Courir De Mardi Gras (7 page)

“I noticed this morning that most of the commercial development is on the old Jefferson property, while the St. Julien side is mainly public and residential property.”

“The St. Julien side. Oh, that describes it perfectly, doesn’t it, Letty?” Miss Esme said.

Letty nodded her large head into her double chin. “That’s just how it was. You see the outsider, Eli Jefferson, came here around 1840 looking for a place to grow and ship cotton. He went to Pierre Huval who owned the inn and the ferry and said, ‘Let me buy your land, and you’ll get rich off the steamboat trade when my gin starts operating and shipping.’ Then he went to the Sonniers who had a nice, well-run place and said, ‘Sell me your land, and I’ll set you up to run a store since I can see you’ve got the talent for it.’ And he went to the Patouts and said, ‘Your mules are the best shod in the parish. Sell me your land, and I’ll help you get a smithy started. A lot of trade will come with the wagons bringing cotton, the women coming to shop, and so on.’”

Miss Letty paused to shovel up some yams, and Miss Esme stepped into the narrative like a scrawny tag-team wrestler. “Well, Josephe St. Julien saw what was happening, and when Eli Jefferson came to him, he said, ‘I got six living children and six healthy slaves to work my land. I don’t need your help. And one more thing, my Phillippe is to marry Babette Huval. Where are they going to farm with you buying up all the land?’ ‘They can farm in hell for all I care,’ said Jefferson. That started the feud. Phillippe and Babette had to share the St. Julien land and house until they could build one of their own. The two wives arguing made Josephe’s life a misery. They say he sent two daughters off to the convent just to prevent their marrying into any of the families who had sold out. The other two he drove to dances in Opelousas to be sure they would find a husband elsewhere. The younger son drowned in the bayou, and that let Josephe pass his property on intact to Phillippe, but he made his son swear never to sell to a Jefferson. Phillippe let his hogs and chickens dust on Main Street and never whitewashed his house to spite all the merchants that Jefferson controlled, but his son, Victoir, got the revenge.”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Letty, “but it was not revenge, just a sharp head for business, I say. Victoir studied Eli Jefferson’s methods all his life, and when the time came he knew what to do. Both his brothers died in the War of the Rebellion, his sister was carted into Opelousas and married off. He had land in the center of town. First, he donated some to the Catholic Church, and all the priests told the people how devout he was. Then, he gave his former slaves small holdings on the edge of his property and asked the priest to marry them to his Negresses exactly like white people. At the wedding, he said, ‘You are free men and women now. Go and be thankful.’ They were so thankful all four families took the name St. Julien.”

“Not because they shared our blood, you understand. They were merely being grateful,” interrupted Miss Esme.

“Yes, well. So Victoir St. Julien built a political base?” Suzanne prodded.

“Exactly.” Miss Letty took over. “When he ran for mayor at the very end of Reconstruction, he had the black vote and the Catholic vote. The only folks left to vote for Jefferson’s grandson were a few Americans, the non-French, you see, and a handful of Methodists.”

“Do you know anything about the big railroad deal?”

“Victoir St. Julien worked his way up to state senator. He had power, but not the kind of money Eli Jefferson had in the bank. Victoir ran the town, but Eli Jefferson owned it, and at nearly eighty years of age, showed no sign of giving it up. Then, through his political connections, Victoir got wind of the new railroad. He knew the lay of the land, knew the tracks would pass on flat country to the south not up here in hill country. Rail is faster, rail is cheaper than the steamboat, you see. He bought the right land and made a fortune when the tracks crossed it.”

“He put Eli Jefferson out of business?”

“Oh, yes! And out of his house, too.” Miss Esme clapped her frail hands with joy. “And then, he gave Magnolia Hill to his own son, the second Josephe, for a wedding gift. Wasn’t that marvelous?”

“But didn’t he ruin the town as well?” Suzanne questioned. Feeling on shaky ground, she looked across to George for support, but he seemed absorbed in chewing a bite of the leathery pot roast into a digestible mass and stirring his peas and yams together with a fork. An old story heard many times held no interest for him.

“Oh, no! The railroads and the boll weevil ruined Port Jefferson,” Miss Esme asserted.

“Now that we’ve got yams, times are better,” Miss Letty added, forking more of the orange potatoes between her jowls.

“We were both born at the Hill. Granddaddy Josephe would not have it any other way,” Miss Esme chimed in, shooing the subject away from yams and back to happier times. “I do believe we spent more time there growing up than we did in this house. Granddaddy gave elegant weekend parties, all those politicians and their ladies, fancy dress in the evenings, rowing on the bayou in the afternoons, picnics, riding, all so fine.”

“If Daddy had lived, we would have gone to stay on the Hill permanently, but he passed on of pneumonia when he was still only the mayor. Brother, that’s Georgie’s grandfather, got to the senate. He got the big house, too.” Miss Letty savagely sawed at a piece of the pot roast.

“He was a personal friend of Huey Long, you know,” offered Miss Esme.

“He dragged the family down to Huey’s level, Esme. The St. Juliens ‘just plain folks’, indeed! Those dreadful dresses Beatrice bought at Sonnier’s and having themselves photographed eating in the kitchen, horrible, just horrible! All the money in the world, and they let the Hill go to pieces.”

“Now Letty, you’re still sore because Fred cut you off when you insisted on marrying Henry Dugas.” Appealing to Suzanne, Esme said, “He called it a traitorous act to marry into one of those families who sold out to Eli Jefferson.”

“At least I had the spine to do it! I didn’t let Fred or Granddaddy turn me into a nun or a spinster school teacher.” Miss Letty’s round face turned a dangerous shade of purple.

“That’s just not true! My beau died in the World War.” Miss Esme paled. She tugged on the zipper at the throat of her pink tunic, but it seemed to be caught in the fabric.

Again, Suzanne looked to George for help. He’d cleaned his plate. He rose and bent over Aunt Esme, brushing her sunken cheek with his lips. He did the same to Aunt Letty, pressing his lips to her fleshy jowls.

“I have to get back to the office. Ya’ll have a nice visit with Suzanne.” Nodding to his hired historian, he said without expression, “Stop by the office if you want a ride home.”

Then, he deserted her in the midst of the battle. “Coward!” she wanted to shout after him. An unexpected ally appeared in the form of Sally. “Ya’ll want coffee now?”

“In the parlor, Sally,” Miss Letty indicated.

“Yes, in the parlor,” Miss Esme echoed, entirely recovered from her brief fit.

Evidently, the two old women adhered to the old code of not arguing in front of the servants. With a silent truce called, they retired to the parlor. Sally appeared with her tray and stood holding it while Suzanne took a demitasse and added sugar. Still, the servant continued standing right in front of her.

“Take a cookie,” she said in disgust, as if a Yankee didn’t know a thing about fine manners. Suzanne selected a gingersnap with a burnt bottom. Sally moved on to serve Miss Esme.

Miss Esme took her cup and cookie. “Sally has been with our family since she was fourteen. She still does all the cooking. Isn’t she a marvel?”

“Definitely,” Suzanne quickly agreed.

“Why, when Letty and I attended St. Joseph’s, she would bring our lunch to the school yard on hot days so we needn’t walk home in the heat and dust. It always came on a covered silver tray, cooling things like cucumber on bread and butter and a bucket of cold lemonade. She’d wait under the trees while we ate, then take the bucket and things back home.” Esme sighed over the good old days and nibbled at her charred cookie.

“Sally does the cooking because Esme never learned how. She was too genteel.” Miss Letty raised her cocktail sausage-sized pinkie in the air.

“You did learn to cook and look at you now!” Miss Esme counterattacked.

“Tell me about the historical marker,” Suzanne intervened. “I understand you are responsible for it.”

“Oh my, yes!” Miss Esme’s face filled with delight again. “We thought up the words, and Brother put up the money. Bronze casting is very costly, you know.”

“She left off Eli Jefferson and put in the yams,” Letty responded.

“It was too expensive to have both, and ‘yam’ is a shorter word than ‘Jefferson’, that’s all,” Miss Esme explained.

“Brother wouldn’t pay for ‘Jefferson’, you mean. Now I say when a feud is over one hundred fifty years old, it has got to stop. Why, Henry and I were just like Romeo and Juliet.”

“Big, fat Juliet, little, skinny Romeo,” Esme taunted like a schoolgirl. “Traitor to the family!”

“Now look here, Esme, I tried just as hard as you to get the name of this town changed to St. Julien.”

“But Georgie’s mother stopped us. What a terrible woman!” Miss Esme leaned confidentially toward Suzanne. The cuff of her pink polyester tunic took a dip in the coffee cup she held in trembling hands. “A disappointed woman.”

“Well, we were all disappointed in Jacques. We thought Nephew would come back from Vietnam covered with medals and follow in Victoir St. Julien’s footsteps. He looked so handsome in his naval officer’s uniform. All his brothers who hadn’t gone to college were just plain foot soldiers who got drafted. Jacques enlisted, but he went and brought home that woman from Virginia. The only thing she liked about this place was Magnolia Hill,” Miss Letty continued.

“Oh no!” cried Miss Esme. “She liked one other thing.” The sisters cackled like co-conspirators, both of them turning pink.

“Jacques was surely a womanizer. He seemed happy to spend his days living off the rents and investments and chasing skirts. Then, he’d go to Joe’s Lounge and drink and tell all about his conquests.”

“A trial to his family, a trial to his wife. Maybe that’s why she turned so mean,” Letty continued.

Suzanne wondered if Dr. Dumont knew about Jacques St. Julien’s reputation on his own turf.

“That’s just family talk. Women loved Jacques, and the men liked him, too. Wasn’t he elected Capitaine of the Courir de Mardi Gras when old Alonzo Guidry died? You say you and Henry wanted to end the feud. Jacques was the one who did it, I say. He drank with the Huvals and the Patouts and the Badeaux boys every night at the Lounge. They got along fine. I think Virginia turned ugly when they took out her female organs. That causes early change of life, you know,” Esme whispered. Suzanne did not contradict her.

Esme continued working on her theory. “Virginia Lee came here and found out she had married a ‘coonass.’ Forgive me, Letty. I hate that word, too. Cajun was bad enough, then people like the Jeffersons brought back ‘coonass’ from overseas after the war. We should be called Acadians as in that lovely poem,
Evangeline
by Longfellow,” she instructed Suzanne. “I always had my students read it and memorize the prologue. Are you familiar with the poem, my dear?”

“Eighth grade English. ‘
List to a tale of love in Acadie, home of the happy
.’ Yes, I am.” Suzanne suppressed a wince brought on by middle school memories of Miss Farrell cramming epic poetry into adolescent brains. Secretly, she loved the poem and doted on
Romeo and Juliet
, but who wanted to be teased? She could see Miss Esme gave her a gold star smile for her knowledge.

The former teacher went on talking. “Do you know, I never use the word nigger because I know how ugly words hurt?”

“That’s not what soured Virginia Lee. It was discovering when her money ran out she had to stop buying those fancy antiques because Jacques wouldn’t raise the colored folks’ rent or put anybody out of business. He just let things keep rolling downhill. And he slept with every woman he laid hands on except his wife.” Letty made her comment more graphic by snatching at her own large breasts straining the stretchy blue fabric of her top.

“Oh, Letty. You can be so crude. We have a guest here.”

“No one thinks anything of it now! Look at this young woman sleeping up at the Hill with Georgie, not a chaperone on the premises.”

“Well, they aren’t sleeping together. Georgie is such a good boy. He painted our house last fall.”

“How would you know? They could have met on one of his business trips. Maybe, this history thing is a hoax. He might be his father’s son in disguise.”

Suzanne finished her coffee in one gulp and rose. “Excuse me, but I have a lot of work to do at the house.”

“There, now you have embarrassed our guest, Letty.”

“Forgive me, my dear. Georgie is a nice boy, but let’s face it. All men are animals underneath. You just forget I said anything and do your job at the Hill.”

Suzanne accepted the apology gracefully, but still insisted she had to leave. Esme trailed her out on to the porch. “Do, do come again. For coffee. Please. Next week.”

“If I can,” she promised and started off along Front Street.

At a safe distance from the storm center, she slowed down and began to take in the scenery she’d missed on her headlong walk two hours before. Below the drawbridge on the opposite side of the river, a large hollow live oak stood, green in winter, but with a gap in its trunk large enough to hide a man. A stout knotted rope hung from its lowest branch out over the water. The rain-swollen bayou reached to within a foot of the rope, but she suspected in summer when children swung out over the river and played in the hollow, the water ran much lower. Beyond the tree, a house with a screened porch sat safely raised on its brick pilings. She took in the serenity of the scene and a deep breath of the mild January air.
Acadie, home of the happy
, indeed. The sun came out, brightening the bayou from a sullen gray to a pale, sparkling brown.

She continued down Front Street past Main and the Roadhouse still serving a few late diners. The warehouses beyond decayed by the bayou, the edges of their soft red bricks sloughing away into dust, their high, small-paned windows milky like cataracts or black and blind where young boys practiced rock throwing. Tucked among them, the infamous Joe’s Lounge flourished under a yellow neon sign hanging out over the street where the road turned to gravel. Tempted, Suzanne opened its red metal door. Dark and abandoned at midday, midweek, a fat bartender washed glasses by the light of the beer signs.