Blood in the Lake Read online

  “There, PawPaw. You see ‘em? Dinosaur birds. They’re dinosaur birds.”

  “Uh, hum,” PawPaw said slowly. “I see ‘em all right, son. A magnificent sight!” The old man shaded his eyes with his hand and peered across the lake into low sun. “A magnificent sight indeed, son.” PawPaw had then added a gentle suggestion. “I do believe those birds are pelicans, my boy. Louisiana Brown Pelicans. And you’re right, a crowd. There’re at least fifty out there, maybe more. I’m proud of my little birder. You made a great sighting.”

  Taddy’s head turned upward. “You say they’re pelicans?”

  PawPaw placed his hand on Taddy’s shoulder, softening the words that might disparage the boy’s achievement. “Right, son. Pelicans. I don’t ever before remember seeing pelicans this far inland. Really a marvelous sight to see.”

  “You’re saying they’re not dinosaur birds, PawPaw? They sure look like the dinosaur birds in my book.”

  “I’m pretty sure about that, son. They’re not dinosaurs, but they’re wondrous all the same. These big birds have quite a story. A few years back they were just about wiped out by the DDT—some chemical that made their eggs so brittle they cracked in the nest. No chicks made it. Then the birds came back, just about all the way, only to be hit again by the big oil spill that darn near sank every one of ‘em. Now my fishermen friends tell me we got bunches of pelicans in the Gulf, back roosting on the oil rigs and nesting out there on what’s left of the barrier islands. But not like before the spill. But here? On our lake? That’s news. Quite a discovery, all right. You’ve made a real discovery.”

  “But PawPaw—”

  PawPaw kept talking. “How about you go get me that lawn chair over there, son. Then cast your line again. I’ll sit here with you and your sister for a while.”

  The old man, the boy, and I had settled in to watch the bobbing birds. Taddy pointed to the Great Egret who had now resumed his stately stroll.

  “PawPaw, look at that big bird. He’s my friend, you know. He’s not a bit worried about those dino—pelican birds.”

  “No, son. Not a bit. The Great Egret knows pelicans want deep water, not his shallow fishing spot. They dive for big fish, not sweep for minnows or forage for crawfish burrowing in the mud close to shore.”

  The sun moved lower in the rosy sky, spreading a blood-red shimmer on the surface of the lake. I remember thinking bad weather wouldn’t come the next day. Red sky at night, travelers delight. The glowing orb dropped behind the tops of the cypress trees, stenciling their limbs against the evening sky. Watching the rocking pelicans, PawPaw slumped and his eyelids drooped.

  I stood up. “Come along, Taddy. It’s past time. Tomorrow’s a school day. You need a good shower.”

  “Could I call Jay tonight? I know it’s too late for him to come today, but I could ask him over tomorrow afternoon. Could I? Please? Could I?”

  “I’ll be back at school. We’ll ask Mom. Come on home now.”

  “If we can’t call Jay, could we call Davy? Those birds were heading right for his house. Maybe he saw ‘em. He could have looked at ‘em straight out of his bedroom window.” Taddy wanted to show off his discovery to one of his buddies and maybe get someone to agree that PawPaw was wrong.

  The Victorian mansion known as Jefferson House, Davy’s summer home, dominated a gentle rise on the northern shore of Lake Peigneur. The cupola or the upper windows would both have been great vantage points from which to view the scene.

  Paw-Paw had turned aside Taddy’s request. “Davy’s back in Tennessee, son. There’s no one over there now. His dad came by the house last week to drop off the key and said he wouldn’t be back until duck season, around Thanksgiving. Davy had to go back to school. Just like you.”

  I was always glad when the Alexanders were at the lake. From the time they bought the Jefferson House and spent their first summer in Louisiana, PawPaw had enjoyed their company. Before the Alexanders had children of their own, Mom told me PawPaw taught the nephews and their visiting friends how to cast a line, and PawPaw continued to be a fishing guide to the three Alexander sons who followed. I knew Jack Alexander was trying to sell the place, and that made me uneasy. What would happen to it? I hoped the man who ran the nursery down the shore would take on the house as well. He would do a magnificent job.

  We had tried to convince Taddy he couldn’t have seen anyone over there. He wouldn’t listen.

  “No, PawPaw. I saw someone on the dock. Right when I first got here.”

  “You’re imagining things, son.”

  I remember wondering if Taddy had seen the same man I’d spotted across the lake. I checked the shell turn-around; the pot smoker had gone.

  “Go put up your rod, Taddy, and let’s get going,” I told him.

  I took Taddy’s arm and shot him a look of reprimand that said stop arguing with your grandfather. Taddy sensed I had little patience left and followed my instruction, but first he looked over to the lake and dipped his head to his friend, the Great Egret. PawPaw rubbed a gnarled hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I swear that bird bowed his head to you, Taddy. Haughty thing never even acknowledges the rest of us are around.”

  Nostalgia. Remembering the many Sunday afternoons I’d spent at the lake when I was a young girl made me sad. How many times had my mother come down to the water to call me in for supper? I couldn’t guess. At Taddy’s age, more than a dozen years ago now, I’d been as fond of the lakeside as Taddy. PawPaw used to call me his Lady of the Lake. I had a favorite spot on the bank right where our yard met PawPaw’s. Beneath a canopy of live oaks, two-foot high cypress knees trapped still ponds teeming with aquatic life. That corner became my secret hideout, tree house, fairyland, or whatever imaginary kingdom I visited at the time. That’s where I had found Yellow Puff, a little mallard unable to keep up as her mother led newly hatched chicks onto the lake. I took Yellow Puff home to raise. When she had her coat of feathers, her beak long and looking around for mischief, I returned her to the lake. She swam away, but for almost a year afterward, whenever I called her name, Yellow Puff came to my little corner to take bread straight from my fingers. Maybe she was a he. I never knew.

  We walked the old man back up to the porch. When we were out of earshot, Taddy started in on me again.

  “PawPaw says they’re pelicans, but they sure look like dinosaur birds to me. We got to call Jay, Mandy. He’s really into dinosaurs you know.”

  “Oh, yes. I know. Please, Taddy. Aunt Mathilde will kill us if we do anything to encourage Jay’s dinosaur fixation.”

  Taddy had said good-bye to his PawPaw just two days ago. “I’ll see you next Saturday for sure,” PawPaw had said. “Maybe sooner, son.”

  “Do you think the big birds will still be out there?” Taddy had asked.

  “Could be.”

  I remember thinking: if the tropical disturbance doesn’t turn into a hurricane. When the outer bands enter the Gulf of Mexico, birds sense the drop in atmospheric pressure well before scientific instruments tell the onshore weathermen there’s a serious storm ahead. Were the pelicans telling us we had a hurricane coming our way? I bet PawPaw had the same thoughts, but neither one of us wanted to say the words aloud. Mentioning the possibility of a hurricane might bring bad karma. Like the old days when people didn’t utter the word Cancer.

  Worry crept back into my head, pulling me into the present. Where could PawPaw have gone?

  The Search Begins

  TAKING THE FIRST exit at the end of the Atchafalaya Basin, I turned south onto Grande Point Highway to a shortcut through St. Martin Parish. Not really grand or a highway. Just another blacktop country road. I had to watch out for hazards—over-hanging mailboxes, loose dogs, slow moving carts stuffed with cut cane stalks ready to be planted. No longer soothed by the peaceful swamp, anxiety about PawPaw kicked in hard. Why on earth didn’t anyone know where he’d gone? PawPaw lived alone in the old house, but Mom, Dad, my brother Taddy, and Uncle Bub were right next door. Bub had coffee with PawPaw every mo
rning, and a child or a grandchild checked in on him at least once a day. PawPaw never stayed away overnight. He never drove farther than the parish line, and he never drove at all after dark.

  Then I remembered the damned tropical storm. Sunday night the National Weather Service had posted a hurricane watch along the entire Gulf coast, from Galveston to Tampa Bay, and predicted drift to open water within the next two days, intensification probable.

  I played with the radio knobs until I picked up a weather report. The storm hung around and now had a name—Hannah. No one knew how Hannah might develop, or if, where, when, or with what force she might come onshore. Unpredictable like a woman, the reporter quipped. A male reporter, of course.

  Yesterday, when I got up early and drove back to school for class, the storm had vanished from my brain. Not the case for the family at the lake. When you live twenty-five miles from open water, at this time of year you always keep a little piece of your mind tuned for the possibility of a hurricane. Four years had passed since the last serious storm, but my family, just like every family, probably woke up on Monday thinking about dead flashlight batteries, loose yard furniture, the need to board up the windows. And emergency power. The summer haul of shrimp and crabmeat in the freezers would spoil without a generator to keep the electricity humming.

  PawPaw was a strong man, but a life of physical labor takes a toll on the body. Even with only himself to worry about, he had more than enough to do for an eighty-year-old. He’d have made a shopping list: duct tape, a loaf of bread, maybe a jar of peanut butter. Now there was a thought. Could he have had a heart attack on the way to the grocery store? Or an accident? No. Someone would’ve found his truck. What if he’d gotten distracted and slipped off the road into a ditch? So many times I’d heard Mom fuss at him for driving onto a headland to check on someone’s cane fields or crawfish ponds.

  With a storm brewing, Mom and her siblings would have had lots to do. My aunts would have thought first of food. What could they have on hand that didn’t need refrigeration or cooking? My dad, a firefighter, would’ve been called to the station to organize an emergency protocol and an overtime schedule for his crew. Uncle J. Allen and Uncle Etienne, who ran the family sugarcane farm across the road from PawPaw, would’ve had to make plans to shelter the equipment and the animals. And they’d have been worried sick about what the winds might do to their crop, grown tall and green, so close to harvest. My Uncle Ti Pierre would be sure all his trucks had plenty of gas and air in the tires. Even Uncle Bub would’ve been busy. He’d probably been called in for extra duty at the sheriff’s office in New Iberia.

  Uncle Bub loved his job, and even more the idea that he could have one. He stationed his wheelchair at the front desk where he answered the telephone and greeted visitors as they came in the door. The sheriff knew what he was doing when he put Uncle Bub on his payroll. The path to PawPaw’s heart lay through his youngest child, and with the children, in-laws, and a collection of lifetime friends, my family could be counted on to deliver a couple hundred votes at every election. Nothing happened out at Lake Peigneur that our PawPaw, Pierre Boudreaux Sr., didn’t know about. PawPaw and Uncle Bub were the sheriff’s eyes and ears for our corner of Iberia Parish.

  Trouble brewing in the Gulf meant the sheriff’s office would be humming with activity. Many of the callers would need to hear Bub’s soothing voice giving them the latest coordinates of the storm, recommended evacuation routes, where to pick up sandbags, which buildings would become emergency shelters. Uncle Bub would’ve been crazy busy all day Monday.

  I had a catch in my throat thinking about my Uncle Bub. Whatever would he do if something had happened to PawPaw? They were so close.

  With the threat of a storm, the roads out of town would be crowded, but I could be pretty sure no one in my family would be packing up to flee. The Boudreaux clan never evacuated unless the State Police issued a mandatory order. Not even Aunt Mazie down in Houma. If a storm did come, I, for one, would be happy if she took her bundle of nerves to another location for the duration, but she never did.

  The gradual loss of barrier islands and protective marshes had made us more and more vulnerable. If tropical storm Hannah became a hurricane and headed for shore directly to the west of Iberia Parish, a mandatory evacuation order would be a real possibility. We’d be on the eastern side, the wet side, we called it, where the circulating force might bring water surging through Vermilion Bay, up the bayous and the Delcambre Canal, straight into the area surrounding our Lake Peigneur. I had never heard of a hurricane taking that course, but I’d been told the probabilities had increased.

  I smiled thinking of PawPaw’s take on the threat of a storm in the Gulf. His clear blue eyes would twinkle and he’d say, “It’s hard to be a Christian when there’s a hurricane out there. The crazy lady has to go somewhere, but you can’t help wanting her to choose someone else’s backyard.”

  The family probably had the usual argument about the safest place for PawPaw to wait out the storm. Mom and Dad thought our one-story brick house, built in the seventies, was the best structure to withstand high winds. Not PawPaw. He insisted the old homestead next door had stood the test of time. My uncle Ti Pierre always voted for his own house across the road, but then Uncle Ti always thought everything he had was the best.

  The threat of a storm no doubt captured everyone’s attention and probably explained why no one had checked on PawPaw yesterday, Monday, the last day of August.

  After the half-hour drive through St. Martin Parish and around the city of New Iberia, I reached Lake Road, the two-lane blacktop on the east side of Lake Peigneur. When I rounded the first bend, I could see a cluster of cars in front of PawPaw’s house. Enough for a Sunday Saints football party, or—I gulped—a wake.

  Blocking one lane of travel, the grill of Uncle Ti Pierre’s green panel truck, Big Beeline Trucking emblazoned in two foot high letters on the cab doors, nudged the back bumper of a sheriff’s black and white cruiser pulled up in front of PawPaw’s house. At the sight of two fresh-faced young deputies stepping out onto the narrow concrete walk leading to the front porch, Uncle Ti lowered his car window, leaned out, and bellowed in their direction.

  “Get on the horn to your friggin’ boss, guys. Tell him to get his fat ass right over here. And make it damn quick!”

  Oh my God. Uncle Ti was acting up again. Ti, or Petit Pierre to give him his full nickname, the oldest of PawPaw’s eight children, could be counted on to embarrass us all. But he had his good side as well. A can-do sort of guy, the family relied on Uncle Ti for action. When your car, your truck, or your tractor for that matter, was stuck in mud, or when a tree had blown down on your shed, you called Uncle Ti. He came in a flash, with a truck and a towline. Maybe today was one of those times we were going to need Uncle Ti. I shuddered at the thought.

  Ti owned a fleet of six trucks. He and two of his own sons made hot-shot deliveries of tools and other supplies to oil rigs and offshore loading areas all over south Louisiana. Uncle Ti liked this work much better than his first job farming sugarcane under PawPaw’s critical eye. Now his own boss, he could leave his crew in charge when he wanted to crawfish, troll for shrimp, or shoot a turkey, a deer, or a few ducks. Off-season in the cane fields, his brothers Uncle J. Allen and Uncle Etienne, who still worked on the family farm, only occasionally risked PawPaw’s disapproval to join a hunt or a fishing trip. Ti always gave his brothers a hard time about having to sneak around their father like teenagers hot after a new girlfriend.

  Hearing the foul-mouthed demands, the younger of the two deputy sheriffs stiffened. His right hand dropped instinctively to his holster, and he opened his mouth to snap a response. The older deputy put out a settling hand. The younger deputy returned to his unit, and I heard him on the radio making a business-like request for the sheriff to come out to the Boudreaux farm on Lake Road.

  I bypassed the crowd on the front porch of the old house and went around to the kitchen door. I saw Aunt Tut first, dripping bo
iling water by the tablespoon into PawPaw’s white enamel coffeepot. Tut was the aunt closest to my mom. I wasn’t surprised to see her pitching in. The sight of me brought tears to Tut’s eyes and she held me in a long, hard hug. I knew immediately I’d done the right thing by coming home. Mom’s hug was even longer.

  “So, what’s going on?” I asked.

  Mom spoke in a whisper, keeping one eye on the door to the central hall. “Like usual, this morning Bub went to PawPaw’s for his biscuits and coffee. He couldn’t get in. The back door was locked, and PawPaw didn’t come answer his knock.”

  Uncle Bub lived in the barbecue cabin in our back yard. He’d probably used his crutches to cross the little bridge over the ditch between our house and PawPaw’s. One leg was a good four inches shorter than the other. He bumped up the sidewalk, jerked up the new concrete steps to the back porch, and grasped the special handle that permitted him to open the screen door with two fingers. Last year Mom had insisted on these little home improvements. She feared one day Uncle Bub’s crutches would catch on a loose board in the old wooden steps and he’d go crashing to the ground. He didn’t need to have one more problem with his legs.

  Another glance to the hall, and Mom continued.

  “PawPaw always let Bub know ahead of time if he had to leave home early, but at first Bub wasn’t worried. He thought he’d just missed a message. He came across to our house to see if I had a cup of coffee for him. I hadn’t heard about PawPaw having to go somewhere so I thought I’d better check it out. I grabbed the key off the hook. Bub and I crossed over to PawPaw’s kitchen door.”

  Mom looked around again. No one in earshot.

  “Mandy, I was scared the minute I walked in. The old coffee pot stood upside down on the drain-board. There were no biscuits on the table.”

  The mention of biscuits brought back memories of Mama B. My grandmother always made her biscuits from scratch, her flour-covered hands kneading the dough on the metal kitchen table. Now that she was gone, PawPaw’s biscuits came out of a plastic bag from the freezer.