Dirty Rice (7 page)

I had the key that Miz Doucette gave me to let myself in when she wasn't around, but I figured I ought to knock on the door since it was still good daylight. Mike Gonzales was standing close behind me, kind of jiggling up and down. I looked over at him to see what he was doing.

“My nerves is always on edge when I meet new people,” he said. I didn't say anything back and I turned back to look at the screen when I heard it rattle from somebody lifting up the latch. I was expecting Miz Velma Doucette, but it wasn't her. Not by a long shot.

It was a woman all right, and I could tell her last name was probably Doucette since she had something in her coloring and the way her eyes were shaped that put you in mind of her mother. The one answering the door was a whole different version.

She knew how to smile, and it made me look off from her as soon as she turned that smile on me. I was afraid if I didn't, I'd be in danger of not being able to control where I was directing my eyes from then on.

“Hello,” the woman said. “I bet y'all are the baseball players for the Rice Birds my mama told me about. Come on in the house.”

She stepped back, and the woman kept on talking as we walked into the front room. “Do you have stuff with you that you need to put in your room?” she said. “Mama said one of you has already moved in, but the other one hasn't yet. Which one of you is the Indian player from Texas?”

I raised my hand when she said that, even though I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. I couldn't seem to make my body not do what it wanted to do at the time, and that proved out to be the way I always acted around Teeny Doucette of Rayne, Louisiana. It was like I was watching myself do things and act ways and say stuff that just came up on their own somehow, and all I could do was be a witness to myself whenever it was happening.

She laughed at my doing that. “I guess that must be you, then,” the woman said, not laughing overmuch. “Mama says your name is something I never have heard before. Will you tell me what it is? She probably didn't say it right.”

I told her, and by the time I finished getting my name out, I could see Miz Velma Doucette coming into the room. She was wearing an apron, and she had a big spoon in her hand.

“So here y'all are,” she said. “Teeny, you go finish setting the table, while I tell these baseball boys about how we do here at supper time.”

“All right, Mama,” she said and walked off down the hall toward the back of the house where the kitchen was located. Her walking was a good thing to see. But before she got out of sight I was able to make my eyes slide off to one of the framed sayings hanging on the wall.

Velma Doucette began telling Mike Gonzales the same thing she'd already said to me about how to act when living in a room of her house, and I acted like I was listening to it again. She added this time some directions about letting her know our schedule of days we'd be in town so she could get supper tended to right every time. She didn't ever want to waste a mouthful of food or time preparing it, she said, and both of us nodded and said we understood that down to the bone. She was interested in where Mike Gonzales was from and what he called himself, and I could see her relax when he said he was Cuban.

“I knew that,” she said, “since Mr. Bernson had told me a Rice Bird player from Cuba was probably going to want to room in my house. But let me tell you, I was surprised to see you when I first laid eyes on you. I said to myself ‘redbone,' and not to say anything against redbones, since I'm Cajun myself and been around redbones all my life, but that complexion they got can fool you.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Mike said. “You the second or third person since I got here that's asked me if I'm redbone. I guess it must be a lot of them around here in Louisiana.”

“We've got a lot of every kind of person here, specially in Acadia Parish and all the other parishes around it,” she said. “People here is like a big old stew in South Louisiana. Better than that, it's like a dish we eat here called dirty rice. Did you boys ever hear of that?”

“No, ma'am,” we both said together.

“You got to get used to it, if you're going to spend anytime in this part of Louisiana. It's made up of a lot of different kinds of meat parts and whatever else comes to hand. It can be real spicy, and when you first look at it, you think it's something that might be dangerous to eat too much of. But it smells and tastes real good. You'll have the chance to eat a lot of it here. Now, one more thing,” Velma Doucette said, looking from one to the other of me and Mike, her eyes sharp the way they were when I'd first met her. “Y'all met my daughter when she let you in the house.” We nodded.

“She's about to finish her high school program this month, and she's going to go off to Lafayette and make a secretary once she's out of Blessed Sisters Academy, she says. Of course, I'd like to see her stay with the sisters, if she feels Our Father's call. She's real smart and a real lively young lady. She's got a future ahead of her, and I require that anybody who rooms in my house has to respect her and not bother her.”

“I understand what you're saying,” Mike Gonzales said. “I went to school at the Christian Brothers in Cuba, and I learned how to act from them.”

“That's a wonderful thing to hear, Mr. Gonzales,” Miz Doucette said. “Do you happen to be Roman Catholic in faith and upbringing, too, Mr. Batiste?”

I admitted to her that no, I wasn't, but that I had sisters of my own back home and I understood and appreciated what she was saying

“Well, that's good, as long as we understand each other about that matter. Now there's no need to say a thing to Teeny about what I've been telling you,” our landlady said. “We'll be ready to eat in about thirty minutes.”

Back in our room, I let Mike know which bed I was using and where to put his goods when they got there. He'd said the bus he'd rode had misplaced his suitcase, but they'd promised him it'd be there the next day. I asked him if he'd boarded that bus in Cuba. He didn't answer that, but asked me what dirty rice tasted like, and I told him I didn't know. Then he read the saying on the wall out loud, the one hanging over the bed I'd be sleeping in.

“I need thee every hour,” he said and looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “So you got little sisters of your own at home,” he went on. “And Miz Doucette's little girl puts you in mind of them.”

“That's right,” I said. “And you're from Cuba.”

“You got it,” he said.

“Where in Cuba you from?”

“Mobile,” Mike Gonzales said and started laughing.

“Is that where the Christian Brothers taught you all about the Roman Catholic church and all?”

“Yeah, that part is right,” Mike said. “I went to school with the mackerel snappers for a good long while. That's where I learned my reverent ways.”

“Don't laugh too loud in here,” I told him. “I expect that ain't allowed.”

“Why is she named Teeny? Can you tell me that, Gemar?”

“I tell you what,” I said. “I think that Dynamite Dunn can tell you the answer to that puzzle later on tonight at that frog place he's been talking about.”

“You suppose he knows Teeny?”

“I imagine he's wanted to for a while,” I said. “Let's go eat that supper that Miz Doucette's been cooking. It's been a long while for me since breakfast.”

“Let me tell you one more thing first,” Mike Gonzales said. “I'm proud and happy to be rooming with a left-handed pitcher who loves his little sisters. And who's a Indian, to boot.”

“Right back at you, redbone,” I said. “Maybe you can tell me how Catholics do their religion when you find the time.”

“Catholics would call me doing that giving you instruction, Gemar. All right, we can work on learning how to worship proper together, and maybe you can show me how to wait on a change-up and where to swing at a curve that breaks in the wrong direction.”

“Hush,” I said. “Don't be laughing so loud.”

• • •

After Miz Doucette fed us supper, we got ready to go to the Green Frog. I don't remember what I had to eat that first supper at Miz Doucette's, so I expect it wasn't anything I hadn't had before that night. Probably some kind of beans and potatoes and cornbread and a little bit of meat.

As I ate, I caught myself looking around now and then to see if Teeny Doucette would show up again, but she didn't. I can't tell you if I wanted to see her then or not. I both did and I didn't. It was like being somewhere deep in Lost Man Marsh in the Big Thicket and seeing a real pretty snake that takes your eye. You want to pick it up to take a good close look, but you're afraid it might be one that'll leave you bit and worried about poison.

Mike Gonzales did bring up her name when we were walking in the direction Dynamite Dunn had told us to take to get to the Green Frog, but I didn't want to start talking about her nor the way she looked. So he let that drop.

It was getting good dark when we saw the sign up ahead that Dynamite told us to watch for. There was a couple of regular light bulbs fixed on the top of a picture on a piece of wood of a big frog with his mouth wide open, his tongue stuck way out and a fly caught on the tip of it. The place was easy to see, and the Green Frog was the first honky-tonk in Louisiana I went inside of.

“That frog looks satisfied,” Mike Gonzales said. “Look at his eyes how he's grinning.”

“Yeah, but that fly don't appear to be enjoying things too much,” I said.

We'd been hearing music coming from the Green Frog well before we got to the door, and when we opened it, the sound coming out of the building was strong enough you could almost see it. For sure, you could feel it. It was like walking into a gust of wind that had all of a sudden blew up when you hadn't been expecting it, and it made you want to lean into the breeze to get enough purchase to keep going.

It was dark inside the honky-tonk, too, darker even than it'd been outside when we were walking up the street in the early night. After I got inside I had to stop and look around me to get my bearings before going any further. A bunch of folks was milling around, talking and laughing real loud and swigging away at bottles of beer and whatever they had in the glasses in their hands. The music was coming from a bunch of men up in one corner of the room, strumming guitars and playing fiddles and hammering on drums, with one man working a small sized squeeze-box back and forth. A man standing in front of the ones making the music was singing in a language I hadn't heard before, and I figured it had to be French. I heard Dynamite Dunn hollering at us to come over to where he was sitting at a table.

When I got close to where Dynamite was sitting, I saw that there was a woman in a chair across from him, and she was leaning way forward in her seat and twisting a long strand of her hair around a finger. She looked like she was in danger of falling over any minute.

“Sit down, you rookies,” Dynamite said. “Did you eat your supper yet?”

We told him we had and sat down. “This lady here is named Pearl,” Dynamite said. “And she is just like her name. She is a precious gem. I dare you to tell me she ain't, Gemar.”

“What kind of a name is Gemar?” the woman said, saying each word slow and careful like it hurt her mouth. “Is it some kind of a foreign name or just another label for a coon-ass?”

“Gemar ain't no coon-ass,” Dynamite said. “Be nice now, Pearl. His folks was here even before the coon-asses arrived. Ain't that right, Gemar?”

I didn't say anything to that.

“I might not know what this Gemar fellow is, but I know what the other one sitting there is,” the woman called Pearl said, pointing toward Mike Gonzales with the finger she'd been wrapping her hair around. “He's a redbone. Look at them high cheekbones and that black curly hair. He probably never been more than five miles from Mermentau in his whole life.”

“You got me,” Mike said. “I'm just what you said. Redbone down to the marrow inside.”

“See,” the woman said to Dynamite, rising from the table and catching the edge of it to help her stand all the way up. “I've been telling you I know these jaspers the Rice Birds bring in here. I'm not going to sit here. I have been around too long to be fooled.”

“Pearl,” Dynamite said. “You are before God right about that. You have been around too long.”

“Yep,” she said. “I have and I'm going to toddle off. So long, you sorry-ass Rice Birds.”

“Gentlemen,” Dynamite said as we watched Pearl work her way hand over hand from one table to the next. “That lady going there is one of the fans of our baseball team, and y'all will doubtless be seeing her again.”

“She just put her hand right in that man's glass,” Mike said. “Lucky she's a woman. He might've decked her the way she's acting.”

“Let me get you two children a beer,” Dynamite said.