The Calling

Lester never intended to come back to this place, and certainly he’d never considered bringing his daughter into the bayou.

But Mama was dead, and here he was, rowing through the swamp in a borrowed pirogue with Leslie sitting across from him, nearly swallowed up in her life jacket.

“Where we goin’, Papa?” she asked, simultaneously chewing cheese puffs and spraying orange flecks onto her jacket.

“Chew, swallow, and then speak,” Lester snapped irritably. “You know better!”

Leslie held up a small hand, palm facing him in a “wait a minute” gesture, and finished chewing her snack. She swallowed audibly, the said, “Sorry, Pa.”

“We’re going to your Granny Suzanne’s place,” Lester told her.

“Why?” Leslie asked, frowning. “We just went to her funeral.”

Lester shrugged. “There are things in the house I have to check out before I sell the place,” he explained. He didn’t add his thought out loud: Or before I burn the place.

The water was shallow and reedy in spots, and Lester kept a watchful eye on the area. He had Leslie sitting in the floor of the flat-bottomed boat to decrease the chances of her deciding to stand suddenly and unsettle their balance, but she could still see out, and if she spotted an alligator before he did, she was not to be trusted. Leslie was an impulsive, excitable child.

What sort of a crazy fool am I, anyway? Lester thought. He never should have brought her with him.

But he’d had no choice, not really. They had flown in from Denver and rented a car to attend to the funeral arrangements and such. Lester had custody of Leslie through the summer months and her mother had gone on a cruise. He would never leave his child with anyone else; trust was not a word in his vocabulary, and certainly not when it came to Leslie.

It had been years since he’d last made this journey, years since he’d lived in the swamp. Even so, he knew he hadn’t made a single wrong turn; landmarks, such as they were, remained in place even after all this time.

He swerved into a lane with a gnarled tree with twisted branches and what appeared to be one wicked glaring eye on one side, and a tall, slender tree on the other. This tree was remarkable mostly because it went up a hundred feet before any branches grew on it.

Brackish water swirled past on either side of the flat-bottomed boat. A water snake startled Leslie, and she ducked down.

Lester said, “Relax, kiddo. We’re almost there.”

Once he’d hit that landmarked fork, there was a long arc to the right, and then the waterway widened out a bit, forming a natural cul-de-sac. One could row in a semi-circle from dock to dock to dock and then back out to return the way you’d come.

Mama’s house was the big one in the center. The two smaller dwellings on either side were elevated over the land, but Mama’s was set up on high stilts, high enough to park a pickup truck underneath, if one were foolish enough to drive one out here.

Ruben Delacroix was sitting on the middle dock, a fishing pole in one hand and a beer in the other, his knobby knees bare and his feet in the water. He put his beer down and waved.

“Dat you, Lesta?”

“Yessir.”

“T’row me dat rope, den.”

Once tied up to the dock, Ruben put hands on hips. “Well, yer back. Drag up a rock; have a sit-down wit’ me. We got lots to talk about.”

Thanks for reading! This story is the first in a series by members of the Vocal Creators Saloon group on Facebook. Look out for the next stories!

Update: Here is the next story in the series: Back Home, Part 2

Memories, Part 3