Blood in the Lake Read online

  I urged Mom to tell me.

  “PawPaw said that when ‘Tienne stepped off the bus in Lafayette, Mama B called out ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God.’ After two tours of duty in Vietnam, ‘Tienne had spent a week in California telling the Army psychiatrist what he wanted to hear in order to get released from the service. He’d gotten a real haircut and found some clothes he could hang on his pared-down frame. The sight of his parents, his brothers and sisters, and Ti Pierre’s new baby boy, put a smile on his lips but not in his eyes. No one could do anything about those hollowed-out eyes.” ‘Tienne moved into his old room. Two brothers, J. Allen and Bub, and we three younger girls, were still home then. ‘Tienne never was a big talker but now, hardly a word. Some mornings Mama B found his bedcovers undisturbed. We kids didn’t notice, of course. You know adolescents. They think they’re the center of the universe.”

  That made me smile. Always has been true, apparently.

  “When Mom’s brother Nonc, who was ‘Tienne’s uncle and parrain, asked the men and boys in the family to join him at his duck camp at Pecan Island for opening day of the season, Etienne said no thanks. But Nonc kept asking, begging really. J. Allen had just gotten his first shotgun. The favorite cousin, Nonc’s oldest, would be there and really wanted to spend time with his hero. Etienne still said no. Then PawPaw played his trump card. He told ‘Tienne he’d take a couple of days off from the field so he could join them. Ti Pierre worked for PawPaw then and said he’d pull the extra time.”

  Mom’s hands were clenched together. Just telling this story caused her pain.

  “Apparently they followed the same routine they do today—leaving after supper Friday so they could get a good night’s sleep at the camp, then up early to be in the marsh before light. They shot birds, mostly mergansers PawPaw said, and had their limit before noon. Shooting over, PawPaw said he saw ‘Tienne’s shotgun on the floor of the blind, unused. He asked ‘Tienne why he hadn’t taken a shot. Tienne said he just didn’t feel like holding a gun. He never wanted to hold a gun again.

  “Planning for another hunt the next day, I’m sure they napped, cleaned the ducks, and started a gumbo. PawPaw said after supper he made a point of getting ‘Tienne alone on the porch. They propped their feet up on the railing, and PawPaw worked the conversation around to asking ‘Tienne what he was thinking about out there in the marsh. ‘Tienne told PawPaw he wouldn’t want to know. But PawPaw persisted.

  “PawPaw said he told ‘Tienne some people were saying it wasn’t going too good over there in Vietnam, but he wanted ‘Tienne to know he was proud of his soldier. The President said the country was in danger from those communists. No matter how the war turned out, ‘Tienne had done his duty for the free world. Sounds corny, but PawPaw believed it. He said if people hadn’t done that before, we’d be talkin’ German right now, if we’d lived long enough to talk at all. Sometimes you just have to do things you never thought you’d do. For your country and for your family.”

  I nodded my head but didn’t speak. I didn’t want to interrupt Mom’s concentration on her memory.

  “PawPaw said ‘Tienne didn’t respond for a good ten minutes. He’d just about decided that was going to be it for their conversation when Etienne opened up. Mandy, I came home that night and wrote down ‘Tienne’s story as best I could. I was afraid I wouldn’t remember it, and I felt I’d heard something important.”

  Now Mom picked up the papers she’d taken from her envelope, and read.

  Etienne’s Story

  When we first got over there I led patrols. We did that for six months or more, I can’t quite remember how long. We’d take the chopper out at dusk. The mission was to search and destroy, to hunt and kill North Vietnamese, and to wipe out anything the Cong might find useful. Sometimes we’d find a village empty, so we’d shoot every goat and chicken, call in the artillery to torch the place, and pull out. Sometimes there were people. We made some tough calls about what to do with them. Then the chopper would come to pick us up, take us home, and we’d sleep in, only to go out again the following night. Sometimes we had to stay out there a couple nights.

  One time, before the chopper came to pick us up, we caught fire from a hill about five hundred yards yonder. I waved off the ride home so air support could hit the hill and take out the rest of the VC. Then it was too dark for the chopper to find us.

  During the night the rains came, slow and steady. We pulled out our ponchos and waited. We’d wandered off course. I really didn’t know where we were. I’d lost the rest of the platoon. Doggie caught a bullet in his left thigh. He didn’t let on right away. I didn’t know why he didn’t tell us, but I figured it out later. He now had his pass to get out of this hellhole. We huddled like possums in a ditch, our boots sunk into six inches of mud.

  In the morning I raised my head, parting the reeds with my left hand, M-16 at the ready in my right. I thought maybe VC would think I was a turtle. The sheen of the rice paddy stretched as far as I could see. I checked the other bank. Same empty view. Silence, dead silence. No sound but our own breathing, the whir of bugs, the croaking of frogs, and the weak swish of a breeze in the reeds rising on each bank. And the smell—the sweet smell of decaying vegetation.

  ‘Movin’ on. Pass the word.’ I sucked my boots out of the muck. ‘Strap down that grenade Corporal, I whispered to Jefferson. ‘Sounds like a fuckin’ cowbell.’ There were eight of us walking, and one wounded. Doggie lay on a litter between the third and fourth men. He wouldn’t be out on patrol again. For that duty you need two good legs. Some genius in the Pentagon sent me here thinking that I’d seen a rice field before and wouldn’t rot easy. He was right. I may be a wiry little Cajun but I’m tough. Even then I figured I’d survive, but I wasn’t so sure about my men. I could feel their fear.

  We made it in.

  I did maybe forty patrols like that and was looking at as many more before the time would come for the end of my tour. Some nights we couldn’t call support to wipe out the VC. We had to do it ourselves, face to face. Same story every patrol, only some nights more men caught the bullets. We went down to six men. Mac took a knife between the shoulder blades and Romano—he got crazy. That happened after a real bad night. We’d walked onto another patrol that had caught it head on. A dozen bodies lay in a bloody heap, some dead but others gasping, writhing, moaning. Our guys. A medical chopper was landing nearby to clean up. After that patrol, Jefferson didn’t bother to hide how he coped with the horrors. He’d roll a joint, light up, and pass it around.

  And then it got worse. Headquarters moved inland. The Captain said that was a sign of our improved position, but no one believed his crap. Winter set in. The night rains turned cold and the day rains steamed up off the muck. And there was always an endless stream of new VC, and another assignment to ‘find and destroy.’

  One night the tarp slipped off my face, and I felt a rat scurry across my cheek. I wanted to scream, but a greater fear triumphed. Who would hear me? Not friends because there were none out there. I lay still and waited for the rats to move on.

  Always keep your feet dry, the Captain had said. Now how the hell could we do that? Back in headquarters we toasted our boots over the sterno, but the next night sloshed through six inches of mud in another downpour. Fungus crept into our boots and socks. Not a surprise that our feet turned white and spongy.

  We could see mountains in the west and sometimes at night felt a breeze from that direction. We dreamed we were there, lying next to a clear stream.

  When Joe Bob stepped on a mine and blew off his left foot, the Captain put the remnant of my men together with another pared-down squad to make an almost respectable-sized platoon. Like us, the new guys had long dirty hair, scraggly beards, and hollowed eyes that said there’s nothing you can show me that I haven’t seen before. They’d been over here for months so I didn’t have to tell them the obvious, like clean your weapon and never forget to fill your canteen.

  One winter afternoon the orders changed. The chopper took us f
arther inland and some to the north, to a tunnel complex at the foot of the mountains. Now we carried explosives along with everything else, and we had a guide, a ‘friendly’ they called Joe. He’d been fitted out with a flak jacket and boots, but was still almost small enough to fit in one of our packs. Joe spoke maybe a dozen words of English. He made hand signals and squeaked out through thin, grinning lips.

  We did our job on three of the four tunnels we were assigned. Three guys went down the tunnels first. Joe and the rest of us waited and made our minds think about what might be worth waiting for—home, women, real food, the end of this shit. The three came out, their faces wearing mud and as close as any of us ever got to a smile. We strung wires, detonated the charges, and then we moved on. We were just ready to blow the last tunnel when we spotted a file of natives moving silently on the trail we had just come in on. Their guns weren’t US issue. VC. My patrol sank down into the dense brush and let them go on by. If we’d been only fifteen minutes later... No one wanted to think about that.

  Now what? I radioed to the base with our coordinates but got no response. I couldn’t rouse HQ. Were they wiped out? After an hour of dead air I knew we were on our own, and I knew why the Captain sent us out with a friendly for a guide. We were going to need more than a map and compass to find our way back to HQ. And back to who knew what.

  The first day of the return felt like an exercise at Camp LeJeune—tough but we’d done it all before. We organized into squads. The squads went out in turns with Joe. When they came back with an all-clear, the rest of us followed. That night we dug in and slept. One squad kept watch. I figured we were four days out, and that we had three days’ rations of food and water. With care and no bad news, we could make it.

  The second day was the same. On the morning of the third day two things went wrong. The brush at the foot of the mountains gave way to those goddamned paddies. No cover. And it began to rain. We could move in the daytime, following the same routine, but at night had to bed down in a ditch. And we couldn’t find a dry hole. Two ponchos could work to make the best of a bad bed—one poncho on the mud, the other as a tent to keep off the rain.

  I woke up the fourth morning and realized I’d been asleep too long. Two hours ago I should have heard one duty squad replace the one before. When I checked, both squads were missing, vanished without a trace. Six men gone. Jefferson was one of them. And then I saw three natives moving single file up the trail, carrying rifles pointed at the ground, again not US issue. I ordered my men to ‘freeze.’ A dozen VC passed back and forth until late afternoon, keeping us pinned down like snakes in two feet of mud.

  When we hadn’t seen anyone for over an hour, Digger opened a can of sterno to heat up an MRE. A sappy grin broke up Joe’s wizened, sun-browned little face and he scampered up the bank. He found a stiff piece of reed, speared a toad, and held the wiggling little critter out over the flame. OK if I cook it? his eyes asked. When the toad stopped sizzling, Joe popped it in his mouth. Digger retched. He jumped out of the ditch and puked into the reeds.

  That night Joe disappeared.

  The next day we came upon our lost men. Cut to bits. I gave the order to leave them, and wept.

  That night we cooked and ate six toads. It was toads or leeches, and Joe had survived eating a toad.

  Once we had been an almost respectable platoon of four patrols. Now we were down to six men. I tried the radio one more time, but again no one answered, so I pitched the device. So what if VC found it? Obviously, they already knew we were out here. I was weak and could do with one less thing to carry.

  Four days later we made it back into camp. There it was, just the way we left it. The Captain gave us a day off. Get a good sleep, he said, because there’s another patrol for day after tomorrow.

  A couple months later I made Captain. I didn’t have to go out on search and destroy any more. I stayed in the pagoda and gave the orders to send out the others. I remember a guy named Belker from Detroit, a broad black face with yellow eyeballs. I remember Possum from Alabama. But I’ve forgotten most of the other names. Mostly I remember the look in their eyes when I gave them the speech. I had several versions: Patriotism—You’re making America safe for your children and grandchildren; Shame—go on out there or you’re off to the court marshal; Pride—you’re a Marine, you fucker.

  I sat there safe under a tin roof and sent them out, one after another—to die.

  When Mom finished reading Uncle ‘Tienne’s story we were both choking back tears. “It’s a wonder Uncle ‘Tienne talks at all, Mom, if that’s what he has to say. I’m so glad you wrote that down. Some day...”

  “Yes, some day. This envelope will be in my desk, with your name on it. And your Dad knows where it is. Maybe you’ll give it to ‘Tienne’s children. I don’t know. You’ll have to figure that out when I’m gone.”

  Mom continued. “There’s one more thing that may matter now, Mandy. I remember PawPaw saying he told ‘Tienne that if anyone did anything to Mama or to one of the kids, he wouldn’t rest until he’d done it back to them. I wonder if ‘Tienne remembers those words.”

  “Good question, Mom, and ‘Tienne isn’t talking.”

  Would the clearly traumatic experience of sending men out to die turn ‘Tienne against another deliberate killing? Maybe his opinion would depend on what thought had the dominant spot in his brain on a given day. Is that the way it is for jurors as well? Changing with the wind? Maybe. Some days I felt one way, some days the other. Tom was telling me he had to represent the best interests of the victims, my family, and that was why he needed to talk to each one of PawPaw’s children. Would what they said one day be what they thought tomorrow?

  Being a prosecutor was turning out to be much harder than it looked from the outside.

  Two Dinners

  “MANDY, WE REALLY need to have Tom for dinner. We’ve only exchanged pleasantries when he comes to pick you up, and your Dad hasn’t even been around for that.”

  Mom had ignored my absences at night, but clearly she’d figured out what was going on.

  “Sure. When would be good? Maybe Sunday?”

  “Perfect. I’ll call him.”

  “No-o-o, Mom. Let me do it. He’d be freaked out by a dinner invitation coming straight from my mom.” Tom wasn’t totally at home with the mores of south Louisiana.

  “Sunday? Does that mean I have to go to church with y’all?” Tom asked when I conveyed the invitation.

  I told him not to worry. Mom’s easy. Her invitation covered only lunch. We all went to different churches, on different days, at different times, and some in the family didn’t go at all. My grandmother Mama B used to check the religious observances of her children, and she tried to carry her governance over to the grandchildren as well, but she gave up. My aunts were regular churchgoers, but my uncles may have made it to Mass on Easter and Christmas. Chreasters, Mom had been known to call them.

  “Dinner will be around two. Dad will probably barbeque. Very casual. Mom may invite Aunt Tut or someone else who wouldn’t give you a hard time, but this will not be another family meeting. Ti Pierre won’t be there, and I promise you the subject of religion will not come up.”

  The lunch went well. Tom seemed comfortable with the group, which turned out to be Mom, Dad, Taddy, Aunt Tut, and three of her children. We ate at a picnic table on the screened back porch. Tom scored by asking Dad about one of his favorite subjects—the day Lake Peigneur disappeared.

  “I’ve heard about the lake draining into the salt mine, but now I’m realizing that must’ve been a traumatic experience for those of you who were living so close. You were here then, right?”

  My father, usually withdrawn in the company of more than two people, sat up straighter. “We sure were.”

  “What was that like? Could you tell me?”

  He could and he would. We say everyone in south Louisiana “dines out” on hurricane tales, but those who live by the lake have an additional disaster to recount. They take every opportunit
y to tell what happened on November 20, 1980.

  Taddy and Tut’s children were rolling their eyes. They’d heard my dad’s account too many times before.

  “First a question, sir.” Tom asked. “The name Lake Peigneur. Where does it come from? I would’ve thought you’d call the area Pirates’ Hideout or some other reference to Jean Lafitte. He’s supposed to have wintered around here and buried part of his treasure on the shores, right?”

  “Right. Treasure hunting frenzy comes in waves every few years, but other than the discovery of salt, a valuable commodity at the time of the War Between the States, the only treasure people have found is bones and crockery. Maybe a few coins, but not old ones. My brother-in-law, Ti Pierre, is forever trying to get up a party to take the Boudreaux map out there for a dig. If you’re interested...”

  I gave Tom a wink. I knew he wouldn’t want more time listening to complaints from my uncle Ti.

  Dad told Tom the French-speaking Acadians who settled the area in the 18th century gave the lake its name. They thought the kidney shape resembled the fine-tooth combs, or peigneurs, the early settlers used to card the wool from sheep.

  Dad continued his tale about the catastrophe. “The lake’s not the same shape anymore, you know. That day changed everything. We’re sittin’ on top of two underground domes of salt they tell me are as tall as those twin towers in New York City used to be before 9/11. Above ground, all we could see back then was the rickety-looking six-story structure of the mining operation and a seventy-five foot oil derrick in the water near the western shore. But down below, in the cavities, fifty-five men were hard at work.

  “The Texaco drilling crew on the platform had put down an exploratory well outside the dome of salt—well, mostly outside. They’d made a slight miscalculation. A fourteen-inch drill bit punched into the salt dome and then into the mine. Water began seepin’ in. You know, the only way up or down most mine shafts is a bucket takin’ up four men at a time. The biggest miracle of the whole tragedy is that nobody drowned. The well-trained crew just calmly lined up for a turn to be taken to the top.”