Snow on the Bayou Read online

  “Thass Phillipe there.” She pointed to one of six men in bathing suits and flippers in a sepia-tone photograph. “My fiancé.”

  “Your fiancé was on Omaha Beach?” the commander asked.

  Tante Lulu nodded. “Yep. Phillipe Prudhomme.”

  “This is remarkable.” The commander was no longer regarding Tante Lulu as crazy, but as someone worthy of respect. “Those frogmen were the precursors of today’s Navy SEALs.”

  “Really?” she and Tante Lulu both remarked. It had never occurred to Charmaine that there was a connection, but it made sense. Both groups were sort of webfoot warriors.

  “And Phillipe Prudhomme is famous among those of us who have studied Navy history.” He tapped a fingertip over one grinning sailor. “Prudhomme was awarded the Purple Heart and the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

  Tante Lulu nodded, wiping her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief she fished out of her bosom. “I have both of them in my hope chest.”

  A hope chest after all these years? Charmaine’s heart was about breaking.

  Tante Lulu straightened and shook her head as if to wipe away the memories. “God’s will,” she declared, then turned to the commander and said, “When you gonna end that war in Af-ghanny-stan?”

  “Me?”

  “If I was over there, cher, I’d be teachin’ ’em how ta make gumbo, not war.”

  “Ahem,” someone coughed behind them, and they realized that the sailor was still waiting to escort them to Justin.

  Just before the door closed after them, Charmaine heard the commander mutter, “If the old bird was younger, she’d make a great Navy SEAL.”

  Then aliens invaded the Navy Seals training compound…

  “Move it, move it, move it!” Cage yelled at the most pitiful group of SEAL wannabees. “You call that sugar cookies? More like sand tarts, if you ask me.”

  Sugar cookies was one of many SEAL “torture” exercises. It involved the men walking into the surf, fully clothed and booted. Then when they were wet from head to sole, they were ordered to roll in the sand, making them into—ta da!—sugar cookies. After that, with sand in every bodily orifice and crevice, turning their shorts and jock straps into sandpaper, they jogged for a mile or five.

  This was Cage’s second week of instructor duty, and he was ready to tear his hair out, what there was of it. Usually he let his hair grow shoulder length, an exception the Navy granted to SEALs because they had to infiltrate foreign countries where they didn’t want to stand out. Good thing he had black hair; blonds or redheads had to dye it, even their eyebrows and eyelashes… and other places. But right now he was sporting a high and tight. By the time it grew out, he would hopefully be back on active rotation.

  Today was PI Friday, and that didn’t stand for physical instruction. Nope, SEALs were notoriously politically incorrect, and once a month, on a Friday, the SEALs celebrated their political incorrectness. His T-shirt proclaimed: IT’S GOD’S JOB TO FORGIVE BIN LADEN, IT WAS OUR JOB TO ARRANGE A MEETING. Some of the other instructors’ shirts said: STOP GLOBAL WHINING; DEATH SMILES AT EVERYONE, SEALS SMILE BACK; EXCEPT FOR ENDING SLAVERY, FASCISM, NAZISM, AND COMMUNISM, WAR HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING; A DEAD ENEMY IS A PEACEFUL ENEMY; BLESSED BE THE PEACEMAKERS; and his favorite, PRAY TO GOD, BUT PASS THE AMMUNITION. Each month they tried to outdo each other with crudity or extreme PI-ness.

  He glanced over toward the grinder, the asphalt exercise area by the special forces building. Then he did a double take.

  There were three people standing there. Two women and Petty Officer Farley, whom he recognized by his bright red hair, even in its short military cut. Farley was motioning for him to come over.

  He told his men to stand at ease until he returned. When he got closer, he noticed in more detail the tall woman with big Texas hair, the likes of which he hadn’t seen since he’d been back in the Southland, tight leopard print pants, high heels, and an itty bitty T-shirt that announced, CURL UP & DYE, and underneath that in smaller letters, www.charmainesbeautyshops.com. Beside her stood a little elderly woman with more wrinkles than an elephant’s scrotum, wearing a lopsided wig. She was waving wildly. At him!

  He recognized them, even after all these years. “Holy Sac-au-lait!” he muttered. It was Charmaine LeDeux and that batty Cajun folk healer, Tante Lulu Rivard. From freakin’ Loo-zee-anna bayou country.

  His second reaction was a puzzled frown. Why would they be here in California… and staring at him as if he were in the crosshairs of their lethal weapons?

  The fine hairs stood out on his body. It must have something to do with his MawMaw, the Cajun name for grandmother.

  JAM, Lieutenant Jacob Alvarez Mendozo, walked by, heading toward the beach. He indicated with a motion of his thumb toward himself and the swabbies that he was taking over. He also winked at Cage after giving Charmaine a quick once-over. As if Cage would ever be interested in the bayou bimbo! And he didn’t mean that as an insult. Charmaine had always gone out of her way to celebrate her bimbo-ness.

  No, it was because Charmaine was lots older than him… and married, last he’d heard. Of course, he’d known her only by reputation. But then, everyone in southern Louisiana knew Charmaine, and not just because she’d been Miss Louisiana when he was a freshman in high school. About forty years old, give or take, she still looked damn good. As for the old lady… who didn’t know the outrageous Tante Lulu? She was a friend of his grandmother’s, but everyone from one end of the bayou to the other had heard of her antics.

  Once Cage reached the group, Petty Officer Farley saluted him and went back to the command center, leaving him with the two women.

  “Hey, Charmaine,” he greeted her first since she was in front.

  “Hey, Justin.”

  “Tante Lulu,” he acknowledged as he got closer. “It’s great to see you.” I hope.

  Charmaine shook his extended hand, but Tante Lulu grabbed on to him and gave him a hug, which was kind of awkward since he was six foot two and she was about five foot zero. She actually hugged his abdomen, and he found himself patting her blond wig, even giving it a little nudge to center it more on her head.

  But why was she hugging him so hard?

  Holding her away from himself, he asked right off, “Is something wrong with MawMaw?”

  Tante Lulu nodded.

  He braced himself before asking, “Is it bad?”

  She nodded again.

  “Oh, God! She’s not dead, is she?”

  Tante Lulu smacked his arm. “No, she’s not dead, you lunkhead.”

  “Thank God!”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Justin LeBlanc, when was the las’ time you was home?”

  He stiffened. “That’s none of your business.”

  “It is when my good friend needs her only gran’chile.”

  “If she needed me, all she had to do was ask. And by the way, why isn’t she asking?”

  “Mebbe she dint wanna be a bother to her only gran’chile.”

  Cage bit the inside of his cheek to keep the irritation out of his voice. “Did she send you?”

  “No. St. Jude did.”

  “St. Jude?” he sputtered.

  “Thass what I said. Did they nick yer ears when they shaved yer fool head? St. Jude tol’ me ta go find that rascally Cajun boy and drag him home by the scruff of his neck, iffen he’s too stubborn ta know what’s good for him.”

  Cage briefly closed his eyes. I wonder what the sentence would be for throttling a senior citizen? Better yet, we could probably use her as a secret weapon against the Taliban. He returned his gaze to Tante Lulu. “What does St. Jude have to do with anything?”

  “Don’t ask,” Charmaine warned.

  But it was too late. Tante Lulu put her hands on her little hips and glared up at him. “St. Jude is the patron saint of hopeless cases, and I’m thinkin’ yer as hopeless as a woodpecker in a petrified forest.”

  “Now settle down,” Charmaine
told her aunt. Then to Cage, she said, “Is there somewhere we can go talk?”

  He hesitated, then conceded, “The officers’ dining hall should be empty.” He pointed to a building beyond the special forces center and began to walk away. Rude, yeah, but he was in a rude mood. Something serious was wrong with his grandmother, and he was having to deal with two crazy women… well, one crazy woman and another who could be an old-time calendar girl. They were like aliens from another planet. He’d forgotten how eccentric Southerners could be.

  As they walked toward the dining hall, he remarked to Charmaine, “It’s been a long time.” He glanced down at her ring-clad finger. “So you’re married?”

  She nodded. “To Raoul Lanier. Do you remember him?”

  “I heard he was in prison.”

  “Not anymore. Rusty was wrongfully convicted.”

  Cage smiled. That was what they all said.

  “Really. His record was cleared.”

  “And you own some beauty salons?” he asked, looking at her breasts… well, at the logo over her breasts.

  She smiled, apparently considering his perusal a compliment. “Yep. Five at last count. And a spa out at Rusty’s ranch.”

  “Would you two stop flirtin’ with each other?” Tante Lulu griped as she huffed along next to them. “Charmaine is married.”

  “I wasn’t flirting,” they both said at the same time.

  “What’s wrong with yer leg? You’re limpin’ like Stumpy Benoit, who lost his toes in Vietnam.”

  “I fell and injured my knee.”

  “You always were clumsy.”

  “I was not! And for your information, I got hurt during a HALO jump.”

  “Well, thass what you get fer trying ta jump over someone’s halo.”

  He blinked at her, feeling as if he’d fallen into some alternate universe.

  “He means that he was hurt during a parachute jump,” Charmaine explained.

  “Well, why dint he say so? I hafta pee. Kin I go in that building over there?”

  “No, it’s the SEAL locker room.”

  “So?”

  “So men are naked in there.”

  “So?”

  He shook his head and continued walking.

  When they were almost to the officers’ building, he noticed Sylvester Sims, or Sly, supervising about a dozen heavily perspiring men and women in gig squad, a SEALs punishment for some infraction or other. At the moment they were doing walking, quacking duck squats. Humiliation was part of Navy discipline. Sly, a big black dude from Harlem, who had once modeled tightie whities for GQ, wore a shirt that said, in small enough print that it all fit over his wide chest, THE ONLY EASY DAY WAS YESTERDAY. FU… SCREW THAT! THERE ARE NO EASY DAYS!

  “Hey, Sly,” he said.

  “Hey, Cage,” Sly said back, but he was staring at Charmaine, waiting for an introduction, Cage supposed.

  Not a chance!

  Walking by, Charmaine asked him, “Is he who I think he is?”

  “Probably.”

  “We have an old underwear poster of him hung on the wall of my Houma spa.”

  “Hung” being the key word. “Sly will love hearing about that,” he said, and it was the truth. His good buddy milked his long-ago cover boy career every which way he could, and it didn’t matter that he was a married man now. In fact, he would be hooting about it to Donita when he went home tonight.

  “I thought there were no female SEALs,” Charmaine remarked, watching the group that Sly was supervising.

  “There aren’t. Those are WEALS. Women on Earth, Air, Land, and Sea.” He shrugged. “You could say they’re female SEALs, sort of.”

  Tante Lulu sighed. “Wish I was younger. I woulda made a good female SEAL.”

  Cage gave her an arched eyebrow look.

  “What? You think jist ’cause I’m small, I ain’t got what it takes ta fight bad guys? Hah! I been fightin’ bad guys all my life.”

  He didn’t doubt that for a minute.

  “I think you Navy bigwigs discriminate against us smaller folks.”

  “The Navy does not discriminate. And height is not a requirement for SEALs.”

  “Oh, yeah? How come I dint see no midgets back there?”

  Charmaine groaned. “I told you, Auntie, ‘midget’ is a politically incorrect word.”

  Tante Lulu glanced meaningfully at Cage’s politically incorrect T-shirt logo and grinned. The old bird was pulling his leg.

  Once they’d arrived at the dining hall and sat down with pastries and coffee, both of which Tante Lulu deemed inferior to good Creole chicory and beignets, she looked him in the eye and said, “Your grandmother has lung cancer.”

  He inhaled sharply. “Oh, my God! When… how… will she…” He inhaled again to catch a breath. “Tell me everything. I saw her last summer in New Orleans, and she seemed fine then.”

  Tante Lulu took one of his big hands in two of her tiny, veined ones.

  He tried, but couldn’t pull free, not without making a fuss.

  “She was diagnosed last fall. She’s already been zapped with radiation and sez she’s in remission, but I doan believe it. She needs oxygen jist ta walk around. And she’s havin’ trouble carin’ fer all those animals.”

  “All what animals?”

  “Tsk-tsk-tsk! If you came home once in a while, you’d know which animals.”

  He squared his shoulders and counted to ten so he wouldn’t say something particularly offensive to the old biddy, although he suspected that insults would bounce off her wrinkled Teflon skin.

  “I doan know why you’re stayin’ away, an’ I doan care. You gotta come home now. Your grandma needs you.”

  “I could probably get a liberty, especially with this bum knee. Yeah, I could probably come for a week or so.”

  Tante Lulu frowned at his limit on the time he would stay, but she had the good sense to keep her opinion to herself this time.

  When Tante Lulu went to the ladies’ room, Charmaine smiled at him and shrugged.

  “How do you stand her?”

  “She can be nerve-racking, but she’s got a heart of gold.”

  “More like a lead sinker, if you ask me.”

  “How many ninety-something-year-old women do you know who would travel all this way to reunite an ailing grandmother and her grandson?”

  “I don’t know any other ninety-something-year-old women. What’s with the ninety-something crap anyhow? Why don’t you know her exact age?”

  “She lies,” Charmaine said with a grin, as if that were a good thing. “Family is all important to Tante Lulu. Did you know her fiancé was your grandmother’s older brother, Phillipe Prudhomme, and he was one of the original Navy SEALs, a frogman? He died in the Big War.”

  “The Civil War?” he asked, before thinking.

  “Idjit!” she said, smacking his arm lightly. “World War Two.”

  Feeling like an idjit, he defended himself lamely. “Hey, everyone in the South still thinks the Civil War was the Big War, don’t they?”

  She just smiled. “Are you married, Cage? Engaged? Involved?”

  When he answered negatively to each of her questions, she gave him a pitying look and asked the oddest thing, “Do you have a hope chest?”

  *dpgroup.org*

  Chapter Three

  Doing the horizontal boogie without the boogie…

  Emelie was a list maker, and whoo-boy, this was some list!

  —Six foot tall, brown hair, hazel eyes, Caucasian, Italian, age 22, medical student at an Ivy League college, marathon runner, favorite music: Aerosmith.

  —Five foot ten, blond hair, light brown eyes, Caucasian, Irish-German ancestry, age 30, artist, favorite music: Mozart.

  —Five foot eleven, brown hair, dark brown eyes, Cuban, age 24, law school intern, hobby: mountain climbing.

  —Six foot three, black hair, dark brown eyes, Cajun, age 20, commercial fisherman, favorite music: Zydeco.

  She was sipping at a cup of cafe au lait and scanning
her culled list of sperm donors. It felt almost like arranging a blind date without all the fuss of dressing up and awkward initial meetings, usually followed by disappointment.

  Inside her office, she had a folder with additional info on each of the candidates. Blood type. Three generations of family medical history. Facial features. Complexion. Sperm count.

  It was Sunday, and Emelie was sitting at a table on her back, upper gallery, facing the fountain courtyard in the back. Her 150-year-old home was not large, but it was two-storied. In the old days, the living quarters were on the second floor, its shuttered, floor-to-ceiling windows open to catch every little breeze, the family in one section and the slaves out back.

  She was soothed by the sounds of the trickling fountain and the bells of St. Louis Cathedral several blocks away calling parishioners to mass. The scent of the bougainvillea vines climbing the ornate, black iron lattice filled the air, along with that of potted roses that lined the gallery. She loved Sundays in New Orleans.

  “Miss Em-el-ie!” someone called from down below, coming through the side passageway from Chartres Street onto her courtyard.

  Oh, no! It was Bernard Landry, her ex-husband.

  “Bernie, what are you doing here?”

  “I knocked on the front door, sug-ah, but there was no answer,” he said in his deep Southern accent. He was already walking around up the outside staircase… without being invited. As many times as she’d told him he was not welcome to drop in without notice in the past sixteen or so years, since their divorce, he still showed up periodically without warning. Some men just didn’t take a hint that the welcome mat wasn’t out all the time. Sometimes not at all.

  “What do you want, Bernie?” She sighed.

  Already he was helping himself to a cup of black coffee from the carafe on the table. “What’s this?” he asked, picking up the paper before she had a chance to grab it back.

  “Give that to me. Right now,” she demanded.

  “Are you usin’ one of those Internet datin’ services?”