Wading Home Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Storm Warning

  Chapter 1 - New Orleans, August 2005

  Chapter 2 - Tokyo, August 2005

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Two Years Later

  Acknowledgements

  Praise

  Copyright Page

  To my families on both sides, the Story/Williams and the Boswells,

  for love, and for history

  Storm Warning

  Louisiana, 2005

  Years before the night the storm made history, it had already earned its name. Those who’d witnessed the worst of them argued that when The Big One finally appeared, it would signal the end of everything in its path. There would be nothing left except the memory of its perfect inception—how it reared its monstrous head over the tropics, then barreled through warm gulf waters that whipped its winds into frenzy before it roared across the thin barrier islands off the mainland toward the coast.

  So when the big storm finally trounced in like an unwelcomed though not unexpected visitor, birds flew to cover and a whole city crouched in fear. It pounded the sandy gulf shores, then arced east as the surging waters battered shoddy levees to rage through the city like no other flood before it. Afterwards, 200-year old trees lay uprooted. Hand-built houses passed down through five generations floated away and fell apart. And the lives that survived were forever changed.

  Upriver, though, where the winds were calmer, another storm formed under clear skies and bright sun and in the sleep-quiet darkness of night. It shaped in the clouded minds of men, gathered force with ambition, surged with greed and lust. But the uprooting of lives would be as heartbreaking as any hurricane.

  A perfect spread of earth one hundred or so miles up from New Orleans, Silver Creek Plantation had begun in 1855 on a whim, a gamble, a bluff made with tongue in cheek. A Frenchman—preacher, planter, and dabbler in games of chance—sat down to a card table with a pair of deuces and got up with 200 acres of God’s garden. A place where tall pines and cypresses and sweetgum shaded the fertile earth, egrets and herons swam through thick air sweetened with honeysuckle and jasmine, and in the creek shallows that necklaced the land like a strand of gurgling silver, crawfish grew nearly as plump as the preacher/gambler’s fists.

  Under the sweating brows of the Frenchman’s thirteen new slaves, new life sprang from the freshly tilled soil. Year after year, the rich earth bore crops so magnificent that the Frenchman could scarcely believe his eyes—there was corn as tall as young pines, sugar stalks with the reach of cypress trees, and a cotton crop that stirred the envy of the whole parish.

  But if Silver Creek was the preacher’s passion, his true love was the young Ashanti woman with soft, almond eyes and a face shaped like a heart. Anyone who saw the two of them together might wonder who was master and who was slave. And either way they guessed, they would have been right. For as much as the papers the Frenchman owned bound her to him, he was as much bound to her by the grip she held on his heart.

  Like the land itself, the Frenchman and the African woman bore generations of hearty fruit, beginning with a son who grew tall, steel-eyed, and strong, and as much in love with the land as the master who sired him. For generations to come it was passed down from father to son, bouncing between legend and fact, that the pear-shaped piece of land was a paradise to which no harm could come. Nothing could stunt its bounty or its beauty, and nothing could pry it from the hands of the Fortiers.

  And nothing did, until the season of the big storm.

  That year, when the old home folks sat on their porches, they shook their heads and sucked their teeth at the bulldozers that pulled up next to the shotgun cabins, and watched meadows of wildflowers and forests of pine fall to the cold sprawl of golf courses and strip mall parking lots. Some chalked it up to the simple business of men in suits, said the old times were done, and the precious land was too rich anyway for the widowed man who’d chef’d in the kitchens of New Orleans. That the drumbeat and forward march of progress was just the way of things. But others thought there was more to it: that a mysterious death by the roadside was really no accident, but one man’s heartless plan.

  Storm nights. A deep, eerie light. The air heavy, thick, and hot. The swaying branch-dance of live oaks, the scramble of birds and squirrels and dogs to safe havens clear of harm’s way. When he was a boy growing up on the land far upriver before he moved to the Crescent City, the chef’s young eyes had opened wide at his father’s tales of the storms down near where the river met the gulf. The ones that ripped trees from their beds and slammed houses into each other, or picked up trucks and tossed them like toys. Or stirred the waters to rise and swallow everything in sight.

  But on this eve of the hurricane, his aging eyes are calm, his mind crowded with other thoughts: a piece of paradise in peril miles away, a father he loved in death, and a son he loves more than life. A son who can scarcely find the land that is his birthright on a map.

  The old chef looks out the kitchen window at the still-quiet sky over the city and thinks of the places he calls home, the one up where the creek winds through and the one here at the river’s mouth, wondering how long either will survive. He tends his stove—a pot of red beans and rice will surely get him through whatever the days ahead might bring—and waits for the storm.

  1

  New Orleans, August 2005

  Across the whole city stillness lurks like a shadowy intruder: no noise of cars, trucks, buses or streetcars, and instead an unseemly quiet, except for the rustle of the cypress leaves. On the river near its crescent, a moored barge floats, a silent steamboat hugs the dock. And nearby, the Vieux Carre stands oddly muted, its rowdiest bars quiet as an empty church.

  Up and down the blocks of old Treme, amid the rows of century-old wood-framed houses where neighbors’ music usually seeps from open doors and windows (the oldest Carmier boy’s sousaphone hoots, or Cordelia Lautrec’s little daughter’s piano scales) an eerie music holds, all the random noises of the neighborhood yielding to the stealthy overtures of a storm.

  In Simon’s kitchen, a streak of late summer sun angles through backdoor blinds and sends a blade of gold across his stove. The old man stirs a huge iron pot of beans (only Camellia brand will do) for his domino-night supper of red beans and rice. Leaning a bristly chin over the pot, tasting a spoonful of the liquor, he sprinkles a dash of salt with artful, experienced hands as the steam fogs his glasses and his cataract-weakened eyes squint into the pungent whiff of garlic and thyme. He dips the spoon in for another taste, then glances out the thin pane of the backdoor window at the stilllight sky, and sucks his tongue. The sun, usually in slow retreat on August evenings, will surely fade quickly tonight.

  With no neighbors’ music to entertain his dinner preparation—most have left town for higher ground, and only the cash-strapped or fearless have hunkered down to brave out the night—Simon hums an old Pops Armstrong standard in a warbled, gritty baritone: Give meee… a-kiss, to-build, a-dream-onnn…. He keeps stirring the beans as the starch breaks down and thickens the soup, wielding the splintered oak spoon Auntie Maree gave him some sixty years ago. With a clean white hanky from his back pocket, he blots the sweat beading on his forehead and turns down the flam
e.

  A loud thwack from the backyard breaks the quiet.

  “Aw. No,” Simon groans, knowing what’s happened.

  It’s surely what he’s feared for years. Simon wipes greasy fingers on a dish towel, slaps it down onto the counter, and opens the back door to assess the damage.

  Sure enough. The giant live oak—planted by his daddy on the day Simon was born seventy-six years ago—now stands an unbalanced amputee, its long bottom limb lying on the ground.

  “Ummph, ummph, ummph.” Simon shakes his head, rests a hand on his hip. That branch was rotten for sure; too many storm seasons, too many nights like tonight. But he pushes back a thought: Could be an omen—something about to break apart tonight, something about to change.

  Stooping down to the ground slowly and favoring the weak place in his back, he drags the branch to the side of the house, opens the storage shed door, and hauls it inside, lungs winded and legs stiff. He dusts his dry hands on the legs of his khaki trousers. With a wild storm on its way, that big branch could easily take flight and slam somebody’s window, like what happened with the one they called Betsy. Maybe even his window. That wouldn’t do.

  Maybe he should board up his windows like the DuBois’s up the street. Or maybe he should have, before. Too late now. Simon pulls his cotton shirt collar around his neck against the wind whipping through the tall pecans that separate his yard from the Moutons’. The air is heavy, thick and warmish, with clouds curling in quick choreography, the breeze carrying the faintest scent of salt water drifting in from the gulf, the sky changing fast. Looking up in awe, Simon smiles; despite their frightening intent, the shape-shifting clouds are beautiful, plump tufts of gun-metal gray, silver-rimmed, reluctant light still glazing through.

  On the west side of the house, next to a pile of chopped wood along the chain link fence, Simon’s herb garden shivers, looking a little wind-whipped. Maybe he should cover it in burlap? He grows everything himself for his cooking, always has, like Auntie Maree taught him. More than thirty years as head chef at a top drawer French Quarter restaurant hadn’t dulled his taste for the freshest basil and thyme he could get, and even now, six years after his last shift at Parmenter’s, he still demanded the best ingredients for his own table, even though he mostly dined alone.

  He stoops and snaps off a leaf of the lavender, crushes it in his fingertips, inhales the sweet scent as a slender face blossoms in his mind. Lavender in the garden had been Ladeena’s idea, and on her final birthday he had surprised her with a sachet of homemade potpourri for her sickbed pillow—dried lavender leaves, orange and lemon rind, store-bought cloves. If he’d known the smile his wife surrendered up at that moment would be her last, he’d have framed it in his memory. The other herbs—the oregano, the mint, the basil (now tall as the fence)—bow under the hand he runs across their heads. He will have a lot to repair tomorrow.

  Simon glances at his watch; the beans have been on almost an hour now. Sylvia, mad as she was at him, had already said she wasn’t coming, not even to say goodbye. And if none of the men are going to stop by for a bowl or two of the best red beans and rice in town, just as they had done for the last seven years, well then, tough luck for them. This andouille sausage was the best he’d ever made.

  He and his buddies in The Elegant Gents were among the oldest members of the neighborhood’s Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, and didn’t limit their gatherings to the occasional parades through the neighborhood, when they’d strut like black kings in their handstitched shirts of blue paisley and matching hats, white suspenders, and Johnston and Murphy shoes, the hot brass band riffs licking the wind. No, unlike some of the other S&P’s, the Gents were like brothers—friends, old and true. And true friends, at least his, made a point of laughing and lying and signifying over cooking pots and dominoes once a week, come hell or high water.

  But not hurricane.

  A couple of the men, Eddie Lee Daumier and Pierre “Champagne” Simpson, had called, but most hadn’t bothered, just assuming that this time even Simon had the good sense to run for higher ground. Never mind those others, they said, this storm was The One. Hadn’t the mayor and the governor been on the TV all weekend? True, he hadn’t seen that in a while. He’d heard the men in the white shirts and loosened ties talking from the hurricane center, their up-all-night eyes reddened, their voices scratchy with fatigue, and felt for a moment a slight chill. This time there was something fearful in their tone. If he wasn’t mistaken, the governor sure did look a little pale. And the mayor too, bald head shining, his slick, pressed look betraying the scary news, was sounding his own alarm. Get out. Get out of the city now.

  Simon had flicked away that chill, gave it no more thought. News folk and politicians had a way of exaggerating these things. But the fact that so many around him were leaving this time did make him swallow hard, scratch the back of his head. He’d never seen such a rush of cars lined up to the corner, crowded to the rooflines with boxes and bags. But like he told Raymond LeDoux down at the Field’s Grocery, he hadn’t left for Betsy and he wasn’t leaving now. The vandals and looters would have to move on to another house for their business. Besides, he was a Fortier, and a Fortier did not leave his home to the whims of storms and thieves.

  A car horn toots, the rattling complaint of a well-used Toyota Camry announcing Sylvia’s arrival. She must have changed her mind. Simon’s face breaks into a wide grin. Maybe there’d be company for this storm night after all.

  Simon calls out as Sylvia parks along his front fence, “Just in time. Red beans’ll be ready in about twenty minutes.”

  My, my. Looking good today, but didn’t she always? Sylvia McConnell, wearing her sixty-eight years gently, stylishly, steps out in green Capri pants and a yellow cotton top, leans her backside against the doors, slender arms folded across her chest and ankles crossed. A scarf of light blue silk tied under her chin stands between her freshly curled and dyed hair and the capricious winds of Louisiana summer. Even now, Simon notes, even in retreat from a hurricane, she found time to keep her standing appointment at Miss Lou’s.

  “My sister and them called from Shreveport. The brother-in-law is bringing his mama, but they still got extra room if I need to bring somebody else.”

  A divorced English teacher from Wheatley High and old acquaintance of Simon’s and Ladeena’s from Blessed Redeemer Congregational, Sylvia reveled in the freedom of retirement, spending most of her days playing bridge, singing high soprano in the gospel choir, occasionally watching Simon cook, and listening to his animated diatribes on his life’s loves—cooking, his talented and smart-as-a-whip son, Julian, and a perfect piece of land called Silver Creek.

  A year after Ladeena died, when the shine of his grief had dulled, Simon’s padlocked world had unlatched to invite Sylvia in. Time had tamed the rough edges of mourning and Simon needed a new comfort—the living, breathing kind.

  On a Wednesday morning, when his car battery failed and he had no way to prayer meeting, he remembered last Sunday, the high soprano floating above all the others in “Lead Me, Guide Me.” Sister McConnell gave him a ride and, in time, a reason to dream again. She was funny, spirited like Ladeena, with a twist of sass. She could cook up a mean etouffee (though not as good as his) and whenever his spirits darkened, there was that laugh that could soften a man’s heart and make his blues disappear like swamp mist beneath a full sun.

  In the years since they began keeping company, time, friendship and a mutual understanding had distilled their conversations into shorthand: glances replaced whole paragraphs, sentences rolled out unspoken in a raised hand, a turned head.

  He recognizes Sylvia’s look now—raised eyebrows, mouth twisted—and shoots up a hand to ward off the argument brewing in those eyes.

  “Now don’t even start. I already told you what I’m doin’.”

  Shaking her head, she turns to look up at the sky as a heavy gust sweeps through the trees.

  “Don’t be a fool, Simon. You need to get out of this place.” />
  And for the next three minutes straight, she rails on about his foolishness. The storm will be the worst ever! Everybody with four wheels and half a brain is leavin! And so on.

  When she sees his eyes shut down, the thick-bunched veins in his temple twitch, and his mouth clamp tight, she recognizes her cue to stop. For a moment, they look at each other in unyielding silence. Sylvia’s glance falls to Simon’s khaki pants, where the tree branch has left a swath of dirt.

  “What happened to you?”

  Looking down, Simon scrapes his thumbnail at the L-shaped mark. “Aw, damn oak. Lost a branch.”

  Sylvia sighs. “Ummm hmmm, see there. Already.” She sucks her teeth. “Somebody trying to tell you something.”

  Ignoring the fact that he’d had the same thought only a few minutes ago, he turns to walk into the house. “Drive careful. They already talking about traffic backed up. You’d better get on your way if you going.”

  For all his testiness, it might have been her bossy strain, her spitfire nature that had kept him interested; it was as if Ladeena had left a little bit of herself in this woman to watch after him, remind him when he was being careless. He’d liked that—being looked after, being cared for. Even when he didn’t listen, even when he stiffened his shoulders against the headwind of her complaints.

  At the steps he turns back to her, his tone kinder. “I’ll save you some of my andouille. You not going to believe how good these beans are. Best pot I ever made.”

  A feathery breeze ruffles her scarf as she pulls it closer. “Does that pot float? You best put those beans in some Tupperware. Eat well, baby, cause you’ll need your strength in case you have to swim.”

  He ignores that, too. “Sure you don’t want to stay? I’ll make it worth your while.” He winks.

  Laughing, she shakes her head again. “Simon Fortier. I’ll be praying for your sorry butt in my sister’s dry house.” She gets in the car and leans an elbow out the window.