“Lagie! Tay Tay!” Marie Mado adjured her girls. “Tranquillez! Vous aller faire un grand mess avant de que tout les gens arrivent!”
They stopped and bowed their heads slightly.
“Now come help your maman. These tables aren’t gonna set themselves.”
Lagie and Tay Tay washed their hands and went to work; Marie Mado wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and looked at Shep and Merlin in mock exasperation.
“They maniacs is what they are. Only why they have to get they maniac out right when a buncha people come over, hanh? Splain me dat!”
Shep laughed, and Merlin smiled because he had begun to understand the way Marie Mado talked, and he was able to tell by now that she was not really being completely serious.
All three went to work patting each trout filet dry, passing it through the Zatarain’s spicy batter mix and then through an egg wash and then back through the mixture of Zatarain’s fish-fry spice and white flour mixed with cornmeal before placing each one in a big bowl ready for the fryer. They also had spicy boudin balls ready for a swim in the hot, popping oil. The guests were bringing the rest of the fare, including vegetable maque choux, spicy cole slaw, and a special tartar sauce for the fried trout. For dessert, there was chicory coffee–flavored ice cream.
In a few minutes, the men were outdoors again by the fryer. Shep was the fry chef, and Merlin kept everything in order on the little card table they had set up for pre- and post-fried trout. Merlin watched with anticipation as the golden-brown pieces of trout surfaced and bobbed before Shep used a long-handled Asian-looking wire mesh skimmer/strainer to remove each filet and set it atop layers of paper towels and newspaper into which excess oil drained. Merlin decided it was a good time to query Shep. “What was that you said to me in French when I was fighting the trout today?”
“Hey, man, I don’t remember with all the excitement.”
“It was something about la patate.”
“Oooooh, yeah! Ne lache pas la patate! Ha!”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“It means ‘don’t let go of the potato.’”
Merlin gave Shep his cocked-head golden retriever look.
“Okay, I’ll splain it to you. Real basically, it means ‘hang on,’ but in a deeper way. The potato stands for life itself, and it means ‘don’t let go of life’ or maybe something like ‘hold on for dear life,’ but I think it sounds more powerful than that in Cajun. The guys on the floor of the drilling rigs used to say that to whoever had the chain and was moving pipe into place over the spinning drilling table because if something went wrong, a man could lose a finger or two, if not his life all together. So ne lache pas la patate maybe means something like ‘hang on like your life depends on it,’ and you did dat for sure today, Magic Man.”
Merlin’s eyes widened a bit with the enlightenment of learning something new about this culture that seemed so different yet was so geographically close to Houston.
“Only don’t say nothing about the oilfield or drilling platforms or any o’ that around ma sweet cousine,” Shep said. “She lost her husband in that big offshore explosion a few years ago.”
Merlin’s brow furrowed as he responded, “Oh, okay, I won’t say anything about it.”
Guests bearing side dishes and sauces arrived. Shep and Merlin had filled a tray with fresh-fried speckled trout filets. Shep picked up the tray with care and said, “Okay, Magic Man, this is just like your days on the front line. You block for me so I can get the main event inside to the buffet.” Merlin complied and walked in front of Shep to open the sliding glass door and deflect any potential forward-progress inhibitors. With the spread set up in a little buffet line and high-decibel Cajun banter for a kind of musical accompaniment, the guests lined up, and the feast was underway.
After supper, everyone was still in high spirits, especially with all the talk of Merlin’s record trout and the near miss of a lightning strike, so they decided to pile into cars and trucks and head to a place up the road called Hebert’s Haut Mercure, which featured cold beer, live music, and a well-worn dance floor. All the generations were on the dance floor at one time or another that evening—from toddlers all the way up to great-grandparents. Lagie and Tay Tay danced holding hands with a couple of their cousins in ring-around-the-rosie style.
The band played a Cajun waltz, and Merlin watched Shep and Marie Mado glide like pros around the room in perfect rhythm to the music. Merlin was amazed. It almost seemed like a rehearsed performance to him, but he knew that Shep and his younger cousin were simply reveling in the music, the moment, the culture, and what must have been the joy of the dance. Shep and Marie Mado sat with Merlin after their waltz, and Merlin said, “That was amazing!”
Shep replied, “Hey, it’s just what we learn to do as kids around here.”
Then Marie Mado, “Yeah, and it’s really not that hard once you get it. Specially the waltzes.”
The band began another waltz. Marie Mado looked at Merlin and said, “Hey, Merlin, I’m gonna teach you to waltz!” Merlin offered his signature wide-eyed-deer-in-the-headlights look and hesitated, but Marie Mado persisted. “Naw, come on!” she said. “There’s no time like the present!” Tentatively, Merlin rose from the table and took the hand that Marie Mado offered him. As they walked onto the dance floor, the size difference between the two of them was comical—tiny, waif-like Mary Mado and huge, lumbering Merlin.
Merlin told Marie Mado, “I haven’t tried to waltz since eighth-grade dance class.” And she came right back with an encouraging “Well, then, it’s time to try it again! It’ll come back to you in snap.”
Marie Mado did her best to guide Merlin through the ONE, two, three; ONE, two, three steps of the dance, but Merlin was slow to catch on. And the size difference made it look like Merlin was dancing with a child’s doll. After a minute or so, though, Merlin did seem to get a rudimentary sense of the dance. He was not the smoothest waltzer on the dance floor, but certainly the most appreciative of his partner’s pedagogical ability and patience. As the song drew near a close, he was concentrating intensely on the step count, and he and Marie Mado moved around the dance floor, not as fluidly as she and Shep did, but at least in time with the music like the other dancers at Hebert’s Haut Mercure that muggy July night in South Louisiana.
• Thirty-nine
The next day on the drive back to Houston, Merlin and Shep saw thick black smoke rising ahead of them in the distance. Merlin spoke first: “Maybe someone’s car is on fire. Should we stop to help?”
Shep responded, “Well, Magic Man, maybe it’s best we wait and see as we get closer.”
“But it could be bad!”
“I know, but we don’t know yet, so no reason to get worked up.”
Merlin sat with concerned eyes fixed on the thick dark cloud rising ahead of them. As they approached, Shep said, “I think I might know what that is.” And then, after a couple of minutes he said, “Yep.”
When they neared the source of the smoke, they saw that it was a pile of old tires that had been set alight on property just off the roadside. As they passed, the flames were so intense they looked as if they were powered by gas jets and the thick black smoke blew across the road, forcing Shep to slow the Black Ghost like it was passing through a heavy thunderstorm. They both looked with wonder at the angry flames.
“I think that’s illegal,” Shep said. “The environmental pollution agency gonna get after them for sure if the state don’t get to ’em first.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that!”
“Yeah, Magic Man, sometimes things aren’t what they seem like they are from a distance—whether the distance is on the road, or on the water, or in life.”
Merlin’s brow furrow relaxed and flattened, and he slumped back into his bucket seat in the El Camino.
“And sometimes we don’t find out what’s really going on until we are a lot closer,” Shep said. “And even sometimes we don’t figure it out until we way, way past whatever it was we w
ere wondering about.”
Merlin turned and looked at the wise Cajun.
“And putting the wheels in motion to try to help based on what we think we see where we are at the time,” Shep opined, “well, all that does is it can put us in danger where if we were more patient, not disinterested, but more patient, and stayed on the road—stayed on our course—things might work out better for everybody and a whole lot less frettin’ and energy would get spent up.”
Merlin looked at Shep with awe as, somehow, he had a sense that he was listening to something important. He took it in and nodded silently as Shep rested his left palm atop the steering wheel, accelerated, and resumed his usual unperturbable countenance, bespeaking his internal cruise control, as he gazed down the highway.
• Forty
Merlin was still enjoying the satisfaction of catching the record trout and the tranquility induced by listening to Shep’s life lessons when he reentered his home. Moments after he opened the hatch to his observatory, his calm mood leapt out the window like a glass armonica–smashing phony in a black ninja suit. The Agglomerator was going berserk, blinking and buzzing with a vigor it had never registered. He chided himself for not checking the program remotely while he was in Louisiana.
He dropped his duffel and went to his workstation. The orange warning flashes were now tinged with red, indicating an energy event was considerably closer. The cloud indicating its location had moved just west of downtown Houston, but the program suggested that it had not yet stopped over the final event point. The hue indicating a Bigfoot nexus had also remained and intensified. This development puzzled Merlin, as he was accustomed to understand the creatures avoided the limelight whenever possible, but he reminded himself that such momentous events like large hurricanes are sui generis and can obey their own logic as they express their unique storm dynamics.
It was clear to Merlin that the whirling cloud on the screen would soon come to a nearby resting place where the event would occur. It was also clear that the time for action was at hand. He had to steel himself.
• Forty-one
Sitting alone at a Danish modern dining table in his third-level corporate apartment on Fannius Scholtenstraat in the Westerpark neighborhood of Amsterdam, Mickey McNaughton looked at his laptop screen and took a couple of sips from a wide glass goblet containing La Trappe Quadrupel ale. He reread Merlin’s e-mail for the third or maybe fourth time. Merlin may be a little out there, he reasoned, but his nighttime airborne description of the goings-on at the out-of-the-way address Tite Dûche’s Porsche had frequented continued to bother him. He looked at his wrist-watch and subtracted seven hours, determining that it was still before noon in Houston. He picked up his mobile phone and called the Harris County District Attorney’s office, and when the phone system prompted him, he keyed in the extension for Jim Atlas’s office.
• Forty-two
Merlin was caught up in rapt attention at the colorful whirling and flashing images the Agglomerator was producing on his monitors. Although he understood what the program was predicting was serious business, he had to admit that the visual effect was quite compelling—even beautiful—like tongues of fire or the moving satellite image of a well-defined high-category hurricane. A ding broke his reverie, and a small rectangular frame appeared on his central screen. Normally, he would ignore this kind of intrusion, but he noticed the message was from Rex Mondeaux’s personal assistant. He opened the e-mail and straightened in his chair when he read the subject line: “VIP Tour of NASA Johnson Space Center.” Merlin read:
Dear Mr. McNaughton,
Mr. Mondeaux has arranged a special VIP tour of Space Center Houston for some of his most valued clients and associates. In appreciation of your work for Fandango, he would like to include you on the guest list for the tour tomorrow. I apologize for the late notice. Please RSVP to me ASAP. If you can attend, I will send you details of the specific start time and location of the tour.
Sincerely,
Sherry McQuerry,
personal assistant to Rex Mondeaux
Merlin’s eyes were at full aperture. A VIP tour of NASA! He had heard of these special tours and rumors that the guests on them were privileged to see the veritable sanctum sanctorum of the legendary aerospace compound down by the bay. With loud and resolute keystrokes, Merlin replied immediately and enthusiastically. The event horizon deserved his attention, but the opportunity to be one of the VIPs on a VIP tour of NASA was not to be missed.
• Forty-three
Mickey McNaughton and Jim Atlas were finishing their phone conversation when Atlas said, “Yeah, I’ll have to admit these are some pretty strange facts. I can’t put anybody official on it at this point, but I agree with you that something seems fishy.”
“So, we’re dead in the water?”
“Not quite.”
“What does ‘not quite’ mean?”
“It means there’s another way for us to proceed. And by us, I mean just you and me.”
“And that would be?”
“A private investigator.”
“Alright, go on.”
“I know a very good PI here in town. A lot of folks think he’s the best. If there’s anything there, he’ll find it.”
“What about his expenses?”
“I propose that we split his expenses for a month.”
“Deal. If there’s something there, we’ll be lauded for doing our civic duty, right?”
“Maybe, but all this is weird enough that it’s worth it to me to try to turn over a few rocks.”
“Alright, I’m in, and I appreciate this, Jim.”
“No problem.”
“Roger. Over and out.”
• Forty-four
Uncharacteristically for such an important day, Merlin overslept by half an hour, so he was in a rush to shower, dress, and be on his way to Space Center Houston. He was so busy getting ready he didn’t have time to check the latest from the Agglomerator. An idea out of left field popped into his mind and without ruminating on it, he grabbed a thumb drive and inserted it into his computer. He dragged an Agglomerator file titled “morning update” into the thumb drive. Before leaving for the JSC, Merlin snatched the thumb drive from his workstation computer and dropped it into his pocket. He then shouldered the strap of a messenger bag containing a small laptop, a legal pad, pencils, and erasers and was out the door.
He arrived at the prearranged meeting point at the visitor’s center out of breath and in the nick of time but relieved and excited to participate in the special tour. And the tour lived up to his expectations. The group saw areas where astronauts and NASA personnel were working. They saw up close the newest space robots that could be sent ahead of a human mission to do construction on Mars. They also got to walk on the huge air-bearing table. It was like a giant, industrial-strength air hockey table that simulated weightlessness and could lift up to twenty thousand pounds. Merlin thought about how it could lift him and an armonica simultaneously. He wondered if there would be enough stability for him to play the instrument as they hovered. When she was talking about the Apollo lunar mission, the VIP guide reminded the group that the very first and very last words spoken on the moon were “Houston”: “Houston, the Eagle has landed” and “We’re on our way, Houston.”
They even had the opportunity to walk through the newly refurbished Apollo Mission Control room. Everything was true to the era, from the onscreen graphics to the four rows of consoles for the twenty-two controllers. After that astounding stroll back through time the guide announced, “I have a very special destination for this very special group.”
With the entire group’s attention on her, the guide said, “For quite some time, the Johnson Space Center has had five mission control rooms, but we are now adding two more to provide state-of-the-art support for future missions. NASA has cleared this group to see one of these new rooms this morning.” Everyone oohed and ahhed, and Merlin brightened and pursed his lips into a small O of anticipation.
; The group went up a flight of stairs, and the guide opened the door onto a gleaming newly outfitted floor of the building. As the group walked into the corridor, the guide went ahead of them to open another door, which led onto the floor of one of the new mission control rooms.
The look of the space was night and day from the Apollo room, as different as an early Buck Rogers movie from a contemporary high-tech intergalactic sci-fi thriller with all the latest CGI special effects. There were arced rows of sleek modular workstations descending on a slight incline, and the screens on the room’s front wall were more impressive than any displays Merlin had seen. As with the Apollo room, there was a central rectangular screen with screens flanking it, but all of them were considerably larger.
The tour guide said, “We are particularly fortunate today that the testing of the screens is underway. It might be quite a show.”
A couple of technicians were in the room working from one of the workstations, and the side screens suddenly lit up with graphics. Then the central screen displayed a high-resolution video of a slowly rotating earth. This image was so stunning that the tour group took it in with silent, mesmerized stares. Next, an image of the Martian surface appeared, and then a dazzling real-time video of a supernova from the Hubble Space Telescope.
“When they are fully operational,” the tour guide said, “these screens will constitute the highest-resolution, most state-of-the-art video and image display of their kind in the world, as far as we know.” Merlin listened, but his eyes stayed on the screens. He heard the tour guide ask, “Does anyone have any questions?”
Like a bolt from the blue, Merlin felt an alien surge of confidence rise in his spinal column. “I do,” he said. “Yes?” the tour guide responded.
Merlin of the Magnolias Page 20