with okra for a more subtle effect.’
The delicious concoction was accompanied by a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc so chilled that it numbed the tongue. Ben was generally more of a red wine person, but the pairing was perfect. He ate and drank, but especially ate. Lottie seemed delighted with his enthusiasm for her cooking. After two platefuls he wanted to stop, though somehow the fork just wouldn’t leave his hand. Or stop shovelling food up to his mouth.
It was just as well he didn’t live here. Too much of this stuff, and his daily runs would start to become a waddling stagger.
‘So, you like it, huh?’ Lottie said. Fishing for compliments, naturally.
Ben managed to pause between mouthfuls and looked her in the eye across the table. ‘When I get home, you know the first thing I’m going to do? I’m going to call up whoever compiles the Oxford English Dictionary.’
‘Oh really, and why’s that?’ she said, showing every one of her white teeth in a beaming smile, knowing a compliment was coming and loving the anticipation.
‘Because if they’re not specifically mentioning your cooking, they’re seriously misdefining the word “tasty”.’
For dessert Lottie had whipped up a Southern-style chocolate gravy sauce, which she poured over beignets so rich in eggs and butter that Ben was amazed he didn’t drop dead right there of heart failure. What a way to die, though, if he had. When the last crumb was gone he leaned back in his chair, clutched his belly and said, ‘That’s it. That’s all I can take.’
Lottie said, ‘How ’bout we retreat to the salon for a lil’ drink?’
She put on an Aretha Franklin CD and they sat in her soft, comfortable armchairs either side of a coffee table. When she proposed an after-dinner tot of rum, Ben had a better idea. He’d eaten so much that he wasn’t sure he could haul himself out of the armchair, but with a manful effort managed to lurch to his feet and run up to the top floor to unbuckle his bag and fetch out the bottle of twelve-year-old Glenmorangie he’d bought from Elmo Gillis. It was still unopened. Tonight seemed like the ideal occasion. He carried the bottle back downstairs. Lottie grabbed a pair of crystal tumblers from a sideboard and they happily attacked the Scottish nectar as Aretha sang about r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
In between refills of whisky, of which there were many, Lottie filled in the gaps in her life story. Her first ten years had been spent growing up as an only child on a tiny chicken farm just outside Chitimacha. It was right on the site of a Civil War battlefield, where a bloody little skirmish had taken place between rebel holdouts and a superior force of invading Union troops in the final days before Lee’s surrender. She remembered how the chickens were always scratching old musket bullets up out of the ground.
‘Poppy could’ve made more money from sellin’ the lead for fishin’ weights than he ever done from raisin’ poultry,’ she reflected.
Her father’s lack of talent as a farmer had eventually led them to sell up and move into town, where he ended up wandering miserably from one menial job to another. Life hadn’t been easy for the family, which she speculated might have been why the seventeen-year-old Charlotte Landreneau had run away to the ‘big city’ to rashly marry Neville Dupré. Neville was sixteen years older and well-to-do, and had the distinction of being the first and only African-American dentist ever to set up a practice in Villeneuve. He was also, it later turned out, a violent control freak who somehow contrived to keep no fewer than four mistresses scattered about Clovis Parish, who between them had borne him six children. For Lottie, never having been able to have any of her own, it had been the cruellest kind of betrayal.
‘I guess we all have our secrets,’ she said. ‘Just took me a long time to find out what that sumbitch was up to all them years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She looked at him. ‘Do you keep secrets, Ben?’
‘Not that kind,’ he said, struck by the directness of her question.
‘I have a secret,’ she said. ‘One that goes back a long, long time. Momma told me when I was a lil’ girl. She said never to pass it on to another livin’ soul, ’cause folks would hate us for it.’
‘Why would they hate you?’
‘History,’ she said with a shrug. ‘History matters a lot here in the South. Like the song, you know? I wish I was in the land of cotton; old times there are not forgotten.’
‘Dixie,’ Ben said. ‘So are you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Your secret. I’m intrigued.’
She smiled. ‘You’re a livin’ soul, ain’t you?’
‘Managed to stay that way until now.’
‘Then I can’t. Don’t take it personal.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said. ‘You never told me much about yo’self, Ben. What do you do for a livin’?’
‘I’m a restaurant inspector for the US Health Department.’
‘Oh, come on now.’
‘I’m a teacher.’
‘Maths? English? Geography?’
‘No, I teach people to do some of the things I used to do. Like how to protect folks who need protection, or help people who’re in danger. Stuff like that.’
‘Now I’m the one who’s intrigued,’ she said. She watched him curiously for a moment, then added, ‘You don’t like to talk about yo’self much, do you, sugah?’
‘It’s kind of a habit with me,’ he admitted.
‘So I ain’t the only one who keeps secrets. Well, I guess that makes me feel better. You married?’
‘Once upon a time.’
‘Kids?’
‘Just the one. He’s grown up now.’
‘Family?’
‘My parents died a long time ago. I have a sister. Haven’t talked to her in a while.’
‘You should. Even though my folks are both passed now, there ain’t a day I don’t think about them and pray to my Lord to keep a special eye out for the both of them. God and family, that’s all there is. That’s my strength.’
‘I haven’t talked to Him in a while either,’ Ben said.
‘He ain’t forgotten you,’ Lottie said. ‘He watches over all of us, ever’ moment of ever’ day.’
‘I used to think that way, too.’
‘So
