Noise. Nonsense. Irritation, all of it.
I leaned back in my chair, code forgotten, and grabbed the remote to lower the blinds that cut my office window off from Daisy's desk outside. My neck felt tight and my shoulders ached so I leaned back, shutting my eyes, not intending to do anything but relax. Just for a little while …
New Orleans
Joe Andres was a mean man. That seemed to be true of a lot of male folk in the city, especially the ones who paid no never-mind to the laws laid down about hooch. Most days I could get away with walking through the drunken crowds, the reckless fools who didn't give a single thought to the policemen lurking on every corner, itching to find someone easy to stir up mess with. But that was New Orleans, not here in the swamp where mama had taken us to for keeping out of trouble since she said those Irishmen from the Channel were having a fine time celebrating St. Paddy's Day.
I didn't mind it so much, except for Joe Andres being up at the Simoneaux house. It was nice to be away from the trolleys and crowds, the wicked gleam in ole Ripper's eye and the constant worry that my mama and Lulu would get found out for making drink no one was supposed to have. But having a fool like Joe Andres that close by meant I still had to keep at least one eye out for trouble.
I liked my Bastie's farm. There were chickens pecking at the ground on the side of the house, next to the shotgun building with the pale blue door and cream walls where Bastie used to store her gardening tools and the feed sacks for all her critters. That led away from the old creole cottage my granddaddy Bastien had built for her with his own two hands some thirty years ago before the pipe he smoked festered his lungs like dry rot on a dock and killed him by the time he was sixty.
The house was cedar framed; the color of the wood had gone all dark like the belly of a rock settled on the riverbank and Bastie kept pretty green shutters on the two windows outfitted at the front of the house. There was a porch with five feet long steps and handrails, where she kept a whiskey barrel cut in the center to catch the water she pumped from the well. She'd use the washboard inside that barrel to beat and scrub out the laundry on Saturdays all day, if the weather was right.
But in front of the porch, just off the side of the cottage, hung an old swing, big enough for three people to sit on, swinging back and forth so that the rusted chain that hung from the oak above it squeaked and moaned in a sort of rhythm that made me smile. On that porch Bastie told me all her stories-how she'd worked with her mama in Atlanta, tending to some rich folk's babies as her mama cleaned their fine house. She talked about those babies, a girl and a boy, Linda and Luke, like they'd been her own until she caught the eye of my granddaddy Bastien who she swore was the most handsome fella she'd ever seen her whole life. He took her away when she was twenty and brought her here to Manchac, where his people had lived for years. He'd spent most of their marriage working on the cottage and planting everything he could for his bride, promising her this small farm would be something straight from the heart of a fairytale.
I sat on that swing this morning, worrying and fretting over Dempsey, looking out through the line of crepe myrtles Bastie had planted to keep the outline of Simoneaux's fancy house distant; she'd wanted a place hidden from the world and with all those trees, dozens and dozens of them and the lush fit of gardenia bushes and climbing roses that ran up and along the fence line, my granny had managed that well enough. But I could still make out the pitch of their roof and the small cottages peppered away from the big house. Dempsey said his daddy used those for his friends when they came to fish the Manchac, but Bastie had said once they'd been used for slaves, folk who never did have even a single choice where they lived or how they did their living.
"Run this up to Mr. Foster's place, Sookie. Aron will take you but you got to meet him down at the crossways. He's at that loose-tail woman's house." The heavy basket was in my arms before Mama stopped speaking and pushed me off the swing and down the drive and I headed in the direction of Clarice Dubois', a girl my Uncle Aron had been sweet on since he was ten and too stupid to understand that following after a girl too old and too rich for him was a fool's errand. Mama didn't like Clarice, said she wore too much rouge and swung her hips on purpose. But then, Mama didn't much like when her brother got played a fool and Clarice Dubois was aces at that game.
Behind me, my mother cleared her throat, finishing off the annoyed sound with a low, long sigh that made me get my feet moving faster. She never asked me and Sylv to do a thing. I reckoned she didn't have to, but the order she gave just then came at me in a bark, something she said through the tight grit of her teeth. I was used to it, didn't bother complaining that the cross ways was at least two miles down past most of the empty fields the Simoneaux's let out to farmers. I hated walking past those fields and half wished I'd answered the knock that had come at my window the night before.