The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4 Read online

  “My father was an executive for Western Union here in New Orleans.” She pronounces each syllable, Or-lee-uns. An uptown girl. “He went fishing down on Vermilion Bay. He goes there often.”

  Not anymore.

  Taking a right on Tulane, I go up to Clairborne Avenue and take it through the city, passing beneath the towering oaks along the neutral ground dividing the lanes of the wide avenue. New Orleans is such a mix of architecture, from the narrow streets of the Quarter, streets lined with lacework balconies through the bustling central district with its concrete high rises along Tulane Avenue to the wide mansions dotting Clairborne Avenue. I watch the passing buildings and houses, the street workers next to Charity Hospital, dogs playing tag along Clairborne.

  Stopping for the light at Clairborne and Carrollton, I see a streetcar conductor moving inside a streetcar at the end of the line. He’s flipping the backs of the seats around for the return trip toward Canal Street.

  Ann looks out of her window as we drive and I’m not about to try small talk on a woman who just lost her father. It isn’t until we’re atop Huey Long Bridge, high above the swirling water of the muddy Mississippi, does she speak again.

  “He liked to get out on his own. He’d take his fishing gear on a bus and stop where he thought he’d get some peace and quiet.”

  The flat scenery along Highway 90 is one, long monotonous succession of scrub oaks and other swamp trees. I settle back and let the Caddy roll along the two-lane blacktop.

  Outside New Iberia, as we pass along the wide grasslands of the Cajun prairie, I tune the radio to a Baton Rouge station with a soft-voiced reporter who tells us how the Allied airlift into Berlin just set a new record by flying seven thousand tons of supplies in defiance of the three-month-old Russian blockade.

  I turn the dial until I stumble onto the ABC network and the familiar sound of a gong, followed by the wild chattering of Chinese gibberish before the announcer yells, “T-e-e-e-r-y and the Pirates!”

  My God, Terry and the Pirates. Haven’t heard one of those in a long time.

  “Leave it, please,” Ann says and we listen to the recording of the old show. Not bad, actually, with Agnes Moorehead as the Dragon Lady in China of 1937.

  Turning left on narrow Louisiana Highway 14, we head through green fields of sugar cane, taller than the car. As the radio show ends, Ann turns off the radio, looks at me and says, “I think something bad happened to my father.”

  Sure. He’s dead. Can’t be much worse.

  Her lower lip trembles. “I think something evil happened to him in the swamp.”

  “You know something I don’t know?”

  She shakes her head and looks out at the last cane field before we pull into the small Cajun town called Abbeville, parish seat of Vermilion Parish.

  All morgues smell the same: formaldehyde with an ammonia chaser. The coroner, Dr Louis Simone, a thick man with handlebar moustache and dark, Cajun complexion, sits behind his cluttered desk and waves us to the two chairs in front. He’s in a white, doctor’s smock.

  “De ting is, I just finish the autopsy report on your daddy’s death.” Simone opens a drawer and pulls out a folder, which he extends toward Ann. “But you know he body’s not here. It’s at the Bultman funeral home in N’Awlins.”

  She looks at me and I take the folder which contains the autopsy protocol for Adam L. Kinzer, white male, forty-nine, of Versailles Boulevard, New Orleans.

  “I want to tank you for all the details you give me on de phone,” Simone tells Ann.

  “Excuse me,” I say as I read the manner of death. “What exactly is death by misadventure?”

  Simone watches Ann as he answers, “It mean how somebody die from where he not supposed to be.”

  “By accident?”

  “O’course. He accidently die in de swamp.”

  I look back at the report for the cause of death, which is listed as, “Massive loss of blood and tissue.”

  “He didn’t drown?”

  “Mais no. He got tore up.”

  From the corner of my eye I see Ann stiffen.

  “By what?” I ask.

  Simone takes a deep breath and looks up at the ceiling before answering. “When someone from de big city or like a Yankee is killed by a gator, we don’t put dat down cause it’ll scare people. Dey tink we live in some sort of primitive area or sometin’. We call it Death by Misadventure.”

  Ann gets up and walks out.

  I stand, but have to ask Simone, “An alligator ate him?”

  “Not all of him, but some.”

  Ann is waiting in the car.

  As I approach, I read the Sheriff’s report that is also in the file. It seems Mr Kinzer was out on the swamp in a rented pirogue. The pirogue came back by itself to where it was rented, a place called Magnolia Alley. Apparently, Kinzer’s body had been found at the edge of Vermilion Bay by two men from Oregon on a fishing trip. The men left town the next day.

  Sitting behind the steering wheel, I look at Ann who stares straight ahead.

  “I’d like to head south now, to Cannes Brulee.”

  We take another two lane blacktop out of town and are immediately surrounded by towering cypress trees dripping Spanish moss. The road is elevated as we drive through a wide marsh, but there are dips which must flood when it rains hard.

  Ann looks even more pale and I try not to stare.

  “He wasn’t bitten by an alligator,” she says suddenly.

  She uncrosses her legs, points her knees my way and recrosses them. In the quiet Caddy I hear the sexy sound of her nylons rubbing together.

  “We had a doctor examine him at Bultman’s. Something else bit him.”

  I slow for a curve in the road and we move past several old plantation homes, not big ones like Tara, but smaller ones in dire need of repair. One on the left has been painted recently and Ann points to it.

  “Pull in here.”

  As I turn into the oyster shell driveway, I spot a blue sign nailed to a cypress tree. The sign reads: Welcome to Magnolia Alley.

  Ann reminds me this is the hotel where her father stayed as we park between two of the largest magnolia trees I’ve ever seen.

  The hotel, converted from an antebellum plantation house, has a wide veranda surrounding the entire building. The lobby is quaint with furniture from the Great Depression, straight-back sofas, wicker ceiling fans and a bare light bulb Edison made, himself.

  An ancient black man leads us upstairs. He wants to carry our bags, but I won’t let him. My room is surprisingly big and clean with a view of the rear of the place, a wide yard leading straight to a deep, cypress swamp. Ann’s room is across the narrow hallway.

  The dining room downstairs is nicer than expected. After a couple bowls of crab gumbo (I have two and Ann only picks at hers), we walk around to the back of the place.

  Ann steps off the veranda and walks briskly across the lawn, straight for the swamp. I follow until she steps around the first cypress tree and starts down a narrow trail of slightly higher ground.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find the Chula.” She doesn’t slow down and I have to follow. Mosquitoes immediately attack me and I swat at them.

  “The what?”

  Ann looks back at me as I catch up. “The Chula’s a who, not a what.” She takes my hand and leads me along a well-worn trail into the swamp. There are other trees here, berry trees and huge, moss-covered oaks with vines wrapped around them like snakes. The swamp smells of decaying wood and stagnant water, the air thick with humidity.

  “Who is the Chula?”

  Ann lets go of my hand and stops a moment. She looks around, then takes a fork in the trail moving to the right.

  “Don’t laugh,” she says. “The information came from a woman in Treme who knows about these things.” Ann pauses and points to a tall, dead cypress. “Two hundred yards beyond that is a bent oak.”

  Ducking under a huge spider’s web, I follow Ann and can’t help wondering about
some woman in Treme, the oldest Negro section of town, known for its voodoo rituals a long time ago.

  Jesus! What have I gotten into?

  Ann points excitedly at the bent oak and moves around it to a trail of wooden planks that becomes a footbridge over water leading to a shack. No, it’s a flat-bottom houseboat at the edge of a wide body of brown water.

  Just as Ann is about to knock at the screen door, a shrill voice calls out, “Y’all come in, now.”

  I step in first, Ann holding my left hand with both of hers. My eyes take a few moments to adjust to the darkness in the small cabin, which smells of boiling crawfish. A black cauldron simmers over a fire in a small fireplace on the far side of the room. A shadowy woman sits on a rocker in the darkest corner. Her eyes seem to shine.

  She leans forward and the sunlight from the door illuminates the reddish, craggy face of an old woman. Her white hair is short and frizzy and her mouth far too large for such a tiny face. She’s part Negro and part Indian, I’m sure.

  “What you want?” she asks.

  Ann inches around me and takes in a deep breath before asking the old woman if she’s the Chula.

  “O’course. But that ain’t what you want, is it?”

  Squeezing my hand, Ann says she wants to know what happened to her father.

  The Chula extends a gnarled hand and says, “Gimme five dollar.”

  Ann digs a bill out of her purse and passes it to the old woman who crumbles it in her hand and holds it tightly. She leans even farther forward and stares intently at Ann.

  “Sometin’ bad happen to you daddy.”

  No kidding. He’s dead.

  Ann begins to shake and I pull her close, feeling her breasts pressing against my side, smelling the perfume in her hair. I feel something else too – my heartbeat.

  The Chula turns her gaze to me, staring without blinking for a long minute until I break her stare with, “What does Chula mean? It’s Indian, isn’t it?”

  “Means Fox in Choctaw. I yam part Choctaw and part African.” The old woman looks at Ann again and adds, “You daddy die in de swamp, didn’t he?”

  Ann nods slowly.

  The Chula closes her eyes. “He were wearin’ a plaid shirt and dem dungarees. He were in a pirogue, fishin’ wit de cane pole.”

  Ann lets out a high-pitched noise and presses herself even tighter against me. I wrap my arm even tighter around her waist, feeling the line of her panty along the side of her hip.

  “The coroner says he was killed by an alligator,” Ann blurts out.

  “No,” the Chula replies. “No. No. No.” She shakes her head and opens her eyes. Craning forward, she whispers, “Bluegums got him.”

  Ann lets out a sound as if the air is being sucked out of her lungs.

  The Chula stands and moves to a purple curtain. She opens the curtain to reveal a window so dirty light barely shows through. She looks out the window.

  “Bluegums,” she says. “Dey got him.”

  Ann shivers in my arms and when I look down at her face, her eyes are shut tightly.

  “What are Bluegums?” I have to ask.

  Her voice is distant and gravely. “When de slaves come from Africa, some escape into de holds of de slave ships. Lived off de rats in de holds. Learnt how to be real quiet in de leaky holds wif dem stones.”

  “Stones?” Ann whispers to me.

  “Probably ballast. In the holds of the sailing ships, they used stones for ballast.”

  “Dat’s right,” the Chula says as she moves back to her rocker. “When de Bluegums live in de holds of ships, dey turned white, whiter den white folk. In de ships gone to New Orleans, some Bluegums escape into de swamp.” Her voice became a harsh whisper, “Dey so white, dey almost shine at night. Dey all white, except for de big, blue lips and gums.”

  Jesus! She’s giving us five dollars-worth all right.

  “They killed my father?” Ann asks.

  Before I can answer, the Chula says, “Dey eats men.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure.” I chuckle. “And they only come out at night.”

  The Chula nods.

  “They eat people?” Ann asks in a quavering voice.

  “Dey eats men. Dey don’t eat womens.”

  Ann is so pale, I think she is going to pass out.

  “Dey do de unspeakable to womens who get caught on de swamp at night and de womens, dey never be the same again, no.”

  I shake Ann and she blinks up at me.

  “It’s a fairy tale,” I tell her. “Come on. White zombies with blue gums?”

  “Dey ain’t zombies. Dey people. Dey a different race.”

  Give me a break, lady. I get Ann’s attention and tell her that we’re due back on planet earth about now.

  “Yeah,” the Chula agrees. “You betta’ go now, afore it get dark.”

  Ann moves stiffly as I lead the way out.

  It’s twilight by the time we reach Magnolia Alley, just in time for supper. I eat two heaping helpings of the best crawfish bisque I’ve had in years. Ann eats a little. Even she can’t resist the succulent, spicy crawfish.

  We go out on the veranda after supper and walk to the back of the plantation house turned hotel.

  “I wonder what they used to grow here,” I say aloud.

  A Negro maid, mopping the back steps of the veranda, stops to tell us there used to be sugarcane and cotton around here but the swamps done took it over.

  Ann and I sit in rockers outside the back door. The swamp is extra dark now. The croaking of frogs and incessant buzz of crickets is drowned momentarily by the rising call of cicadas that flows out of the swamp in singsong waves.

  Ann kicks off her heels and flaps the top of her waistcoat. “It’s so hot,” she says.

  I hand her my glass of ice water and she pours some of it down the front of her blouse and says, “That’s a little better.”

  She hands me back the glass and lifts her dress up, way up, all the way to her garter belt and loosens her right stocking, lifting her knee, pushing the stocking off to let it drop next to her shoes. Then she unfastens her left stocking, letting it drop. She leaves her dress up and leans back. As I stare at her legs she lifts the dress and flaps it, giving me a nice view of her sheer, white panties.

  “That’s cooler,” she says, but now I’m hotter, much hotter.

  “We can’t go back to New Orleans yet,” Ann says as she unbuttons her waistcoat to reveal the white, silky blouse beneath. Wet now, it’s so sheer I can see the lacy bra.

  “Why not?”

  She turns those green eyes to me and they glisten in the yellow porchlight. “We have to see them ourselves, otherwise the Sheriff will never believe us.”

  I look into those eyes and I swear she doesn’t look crazy. She just sounds that way.

  “If I saw one I wouldn’t believe us,” I tell her. Come on, now, Bluegums?

  She bites her lower lip as she looks away and I remind myself she’s just lost her father.

  A low-pitched howl echoes from the swamp. The sound rises and sounds like a wolf.

  “What is it?”

  “Probably a red wolf,” I tell her. “Pretty rare, but still native to south Louisiana. There’s one at the Audubon Zoo. Kinda small with a reddish-brown coat.”

  Ann uncrosses her legs, stands and walks down the steps to the lawn and keeps walking. I catch up just as she arrives at the swamp’s edge. I swipe mosquitoes from my face as we stand there for long seconds. These mosquitoes buzz as loud as dive-bombers. Ann lets out a long breath and tells me she saw something.

  I don’t ask what and feel better when she turns back to the hotel.

  I follow those round hips up the stairs into the hallway.

  “You gonna be all right?” I ask when she turns to me outside her room.

  She nods, steps forward and puts her hands atop my shoulders. She leans up, turning her head to the side and gives me a feathery kiss, softly, very softly. Her lips linger against mine for several heartbeats before she pulls awa
y, turns and unlocks her door and goes into her room. I hear her set the lock.

  Finally catching my breath, I go into my room, leaving the door open so I can see her door. Not bothering to turn on my light, I pull the straight-backed chair around the foot of my bed. I kick off my brown and white Florsheims, prop my feet up on my bed and watch her door.

  Just before midnight I stand and stretch, take a hurried bathroom break and turn on the radio on my way back to my chair. I catch the end of a radio play and at midnight, the eerie notes of an organ come over the radio. A deep, male voice melodramatically tells me to stay where I am, because this is a time for mystery. He says this is the haunting hour.

  I listen to a radio play called “Bird of Death.” Something about men haunting carrion crows in a marsh. No it’s a murder case. Something about a will, a short cut to making a lot of money. The deep voices are soothing and I get drowsy. When one of the actresses uses the word “land-a-goshin!” to the pernickety old man, it’s time to turn the radio off.

  Moving to the window, I look out. The moon is high now, illuminating the back lawn in a bluish hue. I open the window wider, and a warm breath of air slips through the screen into my stuffy room.

  Stripping down to my boxers, I climb into bed. I’m a light sleeper and concentrate on the hall. Hopefully, I’ll hear if she opens the door. No. I don’t think she’ll creep in here. There was something else in her eyes, something spookier than the creepy organ music on that radio play.

  I wake with a start and realize I’m hearing something.

  A long, low howl echoes outside.

  I get up and move to the window. She’s there, at the edge of the lawn. Her long, white gown glimmers in the moonlight, her raven’s hair hanging loose below her shoulders. She turns to one side and I see her face in profile, her lips dark, her skin nearly as white as her gown.

  Ann turns back to the marsh and starts down the trail we took earlier.

  In the time it takes me to dress, hurriedly shoving my gun back into its holster, racing down the hall and down the stairs like a maniac, she’s disappeared into the swamp.

  Ten steps down the trail, I realize I can’t see a damn thing. But I keep moving forward. A branch slaps my face and I slow down in the darkness. Ahead, I see a pale light. Stepping closer, I realize it is splotches of moonlight filtered through the openings in the canopy of trees.