Louisiana Saturday Night Read online

  Louisiana Saturday Night

  catt dahman

  Copyright © 2013 by catt dahman

  Copyright ©2013 by Severed Press

  www.severedpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

  electronic or mechanical means, including

  photocopying, recording, or by any information and

  retrieval system, without the written permission of

  the publisher and author, except where permitted by

  law.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names,

  characters, places, and incidents are the product of

  the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Poem: “Louisiana Saturday Night” used by permission of

  the poet TL Decay. All rights reserved. Reprints are not allowed.

  Copyright ©2013.

  To Bobby.

  “Louisiana Saturday Night”

  By TL Decay

  Craw fish, or fish for crawl?

  Must be with team, whatever the mix maybe.

  But see, the roogaroo,

  No, not boogaboo.

  Tis’ real yet, mis’understood,

  Deep as knees in swamp wood.

  Da teeth, day sink.

  Da teeth, fish slink.

  Taste good on de plate.

  Bite, no hesitate.

  Bite deep, hard.

  In da’ flood’d yard,

  Dat fish trapped and netted,

  Dat wish o’ mine appetite wetted,

  She ate, and gorged.

  For her I forged.

  Now meal of mash,

  Gumbo: person hash.

  Fish and flesh on my plate,

  For taste, only contemplate,

  For taste, add a dash.

  For taste, the fish slashed.

  Sanguine feast,

  Blood eat,

  Onyon added,

  Stew padded,

  Pepper in dee raw,

  And meat from fish’s maw.

  Chapter One: Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler

  Let the good times roll.

  Louisianans have good times while eating spicy food, dancing, listening to jumpin’ music, and drinking a lot of alcohol, despite humidity and heat that are as thick and hot as any gumbo you’ll taste.

  Making gumbo is a way to understand Louisiana.

  Imagine making a pot of gumbo back in the 1800s. It is started with roux, a French gravy made from meat drippings and flour and browned to the color of a man’s skin after he’s worked all day in the hot August sunshine, deep, dark, and savory. Add, as the Cajuns say, the holy trinity: bell pepper, celery, and onions. Already it smells good as it cooks.

  Germans immigrated to the area and brought with them an ability to make the best sausage (made of wild boar in the old days). Sausage or fresh chicken is browned, and the dripping makes up the roux. After stock is added, meat is added and can be the chicken or sausage, or frog, alligator, squirrel, rabbit, or shellfish.

  Vegetables, stock, the roux, and meat are cooked all day and best cooked while listening to zydeco music and drinking cold beer. A dash of beer doesn’t hurt the mixture if it is added.

  Salt, pepper, garlic, and red pepper are added to the gumbo, along with red pepper that was brought from the Canary Islands and sassafras, or gumbo, filet, a staple of the Choctaws. Okra, which adds flavor and thickens the gumbo, was brought from West Africa when the Spanish took control of Louisiana and brought over slaves in ships. The slave ships brought rice that grew well along the Mississippi River, and that is what gumbo is served over.

  Gumbo is a dish that uses inexpensive ingredients, can serve masses, and is a combination of many cultures.

  Zydeco is a raucous style of music that combines rhythm and blues, rock, waltz, two-step, and country by the use of an accordion, fiddle, and a washboard; it is a mixture of many cultures as well and is performed without high-end instruments. Combine gumbo cooking with zydeco and beer, and that’s half of the party.

  Because gumbo and zydeco are both combinations of an otherwise odd combination, that helps explain how everything should have worked out that hot week in New Orleans, which turned lives and the city upside down. Despite their differences, in the ensuing tragedies and struggles, it would have been better if the families Audette and Theriot had merged, such as gumbo or zydeco, but they did not, and therein lies the tale.

  The problem was Candy Lynn Audette-Theriot had her baby right as Hurricane Harrison made landfall; the birth, the storm, and unexpected guests combined, not to make good food, good music, or good times but to ruin the lives of many people.

  Nature did all that.

  Or maybe it was fate.

  But it was a misery.

  Chapter Two: Delivery of One Baby and One Storm

  Emeline Terrabonne Theriot sighed, gritting her teeth with displeasure at the current state of her household, a massive Victorian mansion complete with enormous towering oaks draped in Spanish moss, a pool, and sumptuous furnishings inside. The house had stood in this spot over a hundred and fifty years on a pier-and-beam foundation, reinforced in later years with concrete and added onto so it sprawled and rose higher and larger than most other homes.

  The mansion was not only up to code for hurricanes, but also way past that; Frank added everything he had heard of or had seen to reinforce the home against the threats that came every end-of–summer to New Orleans. They remained safe within the home during the great Hurricane of 2005 (Katrina) and didn’t think this would be any more dangerous.

  They didn’t know this was an unnatural storm.

  Every time someone went outside and came back in, he trailed wet footprints; the trees swayed, filling the lawn with debris, the furniture was damp, and so much noise was in the house. It seemed as if everything not tied down should have already blown away to wherever it all collected. Emeline preferred her home to be run with smooth efficiency, neatness, and a genteel quietness, but that girl upstairs, the mess, and the howling wind of the hurricane curtailed the natural peacefulness of the estate.

  That girl. That girl was truly a thorn in Emeline’s paw, the cause for all the misery and unhappiness, and no one but Emeline’s daughter, Trish, could see the wretchedness of that girl. Even with proof before their eyes, they failed to see the facts, how the girl dressed cheaply, spoke like poor white trash, and had the tastes of a cheap hooker.

  Was it really too much to ask that the girl faint or pass out from her birthing pains like a decent woman of the South? Was it too much just to ask for less screaming? It was as if Candy Lynn was some niggrah woman wailing away up in her bedroom, and one thing Emeline knew was a person’s color determined one’s status. The girl might be trailer trash acting colored, but she didn’t have to do it in Emeline’s home and embarrass her, not that Emeline disliked black folks in their places, of course.

  “Is she about finished?” Emeline asked. She felt as if the girl and nature had conspired to make Emeline’s life miserable and to cause as much turmoil as was possible. Honestly, if that girl couldn’t stop caterwauling like common trash or pass out like a lady, she could have at least waited a while to have the damned mongrel child.

  “No, she’s a ways to go yet,” Abagail said as she carried some ice water up the back stairs to Candy Lynn, “I suspect Harrison and that baby will be here ‘bout the same time.”

  Emeline watched her aged, black maid trudge back to help the girl. Abagail might take ice water for relief, but Emeline wasn’t going to do a thing to help;
if the girl were suffering in baby bearing, then so be it.

  “I am so tired of hearing her screaming,” Trish said, “can’t she shut up?” Trish raked back her hair, glaring upwards as if she could see the screaming girl lying in bed and sweating, whining about the pain. At least when she shut up, they could pretend Candy Lynn wasn’t in their home and part of the household. It was embarrassing to have Candy Lynn, the girl, living with them and married into the family.

  Frank Theriot glanced at his wife and stepdaughter, “Ladies, having a baby is hard work. She’s doing the best she can.” The fury they showed Candy Lynn was frightening. For all their hatred and abuse, they could be animals attacking a weaker member of the herd. When they behaved this way, he hardly knew them; they were more like vicious raptors.

  “It isn’t your son who is married to her,” said Emeline as her bottom lip quivered, making Trish roll her eyes and Frank wish he had found something to do in another part of the house. Emeline’s drama could drain the strongest man in the best of time; with a hurricane bearing down and nerves already on edge, Frank would be exhausted in minutes if he didn’t head off Emeline’s temper tantrum.

  “It’s my son. My blood and don’t you think everyone who is anyone in New Orleans knows my son married that trash? How do you think I feel? How embarrassing is it for me? Think of me.”

  Emeline threatened to blow up as loudly as the storm outside.

  Hurricane Harrison, destined to be the worst hurricane in two hundred years, was an hour from hitting them full force, and while the windows were shuttered and everyone was safe inside, the wind was already a steady howl. The mansion could withstand twice what this storm threatened, but the brackish water was rising fast and was the main concern for Frank, well, after Emeline’s mood, the baby’s birth, and a dozen more complications he was contending with.

  “Emeline, I am just as concerned about Landry and Candy Lynn’s baby as anyone,” Frank said.

  Wrong response.

  “Frank, it’s bad enough he went fooling around with that gutter trash, but did he have to get her pregnant and marry her as well?” Emeline’s big blue eyes filled with tears as if she had only just thought of all that, but they had this very same conversation dozens of times the past nine months.

  When Emeline first found out her son, Frank’s step son, was seeing Candy Lynn Audette, it was because Trish had seen her brother and the white trash girl sneaking around, meeting on the sly, and promptly reported it to Emeline. Trish loved sharing such inflaming gossip about her brother.

  Down by the river in the brush, Trish watched. Handsome Landry, sun browned all over from his swimming nude at the river, but soft about the middle and on the slight edge before he would become flabby and fat, lounged beside Candy Lynn on a brightly patterned quilt next to wine and plastic glasses, fruit, and bread. Trish snickered, wondering if they thought that was a classy picnic lunch.

  Candy Lynn was tall, slender, and almost to the point of being too skinny, the opposite of Landry, but she still had large breasts and wide hips; if she had grown up properly nourished, she would have been an Amazon-looking woman. With chopped off, short hair, and tanned skin, Candy Lynn looked usual for a swamp girl who seldom went to school past fifth or sixth grade and who would spend her life having babies and scratching out what she could in extreme poverty.

  To Landry and some of the other boys, Candy Lynn looked exotic, seemed helpless, and both worldly and innocent at the same time.

  Trish reported to her mother quickly as could be. There might have been a chance for some great possibilities blackmail wise, but Trish was more concerned with the here and now and the enjoyment she got from seeing her (she felt) favored sibling chastised.

  When Emeline and Frank spoke to Landry about his girlfriend or confronted him in Emeline’s case, the scene in the Theriot living room (parlor, according to Emeline) was more heated and dramatic than a soap opera. Trish enjoyed the screaming and ranting as she watched from the hallway, giggling behind her hands.

  Landry hesitantly and fearfully declared he loved Candy Lynn and found her innocence and disinterest in monetary things to be refreshing. To Trish, that was the funniest part of the exchange after the initial accusation.

  “Innocence? I can’t believe you, Landry. And if you think she is not interested in the family money, you are insane,” Emeline said heatedly.

  “You don’t even know her.”

  Frank nodded. That was a fact, “That’s true.

  Emeline pounced, “And what Frank means is that we don’t have to meet her to know this. Landry, she’s an Audette. You know the swamp people….”

  Frank held up one hand, “Now, there are perfectly good swamp people, good folks bayou-born and raised, and we know that,” He ignored Emeline’s scrunched nose, “Emmy…Emeline, it’s true. Some people are just fine, and you know it. There’s plenty who get educations and do well for themselves….”

  “But not the Audettes,” Emeline hissed.

  Frank couldn’t think of a response to that. The family turned out a child every year without educating any of them; rumored that they traded hooch and meth, lived in squalor, poached, and fist fought every chance they got. While Candy Lynn was rumored to be the best of the Audette clan girls and there was one of the boys who was a hard worker, the Audettes were the most avoided, most shunned family in the bayou; it was just best to avoid trouble.

  Some claimed they were cursed, but Frank didn’t believe such things.

  “Maybe you can calm down and we can think about this more and talk more and not rush anything,” Frank began, trying to calm Landry before he worked on Emeline’s rising blood pressure.

  “That isn’t fair,” Landry snapped at his mother.

  “It isn’t fair that half the city will have known about your exploits before we did, “she snapped back, “For once, think of someone besides yourself.”

  Landry muffled a chuckle, and Frank shook his head; that was a weak response on Emeline’s part. She might have won the battle that evening had Landry not announced that he was going to marry Candy Lynn since he loved her and she was pregnant.

  “She is what?” Emeline’s voice went softer, a sure sign this was serious.

  Outside the room, Trish’s eyes went huge.

  Emeline went pale. Then red faced, and then pale again. It was as if she had been slapped in the face. Words defied her as her brain whirled and blood raced in and out of her head as she took in that nugget of information.

  The latter part of the problem might have cost Frank plenty of money but was fixable; the former part was much more of an issue. Landry’s claims of loving the girl were too much to handle. Emeline loudly swore Landry could get over silly emotions and everything could be fixed, but Landry had evidently gotten more from his real father than just his height.

  The boy felt responsible for the girl and baby and wanted to do the right thing by them, he claimed. Emeline slapped Landry’s face before falling into dramatic, loud sobs. Landry, looking to Frank, mumbled apologies and appealed to his mother but remained clear that he loved Candy Lynn, refusing to back off that point.

  Emeline cried hysterically and fainted, but Landry made plans to wed Candy Lynn and said so, right in the parlor. His sister and stepsiblings, drifting into the room, watched the debacle with keen interest, somewhat in the manner of people rubber necking to see a train wreck. It wasn’t so much they wanted to see the entrails, but a little blood wasn’t bad. Would the golden child be dethroned?

  Since she couldn’t bribe, threaten, or guilt Landry into changing his mind, Emeline turned the situation around as much as she could, throwing the biggest, most elegant wedding party in New Orleans’ history. She managed to talk the bride into using pink as an accent color as opposed to wearing a pink camouflaged wedding gown, hired professional caterers as opposed to having a crawfish boil, and booked a church instead of having a wedding on the boat docks. At every turn, Emeline was forced to bully and cajole Candy Lynn into better
choices since the girl was hopelessly clueless about social graces.

  Candy Lynn, in love and starry eyed with the opulence and wonder that Theriot money provided, gave in easily to please Emeline, hoping also to gain some favor.

  Emeline chose the wedding music, over riding Candy Lynn’s desire to have a Michael Jackson tribute, designed the flowers in the bouquets so they had pink roses and not blue bonnets, and demanded Landry buy the girl a traditional small but elegant wedding set instead of something called pink ice. It was almost a battle to have the bridesmaids (Landry’s sisters only, of course) wear simple, unadorned sheaths with pearls instead of the sequined and bejeweled dresses Candy Lynn found. Who knew anyone made mermaid looking dresses covered in pink sequins and rhinestones?

  Having heard Candy Lynn’s attempt at writing her own vows (Even ‘though I got knocked up first, I am so glad you chose to marry up with me.), Emeline had the couple use traditional vows. It was those little details that kept Emeline busy planning the wedding.

  A trip aboard a fishing boat was costly, but it tempted Candy Lynn’s family enough for them to skip the festivities and thereby salvage Emeline’s plans. There was no room at the wedding and reception for three dozen coon ass, shack trash people, so Emeline sent them all out of town on vacation, and that was no cheap feat since there were thirteen to contend with and that many cousins at least. To the rest, she said there was no room, and Candy Lynn gave up that particular battle in return for Emeline allowing her to choose the groom’s cake, which was never ordered anyway; no one noticed or cared.

  Why would anyone notice when it was all Emeline could do to keep Candy Lynn’s dress from being pulled all the way up to show off her panties (if she even wore any) when Landry removed the garter. When Emeline threw the pink and buttercup-yellow rice, later, she sobbed over losing her son as the boy joined his new wife in the limo, leaving his mother to weep lady-like and hold her husband’s arm.

  That had been months before. Now, the girl was having a baby in the midst of a hurricane; wasn’t that just peachy?