the bag. He walked around from behind the counter, selected a jar of spicy thin-sliced pickles, and put it on the counter with a resolute, percussive thunk. Punctuating the gesture, Zimou added, “Pickles on da house.”
Shep paid, and Merlin thanked Zimou and headed for the car. Shep lingered at the door and thanked his fellow countryman Onézime Boudreaux. Zimou replied, “Il n’y a pas de quoi any time,” and continued to watch him for a couple of seconds as he headed toward the car.
Zimou looked toward Merlin in the car and back at Shep with his palms upturned and a questioning look. “Who’s Baby Huey?” he asked.
“I known him since he was a boy. A little different but got a good heart. He don’t really seem to know it, but he don’t have almost nobody to look
out for him, and he just kinda got his rug jerked out from under him on top of that.”
“Looks like he still eatin’ pretty well.”
“Yeah, not eatin’ is not a problem for Merlin McNaughton.”
“Well, you make one helluva camp counselor, ma fren’. Y’all go get on ’em out on the water.”
“We gon’ try. Hey, I got a line on some brand-new linoleum for that counter if you want to re-lay it.”
“Hey, man, ain’t nothin’ or nobody roun’ here gettin’ laid, not even the linoleum!”
Shep burst out in unrestrained laughter as he waved goodbye to Zimou and stepped through the doorway into the steaming midday heat.
• Thirty-four
During the drive between P’tit Pirogue’s Pump n’ Run and Lumbeaux Jump, Shep cued up one of his favorite playlists on the Black Ghost’s sound system. They listened to Michael Doucet & BeauSoleil, then to a hit parade of Zydeco artists, including Terrance Simien, Wayne Toups, Rosie Ledet and the Zydeco Playboys, the whimsical Boozoo Chevis, and the cowboy hat–wearing Southwest Louisiana showman, Geno Delafose. When they were just a few miles away from the Jump, Shep put on the screaming slide guitar–playing Sonny Landreth to further amp up the energy. Merlin was astounded at Landreth’s playing. He looked at Shep and said, “Wow!” as loudly as he could over the music. At the end of a song, Shep turned down the volume a little and said, “That’s Sonny Landreth.”
Merlin asked, “How does he get that sound?”
Shep responded, “I’m not sure how he does it exactly, but he uses a slide and some kinda special way of playing that’s all his own. That’s why they call Sonny ‘the king of slydeco.’”
Merlin asked, “Is the slide made of glass?”
“Well,” Shep replied, “come to think of it, I think it is. I seen him play, and I recall that slide was see-through.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” offered Merlin.
“Oh yeah? Why’s zat?”
“It’s the glass. Besides glass itself as the instrument, glass on strings produces some of the most compelling music in the world. I knew there was a reason I liked it so much.”
“Hey world, the Magic Man is on it! He can even tell Sonny Landreth uses a glass slide! Hooooo!”
Shep mixed up the playlist a little and the unusual fishing duo was jamming out to “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter” by R.E.M. as they passed a painted sign that read “Welcome to Lumbeaux Jump—Louisiana’s premier jump-off spot for the outdoor sportsman and sportswoman” and underneath it in French, “Bienvenue au Saut des Lumbeaux. Faites votre saut içi.” On the left side of the sign were leaping trout and redfish and on the right were several migratory ducks flaring for landing into a decoy spread in front of a blind on a bay. Merlin read the sign and noted that nothing appeared to be jumping in this quiet little outpost of French Louisiana. The sun was still high in the afternoon sky, and it looked as if the locals had left the out-of-doors to the mad dogs and Englishmen of musical yore.
Shep turned down a street whose asphalt pavement soon became crushed oystershells. He made another turn into an oystershell driveway that became a neatly paved motor court surrounded by a group of dwellings. The main house was freshly painted and on tall stilts. There was what looked to be a cosmetically improved double-wide mobile home across the driveway from it, and next to it a single-wide. Both of these were on stilts also and just as high as the main house. Beyond the motor court was a driveway that led to a small boat ramp. Merlin could see there was also a covered boat slip with a hoist behind the main house. The hoist held a shallow-draft bay and marsh fishing boat. Underneath the houses were parking spots and utility rooms.
As Shep angled the Black Ghost toward a parking spot under the shade of the main house, Merlin saw the first resident Lumbeaux Jump presented him. The house obscured the view initially, and all he could see were thin, deeply tanned legs taking delicate steps down a stairway in flat white shoes that looked like ballet slippers. Then a white cotton dress and a petite woman who looked to be not too much older than Merlin himself came into view.
“Now you get to meet ma sweet cousine,” Shep said.
Shep opened the driver’s side door and stepped out onto the concrete of the covered carport. The diminutive woman was beaming from ear to ear as she and Shep embraced in greeting.
“Cousine Marie Mado, you just get prettier every time I see you!” Shep proclaimed. Merlin registered that she was indeed very pretty in a very natural, unaffected way with long black hair, glowing olive skin, and fiery hazel eyes. Shep beckoned Merlin to exit the El Camino with a wave and as Merlin unfolded from the bucket seat, Marie Mado exclaimed, “Hoo, Shep, I heard they grow ’em big in Texas, but I never ‘spected to see one like this!”
“Hey, this my fren Merlin I was telling you about!”
Merlin extended his right paw and uttered a perfunctory “Pleased to meet you” as Marie Mado bypassed the handshake and gave Merlin a hug, which he slowly returned in a gentle one-armed embrace.
“If you with Shep, you family, too, cher.”
She was still smiling as Shep announced, “Now this ma sweet cousine, Marie Mado. She and her kids live here and take care of the camp for the whole family.”
“Enchanté!” Marie Mado said to Merlin with a slight theatrical curtsy.
And then to Shep, “Where y’all been?”
“We had to make a stop up the road to see ole Boudreaux at the P’tit Pirogue.”
“Oh yeah, ole Zimou. How he’s getting along?”
“He still cookin’!”
“That’s good, and guess what, I am too. Got a big bowl of cold-boiled shrimp right off the boat this morning for y’all. And I already mixed up cocktail sauce for them also too.”
“Aiiieeeee!” Shep let out a Cajun party whoop and waved Merlin toward the truck bed of the Black Ghost to get their gear.
Before Merlin crossed the threshold of his temporary home he saw a carved and brightly painted wooden alligator above the door. Shep showed him to a small bedroom with a big king-size bed. Out a side window, Merlin could see a canal that passed by the fishing camp. On a wall near the galley kitchen, there was a barometer, and on seeing it, Merlin’s eyes lit up. “A barometer!”
“Yeah, you know us Cajuns got a pretty good sense of the weather, but every once in a while it don’t hurt to consult a meteorological instrument just to confirm our gut.”
“This place feels like home,” Merlin said.
Shep didn’t miss a beat. “Wait ‘til you taste ma cousine’s cookin’!”
• Thirty-five
At 4 a.m. a group of people followed a tall man in single file, walking from the Amsterdam cruise ship terminal toward the Red Light District. After moving a few blocks into the infamous part of the old city, the group stopped in front of a nondescript house, the only identifying marker of which was a dark plaque with the image of a circular band with a smaller circular band hanging from a metal loop at its base. It looked kind of like something used to lead livestock, with the larger band capable of encircling a neck and the smaller one serving as a place to attach a lead. A door opened, and the tall man stood aside for the group to enter. He then entered and shut the door tight.
• Thirty-six
Over the next few days, Shep and Merlin fished all the habitats of the area—broad, open bays Shep called lakes; narrow, labyrinthine sloughs whose twists and turns Shep navigated with expert precision; and even the surf on a beach on the northern Gulf Coast south of the Jump. They waded some of the shallow water littoral areas and drifted in the middle of the open bays. It was hot, but there was enough breeze to make the day tolerable without being so windy as to shut off the fishing. When they got in the boat after wading, the air hitting them when they were up on plane and cruising cooled them a little and dried their clothes.
On the first day, they caught fish here and there—a few trout, but mostly redfish, the majority of which they released unless Shep deemed them the perfect eatin
g size. Merlin brought two bait-casting rods and reels and an 8-weight fly rod and saltwater reel. He had a plastic box full of tackle and a box affixed to a Styrofoam donut for wading with netting material at its center for keepers.
Uncharacteristically, Merlin showed no concern for determining latitude and longitude as he trusted in Shep’s guidance through his home country. The twenty-two-foot center console Hanko was constructed of heavy-gauge aluminum painted dark green and did winter duty getting hunters to and from duck blinds. There was a flat area on the foredeck where an angler could stand and cast. There was a padded leaning post for Shep as he ran the boat. In front of the captain’s console, a big marine cooler with a cushioned top was Merlin’s seat when they were moving across the water. Behind the leaning post was a big heavy-duty cooler, which doubled as a lookout stand for Shep when they weren’t running. The weight distribution onboard worked pretty well with Merlin sitting forward of the center console as they ran and fishing from the foredeck and Shep at the console working the 200-horsepower Mercury outboard and fishing from the aft.
On the second day, the fishing wasn’t very productive at first, and as they drifted in a bay called Spirit Lake, spirits were low. They pulled in small gaff-top catfish that slimed their lines and whose needlelike dorsal gaffs they were careful to avoid as they used hookout pliers to release them. Shep stood on top of the box behind the leaning post and scanned the horizon with a monocular. He paused, looking in one direction for a moment, and then said to Merlin, “Okay, let’s go.” Merlin reeled in his lure and sat as Shep started the engine. They were up on plane in seconds, and there wasn’t a lot of chop in the water, so the running was smooth. Merlin began to see some commotion on and above the water, and as they approached their next fishing spot he looked back at Shep and flapped his arms with a questioning look. Shep nodded.
They neared the place where the seagulls were feeding, and Merlin could see the big trout slick. Shep guided the boat around one edge of the slick to position it to drift into the trout-feeding frenzy. He queried Merlin, “Smell dat?” Merlin smiled and replied with even greater enthusiasm, “Watermelon!” confirming the distinctive smell of a school of feeding speckled trout. Shep cut the motor behind the slick and deployed into the water what fishermen call a parachute, basically a small facsimile of the airworthy variety that slows a boat as it drifts. As they floated into the slick, the much stronger smell of an entire field of ripe, split-open watermelons enveloped them.
Merlin of the Magnolias Page 18