CAJUN QUEEN: By Michael J. Solender
Thursday, September 10th, 2009SUMMER CHILLER CONTESTANT
Boudreaux was not raised to enjoy a salubrious lifestyle. He was a third generation Acadian. His people had originally sailed from France to the Canadian Maritimes and settled in Nova Scotia.
Deeply religious and spiritual their rituals over time came to include worship and homage to ancestors through elaborate means including séances and day long chanting, singing and prayer. These rites grew in there intensity as his ancestors moved south and settled in the bayous and backwater towns of rural Louisiana.
His own mother, slavish to the Cajun ritual culture, was so well known as a “seer” in the tiny village outside of Baton Rouge where he was raised that there was a constant stream of town folk and outsiders alike at their door every weekday morning that his Mamma, Miss Thelma took to making her living by providing counsel and advice to those seeking it.
As soon as he was old enough to read, Miss Thelma, pulled him out of town school and began providing her own brand of education for Boudreaux to consume.
“Nutin matter but you family, you god and you beliefs boy.” Thelma told him daily. “You gonna learn all you need ta know ta get by in dis world from me.”
And learn he did. He learned all summer long, there was no let up during the particularly hot and steamy Louisiana summers that started in June and went all the way through September.
His Mamma charged $15.00 per private séance session or Tarot card reading, a princely sum back in the day. Boudreaux’s job was to light the incense, a small copper urn of finger and toe nail clippings with his own hair clippings, when Momma turned the lights down and the seeker had their eyes closed awaiting divination.
She wove magnificent tales of seekers ancestors, how they enjoyed the afterlife and offered dogma on what the seeker should do in the here and now to be in their and God’s good graces. Mostly the advice was to continue the “visits” as the séances were known, providing the income to keep Miss Thelma and young Boudreaux well fortified with andoullie and catfish.
The acrid smell of burning protein at first made him nauseas but he learned to equate the putrid odor with food on the table and the clothes on his back.
“Need the burn of da body to nourish da soul, boy. Our soul and da souls of others.” Thelma said sternly one afternoon when the pungent odor was particularly clingy. “Fire takes from da body, but fire, she give it back ta those who deserve.”
As he grew, Boudreaux thirst for knowledge and life outside his small Cajun village outstripped his mothers hold over him and he left her grip for New Orleans where working nights and weekends in a restaurant, he earned enough to first gain his GED and then gain entrance to the University.
He loved his mother and saw her on weekends, though her health faded in his senior year in College and she died suddenly one particularly hot July morning in the middle of a séance with a seeker.
Miss Thelma had a true Cajun jazz style funeral. The Elegies played were raucous and made Boudreaux smile, knowing his Mamma would have been pleased to hear such wonderful music and witness all the friends, family and seekers who had turned out for her send off.
Driving back to New Orleans with only the happiest memories of his childhood and his mother on his mind, Boudreaux was distracted while merging onto the freeway by a wasp that had found its way into his sedan. He picked a woeful time to swat at the tiny insect and an even worse moment to decelerate his car as he merged onto the 4 lane thoroughfare back to New Orleans.
The 18 driver of the wheeler approaching him was certain that the smallish black car ahead of him would quickly advance and shoot over one lane like every car before had done that day. So sure was the driver that he never let off the gas and crushed Boudreaux’s car, killing him instantly and engulfing the entire vehicle in flames.
Once the gasoline supply was exhausted and the last emergency firefighter had begun the mop –up, the assistant coroner and her crew had begun to determine the number of occupants of the vehicle. On site identification would be impossible as what body they did see, was charred beyond recognition. Even in that state, the odor of burning protein overwhelmed any petroleum odors and had the uninitiated gawkers and looky-loos gagging as they drove by.
3 hours after the front wheels rode over the back of Boudreaux’s sedan; his charred body was being re-assembled and placed into the black Mylar body-bag.
“We’ll use forensic dental to ID this cat.” She told her crew chief. The Assistant Coroner was in possession of the DMV records associated with the car, but couldn’t rely solely on that for the driver’s identification. She was certain it was a male and that he was the car’s lone occupant. She had phoned ahead to the morgue and told them what to expect when the body arrived.
The ambulance backed up to the rear entrance at the morgue. It was met by an attendant who grew up not far from Boudreaux in the swampy country outside of Baton Rouge.
He took the black body bag off the collapsible stretcher and loaded it onto to a gurney, wheeling it in to the autopsy room as instructed. He thought the bag was much too heavy for a total incineration victim, but ignored it until he unzipped the black bag and saw Boudreaux’s body, fully clothed and pristine without even so much as a scratch, let alone a burn. Boudreaux was dead, that was certain, but he looked perfect, restful and even had a small smile on his lips.
There must be a mistake the attendant thought. This certainly couldn’t be the burn victim. As he said that his nostrils began to flare and his nasal passages burn, filling with wisps of protein laced smoke that emanated from Boudreaux’s eyes, now open and hollow. The stench mixed with the humid July air and antiseptic cleaner used in the morgue, making for a noxious, gag inducing smell.
The attendant ran for a fire extinguisher, not fully comprehending what was happening. When he returned to Boudreaux’s body, the eyes were closed the smoke gone but the pungent odor remained. Staring at the body in disbelief, he didn’t know what to do. He jumped when his cell phone rang; the caller ID was showing it was the Assistant Coroner. She would not believe this.
“Hello… morgue…Mouton speaking.” He said tentatively as he answered the phone.
After a short pause he heard a distinctly female Cajun voice, NOT the Assistant Coroner, on the other end say simply: “Take you good care of my boy now, hear? Fire takes from da body, but fire, she give it back ta those who deserve.”
© 2009 Michael J. Solender
Michael J. Solender sometimes runs with scissors. He blogs here: http://notfromhereareyou.blogspot.com
