M&C & The Booty of Jean Lafitte

Moses and Curio and the Booty of Jean Lafitte





  In 1809, two men made a mistake...



           "Hurry up, Rascal! You layabout!  We'll be missed fer sure!"

Fulton Slattery took an ax to the lower limbs of a live oak. Below him, Eddie Aldridge hacked at a chest-deep hole with a pointed spade. A powder keg, emptied of gunpowder and replaced with a hundred Spanish gold eighths packed in hay, lay sealed next to Eddie.

         "Aye, but it need be bigger yet!" Rascal Aldridge panted as he frantically whacked at the tangles of roots inside the hole. "Damn these cursed oaks here. They got roots wove up in dat earth like a Creole's crotch!"

         Fulton worked carefully with his ax, pruning away the limbs and cleaving the tree vertically at its fork, just at his shoulder.

         The echoes of distant muskets and the occasional four-pounder's boom was heard to their south.

         "Somebody stood and took a fight back to 'em dis time, Fultie." Rascal observed. He scraped the sides of the pit listlessly with a larger shovel as he listened to the skirmish.

         "But not fer long.  He’ll duck ‘em yet.  So move yer mangy hide!" Fulton had seen enough of his comrade's lackadaisical work. He himself dug the greater portion of the hole far in the swamps above Barataria Bay. "My old grandmother dead of consumption moves faster in her grave than you do, an able-bodied man. God love her soul.”

He stood and watch a few more tepid swings of the spade and had enough.  “Move outta’ there 'afore you get us both to swing!"

         "It's dug!" Rascal protested as he tamped the dirt of the floor solid. Already water was seeping up from the boggy soil, giving the turned earth a slurry composition beneath his bare feet. He looked down at the shiny muck. "Ye sure those kegs can hold fast to that water?"

         "It’ll hold long enough. Give me the hand, man!" He helped Rascal out of the hole. "We gotta’ get back. Let's finish fillin' it back in a might faster than yer old ass started it, eh?"  He scowled at Rascal and jumped carefully into the hole on his one good leg.  His stump was the result of a Spaniard’s musket two years before.  Rascal eased toward the chest of gold but gripped the long-handle shovel as Fulton gained his footing.

         "Easy now with that chest. It'll hold well enough if it ain't burst. No slippery hands..." He looked up at Rascal and jumped backward.

         "Ach! What are you a-thinkin, Ras...!" Rascal Aldridge swung the shovel down on Fulton's head. The Welshman dropped into his grave.

           "I had about enough-a that low-talkin me, you arse." Rascal dropped the shovel and slid the heavy keg over to the lip. "And this will fer sure keep until them Limey's see that ole Bos Lafitte swings and I can get back to it."

           He carefully dropped the loot into Fulton's lap. "Shan’t take too long. You'll barely even be wormy I reckon. Now you just hold fast to it fer me.  And I thankee for helpin’ me lift it from that tight arse Lafitte.  A man ain’t got all day to risk his life for the glory of a rich man’s soverigns so paltry dispersed."

He threw the ax and the small spade in the hole.  Rascal looked up at the sky.  A thunderhead was moving toward Barataria from the west.  Lighting his pipe, he stroked his gristly elbows and arms.

         More gunfire began echoing, farther away now.

"Aye, they done run into the embrace of the woods." He began flipping dirt back inside the hole, noting the peculiar split down the middle in the baby oak. "Lucky me to have you doin’ me thinkin’ for me Fultie, ole boy.  Nice that bit, how you marked that little tree. A feller could get lost finding a single little ole tree in all this cursed mess."

“Lucky me, lucky me!”  He filled in the pit with his shovel, singing jubilantly the seaman’s songs of their day. 

Life was looking up for one Rascal Aldridge.  It was a first.



         Tall, dapper, and angry, Jean Lafitte stood in front of Rascal Aldridge a scant four days later. Rascal was on his knees, sweating in the July sun with his hands clasped in front of him.  Flogged until he confessed his sin, he cried out to the man his crew affectionately called Le Bos. 

         "It was fer me missus, Captain. I swear it!  Not a dime fer me, but Fulton…he run off with the booty ‘afore I could even taste my cut.  That swine.  He hid it out where I couldna’ fount it in a hundred years of trying.  And yes, I done ‘im in fer it!  But I only a-killt him for denying me mine and breakin’ the compact."

           Lafitte was sleepy.  The latest two days of fighting and hiding in the swamps as the Admiralty pursued him anew had not allowed for much rest.  He yawned and rubbed his eyes.

"Again and again, the lies, Rascal.  I swear you could not have been christened no better unless they named you Old Scratch.  Where is the body, then?  Where is this mystery missus, Rascal? A dozen shipmates I've asked of this mysterious missus of yours. Not a one speaks of some loving mother of these phantom whelps you insist you have. You been buggering a ghost? Some spirit?" 

Lafitte waved his hand as he looked at Aldridge’s face for a retort.  All he registered was a brief pause while he conjured up another untruth.  “Merde!”  Le Bos sneered and sipped from a cup of port. “I can’t abide a liar.  We’re all thieves, but nay…not a liar.”

           Rascal stammered, looking at the men standing around him. Not a one had a look of compassion in their eyes. Finding the inventory of his vault short a hundred gold pieces, when he returned from outflanking the latest British attempt to uncover his hideaway, had sent Lafitte into an uncommon rage. Every one of the men had suffered the interrogation and the tirade of Le Bos needlessly.

           Fulton's one-legged indentions in the wet soil next to the hut where the money was stolen was enough to finger them both for the deed.  The men’s own reputations provided the lynchpin for the conviction.

         "The body went into the river, Sir!  I swear it! Please, I got kids, Sir! A man seein' the Admiralty comin' up the bayou like I did has gotta’ think of himself and his blood first. I thought you was a-goner for sure this time."

           "No, what you two thought, if you two ever had that capability…you two thought you were the luckiest bastards in Barataria when you got to stay behind and watch things." Lafitte chuckled. "I'm ashamed I’ve had such bad judgment in men as of late. I'm gettin' weak in my spine I believe. Tis no life for a trusting soul I guess.  No matter how fair I try to be, I surround myself with privateers with no home and no crown, what should I expect?  Allegiance?  Bah!  To themselves and themselves alone."  His men standing around him shook their heads.  Their eyes all swore fresh loyalty to Le Bos.

"Sir! I had no thought of malice! Only fer me kids."

           "It's noted, Rascal. But trust is a thing I value and tis apparently little concern of yours." Jean pointed to a clutch of burly canooneers.

"String him up. Three days he stretches and swings!" Lafitte eyed down the men around him. "Same as any man who steals from ours.  We share and share alike.  Any man don’t like it can leave now and I’ll think no less of him.  But now and here after, any man I catch stealin’ from me and your brothers?  That scoundrel will beg to only be mercifully hanged."

         The cohorts all nodded and glared at Rascal.

         “Make sure he kicks.” Le Bos ordered. “I want him to have a bit of time to repent when he’s a-jerking at the end of that rope.” 

Lafitte walked away as Rascal Aldridge was dragged, pummeled, and finally, screaming and kicking for his life, man-handled toward the closest oak.

A young Creole woman, her belly bulging with child, walked up to Lafitte, catching him as he stepped onto the porch of his house.

         "Monsieur!  Monsieur…Bos!”

Lafitte stopped and looked at her.  He recognized her as one of the parlor girls Miss Rondaux kept gainfully employed when the men sought to spend their spoils of battle.  “Bon jour, Lorette.”

“I gots a problem, suh.  A major one.  It cain’t wait another minute.  Dat man, Missah All-drinch," she mispronounced. "He only half-lyin' about his children. I be a-carryin' his chile."

         Lafitte looked her up and town, imperiously tall as he stood atop the stairs. “Is that so?  Lorette, you told me Bagdo Cormiaux was the father.  Rest his soul.”

“I thoughts about it, Monsieur.  I been thinkin’ about it a lot since Bagdo drownt.  His times with me…it could not have sown the seeds, suh.  Monsieur All-drinch, he gots to be the man.  Please, suh.  I’ve been aimin’ to have a proper baptism for the chile.  You hang a man for dis, my chile got no chance in de world.”

"I suggest next time, you pick a better breed than a common thief to give your wares to then." He flipped a silver piece to her and yawned.

"That’s for the midwife. At least your bastard can have the virtue of a birth attended to properly.  Apparently the sire of a man of honor eluded it.  That’s may be a shame, but not mine.  Adieu." He turned and went into the house.

Rascal Aldridge was hanged as soon as a sailor found a suitable length of rope. For three days, the corpse dangled alongside the Spanish moss.

           The baby, a dubious son, was born without incident, one week later.



Nearly Two hundred Years Later...



         Albert “Albie” Aldridge tapped the flame of a cheap Bic to an impossibly large lump of crank seated atop a nest of Bugler tobacco packed in a glass pipe. He sucked in the acrid smoke, clearing the bowl of a dose the size of which would have caused many lesser users to have keeled over and died.  Holding it in until he could no longer stifle the burning, he exhaled.  The smoke was filtered through the rotten gaps of a near-skeletal smile.

         Murmuring, "Fuck 'em," his chin hit his chest as the pipe tumbled from his loosened fingers. It took a bounce on the flattened and desiccated remains of a raccoon that was dead long before he ended up secluded in his family's last vestige from their two hundred years of scurrilous existence in deep Acadiana.

         Albie was holed up in a tarpaper shack on four dry acres of Louisiana swamp that sat between Lake Laurier and Lake Judge Perez. The land, a term used loosely in the marshes surrounding Barataria Bay, was decreed to Albie when a Plaquemines Parish Probate Judge could find no more living Aldridges around 1985.

           The shack was eerily similar to its lone inhabitant- tainted, foul, worn-out and several decades past its usefulness. It had the dubious distinction of surviving a mob of angry whites in 1920 when they rampaged throughout the tiny shantytown, ostensibly to avenge the rape of a white woman. In fact they were just drunk and one of the men randomly decided the shantytown was the incubator for the influenza that killed all three of his children during the epidemic of 1918.

Twelve houses had been burned; somehow Dandy Aldridge's shack managed to remain standing. All of Dandy's kin and friends who were burned out filtered into surrounding towns.  Dandy was ironically the actual rapist in question but was never stood to the charge. 

He and whatever woman could stand him lived on in the tarpaper hut for another fifteen years.  Women usually stayed only long enough to drop a baby for him that they soon learned he would not even attempt to support.

A random encounter with a pistol-wielding farmer who did not take kindly to his stealing three laying hens in the middle of a March night eventually ended Dandy’s life.

The shack remained standing for another seventy-odd years, alone in an ever-increasing cocoon of wild hedge, creeper vines and mimosa.

           Now the tin roof shanty stood in the midst of a swamp far from civilization, forgotten except as a blemish on a parish tax ledger every now and again. There was no plumbing and never had been. At one time after the war, a power line had been run to it, but the poles were long since cut away for wood. Mice and funnel spiders had long since taken turns moving into the two lone power receptacles in the kitchen and den.

Corners of the roof in the only two bedrooms had long been peeled away by storms.  The floors were eaten until they crumbled away into huge gaps of exposed dirt. Junk and random weeds cluttered every room as dust bunnies grew by the decade into dirt piles wettened by dripping rains.  The entire hut was rife with burrowing bugs, enshrouding fungus, fornicating varmints of all description and size, ancient sin, and the mental and physical depravities of numerous Aldridges over many decades.

Behind the peeling walls, boarded windows and doors nailed shut, Albie had spent six straight days awake.

           Occasionally after the jitters began in earnest after the fourth day awake, he fired a few dozen rounds through the already porous walls with a Mac-10 machine pistol. The mice and other critters that scurried around both inside the walls and in the overgrowth that was threatening to devour the shack at some far away time made noises that sent him panicking.  Fearing an assault by unseen but well-known demons, he fired recklessly and often.

He had no idea that the four boxes of grits and two boxes of Mac-n-cheese he called his 'extended provisions' had long been torn apart and carried away by the vermin in the kitchen. His sole source of drink was two jugs of distilled water. He rarely thought to drink. Only when his swollen throat hurt to draw in the pipe's smoke did he think to hydrate himself.

           For six straight days, he lived perched on a day bed with a rotten mattress in the living room. Around him were mildewed shards of furniture, piles of ancient clothes that were more fungus and mouse shit than fabric, ancient sacks of garbage long ago scattered and shredded into insulation by generations of rodents, and some filthy, tossed-about utensils and decrepit housewares dating from sometime in the Fifties when his extended family had last called the shack an official address.

Any semblance of a driveway that may have existed was long ago swallowed by the creeping flora of the surrounding swamp.  If there was still a mailbox at the end of the old path at the nearest road or ever had been, it was probably long gone.

           Albie scarcely moved from the mattress. The first two days, he made an effort to step outside to pee off the front porch and to crap over the side of the back door's threshold. The porch on the rear of the house had long-before succumbed to the termites and the elements. By the third day, as paranoia increased while he added more and more crank to his already burned-out mind, he decided to kick a hole in the floor in front of the day bed. He squatted over that when the body randomly excreted the remains of its diet of his own muscle tissue mixed with the vitamin crank.

         More often than not, he missed even that target.

         When the buzz would wear off, he would become somewhat lucid. There was pain, then. He had ripped most of the flesh from his forearms as he clawed at imaginary junebugs that were trying to dig their way into his bloodstream everytime he felt himself nodding off.

         A staph infection was setting into his arms. Angry red streaks outlined his veins as they bulged through arms long atrophied by the wasting-away from the addiction. Eager to avoid the white-hot fire that the junebugs inside his veins were causing, he decided to kill them by overdosing them with crank. It seemed a logical way to defeat them. Albie figured a junebug could not withstand the dose of crank like he could.

He sat for hours on end, hunched up with his knees brought up to his chest, naked so he could flick away any bugs if and when they tried to get inside him to help themselves to the feast he imagined their brethren were enjoying within him.

         With only the pound of crank stolen from a cooker he robbed and killed as he fled the clutches of his former friend and boss, the mobster Bertrand "Grizzly" Fontenot and two boxes of 9mm ammunition for the Mac-10 as protection against his perceived and imagined foes, Albie Aldridge rocked nervously on the bare, rank mattress. 

It was the only unemployment benefits he qualified for after leaving his job.

Every minute scratch of a limb against a wall was threat enough for the bullets to fly. One thought completely held him in rapt attention for the entire six days he lay awake in the throes of meth-induced mania.  High on crank, he would rock and chant the mantra repeatedly.

           "They're coming to get me.  They comin’ to get ole Albie!"

           Albert Aldridge made many a miscalculation in his life.  About that, however, he was correct.





Albie had been a trusted lieutenant, entrusted with secrets that he spilled to Deputy U.S. Attorney Randall Jowanski at length. When Jowanski showed him the door without a deal afterward because he could see Albie was a drug-addled train wreck of a witness, Albie stole a fistful of random papers from Pete's office and brought them to Jowanski, again with the random hope of getting something resembling protection. He was shown the door again.  Leaving the office that time, he saw a van with Ricky Delarque, a known Mudbug hit man, watching him after he delivered the goods.  Albie immediately loaded up with supplies and broke camp.

           JT Griffon, Pete's favorite private investigator, tracked Albie as far as the home of Ray Craven, the operator of a large meth lab where he cooked up crank for the Fontenots. Ray was shot dead.  His truck and john boat were missing.

         "Wasn't a speck of product to be found in there nowhere, Griz." JT had told them. "Ole boy even broke up all them glass beakers and scraped what he could get outta’ them, too. Depending on how much Ray had cooked up, ole Albie either gonna be flyin' high to heaven or he maybe got money to run off on."

         He handed Grizzly a packet, the background information on Albert Bruce Aldridge. "He took a truck with a boat on it. I done some looking at him and wrote out a few places he’s been known to be tied to. Of course, y'all know him,  I don't. So you may have a different notion of where the guy might run.  I did see on there where it said he’s got some land or at least some place in his name downriver below Phoenix.  It’s a family plot of some kind or somthing.  That appraisal report ain't been updated in over a decade but it had a shed or a shack of some kind listed the last time anyone thought to look at it.”

JT lit a cigarette.  “If he wanted to hide out, it’d be a good place to hole up if he had a boat to get to it, which he now does.”  He stood up and shook hands with the Fontenots.  “Y’all need anything else, give me a holler.  And good luck with it."

         Grizzly Fontenot stuck his thumbs in the top of his eye sockets and took a deep breath as “Big JT” Griffon sauntered out of his office in Algiers, Louisiana. As he left, Grizzly and his brother Pete could heard the sound of billiards below them until the heavy door closed itself.

         Grizzly's office sat on the third floor of the huge tavern known as Mudbugs. At any time of the day or night, the minions and heads of the mob outfit known throughout New Orleans as the 'Atchafalaya Mudbugs' inhabited the pool hall and tavern.  The building was converted from an old cotton-bale warehouse by their mother, Ruby Fontenot.

           "Established Sometime 'Round When Dem Saint's Come Marchin' In," the wooden sign on the front door read.  It was as close to logging the date of their existence as both a club and an outfit as they could manage or dare to observe.

         Grizzly turned around and pulled out the last two Bud Dry longnecks from the fridge behind him. He swayed as he handed one to Pete.

         "I guess it done come down to it den." Grizzly shook his head somberly. "Da man done lost his evah-lovin' mind forevah." He stifled a belch. They were the last two beers were from a case bought at noon.  The clock read 3:20.

         "His evah-lovin’ mind done made one nasty stinkin' pile on its way out, dat's fo sho." Pete wiped sweat from a big jowl with the back of a sleeve. "If it's dem Lowry papers he done took ovah to Asshole, we gonna’ have one helluva fight to stay upright and walkin' without orange jump suits in a few years."

           "You know," Grizzly dropped the cold bottle into a coozy that read, "Dead Men Tell No Tales." "I don't know what's worse. Losing our chef or him droppin' dem damn papers right on Randy Jowanski's doorstep."

"Both-a dem gonna’ cost us money. Dem chefs ain't so hard to come by, but Aaron is hyper-pissed.  He already done been makin' his displeasure heard about dem papers bein in dey hands. He seem to think lettin' him live and cook his mind up some more be much bettah den him jess goin' away. He look bettah on da stand as a strung-out ghost den a disappeared witness tryin' to make Asshole's case for him if’n he gets us to a docket."

           Grizzly rolled his head over and looked at his brother. "That’s Aaron’s lawyer-talk.  But fuckin’ Albie?  Bro, you know he gotta’ go. I don't care about what Aaron thinks he can do to him in a courthouse.  It's been time to do it fo’ a lot longer than it shoulda’ been."

He drained the beer in one pull and got up from his cypress desk. "Walk with me. I need somethin' stronger from downstairs.” He picked up his cane to maneuver the stairs on his one leg. “Christ, my damned head hurts.  I’m gettin’ sloppy in my old age, I swear it."

           They walked down the stairs to the floor where various shady paused in place as they realized the boss was among them. Grizzly slapped backs and joked with them as he passed them, but all of them felt the tinge of danger in his presence.

The brothers walked up to the bar and sat down.  The bartender, a buxom, tattooed Amazonian blond named Bree Delarque, walked over from her talk with a few of the fellows.

         "Whatcha’ sippin, Boss?"

           Bertrand sighed at her impossibly large bosom in the low-cut shirt she was never without and looked over the bottles arranged on the shelf behind her. "I'ma need dat Turkey real fuckin’ heavy today, baby doll. From the tap, si vous plait." He winked at her.

         She pulled down a fifth of Turkey 101, jammed it between her breasts, and poured him a shot glass full by leaning over the counter. Then she bent her head forward, pulled it out with her mouth and turned it up for a few shots herself.

         The minions and boss alike cheered the trick. It never got old. She sat the bottle down in front of Grizzly.

         "I knew der was a reason I hired you." Pete chuckled.

         Bree juggled her breasts and laughed at him. "Two, baby. One just ain't enough of some things."

         “So says da sage.” Grizzly turned up the shot and poured another. One of their dope mules, sat down beside Pete and dropped some quarters into the electronic trivia game.

         "Boy, where you get dat nasty Alabama shirt?" Pete looked at the man, Eddie Nesbit.

         "Dat's National Champion Alabama to you, Big Daddy." Nesbit smiled. "I got it last time I went back home."

         "You crazy as hell to wear dat in Nawlins." Bree sneered at him. "Take it off."

         "Yours first." Eddie fired back at her. “Please?”

         "You couldn't afford the air fare to fly as high as you could get on these titties, Redneck." Bree wiggled a no-no finger at him and walked back down to fetch Gary Couvillon another PBR.

         "I made my mind up." Grizzly turned up another shot of Turkey. "Albie's retired. Call Moses and my lil Curio baby to take care of Albie.  Permanently and proper-like.  I want his ass gone.”

           Pete cleared his throat. His brother had been drinking heavily. Such things were not to be discussed in amongst their great unwashed masses.  As they were finding out after Albie Aldridge stole a cache of documents that outlined a money laundering operation, information was power.

           Pete glared at Eddie Nesbit, who stared as intensely as he could at the random trivia questions on the bar-top game. "Loose lips sink ships, Bammer."

         "It's a dark and silent world we all walk until our grave are dug, Pete." Eddie gulped and subtly mimicked zipping his lips shut with his fingers.

“You keep dat dark and silent world squarely on your mind, boy.  And no wearing dat shitrag in my bar no more.  I don’t care how many south Florida faggots yo’ boys paid off to take a dive, dey still a crimson turd to me.”

Nesbit nodded and turned to look at his beer.

         "Come on, Bertie," Pete picked up his beer with one hand and Grizzly with the other, his eyes still glaring menacingly at the Alabama mule. "Let's go talk to a guy about a thing."

         A television behind Bree caught Grizzly's eye. "Hold up. Looka’ dat, fellas!"

         Raw footage of what Hurricane Andrew had wrought upon Homestead, Florida played across the scene. In the corner of the screen, a live radar shot showed the compact storm was set loose in the Gulf of Mexico. A meteorologist cut into the pictures of devastation and highlighted projected paths for the hurricane.

         Most of the lines denoting the path pointed the storm at the Crescent City.

           "Oh shit." Bree spoke for everyone.



           "The devastation to south Florida is tremendous," said the talking head on Channel Seven. "At this hour hundreds of thousands of residents in the Homestead-Miami area of Florida are without utilities. There are reports of widespread shortages of water and food. Long lines have formed at the local civil defense and National Guard rally points for items such as ice, food and water. Residents I spoke to today told of the viciousness of the night the powerful storm made landfall..." The channel flipped.

           "...Looting reported..." Flip.

         "Mayor Morial warned residents..." Flip.

         Curio Phelonie frowned and flipped off the television at her cottage in Thibodeaux, Louisiana. Outside, she heard the nonstop whine of a power saw that was followed now and again by the pounding of nails. Her boyfriend, Moses Holliday, was busy boarding up her home for her.

         For the fourth time in twenty minutes, she rolled her eyes as a pager danced on the coffee table beside her.

         "Jesus, give us a damn minute!"

Curio grumbled and turned on a table lamp beside her as Moses covered the last living room window with a sheet of plywood.  "Anybody and everybody with a lick of sense is boarding up with a keg of the Beast or hauling ass outta’ here," she chewed an Oreo and chased it with chocolate milk, "but leave it to two fuckin’ coonasses to need someone dead when a hurricane is coming."

She sighed, hiccupped chocolate, and continued studying a manual that detailed methods of combat with edged weapons.

           "Light reading while we hole up a dew days," as Moses said.

         To her horror, she realized the whole jumbo pack of cookies was eaten by the time Moses came inside for a beer. Curio was sniffling when he walked in, shirtless. Sawdust clung to his sweat. He shucked his work gloves and walked over to her.

         "What's wrong?"

           She wiped her eyes. "The boss is calling and I ate a whole box of cookies without realizing it."

           Moses laughed at her. "Were they good?"

         "Apparently.  You know I'm about to be on my period. Why the hell would you bring me a bigass pack of cookies home knowing I'm about to be boarded up in here with them?  I'm getting fat.  You want me to get fat?"

“You’re not fat.”

           It was absurd. He knew it. She probably knew it. But it was a thing Moses suspected every man who cohabited with women had dealt with such random lunacy at some point.  He also knew it had been a long while since the word for action had come from New Orleans.

         His young lover had grown accustomed to the job. The 'peculiar employment' as he called it.  Since being accepted into the Atchafalaya Mudbugs crime syndicate, work had been plentiful. Keeping fit to retain a body she thought was both sexy for her man and useful in the job was easiest when they were working steadily.

           Few jobs had come their way for a few months, though.  Idleness set in, followed by monotony and the sighing humdrum of too much free time.

Moses understood it.  He dealt with it easily enough because after years on the job it was second nature to have long spates of time pass until he was called into action again.

           Whiskey usually filled his downtime before he met Curio. Television and shopping filled hers when he was not around. 

Now, she was shocked to look in her trash can and notice it was cookies and ice cream.  She wiped her eyes.  “Fuckin’ Oreos.  Why do they gotta’ come in such big packs.  The shit ain’t right, man.”

         Chuckling he said simply, "I brought them so we we have something to munch on if we got stuck in here a little while." Her eyes got wide. He gulped as he realized his innocent explanation was poorly worded and even more poorly timed.

Her lip quivered a few dangerous times before she erupted.

           "Oh my God! You gotta’ be thinkin I'm such a pig right now!" She whimpered again and looked through watery eyes at the empty pack of Oreos. "Dammit, man. I gotta’ get off this couch!"  She tried to get up and to her horror, she discovered she had been sitting so long her legs were asleep.  She mistook their lack of motion for a lack of power needed to move her butt.  “Fuck!  I can’t even get up, I’m so fat.”

         "Stop it.  You ain’t fat.” He walked over to her kitchen counter and unzipped his duffle bag. “You said they called?  You call back?"

         "No. It's been going off for a while and I've been sitting here watching you and eating these damn cookies. I'm so lazy."

           "Well, let's see what's on the agenda. Maybe we get to get you to do some sweatin'..." Again, he realized by the exasperation on her cute face that she misconstrued.

           "You mean so the oinker you're fucking can lose her fat ass, don't you?"

           He fished a throwaway cell phone from the duffel. "Your ass ain't fat. It's perfect. Want me to bounce a quarter on it?"

           "Would you? It would mean a lot to me."

           "Women." He wiped sweat from an eye as the call-forwarding service picked up.

           "Moses for Griz."

         Grizzly Fontenot soon clicked on the line.

           "Hey, Tex.  Listen, we headin' over to da beach house to get it ready.  But I need you to send yo lil cheri over to da office later, Mo.  Send her in while we open. I'ma put a packet behind da bar for y'all.  Bree’ll get it to her."

         "Timeline?" Moses flipped on the television and found a radar image on nearly every local channel.  Andrew was still moving fast toward their area.

Curio looked up at him, incredulous. “A job?  In that?”

"Soonest, Mo. While we know where fo’ sho."

         "I hope it's in Texarkana." Moses chuckled and shook his head.

           "Naw.  Not dis time, ole boy. Bring your raincoat."

         "On the way." He hung up the phone and pulled the battery out of it.

         "Can't it wait until after the killer hurricane passes us by?" Curio hugged Moses around the waist as he sat down beside her.

         "Apparently." He weaved his fingers through her hair. "You get to go to the office though."

         "Me? Why does he want me?"

         "Because you don't exist. You're just another woman headin' into Mudbugs for dollar longneck night.  They're gonna leave a packet for you."

         "They won't be there?"

         "Nope. But watch out for Bree.  Her knockers could eat a barrel of them Oreos by themselves."

         "That ain't funny."



         Curio Phelonie had the door opened for her by a kindly but quite drunken old codger as she walked into Mudbugs.  He doffed his tattered fedora to her but stared at her butt for a long time as she passed him.

         If the city of New Orleans was facing certain annihilation by the huge hurricane, the people partying in the bar had no idea. The place was packed.

         "Holy shit!"

One of the guys spoke for the others around his pool table as she walked by them. Curio selected a form-fitting black mini-dress.  It was high-cut on her thighs but with a gaudy silver Fleur de Lis dangling on a chain, it drew their eyes to her breasts and not her butt.  She wore matching pair of silver and black stilettos to lift his short self a few inches and purposely tighten up her butt a bit.  Moses was half-drunk on beers when she made him actually attempt to bounce a quarter on her ass as she selected a dress to wear.  He failed to get the appropriate spring from the coin and she was horrified.

Cutting her dark eyes toward the men as they gestured and toasted her raucously, she winked and smiled. It was good to be out and about.

         Smiling her infectious smile, she walked to the bar, where a large Amazon was pouring Cuervo from her huge cleavage down a row of shot glasses.  Gaping, Curio nodded in admiration as the blonde pulled the bottle out by the neck and turned it up without using her hands.

Dollars fell into the tip jar next to Curio. She looked around the pool hall and saw the festivities going on fully, despite the danger. A number of dark men she assumed where in her boss's stable lingered over cocktails in small bunches.

Suddenly, two pairs of briefly-bared breasts exploded from a pair of giddy Tulane coeds in one corner of the place.  The blaring music could scarcely hold back the uproar.

         "It's good to be back home."

Curio leaned back against the bar and savored le bon temps.

         New Orleans was her home by birth, but it was not a town she frequented much. Moses frowned on her returning to visit, since she was now a wanted woman in several locales. It was a situation she understood better now that she was more involved in their job.  Though she was happy to be sitting at a bar in her hometown as a young woman, there were of course, memories of the city that she wished she could avoid recalling but they would not be deterred from emerging in her mind.

New Orleans meant her childhood, a most unpleasant upbringing. There was no reason for Curio Phelonie, a hired killer for one of The Big Easy's most notorious gangsters, to return to the city where she was once just Lemarie Leblanc, the daughter of a slain junkie stripper, victim of molestation, a faceless runaway, and a thief by requirement.  Once she was just a sad tale of daily struggle and sexual favors granted for a decent bed to sleep in. 

She was a party girl only in appearance.  There were endless nights at clubs and parties out of necessity, not frivolity.  People who knew her on the all-night dance floors assumed she was just a creature of the festive night if they did not already know she was homeless.  Moses found her one day and ended all of that.

Now she was a siren in another club who no one knew but all who saw her in the bar coveted.  She needed none of them for her sanctuary and would kill any of them,if required. 

But, since she was just picking up orders from the boss, she figured on no killing that night.  Her learned paranoia kicked in as she surveyed the bar for threats.

It was a city where things erupted in minute explosions of whimsy.  Fights, public drunkenness, random stops and possible informants watched her every second of her time in the city, if Moses' paranoid admonitions were to be believed.  If she fit a description for some crime and her prints were lifted for some reason or another, they could possibly be linked to capital murder scenes by chance.  Though possessed with an over-abundance of caution, Moses was keen on the possibility of the overlooked detail.

         "The one eyelash in the carpet is all they need to kill you in Angola." He reminded her constantly. "The one drop of blood on a pant's leg will gas you in Parchman. The smeared thumbprint on a spent brass could fry you in Florida."

The randomness of the fickle finger of fate was drilled into her incessantly. After killing several men with Moses, some of those kills not going too well, the paranoia was finally beginning to set in for her as well.

But being in New Orleans...there was something about being back home that brought back the swaying swagger within her.

           "What can I get you, honey?" Bree propped up on the bar and drooped her huge breasts down in front of Curio.  Curio spun around and was greeted with them a foot away.

           "Jesus! A garden hose to milk those things, baby!" Curio laughed aloud, surprised suddenly.  “Day-um, how do you walk?”

Bree raised back and smiled. Curio pulled a twenty from her purse.   

"Seven and seven.  And did the big boys leave a packet with you for me?"

         Bree nodded and cut her eyes around the bar. "Coming right up. You Trixie, right?"

           "Yeah.  Whatever.  That's me." Curio shrugged. She had no idea what fake name Bree had been given.

         "Okay then." Bree poured up the highball and slid it in front of her.

         "Thank you. How long you been workin' here?"

         "Four years." Bree pulled a pair of Lites from a chest cooler and popped the caps for a waitress.

         "You boarded up for dat storm?"

         "I live over in Slidell. My husband got it done today." Bree looked at a ticket order and walked over to a blender to mix up a frozen Sex on the Beach. She clandestinely dropped a tiny sealed plastic tube into the concoction as she poured it into a To-go cup and topped it with a lid.  She dropped the Styrofoam cup in front of Curio.

         "Here." This one's on the house..." She looked over Curio's shoulder. "Shit, incoming, Trixie."

           Two drunken jocks sauntered up behind Curio, flanking her on either side. Both held longnecks extended casually and bore young wolves' grins as they waited for her acknowledgement.

           Curio stared at Bree and smiled, her eyes darkening as the smile dissolved into a sneer.  She winked at her and spun around on the bar stool.  Coldly, she studied the pair.

           "Hi!" The wolf on the left was shaved bald, thickly-built, medium height, wearing a pair of worn khaki shorts and a Panama Jack t-shirt. She looked him over and figured him for the alpha male of the pair.

Her eyes rolled over to her right at the wingman. Wolf Number Two was short, had thinning blond hair, a very slight build with beady eyes and a butt chin. He wore ripped jeans, Teva sandals…and a faded 1986 Sugar Bowl tee. Her eyes fixed on that atrocity directly.

         "Oh hell no!  You can save the hi." She raised a 'hang-on' hand to the alpha and pointed at the wingman's t-shirt.

         "You an LSU fan?" She downed the 7&7 in one long gulp and jammed the empty glass of ice at the alpha. The alpha took it and looked at his friend queerly.

           "Hell yeah I am.  My name's Duncan!" He thrust out a hand and brightened into a grin.  He mistook her interest as her choice of him over the better looking buddy he ran with.  She glared at his extended hand and looked back at the alpha, who then figured he was her choice.  Just as he expected.  He smirked and bobbed his head with a breezy, all-knowing grin.

           "You a LSU fan too?" She asked him.

           "Geaux Tigers.  Absolutely, baby." The alpha grinned and set the glass on the bar. "I'm an alumni actually.  Class of '88, baby.  You need some purple and gold in you?  I can accommodate."

"This skinny ass little blond motherfucker is a friend of yours…baby?  You associate with him of your own free will?" Curio picked up the to-go cup and took a sip.

         "He's my friend, sure. What's the problem with that?"

           The wingman looked at her in shock and returned his extended hand to his beer.

           "That shirt is offensive.  He should fuckin' know better than to wear that piece of shit shirt this close to the season." She stood up and jabbed a finger into Duncan's bony chest. "Dat's some sorry-ass shit!  You call yourself a fan!  Fuck off." She looked at the alpha. “Both of y’all!”

           "What?  It's a damned LSU shirt!" Duncan's eyes widened as he shrugged and studied the shirt.  Curio held up a hand and walked between the two young men.

         "Go to hell, Cornsilk.”

“I don’t get it.  What the fuck is your problem?”  The alpha growled at her.  He was clearly not used to being dismissed so flippantly.

Curio paused and said, “We lost that game. I wouldn't be caught dead in a shirt from a Sugar Bowl we lost and I'll be damned if I get hit on by some dumbass who wears one." She wrinkled her nose at the alpha guy. "Or his faggot friend who tolerates that in his presence." She tossed her head in disgust. “We're known by the company we keep, right? Get some fuckin' class, alumni." Curio walked away in a huff. “There’s some Tulane whores over there.  Try them.”

         Truth be told, she could care less if the guy had drug some old t-shirt from a drawer without thinking. There was a hurricane coming and a job to do.  There was no time to waste on being hit on by jerk-offs when her man was awaiting her return with a job, party favors, and a ragingly satisfying erection.

           The two men looked at each other, unsure how to react.  A few of Grizzly's men had overheard the little Cajun sprite's stance against the shirt and snickered from their bar stools. Bree chuckled and popped open a few more longnecks.

“Geaux Tigers!”  A man called out behind her.  Bottles raised in drunken solidarity.  The cheer was raised around the tavern.

“Yeah!  Take that bullshit-ass t-shirt off and wipe your ass with it!”  A man at the bar called to the offender, cigarette dangling from his lips, pool cue in his grip. 

The pair could see various men in purple and gold and the occasional Saints’ black and gold were eyeballing them with scorn.  A few were cracking their knuckles for show.

           Finally, the alpha called out, "Hey fuck you!" He looked and nodded for approval from Duncan. Transfixed, Duncan watched her leave in the slinky dress that clung so well to her ass.

         "I'm in love." He said dreamily as her ass swished away in the skirt.

           "No way!  He didn't just tell me fuck you!"

Curio heard the insult and immediately swerved toward the guys at the pool table who had cat-called to her as she entered the place. The one closest to her stood up abruptly as she sashayed to him.

With his friends’ cheers and whoops in his ear, she pulled him by the collar of his Polo and kissed him deliciously on the mouth in front of everyone. The guy was too shocked to reply. Curio broke the lip-lock and turned his ear to her mouth roughly. He wobbled in place, clearly drunk.

           "I came in here looking for a coupla’ guys to make me scream because it takes at least two or three to get me off like I like." She purred in his ear. "But you see those two assholes over der?" She turned his head to look at the two men still staring at her from the bar.  Other men turned who were watching her turned and looked at them, too.

The drunk man wearing her lipstick nodded absently.

           "Those two just said that Bill Archer is a raging faggot and there's no way we can beat Ole Miss or even Tulane this year with the prissy faggots we got playing for us this year.  I’ll tell you this.  I woulda’ liked to have found me some good dick up in here tonight since I'm staying not too far from here until the storm passes.  I figured what the hell, we all may die in it so why not die happy, right?”  She turned his face to hers and glared at him.

         “But I'll be damned if I stand there in this bar and listen to those kinda’ bastards talk about our Coach like dat.  I think y'all oughta’ watch this sweet and horny piece of ass as it leaves this shithole of a bar and then maybe y’all oughta’ go explain to those two dickheads that Coach Archer ain't no fag.  And maybe dey shouldn't be running off the best night all you boys coulda’ ever had before we all die. Toodles, baby!"  She smacked him on the cheek.  The drunk man turned to his friends, who all turned toward Duncan and his alpha-male friend.

           With a little extra swish of her hips, Curio Phelonie marched out the door. Erupting in laughter as she slammed the door behind her, she tasted the sweet air of the flippant city.

It was good to be home.

She barely made it half a block up the street before a chair flew through a front window of Mudbugs, followed soon after by a scrum of men cursing, wrestling and punching each other as they tumbled wildly through the doors and into the streets.



"Hoo boy!"  Moses rubbed his temple as he studied the documents under a magnifying glass at his cottage on Flechette Bayou.  Outside, he could already see the Spanish moss on the distant trees sailing like gnarly wind socks. 

Andrew was estimated to be thirty-six hours away from landfall.

         Curio sat across from him, cleaning the sawed-off double-barrel Moses called Barry White.

         "They finally called out Albie."  Moses shook his head in disbelief.  "I don't know what I hate more about this.  The fact that they should a-done it to him years ago or the fact that they let him drop a dime on them and now to make it right, they're calling us to head after him in the middle of a damn hurricane.  I'm gettin' too old for this shit."

         "Where is he hiding out you think?"  Curio fit the stock to the barrels and snapped it close.

         "They ain't gotta’ clue, I bet.  But Pete thinks he's holed up down in Barataria at some damn shack of his.  Of course they would think that, since it ain't their asses takin' the boat ride down that way.  Shit."

Quickly, he scanned through other possible hide-outs. 

         "He could be there.  Of course, he could be in a Federal safe house in Michigan for all they know.  I almost hope he is."

         "What's the plan?"

         He pointed out the city on a map and followed the river’s course south.  "We put in down there by Phoenix and head down to the shack.  Hopefully he's not holed up in there with his big ball of crank all nice and wired up with ten machine guns.  Our luck should be so good."

         "Who is he?  Why dey tolerate a cranked-up guy like that?"

         Moses shrugged. "Albie goes way back with them.  His uncle used to hijack trucks for ole man gumbah Marcello way back when.  Mama Ruby hired him out from under them at some point.  Hell, for a long time Albie was pretty useful.  Back in the street days, I worked with him a time or two when we had to operate in force.  He’s dangerous."

         "What's wrong with him?  He got a beef?  I mean, he went to the damned Feds.  Who does that?"

         "He’s just cooked out.  They lost him a long time ago and now it bit ‘em.  I had no idea when we used to coke it up like we did back then that either of us would live long enough to see the repercussions.  'Course, I dropped it back a notch or two after a while.  But Albie never dropped it back one bit and now he got a-strung out on that crank.  It ain't healthy and at his age and as long as he's been a-tweakin' it up on what to fuck ever he could get his hands on, his mind ain't much more useful than a whoopie cushion."

         "With all the guys we've done up lately, I can't help but wonder if Grizzly is cleaning house in order to clear his table for another kinda’ meal."  Curio got up and walked over to the fridge and poured herself a fuzzy navel.          "I sure as hell wouldn't want no history with him after seein' all the familiar faces at the table around start gettin' thinned out."

         "Each one had a reason to go, though.  Think about it.  Thieves and idiot thieves are the mainstay of our business.  Just because they been around a while doesn't entitle anyone to jeopardize the outfit.  Albie shoulda’ went away a long damn time ago.  He finally fucked up enough for them to call him out.  Problem is, they're doin' it only because he dropped some papers to that Fed Jowanski.  God knows what else he actually told them.  Even if the Feds can’t use it in court, it can point them in places Grizzly would rather they stay the fuck out of.”  He ground his teeth and sighed. 

“Our guys are probably gonna’ get indicted at some point and it's gonna’ be hell on their business.  You, my dear, can probably expect a lot more work in the near future."

         Moses put down the magnifying glass and lit a Winston.  "I've seen it before.  Whenever they get indicted, and it has happened before, they get jumpy, pissed off and generally become paranoid cockknockers.  Trust me, it's a nice set of paydays when they are looking at a possible court date."

         "I worry about you, Moses.  You are way too tight with them.  You talk way too la-de-da about how paranoid they are at times.  You sure they wouldn't come after you?  You really are a man who knows too much, ya know."

         Moses blew a smoke ring.  "I don't lose sleep over it.  I handle problems for them without any mess and we go way back.  Having you here tells me I'm bulletproof to them."

         "I'm beginning to think you're bulletproof, period.  You so awwwesooome."  Curio giggled and downed her fuzzy navel.

         "So haw-neeeee," Moses imitated the comedian Jay Hickman.  "You weddy to go on a lil boat wiiide?

         Curio stared at him, her mouth open in horror.  “You asshole!”

         “What?”  He chuckled.

         “You know how that joke fucking ends!  You do think I'm fat!”

         Moses looked at her.  Everything in place, her physique so alluringly accentuated in the clingy dress, she was undeniably gorgeous.

         “Babydoll, you ain't fat.  You ain't plump.  You ain't...” He got up and walked slowly to her, his eyes smiling. “...rotund.  You ain't portly.  You ain’t fluffy.”  He put his arm around her and pressed his lips to her neck.

         “You ain’t Reubenesque.  You ain't pudgy.”  She swooned as his mouth massaged her neck.  “You ain't even big-boned.”

He felt her tremble and heard her stifle a giggle as his tongue tickled her sweet spot under her ear.  As she stroked his hair, his lips brought the quickening of her breath in his ear. 

“But you're about to be,” He whispered perfectly and the talking ceased.



         Albie Aldridge looked out of the hole that had been the kitchen window of his decrepit shack.

         “Dey’s a storm a-comin’ ole Albie.” His eyes beheld the stiff gales sweeping the trees and the dark skies as the morning brightened into gray.  Cradling the machine pistol in his arms, his eyes darted restlessly as he surveyed the woods.  “Bad one, bro.  A really bad one.”

         He pulled the edges of a ragged towel back across the window and stabbed the edges on nail heads to hold them in place.  Thirsty suddenly, he found a jug of water and downed it completely.  The hydration fueled him as he picked his way around the junky old shack, peering through gaps in the walls and boarded-up windows dozens of times.

Every glance told him the sky was growing angrier by the hour.  Already, he heard the moaning of wind through the gaps in the walls and the slap of tin against the frame.  Retreating to his perch on the old day bed, his deranged mind wandered incessantly as the five senses ramped up to overdrive.  He smoked up more crank and rocked on his ankles like a shivering, twitching, starving bird.

One gust caught a giant oak with two great canopies of full, lush leaves full-on in the rear of home.  A great creaking and popping noise erupted around the shack as the roots gave way.  The treetop caught the gust like a sail and over it went.  The sound was an intense rustle as the dying behemoth toppled over.  The impact rattled the house.

Pieces fell from the molded walls and decaying roof.

For a moment, Albie thought the tree was aiming for him directly.  When he heard it crash away from him, he breathed a sigh of relief and had another pull from the pipe.  The wind still whistled, catching the tin and peeling at the tarpaper walls in new angles of attack with the tree felled.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement.  His ears heard the rapid footfalls of a man running across the front porch.  For a brief instant, a shadow creased through the streams of light that worked their way through the cracks in the doorway.

Immediately he raised the Mac-10 and squirted a few wild rounds at the blemish.  More light streamed in through the bullet holes.  The shadow only moved away slowly; its motion apparent as the light blinked away temporarily and then reappeared as it moved down the length of the living room.

“I hit you!  I know I did!”  Albie jumped to his feet, laughing maniacally.  “Aired you out, bitch!”  He fired a fusillade of 9mm bullets in a methodical sweep of the wall.  “Die, asshole!  I hit you!” 

The pistol clicked as he ran empty.  Quickly, he reloaded and swept the wall again, his eyes wide.  To his horror, he realized he ground down on his teeth so harshly one of his rotten molars was now swirling around in bloody shards in his cheek.  He spat and wiped his mouth.  Dropping the emptied clip, he fumbled around in his twisted blankets, trying to find his box of bullets.

“Al-bieeee.” A man’s murmuring moan whispered through the rear bedroom continuously every time the wind reached a certain pitch. 

He found the box, panicking as he fumbled around trying to reload the two clips.  Albie managed to get five shells into one and reloaded the gun.

“Al-bieeee.” A tree limb screeched his name as the end of a limb with a dozen long-dead twig ends was dragged slowly across the tin roof.

“That’s me!  I’m Albie!  You just come on in here and see what ole Albie’s got fo’ you!”

His eyes darted around. 

A man continued walking back and forth on the porch.  In the increased number of bullet holes punched through the walls, he could almost make out the garb of his assailant.  The pants were not jeans nor did they seem pleated or machine stitched.  They swayed in minute riffles as the wind whipped around them.  Watching the pants move from left to right and back again down the porch, Albie nervously filled the spare magazine.

“Al-bieee!”  A sudden downpour, brief and torrential fell on the roof and subsided after it spoke his name in its wet Morse code on the tin roof. 

“Al-bieee!” Thunder echoed his name in a momentous sonic boom that rattled every stick of rotted wood bracing in the house.

He retreated into a ball as tightly as he could manage, the only part of him projecting was a thin hand quivering with the outstretched machine pistol.

“Stop it with dat man’s name and face the man you’re a-callin’!” He yelled, eyes jerking in feverish glances around him as his name continued to be heard as the wind worked the swamp. 

Another oak gave way to the east of the house.  It crashed into a bald cypress and the pair of them splashed tremendously into the shallow bog surrounding the deeper slough.

For the first time, he heard the tell-tale jingle of coins clinking in a random manner at the rear of the house.  Thinking it was some careless assassin jingling his change in a pocket, he fired the five rounds at the sound and slapped in the spare clip.

“It’s gold.!  A voice laughed at him through the bullet holes.  “Gold, Albie.  It’s gold!

“It’s bullshit is what it is!” He yelled and counted the bullets in the ammo box before he began clicking them into the spare clip.  Albie was down to twenty-three rounds, counting the full clip in the pistol.

“Gold…” The voice hissed at the front door.  Albie plugged his ears and rocked on his feet.

“You jess tweakin’, dumb shit.” He swayed and reminded himself.  “How long you done been suckin’ at dat der glass mustang?  You gallopin’, bebe.  You jess all wired-out, boy.”

“Al-bieee!  Gold…” The voice laughed at him from in the molded kitchen.  He aimed the gun reflexively.  There was nothing there but the hint of a moving shadow beyond the walls.

“Not fair…” The screech of the oak’s twigs on the roof seemed to be saying over and over again as it limbs swayed back and forth over it.

“Gold…not yours!” Thunder screamed again from above. “Done me wrong!”

“I ain’t got no gold!  I gots some soft white toot and some blazin’ hot lead fo’ you doh!  Come and get it, asshole!”

His heart raced as the meth swirled through his veins.  The infected veins in his arms pounded.  Pus and blood to begin to ooze through the breaks in his skin. 

“Poison!”  He screamed out as he saw the pus welling from the crooks of his elbows.  “I’m bit!”  He sucked at the wound and spat the mess onto the dirty floor.

“Not yours…gold…” The wind groaned again through the loose tin sheets.  “Gold.”

He lurched from his day bed, missing his aim and stabbing a foot through the squat hole.  Ignoring the putrid muck that caked his foot, he ran for the rear bedroom as again the whistle of “Al-bieee” sang through the bullet holes in a dozen sing-song voices.

Rain again fell on the roof in a momentary downpour that imitated a staticky rendition of “Gold!”

His heart raced as paranoia inched its way into panic with each heartbeat.  His eyes bulged in their sunken sockets.  His mouth fell open as he gasped.  Again, he could hear the intermittent tinkle of a coin falling behind the house.  Bullets were fired at the sound.

“Albie!” A distinct man’s voice spoke aloud. “Gold!”  A smattering of coins clinked in staccatos of five or six at a time behind the house. 

Spinning in a circle and screaming wildly, Albie emptied another clip through the house.

“Gold!” came the wind’s rumbling reply to his gunfire. 

He heard the screech of tin ripping away as if some beast from hell itself was chewing away the house.  The sound of crackling studs permeated the screech and scream of the metal cleaving away. 

Again came the bray of a man’s deep voice. “Gold!”

“Who are you!”  He screamed, running around the disintegrating wall separating the living room from the rickety rear bedroom.  Sunlight hit him unexpectedly.  It took him a moment to realize the wall had collapsed in the rear of the house.  He could see the enormous root ball of the fallen oak fallen toward him.  Tiny sparkles dripped from the ball of wet earth.

A blast of hot, wet wind hit him in the face and shoved him to the floor.  The wind swirled around inside the three walls still standing.  It spun intensely into a tiny cyclone of dust, mold and leaves sucked in from inside the walls and from outside.   

         Albie rubbed the grit from his eyes and stood up.  Blood smeared from his elbow across his face.  Blinking, he beheld an apparition of a man.  The body formed within the swirling trash of the tiny cyclone.

         “Gold!” The voice again spoke.  Albie reeled backward, cursing in terror.  He stumbled over his own feet and fell down again, screaming in terror.

         “What in da hell!”

A long arm of swirling debris spun horizontally toward the fallen tree. It held into a long finger that pointed toward the root ball.  Then it fizzled away entirely and the rubbish wafted away as the wind suddenly dies in the remains of the room.

         Albie sat for a long while, heart pounding.  Unable to believe what he saw, he finally crawled to his feet.  Squinting at the tree, he gaped in amazement at the sparkling mass of oak roots and earth. 

Gold coins were imbedded within it. 

And a skeleton



         In the middle of the Mississippi River, Moses cut the motor to the john boat and slid his duffle bag closer to him.  Heavy rain was finally falling after an hour ride from the boat launch at Phoenix under only then-darkening skies. 

“Gear up.” He said, surveying the bank ahead of them. “Look sharp.  He might be hearing us.”

The boat rocked as the wind whipped tiny brown waves under them.  Curio checked Barry White a final time and winked at him.

Moses pulled out a balaclava and slipped it on his scalp.  He looked up at the dark clouds and mumbled, “We don’t get paid enough for this shit sometimes.”

“I don’t wanna’ hear it, Mister I don’t ask, I just do.” Curio slipped on a pair of gloves.  Both were wearing jungle BDU outfits.  “We could be sittin’ naked in that hotel room and tell Grizzly Fontenot we came down here and the tweaker wasn’t nowhere near here.”

“What would you like to hear?” He grunted and shoved his .45 in his belt holster as the boat ground up on the levee.  Curio stood up, jumped out of the boat and sank up to her calves in soft, rancid muck.

“Ahhhh!” She froze and flailed her hands in exasperation.  “Dammit!”

He snickered at her.  “Watch that first step, it’s a doozy.” He pulled out “Cletus,” his CAR-15 rifle and slung it over his shoulder.  Standing up, he threw the bag ashore.

“Oh man, this is some bullshit!”  Thunder rumbled as Curio tried to pull out a leg.  She only managed to fall clumsily forward.  Her hands sank in the mud up to her wrists.  “Shiiiit!”

Moses leapt far up the bank on more solid ground.  “Look at you all sunk in hunched over like that.  If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were sending me a naughty hint.”  He looked at the rain clouds.  “You and your outdoor fetishes.”

         “That ain’t funny.  Help me please.  I’m losing a boot!”  She pulled a hand loose.  He caught it.

         “Ball up your toes like a fist.” Moses laughed to himself, which infuriated her further. “Wiggle your foot from side to side as you pull it out.  Think of your foot as a shovel pulling up a plug of it.”

         Rain began pouring in sheets.  Curio finally got a leg freed.  Moses gave her a heave and she was out.

         “That fucking sucks.” She stared at her muddied feet and hands.  “Oh man, gross!  It’s stinks!  Why does it stink?”

         “Because it’s rotten.  Circle of life, baby.”

         “Ew!” She flailed her arms frantically.  “Nasty!”

         “Rain’ll get it cleaned off soon enough at this rate.”  Moses pulled his balaclava over his face completely.  Curio flung her hands some more and stood up.

         “Gun okay?” He asked her as he shouldered Cletus and pulled the charging handle.  “Check the muzzle.”  She looked at it.

         “I’m good.”  She wiped her trigger hand on her pants.  “No, I’m not good.  God I smell like shit.”

         “Alright then, baby doll.” Moses pulled the boat up further on the bank.  “Let’s earn our keep and go home and take a shower.  You do smell like a gator turd with that shit on you.” He pulled out a map and looked at it briefly. “This way.”

         “Blow me.” She grumbled as they started into the dense swamp.



         “Gooooold!  Holy shit!  Why didn’t ya’ tell me!” Albie rushed out of destroyed rear of the house, blinded by the flashes of tiny, sparkling doubloons as they fell a few at a time from the root ball.  As the rain poured, the mud caked on the massive twelve-foot-wide mass of tangled oak roots fell away in clumps. 

A mass of gold coins was entwined in the middle of it.  The rain freed bits of the coins as well as the mud melted away. 

His eyes beheld the glorious sight.  He very much resembled a dancing Auschwitz victim as he boogied in place. 

         A giant clump fell from the mass of mud.  It landed at his feet.  Albie wiped aside his stringy grey hair and looked at the clump.  A skull was evident.  He knelt down and picked it up.  Mud dripped away in the rain and revealed the top of the skull was crushed inward.

         “Dead men tell no tales, eh, buddy?  Ain’t life a bitch!” He casually flipped the skull aside and inspected the mass of mud.  He could make out bones jutting out all over the place.  The man was clearly buried under the tree when it was a baby.  Looking at the length and breadth of the fallen tree, he whistled in admiration.

         “It’s a hundred years old at the least!” 

Memories of his youth flooded to him suddenly.  Memories of bedtime tales.  Of Barataria and Lafitte’s gold. 

         “Specifically of Lafitte’s stolen gold.” Albie chuckled.  “Long lost and now sure as hell found by ole’ Albie Aldridge after two hundred years!  I’ll be damned.”

It was a matter of pride amongst his scurrilous forefathers that somewhere on their land a pilfered cache of gold was purportedly buried.  The honorable version of the gold was that some forgotten relative had stolen a whole keg of gold only after Lafitte lost a card game and did not pay what was owed to the winner.  A vengeful Lafitte ordered ten men to hang for the theft but no one ratted out the thief out of respect for what he had done and they went to the gallows gallantly in solidarity.

         “My poor ass grandpappy woulda’ shit a brick if he knew he was pissin’ off all of dem Old Milwaukee’s on a fuggin’ treasure chest hidden under his feet.”

Albie leaned forward and looked into the huge crater.  It was filling with muddy water.  More coins trickled into slurry.  He reached out and pulled a single coin sticking out from the mess.

         “I’m loaded.”  He smiled at the doubloon and looked at the angry sky.  “Thank you, God.”  Slipping the coin into a pocket, he turned to walk back into the house to celebrate with a fresh bowl of crank.

         An apparition stood in his path.  Albie froze.  The form of a man with an obvious head wound stood outlined in the curtain of pouring rain as it blew sideways.

         “Thank you for the heads up, homey.” Certain he was hallucinating, Albie gave the ghost the middle finger. “Sorry about the cracked skull.”

         “The gold is not yours.” A voice spoke in Welsh to him.  “Lost and now found.  It’s mine again.”

         “The hell it ain’t.  Finders keepers, jerkoff.” He laughed at his mental folly and marched past the shimmering outline.

         An unseen hand of wind ripped a timber from the rafter of the shack.  It somersaulted in mid-air for a few cycles as the ghost pointed at it.  With the flick of his rainy hand, the ghost sent the shard driving down into Albie’s skull.  He dropped to the ground, dead. 

His own spirit, framed suddenly in the rain, stood next to his corpse for an instant.  The two ghosts looked at each other for a moment, confused. 

Both heard a roar of a vengeful tempest coming up fast behind them.

         “Mine at last!” A thunderous presence screamed at them.

         The apparitions turned to see the larger presence in their midst.  Both scarcely had time to flinch in terror before the maelstrom of Hurricane Andrew sucked them into the air with a howl and punishing chains of oblivion wrapped around them. 

         

         “Look at all those fuckin’ bullet holes.” Moses squinted through the rain from their concealment.  The wind was picking up.

         “Someone beat us to it, maybe?  That fucker looks like it got aired out.”

         “Maybe.  It could be on account of some gun-happy kids with nothing better to do one day back in ’87 too, though.  Who knows?  We do this one same as any.  You sit here and watch that front door.  I’ma slip around the side and put a few more holes in them walls.  He runs out?  Drop him.”

“If he don’t?

Moses patted the duffle bag. “He’ll come outta’ there one way or another.  Look sharp.  Get the pistol out…” He pulled her new Luger from its holster. “You might need more than just two blasts of that shotgun.” 

“Yes, sir!  Moses, sir!”

He cocked the Luger and inspected it.  “You mean, Ja Wohl!”

“Huh?”

Grinning, he winked at her.  “You need to watch more Hogan’s Heroes, sugar.  Look sharp and stay dry.”

“Smartass.”  She kissed him.  “Be careful.”

“You stay hid.  I’ll run a clip through the house and see if I can get him.  If you hear him screamin’ now, you don’t do nothin’ dumb like jump up.  You just watch that door and make sure he don’t haul ass in the woods or nothin’.  I’ll be damned if I track him in this rainy fuckin’ bullshit.  Especially through that snakey ass bullshit around here.”

“I’m good.  Let’s get this done.  Fuck this hurricane bullshit.  I still smell that mud on me.”

“You think this is the hurricane?” Moses Holliday grinned in that wry manner she loved to see.  “That sumbitch is still a good five hours away.  This ain’t shit.”

“Lovely.  Get him, baby.  My hair is a damned mess and I got mud under my nails.”

“Make sure you don’t get mud on Barry White.  That gun don’t like that at all.”

Moses moved out, running through the tangles of saw-grass and palmettos surrounding the house.  He could somehow feel unseen eyes on him. 

The wind was now whipping the brush and treetops into a frenzy.  A large cypress bough snapped from high on its old trunk and flew down at him.  It crashed through the top of a persimmon and toppled through the maze of limbs to crunch in front of him.

“Whoa shit!” He paused in mid-step, looking up at the tree for more deadfall.

He felt a puff of wind pulse directly into his ear and heard a voice whisper, “Awaaay!”  Moses had the rifle to his shoulder in an instant, sweeping left to right, ready to engage.  For a split second, he imagined he was in the bush of Vietnam.  Sweating, his eyes widened in panic.

What in the holy hell!  His sharp eyes caught nothing amiss. 

“Awaaay!” Again, the voice called into his ear. “Mine!” 

Seeing nothing, he nervously continued his sweep around to the rear of the shack.



“You and me gonna’ dance, Barry White?  Or is dat lucky dog Tex gonna’ get the action all to himself today?” Giggling as she felt the agitation beginning in her panties, Curio pulled back a hammer on one of the double-barrel’s chambers and readied for action.

         “What a dump.” She mumbled as she took in the ramshackle abode.  “Who in the hell would stay in there?  Nasty tweakin ass…”

         A giant oak groaned behind her as a fierce wind gust picked up suddenly.  With a sudden popping sound, its swaying canopy found its final pendulum swing and down it came.  The massive trunk roared down beside her, missing her by two feet.  It sliced the shack completely in half.  The whoosh of the air beneath the trunk spilled from beneath it, carrying an onslaught of loose bark and earth with it. 

She was splattered with debris.  Screaming before thinking, she recoiled away from it, rolling through the blackberry brambles and saw briars.

         “Fuck me!”  She sat up and retrieved Barry White.

         “Moses!”  She screamed in horror and ran toward the right side of the house.  “You okay?”



         Moses heard the tree falling to his left just as he rounded the house, still concealed in the undergrowth. 

         “Oh shit!”  He could tell by the angle it must surely have dropped close to Curio.  In awe, he saw the hundred-foot-tall oak demolish the flimsy tarpaper shack in a split second.           

“Awaaay!” The voice screamed to him now.  He swiveled Cletus around, concerned for his sanity.  There was no one in sight yet the voice sounded as if uttered only a few inches from his ear.

         He heard Curio screaming his name.  “I’m clear!”  He yelled. “Take cover!”

         “Awaaay!”

         “You know what?  Fuck you, Awaaay!” He stood in place and spoke aloud.  “I got business here same as you, whoever the fuck you aren’t.”

         The wind pushed over a cottonwood tree behind him just as Curio came into sight.  He heard the whistling and crunching sound and saw the motion of the trunk out of the corner of his eye.  Diving to his left, he hugged the ground as the tree fell across the remains of the shack.  It crossed the first tree lying across it in a near-perfect X.  His split-second dive saved his life but not his ass.  The tree lay across his waist, pinning him in place.

         Curio could not see him.  Holding the shotgun cautiously toward the crushed house, she struggled to see through the driving rain.

         “Moses!  You okay!  Where are you!”  She screamed in terror.  In her ear, a voice was softly repeating, “Awaaay, mon cheri…awaaay!”  Over and over again.

         Moses heard it, too.  He wiggled out from the trunk and rolled over. 

         “I said, Fuck you, Away!  You stop this bullshit!” The voice stopped abruptly. 

That was simple.  Moses looked around.  Too simple…

Using the rifle as a crutch, he pulled himself up.  The tree bruised his butt cheeks severely.  He winced in pain but jumped in place and did some bends to verify nothing was broken up inside him too badly.  Curio saw him and ran to him, screaming.

         “I’m fucking hearing voices!  What in the hell!”  She hugged him, eyes wide.

         “Tell ‘em to fuck off.  We got shit to do.”

         “I’m serious!  They won’t stop!”

         “Sit here.  I’m gonna’ check that shack.  Tell the voice to stop.”

         “Stop it!”  The voice stopped for her, too.

         “It quit?” Moses bit his lip and held his ass.

         “Yes.  What the hell is this shit?  Are you okay?” Curio looked around at his behind.

         “My ass got beat up.  Damn tree fell across my ass.”

         She could not help but laugh.  “You get your booty tapped?”

         “Ha ha.  It’s hurting like hell.  I might have a busted pelvis.  I don’t have to tell you how bad that is for business…oh fuck!”  Dismissing the pain, he pulled her to the ground and knelt into a crouch as he began firing his rifle.  Curio felt the shotgun jam into the mud beneath her and knew the barrels had to be plugged.  She pulled her Luger and rolled over to aim at whatever Moses was unleashing his full magazine upon.  Her eyes widened.  Without thinking, she began firing and screaming.

         A glowing ghost of a man walked through the stream of bullets without flinching.  Behind him, he dragged two writhing ghosts bound by luminous chains.

         Moses emptied the clip and dropped the rifle.  Snapping the .45 up, he paused as he heard Curio’s pistol’s breech snap open as she fired her last shot.

         “Cease fire.  It ain’t doin’ these guys no harm.” He swallowed hard and holstered the pistol.  Stepping in front of her, he glared at the specter with the meanest look he could muster.  He figured intimidation was possibly the only recourse he had. 

Scared to death inside, Moses Holliday jammed his fists into his sore hips and bellowed at the ghost in his best drill sergeant imitation.

         “We interrupting something you got going out here, motherfucker?  You damn sure interrupting something of ours!”

         The ghost shouldered the chains of his quivering captives across his shoulders.  The appearance was that of a tall man.  He was clad in clothes that reminded Moses of a costume Errol Flynn would have worn in some swashbuckling film of old.  His face was hazy to distinguish, but Moses could see the hint of a beard and chiseled features.  The figure was tall and seemed possessed of an aristocratic bearing.

         “Who are you?” The wind spoke to him suddenly in French-accented English.  Moses blinked his eyes a few times.

         Wow! was the only thing he could conjure in his mind.  Curio stood up beside him.

         “Monsieur, I’m Curio.” She stammered.  The ghost looked at her and smiled.

         “Moses Holliday.” Moses still glared.  “Who might I have the pleasure of a-speakin’ to?”

         “Le Bos.” The apparition spoke and took a few steps away from them, heading in the direction of the river.

         “Good to meet you, I guess.  You got yourself a load.  You need a hand with them you got there, Lee?”

         Le Bos looked at them and pointed a finger slowly at the pair of ghosts behind him.  “For ten generations they hid what was mine.  Now what was mine is mine again.  And they are mine as well.”

         “They steal somethin’ from you, Lee?”

         Something clicked in Curio’s head.  An old lesson from an elementary school visit to Jean Lafitte State Park.  The words, Le Bos…

“Monsieur Lafitte!  Holy shit!  Jean Lafitte!”  She blurted.  “Moses!  That’s Jean Lafitte, the pirate!”

The ghost smiled and bowed slightly.  “Bon soire.  If I may be allowed to say it, you’re a lady of exquisite detail.  A true beauty in the midst of this tempest.  The stars in all the heavens over Hispaniola never compared to you in your allure, Miss…Curio.”

“Shit!  I’m being hit on by a dead pirate.” She laughed.

“He tries anything…fucking let him have at it.” Moses mumbled over his shoulder at her.  “You get a pass from me on this one.”

“Kinky.” She said quietly and marveled as the legendary Jean Lafitte, dead two hundred years, stood before them. 

Damn, he’s handsome for a dead man! 

For some reason, she found herself fanning bare-handed like some old Southern belle.  I bet he was a hellafied piece of as  in his day…

“Anything we can help you with, Mister Lafitte?” Moses danced in place as the pain in his hips pulsed. “You ain’t seen an old junkie bastard around here have you?”

“Morte.” The ghost said simply. One of the captives flinched as he uttered the word and rolled around convulsively. 

“Fuck me, that one looks like Albie!” Moses pointed at the flouncing ghost.

“They hid from me what was mine.  Now their sins are to be paid and what was mine returned.” Lafitte said.

“It sure took you long enough, I guess one never repays a debt owed to a ghost.” Curio said.

“This man’s blood ends now.  I should have ended it long ago.  What was mine is mine.  A thief his fathers were.  A thief the sons became.  But it ends with him.” The rainy Albie-ghost screamed soundlessly and flailed that much more.  Its dark eyes fixed on Moses, seeming to recognize him.  It mouthed his name at him.  Moses only shook his head in regret and shrugged coldly at the bound apparition.

I’ll be damned…  He thought to himself.  If this don’t beat all I ever done seen…

“Albie never was much good with his sticky fingers.” Moses shrugged at Le Bos.  “You got a body around here I can get paid for?  My Lee Boss ain’t much good on word of mouth when it comes to paying for services rendered.  I can’t turn in a chit for a soul, you know.”

Lafitte pointed to the rear of the crushed house.  Moses nodded and walked in that direction.  He gave the bird to the thrashing ghost of Albie Aldridge as he passed.

“Sucks to be you, you fucking rat.” He said with a sneer and spat at it.

Looking at the other ghost, he could see its face was a mass of blood that streamed unceasingly from the top of its head.  He jerked his middle finger at it as well.  “Sucks to be you, too.  Whoever the fuck you are.”  He gaped for an instant.  The ghost had one leg.

“I wish I had more time, Madame.” Lafitte intoned to Curio as it walked up a few steps closer to her. “Parting is truly such sweet sorrow.  Tis a true curse on me for not having had the pleasure of your enchanting acquaintance when my days of flesh were mine to physically enjoy a lady’s charms more thoroughly.”

“Shit!  Merci, Monsieur!” Curio blushed and stared admiringly at Jean Lafitte.  Lafitte winked at her and walked toward the river again, dragging the twitching ghosts behind him.  The apparitions dissolved into a windy oblivion in front of her.

“Man, the bullshit you see on this job sometimes.” She sighed and changed clips in the Luger.  Catching up to Moses, she said, “I swear that ghost wanted a piece of me.  That motherfucker had some kinda’ rap goin’!”  She slapped him on the arm.  “He didn’t think I was fat, either.”

“If we die, maybe y’all can hook up.” He said as they rounded the house.  The treetop that first split the shack was lying across Albie’s smashed body.

“Do we tell Grizzly about this?” Curio looked at the gory mess.

“What and how exactly would you like to tell him about this?”  Moses worked his way through the limbs and looked closely at the body.  “I sure as hell ain’t gotta’ clue what just happened and I’m not tellin’ Grizzly Fontenot that the ghost of Jean fucking Lafitte killed Albie and dragged his soul into Barataria swamp.”

“We gotta’ tell him something.”

“Then tell him you shot Albie between the eyes and you and me fed the body to the gators.  Bada boom.  Bada bing.  Pay the man.”

“The wind seems to be getting stronger.”

“I noticed.  We gotta’ get gone.  That john boat ain’t made for white-water rafting.”  He snapped away a few limbs and exposed the body to his view. 

Even after being rained on, the stench of Albie Aldridge was overwhelming.  The skeletal appearance of the corpse was shocking.

“He woulda been dead before long even if we didn’t get here.”  Backing out of the treetop, Moses spat.  “He’s damn near skin and bones.”  He looked at her.  Curio was staring in disbelief past him.

“What?”  His head turned.  His mouth fell open.

The root ball was still dripping gold in front of them

“Is that what I think it is?” She pointed, shocked.

The wind began howling.  They dove to the ground instinctively.

“I think it is.” Moses yelled over the din.  “But we ain’t touching it!”

“Why the hell not?” She screamed back at him.  Rain was stinging their faces.  Leaves clung to them as they flew from limbs.

“You think that sumbitch is gonna’ let us walk away with his fuckin’ booty?  He already damn near busted my ass.  Hell, he dropped a fuckin’ tree on Albie.  We ain’t touchin’ that shit.  Ain’t you seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, girl?  Don’t fucking touch it.  Not one red cent of it.  Fuck, for that matter, don’t even look at it.  It’s cursed.”

“Oh man.  We can retire on that directly.”

“Or we can piss off a goddamned ghost who is clearly a miser when it comes to his cash.  New rule for us from now on…if we can’t shoot it, don’t piss it off.”

“Fine.  Whatever.” The remaining walls of the shack ripped and flew away unseen into the swamp of Barataria.  “I think I could convince him to let me have some of it, though.  We had a moment…”

“Yeah.  You had a moment.  He’s got a fucking eternity.  Albie’s dead.  A hurricane’s coming.  Let’s didi mau outta’ here and go somewhere nice and dry while we still can.”

“But damn…” She watched as clumps of mud fell and a mass of gold fell into the crater.  The coins sounded like a slot machine jackpot as they bounced on each other in the mud.

“Nuh uh!  Don’t.  I ain’t touchin’ it.”  The wind subsided slightly.  He stood up and pulled her to her feet.  “Let’s get our shit and go.”

“What about him?” She pointed at the body.

“He’ll be taken care of by the locals.  Let’s go.”  He grabbed her hand.  “Before Andrew really gets into the mix around here.”

Together they gathered up their gear and rushed to the john boat.

Three hours of alternately beaching the boat in panic and rushing as fast as Moses dared through the white-capping waters of the Mighty Mississippi when the wind allowed, they reached the boat launch…on the wrong side of the river. 

Andrew had by then, arrived in force.

“Ain’t no way I’m crossing a mile of wild-ass river in this boat in a hurricane!”  Moses yelled in her ear to make himself heard as he dragged the boat up the bank.  “We gotta’ wait it out a while.” He began unbolting the fifteen-horse motor from the rear of the boat.  His bruised butt was stiff from the ride.  Sitting upright with a death grip on the throttle was torturous.

“Are you nuts!” She yelled.

“Not as nuts as I would be trying to run a flat-bottomed boat across the river in them chops.” He pulled the motor off with a moan of agony. “Fuck this thing sucks.  Get the gas can.  Make sure the lid doesn’t pop off.  We can’t get water in it or we might be stuck.”

Curio grabbed the can and followed him up the bank.  When he was safely hidden from the view of some random passerby, he laid the motor down and sat the can next to it.

“Baby, normally I wouldn’t ask, but I need you to help me drag the boat up here and flip it.  I’m in a bad way here.”

Curio nodded and walked him back to the boat.  It was already filling with water.  Heaving and groaning, he dragged the boat as best he could up the muddy bank, Curio helping as best she could.  He rolled it on its side to drain the water.

“Welcome to our tent.” He smirked as he sat the boat down and tossed the duffel bag out of it.  “Man up, baby.  We gotta’ get us out of sight.”

Cursing and slipping, they dragged the boat into the brush and got it flipped over.  Moses propped it against a tree as a lean-to and laid the motor and gas can beneath it.

“Okay, we hole up and wait for it to lay a bit.  Christ, I’m hurtin’.” He hung the duffel bag on a limb.  Curio scurried under the aluminum hull and balled up against the tree.  Moses looked at the sky for some sign of relief and found none.  Muttering curses, he lowered himself in painful increments to the ground and rolled under the hull.

“This sucks.” Curio chuckled.

“At least the mud got washed off’a ya’.”

“You gonna’ be okay?  I mean, damn.  A tree fell on you.”

“I’m good.  I damn sure need a pill and a coma when I get back though.

“Can you believe we saw a ghost?”

“What ghost?  I don’t believe in ghosts and neither do you.” Moses closed his eyes and wiped rain from his face.  “Ain’t no such thing as ghosts and I’ll never say otherwise.”

She stretched across the wet ground next to him.  When she was snuggled up to him, he draped a rain slicker across them and pulled the boat down over them.  Lying beneath the hull, they lay still a long while as the storm blew.

“It’s been a crazy day.”

“It’s a crazy life.”  He yawned.

“One day, I say we go back and check this place out.”  Curio closed her eyes and leaned her face forward against her knees.

“This place no longer exists.” Moses mumbled. “It’s just a dream.”

They were both asleep before they knew it.

The storm’s rage stopped suddenly four hours later as the eye passed over Barataria.  Under the cover of a starry night, they launched the boat and made a dash for the opposite bank and safety.

Neither said a word to anyone or each other about Albie Aldridge ever again.



*  *  *