Chapter Two #2
I see Mama inside in her red cowboy hat and red cowboy boots.
Her cowgirl phase. Her throaty laugh as she poured peanuts into my sister’s Coca-Cola bottle while purring to Ermine Taylor about how there were no good-looking men in this town.
Mabry clutching my hand, laughing as I pretended to smoke my candy cigarette.
That memory is quickly replaced by another that recalls a name I’ve so far kept out of my head.
But seeing this old place brings it charging back.
Ms. Ermine and her husband, Mr. Billy, taught me to use the register the summer I turned fourteen.
I was ringing up a customer when a long-legged creature with tanned arms and a lean body sauntered in and promptly ignored me, making me wish for the first time that I liked makeup as much as my mother.
“Travis Arceneaux,” I whisper.
His name on my lips conjures up images of late nights on the levee and long hot days on Shadow Bluff’s front porch.
But teenage infatuation isn’t all it conjures up.
I shut out the next thought as if I’ve slammed a door.
The ability to compartmentalize is a gift every therapist should embrace.
A way to keep the negative aspects of the job from seeping into everyday life—the patients you can’t help, the frustrations, the trauma of children.
It may also be the only thing that can get me through being back in this town.
I refocus on the road and slow down even more.
If I don’t, I’ll miss the narrow unpaved path I’m looking for.
When I spoke to the lawyer Mr. LaSalle yesterday, he sounded a bit perplexed that I’d be traveling to Broken Bayou for some very old boxes.
He offered to ship them, but I declined, explaining I had a few days off work and really wanted to revisit the town where I’d spent my summers.
That’s when he told me the Aunts donated their home and land to the local preservation society, and that group was in the process of taking ownership, but he was sure they wouldn’t mind if I stayed there while in town.
I agreed before I realized what I was agreeing to, and now that I’m this close, and after the events at the Sack and Save, I wonder if I should’ve chosen a hotel in Baton Rouge instead.
A telephone pole with a Missing poster stapled onto it marks my turn.
The eyes of a young woman watch me from the torn paper.
Is this the missing schoolteacher Mama spoke of?
I try to place her, maybe someone from this town, from my past, but I can’t.
Like with Johnette, I don’t recognize her.
So much of this town stayed sharp and in focus, while other parts dulled and faded like that picture.
There’s a number to call with information, and I hope for her sake, and her family’s, she’s not in that bayou.
But the news vans I saw earlier might indicate otherwise.
I turn and crawl down the narrow dead-end lane, through a tunnel of live oaks.
Twenty years have passed, yet it still looks the same, overgrown and remote.
The closer I get to the end of the road, the more shallow my breathing becomes, like I’m somehow going up in elevation instead of driving below sea level.
I stop at an open gate at the dead end. The same gate Mama charged in her cutoffs and boots, flying over it the cowgirl way, as she called it.
Hands high on the top rung and flipping her body over like the Kilgore Rangerette she never was.
Always reminding Mabry and me she would have been if her mama hadn’t been so drunk that she’d been unable to drive Krystal Lynn to the tryouts.
I glance at my phone, swipe it open. I want to call Mabry, tell her where I am, but she won’t answer. She was so angry the last time we spoke that she promised we’d never talk again. I figured it was an empty threat. A way to scare me. But she kept her promise.
I decide to text instead.
Guess who? You’ll never believe where I am.
I inhale a slow breath and release it even slower; then I pull through the gate.
Dusk has settled in among the thick, twisted live oaks flanking the narrow driveway.
Veiny roots sprout from the ground and spread in all directions.
No manicured lawn or landscaping here. The Aunts always complained about how the trees’ shadows prevented any grass from growing, but from the looks of things now, weeds grow plenty.
They choke every square inch of the yard.
Something moves deep in one of the shadows.
Probably a raccoon or possum looking for food.
Or maybe it’s just the ghosts of two little girls running around in oversize Hanes T-shirts, catching lightning bugs in mason jars.
I picture Mama running around with us, her T-shirt always shorter and tighter.
The Aunts yelling at her from the porch to “Put some britches on, Krystal Lynn!” Mama, of course, ignored them.
We brought the full jars inside, up to the front bedroom.
Mabry and Mama jumped into bed, and I turned out the lights and opened the jars.
Tiny dots of light filled the room, and Mabry whispered, “Magic.” And we all fell asleep, watching the light show, Mama humming “Delta Dawn.” But the magic ended the next morning when Mama and I awoke to Mabry’s wails and small dead carcasses covering the beds.
I teared up as well. “I didn’t know it would kill them.”
Mama smoothed Mabry’s hair, pulled me in close, and in a rare moment of clarity, said, “Shhh, sweet girls. Of course you didn’t. Sometimes we do things for fun and don’t realize the consequences. That’s just how life is.”
Every inch of this property holds a story from my childhood. I wonder how long I’ll be able to live among them.
The old house looms in front of me in a hulking mass.
Greek Revival columns that have seen better days hold up a sagging porch that looks like it’s given up.
Weeds have made their way here as well, twisting through the wooden slats as if nature decided to take over since the Aunts were no longer around.
White peeling paint covers most of the exterior of the house, interrupted by bare patches of wood and windows with a thick layer of grime.
Shadow Bluff is not like its closest neighbors to the west: the stately Rosedown with its extravagant gardens and smooth columns, or the haunted Myrtles Plantation with its 125-foot veranda and Baccarat crystal chandeliers.
No, Shadow Bluff is different. Smaller, not on hundreds of acres, and certainly not fifty-three thousand square feet like Nottoway, a few towns over.
Shadow Bluff lives in the shadows of the moss-hung oaks in a town nobody wants to visit.
The local Historic Preservation Society may have more on their hands than they bargained for.
The summer air feels like a heavy blanket when I fling open the car door.
Frogs croak in the shadows of the large oaks that give this property its name.
Bugs flit around my face. I grab my things and crunch across the oystershell drive toward the ramshackle porch.
My handgun slides into view through my open duffel.
I added it last minute, along with a box of bullets.
“A girl’s day out,” Amy said about our conceal-carry class.
Laughing, she added, “It’s practically mandatory in Texas.
” I shot ten different guns in our class that day, but this handgun fit me best. Even my ex-husband argued it might not be a horrible idea to have protection.
A single woman living alone in a big city and gaining notoriety. Notoriety. Jesus.
I drop my bag on the old porch and stare at the heavy front door.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes shut.
I could turn around, get back in my car, and go back to the mess in Fort Worth.
It’s not too late. I could tell the lawyer to throw Mama’s boxes in the trash.
But as I open my eyes, I know I’ll do neither.
This is not just about old boxes. It’s not just about running away from public humiliation.
It’s about protecting what means the most to me: my career.
I lift up the front mat and find the key the lawyer told me about and slide it into the lock. Mama’s young voice fills my head. The one from that night down here so long ago. Soaked in vodka, warm, and slurred in my seventeen-year-old ear as I leaned over her bed.
Get rid of it, sweet girl.
I turn the key.