Chapter 1
Retired Police Chief Earl Moultrie knew everything there was to know about everybody in Bayou Le Beau. That’s because the Cajun cop was a throwback to a more colorful, less politically correct era when Southern gentlemen were particularly blunt about the pecking order in the backwoods environs of Louisiana. Born on the bayou and with only an eighth-grade education, that hadn’t stopped the hard-bitten countrified brawler from rising in the local political arena. For 35 years, he’d been the law in a town where lawlessness was the order of the day when backroom politics were a way of life.
As anyone who has ever lived south of the Mason-Dixon Line will attest, history in Dixie was very much alive and well. On the bayou it was an unspoken fact that real Southerners didn’t forgive or forget the fact that the nearby metropolis of New Orleans was one of the first cities taken by federal troops during the Civil War. The fact that Earl’s house proudly sported a Confederate flag was reported to have raised some eyebrows as more than one curious northern tourist asked why he still flew the anachronism.
“It’s a Southern thang. Y’all wouldn’t understand,” he’d tell them with a smile before spitting tobacco juice in their general direction. That’s usually where the dialog ended.
Truth be told, there were lots of things outsiders wouldn’t understand about Earl and his kind. Things that the years and a whole lot of moonshine had washed away like the nearby lethargic tributary of the mighty Mississippi called Bayou Le Beau. Gone but not forgotten were traditions handed down from generation to generation, like cast netting for shrimp every summer when legions of the hearty crustaceans swarmed like waterborne locusts through the brackish backwaters of the delta on their yearly spawning run.
That’s when Earl would grab his net and a jug of moonshine before heading behind his house onto a handmade ramshackle dock that looked as if it would be unable to support his ample girth. But support him it did, as well as his buxom bride of thirty four years, Jolene Ann, whose voice was more irritating to Earl than the constant din of the ever present cicadas.
“I don’t know why you spend so much time out here foolin’ around with that silly old net when you could just drive on down to the Sea Pearl and buy a mess of shrimp right off one of the big trawlers.”
“Now what fun would that be?” Earl responded reflexively as he cast with more vigor than necessary toward the unseen crustaceans that lurked below while keeping the trawl line firmly clenched between his teeth. Meanwhile Jolene sat with her plump legs dangling over the edge of the dock playfully toeing the water just to annoy Earl who had told her on more than one occasion how errant noise tended to spook the shrimp. She smiled at him when he drew his empty net back upon the dock. “It’s still a bit early in the evenin’, Jolene. The moon ain’t even up yet. I wonder what we can do to while away the time?”
Jolene giggled and squirmed away from him as he made a playful grab for her. “Now you just mind your manners, Earl Ray,” she said as she pointedly turned her back on him to stare across the black ribbon of water that neatly bisected the town. Their modest home and the two acres upon which it sat were at the eastern end of town, where Davenport Street met the Maurepas Swamp. Looking up toward the diminutive bridge that spanned the narrow waterway, she reflected, “The stars sure are purty tonight, ain’t they though.”
“They sure are, Jo-Jo,” he said sidling up next to her to give her a squeeze. This time she didn’t deflect his affection, instead choosing to coyly nuzzle his cheek which bore three days of stubble and smelled faintly of corn alcohol.
“Well, are you going to offer a lady a drink, or what?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said, releasing his grip on her long enough to waddle across the dock to fetch his jug. Bringing it back with him, he took a manly swig before gallantly using his sleeve to wipe the spout and hand the bottle to her. “Now go easy on that, darlin’.”
Tipping her head back to take a drink, Jolene suddenly paused mid-mouthful. “What in the Sam Hill is that?”
Following her gaze to look up above the tree line, all Earl could see were the silhouettes of cypresses swaying lethargically against the star-studded sky in the slow summer breeze. “Maybe you’d better give me that back,” he said, reaching for the bottle. “I think you’ve had about enough.”
Still staring blankly at the heavens, she handed him back his jug without protest, before asking, “You mean you don’t see that?”
“All I see is a sweet thing sittin’ beside me all by her lonesome,” he noted while reaching around to give her another squeeze.
“Don’t treat me like a fool, Earl Ray,” she said slapping his hand away. “Are you tellin’ me you don’t see that?”
“See what?”
“THAT!” Jolene commanded as she grasped his head in her hands and turned it so he was staring about twenty degrees above the tree line. “Open your eyes and look!”
Glancing up with his head tilted back at a painful angle, he stared long and hard without success. If it wasn’t for the fact that Jolene had her fingernails dug into his cheeks, he would have told her to stop fooling around and gone back to casting his net, since it was apparent that any amorous intentions he may have harbored were not going to be reciprocated by his wife. However, it was at that very moment that he did finally catch a fleeting glimpse of something high up and far away. Something sporting a bright yellow light, that swooped, swayed and darted like a firefly.
“The hell?”
“You see it too, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what I see, Jo Jo. It could be some Warthog jockey from Fort Polk for all I know.”
“A what-jockey?”
“A Warthog,” he told his wife again, although from her puzzled expression, the word didn’t mean a thing to her. “It’s a ground attack jet the Army uses. Big ugly thing. I’ll bet that’s what it is, some hotshot pilot horsin’ around at taxpayer expense. If it comes close enough for me to get an insignia I’ll make a call to the base commander tomorrow and give him a piece of my mind.”
“Well, you might just get your wish, Earl Ray,” Jolene told him, still staring pointedly at the night sky, “because it’s coming this way.”
“It is?” he replied, returning his gaze to follow that of his wife’s.
“If that’s a fighter pilot,” Jolene told him, “then he ought to either get some kind of medal for the way he’s throwin’ that plane around the sky, or he should be grounded.”
Even Earl had to admit that the flight path of the illuminated object was erratic to say the least as it darted, jinked and corkscrewed at high speed while hurtling ever closer to where they both stood wide-eyed at the end of their dock.
“What the hell is that?” Earl blurted in annoyance, his voice rising nearly an octave. As he watched, the light grew from a pinpoint to a tiny orb that careened all over the heavens as it grew ever larger.
“If that’s a jet, why don’t we hear its engines?” Jolene asked him, her eyes darting after the silent hurtling object which had grown to be about the size of the moon. Suddenly, the craft made an abrupt course correction that sent it hurtling directly toward the trees across from the couple.
“I don’t know, Jolene…Get DOWN!”
Pulling his wife onto the dock, Earl belly flopped beside her while hearing branches snap and his wife scream as the bridge, the dock and the house behind them were bathed in light bright enough to rival the midday sun. Looking up, he watched wide eyed as a 15-foot wide glowing orb sheared off the tops of two Cypress trees across the water, briefly touched the bayou then rebounded once more into the air before arcing over the bamboo thicket screening the adjacent swamp. Then the strange airship was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
“Well, I’ll be dipped,” Earl grumbled while Jolene lay shaking beside him whimpering softly. Sitting bolt upright at a flash of light followed several seconds later by the sound of a distant boom, he got slowly to his feet and looked off in the direction toward which the object had departed. “Did you see that?”
Hair disheveled and eyes wild as that of a cornered possum, Jolene looked up at Earl as though he were speaking in tongues. Taking his hand in hers, she got slowly to her feet, her knees visibly knocking. Then wrenching the jug of shine from his grasp, she swallowed a big mouthful before telling him, “I didn’t see nothin’.”
Earl stared back at her in disbelief. Shaking his head he told his wife of 34-years, “Now I don’t know what in the heck it was that I saw darlin’, but I sure as hell know what it wasn’t. You can’t mean to tell me you thought that was some kind of an, an, an airplane?”
Once again, his wife clasped him on both cheeks, her fingernails digging painfully into his flesh. “You’re not hearing me, Earl Ray. I didn’t see a thing. Not one goddamned thing!” Then Jolene stormed off the dock toward the house, leaving the retired cop all alone with his cast net, his bottle and the biggest mystery he’d ever encountered in 35 years.
