Maggie sighs. “I remember the bugs were buzzing. The bullfrogs were croaking. And the night breeze was sweet with the smell of bougainvillea. And I remember understanding for the first time why Luc was so into poetry.”
For a moment, we slip into silence, each of us lost in the past. Then she says, “And now we can add tonight to our list of memories and moonlight. When we’re eighty, we’ll remember the time we sat on Luc’s porch and said farewell to Richard Armstrong in a way that would probably make him crazy. Bynottalking about him.”
“Hear, hear.” Luc lifts his beer and taps it against the neck of my own. I lean over and tap Maggie’s coffee cup. She’ll be driving home later, so after one glass of wine with dinner, she moved on to café au lait. Made with chicory, of course, because she’s a heathen.
“You know how everything in the universe is made up of stardust?” she says after taking a sip.
I slant her a glance, wondering where she’s going with this.
“I was thinking about that question you asked,” she tells me. “About how long you’ll be remembered after you die? And I was thinking that maybe your memory isn’t bound by the lives of those you loved or those who loved you. Maybe your memory is actuallyboundlessbecauseyouare boundless.Energy doesn’t die, right? It simply changes. Our bodies decay, but we’re still in the ground. In the air.” She points to the moon. “We’re even in the moonlight. Weare. Forever.”
I smile. “It’s a nice thought.”
The forlorn hoot of an owl and the gentle sigh of the bayou licking at its banks seem to say they agree with me. Luc switches over to an old Louis Armstrong tune and quietly starts to sing, his voice melding with the hum of the guitar and the tinkle of the wind chimes.
My limbs are drowsy with beer and physical exhaustion. These days, my stamina is shit. My eyelids, weighed down by anchors, begin to drift shut. Then a flash of light in the distance has them flying wide. I blink, searching for the glowing blue sphere, but it’s gone.
Or was it ever there? Are my eyes playing tricks on me again?
“Did y’all see that?” Maggie sits forward and points.
I release a covert sigh.
“It’s only a little ol’fifolet,” Luc assures her, setting his guitar aside and lacing his hands behind his head. The picture of health and ease. If I didn’t love him so much, I’d hate him.
“What’s that?” Maggie wrinkles her nose.
He frowns at her. “You’ve never heard offifolet?” When she shakes her head, he makes a disparaging sound. “And you call yourself a Louisianan?”
“Now you’ve gotmeinterested,” I tell him, searching the darkness for another glimpse of the strange blue light.
“According to legend”—his voice drops an octave, reminding me how much he loves a good fireside, or in this case, porch-side tale. From all accounts, his father was quite the storyteller, and Luc claims he learned the craft at the man’s knee—“when pirates buried their treasure, they would execute a member of their crew and stuff the body down in the hole with the booty.”
“That sounds unnecessarily cruel,” Maggie mutters, her mouth screwed around a moue of distaste. But I can see by the spark in her eye, she’s already caught up in his tale.
“The soul of the dead man was said to bind itself to the treasure,” Luc goes on, “forcing the spirit to guard the haul from would-be thieves. It often takes on the form of a glowing ball of light called afifolet. I reckon we just saw one wandering the swamp.”
Maggie shivers, making me grin. She’s always been susceptible to ghost stories. And not that Luc doesn’t know what lies in the deep, dark heart of the bayou. He does. He mostcertainlydoes. But I’m catching an unmistakable whiff of bullshit.
As if on cue, we hear muffled voices followed by a splash. Then the light flashes again.
Maggie scowls around me at Luc. He tries to hide his smile, but can’t quite manage it.
“Hunters out gigging frogs,” he explains.
“Dang it, Luc!” She reaches across me to punch his arm. “You had me going with that wholefifoletthing. Did you make that up on the fly?”
“No, ma’am.” He shakes his head. “It’s a real legend. Been passed down through the generations of folks who’ve called the swamp home.”
“But you’ve never seen one.”
“Not in all my years.”
“And you don’t believe in them.”
“Not in the slightest.”
She makes an indignant noise. But the look in her eyes as she stares at Luc is anythingbutindignant.
