Seen It All and Done the Rest (22 page)

FORTY-ONE

B
y the end of the day, we were almost too tired to take Louie up on his offer to feed us.
Almost.
Aretha had plans with her daughter and Victor brushed off our invitation before I could fully extend it, but Zora and I went home to shower and change before Abbie picked us up at just before eight. It had been a long day’s work, but we had already made a visible dent and that was enough to satisfy me.

It was going to be a big job, even with all of our hands working, but we had a plan to keep us on track. Aretha had worked out a schedule of what needed to be done in what order so we wouldn’t be doing drywall before the electrician finished. But all of that came later. Today, all we had done was bag and re-bag trash, inside and out, load up Aretha’s truck and let her haul it to the dump. Abbie and I worked outside and Victor and Zora worked inside.

By six o’clock, we were all exhausted. The water wasn’t on yet and I worried about where Victor would go to clean up, but I knew better than to ask him. I got the feeling his pride was all he had to call his own and anything that threatened it touched off some serious alarms. He and Zora seemed to get along fine. They tossed enough trash out of that house to fill two loads on Aretha’s truck all by themselves.

Louie lived on the second floor of a well-kept four-unit building on Ashby Street, and we pulled into the driveway as we had been instructed to do. As soon as we stepped out of the car, we could hear zydeco music coming from an upstairs window, along with the aroma of something that made me know how hungry I was. Zora found Louie’s name on the mailbox, and we rang the bell. He buzzed us in without requiring any verbal ID and stood smiling at the top of the steps, holding a wooden spoon and wearing a big white apron. The sounds of zydeco king Clifton Chenier were pouring out of the door behind him.

“Ladies,” he said, “welcome, welcome, welcome!”

We followed him into his apartment, which was so small, the four of us seemed to fill up the place like a party when everybody arrives at the same moment. Or maybe it was just the music. Or the smells wafting in from the kitchen. Louie’s place was offering the two things New Orleans is known for—good music and good food.

I introduced Zora and thanked him for having us.

“Thanks for doing me this favor,” he said to me when Abbie had stepped into the small bedroom to return a call from Peachy. Louie had just spoken to him and conveyed Peachy’s apologies that he couldn’t get away from the restaurant to join us. Zora was in the living room, dancing by herself, and Louie was moving around in the cramped kitchen with a grace that was almost as sensual as the smell of food. It was like watching a really good dancer. I sipped the champagne he had offered and enjoyed the show. He was dishing out steaming bowls of gumbo and cutting huge hunks of steaming corn bread that had been cooked in the skillet the old-fashioned way. There was also a big pot full of steamed shrimp and crayfish, a pan of blackened catfish, another of jambalaya, and one more pot of red beans which I was sure would provide the perfect topping for the fluffy white rice he had just removed from the heat.

I surveyed the feast and my stomach growled again. No way Louie’s chef could resist this offering. If he liked good food, this probably made him weep.

“So how many of these fabulous dishes will we now be seeing on the menu at that hotshot hotel you work for?”

Louie carried two bowls of gumbo over to the tiny kitchen table. “None of these made the cut, Miss Josephine.”

“None of them?”
Impossible.

“Not a single one.” He set the other two bowls down and put the plate of corn bread in the center of the table. “That’s why this is really kind of a celebration.”

“I’m all for that,” I said. “What are we celebrating?”

He looked at me and untied his apron. “I quit.”

“You quit your job?” I was surprised. He had told me at Abbie’s that Atlanta had a surfeit of good chefs and that he was lucky to have found a position, even if it was less than perfect.

“The thing is, cooking’s not just a job to me,” he said. “It means something. How it looks, how it smells, how it tastes. How people feel when they eat it. All that matters to me.”

“I can see that,” I said, smiling at the beautiful table he had laid out for us.

He smiled back. “I’ve given up just about everything else I can think of already. This is the one thing I figure I gotta keep doing the way it’s supposed to be done or I’m not what I say I am.”

Zora’s dance must have come to an end at the same time Peachy and Abbie said their goodbyes because before I could say another word, both my crew members suddenly poked their heads around the door, their noses quivering like rabbits’.

“Anything we can do to help?” Zora said. Abbie was grinning at me over Zora’s shoulder.

“You can sit down and eat this food,” Louie said, pulling out a chair for her with one hand and one for Abbie with the other.

“Peachy’s sorry he can’t be here,” Abbie said. “He said to tell you, and I quote, ‘If you have enough time to cook for us, you could be down there cooking for him.’”

Louie laughed, pulled out another chair for me, and sat down, too. “Duly noted,” he said, reaching for my hand and Zora’s on his other side. We lowered our heads.

“Bless this food,” Louie said, “and these friends who come to share it. Amen.”

“Amen,” we all said, glad Louie hadn’t felt the need for a longer communication with the Almighty. The food he had put before us was a beautiful, aromatic distraction and we were only human. We helped ourselves to the corn bread and picked up our oversize gumbo spoons. After that, there wasn’t much conversation for a while. Not that we didn’t have anything to say. Just that it’s rude to talk with your mouth full.

FORTY-TWO

I
like him,” Zora said, after Abbie dropped us off and we had taken our showers and climbed into bed together in my room for what had become our nightly ritual.

“Me too,” I said. “He’s been through a lot.”

“Abbie told me,” she said, snuggling down a little deeper into the pillows. “He didn’t seem to be too upset about quitting his job.”

“They don’t deserve him.”

“Maybe he’ll come and work with us.”

The idea hadn’t occurred to me. “As a chef?”

Zora giggled. “We can’t afford a chef yet, Mafeenie.”

I loved that “yet.” Showed confidence, always a big part of projects like this. Faith was a big help, too.

“Well, what did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he can be a part of our crew,” she said. “Abbie said he told her he used to have a big garden behind his restaurant. He grew everything on the menu.”

“Did he ever grow any sunflowers?”

“I think they grow wild in New Orleans,” she said, yawning.

“Everything grows wild in New Orleans,” I said, pulling the spread up around her.

“Even Louie?”

“I’m sure he had his moments,” I said. “Are you sleeping in here tonight?”

“Can I?” She was half asleep already.

“Of course.” I leaned down to kiss her goodnight.

She was asleep before I had a chance to turn out the light, but I just lay there for a minute trying to imagine what Louie being wild might look like. By the time I dozed off, I wasn’t any closer, but the next morning, I remembered the sound of zydeco in my dreams. Old habits are hard to break.

FORTY-THREE

O
n Wednesday, our crew expanded by one. Aretha and Zora were trying to finish up the last of the blue front doors, so another pair of hands was right on time. Abbie and Victor and I were raking up the endless detritus that still cluttered the front yard when I glanced up and saw Louie getting off the bus at the bottom of the hill. He was wearing jeans, an army jacket, work boots, and a cap. He was carrying a bigger version of the red cooler in Victor’s room, which he had reached back into the bus to retrieve.

“Is that Louie?” Abbie said.

“Sure is,” I said. “Did you know he was coming?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Did you?”

“Nope.”

Her signifyin’ look returned. “Maybe he wanted to surprise you.”

“The more, the merrier,” Victor grumbled, watching Louie starting up the driveway.

Victor worked hard, but he complained hard, too. And continuously. I hoped his disposition would improve as we all got to know each other, but so far, he seemed to move between sullen and surly with equal regularity.

I waved at Louie and so did Abbie, but his hands were full with the cooler so all he could do was nod and smile.

“What’s all that he’s carrying. Lunch?”

“Cross your fingers,” I said, mentally crossing mine. “This brother can burn.”

We headed up the lawn to the house as Louie gently deposited the cooler on the back steps.

“Welcome to my wreck,” I said.

“It’s a work in progress,” Abbie said. “I’m so glad you came.”

He smiled. “Since my services are no longer required downtown, I thought maybe you might be able to put me to work.”

Victor was looking at the cooler, and suddenly I wondered if he was hungry. Was seventy-five dollars a week enough for him to feed himself? Maybe I should make it a hundred.

“I think we’ve got a rake with your name on it,” I said.

“I’m your man,” Louie said. “I’m a rakin’ somethin’ when I put my mind to it.”

We were taking entirely too much time with chitchat to suit Victor. We had already agreed that noon would be our regular break, and it was eleven forty-five. Louie turned to Victor and held out his hand.

“I’m Louie Baptiste.”

“Victor Causey.” They shook hands. “What’s in the cooler?”

“A little of this and that,” Louie said, popping off the top to reveal a veritable feast. He had thick sandwiches in plastic bags, deviled eggs, potato salad and cole slaw in Tupperware, and a jar of huge red dill pickles. Everything was neatly packed on a bed of ice. We had been raking and hauling since early this morning and I was suddenly so hungry, I almost swooned. “Anybody want lunch?”

“Now you’re talking,” Victor said, with his first smile of the day.

“You look like a roast beef man,” Louie said, handing Victor a hearty sandwich that could have fed a small family.

Abbie had a blanket in the trunk of her car and she spread it on the ground like we were guests at a Sunday school picnic. Abbie and I both had turkey and we split the biggest pickle between us. Louie said people in Louisiana and Mississippi soak the pickles in red Kool-Aid and then eat them. It started off with kids and now everybody was eating them. He couldn’t resist trying it. This was his first batch, and while it sounded awful, the taste wasn’t bad at all.

The weather was cooperating with enough sunshine to warm up the afternoon like it was already spring and we ate like we never would again. I suddenly missed Howard. He would have laughed to see me sitting on an old green blanket, in front of a broke-up house, eating red dill pickles, and loving every minute of it.

“What are you planting?” Louie said, looking down the lawn at the plot we were clearing.

“Sunflowers,” Abbie said. “Maybe some roses since that’s what used to grow here.”

He looked surprised. “Nothing to eat?”

I shook my head. “Not this time.”

“Not even some herbs?”

He sounded like the idea of having a garden that didn’t feed you even a little bit was inconceivable.

Abbie looked at me. “We hadn’t really thought about herbs.”

Of course the idea appealed to her. I had to nip this in the bud. If I let Abbie start adding things, my whole budget would be spent at the nursery buying tiny little tomato plants and a few sprigs of basil.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We’ve already got our hands full, don’t you think?”

“They grow real easy,” Louie said. “Some basil, a little sage, maybe some rosemary.”

It sounded like that Simon and Garfunkel song.

“That would be lovely,” Abbie said. “Especially since it’s a peace garden.”

“What do herbs have to do with peace?” I said. “I thought the flowers were symbolic.”

Abbie smiled and turned to Louie. “Do you think herbs have a place in a peace garden?”

Louie smiled back. “Well, I never saw anybody fighting when they’re eating good.”

“Amen, brother,” Victor said, and looked at me. “You weren’t kidding when you said he could burn.”

Louie glanced over at me, and suddenly I felt embarrassed that I had paid him a compliment.

“So how much is it going to cost me to grow these exotic spices?” I said.

Abbie laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Louie and I can work something out.”

Knowing them, they already had.