Secrets, Lies, and Crawfish Pies Read online

  “They don’t need your help.”

  “They need all the help they can get,” she said, then switching in an instant from complainer to beseecher, she lowered her eyes and gazed up at me. “Speaking of help, I sure could use yours when we get back.”

  “Help doing what?”

  “I am up to my knees in getting this year’s crawfish festival planned. I figured since you’re going to be home, you could help me.”

  Just then, the realization of what going back and getting embroiled in the life of Roble meant hit me like a brick. I raised my sad eyes to meet Auntie’s. I blinked them hard and tried not to cry.

  “I don’t know, Auntie.” I sniffed. “I don’t think I’ll be around long enough to help.”

  “Oh, look at you, darlin’. Now don’t look so sad.” She put her arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “It’ll be alright, you’ll see. Hey!” Her attention averted from my woe-is-me pity party just as quickly as the tears had welled up. “We’re not paying you to turn in circles,” she yelled, leaving me to continue her harassment of the movers. “Pick up that box and get a move on!”

  The world moves on...

  I swiped at my eyes, blew out a breath, and took my bags out to the front stoop of the apartment building. Uber was giving us a ride to Union Station. Amtrak was taking us to Texas.

  The sunny early June day smacked me in my sullen face as I walked out the door. It made the concrete pavement glisten, and the neighborhood I’d adopted look cheerful. Bursting at the seams with architectural charm, it was the type of place people dreamed of living in.

  I plopped down on the stoop and straddled my legs over my luggage. I rested my elbow on my knee and put a fist under my chin. I looked for the last time at my street filled with old houses, many of them listed on the National Register of Historic places. Uptown Chicago was gentrification with a big dollop of diverse flavor. Best known for its music venues, it was a place after my own heart. I had wandered down the street many an evening, following the call of a world-class jazz club, Theater Corner.

  “Finally!” Auntie said. She stepped out on the stoop and poked her knee into my back. “Let’s get a move on. Isn’t that your Hoover driver?” She pointed to a black Kia Optima.

  “Uber,” I said, moving out of her way. She stopped on the step two down from where I sat, her big tapestry purse clutched at her side.

  “What kind of word is that?” she said. “Ooober. And whatever happened to neighbors giving neighbors a ride? Thank God time has stood still in Roble.”

  I let out a moan. Just what I needed to hear.

  “Well, c’mon,” she said and gave my arm a yank. “Let’s get a move on.”

  I felt twelve years old again, my feet dragging as I ambled over to the car, pulling my bags behind me, not wanting to leave. Back then it was Beaumont, Texas, where I had lived with my parents. After they died, Auntie Zanne was the first to arrive. She planned the funeral, buried her baby sister and her sister’s husband, and took me home to live with her. I felt lost and numb, but too young to protest or put up a fight even if I had had the strength to. In the end, my life in Roble with my auntie turned out well. I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood. But all that uncertainty I felt when Auntie Zanne stepped in to whisk me away, I was feeling at this moment.

  Auntie Zanne practically had to get behind me, push me to the car, and then into Union Station and out onto the platform. Once it was time to board, I climbed into the train, tucked my bags underneath the seat, and plunked down. I leaned my cheek on the cool glass of the window in the air-conditioned Sightseer Lounge car where Auntie Zanne insisted we sit.

  I cried as we left the Windy City and traveled through the farmland and rolling hills of Illinois. But by the time we crossed the Mississippi River and rode through the elevated plateaus of the Ozarks, my auntie had scooted in close to me and prodded me out of my mood, chatting me up with her plans for the 25th Annual Sabine County Crawfish Boil and Music Festival. As a board member of the Tri-County Chamber of Commerce, she was in charge, and that put an excitement in her that notched up with every mile we put behind us.

  Full of life and animated, I listened as she rattled on about the East Texas “big” event. I smiled at her–so much energy, she didn’t look or act anywhere near her eighty years. A Texas transplant, she loved their traditions.

  In the late forties, her parents had moved their three girls, Suzanne, Carmalice, and Gabriela, from Louisiana to Texas after Naomi Drake became New Orleans’ City Registrar for the Bureau of Vital Statistics.

  In her zeal to impose a strict binary system of people either being black or white with nothing in between, Drake denied mixed-race French Creoles’ distinct classification, something they coveted. She systematically applied hypodescent rules, lumping white and mixed-race Creoles into the same pot with Negroes.

  Naomi Drake’s race flagging began with her having her employees comb records to conduct her own style of genealogical assessments. If a person who identified as white had a surname common to blacks, or if obituaries listed a decedent as having black relatives, family members having services at traditionally black funeral homes, or burials at traditionally black cemeteries, she changed their race, no questions asked. And if a person didn’t accept her new assignment, she would refuse to release the birth or death certificates.

  That didn’t sit well with the members of the French Creole community, and a mass exodus commenced. Some left to reestablish their own segregated community and others to find work. But the majority moved to Texas, settling in Houston and the cities that made up the Golden Triangle–Beaumont, Orange, and Port Arthur.

  The St. Romains settled in Beaumont and resumed attending Mass at the Roman Catholic Church and speaking French. Everything was good–at least for a little while. It wasn’t long before young Gabriela died and my grandparents— heartbroken, so the story goes— followed shortly after. A tragedy that drove my Auntie Zanne to hastily marry a man with distant French kinfolk and move to Roble to start a funeral home.

  I glanced over at her. She had dozed off and was snoring lightly. Auntie Zanne’s fair skin was smooth, and nearly wrinkle free–no sign of all the history that she’d lived through. She was pretty, my auntie. Even at her age she still looked a lot like Lena Horne in her prime. Ah, but the voice of that songstress had gone to my mother, Carmalice, the middle child and, as my auntie often told me, the one with all the spunk.

  My mother spoke French, had a beautiful singing voice that she offered almost exclusively to the choir at church, and she made the best gumbo in all of Louisiana and Texas. But even with my mother’s love of everything French Creole, it was the blues that stole her heart. A guitar player by the name of Earle Wilder, to be exact.

  My parents met at a bus stop, were married within the week, and had me nine months later. Momma, in naming me, took her maiden name, St. Romain, since there were no family members left that would carry it on, took the “saint” off the beginning and added an “e” at the end to match the spelling of her and my daddy’s names. Carmalice, Earle and Romaine, one happy family – our house always full of music and laughter.

  Until tragedy struck again.

  I let out a sigh.

  By the time our train rolled past the piney woods of East Texas, low hanging clouds tinged in a grayish ash had opened up and plonked a torrent of rain and wind down on us.

  “Wake up, Auntie,” I said, gently shaking her.

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” she said, her eyes snapping open. “I was just resting my eyelids.”

  “Well, tell your eyelids their rest is over. We’re here.”

  “We’re here? Well, that wasn’t a bad ride at all,” she said, patting her hair back in place.

  “Who’s coming to get us?” I asked as we left the platform and got a glance out the front door of the station.

  “Rhett Remmiere,” she said a
nd waggled her brows.

  I chuckled. “Am I supposed to know who that is?” I asked.

  “He’s French. Someone for you to talk with.”

  “I can speak French to you if I want someone to converse with. All I care about is if he’s punctual. I’m ready to get in out of this rain.”

  “Voilà,” Auntie Zanne said and pointed.

  Mr. French Guy, just coming in the doors, was tall and well-built, dressed in torn jeans and a black T-shirt, with a pair of round wire-rimmed glasses. He donned a pair of ratty tennis shoes that showed he had stepped through puddles instead of over them.

  “Hey!” Auntie Zanne yelled out and waved. He couldn’t have missed us. The station in Nacogdoches wasn’t much bigger than a Lakeshore East studio apartment in Downtown Chicago.

  “Hey, Babet,” he said smiling. He walked over to us. “Looks like you brought a bunch of rain back with you.”

  “Wasn’t me,” she said. “It wasn’t raining in Chicago. Was it Romaine?”

  “Nope.”

  “Romaine,” he said and let his eyes trail the length of me. “So, you’re the doctor?” There was no sign of a French accent.

  “I am,” I said.

  Seemingly, what he’d seen wasn’t what he expected. But I didn’t have the strength to say anything else or to prove my worth to him.

  “Okay,” he said and slapped the palms of his hands together. “Let’s try and see if we can run between the raindrops out to the car.”

  Auntie Zanne laughed so hard at his comment that she tickled me. She couldn’t have thought him that witty. He smiled. I was sure he knew that he hadn’t been.

  * * *

  Wipers slapped across the windshield, barely keeping the road before us visible as we made our way east on State Highway 21. A wind had picked up and the rain beat against the branches and leaves of the trees and ricocheted, splattering hard against the car. It reminded me of driving through a car wash.

  The usual forty-minute drive from Nacogdoches to Roble took a little over an hour. But even through the pounding rain, the large Greek Revival-style plantation with the sprawling oak trees on Grand River Road that Auntie Zanne and her husband had turned into Ball Funeral Home & Crematorium emerged beautiful and stately. Built in the mid-1800s with its white pillars, black shutters, and arched roof, it had been one of the largest cotton plantations during its time.

  “What is she doing?” Auntie Zanne asked as we neared the house.

  Josephine Gail Cox, my auntie’s oldest friend, and frequent resident of the county’s mental health facility, was standing in the middle of the driveway. Yellow plastic rain jacket on, her soaked thin dress clinging to her bare legs. She stood sentinel, re-angling her body every now and then so the heavy rain wouldn’t pummel anything vital.

  “Pull under the carport,” Auntie Zanne directed Rhett. “Let me see what in tarnation is wrong with her.”

  Rhett did as directed and drove slowly up the driveway, running up onto the grass so as not to hit Josephine Gail or splash her, not that she could have gotten any wetter. He pulled up and parked next to Jack Russell, Auntie’s Jack Russell Terrier, who watched Josephine Gail from a sheltered distance. Auntie had so named the dog because, as she said, that’s what he was. According to that logic, I had told her, we’d all be called Man and Woman. And even with that she didn’t stick to the name she’d chosen, he was J.R. to all of us.

  We opened the doors and got out of the car. J.R. didn’t know who to scamper to first. He turned in circles and scuttled from one side of the car to the other. He hadn’t seen me in two years, and Auntie in two weeks, but in the end, I won out.

  “Hey boy!” I said and stooped down to pat him. He turned on his back, demanding I rub his belly. “Yeah, I’m happy to see you too. Good boy.”

  “Josephine Gail!” my auntie called out to her friend, but she didn’t answer. Didn’t even give a look our way.

  I stood up, ready to go and see about her, but Rhett volunteered before I could.

  “I’ll go and get her,” he said.

  “Good,” Auntie said, then muttered, “I just hope she isn’t getting sick again.”

  Reaching inside the double glass doors of the house by the carport, Rhett retrieved an umbrella and splashed his way down the drive to usher Josephine Gail back into a dry place. But it was easy to make out by her body language–side-stepping cover from the umbrella twice, her fists balled down at her side and eyes fixed straight ahead–she wasn’t budging.

  At the same time that Rhett made it back to us to give his report, the sheriff’s car, silent red lights flashing through the dark rain, raced into the long driveway. It splashed through water as the tires came to an abrupt halt a good thirty feet from where we stood. The car door swung open and the sheriff bolted out into the rain and jogged, swerving around and hopping over puddles, past Josephine Gail to where we had gathered underneath the awning of the carport.

  You would have thought a shoot-em-out bank robbery was in progress.

  My first cousin on my father’s side, Pogue Folsom, was the law in Roble. But with a population of not even nearly a thousand and zero crime rate, he was more public servant than protector. Not long elected, doing welfare checks, retrieving cats from trees, and setting up blockades for the annual crawfish festival made his sheriff title almost inconsequential. But he had worked hard to get where he was, and I was proud of him.

  “What’s going on?” Auntie Zanne asked Pogue, raising her voice over the wind and rain. “What are you doing here?”

  “There’s a dead body in there,” Pogue said, pointing through the double glass doors. He pulled off his hat and brushed beads of water off it.

  “Of course there is,” Auntie Zanne said, sucking her tongue and rolling her eyes. “It’s a funeral parlor. I’ve got lots of dead bodies in there.”

  “Only this one...” Pogue said, his voice getting louder over the bash of thunder and a crackle of lightning, popping as it smacked the ground, “...was murdered.”

  Chapter Three

  “What do you mean murdered?” Auntie asked Pogue once we had gotten Josephine Gail to move and the five of us retreated inside. We stood pushed together in a small, tiled area of the add-on entryway, J.R.’s tail wagging as he went from one person’s leg to another. “Don’t come ‘round here starting trouble, Pogue Folsom,” Auntie fussed. “I’m just getting home and I need to get settled in. I’ve got a festival to finish planning.”

  “Josephine Gail called me,” Pogue said in his defense, his drawl thick as molasses. “Said she had a dead body that didn’t belong here. She thinks there has been a murder.”

  “Murder!” Auntie Zanne said. “There you go saying it again. I can’t abide by such language in my place of business. Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said and shrugged. “I’m only repeating what she said.” He nodded toward Josephine Gail.

  Everyone turned to her. Water dripping off her, hair clumped together, eyes glazed, she was as stiff as a dead body herself and wasn’t offering any information.

  “I’ll need to ask you some questions, Josephine Gail,” Pogue said, pulling a notebook out of his shirt pocket. “Then, I’ma need you to show me that body.”

  “Well, you are just going to have to wait,” Auntie Zanne said. “Look at her. There’s more water on her than there is in the Sabine River. I’m gonna get her dried off before I let her do any talking.” Auntie put her arm around Josephine Gail’s shoulder. “Help me, Rhett.” She started up the five steps that led to the main floor. Coming around the other side of her, Rhett grabbed a hold of Josephine Gail’s other arm to help steady her. “She’s probably in shock from seeing that body,” Auntie said.

  Pogue looked at me, a big grin on his face. I just shook my head.

  “Doesn’t Josephine Gail work here?” he asked, still grinning. “Seems to me she’d be
used to seeing dead bodies.”

  “Wipe that grin off your face, boy,” Auntie said over her shoulder. “I know without looking at you you’re looking like the cat that caught the mouse. Don’t think ‘cause you made Sheriff you can come in here bossing folks around.”

  “No ma’am,” Pogue said, grin getting even wider. He thought himself clever even if Auntie didn’t.

  She got to the top of the stairs with Josephine Gail and turned around to look at us. “And, Mr. I’m-the-Sheriff, are you implying that I have murdered bodies in here all the time?”

  “No ma’am.” Pogue shot a look over at me.

  “Good, ’cause I don’t. And that’s probably what’s giving her a shock. The killer could still be around. Rhett, you give the place a once-over after we get her settled.” Auntie gave her friend a squeeze. “C’mon, Josephine Gail, you’ll catch your death of cold with all those wet things on. Romaine’ll take a look at you, make sure you’re alright. Pogue,” Auntie waved her hand toward the back, “go get a blanket out of the hall closet and bring it to me. Matter-of-fact, bring me two and a few of them white towels. We’re going to the kitchen. I’m gonna make something hot for her to drink.”

  We watched them amble off and Pogue turned to me. “Didn’t get a chance to say a proper hello to my favorite cousin,” he said and wrapped his arm around me.

  “Hey cousin,” I said and hugged him back. “How’s your momma?”

  “She’s good. She’s already trying to get me to drive her over to San Augustine to go to Brookshire Brothers’ grocery store so she can make you some jambalaya.”

  “Tell her if she’s gonna make me some of her jambalaya, I’ll drive her over there myself.”

  “I sure will tell her that,” he said.

  “Where are my blankets, Pogue?” Auntie’s voice came booming out from the kitchen to us.

  “I better get them,” Pogue said and gave me another hug. “Good to have you home, Romie.”