Bourbon Street (Prologue Books) by G.H. Otis

Author:G.H. Otis [Otis, G.H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440541216
Publisher: Adams Media
Published: 2012-03-14T12:00:00+00:00

The skies were clear, the sun hot. The early morning smell of roasting coffee reached my nostrils. I wouldn’t miss that. I tossed my new traveling bag into the back seat of the second hand Ford and got in behind the wheel.

I opened a new pack of butts and lit up. There wasn’t any hurry.

I took a last look at Bourbon Street, deserted at six a.m.

I goosed the starter and slid away from the curb. A red light stopped me at Canal Street. I was impatient to get on the road. No more stops for Digger Mulcahy, President of Seismograph Services Incorporated. I had a hundred grand in the bank—less a couple for the second hand Ford. I was on the high road for sure.

The light changed and I headed for the Huey Long Bridge and La. 78.

I made the span from New Orleans to Raceland, down near the Gulf, in good time; had lunch and struck out again.

I drove along a hard top toward the island at a slower clip.

The road is narrow and plows through mile after mile of sugar cane fields. The cane grows about twelve feet high and visibility is limited.

I can remember wheeling around corners at sixty in the old days only to find a car left parked right in the middle of the road where a Creole had left it. The old boys don’t seem to have caught on to these modern inventions yet.

I came out of the cane forests and on to the ridge over-looking the three quarter mile bridge to Grannado. It was dusk.

The bridge was as rickety as ever and the boards slapped and rattled under the car as I crossed over.

The island was the same too. A desolate seven mile strip, a mile and a half wide. A few palms, bent grotesquely by the wind, Spanish Dagger and a few other semitropical plants, sand, surf and heat.

I turned the car into a rutted lane toward the wharfs.

A few lights showed in the shacks of the inhabitants. The population is a mixture of French, Spanish, Portuguese and Filipino descent. The language is a French. Spanish patois.

I kept on past the shacks toward the wharfs at the end of the island.

The road was made of crushed coral and oyster shells. I could hear the wash of the surf and in the distance I made out the blaze of lights that would be Coteaux.

I wondered if Catlin would remember me.

A couple of pickup trucks and an old Cadillac sedan were parked in front of the General Store. I braked to a stop and got out.

From the front porch I could just barely see through the jungle of rope, fire hose, canvas, winches, pumps and canned foods to the back. Everything was dust-covered and rusty, but it looked like the old boy still carried most of what I would need.

The screen door swung open under my hand.

I made my way through the sea of marine equipment and canned goods to a rough plank bar at the back.

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