named O’Harran, he used to use it as a fishing and hunting lodge, but he hasn’t done much of that for years. He lets Old Jake stay there for keeping the place up.”
“Old Jake don’t do much up keeping,” Bert said with a grin. “Fact is, he don’t do any. He didn’t even replace the glass when he broke a window. I suppose if the roof blew off, he might do something about that.”
“How far is it?” I asked.
“Half an hour in a motor boat,” Tosche said. “If we can find a boat.”
“Take mine,” Ed said. He tossed a key to Tosche, who thanked him and the others, gave me a nod, and marched out. I paused to add my own thanks and then squished after him.
The rain had let up—which was just as well, because the boat lent to us was not a cabin cruiser. It was an open boat with an outboard motor that seemed to produce more sound than movement. As we headed out into the channel, we were passed by a sizeable ship Tosche identified as an offshore crew boat, one that took workmen and supplies to the oil platforms in the Gulf. Pointe Neuve slipped astern, and on one side of the bayou a forest closed in. On the other were occasional buildings—a house or two, a cluster of warehouses, a dock with boats and a derrick. Tosche pointed out the trading post where the Cajuns sold alligator hides and furs during hunting seasons.
Eventually the forest took over both sides of the bayou, but even that didn’t shield the place from civilization’s corrosive touch. We passed one wreck after another—old barges and ships that were half sunk in the shallows and rusting to oblivion, which unfortunately was a slow process.
We turned into a smaller bayou lined with tall live oaks. These are evergreen oaks, a beautiful, massive tree of the American South that puts out enormous branches close to the ground. Festoons of Spanish moss added their own touches of hoary beauty to the grayness of the day. This was Tosche’s natural habitat, and he relaxed and became almost articulate as we penetrated further and further into it. Several times he shouted remarks above the din of the motor about something we passed. Once he pointed out an armadillo burrowing along the bank. Another time it was a tree stump that marked an alligator den.
Sitting there a foot or so above the water, it suddenly occurred to me that our small boat offered very little protection against a rampageous gator.
I called to him, “Is it possible to outdistance an alligator by swimming?”
“Not unless you can do better than twenty-five miles an hour,” Tosche shouted back with a grin. He added, “You can’t outrun one, either. They’ve been clocked up to thirty-seven miles an hour on land.”
“If one gets you in its sights, you’re done for, eh?” I asked lightly.
“Naw. All you have to do is jump out of the way. They have short legs and can’t turn sharply. Anyway, they can only travel twenty-five feet or so before their legs give out. They don’t often bother people in the water, but it’s probably wiser not to share a swimming hole with one. Snakes are a lot more dangerous than alligators. They can drop into boats from trees.”
It hadn’t occurred to me to look for danger overhead. This sounded like a gag someone thought up to scare a tenderfoot with, but Tosche seemed serious enough.
It was a land of brackish water, freshwater mixed with sea water, and both fresh and salt water fish were taken here. On the shore in an occasional clearing, low palmetto palms could be seen. Tosche called them swamp cabbage and said Cajuns used them like coleslaw. A shallow backwater was crowded with the flower-tipped stalks of arrowroot plants, whose roots were another important Cajun food and medicine source.
Finally we turned into a bayou as narrow as a creek. Trees lined the shore, and arching limbs trailing strands of Spanish moss formed a roof over us. The water was absolutely still until our boat passed. Civilization seemed unimaginably remote, but even this charming place hadn’t completely escaped the corrosion. I counted three beer cans floating near the bank.
When Tosche cut the motor, the silence had the same impact as a door slamming. We drifted around a bend, and ahead of us on the right was a dock. When we came closer, the roofline of Old Jake’s cabon could be made out through the trees.
Tosche seemed puzzled. “Old Jake’s boat is gone,” he remarked. “His pirogue is gone, too.”
“Pirogue?” I echoed.
“Cajun canoe. It’s a small, flat-bottomed boat, doesn’t draw much water, so it’s useful in a swamp. Old Jake may be out fishing, but I don’t know why he would take his pirogue.” He hesitated. “I suppose there’s no point in calling on him if he isn’t there.”
“Might be a good idea to find out whether he has a house guest,” I suggested.
Tosche seemed doubtful, but he used a paddle to turn us toward the dock. I jumped out and tied the boat to a post. Tosche watched disapprovingly but said nothing. Together we went up the path to the cabon.
It was built on a hump of high ground between the bayou and a swamp—a weathered wood shack on high posts with a corrugated iron roof that was in the process of rusting away completely. We mounted the steep steps to the open porch. An old wreck of a lounging chair stood in one corner. The battered table beside it had a couple of charred tobacco pipes, a large coffee can that served as an ashtray, and a clutter of empty beer bottles. I paused and read the labels with raised eyebrows: Blackened Voodoo Lager Beer.
“Local brand?” I asked Tosche.
I thought I was joking, but he said, “Yeah. Dixie Brewing Company.”
He called loudly, “Ho, Jake!” Then he banged on the warped door. There was glass in one of the two windows that looked onto the porch. That one was closed. The other was opened permanently, no glass, but there was a new screen tacked into place over the opening.
Tosche banged on the door again. Then he opened it. “Ho, Jake!” he called. “Anyone—”
He broke off and halted. The stench hit us an instant before we saw what was on the floor. A man lay face down in the center of the room with the end of a long, gray beard showing beside his head. Tosche started forward, but I grabbed his arm and very firmly moved him back out of the way. In the presence of a corpse, he was no longer the expert guide.
I knelt beside the man on the floor. Obviously he had been dead for weeks. To be exact, two of them. If the cabon hadn’t been so well ventilated, the stench would have kept us from entering.
I got to my feet. “I don’t want to turn him over,” I said. “I’m assuming it’s Old Jake because of the beard.”
“Also, the clothes,” Tosche said. “Also, that scar on his hand.”
“What does this area use for police?”
“The Parish Sheriff’s Department.”
“I’ll wait here while you get help. How many hours away are they?”
“They have cars on the road. One drives through the village a couple of times a day. Figure half an hour for me to get back there and telephone, fifteen minutes to half an hour for them to respond, and another half hour to get back here.”
“Make certain they understand the situation—use the word ‘murder.’ I’m sure they would send a doctor in any case, but
