Christmas in Dogtown Read online

  “I’ll get my knives and help you clean them and put them in the cooler since Emile’s not here—they’re too heavy for you to handle whole.” Chan assumed she’d agree, trotting off to his truck before she could respond.

  Resa sighed, pulled on gloves, dug her uncle’s hatchet and skinning knives out of the cabinets over the table, and chopped the needle-nosed head off the largest gar with a single whack.

  Three weeks. It was only for three weeks.

  ~4~

  “You are stupid,” Resa told her reflection in the tiny, scratched mirror of the White Castle’s rose-pink bathroom. “Stupid, ridiculous, and absurd.”

  She’d been wrestling with her curly black hair for a half hour, and the brown eyes that stared back at her from beneath freshly plucked brows and carefully applied eyeliner looked more jittery than sexy. “And idiotic.”

  First, it had been almost a week since Chan had asked her to the Saturday night community dance, popping the question almost shyly as they hacked at the bodies of gigantic dead fish. They’d both been covered in blood and smelled like they’d been rolling in bait, which should have tipped her off that anything in Dogtown reeking of romance, well, reeked.

  Second, her potential date had left immediately after asking her out so he could catch an alligator that had eaten somebody’s poodle in one of those backwater houses near the swamp. He burned rubber out of the Madere’s driveway after making sure he had enough duct tape to wrap around the gator’s jaws. Adequate duct tape was not an attribute she’d ever sought in a man.

  Third, they’d both acknowledged that being seen together in public was tantamount to social suicide.

  “You know we’re not destined to marry each other, right?” She’d wanted to make sure they were approaching this date from the same perspective. Old friends who’d recently ended up back in their childhood nightmares, in other words. “I’ll be going home in”—she counted in her head—“two weeks and four days.”

  “I don’t have plans to marry anybody right now,” he’d assured her.

  Later, she realized he hadn’t said he didn’t want to marry someone next week. Or that he didn’t want to marry a girl from Dogtown, especially her.

  Later, because one has a lot of time to think while making sausages and cooking rice for boudin, she realized he’d been pretty damned cagey with that answer.

  And what had she spent the last hour doing? Going through every bit of clothing she’d brought with her as if preparing for a dinner at Commander’s Palace and not a dance in the back room at Caillou’s, the only place in Dogtown that would hold more than twenty people. For church and school, people drove to Paulina.

  “You. Are. Stupid.”

  She finally settled on the non-raggedy jeans and a plain black sweater. One could never go wrong with black. Boots. The little gold bear earrings Uncle Aim had given her when she left for college, so she wouldn’t forget where she came from. Like that was possible.

  She’d been late closing Madere’s as people from New Orleans and all points east drove over to buy boudin and andouille. Seemed like every city dweller had a favorite river parish meat market they swore had the best products, and Madere’s had its share of fans.

  When Uncle Aim came back to work on Tuesday, they’d also managed to get Chan’s gar smoked and in the display case, but her uncle had left her to close up today. “Gonna play at the dance,” he said, winking at her. “And watch my girl on the dance floor.”

  He was assuming a lot—she hadn’t told him she was attending the dance, much less that she’d be arriving with Chandler Caillou. And dancing was not on her agenda.

  A crunch of gravel outside the window told Resa her date had arrived. She hated—absolutely resented—that she had butterflies in her stomach over the prospect of a date with Chan. It was probably the leftover gar balls she’d had for lunch, or the horror of what people would think when they walked in together.

  She opened the door before he could knock and send more framed puppies to their final resting place. He’d traded the flannel shirt and jeans for a chocolate-brown sweater and cords, and looked good enough to drool over. The man cleaned up well.

  “You look great.” He had a sweet smile and a gentle way about him that had bored Resa as a teenager but appealed to her post-Jules-the-Jerk adult self. “Ready to fire up the Dogtown gossips?”

  She sighed. “How do you think people will react?”

  Chan opened the truck door for her and waited while she climbed in. After sitting behind the wheel and cranking the engine, he said, “I told my folks we were coming to the dance together and my mom tried to talk me into bringing you a corsage.”

  Resa stared at him, waiting for the punch line. His crooked smile was only half joking. “Oh my God. What did you tell her?”

  “That I’d turned thirty on Thanksgiving, you weren’t far behind me in age, and you’d probably rather have a gator claw. She said if I gave you a gator claw, she’d be so humiliated the family would have to move to Lutcher.”

  Resa buried her face in her hands. “It’s not too late. We could drive across the river and see a movie.”

  “Are you serious? If we don’t show up at the dance when we’re expected, our families will be buying baby clothes by New Year’s Eve.”

  They caught glances and burst out laughing. Resa shook her head. “Okay, Chandler Caillou and Theresa Madere, on a date. Let’s do it.”

  In her imagination, Resa had pictured their entrance into the restaurant banquet room, which spilled into an open backyard filled with tables, benches, and a small stage and dance floor. Christmas lights had been strung around the yard and outlined the door and porch railings. She’d pictured the crowds, the bottles of beer, the platters of food, and the dead silence that would greet her arrival with Chan.

  That didn’t happen.

  The band—Uncle Aim on fiddle, cousin Mack Madere on squeezebox, and one of the Caillou cousins whose name Resa didn’t know on bass—stopped in the middle of Jolie Blon. “Clear the floor!” Uncle Aim shouted into the microphone. “Theresa and Chandler need a waltz.”

  Resa tried to turn and run, but Chan had a lock-hold on her wrist. “Play along,” he mumbled, pulling her into the center of the suddenly-empty dance floor. “It’ll be worse if we don’t.”

  “I don’t remember how to waltz.” Her voice was more hiss than whisper.

  Chan gave her a brilliant flash of white teeth, through which he said, “Fake it.”

  The little band broke into an easy version of J’ai Passe Devant Ta Porte, and Uncle Aim sang. Resa forgot the crowds standing around and instead absorbed the high, keening verses in old Cajun French. The music transported her to the dances when she was a kid and stood on her daddy’s feet while he twirled her around the floor. The “long-short-short, long-short-short, twirl” steps came back to her. When the song ended, the onlookers burst into applause and catcalls. Resa felt her face turning six shades of red.

  Chan waved and nodded to everyone as he pulled her inside the banquet room, where it was comparatively quiet. She sat at a table in a dark, empty corner while Chan went to get a couple of beers.

  “Abita for your thoughts.” He set the bottle on the table and took the chair across from her.

  “Why?” She couldn’t believe she’d never really asked the question before—oh, she’d asked it, but never forced anyone to answer. She’d been too busy dismissing it as stupid. “Why have our families always paired us up? I mean, you’re a great guy, don’t get me wrong. But it’s like ever since we were born, there was just this”—she waved her hands between them—“assumption.”

  Chan looked past her, through the back door where the band had resumed Jolie Blon and couples of all ages danced in a weekend ritual that went back for generations. “We’re about the same age. We’re Madere and Caillou—hasn’t been a pairing between the families in a long time, not since your dad’s and Emile’s parents.”

  “Really?” Resa frowned, mentally ticking throug
h the couples she knew. Sure enough, each one had a Caillou or a Madere, but not both. “Why does it matter?”

  Chan didn’t answer for a long time, just looked out at the band and the dancers and the sun sinking into the marshy land to the north. “Maybe it doesn’t.”

  ~5~

  Three days after the dance, Chan called Resa and asked her to meet him at the river levee near Paulina. “You’ll know the spot,” he’d said cryptically before hanging up. “Dress casual.”

  She only had to think about it about a few seconds before letting out a whoop. For the first time since she’d finished college, she’d be in St. James Parish to help get ready for the bonfires.

  Tuesday had always been boudin noir day, and when Resa got to Madere’s, Uncle Aim was up to his elbows in grossness. Resa could make blood sausage, but she sure as heck wouldn’t eat it. Anything with pig hemoglobin as a defining ingredient wasn’t going in her mouth.

  Emile looked up and smiled at his niece. “It’s slow today and I’m feeling better. You go on and help Chandler do the Dogtown bonfire.”

  Resa gave him a hug from behind, looking around his shoulder and making a face at the big bowl of rice, fat, ground liver, and pig blood. “How’d you know?”

  “It’s just five days until Christmas Eve. Gotta get the frame up in time for Papa Noel.” He dipped a fork in the bowl, tasted the boudin filling, and reached for more salt. “Although I think you might have planned it this way to get out of making the boudin noir.”

  “I’m not that smart.” Resa kissed Uncle Aim on the cheek and headed to her car. The wind would be cold blowing off the river, so she pulled her old ULL hoodie out of the backseat and tied it around her waist.

  The drive to the Mississippi River levee only took a few minutes, and Resa steered slowly along River Road, looking for Chan’s truck. She finally spotted it an eighth of a mile west of Paulina, sitting at the base of the levee with a long flat trailer hitched to the back. The trailer was empty, but its cargo had been spread across the grass—dozens of logs stacked and sorted by length.

  She ascended the high earthen levee to the flattened top that was wide enough for a car to drive on. On the side she’d climbed up, grass covered the levee as it sloped down to the road. On the other side, the dropoff fell steeply into the wide brown expanse of the Mississippi River. On Christmas Eve, big cone-shaped bonfires that stretched for miles atop the levees would be lit to help Papa Noel, the Cajun version of Santa, find his way through the river parishes to leave presents for all the girls and boys.

  Of course it had become a tourist attraction these days, with cars full of visitors lined up on River Road to see the fires.

  The fun for Resa as a kid had always been building the teepee-shaped frame, working in the bright winter sunlight and fresh air. “You got the spot picked out?” she asked Chan, who squatted on the ground with a tape measure and a notebook, a pencil stuck behind his ear. Building the bonfire frame was quite an engineering job.

  “Yeah, I’ve measured twice and marked the spot for the center pole. I’m going to dig. Think you can fit the metal shoe onto the top before I raise it?” The round metal shoe had notches in it that would hold the side poles in place.

  They worked hard for the next four hours. A handful of Caillou and Madere cousins showed up, helping erect the eighteen-foot center pole and upending the three long side poles into place so their tops fit into the notches of the shoe.

  By the time they’d used up the day’s haul of wood, Resa’s shoulders ached from dragging and lifting logs, and the cold, damp wind had chafed her cheeks and nose.

  “What are you looking at?” Chan came to stand beside her on the levee after seeing the cousins off. Stirred by the wind, the muddy river flowed fast and choppy, and the rising bonfire frames stood in stark outline against the brilliant blue of the December sky.

  “There’s nothing really like it, is there?” She didn’t have to explain what she meant. He’d know—that familiar tug of home and comfort that could blindside you in a heartbeat. She hadn’t considered St. James Parish home in a long time, but the river called to her. In New Orleans, it was a means of commerce, a romantic backdrop from an upper-story window, the reason for a bridge full of traffic jams. Here, it sang and pulsed and curved through the land and the people.

  “No, there isn’t.”

  When she turned to look at Chan, Resa realized he’d been watching her instead of the river. The expression on his face was a complexity of yearning and sadness and amusement, all rolled together in a twitch of the lips, the slow blink of green eyes.

  “What does that look mean?”

  His smile started with a quirk and spread slowly. “That I want to kiss you but I’m not sure how you’d react.”

  Resa bit back her first response—Why don’t you try it and find out? That’s what she’d say to someone like Jules. Instead, she reached for his hand. Chan was so serious and, somehow, fragile. “I think I’d kiss you back.”

  His face was red from the cold, damp wind, but his mouth was warm and firm against hers. Just a tentative compression of lips the first time, then another, warmer and deeper. Something hot and satisfying blossomed in Resa’s chest, sped her heart rate, drew her to this strong, serious man.

  He pulled away but stood with his forehead on hers for a few long seconds before stepping back. “We better go.”

  Their hands still clasped, Chan walked Resa along the levee and down toward their vehicles. “You want to stop for a beer?”

  Resa shook her head. “Guess I better get back and help Aim close up.”

  Some corner had been turned between them, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to turn it or what it meant. She needed time to think.

  By the time she got back to Madere’s, it was late and she’d convinced herself that the whole bonfire thing had just made her sentimental and vulnerable.

  ~6~

  For the next two days, Resa spent the mornings at Madere’s, letting Uncle Aim sleep in. He’d arrive with a take-out lunch from Caillou’s, and they’d eat together.

  In the afternoon, she’d meet Chan on the levee. Uncle Aim would pay her for working full time because he knew she needed the money but was too proud to ask for a loan. But she’d have to give some of it back. It wasn’t in her to take what she hadn’t earned.

  Today, they’d finished the frame. “You do the honors.” Cage handed Resa the short log that would complete the wooden pyramid.

  She stuck the log in her backpack, borrowed from a school-age Madere cousin just for the occasion, and reached up to grab a log. Chan’s hands were warm on her waist as he helped her get started. Then the climb was easy.

  Some of the businesses that did bonfires brought in cranes to finish the tops of the frames, or created new designs for their bonfire each year, building them to resemble boats or gators. The Madere/Caillou bonfire had always been the traditional teepee shape, however, and always assembled by hand.

  Resa fit the last log into place and held onto the frame while she looked downriver from high above the levee. It wasn’t that far from here to New Orleans, less than forty miles, but it felt like a different world. Ten days ago, she’d felt as if coming to work at Madere’s, even for three weeks, was the lowest she could sink. Now, confusion tripped her at every turn, and she feared she had already stopped running long enough for the quicksand to envelop her ankles and start rising toward her knees.

  “Everything okay up there?”

  Resa looked down at Chan, who stared at her with hands stuffed in his pockets and a scarf wrapped around his neck. He must be cold-natured, because Resa thought the day was perfect. Clear and cool and bright.

  “Coming down.” She backed down the bonfire frame carefully, checking the stuffing of branches and cardboard inside the “teepee.” All that remained to do before Christmas Eve was put up the Madere’s/Caillou’s sponsor sign and their bonfire number.

  She hopped off and wiped tree bark and sap on her jeans. “Treat you to lunch?
”

  They stopped at a little drive-in spot in Paulina to avoid the Caillou’s rumor mill, and sat in Chan’s truck with their burgers and sodas.

  “Don’t you get bored here?” Other than the one poodle incident, she hadn’t heard of Chan taking any other gator calls.

  “It’s just slow right now. Gators don’t move around much during cold weather.” He picked the lettuce off his burger and dropped it in the paper sack. “Come March, it’ll pick up. Things were crazy in October when I first moved out, even though we’d just been through gator season and the numbers were thinned out.”

  Resa shook her head. “You’re such a calm, easy-going guy. But you must have a hidden adrenaline junkie in you—the gator basket at Caillou’s is about as close as I want to get to one.”

  Chan gave her a smile. “You think I’m calm and easy-going?”

  Well, duh. “You don’t think so?”

  He shrugged. “Never thought about it. I just like gators. They’ve been around these swamps since the world was made, you know? And we’re crowdin’ them out. All I do is help them get away from people and relocate them to someplace they’ll be safe.”

  When he put it that way, the job didn’t seem like such an odd fit for him. More caretaker than wrangler. “Why’d you really come back to Dogtown?”

  Chan took another bite of his burger, then wrapped the rest in a napkin and dropped it in the bag. “It was time, that’s all. I had to decide where I wanted to live my life and how I wanted to live it. Pushing papers around a desk in Baton Rouge wasn’t it.”

  Resa looked out the truck window. From here, she could see the tops of the Christmas bonfire frames stretching down the river levee. She turned back at the stroke of Chan’s fingers on her neck.

  “What do you want, Resa? You want your life in New Orleans back?”