Vacajun

Way down in a bayou town. Just for kicks, my love, you and me, we don’t know this place. No infusion bars, vintage boutiques, or multilevel movie theaters; no yuppies or hippies or hipsters. People here lean too close, and slur through log lips, and you can count their swampy teeth. Hey, be nice, you say. Watch the stereotypes. I know it, I know it, but even so, those were some teeth.

I’ve got to hear live zydeco, would die to hear it, so we drive to the roadhouse, out where the town trickles off into the weeds. We get there as the light bulbs on the sign blink out. Two women stand smoking in the dirt lot. Is the music really done for the night? I ask. It’s so early. A brunette with wadded tissue cheeks says, yes, they’ve gone home already. But come on back tomorrow, seven o’ clock, they’ll be at it again.

But there is no tomorrow.

There has to be another roadhouse in the next town, I say to you. Didn’t we pass one?

We pull over in a gas station parking lot, and while the rental Hyundai idles, we fish out our gadgets. The race is on to find an open roadhouse in never-never. It’s an Android duel. You’re Palm Pre; I’m Intercept. Our fingers fly blind across the QWERTY pads, our throats glow icy blue.

It takes forever, doesn’t it, my love? There’s no reception on this bayou. Not enough radio towers. But we’ve got a lust for the down home, for the real. The Cajun soul is somewhere out in this broad night, somewhere beyond the crickets and the bashed-in trailers and the last of the kitchen hands rinsing out giant crawfish tubs. Somebody somewhere is scratching time on a washboard. So our fingers manipulate our mobile devices and the signals bounce into nothing. And would you look at that moon? It’s as big as a whale.

We don’t notice the dark man until he pops his head right through the open car window, folds his arms on the door.

How y’all doing?

Wonderful. Yourself?

Lookahere, I don’t mind if you going to meet somebody in this lot. You know, it’s alright. Just pull on over there, where you be a little out of sight.

We’re just trying to get online so we can find some music.

Hey, I’m for real. I’m the manager of this place. I don’t care if you black, blue, white, purple or green, I’m for real. It’s alright if you meet them. Just do it over there, instead of out here where everybody’s looking at you.

He leans right in over your lap, my love, his moon face close to yours. You can count his swampy teeth, if you want to. I’m for real, he says. I ain’t asking for money. I got money. He pulls two ragged dollars out of his pocket. I’m not homeless or nothing. I’m just trying to get something to eat.

Oh here, I say, trying to unearth meaning from his language. We have a lot left from dinner. I reach into the backseat for a Styrofoam box of crawfish etouffee I couldn’t finish. He opens the lid and runs his puffy pointer finger through the gelatinous remains. Nah, I don’t eat this stuff, he says, handing it back. What’s in that other box?

Hey man, you say, we’re going to take off. Thanks for the advice.

I’m not saying you can’t stay, he says. You can stay and meet who you waiting for, just park over yonder.

We’re going to move along now, you say, letting the car roll slowly forward. Mr. Heebeejeebee does stand up now, so as not to lose his head and arms, and we escape onto Rue Principal.

Shit, that was creepy.

Yeah, just a little.

At least we know where to score meth! We laugh and hold hands. But my love, we don’t know anything. We drive around town, rolling in and out of parking lots, pulling U-turns and slowing down wherever people are gathered, our radio quiet to hear any strains of mewling fiddles. Down the one little strip of antique dealers, past the battened-down bakery. We find a bar made of corrugated tin, where the music sure as hell is not live, and the parking lot is full of trucks. It’s called The B&BB City Bar, and we park in the lot, but chicken out. It’s the scariest bar we’ve ever seen. We travel back and forth across a draw bridge topped with a giant wooden crawfish and a banner that reads Lusienne. Way down where spelling is old and the river slips silent and there is no music after nine.

We go until we’ve been lost forever, and I say to you, Baby, let’s just get back to the cabin and have a mellow night. You’re reluctant, because you’ve been drinking a little and would like to drink more. You’d like to shoot the shit with some locals and see if you can get a laugh from the new joke you made up: We’re on a vacajun!

I say, Come on, the lake will be pretty under this moon. We’ll take some beer.

You smile for me and pat my knee. Sure thing, you say.

We stop at a different gas station and buy a six of Abita and head back across that bridge one last time, find our narrow road through the lightless fields, open the moon roof, crack a beer to share. Beards of Spanish moss wag above the road, the trees becoming taller than themselves in the headlights. The headlights make twenty feet of world exist and we could sail off a cliff without seeing it come. But there are no cliffs and no mountains and no hills. We could drive into a swamp, that we could do. Isolated houses loom like fortresses, like ancient schools, like insane asylums. And the sunken trailers with their faces pummeled and windows bandaged and cars slumped out front on three wheels.

We see no headlights but our own. Our cabin is down a dirt road called Lawless Tauzin — a road without rules! But we miss it, instead continuing until the pavement ends at a fence, where we must turn left or right. You instinctively head right and I say, No! Baby, we passed it back there, pull over. I’m almost yelling, because I like to be lost, but not this lost. That’s when they put the sirens on. The world swims blue and red.

A silver pick-up parks behind us. Footsteps grind rocks into the dirt; he walks with a world full of time. His face at the window is young and shiny, acne on his chin. He’s plainclothes in a sweat-stained tee, but with a gun in a shoulder holster and a badge on a lanyard around his neck.

Y’all lost?

My love, we are very, very lost. We have an open beer in the car, but that’s not even illegal here, is it? Illegal is the baggie of ragweed you scored in the French Quarter, now crushed in your back pocket. Being from California might possibly be illegal. And our ignorance is certainly a crime.

Where y’all headed out here?

Um, Country Cabins? you say. Or whatever it’s called — Cajun Cottages? I think that’s it.

The cop shakes his head.

We missed the sign in the dark, I say.

Alright. Let me ask you something. The cop leans in close and his badge swings in and hits you on the cheek. You flinch and I feel your fear. This is real. He says, Did you maybe talk to a fellow at the Food-N-Fun?

The what?

Gas station across the bridge.

Oh that guy! We both laugh like it’s the best one we heard all night, a real thigh-slapper. He was a piece of work! Trying to be casual, trying to make it stick.

The cop is not amused. Do you know him? No. Why did you talk to him? We were lost. Did you hand him some sort of box? Leftovers from dinner. Who do you know here in town? Nobody. When did you get in? Today. When are you leaving? Tomorrow. Why did you come to this hell hole? Because we’ve never been. No other reason? No. What kind of reason is that? Silence. Get out your license and proof of insurance, please.

It takes two of us to figure out how to open the glove box. You turn on the windshield wipers by accident. Rental car, you say.

He reads your license and then gives you that look, the one we both expect: San Francisco?

My love, all those movies we watched on the couch are running through my head. This is how lives change course forever. This is how idiotic tourists get their comeuppance. This is how the wife gets raped while the husband watches with a bowie knife pressed to his testicles. This is how couples end up chained in basements. This is how people get skinned and their skins made into throw rugs. This is how alligators get fat. This is how . . .

You ask, How long have you guys been following us?

It looked mighty peculiar, he says, all them stops you were making.

Now we start explaining in earnest. We both talk at the same time. The partner walks over, nods, listens. He is older, looks like a father, maybe a grandfather. He wears a uniform. Plainclothes keeps asking and we keep explaining. Every place we stopped, every conversation with every stranger. I grab the open map in the backseat and tell him our route from New Orleans with all the little towns. I point out the Styrofoam containers from the crawfish joint where we had dinner. We keep talking. Not too much, never too much, maybe way too much.

He carries your license back to the silver truck — it’s unmarked, looks like any other truck. Whatever happened to black and white? The cops confer and we risk glancing at each other, our wild eyes flashing blue and red, our love a current between us. We will save each other.

Plainclothes comes back and says, Where’d y’all say you were staying?

Cajun Cottages, I say firmly, because I’m the one with the memory in this operation. It’s on a road called Lawless Tauzin. There’s a lake.

Alright then. We’ll take you back there.

He hands you your license. They load into the truck and cut the sickening blue and red lights. We breathe. You use your turn signal, monitor your speed. My eyes burn from not blinking. We follow the taillights at three car lengths. About a mile back down the road, the truck slows to signal our turn-off, a glorified driveway with a crooked little sign tucked into the trees. The cops speed into the night. Part of me believes they will come back while we sleep.

I have to hand it to them, you say. They did protect and serve.

We grind down the driveway to the perfect little pink cabin on the lake, with its porch swing and infantile curtains, quaint dolls on the dresser. But it is a nervous cabin. The crack of a tree branch jerks me to the window. I have to get out of doors, I say. We make a decision.

I grab the towels and jackets and you grab the beer. We move quietly down to the bank where canoes wait. We debate in whispers, and choose the narrow aluminum one. You roll it over with a mild thump and we board unsteadily.

The water takes us, and we glide. There is no wind, no sound save the dip of the paddles. The surface is a perfection of glass, the moon and trees trapped beneath. Smells of algae and mulch.

Now that we are quiet, crickets rub their fiddle wings. It is a blue bayou moon, bloated above the tree line. It has swallowed the cloud cover and the stars. A sky full of moon, bright enough to know your dear features, my love: the abrupt slope of your cheekbones, undeterred hawk nose, eyes glittering in their caves. Strands of moonlight wrap around us, we are bound.

Our paddles tickle the surface, the surface smiles and breaks. That’s our love on this lake. You crack a beer and waken the resident waddle of ducks. They burst into mocking laughter – waaaa-wa-wa-wa! — for we are fools, such ever-loving fools, only briefly safe from ourselves.