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May 12 Premier
Red Dragon Tales Premier May 12
Author Whitney Lakin
Author Sam'l Irwin
Actors Rose Ann St. Romain (left) and Ray Gaspard (right) reading Message In An Oyster Shell.
Skeleton Key

A SHORT STORY

Descended from Ukranian highwaymen, Whitney Lakin has contributed her work to Ellipsis and Pussycat magazine. She's also the author of A Paintbrush in the Devil's Toolbox, which is about the Devil, and not about home repair. Though she's 26, Whitney still giggles incessantly whenever she hears the French word for boots.
Whitney baked delicious chaoclate chip cookies for all the attendees at the May 12 premier of the Red Dragon Tales Readers Theatre.

Skeleton Key
by Whitney Lakin

Jack and I were married last Thursday, maybe Friday--I can’t really remember. As we drive beneath a stormy sky the color of gunmetal, I hear the church bells toll--their metallic, mournful chime echoes through the valley.

I guess it’s Sunday morning, then.

We are lost, thanks to a dime-store map printed during the Eisenhower era. Jack sucks on a Camel and glowers at the miles of cow pastures and barns, squinting through a windshield smeared with gooey splashes of red, black and yellow. The brittle wing of a dismembered dragonfly flutters as he flips on the wipers. Fluid shoots over the glass, and I stare at the smear and smile.

"Mmm, don’t you think it’s much prettier than the painting your aunt gave us? It‘s kind of impressionist, in a way."

He only stares ahead.

"I dunno. That’s kinda sick."

I shut my mouth and fiddle with the radio--when he’s in this kind of mood, anything I say just hits the ground dead, like a baby bird pushed from its nest. An asthmatic voice cuts through the static, and I settle on a sermon by Brother Terry, Sound of Southeast Louisiana. He’s on a roll, and I laugh when his tirade against money is followed by the number for the pledge hotline. Slumping in the seat, I read my husband’s body language, memorize his expression, and give it a name for future reference--"Don’t fucking touch me or I’ll blow." Slowly, I’m learning how to be a wife. Running my fingers over the gold band, I prepare myself for a lifetime of matrimonial bliss.

James, is this is what you really wanted for me? A tear slips from my eye as I remember my best friend crouching shirtless at the water’s edge, his thrift store jeans ripped at both knees. His breath smelled of vending machine coffee, his skin of the thin trickle of murky Mississippi that flowed behind the trailer he called home. I watched the sweat bead at his neck, slide down his back and pool at the frayed waistband. His back turned, he began to roll a joint. I could not see his face as he spoke.

"I think you should take him up on the offer, get out of this place."

"What?" I put my hand on his shoulder and he jerked around, spilling his stash. Green buds scattered across the sand. Ignoring them, he shot me a petulant glance.

"You wanna make love to me on a plastic mattress in a double-wide for the rest of your goddamn life? I know what you really want, can tell when you look at him. You see certainty. And not the kind that I’m offering you--a lifetime of Chef Boyardee and quarter beer Tuesday nights down at the Crowbar. He‘s got money. Look, go for him and don‘t worry about me. Our fates are intertwined--I know I‘ll be seeing you again, somewhere. Don’t worry about me."

I bent down and picked up a clump of weed. Holding it to my nose, I knew that I would never again be able to stand the smell--ripe, like the earth after the rain, like my lover’s damp skin.

For he’d been right about the plastic mattress and the trailer--and certainty.

Especially certainty.

New Orleans. Jack and I mouthed our vows inside a cool vault scented with frankincense and lined with oil paintings of bleeding saints. The image of James, half naked by the slow-crawling river that lined the decrepit railway tracks, haunted me as Jack pressed his lips to mine, filled my mouth with spit tinged with tobacco.

All my lovers taste like smoke.

After so long on the road, my thoughts begin to unfurl, floating lazily through my mind, playing over and over like an outdated film reel. To pass the time, I think of corny jokes James once told me, pressing his mouth to my ear and practicing his stand-up routine as he lay in bed stoned--I only laughed because his breath tickled.
I hear snatches of a child’s rhyme as we approach a stop sign--three, four, shut the door. A girl skips rope, her long red braids flapping against an oversized t-shirt as she calls over and over, like she’s forgotten the rest of the words but needs something to sing.

Three four, shut the door.

And I remember the sound of breaking glass.

He had locked himself inside the bathroom. I sat slumped against the metal door and listened to the thick slosh of water spilling over the rim of the shower. The radio played a new Bad Seeds song, and the words seeped beneath the crack, carrying with them cold air and a thin trail of pale brown liquid. I admitted to myself that I’d waited until it was too late.

"JAMES!"

"…and no more shall we part…"

Nick Cave answered me as I pounded on the door, hollering over the rush of water.
"OPEN THE FUGGINGDOOR OR I’LL BREAK IT DOWN."

I threw myself against the rusted frame, snapping the flimsy lock.

Shards the color of emeralds lay scattered over the floor, stuck to the thick vinyl curtain that shone an oily blue beneath the single light bulb dangling from the ceiling.

I remembered closing my eyes as I imagined the feel of white satin against my skin.
Water sprayed from the showerhead and circled around a broken bottleneck, diluting the amber fluid. The air was heavy with the chemical sting of whiskey; the window wide open, the edges covered in glistening slicks of blood.

The last thing he left me was the taste of cinnamon and copper, bitter ashes and sweet honey.

Memories act out their shadow-plays as we wind through swampland. The earth breaths, sending up twisting spirals of opaque smoke that hang loosely in the air, draping over the Mustang. I turn to Jack.

"Hey. They’re like ghosts."

I reach my hand across the stick shift and caress Jack’s skin, slip my fingers between his.

"Huh? Ghosts? That’s weird.’ Like anesthetic, his voice numbs my mind. Shifting into third, he sucks on a cigarette like it’s the last breath he’ll ever take.

The irony of the thought hits me instantly, when we hit an oil slick that sends the car shooting into the guardrail. I laugh as he yanks the wheel like a kid playing some racing game at the local arcade, shitmotherfuckershit flying from his mouth while the blood drains from his knuckles.

I think of the feel of damp denim against my skin as the car tears through the flimsy metal barrier and floats above the swamp, like a glimmer of metal suspended in the indigo twilight.

Then we descend, like a child’s top sliding down a banister, and there are stars in the ground and ghosts in the sky--the world turns on its edge as we slide into the waters. My hand jerks to unfasten my belt, and I reach for the window, the skin of my fingertips splitting open as I shove down the glass.

Jack fell down and broke his crown.

A child’s voice sounds in my head and I turn to see blood streaming from Jack’s nostrils. Like a voyeur, I watch his grip slacken on the wheel, his fingers relaxing as a halo of blond hair floats above his pale face. My breath failing me, I push my hands against the tattered fabric lining the roof, gulp air, and slip through the window.
I asked for certainty. I got death.

I laugh as I break the surface. My arms drip stinking algal waters on the dry grass as I pull myself up to the bank. I curl into the hollow of a rotted oak and pass out.
A wash of bright pink and garish orange flashes in front of me as I open my eyes to a neon sign.

Dammerschlaf Inn, Route 72.

Route 72? Hadn’t we been on the Choctaw trail, highway 10? I thought back to the moth-eaten map crammed in the glove compartment--but then again, back roads weren’t important when we’d planned our trip, tracing red China marker lines along the major routes leading out from New Orleans. Alone, I walk through a night scented with peat and pine, my mental numbness evaporating like fine mist. Against a blue backdrop hung with stars that buzz like iridescent white insects I follow the sign, pink and orange advertising a good night’s sleep. I press my face to the soap-smeared glass and see a single lamp burning in the lobby.

A thin, freckled face floats in a sea of brown paisley as the girl behind the check-in desk flashes a practiced smile. She looks like something out of an outdated Sears catalog, I think to myself. Supressing a smile, I shut off my thoughts and wonder if she can read my mind.

Your clock’s broken, I look at her, watch her twirl the phone cord around a nail smeared with gaudy pink polish.

"Here’s your key." If she can read my thoughts, she doesn’t let on. Instead, she dangles a brass ring before my face and plunks it on the counter. Covering the mouthpiece, she nods to me. "It’s a skeleton key. As a guest, you can use it once--only once--it opens any door in the place. If you shut the door behind you, don’t expect us to let you out. Have a nice night." She waves me off as I think to myself I need a phone, I need to call an ambulance, we need to pull Jack…uh, Jack’s body from the river, and don’t you even need me to check in?

My mouth gapes open and the girl giggles at the scratchy voice coming through the receiver. Clasping her hand over the phone once more, she whispers an afterthought.
"Careful ‘fore you use that key. Don’t waste it. And if you need clean sheets, lemme know."

I move slowly over the plush carpeting, turning the key in my hand. It is heavy and looks ancient, the copper tinged green, faint scratches lining the metal. Peering down the hallway, I see over a hundred doors fading into a pale blue vanishing point. The first is unlocked--it opens to a vast gaming hall lined with green velvet card tables. A wizened old man hunches over a roulette wheel and shouts,
"Here’s one for the god with the spinning head." Tossing a dollar on the table, he crosses his fingers. His bloodshot eyes follow the ball as it nestles into 00. From beneath a stilted arch, a horde of black figures descend, slipping long arms around his waist. A skeleton key tumbles from his hand and I run, the noise of tearing flesh following me down the corridor.
I pause before a muted orange blur that flickers behind clouded panes of milk glass. At my touch, the door to a bar slides open, revealing a fireplace. Thick drapes of purple velvet line the walls, and the folds drop fine gray ash as I brush past.
"S’free, you know." The half-naked woman smiles, swinging her legs over the stool, sickly alcohol fumes seeping from her painted mouth. Lining the bar like dead tin soldiers, crumpled cans of Molson bleed their last sticky drops.
"You wann one? S‘free, you know." A bone draped in doughy skin shoves a drink in my face. Her voice bubbles like she’s speaking through a thick layer of beer and phlegm, and I shake my head. Pinching her skeleton key between shriveled fingers, she dangles it before my eyes and gurgles on, "One door, an eye picked this one. Bess’ choice eye evah made in my life. Wanna drink? S’free, you know. Siddown an‘ I‘ll tell you the whole story of my life." I slink into a plush seat that reeks of sweat as she launches into a diatribe punctuated by slogs of whiskey. I think about the time in undergrad when I took seven tabs of bad acid, then went to see Huis Clos--or at least the local college’s take on Sartre. When I laugh, she takes it as agreement, and knocks back an entire bottle in one long, excited slurp, and wipes a string of drool on a rotting velvet curtain. Reaching for an empty bottle, she frowns, throwing a frantic glance around the bar.
"Guess the house is out." As the cloth falls back into place, two trails of black smoke seep from behind the moth-eaten folds, wrap around the heap of bottles and cans and creep toward her throat. Like the fingers of a cruel lover, they part her lips and force themselves inside.
This time I watch.
Spooked eyes tumble from her skull; the jelly orbs dangle from glistening strands of sinew. A wound the color of dried roses spreads across her chest, crawling along the ridges of her ribs, spreading into the hollows between bones. Moments later, her entire body is a funeral wreath of slick wounds and faded bruises. A thin wisp of smoke escapes from parted lips that cannot scream; black tendrils curl from gaping sockets. Her body disappears, fading slowly from view--first skin, then muscle, blood and bone, till only a faint, glowing trace of marrow lingers in the air.
"S’free…" The smoke beckons me, curling a blackened finger, and I think of the college play--three souls trapped in a sort of purgatory, like children meeting in a nightmare…
On the bar, the skeleton key spins like the broken lobby clock, floats lazily into the air, then shoots into the velvet drapes. A hand of dark smoke darts from behind the folds, catches it.
Panicked, I slide my hand into my pocket. Nestled amongst damp balls of lint is the brass ring, the heavy key tinged with greenish corrosion.
Slipping back into the hall, I stare down the corridor. Fingers of fog follow my every move, creeping along the ground and curling into ghoulish forms. A bouquet of milk-white lilies hovers above my head, fades into wavering strands, then shapes a death head that trails me to the next unmarked door, its handle circled by a blot of rust. I pause, holding my breath. The fog curls around my nose, bringing with it the clean scent of pine. Pressing my ear to the cold metal, I hear the sound of water running, tiny needles pelting the ground.
Something within is moving.
The moody strains of a slow song wind through the air. I sing along as I peer down the corridor at the hundreds of unmarked doors covered by shifting scrims of smoke.
"As a guest, you can use that once--only once."
"S’free."
I slip the key into the lock and freeze, haunted by the gurgling voice of the drunken woman, the glow of her marrow hanging in the air. Turning to the soaped-up front windows, I think about leaving the hotel, slipping back into the indigo night. Maybe I could hitch out to that antebellum inn where we spent the first night of our honeymoon lying beneath fresh-bleached sheets, the sterile scent mixing with the smell of tobacco smoke. The front door locked behind me when I’d stepped in, and the desk clerk did mention that the key opened any door in the hotel.
But somehow I know that nothing lies outside--that the hotel has a mind of its own, changes with each step I take.
From behind the door I hear the sound of wet feet stepping over tiles. A metallic grating follows, bringing with it a rush of air that leaks beneath the crack. The cold seeps through my clothing, and I hear a rustle of cloth, then silence.
"Our fates are intertwined babe. I’ll be seeing you again, somewhere."
I turn the key and push inside. A smoldering cone of incense lies on a bathroom counter, the bluish tendrils sweeping over a mirror that reflects bright green eyes.
James stands naked and grinning, his fingers wrapped around the neck of an empty bottle. Clear drops of water shimmer on his naked skin as a fierce gust of wind whips through the cramped room. Shivering, he slides back the vinyl shower curtain and crooks a finger at me. Grinning wickedly as I slip beneath the stream, he wraps his bare arms around my body, holds me close as the warm water soaks through my clothes. His lips taste of smoke and cinnamon as he slips his tongue inside my mouth, trails his left hand down my back, slides frigid fingers beneath the layer of soaked jean. Tangling his right hand in my hair, he pulls away, then smiles.
For I tell him that I’ve thought it over, and I’ll take making love on a plastic mattress over certainty.
Intertwined, we kiss, and he lets the bottle fall to the ground, where it spins but does not break
Message in an Oyster Shell

A SHORT STORY
BY SAM'L IRWIN

Sam’l Irwin, chief photojournalist for the Louisiana Market Bulletin and reporter for Baton Rouge daily newspaper, The Advocate, arranged for actor Ray Gaspard, a Baton Rouge Little Theatre mainstay, and professional storyteller RoseAnne St. Romain to read his Message in an Oyster Shell, a forces of destiny true love tale at the May 12 premier.
The 50-year-old Irwin has had his fiction published on DeadMule.com, the Nicholl’s State 2004 Jubilee Anthology and the Louisiana Market Bulletin.
His essay entitled Kneeling at the Altar of Schwinn, 1966 was printed in Breakaway Book’s collection of cycling essays called Bicycle Love: Stories of Passion, Joy and Sweat.


Message in an Oyster Shell
by Sam'l Irwin

“’Cuse me, ma’am, whachu doing? Don’t you know you can get two-cents for that bottle at Ruggerio’s?”
  
 I turned around and saw an old colored man coming out of the thicket. He picked up his cane pole and cast a line into the river.

“Yessum, a body can get two-cents for them bottles,” he said

I didn’t care about two-cents. I didn’t care about anything anymore. Not since Janey Mae got married the day after Thanksgiving and left Natchez. She and her beau, sorry, her husband moved up to Tupelo last week. His daddy is a big cotton farmer in the Delta.

Janey Mae and I were the only girls in our graduating class at Mississippi Women’s College who hadn’t gotten married yet. I said “were” the only girls. Now I’m the only one. I could just hear Walter Winchell on the radio, “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press…Big News Flash: Susan Marie Beauchamp is not married. I repeat, Miss Susan Marie Beauchamp of Natchez, Mississippi, is not married. As we go to press, she still is not married and probably never will be.”

I threw another Coke bottle into the river.

I could tell the old man was poor. Why, most of the colored around here are poor. It’s just the way it is. I suppose he could have used the two-penny deposit from that Coke bottle. I guess Hollywood was to blame. You see, in the movies, every girl falls in love. I mean they fall full blast into love. It just seems to me that when a girl kisses a boy and he’s the one, she should feel something.

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not “loose.” But I’ll confess I kissed a few boys in the back row at the Bijou. I even kissed a few boys at the weekend Harvest Dances. When I went to college, the W, as everybody in the great state of Mississippi calls it, I kissed a few boys there. And not one single time did I ever feel a warmth, a tingle, not even a goose bump. Not once.

I went with Billy Ray for two years in college. He was a Kappa Sigma Southern Gentleman studying engineering. I was a Tri-Delt in music. He was so handsome in his Confederate colonel’s uniform for the spring formal. We’d been holding hands for two weeks, but he hadn’t tried a thing. He had everything: good-looks, smart, rich and he seemed nice. He even had a car.

All of my girlfriends said I was the lucky one and how we made such a good-looking couple and all. I wanted him to be the one and I even thought he was the one. I made myself believe he was the one, but deep down, I knew he wasn’t from the first time he kissed me under the willow tree at the fraternity house.
I broke it off when he proposed to me.

“Billy Ray,” I said, “I can’t wear your ring.”

“Why not?” he said weakly. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or relieved.

“Because when you kiss me, there’s nothing.” I was shocked to hear those words pop out of my mouth, but they did.

And then I graduated and went on back to Natchez, apparently to be an old maid forever. That was ten years ago.

And then Janey Mae had gotten married the day after Thanksgiving. I was her maid of honor. In fact, I’ve been a bridesmaid six times in the last three years.

I wished Janey Mae good luck when she and her husband jumped into the back seat of the Cadillac. They were going to New Orleans for their honeymoon. She rolled down the car window and handed me her bouquet.

“Marie, you’re going to be next. I just know it. I’ll call you next week and reveal all the secrets of the honeymoon.” She gave me a sly wink as the car containing Mr. and
Mrs. Virgil Lee Taylor drove off into marital bliss.

That night, after everyone had gone to bed, I left my bedroom and quietly descended the stairs. I crossed the foyer and made my way to the pantry. I had to be extra quiet because Thelma slept in the back room off the pantry and I didn’t want to wake her. I also did not want to be caught in my fool’s errand.

 I opened a cabinet drawer and removed a large paper sack. I knelt to the floor and placed three empty Coke bottles in the bag. I had a fourth one in my hand when the hanging light bulb overhead clicked on.

“Missy, what you doing with them Coke bottles?”

I was so startled by the sudden interruption that I jumped up and dropped the bottle. The unruly thing clunked off the flour barrel and rotated round and round in a mocking version of Spin the Bottle.

“Nothing, Thelma.”

Thelma stopped the spinning bottle with her pudgy foot.

“It sure looks like you doing something. You know your momma gives me them bottles. I sell them back to Mr. Ruggerio at the grocery store.”

“Why, yes, Thelma. I know that.”

“Then why you taking my bottles?”

I don’t think I cried on the outside, but I was weeping on the inside. I reached into my chiffon robe and handed her the notes I had written on my pink stationery just a few minutes earlier.

She took the papers and looked them over.

“Mmm mmm,” she said as she shuffled the pages. “Mmm mm. Missy, that don’t explain nothin’. You knows I can’t read. Now you gonna hafta read what you wrote on them papers sos I can understand what you doing in my pantry stealing my bottles in the middle of the night.”

Horrified to be accused, I said, “I am not doing anything of the sort. I left you ten cents right there on the counter.”

“Sos I see,” Thelma said as she pocketed the money. “Well, I guess you bought them bottles and you can do what you want with ‘em now and you don’t have to ‘splain no how to me. I’m just the maid, the one who changed your diapers when you was a baby and cooked you dinner and looked after you. I guess I don’t need no explainin’.”

“Thelma, I can’t tell you. You’ll just laugh. It’s foolish.” And then I really started crying. “It’s just that all my friends got married and I’m here in Natchez teaching piano lessons and I’m never going to fall in love. I can’t fall in love with just anyone. He has to be the one. Don’t you see?”

That’s when the old woman came up to me an offered up her fat arms and took me in. I wept on her bosom as she comforted me.

“Come sit at the table wit old Thelma and let’s see what this is all about, baby girl.”

She led me to the table and turned on the stove to heat up some cocoa.

“Now, what were you going to do with those papers and my Coke bottles?”

“They’re not papers, Thelma. They’re correspondences to an unknown,” I sobbed.

“Well, what do those corre…uh, corree…”

“Correspondences,” I sniffed.

“Uh, to the unknown say?” Thelma asked.

“I’ll read it to you,” I said, pulling my Princess glasses from my robe pocket. “Stop me if you don’t understand something.”

Dear Unknown Gentleman, My name is Susan Marie Beauchamp. I reside at 802 St. Charles Street in Natchez, Mississippi. I am 30 years old and have never been married. I am college educated and teach music. I am smart and know how to cook, clean, read and drive the following implements: tractor, cotton picker, flatbed truck and automobile. I know all the popular dances and enjoy movies and contemporary novels as well as the classics. If these things interest you, please write to me. I promise I will write back. Cordially, Miss Susan Marie Beauchamp. P.S.: If you find this note, consider it destiny. Ha Ha.

I quickly took my glasses off and returned them to my pocket. I took the tissue Thelma gave me and blew my nose. “Well, what do you think?”

Thelma handed me a cup of hot cocoa.

“Now I see what the corre, coree uh,…”

“Correspondences.”

“What they said. But what that have to do with my bottles?”

“I aim to put my notes in the bottles, seal them up with a cork and throw them in the Mississippi.”

Thelma put her chocolate down on the table and scratched her head. Her broad shoulders started to shake in small motions as she tried to hold back. Finally her whole body shook in laughter.

“Lordie, baby girl. The Lord done delivered Jonah from the belly of the whale once already. You ‘spect he got time to send you a man to fish out the river?”

By now I was caught up in Thelma’s laughter and forgot how pathetic I was.

“Why, yes, Thelma. That’s exactly what I expect. Besides, we’re always singing ‘Shall We Gather at the River.’ Why can’t a man gather at the river with me and kiss me so I feel something?”

“Missy, you better be careful what you ask for. He might well swim up the river. Be ugly like a catfish.”

“I wouldn’t care if he was ugly, Thelma. If he gives me the right kind of kiss it won’t matter.”

Daddy came into the kitchen right then and said, “What are you two women doing up at this hour, laughing and causing all kind of consternation?” His hair was messed up and his robe hung crooked.
“Why, nothing, Daddy. We’re just talking.”
“Since when do you have conversations with the maid in the middle of the night?” He picked up one of my correspondences and read it. I was completely embarrassed by this turn of events and fell silent.
Daddy shook his head and threw the note back on the table.
“Marie, you’re just too picky,” he said. “Maybe it’s my fault for teaching you to be so damned independent.”
He ran his hand through his gray hair and announced, “Come Monday, you’re coming with me to my office.”
“Whatever for, Daddy?”
“Well, since you ain’t getting married, you’re going to have to learn how to take care of yourself. Starting Monday you’re going to learn the insurance business up and down, you hear?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
He turned and waddled out of the kitchen scratching his backside.
“Well, little girl, I gots to go back to bed. The crack of dawn comes earlier every day for this old soul,” Thelma said.
I gathered up my bottles and retreated to the bedroom. I sat on my bed and wondered if I was going to like my new life as an insurance agent.
I rolled up my correspondences and tightly wrapped them in wax paper and rubber bands and placed them inside the three Coke bottles. I pushed the corks into each bottle as far as I could and went to sleep.
That night I dreamed about the three bottles I was planning to throw in the Mississippi River the next day. One sank immediately and buried itself into the silty bottom.
The second bottle bobbed all the way to New Orleans. I could hear Dixieland music coming from the French Quarter as my note bounced between the hulls of the barges and tugboats. A ferry boat deckhand noticed the bottle and fished it out of the water. The music stopped when he pulled the cork and read the message. Laughing, he put the note inside the pages of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” for a long time. He later returned the note to the bottle and threw it back into the water, where it floated all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It drifted in the sea for months until a shark swallowed it.
The third bottle floated among the thickets and trees along the river. It was netted for a year in the branches of a big weeping willow. But the spring flood came and washed it away from the clutches of the tree. It flowed with the current past a huge bridge construction and moored against driftwood on a sandy point. A Brahman cow came down the levee to drink right next to the log. She was followed by her two calves. The mamma waded into the water to drink, but she got stuck in the mud. After an hour of braying, a colored man threw a rope around the cow’s head and pulled her out. As the cow climbed the bank, the bottle was freed and flowed with the current to the mouth of the river. It floated into the brackish marshland and came to rest against a shell bank.
In my dream I could hear the chug-chug-chug of a wide bottomed boat and men’s voices. They were speaking a language I didn’t understand. I heard the loud splash and clang of a metal object hitting the shell reef. The mud and shell and bottle were dragged up from the bottom and flung into the boat.
A man reached a gloved hand into the muddy mess for my bottle. It was as if I was inside the bottle and looking out at him, but his face was blurred from the irregular contours of the green glass.
When he picked up the bottle I felt a powerful tingling volt of warmth. He uncorked the bottle and….
???
I do not know why I kept the Coke bottle. It was only trash. We always throw the trash overboard. Especially glass bottles. They provide anchors for the tiny oysters and help build the oyster bed. But I felt different about this Coke bottle.
Ha, a Coke bottle. I did not even know what a Coke was until I came to this country, to Louisiana. Even then, the wealth of an oysterman does not provide for the indulgence of a drink like Coke. Besides, we Croats prefer to drink a warm herb brandy like Travarica. It was New Year’s Eve and I was looking forward to a taste of spirits.
I was the first of my family to leave the Elafit Islands and emigrate to America. I did not like Tito so I saved my fisherman earnings for five years before I left my home. I found work with an Italian shrimper and learned the waters of the Barataria. After a year I helped Thibodeau build me a lugger to fish oysters.
I saved my wages and brought the second of my seven brothers to this country and then the third. We three brothers soon brought MaMa to Shell Beach and developed our business. I am the owner of a fleet of oyster luggers piloted by each of my brothers. All of my brothers are married and have children. Some are married to these crazy Cajuns. One is married to an Italian woman. Another is married to an Isleño.
My mother is always badgering me, “Alen, why you no married? Why you no give me the grandchildren? You are the oldest. You children will be special.”
I always reply, “MaMa, I must care for you. I must have the money to provide for your comfort. It is you I am thinking of.”
MaMa always laughs when I say this, but it is true. There is no money with the oysters. Not enough anyway. It does not matter if I live in a communist state. It does not matter if I live in a capitalist state. All I know is the life of an oysterman is hard work and low pay. But here in America, I am boss of my fleet.
I did nothing with the bottle. I merely placed it in the cabin. When we returned home that afternoon, my boat was greeted by my brother’s at the mouth of Adam’s Bay.
“Alen,” he cried. “You must come home right away. MaMa is sick again. She is asking for you. She is dying.”
“Again?” I said. Poor MaMa had been dying for ten years now.
“The doctor says this is definitely her time.”
I hurried my boat as fast at it could travel and returned home. The doctor had been summoned and met me at the door of her sick room.
“Mr. Rak, your mother’s diabetes is getting the best of her. There is not much I can do. This may be her time. She must rest and we must pray.”
I rushed to MaMa’s side and held her tiny hand. Her vision was almost gone from the diabetes.
“Alen, is that you? Where is my eldest? Where is my Alen?” she cried softly. Bepo and Augustin, my brothers, and their wives were nearby. Their faces glowed in the holy candlight offerings.
“I am here, MaMa.”
“Alen, I am afraid I am dying. There is nothing you can do to help me. But there is one thing you can do to make me rest easier: you must promise to marry. You must marry and have children. You are 35 years old. It is time. You will not have to care for me very much longer. It is my dying wish for you to have a family.”
I tried to protest. “But MaMa.”
“No but MaMa. You will marry at Christmastime like your papa and me and name your first born son Bernard, after my father.” She wrapped her bony hand around mine and held it tight as a vise. “Promise me you will do this, Alen, and I will die happy.”
“I promise, MaMa,” I said as I kissed her forehead.
I did not know what to say. I sat there like a slaboumnik. Thankfully, my stunned moment was interrupted by my irritating sister-in-law, Colinda. She brought MaMa some moss tea.
“Colinda, are you sure that tea is good for MaMa?”
“Mais, of course,” she said. “I wouldn’t give her nothing bad. My grand-mere had the sugar diabetes and she drank the tea whenever she felt weak. Grand-mere lived to be 85.”
Colinda pointed to her head. “She had it up here. Grand-mere had the power, yeah. She was a traiteuse, a treater.”
She lifted the cup to MaMa’s mouth and helped her drink. MaMa patted her lips dry with a handkerchief.
“Colinda, did your grand-mere give you the recipe for a love potion?”
“No, MaMa. But even if I did know one, what would he do with it? Bepo says Alen is too picky. This one is too fat, this one is too skinny. This one is not smart, this one is too smart. Bepo says Alen had plenty of chances to marry.”
MaMa patted Colinda’s hand.
“I am not worried. Alen has promised to marry at Christmastime.”
“MaMa, I did not promise to marry at this Christmas,” I protested. “It is too soon. I don’t know where to start.”
But she had fallen asleep and heard none of my words.
My brothers tried not to laugh as I left MaMa’s sickroom. Bepo followed me out the door.
“Hey, Alen, Madame Broussard is available. She is only 65. I’m sure she will make you a lovely wife.”
“Bepo, don’t bother me. I have to check on the oyster catch and get our shipment ready for New Orleans,” I replied.
“It’s not a problem, Alen. We have already loaded our catch on the truck and iced them down. I told Anto to put yours on the truck.”
“Good. I must hurry to New Orleans and deliver them and get back to MaMa.”
“Perhaps you will find a wife on the highway, eh? A wife on the highway? Ha ha ha ha!”
I seized his elbow and yanked it around his back until he shut up.
“Now stand aside. I must check my boat to make sure your idiot son has cleaned it properly.”
As I walked to the dock to give the boat a final check, I thought about my father who was killed in the war. When he left to join the guerillas, he told me to always take care of my mother. I thought I had done a good job of that. I brought her to America and built her a house. But I could do that because I was always vigilant about business. You must always be on guard. You must always check your business partners, even if they are your brothers. You can never be idle for a minute. The Croatian oysterman must always be working. There is always extra burden on the eldest. We don’t have time for such foolishness as wives and children. We must be strong and take care of the others.
Satisfied that the boat had been properly stowed, I put one foot on the gunwale to step up to the dock. Clunk! What was that? What did my brother’s son break now?
I opened the door to the cabin and the Coke bottle I retrieved from the oyster bed rolled toward me. It stopped at my feet and I picked it up. As I scratched the algae away from the glass, the strangest feeling came over me. I put the bottle in my pocket and went to my house to get my suit. Why I did this, I don’t know.
I quickly showered and dressed in my good brown suit. I was fingering the buttons on my double-breasted jacket when, for a just a brief, crazy minute, I felt something that can only be described as happiness. A picture of me in my suit getting married on New Year’s Day flashed though my head. There I stood in the St. Louis Cathedral with a priest and my bride, whose face I could not see. I felt—good.
“Alen!”
I recovered from my idyll. “Bepo! What is it? What has your good-for-nothing son broke now?”
“Nothing. I have been calling you for five minutes. You have been standing there like a deaf budala.”
“What is it you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“I’ve come to tell you that I put petrol in the gas tank,” Bepo said. “Alen, you are going to New Orleans to sell the oysters at Teebaugh’s, no?”
“Yes. That is what I am doing.”
“Then why are you wearing your good suit?”
“It’s none of your business why I am wearing my good suit,” I said. “Now shut up and get out of my way.” I brushed past him and jumped behind the wheel.
Bepo came up to the door. “Alen, I hear that Louis Prima is at the Flim Flam Club tonight. I also hear the Flim Flam Club is a good place to meet women. There should be a lot of people in the French Quarter tonight. It will be New Year’s Day tomorrow. Many will go to the big football game. You know, the Sugar Bowl.”
“That is hardly my concern. I merely want to make a novena for MaMa at St. Louis. Now I will be back late tonight. Prepare the boats for tomorrow. The holiday season is the best price for oysters.” I gunned the engine and drove to the city.
I reached the French Quarter by dark and found my way through the back alleys to Teebaugh’s Oyster House and Restaurant. I was greeted well by Antoine, the head chef. He was from Marseille and had been in America for 10 years.
“Alen, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s. I trust all is well?” he asked.
I was telling him about MaMa and her crazy request that I marry during Christmas when Boo, the headwaiter burst into the kitchen with a tray of uneaten raw oysters.
“Mr. Alen, did you bring some big oysters this time? There’s a customer who say the oysters too small. And she say they ain’t salty enough,” he says to me.
“Impossible! This is the best time to fish the oysters in Louisiana. They should taste their best. Who is this woman?”
He opened the kitchen door. “There she is. The brunette at the large table of 12. She with her father’s party. Mr. Beauchamp is a very good customer from up river. He brought his office staff to go to the Sugar Bowl. I hear she an old maid.”
Antoine said, “She looks young for an old maid. She is quite a beautiful lady, no? She look like she would be a handful for her husband. No wonder she is not married.”
Antoine gave me a sly wink. “Alen, why don’t you bring her a dozen of your oysters?”
???
Daddy was a loyal and fervent supporter of Ole Miss football and when the Rebels were invited to the Sugar Bowl, he immediately made plans to take the office staff and entertain a few customers in New Orleans.
For the last three years he patiently taught me the ins and outs of the insurance business and I had done well. But still he longed for grandchildren and every now and then he tried to fix me up with a beau. I was to be introduced to a key client in New Orleans at Teebaugh’s. It was Mr. Crappanza, an auto dealership owner. His wife had died two years ago and for some unknown reason my father thought we’d hit it off. We didn’t.
I suppose I was in a bad mood. I developed a run in my nylons as we got in the taxi and my high heels were beginning to hurt. I must have taken out my frustration on that poor waiter and told him his oysters were inedible.
I excused myself to go to the ladies room and made my way to the narrow hall when a large, dark man carrying a tray of iced oysters on the half-shell exited the kitchen and knocked me flat on my, excuse the expression, fanny.
???
 “You clumsy oaf,” she said to me. “Can you not see I am in a hurry?”
This disrespectful talk from an American woman was most unattractive and now I was insulted. First, she had criticized my oysters. Now I was an oaf?
“I beg your pardon, my Gospo?ica,” I replied. “It is apparent to me that you have no consideration for the working oysterman or anyone else for that matter. But since I am a gentleman I will help you to your feet.” I bent down to help her up and slipped on the spilled ice just as she was regaining her footing. My head struck hers in the process and she fell to the floor again. I fell on top of her. The oyster tray spun noisily on the floor.