Sketcher (2 page)

Two

See, how the cussin' started was we had this five-hundred-gallon water tank outside the house, and it was running low, almost empty, and that was slowing up work in the kitchen. Pops and Pa Campbell had been braggin' that they could use a mud pump and PVC pipe to dig a well until they hit ground-water. But they hadn't done much more than the braggin', cos those two can't stand each other long enough to get anything done. So when Pops made the mistake to ask Moms how far along his dinner was, she answered him the way Doug says women do when they've been stewin' about somethin' for a while.

“They got running water on Hayne Boulevard, Alrick.”

At this point Pops could still have escaped by just playin' deaf.

“Huh... what?”

“I
said
, they got running water on Hayne Boulevard.”

Once she repeated herself, it was too late. The poor guy dug into a radio he was fixin'. Couldn't even look around to face her.

“Oh... I see. Well... um, we got running water too, baby! And as soon as Pa Campbell helps me dig down to that groundwater, we won't have to be hauling water any more.”

“They say you could drink the water straight from the tap on Hayne Boulevard, Alrick.”

“OK, but I'm fixin' to dig a thirty-foot well with a distillation unit that's going to be the best damn distillation and desalination unit in the swamps, Valerie.”

“You mean this year? This year, Nineteen Eighty-one? You got so many intentions and ambitions, this world is just too
small for you and the clock is short on time, Alrick Beaumont.”

“Well, what else do you want, Valerie? I know this ain't your Hayne Boulevard, but we doing the best we can – look!”

And that's when he pushed back his chair and got up, and Tony started doing a quiet drum-roll sound effect with his mouth, cos he knew it was time once again for the
Grand Tour of our One-Room Swamp Shack
. My old man stood in the middle of the room and turned around three-sixty degrees, pointing with his left hand at things you really couldn't see, cos they were prob'ly outside in the mud or hidin' behind the mountains of stuff he was repairin'.

“Val. Look. We got a 45-kW generator with a Caterpillar D90 engine – brand-new – plus four eighteen-wheeler batteries for back-up. We got two four-by-two-foot KeroGas stoves for cookin' and bakin', a forty-channel Cobra CB radio – that's the latest, with more output than they allow in these parts. It's peaked and tuned and it's got a thirty-foot antenna outside, so you can talk to whoever you want. We got two HF-1200 walkie-talkies jus' in case someone needs to go into the woods. For godssake, we got the city right next door, Val!”

She just kept choppin' carrots without lookin' up. Instead she answered real soft, like the Wisdom Book of Proverbs say you should:

“You're right Alrick: we got everything we need
right
here. Everything...
except
running water and rice. That's right. Between makin' sure we all got home when you're out doin' your ‘evening activities' and me trying to keep my two jobs cookin' and waitin' tables for other people, your wife forgot that we're out of rice. So, Alrick – look: we got five ounces o' lean ground beef, one large onion diced, ten ounces of sun-ripe tomatoes, green chilli chopped and one pound o' red beans, but we need about six or seven ounces of Zatarain's right about now. And where we going get it, Alrick?
And don't say ‘Lam Lee Hahn'. Those Chinese people know exactly how to shut down shop and head home at night. They know that nobody 'cept the Beaumonts would be coming to make groceries this time o' night. Those Asian people, they opened a shop out here in this hellhole... but they're smart. They live in the city. In the
city
. So, you goin' get it, Alrick? Just pop into the city and get us some rice somewhere... since it's ‘right next door'.”

I wanted to point out to Moms that the Lam Lee Hahn family – who were genius to set up that small grocery shop out near the train tracks to serve swamp folks and make money – were actually Vietnamese. But this cussin' was goin' good, and I wanted to hear the endin'. Well, to be honest the endin' was disappointing at first. It was just Pops sayin' the usual “
bordel
” under his breath and me saying to myself, “You know, Skid, cuss words might be the only French your Cajunish father knows” – even though he liked tellin' us all about The Great Expulsion from French Canada back in Seventeen Fifty-something, as if he had been there.

Now from where I was, I could see Frico in the old dresser mirror, in his usual place on the floor beside the bed. That's where he liked to sit and do his sketches – where we couldn't see him. Moms told us to always look out for Frico. She said to make sure he had his glasses on when he was sketchin', and then pay close attention to him, cos sometimes that boy would be concentratin' so hard on what he was paintin' or drawin' – he'd forget to breathe. He'd just kind of fall asleep sittin' straight up with his eyes wide open. Yep, he'd blank out and wouldn't budge for hours. So we'd shake him – and if that didn't work, we'd prob'ly have to slap him. They wouldn't make me slap him, cos sometimes I didn't know my own strength.

Anyway, there he was: I'm watchin' him in the mirror and – would you believe it? – all of a sudden he just jumped up with the sketch pad and walked out of the house into the pitch
black of night. Now that may sound simple, but you don't just walk out of Valerie Beaumont's house in the pitch black of night without someone accompanying you or making sure there are no black bears or water moccasins or demons lurkin' about the swamp. Furthermore, Frico was only nine years old. How dare you walk your nine-year-old self out of the house and let the screen door slam behind you like you can't stand all that fightin' in your ear? And especially
without
your glasses? But see, that's the kind of crap that Frico Beaumont got away with.

Now, I'm not sayin' I'm innocent. I'm jus' sayin' I couldn't catch a break, like with that CB incident – but Frico, everybody treated him like he was some kind of special, even though Skid Beaumont is the last Beaumont – the
baby
Beaumont. While me and Doug and Tony wash dishes and haul water and go borrow somethin' from that crabby ol' lady Ma Campbell across the fence, Frico gets to take Calvin, our yaller dog, on a lovely stroll to the shop or to go paint by the train tracks or deeper in the swamp. But even then, that's during the day. So when he stormed out of the house that night, I was waitin' to see if he was finally gonna get it. But Pops, he just stopped his Cajun-cussin' and said: “Y'all go on and get your little brother.”

Of course, even if Doug and Tony weren't doin' no homework, they weren't gonna get up first, cos they were just tired of goin' after Frico. So I jumped up like a good boy, made sure the screen door didn't slam when I ran out, and waited to see if anybody was goin' to come after li'le ol' Skid and protect him from black bears, water moccasins and demons. But no, sir: 'twas just me, myself and a million crickets.

Now, even though I don't personally believe it, older folks say that strange things from hell walk under the old cypress trees after dark. So, if you ever go walkin' in the swamps, here's a few rules for ya, just like I heard 'em.

If you see a shadow walkin' out on the water, look away.

If you hear someone whistlin' or singin', don't join in.

If a voice calls your name in the woods, walk in the opposite direction. Quickly.

Watch out for a hairy man with his head in the trees: that's the Loogaroo werewolf man.

Look out for the little bald-headed girl walkin' fast – and don't follow her.

And most of all, you need to look out for James “Couyon” Jackson and his gang, who'd dope up on crack before coming in a black van to cut out your kidneys and leave you in a tub full of party ice and rock salt. The way I heard it, you'd rather bump into the Loogaroo man after dark than run into those crack-pipe-hittin' types in the broad daylight, I tell ya.

So yeah, Pops told me all these stories and then he let me go out alone. Anyway, all that waitin' in vain on the doorstep made me lose precious seconds, so by the time I chased after Frico he had disappeared, almost like the darkness was a stretch of water and he'd done gone under in it. Well, after walkin' blind for a while, I realized I didn't know where I was. See, in the pass, we lived on a little piece of land, shaped more or less like an “L” – a cul-de-sac, really. The top part of the L was connected to the mainland and led in from the train tracks that ran through the swamp. You went down a grassy slope from the tracks when you entered the L. Then, a little way in, there was a footbridge with a decent enough creek runnin' under it. You crossed that bridge and went on for about two hundred metres on a dumped-up marl road before going round a bend into the bottom part of the L, which is where we lived along with Ma and Pa Campbell. Their house was right across the chicken-wire fence from us.

Now, all around that L-island, as I call it, there was some murky swamp water filled with alligators and lots of drowning opportunities. So at night, without a light or a full moon, you could easily end up going off the corner of the L – and that would be the end of it. Furthermore, after the dry season, when rain broke a drought, big ol' sinkholes could be
anywhere. So I stayed put until I saw Tony and Doug way behind me with a flashlight and I got a sense of where I was.

Doug was callin' out, “Skid, wait!” – so I walked in the opposite direction. Tony, who was the eldest at thirteen, began yellin' something scary about some vampire guy that he used to watch when my family had a TV. I wasn't goin' to look like no baby, so I took my bearings from the light and just kept walkin' until I saw the flashlight bobbin' up and down, on the ground and up in the cypress trees, so I knew they'd started runnin' after me. I took off at top speed and just kept lookin' behind me from time to time.

Now, I don't know how soon it was, but I just felt the ground getting soggier and soggier, and then I heard a voice from heaven say: “Skid, stop.” Actually it was Frico's voice – but that was good enough. He sounded like he was up above me in a tree somewhere – and that was weird, but that's ol' Fricozoid for ya. Then, when I stopped and peeled my eyes and looked dead ahead into the night, there – right in front of me – was a steep slope straight into the dark swamp water.

“Don't move.”

Hell, like I needed him to tell me that. I started reversing slowly, and he said again from up in the tree: “I said don't move – till I tell ya.”

That's when I saw the eyes. Just above the water surface, right in front of me. One massive bull alligator, about a twelve-footer, right behind the grass, just waitin' for me to keep walkin' forward. Even though I'd just finished runnin', I felt colder than a dead eel and I started wondering where the hell was Doug and Tony when you need 'em? When they finally caught up, Tony was pantin', cos he was kinda pudgy. In the dark I could still see that Doug had a “what the hell is wrong witchoo” look on his face. He had dragged on his soccer uniform back to front and he had only half-pulled out his cornrows when all the chasin' started. He shone the light on the bank in front of me and said: “Look, fool.”

I saw that I was standing in an alligator slide – that's the long slide marks that an alligator's belly makes in the mud when he's gettin' off the river banks to prob'ly get dinner. And that gator just sat there down in the water like a fleshand-blood submarine and gave everybody the evil eye. Then Calvin came up and started yapperin' just to impress us, and the alligator raised his head and hissed just to let us know he wasn't off-duty. So I walked backwards slowly and Doug started givin' me a lecture, while Tony took the light and swept the area. He shone it into that monster's mouth and saw those teeth and started with the vampire stuff again until Doug, who was a year younger than him, told him to grow up or shut up, whichever one came first. So just to annoy him, Tony put on his nerd voice and looked at the sky, pointin' out that US satellites look different from stars and they can move them around from secret locations on earth – and Daddy knew, cos he helped build a rocket at the NASA Assembly Facility over in Michoud and blah blah blah.

In the middle of all that science fiction and Doug lecturin' and Calvin overdoin' the barkin' thing, here comes Frico's voice again from up in the tree, real slow and soft in the darkness: “See, this is exactly why I got out here in the first place. Can't catch a break from y'all. Jeez.”

And Tony swung the flashlight into the trees and Frico shielded his eyes and nearly fell off a branch. The guy had climbed into a tree with some branches that hung out over the water. Moms said it was a tamarind tree. It was tall, but still smaller than those big old cypresses and beech and willow trees. It had low branches, so it was much easier to climb. We always went up into that tree durin' the day, cos it was like our lookout point. From up there, we could see clear across the train tracks over to that scrap-metal junkyard where those mean Benet boys live, north of us. Beyond their dungeon was an old clogged-up canal that could give them access to the far-east end of Lake Pontchartrain. Lookin' east, all you
could see was train tracks. You couldn't see the end of the tracks, but we knew that one train went to Slidell – which when you're in the swamp is another city a whole world away. Turnin' around to the south-east, we could see the stretch of bayou in front of our house that, like I said, was built on the bottom part of the L shape I told you about. Along the underside of the L, you'd see Pa's sugar-cane strip, the mud levees we built, then some lonely crawfish traps bobbin' up and down in between the mangroves of the open pass. Beyond that there was nothin' but a lake and the eternal Gulf of Mexico way out south. Moms always said we came to live in the drainpipes of America. To the west was the best part, cos on a clear day you could see New O'lins with all those glass buildings lookin' liquid behind the shimmer.