Page 31 of The Cajun Doctor

“Sure. But why didn’t ya just whack it with a shovel, lak ya taught us ta do?”

“’Cause it was bigger than mah shovel. I wasn’t takin’ no chances. What if it weren’t totally dead from mah whackin’ and I tripped over mah St. Jude doorstop and then it bit me? I could be deader’n a swamp stump before anyone came and found me.”

“Tante Lulu! That’s dangerous. I worry about you being here all alone.”

Louise admitted, “It might not have been a water moccasin. It was prob’ly a water snake. But it was big.”

Charmaine’s mouth was gaping open. But then she snapped it shut and asked, “Who’s your matchmaking target this time . . . I mean, who needs matchmaking? Daniel, or Aaron? Or is it Simone LeDeux, that cop we met at Tee-John’s wedding before she went off to Chicago. I heard she’s back in town.”

“And ain’t that somethin’? Every time I think we tagged all of that horndog Valcour LeDeux’s chillen, another one shows up. Wish I could get that man out of mah mind. He’s lak a booger what can’t be thumped off. Oops, sorry fer sayin’ bad things ’bout yer daddy.”

“Hah! Daddy has never been much of a daddy to me. Or to Luc, Remy, René, Tee-John, Daniel, Aaron, or now this Simone, and God only knows who else. Let’s not talk about him anymore. I just get depressed.”

Ain’t that the truth? Louise unlocked the door and went through the small living room and directly into her kitchen.

Charmaine followed and immediately opened the fridge and took out a pitcher of cold sweet tea, pouring a glass for each of them.

Louise took a couple beignets out of the bread drawer and set them on a plate in the center of the table. “I got some leftover shrimp and grits with andouille sausage, if yer hungry,” she said.

“No, this will be enough. Rusty is makin’ barbecue fer dinner.”

Louise sat down wearily and looked around. Her kitchen was a charming room, if she did say so herself, with red-and-white checkered curtains and a matching tablecloth over an old 1940s red-and-white speckled porcelain enamel table on metal legs with four red leatherette chairs.

Off the kitchen was a pantry holding all of Louise’s traiteur remedies. There was only a single window, but it provided enough light for her to handle her herbs and potions with mortar and pestle on the butcher block table in its center without going squinty-eyed. Even out here in the kitchen, she could smell the pungent dried herbs that hung from the pantry ceiling. Glass containers with handwritten labels were arranged on the floor-to-ceiling shelves, containing all the medicinal remedies she’d gathered from old and new recipes, some of them decades, even centuries old. The grandchildren always got a kick out of looking at jars holding the novel items, like alligator hearts, or possum tails, or frog tongues.

Enough with the reminiscing! “Back ta our matchmaking mission,” Louise said, sitting down at the table across from Charmaine who’d just taken a bite of her beignet and sighed with pleasure. “I doan know fer sure, but I’m thinkin’ Daniel is in most need of lovin’. He’s got the blue devils badder’n I’ve ever seen. Well, no wonder! That boy has had a lot of rain in his life, bein’ a children’s cancer doctor. What he needs is some rainbows, of course.”

“Of course.” Charmaine was probably being sarcastic. She licked the sugar off her fingers, then wiped them on a St. Jude napkin. “And we’re gonna bring him rainbows? With a love match?”

“Exactly.”

“I’m afraid ta ask. Do ya have anyone in mind fer him.”

“Samantha Starr.”

“Lawdy!” Charmaine said. “Those two don’t even like each other.”

“Charmaine! How ya ever gonna take over fer me, if ya doan learn nothin’?”

“Huh? Take over what?” Charmaine narrowed her eyes with suspicion.

“Mah jobs.”

Charmaine’s suspicion turned quickly to alarm. “Tante Lulu! Is something wrong? Did you go to the doctor? Is it your heart?”

“I’m fine. But I won’t allus be around, and someone’s gotta be willin’ ta step inta mah shoes.”

Charmaine exhaled with relief, as if she’d been holding her breath. “I have enough to do with mah beauty salons without becoming a folk healer, too.”

“I’m not talkin’ ’bout mah traiteur bizness. I got plenty of folks willin’ ta take that over, includin’ Grace Sabato. She knows almost as much about herbs as I do. And I got it in mah will that Luc takes over mah charities . . . Jude’s Angels, fer instance. Tee-John already tends mah garden, even if he does say some bad words when he gots ta hoe around the okra. I better not look down from heaven one day and see my garden gone ta seed. And I’m gonna bequeath Useless ta Remy.”

“I thought it was Remy who pushed that gator off on you in the first place.”

“I’m pushin’ back. Oh, not right away. Doan go gettin’ that scaredy-cat look in yer eyes again. But eventually.”

“Okay, Grace, the folk healing; Luc, the charities; Tee-John, gardening; Remy, the gator. What about René?”

“Oh, he’s gonna take over the Cajun Village People acts in the future.”