Ghosts of the Attakapas

Ghosts of the Attakapas        
              
     Over breakfast, I break some news for Rowena. “Hey let’s try this on for size. Rowena, did you ever hear of a Chenier?”
     “What Louisiana gal hasn’t heard of Clifton Chenier, King of Zydeco?”
     “Sweet pea, a Chenier is a hummock in a marshy region, with stands of evergreen oaks. Don’t feel bad, even here in Louisiana, most people didn’t know about the Cajun Riviera until hurricane Audrey in 1957. I want to take you to alligator country down near the gulf in the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, one hundred miles of nothing but marshes and gators. Maybe we’ll get to feed some.”
     “Are you crazy? Those dinosaur throwbacks could make a meal of us.” She gets up, takes our dishes, puts them in the sink, and washes them.
      The next morning our time comes to depart for the briny water to try our luck at saltwater fishing. Rowena straps herself in the seat belt. I drive us in our convertible with the top pulled down and the wind rushing over my ears. We take the interstate west over the haunted cypress trees of the Atchafalaya. The wide roots look like hoop skirts with the branches above the tangled hair of southern belles who were pursued by the ghosts of Confederate soldiers but found refuge when the swamp Goddess morphed them into trees.
     We cross the Atchafalaya river which is the artery of Cajun country where barges ply the flow of currents whose channel will carry old man river when it changes course as it would have long ago had the corps of engineers not deepened the river bed. We take the off-ramp in Lafayette and head to Abbeville on our course to where garfish get hooked in fishermen’s trotlines when the old Cajun man was hoping for bass for a change.
     Soon there will be no gas stations for a hundred miles so I check the gauge and we are set for the wild country. The waterways open up like dark liquid paths to secret glades where pirogues take old men into remembered bays. After passing the threshold where towns give way to fishing shacks then even those few and far between, we encounter our first gators sunning by the road like the place belongs to them and I am not one to argue with them. The ripples in the canals are like those in my sweetheart’s dark hair so rich and vivid that I feel like dipping my toes in them but know that snakes and gators might take them for hors d’oeuvres.
     After we pass through endless marshes, we arrive at the coast where seagulls greet us with a chorus of cackles to welcome us to the salty breeze of the gulf that we cannot see yet but know is there just over the horizon.
     We arrive at the Peveto Woods Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary where as many as two million birds come each year. My eyes are full of wonder to see the legendary scarlet tanager that knows the seasons with the precision of the farmer’s almanac along with butterflies who also head south in kaleidoscopes for winter.  
     We set up our tent beneath the trees. There we find middens, piles of oyster shells left by migrants from the perennial winter of the northern ice age when the woolly mammoth lumbered across the cool grasslands of Louisiana. The nomads had no home but the memory of a forest might stir a tear as they traversed the pelagic land-sea. The camel species began far from the Sahara in North America where they migrated south in riderless caravans with their humps silhouetted by the setting sun to lead the grass-people to water and fruit.
     We are covered in shadows as the sun starts to sink below the horizon. I hear hounds bay mournfully in the distance. Soon we are immersed in pitch-black darkness. The stars shine like millions of candles in the velvet black bowl of the night sky. Rowena asks me, “Are you afraid?”
     I say, “No more than normal.” We dress down to our undies with wool blankets wrapped around us to keep warm with each other’s bodies in the October cool.
     She pipes up, “Damn John, you sure had a good idea to take us here.”
     I say, “We should move out here, grow sugar cane, and have a vegetable garden to live off the fat of the land.”
     She replies, “There you go dreaming again. You don’t have a green thumb. And we’re too citified to be gardeners. We’d end up panhandling.”
     I say, “My grandpa was a sharecropper. It runs in the blood. We can learn to farm.”
     She says, “Honey you’re no farmer. But if you want we can grow some herbs on the balcony. That’ll be your crop.”
     “Maybe we can grow some tomatoes too. We can harvest them and make salads.”
     She says, “Knowing those red juicies were grown by you would make them very delicious.”
     We are silent for a moment. I break the silence and say, “Good thing we got out of the city for a while. We needed fresh air and quiet.”
     She replies, “We sure did. Everyone has an angle there.”
     I ask her, “Do you really like it out here? I do have dreams of living off the land but you always seemed to like grocery stores. The produce is much easier to come by already grown and in an air-conditioned store. This place is beautiful but it takes some getting used to for a city boy.”
     She says, “Did you figure a change of scenery would jump-start our marriage? Was our old clunker stuck in the mud?”
      “I’m glad I drove off the lot with our marriage. Ones like ours are built to last. Love how you engine purrs.”
    She says, “You’re so crazy. But truly we could come home and find our balcony egged or draped in toilet paper. Are you sure you want to stay here for the whole weekend?”
     “Oh come on. The kids back home are good eggs. They won’t do such things” I reply with a wave of my hand.
     “Well OK. But I warned you.”
    “No campout is complete without a campfire. Stay here darling while I look for some twigs to burn.”
     She holds my arm and says, “No John. Please stay here. Ghosts of the Attakapas Indians haunt this place. They were known as man-eaters.”
     I kiss her and say, “Ain’t nothing left of those Indians other than bones. Don’t fret pumpkin.”
     I get up and walk into the forest. Rowena follows me with her flashlight. Hours pass like in a movie. The Perseids blaze their trails overhead.
     I am disoriented in the dark and have lost my bearings. And like the fool that I am, I left my compass in my pack at the campsite. I call to Rowena but hear only the wind. I try to retrace my footsteps but without discernible landmarks this is folly. And so I keep walking as the minutes slip by.
     I shine the flashlight on the ground looking for a trail to take me back. But to my surprise, I see paw prints that for my tear clouded eyes look like they could be a wildcat’s. That is if I didn’t know any better because the big cats vanished from this land long ago. But I follow the tracks hoping they are those of a large dog and that they lead back to Rowena. Then I hear a growl that could be a tomcat or a larger feline, Lord have mercy.
     Out of the darkness comes a ray of light. I follow it to Rowena. “Oh, my God, you are covered in blood!”
     She replies, “After you left I had a visitor. A cougar did this to me. She mauled me.”
     “Get in the car, pronto.”
     “Hun, it hurts too much. You have to carry me. I am afraid you’ll have to pack the camping gear.”
     “Fuck the gear, next stop for you is the ER.”
     She says, “Are you sure you don’t want the quilt your grandma made for you? It won’t take but a second to pack it.”
     I reply, “no means no. I can’t believe I left you alone. I must have been crazy.”
     “Don’t you want the Nikon I gave you for Christmas? Just put it in the glove compartment.”
     “Would you please be quiet? There is no telling how much blood you lost. You may need a transfusion.”
     “Honey, the truth is when that big cat pounced on me she slapped my face so hard with her paw that my head bounced. But now I can hardly move. I may be crippled. If you need to leave me I understand. I will always love you married or not.”
     “There ain’t no divorce in our future. I won’t hear any more talk about it. I have done heard enough for one night. Now I’m going to put you in the car. How did you get into this bloody mess?”
     Rowena asks, “Does this look like blood to you?” Then she dips her fingers into her wound and tastes it. She says, “It tastes like ketchup to me. Why don’t you try some?”
     I shout, “Damn, you mean that stuff is tomato sauce? My heart went from one hundred to thirty in a split second. Why did you put on this show?”
     She says, “Just to see what your priorities are. I had to wonder why you would leave me alone in this spooky place.”
     “I saw paw prints and heard a growl.”
     “The only visitors I had were a Great Dane and a tabby cat.”
     “Oh, darling, I didn’t figure on getting lost. To my way of thinking I’d only be gone a minute or two. I was wrong. Can you forgive me?”
     “What if there had been a cougar?”
     “Oh honey, they are supposed to be extinct around these parts but that is no excuse.”
     She answers, “The fact that you would leave your prized possessions behind to get me help told me all I needed to know.”
     “You are dressed for a Halloween party.”
     “Do I look like a girl from the Rocky horror picture show?” Her panties are tatters letting her black fleece brazenly poke out. Her blouse is in rags with her bra her only concession to modesty.
     “You need to change your clothes.”
     “I’m more exposed than a B movie actress in a skin flick. But the woods ain’t no place for a fashion show. Besides, this dress is just rags to be used for patches now. What is left of it is too deeply soaked in ketchup for even stain remover to take out. So I’ll just get out of it before someone thinks this was a crime scene.”
     She reaches over, puts her finger to my lips, and says, “You know with your high cholesterol and atrocious diet, you are a prime candidate for a heart attack. I could give you a coronary.”
     “What better way to join the choir invisible?”
     She replies, “That’s not funny.”
     “Don’t worry. My heart is as strong as an ox.” She beams her lipstick smile upon me.
     She answers, “Well your physician said you can take a licking and keep on ticking. So who am I to dispute a board-certified doctor?”
     I reply, “Something tells me your interests lie beyond medical science.”
     She says, “The missionary pose teaches the gospel of guys to keep gals on their back. It is the ultimate undercover job by men on women.”
     I say, “For a minute I thought you were going to pull whips and chains out of your hat.”
     “I’m no feistier than a kitty cat. I may nip at you sometimes, but that just makes me sexier.”
     Rowena stands up, turns around, and faces me. We are both naked and she walks toward me. She lays me down on the blanket. I ask, “Are you going to seduce me with black magic?”
     I am her fallen angel whose purgatory is name-less. She looks up at the sky. Her vibrato puts a crack in the glass ceiling big enough for her to climb a ladder through onto the podium upon which she conducts the orchestra.
     Her face looks like that of Helen sailing the lake of heaven who for the first time sees the Isle of the Blest where she will share the afterlife with Achilles for an eternity of lovemaking.
     Upon awakening my heart is heavy with the news I must tell her. “Honey, I got hired as a cross country truck driver. The pay is one hundred thousand a year. This will mean we can pay off our mortgage in five years. But I’ll be gone all but five days out of the month. Just think of how great it will feel to own our home free and clear. No more notes but the best part are no danger of foreclosure even if I become unemployed.”
     “What in the hell are you saying? I fucked you and you screw me with this news?”
     “Don’t get your panties in a wad honey.”
     “You were my hero for not waiting for me to bleed to death while packing your keepsakes. My test must be more drastic for an absence of weeks. Honey, I tested positive for lymphoma but I understand if you have to finish that run to California. I’ll try to hold out until you get home.”
     “I’ll call you every night from the motel. I’ll bring my laptop so we can do the video thing.”
     “The next thing you’ll say is that you’re having an affair.”
     “Of course I’d never cheat on you. But if you need to take a man to bed I’d understand,” I offer.
     “Have you gone psycho? Don’t you realize that once a man gets his rough hands on a woman’s body the touch takes on a life of its own overcoming its intended purpose as a bed warmer? If the word homewrecker isn’t in your vocabulary then now is the time to learn it. In fact, you are correct that your absence might introduce this scenario. Brides don’t let Beaus act like Curly in the Three Stooges. This isn’t a TV show and reality is knocking at our door.”
    I reply, “You are putting the fear of God in me.”
     The first blush of dawn arrives. Perched on boughs above Rowena, crows caw like wraiths as though welcoming us into a Hades of the heart. The cool morning air rushes over her naked skin. She unpacks her second dress and slips it on for the ride home. She is garbed in floral prints like a bridesmaid. Rowena intones, “How dare I dress for a wedding with vultures already circling the corpse of our domesticity?”
     With the desperation of a madwoman who won’t let go of her delusion that she can talk me out of it, she calls out, “Meet me under the magnolia tree where we fell in love. John, soon it will be the heat of the day. You’re fair-skinned. Let’s get that car AC blowing. We can’t risk you getting heatstroke.”
     I exclaim, “Rowena, I’ll request a truck with a sleeping cab. You can join me for some rides. You’ll get to see the country that way.”
     “The only geography I want to see is your butt in the bed at home.”
     “The soles of my shoes are so thin every shell from these ancient oyster bakes makes me wince. Would you carry me to the car?”
     “Of course, you ain’t heavy, you’re my wife.”
     “Unless I get pregnant my weight isn’t an issue.”
     I carry her over the sand barrens of the beach ridge known as a chenier plain back to the parking area where the car waits. I breathe to the rhythm of my steps. Each breath is a silent prayer to hear her say, “When you are gone, I will wait for you in the bed we made together.”
    But instead, she says, “You know going long distances in a rig is hard on your back.”
     I reply, “It may be easier on my wallet. But it sure ain’t worth losing you.”
     She says, “You cry uncle better than most roosters can crow.”
     I say, “I’m glad we are out of range of cell phone service. We did Robinson Crusoe one better with our home only a three-hour drive.”
     “Did you bring me out here so I’d have nothing to do but make out?”
     “I thought you needed to get off the consumer bandwagon for a while to a place with no stores.”
     “Aw, you know that is as good a reason as any to get out of the city. But let’s skip the fishing. I’ve had enough adventure for one trip.”
     “It is best we keep my beast caged,” she says.
     I reply, “Zoos are where wildcats are tamed. I’d rather let your lynx roam free.”
     “You’ll be the one to explain the scratches on your back to our friends at the pool.”