Postmark Bayou Chene Page 26
Death by exploding fuel cans really did happen, at least once. Alcide Verret’s first wife and two children died in such an explosion. No one knows for sure if the mistake was hers or that of the boat store that sold it to them.
Beekeeping was a viable occupation around the Chene, with at least one apiarian, Charles Henry Waterhouse, listed in the 1900 census. Paul Viallon of Bayou Goula was a pharmacist, apiarist, researcher, and writer for bee journals as well as a manufacturer of hive boxes and frames in the early 1900s. It makes sense that a beekeeper at Bayou Chene would have purchased supplies from Paul Viallon.
Fiction
Wambly Cracker’s name, appearance, and personality came to me in a dream. I woke my husband, Preston, and said: “In case I forget, in the morning remind me of the name Wambly Cracker. He’s going to be a character in my novel.” I have no idea where that name came from; as far as I know, I had never heard it before my dream.
While Adam, C.B., Fate, Loyce, Mary Ann, Roseanne, Sam, and York came wholly out of my imagination, they represent the ways people came, settled, and eventually left the Chene community. They also represent the diverse socioeconomic and educational backgrounds of those hardy settlers.
Somewhere in Between
Loyce Snellgrove was inspired by my blind aunt, Lois Voisin, who was born after my family moved from the Chene in the 1920s. She cheerfully lived life as fully as her overprotective family would allow, and she served as the example of higher education in my family because she went all the way to the eighth grade at the Louisiana State School for the Blind in Baton Rouge. I’ve wondered what her life would have been like had she been born while the family still lived at the Chene, so I explored it for this book. I took the liberty of setting her free to a richer life than a blind woman could have enjoyed at the Chene.
All other first and last names were taken from the 1860–1900 census records around Bayou Chene. The names were chosen because I liked the sound or because they represented one of the ethnic cultures common to the area. The Chene was incredibly diverse, with settlers coming from all over this continent as well as right off the boats from the Old World. Other than the names of Alcide Verret and Calvin Voisin, any combination of first and last names belonging to actual persons was inadvertent.
For my fictional villain, Pank Neeley, I deliberately chose a name that didn’t show up in census records so as not to embarrass any real families. There is a newspaper account of a Bayou Chener who used the defense that he didn’t intend to shoot his girlfriend but, rather, was aiming at a rival beau who was walking with her.
Peter Bunch used to tell of seeing a corpse with iron cooking pots tied on each side when he was a boy. It was the first dead person he had ever seen. They never found out the man’s identity. Mr. Bunch pointed out to me the burial place near his tar vat.
I heard from Alcide Verret and other people the story of a woman whose rocking chair dumped her and the baby off the deck of the houseboat. In some versions the baby survived, just as in my book. In other accounts it did not. Considering the number of houseboats and the fact that so many swampers, particularly women, never learned to swim, it’s understandable that this particular tragedy could have befallen more than one family and with different outcomes.
Florence Chauvin told me a story of a Chener who went AWOL from a war and lived in the woods, spying on his family for years, lonesome but too afraid to come home. When Florence was a child, in the early 1900s, Indians found the man nearly dead from malnutrition and brought him back home. He lived out the rest of his life in a small houseboat. For little Florence, going to visit him was great entertainment because he was so mysterious.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As a career nonfiction writer I was mystified by authors who could imagine characters and events that never existed. So, it was a cruel joke when Cairo Beauty, Fate, Loyce, and Val started swirling around in the air above my head, and I realized I wouldn’t rest until I put them to paper.
One of my first discoveries was that a novel in progress is like a pregnant cat—no one makes eye contact when they see you coming with one. I was blessed with friends and professionals who not only invited me in but asked for a kitten.
Fellow nonfiction writer and connoisseur of fiction Laurie Coch rane asked repeatedly to read the earliest draft I was willing to turn loose. Her gentle nudges kept me working until I had something I thought might not be a complete waste of her time. She discovered potential in characters and plot that I couldn’t see for myself, gifting me with a clearer vision for the book.
Greg Guirard gave voice to my half-Cajun character Val. Whenever I read Val, it’s Greg’s voice I hear. Calvin Voisin, whose own speech defines the vanishing cadence of Bayou Chene, listened to my Chene voices for authenticity. He also checked that I still knew how to describe setting out nets and cleaning catfish.
Shannon Whitfield, Georgia Luckett Champion, and John Mayne read from an outsider’s point of view, catching phrases that would bewilder readers from the other forty-nine states.
Editor Margaret Lovecraft did such a thorough job of keeping me in line that now, whenever my husband or I run into fractured fiction, we admonish the page or screen with “Margaret wouldn’t let you get away with that!”
Maria Hebert-Leiter, an early critic for the manuscript, was an inspiration. Maria’s detailed commentary guided me in plumping my bare-bones manuscript into a more satisfying story. Copyeditor Elizabeth Gratch guided it through the final stage with skill, humor, and a clever eye for detail.
I relied on historians Jim Delahoussaye and C. Ray Brassieur for details about traditional boatbuilding and fish buying. Bayou Chene descendants and historians Bob Carline and Stella Carline Tanoos shared their anecdotes, newspaper clippings, maps, and lifetimes of research. Errors in facts such as dates, water depths, rake of bow, or the selling price of Spanish moss in 1907 belong to me, not the historians.
My husband, Preston, tiptoed the narrow, blurry line of being supportive but honest.