Prologue

“Are you sure about this?” I asked the young woman who had wandered onto the back deck of my houseboat. She hadn’t once been invited but had come aboard from the old Monchac pier with a confidence I could only envy, and started asking me for a job.


Also, I was pretty sure she was crazy.


Without answering, she produced a large net from an unseen corner of the deck, hefting it under her arms. The net looked as if it weighed about as much as she did, though she seemed to be preparing to toss it off into the black waters of the bayou. She even had her teeth clamped around a large, lead sinker. Her teeth! 


“Even if I do hire you, you should know I certainly can’t offer dental insurance. I’m in no position to—”


“Don’t worry, boss,” she mumbled through her clenched jaw, looking at me like I was the one acting strange. Then she turned and went into a pirouette. 


She was extremely graceful in the way she did it, I’ll admit. Her wind up was elegant, and she threw the net out like an Olympian might handle a discus. That net blossomed through the air in a great arc, and when it landed in the dark swamp water beneath us, it cut a perfect circle in the surface of the algae and sank immediately. No doubt it scooped up all sorts of unmentionable creatures that troubled the mud below.


Then she started to tug. Gently at first, but soon she was putting her full weight into it.


“Oooo weee,” she yelled. “I got me something big and bad.”


“Why don’t you ask it nicely?” I inquired.


I watched for a moment, a bit dumbfounded by the spectacle. But I suppose, when you consider it, food delivery probably wasn’t an option out this way. Perhaps the young woman’s tactics were not that crazy.


“Well, don’t just stand there, grab the rope, Mila!” she shouted, and soon we were tugging together. The water was surprisingly cold as it ran from the rope in between my knuckles, and the heavy resistance the net gave felt exciting. 


Soon the girl had the top of the net in hand and slung the rest of it up onto the deck in one smooth motion. It landed against fiberglass with a somewhat unexpected sound and sat there like a wet nest. I waited to see what grotesque creature would come slithering from the nylon, but all was still within. Leaning over the pile of line and sinkers, we confirmed: nothing stirred. I could already see the disappointment forming on the face of my young companion.


“Just some old logs I reckon,” she said as she went about untangling the net.


“Wait a second!” I cried.


I had seen something there. The girl’s green eyes began to widen and she dropped the net, telling me that she saw it, too.


She made the sign of the cross on her chest.


There were human bones inside.


It all started with a bounced check, followed closely by a voicemail from the swamps of Louisiana.


The check was one I had written, and it was to go towards the outrageous LA rent for my small shop at the West of Paradise strip mall.

When I saw the face of my landlord as he darkened my door that spring morning, I knew the jig was up. It was something around his eyebrows that told me my dreams were about to be cut short.


It had long been a life’s goal of mine to own a store devoted to the art of lettering. And I had finally done it. I’d saved and sweat and bled for my dream. But one look at the tension in that jawline let me know that all of this was about to go away.


Stationery, pens, cool stamps, journals, color pencils. That kind of stuff had been my obsession since I was a little girl working at my mother’s pawn shop downtown.


Now I had my own shop, and though it had been somewhat successful, it was not nearly enough to keep up with the demanding rent increases that central LA commanded. And now it was time to pay the piper.


The piper, in this case, was a man named Dean Whitley. Only he didn’t play the flute. In fact, I doubted seriously that he had ever heard music at all.


“Your check has bounced, Miss Breaux,” he said, looking around at all of my art with an upturned eyebrow. I had all sorts of my sarcastic lettering prints proudly displayed on the walls of the place. My little quips and sayings, beautifully drawn in expressive black and white lettering. 


Caffeine is the foundation of my food pyramid.


I swear it was Friday five minutes ago.


I could give up chocolate, but I’m no quitter.


But Dean was more interested in a bank statement. He already had his tablet out and was zooming in on where it said charge-back initiated next to my check, as if I might refuse to believe him.


“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to be out by Friday.”


“Please, Mr. Whitley, there has been some kind of awful mistake,” I said. “I could have the rent by … maybe next week?”


But there had been no mistake, and I wasn’t good at begging for mercy. Dean knew it as well as I did.


I felt like I would start to cry, but instead put on a brave face. Battling despair, I let the practical consequences of this bad news wash over me.


“I’ll have to rent a truck. I’ll have to move this all somewhere. And my Saturday students? I don’t know what I’m going to do! I just wanted to practice my art and share it with others. You can understand.”


“Of course I understand, my dear. And I hope you can understand the reality of mortgage payments as well. Perhaps you could try relocating to somewhere … less competitive rent-wise. Or perhaps even changing your business model?”
Maybe he saw the moisture forming around the corner of my eyes.

Maybe he recognized some familiar humanity in the struggle I was so clearly going through. 


“Business is business, after all. It is not for the faint of heart. Have you seen the boba place on the corner? There is a line out the door every morning.”


“I do like bubble tea,” I whimpered.


“Well, I’ll see you Friday then,” he said, and turned to make his retreat.


At the threshold, he stopped, casting his eyes around the room. The little bell on the door made a sad jingle.


“Your lettering is beautiful, Mila,” he said. “Kind of snarky, but your penmanship skills are really remarkable. Shame there isn’t a bigger market for a thing like that. But you’ll land on your feet.” He cast one last look around the shop before disappearing.


Perhaps he did have a soul.


* * *


The second bad news of the day wouldn’t come for a few hours, until after I had finished packing up about half the store and decided to take a moment to check my messages.


One new voicemail: a number with an area code I didn’t recognize. Over a minute in length. At first, I nearly deleted it as spam. However, curiosity, and the desire to distract myself from the breaking down of my life’s work drove me to listen.


“Hi there, Mila. You and I have never made acquaintance before, but I am your Auntie Roma. I was married to your Uncle Alcede. I’m sure you heard of old Alcede? He was your late father’s baby brother. Ring any bells? You may or may not know this, but Alcede went missing a while back. Matter of fact, he’s just been declared legally dead. That might not mean nothing to you on the face of it, but there is something you should know. The old goat’s last will and testament is fixing to be going through probate, God rest his soul.”


I heard a few sniffles and what sounded like tissues being yanked from a box.
 “

Well, he left you something, chère. I remember you had just been born when he had the will made, and I thought to myself, what use would a young girl from Los Angeles have for his old houseboat! But he was a stubborn man. Even though he never got a chance to make it out to California and meet you, he kept your picture under the glass of our coffee table for twenty years. You know the one where you wrote your name in the sand at the beach? I figure you probably living the big city life and hardly know what a houseboat is. I’m happy to sell it for you and send you the money, just let me know. Anyway, all the best to you and yours!”


I put the phone down by my side and thought for a minute. Dad passed away when I was five years old and I had never met his side of the family.


Louisiana might as well have been on the other side of the planet. But he always did have an accent that would cause the local Angelenos to giggle a little bit. And, of course, there was the name. He’d given me a name wholly out of place among the jacaranda and sand of LA. A name too wet and Francophone for these dry canyons with their Spanish names.


I called her back.
“Well, hi there, girly!” Auntie Roma answered.


“Hi, Auntie Roma.”


“Well, you go ahead and call me Auntie Remoulade. That’s what everybody in these parts calls me, on account of I’m the finest cook in three parishes.”


“Oh, OK.”
“

I reckon you listened to my voicemail? I got your number from the internet. Ain’t that something? I hope that’s alright.”


“Yeah, of course. I was sorry to hear about Alcede. It was a shame we never got to meet.”


“He was a decent man. A good provider. And he wanted to make sure he left you something, even if it wasn’t the most practical thing for a city girl like yourself. Now, I can probably get a few thousand dollars for it if—“


“Auntie, what exactly is a houseboat?”


There was a heavy pause across the line, as if I’d asked a silly question.


“Well, it is just what it sounds like. It’s a kind of barge with living quarters on it. It doesn’t go very fast with its little motor, but it has a pretty shallow draft so it can float around the swamp. Your uncle would take it out when he needed some alone time. It was kind of like his man cave. A little run down, but it still floats! I think.”


“You think I could fit a store inside of it?”


There was another long pause.


“Well … bless your heart. That all depends on what kind of a store, honey. You wouldn’t open a lumber yard inside of one, I don’t think.”

“What about paper? Pens? That kind of thing?”


* * *


It was a crazy idea, lacking all business sense and even common sense for that matter. I’d never driven a boat, never been to the swamp or laid eyes on a bayou. But I was ready for a change. I decided to stop thinking and just jump. I suppose that is the only way I could explain it.


As the plane banked on takeoff, I watched the Hollywood sign recede into an unreadable squiggle among the dry hills. I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: excitement.


After a bumpy ride, the pilot came on the PA and announced that we were approaching New Orleans. I slid open the window and looked down.


Water. Water everywhere.


Black unending sheets of water, with no clear borders as to where it stopped and the land started. Squiggles of it extending away from a twinkling island of city. Oceans of it in the distance, threatening to well up and wash away what scraps of silt managed to cling on for dear life. What mysterious charm I felt!


That is, until I got off of the plane at Louis Armstrong International and felt the wall of humidity smack me in the face like a warm, dead fish.


“Is this for real?” I asked the taxi driver.


He only laughed and asked me where I was from.


I was dropped off at a combination bus and train station, where I boarded a greyhound headed for the swampy village of Monchac, only a short jaunt of an hour.


The entire ride was spent on elevated, interminable bridges that spanned just above the endless stretches of swampland.


It was around mile ten when the darkness became complete, and I began to wonder if I’d made a terrible mistake.


* * *


I spent the night in a small motel along a highway, and in the morning called the delivery driver. A company had been dispatched a week earlier, using my last remaining dollars. They were supposed to be bringing along all of my stock from the defunct store in LA. After some confusion about directions, I managed to get him to the hotel where I bummed a ride down to the Monchac pier.


I knew from my obsessive Google Earth habit that the town hugged the coast of a giant lake with an Indian-sounding name that I would not yet dare and try to pronounce. But seeing it there stretching blue and forever, with white specks of cloud troubling its surface and the pelicans all diving to catch its fish, I knew I was in a place that no computer program could have prepared me for.


The driver and I stood there in a parking lot made from oyster shells, sea-smelling and gleaming white in the morning sunshine. My attention was drawn to a row of sparkly, expensive-looking barges that were docked in a row along the covered section of the pier. I could only hope that one of them would be the location of my brand new lettering shop.


“Well, couldn’t I just sop you up with a piece of cornbread!” a voice said from somewhere.


It took me a minute to register it as coming from the screened-in porch of the Monchac Bait and Tackle Shop.


A woman, aged but kinetic, stocky but light on her feet, burst out of the screen door and soon had me in a bear hug that cracked my back and squeezed the breath from my lungs. When we finally separated I saw that she had a tear running down her cheek and was wiping at it with the corner of her sleeve and laughing at the same time.

“I’m your Auntie Remoulade, chère! Come on and let me look at you.”


She spun me around, smiling and sobbing at me in waves, before going in for a second hug.


“As I live and breathe, child, I would have never imagined in a thousand years that I’d see you standing in the swamp. Welcome to downtown Monchac.”


Downtown? I thought that my auntie must surely be joking. She and I, and maybe a few bullfrogs, were the only foot traffic to be seen in any direction. And I was planning on starting a business here? What was I thinking?


“Where are all the people, Auntie?”


“Well, all of the men are out fishing. Most of the women folk work jobs in the city during the week.”


“Ahem.”


I spun on my heels, remembering the delivery man with his truck full of my goods. He had been standing there and patiently waiting, but now cleared his throat and demonstrated my rudeness with a glance at his watch.


“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve got a whole lot of stuff here, Auntie. Can you show me the houseboat?”


“Where are my manners, right this way,” she said, and started heading towards the boat dock, all the while giving me the low down over her shoulder.


“You’ll have to excuse the mess. With Alcede gone away for some time I’m afraid I’ve let the old girl go to seed.”


We passed rows of shiny boats with their expensive, fast motors. I wanted so badly for Auntie to stop by any of them and turn to say, voilà. But alas, it was not to be so. Together, the three of us sauntered down to whatever the nautical equivalent of the wrong side of the tracks was. 


The boats quickly began to devolve. From shiny, to barnacle-ridden. From expensive, to craft that wouldn’t look out of place upside down at a landfill. Until, at last—


“Here she is. Ship happens!”


“Sorry?”


“Oh, that’s just what Alcede used to call this old thing. The SS Ship happens. He was a bit droll your late uncle, rest his soul.”


The delivery guy let out a low whistle that was less than professional. “You want your stuff in here?” he asked, but walked away before I had to go through the embarrassment of piecing together a response.


“What will people think?” I said, giving the boat a once over.


“Honey, you’d worry less about what people think if you realized how little they do.”


I broke into a smile. I couldn’t help myself. I thought what she’d said would make a great lettering piece.


“Well, I don’t know the first thing about boats, but at least it is mine and no one can kick me out for bouncing a check. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, Auntie. Thank you.”


The delivery driver arrived with a dolly stacked taller than he was, loaded down with boxes of pens and stationery so that I feared he might bust through one of the rotten planks that made up the dock.


“So, what kind of store is it you run, anyhow?” Auntie asked.


“Lettering, stationery. I do things like this,” I said, pointing to my shirt.


“Don’t let anyone ruin your day. It is your day. Ruin it yourself,” she read, and then let out a loud belly laugh that seemed to rock the pier.


“You going to fit right in around here,” she laughed. “Sass is a way of life.”


“Fit in with who?” I said, looking around once again as reality dawned on me.


“Don’t be like that, doll.”


“I don’t know how I’ll ever run a successful business with no customers. I haven’t seen a soul.”


“Come on aboard,” she said, and threw her large self onto the boat with a girlish hop that was surprisingly athletic.


Inside it smelled of mildew and seafood, a potent combination to say the least.


Auntie moved a few pots and pans from a drying rack, revealing a large map tacked to the wall. The map was curling and yellowed in the humidity, but still very legible. It showed a vast empire of water, just like I had seen from the wing of the big jet that had brought me down here.


“That’s the thing about a houseboat, Mila,” she said.


She pointed to the constellation of small towns that dotted the shores of a maze of waterways that stretched hundreds of miles.


“Your stationery store,” she said, with a warm smile. “It ain’t stationary no more.”


* * *


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