Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx

Author:Annie Proulx [Annie Proulx]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007498321
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Trois jours après ma mort

They were nearing the village now, past the gas station at the crossroads.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. What is this?” Onesiphore pointed at a building going up, the Marais brothers nailing up exterior sheathing, gaping rectangles in the facade for plate-glass windows.

“Gonna be a restaurant. Somebody from Houston behind it. Call it Boudou’s Cajun Café, jambalaya, crawfish boil and live music every night. For the tourists.”

“Who is this Boudou?”

“Nobody. They just make up a name it sounds like Cajun, French ennaway. Building up the tourist industry, employ local people, that’s the Marais brothers.”

“Y’know,” Onesiphore said, squinting up his eyes malevolently, “my generation we just live. We don’t think who we are, or anything, we just get born, live, fish and farm, eat home cooking, dance, play some music, grow old and die, nobody come here and bother us. Your generation split up. All of you talk American, no French hardly at all. Some say ‘oh, I got to learn French, I got to be Cajun, quick, show me some words and give me a ’tit fer I can play Cajun music.’ So then these bébés here, they coming up in a time where strangers get in, make a restaurant, nobody’s gonna eat at home and go to the dance, but they go to a restaurant own by some guy from Texas, a place for tourists come to see the Cajuns, like monkeys. CAJUNLAND! Put up the sign.”

Buddy rolled his eyes. They were past Dumont’s store, abreast of the woven wire fence topped with two rows of barbwire in front of Bo Arbour’s new ranch house, window trim painted sea blue, plaster ducks in the rank-growing grass and the first of the row of television aerials that marked the air with loops and curves resembling the old skillet-full-of-snakes cattle brands.

“You never could tell, you look at that nice house, old man Arbour died from leprosy. Oh I remember, they said his leg was like cheese, his big toe fell off in the bedroom, then they took him away to Carville there with the lepers. Kept it secret for a long time so he can stay home.”

“Oil rig work built that house,” said Buddy out of the right side of his mouth. They passed Onesiphore’s cow pond and turned into his driveway. Buddy and the daughter-in-law lived on the far edge of the village near the rice field, in the modular house Buddy was still paying off. They pulled up behind Onesiphore’s old truck, the paint completely gone, a dark red shell of a truck eaten out by the damp salt, dented all over from the old man’s accidents and dance hall parking lot bashes with fried drivers. There was a spatter of shot holes in the cab from the night Belle was killed.

“Let’s get this cow trough down first,” said Onesiphore. “I wanna put him over by the fence where it’s that old wood one.” Cigarettes in the corners of their mouths to keep the smoke from their

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