Music of the Swamp by Lewis Nordan

Author:Lewis Nordan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 1992-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Porpoises and Romance

AFTER THE hurricane, beach houses along the Gulf coast rented for a song, and so that was when my daddy got the idea of taking my mama on a second honeymoon. My mama said she never had a honeymoon in the first place, what did she want with a second one.

Daddy said they would take long walks and watch the sun rise and eat crabs and rent bicycles and browse in shops. He said they would put the zip back in their marriage.

Mama said, “Crabs! No way, José.”

Daddy said it would be like having their own private beach.

Mama said, “I don’t know why you want to be riding on a bicycle.”

He said, “Come on, baby. Let’s fall in love all over again.”

Mama said, “Well, all right. Can Sugar go along?”

Daddy said, “On our second honeymoon?”

I said, “I ain’t studying no second honeymoon.”

Mama said, “I’m not going on no second honeymoon less Sugar comes along.”

Daddy said, “It don’t seem right, falling in love all over again right in front of your own boy.”

Daddy was right about one thing anyway. The beach was deserted. It was worse than deserted. The hurricane had blown most of the sand five miles inland, not to mention the hotels. The beaches were mud, the hotels were hideouts for murderers and swamp-midgets. Daddy said, “Well, wouldn’t you think they’d have got this place cleaned up a little by now?”

We were standing on the beach, which was filled with dead fish and other animal carcasses, including a whale full of buzzards.

I said, “I’m scared, I want to go home.”

Daddy said, “That whale smells like Korea.”

Mama said, “Hush up, both of you. Are both of you boys trying to spoil my one and only second honeymoon?”

Daddy looked at me like: duh.

The little coastal village where Mama and Daddy rented the house was a ghost town. Everything was full of sand from the hurricane, even the trees, the ones that were left standing. And you couldn’t go barefoot on account of broken glass, you might step on a piece and cut the living daylights out of yourself. It’s hard to clean up after a hurricane. Buzzards flew up out of the whale like bats out of a cave.

THE SHOPS were all closed, of course, and so were most of the restaurants. One restaurant still had a palm tree, roots and all, sticking through the busted-out front window. There was a coffee shop where we tried to have breakfast one morning, but the woman behind the counter slammed cups and saucers around like she was mad at us. Daddy whispered to Mama, “I hope she ain’t expecting the full ten percent tip.”

Even the parking meters had been stripped from their posts and stored away somewhere. Bicycle rental was out of the question, of course. And at night the house we were staying in, which was olive green with muscular mildew and alive with one million crickets in the kitchen cabinets and in the furniture and bathroom and light fixtures,

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