Page 14 of The Cajun Doctor

“Because high heels make a woman’s butt stick out and her boobs arch up, kind of perky like,” Aaron answered with a grin. Aaron knew lots of interesting crap like that.

The drive down a two-lane road that ran parallel to a bayou was like a trip back in time to the 1950s. The only station they were able to get clearly on the radio played a weird kind of French music. Cajun, they presumed, with its unique twang. “Jolie Blon” or some such thing.

Old wooden signs planted in the ground must have been repainted over the years, otherwise they would have been rotted away. The jingle on these particular ones read:

“His cheek”

“Was Rough”

“His chick vamoosed”

“And now she won’t”

“Come home to roost”

“Burma-shave.”

There were old trailers with disabled appliances in the front yards, but bigass satellite dishes on the roofs and shiny new, expensive pickup trucks in the driveways. Here and there a general store advertised a mixed bag of goods and services, such as fresh okra, squirrel meat, haircuts, and live bait, all in one place. A taxidermist, who was also an undertaker, had a stuffed alligator hanging from a sign in front. But then there were quaint homes on stilts at the edge of the water, and the occasional old plantation, some restored to their former beauty, others falling prey to the encroaching jungle-like vegetation.

Because their rental car had a faulty air-conditioning system, they’d been driving with the windows open. Heat shimmered over the slow-moving, dark bayou waters. The high humidity seemed to magnify the vibrant colors of lush foliage and caused the white clouds overhead to writhe and swirl constantly, a phenomenon explained by Aaron who was somewhat of a weather authority, being a pilot. When Daniel got back to Alaska, he was never going to complain about the cold again.

Seen from the air yesterday, the Southern Louisiana bayou country had looked like one of Aunt Mel’s lace tablecloths. Better yet, like an illustration of the vascular system of the human body, veins and arteries going this way and that, except that here it was hundreds, maybe thousands, of different streams twisting and turning through the land. Up close, the landscape was even better. The scenery was an amazing assault on the senses, both visual and otherwise. Swarms of insects. Butterflies of every color and size imaginable. That fishy mud smell in the streams, along with decaying vegetation, offset by the almost overwhelmingly sweet aromas coming from flowers the size of saucers. A great blue egret stood, one-legged, on a partially submerged cypress log, its long neck and bill extended, waiting for its next meal to appear. A deceptive calm enveloped the area, deceptive because the area was teeming with all kinds of dangerous animals. The creepy live oak trees dripping gray moss helped to paint a picture of both peace and peril.

Daniel had to admit to being enthralled. He hadn’t expected to like the bayou country. He still wasn’t sure that he did. But a sense of coming home filled him the deeper they got into Cajun land. And Aaron felt it, too. He could tell by the way Aaron’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and the rapt look Aaron kept darting his way as if to say, “Can you believe this?” Maybe there was something to that genetic memory crap some folks claimed to exist.

They found Tante Lulu’s home on Bayou Black a short time later, and Daniel was pleasantly surprised as they pulled onto the crushed shell driveway. Instead of the trailer on concrete blocks he’d been halfway expecting (yeah, he was guilty of a little cultural bigotry, or maybe it was low expectations because of the way his mother had been treated), there was a trim little cottage covered with climbing roses, a penned-in vegetable garden, and a life-size statue of a saint standing in a circle of pansies. And a ten-foot, armor-plated alligator sunning itself in the backyard!

“Holy frickin’ Dixie!” Daniel exclaimed as they both rolled up their automatic windows, which immediately turned the inside of the car into a sauna. “What the hell is that?”

“An alligator,” Aaron answered.

“I know it’s an alligator. What’s it doing here?”

“Well, the bayou is only a hop, skip and a gator jump down the lawn,” Aaron pointed out.

“Don’t be a wiseass. What are we gonna do?”

Aaron laid on the horn. “We’ll see if Louise Rivard is home, first of all.”

“And let her come out and handle the alligator?” Daniel asked.

“You have a better idea?”

He didn’t.

Aaron laid on the horn a few more times, but there was no movement from within the house. Even though it was only eleven a.m., the old lady must already be at the wedding.

“Guess we should have asked at the beauty salon where this wedding was going to be held,” Aaron said.

“Or we could just go back to the hotel, relax by the pool, and come back tomorrow,” Daniel contributed.

“Nah. Since we’re already here . . .” Aaron pressed on the horn and didn’t let up for a couple of seconds. Aaron knew very well that he probably wouldn’t be able to talk Daniel into returning on this fool’s errand again, if they left now.

Meanwhile, they both watched with fascination as the huge reptile raised itself on short stubby legs and started ambling their way, faster than you would expect a creature of a thousand pounds, give or take, to move. When it got closer, it opened its mouth, displaying enormous piano-key size teeth, and let loose with a mighty bellow which caused them both to jump in their seats. By now, sweat was rolling down their foreheads and necks, and not just because of the humidity.

“Oh, shit! That gator roar was probably a broadcast to all his fellow gators up and down the bayou, ‘Hey, everyone, check out these two idiots in a metal coffin’,” Daniel pointed out.

“Don’t be such a killjoy. This is fun.”