Sorry for the delay in posting. First part of the month is always a bear for me. I might have rushed the editing so excuse any stupid errors.
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Chapter 69
Close but no cigar. Evacuation orders that is. There was a big naval bruhaha out in the Gulf but it stayed closer to Florida and Cuba than it did along the Gulf Coast. I admit hearing all the place names and hearing of the damage that was done made me heartsick but I knew when I left Bradenton that it was likely for good and even if I did go back a lot would never look like I remembered it looking. I was talking to Zeb about it and someone thought they were being helpful by saying after a certain point you can’t go home again. Might have thought they were being helpful, definitely weren’t. As bad as I felt the Crew felt worse and it was morale shaking. They’d all left thinking the evacuation was temporary. My reason had been different. What got to me is the idea that maybe, one of these days, evacuation is going to sound and I’m going to lose this new home that I’ve tried to create for myself. I’m starting to see people different. Not temporary so much as … fragile I guess. And I’m starting to see around me that more than the war, my circumstances are fragile. Thank goodness I don’t have that much time to think those kind of thoughts or I might just think myself into a depressed funk.
I’ve been breaking up a lot of fights and trying not to break heads while I’m at it, they don’t always let that be an easy thing to avoid. Some of these soldier boys and girls don’t get along all that well. I mean some of them fight at the lamest excuse. Take what you call things. Seriously, what you call things. Ranks are different between services, so trying to determine where people fall on the rank scale can be a little weird if you don’t have a score card. What they call their tools and spots they claim aren’t necessarily the same either. It hasn’t been helpful that sometimes Senior Officers get along like static electricity. Colonel Hyland is who called the naval battle in the Gulf a “bruhaha” and let me tell you she lit some of the naval personnel’s tails on fire. She’d been making headway in her climb to the top until she did that, and lucky for us she wasn’t just sent back to New Orleans, she got recalled to Atlanta. She’s now under some general that is in charge of protecting the CDC among other assets in that area who has a reputation for being what Mr. Julius might call rough as an old corncob. I wasn’t sad to see her go but now the navy has taken over New Orleans and Mobile, AL and they have a different way of running things and it is causing some SNAFUs for the more inland areas.
One example of the problems being caused is that the Navy … or at least those in our part of the Gulf of Mexico … seem to think they have authority over all of the waterways whether they go out to the Gulf or not. I heard that they’d even bent the nose of the Coast Guard bigwigs with the rules they are trying to lay down. Now I get it. They’ve got a job to do. It is called “command of the sea” or something like that. But I think some of them are getting PO’d at the enemies we have as they leave “the seas” and start going in rivers and lakes to get into the interior of the continental US.
I know the Coast Guard is used to patrol the territorial waters which is the water between coast and the continental shelf. I also know they are patrolling up rivers like the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes, and Columbia River, and all of the Intercoastal Channels like we have in Florida. You’ve got even more overlap with the US Army Corps of Engineers that work with so many different civilian and military departments that it is a wonder they don’t rule the world … Homeland Security, FEMA, etc etc and yada yada.
It really isn’t such an awful thing to have a bunch of people want to protect the same piece of land. The more the merrier in that respect in my opinion. The problem comes when everyone wants to be the boss and no one wants to be the grunt. And when the bigwigs in DC that haven’t run anything but computer simulations in so long they forget what it is like to operate in the real world. Just ‘cause you are good at video games doesn’t mean you are good at doing the same thing in real life. And the military being what it is, an order comes down and other people are just supposed to figure out how to obey it which only adds more trouble and confusion.
In Breaux Bridge this has meant us having military boats on the bayou and in the swamp. I heard one ol’ guy say that was going to work as well as it did on the Mekong during Vietnam. I had to go look that one up but I gotta say the boats look a lot the same as do the men running them. And I’m sure no one is surprised to find out that not everyone took to the idea of the military sticking their noses into private civilian matters. And I’m sure no one is further surprised to find out that Cajuns were some of the ones that took to that idea the least, especially when it was getting in the way of putting food on the family table.
Thank goodness for Colonel Morgan and his staff. First off they’ve learned to work with civilians and don’t just treat us like fresh out of basic cannon fodder. They know we have sense and are inclined to let us use it without telling us how to take care of our own business 24/7/365. Colonel Morgan has been a kind of liaison between us and them jacked up navy guys and gals. I’m not say that the navy shouldn’t have some say in the defenses against the enemies coming from the waterside of things, ‘cause their equal to enlised and junior officers seem to be all right, but some of their senior officers on up kinda need to get back in touch with the land that surrounds the waters they want to have some say over and the people that live here.
Em tried to explain it to me one time. He said that they train everyone in the military to be the sheep dog I regularly accuse him of being. They have something that they are supposed to protect and they do it, as a job and as a calling. Most of them are good at it with good motivations, and not just because they’ve been ordered to do the job either. But things is one thing and people another. Once you throw civilians into the mix you usually wind up with indigestion. I wanted to say, “How noble and romantic.” On the other hand that might have been straying into one of them areas that would give me and Em indigestion.
I can relate even if saying so would make most people laugh like I was making a joke. How the heck did I somehow inherit Fabrice? I can’t turn around without that boy being right there. It’s like he’s attached to my butt by a slinky toy. And where he goes Dot wants to follow. Now when I’m working I gotta make sure that it isn’t just something safe for me but whether it is safe for my two mini-shadows to do because there is no telling them not to try. If I’m fishing, hunting, gardening, don’t matter. And if they are around, I also have to watch my mouth because those two parrots will repeat everything they hear, not just what I say but how I say it. I can’t even slide a cajun curse in there. Talk about massive frustration. And all anyone does is laugh. Except Vadie. She gets it.
Momma L is watching Dot because the rules changed and Vadie can’t take her to work anymore. There’s no day care either – not that Vadie can afford it – and all the playgrounds and what not have been closed because there was an outbreak of measles when they found out a lot of parents had just lied about their kids being vaccinated. Been a lot worse than people expected. One or two sick kids and you’ve got a gazillion doctors and nurses to take care of them every second and all the drugs in the world for the all the symptoms and side effects. When that one or two jumps to dozens it becomes a different story and math being what it is, you start seeing more and more of those complications cause worse problems. Diarrhea with measles is common … but when you’ve got a bunch of kids needing to be treated for it in a health care setting ‘cause their fevers are out of control, you start seeing kids suffering brain damage and even dying from it. Pneumonia and encephalitis are also being reported in the news as CODs for kids.
Scared the crap out of us for a little bit because Dot came down with spots. I kept her in the work shed since I’ve got every vaccine known to man and then some because that’s the way things roll in foster care. You don’t have a say, you just get lined up and shot up with whatever the latest is, or the yearly vaccines for the seasonal stuff. Turns out Dot is allergic to bedbugs. I keep everything treated around here so that meant she got them someplace else. Vadie was in freaking tears … some was relief of course though poor little Dot was miserable until Momma L’s special treatment started taking effect, but some was life being too much for her to handle alone.
Vadie isn’t living in that craphole closet she was living in anymore. Instead of taking care of what needed taking care of her landlady said she either moved or she’d evict Vadie. Insinuated lots of nasty things as incentive to make it quick … or else. When Momma L found out she nearly brought down the Wrath of God and told the Ol’ Rougarou that she’d better stay on her side of town because she wasn’t welcome on hers anymore. That would be funny expect it really isn’t. Momma L don’t play about that stuff and can be danged scary. The landady isn’t much better. She thinks she is some kind of Mambo Sallie Ann and that should be funny too but it isn’t. Momma L says she’s dangerous because she believes her own lies and has a few too many believing right along with her. The Landlady claims that Vadie brought bad Juju to her own place and that it isn’t bedbugs but dark spirits that have come to pay back Vadie for something she’s done to someone else … like karma only voodoo-style … and that it must be bad for them to attack her child like they did.
I’m telling you I about had it myself at one point. Vadie was a nervous wreck and scared Dot was really sick and then when that was over, scared that someone was going to take Dot away from her. In this heat Vadie passed out from heat exhaustion and if I hadn’t already had a tub ready to put Dot into I’m not sure what would have happened. For once the navy folks were useful on a civilian level and let me tell you, they got more traction out of the one kind act of that doctor than they had out of all the other things they’d tried … least they did once the story grew legs and got around. And who is to say how that happened.
Anywho I told Vadie to stay with Dot, that Tib and I were going to take care of things.
On the way over in Tib’s truck he said, “I know what I’d like to do to take care of things.”
“No,” I told him. “You just be Vadie’s knight in shining armor and get her and the baby’s things. You let me handle things with that crazy woman should she be stupid on top of her crazy and start running her mouth.”
For once Tib seemed to be using sense because he said, “I’m … I’m asking you don’t cause no problems for Vadie. A lawyer called about Dot this morning.”
“I heard. Don’t worry about the lawyer. I’m not saying they might not take another swipe at some point but for right now they’re thinking about what will come out and whether they’re willing to take the heat.”
“Whut the hail is that supposed to mean?!” Tib asked giving me a confused and irritated look.
“Means that in the process of finding stuff out about my family tree I’ve found a few things out about other family trees. The rest you don’t need or want to know so you can’t be questioned about what you know and what you don’t and when you found it out and from who.”
Tib is not as dumb as he sometimes pretends for the sake of blending in. I’m not saying he isn’t a hot head with a mouth that can run on. That’s why I wasn’t telling him that I found out who occasionally acts as middleman for certain unauthorized, non-ration book purchases. And takes a larger than normal profit for doing it. I mean I’m not against people making a living but I don’t like hypocrisy either and if they are going to try and say crap about Vadie then their own “suitability” is gonna get called into question.
“Okay. I don’t want to know,” he told me. “Just …”
“Relax. Just focus on getting their stuff as fast as possible. One, it looks like rain and two … I’m even less fond of that sort of public drama than most.”
Well, I shoulda knocked on wood. That landlady got all up in my face, saying something about my aura and that my body housed a dark spirit and a lot of mumbo jumbo.
“Lady, if anyone has a dark spirit it is you. And while I don’t know all there is to know about your religion, I do know that if you make bad juju then it is going to come around and bite you in the butt. So back the frick off.”
“You seek to make me fear you.”
“Drop the accent. I understand you are originally from New Jersey. And trust me, you are no Bela Lagosi. May look like him under all that make up, but you aren’t up to his talent. And those all black eyes of yours are probably just contact lenses. Either/or, I could care less.”
She made some stupid sign against evil, or so I was later told, and I’d had it. “You know, you are just stupid. Plain out and out stupid. You took a girl’s money to provide a room for her and her kid. You keep your place trashy. Somehow you get bedbugs, you deny any responsibility, and you’re trying to call them bad spirits that some poor little girl brought on?! If you really do believe in that religion you are trying to peddle you gotta know that there is no ritual or sacrifice that is going to get you out of the karma hole you just shoved your head into.”
Oh she started gobbling and clucking and doing these air drawings of voodoo signs, or I assume that is what she was doing. For some reason she struck me as hilarious. I started snickering and the more she spazzed out the harder I laughed. Boy was she mad. Then she picked up something like she was going to throw it at me and it wasn’t funny anymore.
“You throw that at me and there is going to be trouble.”
“Hah! You admit you are afraid!”
“Afraid?! No. But you should be. You throw any of your weird crap on me and by the time I’ve finished reporting you to everyone I can find you’ll be investigated six ways from Sunday and if you have anything in your past you can bet it will be laid out in the light for everyone to see. So back … the frick … off … now.”
I guess she finally figured out I wasn't bluffing and said, “Get off my property! Get off my property now! I deny you entrance!”
“We’ll be leaving as soon as we load the last box. Oh … and before you get anymore bright ideas? That little utility room closet isn’t licensed for being a rental property.”
“Louisiana doesn’t require it," she informed me with a superior smugness that made me want to spit if I hadn't already had her checkmated.
I gave her a shark’s smile. “But Beaux Bridge does ever since the Army, Navy and the City Council came to a compromise over the governing rules of this area during war time. All rental units must be reported, inspected, and licensed.”
“You lying.”
“You think? See the license and inspection don’t cost anything. But you gotta have a safe and secure unit. I don’t guess they’ll think too much of the fact that space is all sorts of fire hazard … window nailed shut, exposed wires in the ceiling, hot water tank doesn't have a pressure release valve, not even a smoke alarm. Tell you what. Why don’t you just call and find out for yourself just how truthful I am being.”
“Doesn’t matter whether you are lying outright or not. You’re friends with them military. You’ll tell them to hassle me.”
“Nope. I’m gonna let your karma bite you in the butt. And then I guess everyone will see just how much juice you got with the spirits and haunts.”
I heard a snort of derision and then Tib said, “This is fun and all but last box is out. I wanna take move out pictures and then get out of here before it starts raining. After I drop this boxes off I gotta get to work.”
The story got back to Mr. Julius somehow and then to Momma L. Trust me, you don’t want her cackling at your expense.”
“Ava, you gonna need to go to Confession for that one.”
“Why confess something God already knows about. It isn’t like I was hiding anything. Let someone else turn the poor priest’s hair white. I got enough to be sorry for as it is.” She cackled some more and then sent me out to the garden for some watermelons as that’s what “the boys” were gonna have for dessert that night.