by Louis E. Bourgeois
The thing with these cops was that they thought the world was the same as it had been during Prohibition. They didn't understand that it's 1941 and you just can't go around doing the same things you did back then, not even out here in the marsh. There's airplanes now and other such inventions. It's a damned shame but that's the way it is. It's still safe to kill at night, but it ain't like the old days when you could just toss a body overboard in broad daylight. These cops couldn't understand that times change. They had been drunk for twenty years, and they didn't understand what it means to be sober, drink coffee, and read The Times-Picayune at your kitchen table.
LeBlanc, the youngest of the cops, who had two missing fingers (he lost them one night at the Roosevelt during a gambling brawl) held out a bottle of whiskey he'd gotten from somewhere and said, "Jeanfreaux, have a shot."
"I'll stick with my Dixie," I said.
They guffawed, and LeBlanc said, "Jeanfreaux and beer! Simply impossible!" I hadn't touched any hard stuff since before prison. They just didn't want to believe it.
About a mile from Alligator Point some seagulls began to follow us. Birou pulled out his revolver and shot one, and it fell into the lake. He shot another one and it fell onto the deck. It was just a wing shot so the bird was shrieking and flopping around in a crazy and horrible way. The three cops laughed. This didn't make me feel none the better about what they had done.
They seemed to always be laughing. They could laugh about anything. One of the cops, LeBlanc, I think it was, with his big black boot, smashed the wounded bird's head into the deck and laughed even harder.
I said, "What are you sons of bitches doing? We'll never get out of Lake Borgne alive with the bad luck you're bringing on." And, of course, they laughed and laughed.
But they weren't laughing when it began to rain real good and hard. They went under deck. We hit a waterspout about twenty minutes after it was raining and a sizable stingray landed at the bow of the boat. The stingray was flopping about like an injured bird. It looked evil as hell and I wanted to kill those bastards below my feet who caused all this wind, rain, and stingray falling from the sky.
We hit a few more squalls, but they weren't too bad, and by the time we reached Alligator Point the weather had cleared enough so that we could fish. Of course, I knew there wasn't anybody on the boat interested in fishing. I wanted to kick myself in the ass for having been so stupid as to come way to here with these three cops. They were looking to scare me into going back to a way of life that I was hoping to put far behind me, and I was pissed as hell to be way out in the middle of Lake Borgne with these lunatics. They had already brought on about a thousand years bad luck by killing those dolphins and seagulls. I felt that if they didn't get me nature would.
I was securing the anchor on an oyster reef when I heard Malone say from behind me, "Jeanfreaux, get on your knees."
I got on my knees. Malone put his .38 at the back of my head. He said,
"We're going to kill you, Jeanfreaux, pure and simple. I'm going to shoot you in the head and then feed you to the small and big fish." They laughed and laughed, serious and not serious at the same time.
LeBlanc walked up to where I was kneeling and held out a piece of steel wire. He said, "I've got a better idea than Malone. Jeanfreaux, I'm going to stick this wire through your ears to see if you have any brains. Then I'm going to feed you to the crabs."
At the bow, Birou was pissing in a beer bottle. When he finished, he walked up and said, "Jeanfreaux, drink this piss." He was drinking from the bottle of rum in one hand and holding out the bottle of piss to me in the other. He said,
"Jeanfreaux, this piss is for you. You're a piss drinker from way back. You need to drink this piss and seriously consider our offer."
I was on my knees with a pistol to my head, but I wasn't all that worried. I had been in similar situations in the past and had always managed to break out one way or another. In fact, I had the feeling that I was reliving this situation exactly as it was happening. Although I knew these guys were quite capable of killing a man, and wouldn't think too much about it, I also knew they weren't too bright. I reached up and took the beer bottle from Birou and drank the piss. It burned terrible at the back of my throat, but it wasn't any stronger than good whiskey. The three of them were standing around me in a circle. They seemed shocked that I actually drank the piss. After all, at one time I was their boss. But the main thing is that by drinking this piss I was telling them to go screw themselves. And, somehow, it put me on the right side of nature.
Even though I could still feel the barrel of the .38 at the back of my head, I said to them, "You'll never make it back to Bayou Sauvage if you kill me, you sons of bitches. You'll never find the right bayou home and you'll find yourself way out in nowhere for the mosquitoes and gators to eat your asses up. You're the dumbest bastards I've ever laid eyes on." It was true. They were city boys for the most part and didn't know the bayous all too well. Way out here, if you take the wrong bayou home, you could definitely find yourself in a hell of a fix where nothing or no one can help you. If they had shot me and tried to find their way home, they would have died more likely than not. I guess maybe some airplane could have helped spot them, but most airplanes now are being sent overseas to fight the European War. But the main thing is that they believed what I said. I got off my knees and walked back to the boat's cabin. They didn't say or do anything. I sat on the captain's stool like a goddamned movie director and hollered to them to get the rig together and start fishing.
They did exactly as I told them, but they were still laughing. It wasn't but about a minute or two before their rods began to dip. For half an hour they caught nothing but hardhead catfish and stingray. Nature's curse in action! They joked around about it until LeBlanc got nailed on the back of the hand by a ray. He hollered and cried out that he wanted to go back home. I was happy to oblige him. I decided to take Pappy's Ditch which would take an hour longer than returning straight through Lake Borgne. I thought it a good idea to keep them lost, just in case they decided to use the pistol after all. Besides, I had my own plans to consider.