Bayou Recompense

When I was a boy Charles would bring me down in here deep in the Atchafalaya basin. To make a man out of me, he said. It worked. He left me alone in here for a week one time during my fourteenth summer. I had a couple pounds of beans and a short string of sausages along with whatever seasonings could be scrapped up in the galley, mostly Cajun seasoning and hot sauce with pepper and salt and thyme along with garlic and onion powder.

What I also had was a wealth of food at my fingertips if I could keep them from being bitten off. Crawfish and catfish were plentiful for a patient man or boy. From that experience I learned how to live on my own in the largest wet land bayou network in America.

I wasn't alone in that regard. Rudy Cormier, his brother Damien and a gangly looking old Creole man named Pierre Monet each had similar experiences. Each one of them could slip away unawares and come and go through these swamps with never being seen by unsuspecting eyes and on the other hand nothing slipped by without being seen by one of them.

Pierre Monet was seated in the corner on a short stool listening to the incessant rain pounding on the tin roof above, his blood shot white eyes framed in the darkness of his coal black face; only the sheen of the reflecting light gave him human form. The stare was toward the form in the opposite corner shuddering from his silent glare.

Moments earlier Pierre's long bony fingers picked at the small ukulele breaking the silence along with his accompanying soulful bursts of lyrical enjoinment forced upon the man sitting opposite him in fright. It stopped before I entered the room. I lit another Kerosene lantern and the chimney cast shadows across the expanse onto the walls around us. Rudy Cormier sat opposite me at the table.

The figure in the corner lifted his face and yellow splashes of light invigorated the broken features of what was once a proud little peacock of a man. The side of his face and corners of the mouth were bruised in the pale glow and his eyes were sunken and unfocused.

I can't read the souls of men or hearts but I could distill the terror masked on his face; he knew what he had endured and knew life itself was worse but it was all past now as much as the rain that had already fallen around us. This was not Jackson or the Natchez Trace; this wasn't even within the pale of western civilization. For all the keeping of clocks and calendars were worth, this could have been the Mesozoic but for the four souls inside the floating tin shack.

"So what now, mandamás?" Rudy asked from across the table.

"When the storm breaks give him his bag along with a tin of beans and sausage or something and take him out through Belle River. See that he gets on the Cason Chase. He won't come back. Now, I need to talk to him alone for a bit."

Rudy and Pierre both got up from their seats and went out under the awning on port side. I just watched the broken man for a few minutes observing what he had become. Pierre Monet ran one of the Societies, a Creole gang out of Haiti with tentacles reaching into some of the local communities. They tend to stick to themselves and their own business although over the years they worked with Manford Cormier for certain needs.

When I was a young boy I remember Charles entertaining Manford and two really dark skinned Haitian men long into the evening. I never knew the business but it was smoky and secretive and one of the Haitians cast a glance at me as I hid in the curtain in the kitchen; his glare scared the shit out of me and I raced to my bedroom with the trailing laughter of each of the men following me up the stairs.

With lightening crashing around us and adding an eerie glow to an otherwise hideously frightful scene I studied the captive a bit longer before speaking.

"Mr. Bishop or whatever your name will be in your next life, I'm curious about certain things."

He raised his eyes into mine and gazed into the emptiness behind me.

"How does a man convince another man's wife to cuckold her husband for fourteen years and believe there could never be a consequence for such an affront?"

I don't know if he could answer or not but it wasn't necessary; I was being rhetorical for the moment.

"Now, one man might consider letting the lawyers hash everything out and walk away having been shamed yet still able to keep his head high. Another man might have just put a bullet into your ear and pissed on your corpse. Another still might have had your balls in a jar sitting on the shelf of an old tin rig like this.

"Then there are men like me, Michael, who would rather you know that life is one constant sorrow after the other, not knowing when some unknown vodouisant might add a new twist to your rather excited life. That's where we are today. But, I still have some questions. Do you understand me?"

He nodded his head hesitantly.

"Good, let's start. You and Monique have two children, right?" Good, good. When you and Cynthia were still planning on marrying, you know, before you were forced into that unfortunate relationship, did the two of you ever talk of having children?"

He looked up in fear.

"Answer me."

"Yes, we did." Was his reply but the words were half garbled pushed through his mouth with several teeth and a particular bridge missing.

"She wanted babies."

"Interesting, now if she wanted babies why do you suppose she and I never had any babies?"

At this point I knew he was becoming aware of the purpose of my interrogation.

"If you don't tell me the truth, I will cut the life out of you right here."

"She had a miscarriage and couldn't have babies after that."

Well, that was the truth but I needed the extraction.

"How did she have the miscarriage and whose baby, yours or mine?" I glared hard at him and he knew the answer would preserve his life or end it.

"It was your baby."

"How did it happen?"

"She fell." I waited further glaring at him. "She fell after I hit her."

"Tell me the whole story"

Michael Bishop proceeded to do just that and related how Cynthia had become pregnant while he was overseas on business and in his anger he struck her and caused her to fall resulting in the miscarriage. He continued with how he demanded she have her fallopian tubes cut and tied and denied me the child I had wanted. He owned her at that point even if she was mine. There was no way she was ever going to tell me that unless forced.

I wanted to kill him right there at that point even though I already knew everything he told me. Instead I let everything else remain in the shadows and poured three fingers of cognac. Michael Bishop was going to become somebody else soon and never set foot on these shores again. I had my wife back for the first time in our marriage but I didn't know if I wanted her back.

That's a funny thing about women, marriage and love. Sometimes, love doesn't have anything to do with it, at least among certain Jacksonians. They marry for privilege and position and don't care who they fuck up. Fucking up is a two way street in my neck of the woods. Michael Bishop was fucked up. The two of them fucked me up and now it was time to clean up after ourselves...

The storm broke two days later and Pierre Monet led a bewildered Michael Bishop out into the moonlight and onto a small skiff that would start his journey to a Haitian registered freighter named the 'Cason Chase'. He was given a small plastic bag containing new ID and passport along with $300. His backpack had three changes of clothes and several tins of kipper snacks. Six days later the freighter left New Orleans for the Dominican Republic. He and I both knew beyond any shadow of a doubt, not even a scintilla of a doubt, that he would never be heard from again. If he ever was, the vodouist would deal with his tongue among other organs.

Rudy Cormier and I had completed what we set out to do which was to restore my dignity and in so doing had reshaped the lives and fortunes of a handful of people. I had to cut 30% of the take to Rudy and his accomplices as well as a 20% cut to Pierre Monet and his people leaving me with half of Cynthia's fortune. What I also got was a new job...

*****************

"Good morning, Mr. Blanchard." My assistant Wendy greeted me with her usual cheerful banter.

As I walked into the recently redecorated corner office on the eighth floor down on Laurel Street in Baton Rouge I couldn't help but notice the sly grin on her face. Manicourte & Sizemore had held that quarterly meeting and hired me as the CEO of Bishop & Dawes and as a result I moved the company from Jackson to Baton Rouge.

The truth is I didn't know the first thing about running the company but I was a damn good engineer and I could learn. Besides, with a Cormier seat on the board at Manicourte & Sizemore I knew I had resources I could call upon.

Charles' old place got a fresh refurbishing and I moved Cynthia away from Jackson and the Pussy Parade. Surprisingly she made no resistance whatsoever and was quite cheerful about the whole change of scenery.

Now, the thing about Cynthia; she gave birth to a baby boy I named Charles Maynard Blanchard about a year after Michael Bishop disappeared into the fog of a world dominated by the Society and its varied Pierre Monet characters. Rather than try to have her fallopian tubes reattached the doctors recommended in-vitro with her own eggs and it worked to our satisfaction.

I decided to stay married to her in spite of her long standing adultery if only to ensure she gave me the child we had promised each other. If she had made herself barren through her infidelities I would have cast her off to her own devices. That did not mean we had a marriage as before. I was very discreet but there was a reason I hired Wendy as my assistant and typing had nothing to do with it.

Did any of it make me a nice guy? To the contrary; I was hardened and calloused even though I could smile, party and have the greatest of times with anybody. I could make love to my wife and know she wasn't going to stray again and I can raise up my boy knowing he would become a good Louisiana man. On the other hand there was a man out there somewhere with a new name always wondering if a reaping ghost from his past was waiting just over his shoulder.

*********************************

Epilog

Eighteen years after Charles M came along the creaking boards groaned softly as the wind pushed the dock gently against the floating shack tied to the pier several miles up Bayou Chene. The storm had subsided a few hours earlier and now all that was left were gentle breezes as the clouds gave way to clearing skies.

"I have no idea why you men like coming down here." Cynthia exclaimed.

Charles M just smiled at his mother and said "This here is where life begins, Mama. Everything you need to taste life is right here at your fingertips."

Cynthia just shook her head and continued with the Jambalaya pot while I pulled cornbread out of the oven. Rudy Cormier sat over in the corner chasing a snifter; he claims it helps his progressing Parkinson's but the body shivers still come and his hand remains unsteady. Nonetheless he was able to best both his young son, Patrick Cormier and his friend Monstoulle Monet, the grandson of our long departed acquaintance Pierre Monet. Along with Charles M, the three boys would be entering LSU in the fall.

We continued with the dinner and as we enjoyed a bottle of cognac on the deck afterwards I took in Cynthia. She was fifty five now to my fifty seven and while she had put on a few pounds in recent years she was still as desirable as she was when I first laid eyes on her. With the raising of our boy I had forgiven her but I had never forgotten.

I had pulled her out of her society back in Jackson, sold the Nason place up on the Trace and with no family back in Mississippi we had little reason to visit except for the occasional foray as we were passing through. Instead I made her into a Louisiana woman; she learned the cookery and customs and even earned her MBA at LSU. She became the mistress of Charles old home, now mine, in Baton Rouge. The dalliances with Wendy lasted just long enough for Charles M to become a toddler and we broke it off. She married a lawyer and stopped work to raise her own family.

A few years earlier word was passed down through certain channels that an ex-pat by the name of Martin Baylor passed away in Cayenne, French Guiana leaving a local common in law wife and a young daughter. He had made a living as a barkeep in a small hotel where his wife was working as a housekeeper. I had Rudy find a way to get a small stipend to the widow to take care of her and the child.

As we were cleaning up Cynthia was putting several items away when she came across a small container holding an ashtray, a few photographs of Rudy and Pierre Monet. Included among the items was a gold ring. It was a medium sized man's ring with a ruby gem stone inscribed with 'Ole Miss' on the top and the bottom with '1987' and the initials MB along with a pair of gold cufflinks with the same initials.

She stood there looking at it for several moments and gazed out the window into the swamps and wetlands all around us before placing it back in the tin container and on the shelf. When she turned back to the room our eyes met for a moment and I caught just an instant of fear deep inside her but it was only an instant; Charles M joined us at that point and we stood there as the family we were deep in the wet bayous of the Atchafalaya River basin.

MFH