Our Blissful Bayou Beginnings

By Danielle Peterson

The Duck And The Doe is the tale of two immortal beings whose eternal love has soured a bit in the last two centuries. Written as a memoir by the "hero", this novella is a musing on both what love is and how much America has changed since the early 19th century. The first volume deals with both the supernatural and the racism of the old American south. Told with humor and passion (and the occasional rant) the story of these strong characters, including a wealthy young lawyer and a clever courtesan, will change your idea of what "love forever'' really means.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danielle Peterson
• Release date: Aug 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476011059

Danielle Peterson

Danielle Peterson was born in Spokane, Washington. She currently lives in the Netherlands and attends the Den Haagse Hogeschool for an education in Public Management.

Book preview

Our Blissful Bayou Beginnings

Danielle Peterson

Copyright 2012 by Danielle Peterson

Smashwords Edition

Chapter One

Love eternal.

And not love in that generalized love for your fellow man, love of knowledge, love of art, love of abstract beauty arena, I mean the love between a man and a woman. And not just between any man or woman, but between myself and what I at the time of my error believed to be the most perfect woman who could ever grace this moribund planet.

How wrong I was. It is almost comical in retrospect. Almost.

She is still beautiful, make no mistake about that. Her long brown hair still cascades down like some sort of waterfall of personal mockery towards me. It shines with an unholy radiance in the glow of the sunset, even more visually pleasing than it was when I first met her. But the heavy whalebone enforced corsets have long been cast aside in favor of the liberating and promiscuous fashions of these modern times.

Sometimes I can almost forget that I am a cursed man. To have seen empires turn to dust and the dark reaches of the stars penetrated in pissing contests between ideologically radical governments is, admittedly, an interesting thing. When I made my mistake I wrote on imported paper with imported ink; such decadent scribbling were the dominion of the upper echelon. Nowadays any idiot can produce endless literary vomit and share it with the world. My fascination with the internet was very quickly quelled by a bottomless chasm of utterly pointless nonsense. But I use it still. It helps me keep tabs on her, and she on me. And I am a fan of the digital piracy. I am always looking for something interesting to watch. I have a lot of time to kill.

But I digress. Surely the introspective ramblings of two hundred and twenty six year old man will not find warm welcome on this internet. Perhaps I should encourage you to get off my lawn. We could all have a laugh over it.

No, you’ve come here to read about my folly. I should say it began with my birth, but that was interesting only to myself. Please indulge me though, as I share it. I was born on February 16, 1785. My mother had been a French duchess, or something, I am not sure, she never really spoke of it to anyone and I had heard only second hand accounts from family members. I found that to be odd. After all, what was the point of being royalty if you did not tout it? I have long since deduced that she had been disgraced in some manner but years and years of research have produced nothing. She had a certain amount of class and sophistication that made the men of New Orleans easy pickings.

Mother was quite beautiful, or at least that’s what Father told me. She died of malaria when I was but a baby. That was all Father spoke of her, not that she was kind or short tempered or well read or a deft hand at crafts. Mary, my sister, and I were raised by a succession of black nurses. Is it alright to say black? I have been chastened in the past for my usage of descriptive words for the people of African descent. I mean, of course, no disrespect. She, my ‘eternal love’ is of African descent. I just want to be clear. These were the times wherein my Father owned black slaves, I do not wish to whitewash history, nor do I wish to anger anyone. Regardless, Mary and I were attended to by a series of young to middle aged black ladies on our father’s sugar plantation in what is now called the state of Louisiana.

When I came of age I was sent to study law at the College of William and Mary. I did not want to lead the plantation life as my father had. I found it terribly dull compared to life in the slowly growing city of New Orleans. I wanted a neat and tidy house in the Spanish style and a dutiful and beautiful wife. Of course, that all changed when I met her.

I came back from Virginia with my head swirling with Latin phrases and enough confidence to open my own law office. My name was painted on a door to the office and my many noble ideas of saving an innocent man from the hangman’s rope or an help an indigent woman claim justice against her ravisher were soon mitigated into endless lawsuits over the most mundane things. It turned out that the market for criminal law was not as lucrative as I had hoped and I had to fall back on litigation. Still though, it paid well, and I was well on my way to becoming a very eligible bachelor.

You young men today, and by that I mean the past century or so, have it all too easy. To be handsome or charming or having some remarkable skill is enough to convince a woman to sleep with you. When I was in my early twenties dating wasn’t so simple. My family name was a respectable one and as such there was an elaborate courting procedure to be followed. Once I had made enough money and successfully represented enough men about town I proposed marriage to a mousy young woman named Louisa Honore, the daughter of one of the most successful dry good merchants in the American South. My memories of her are not very clear. I recall that she was of a highly religious conviction, constantly attending masses and invoking saint this or that. She was pleasant enough though, and I suppose I must have found her attractive in some way because I agreed to marry her and I had my pick of many young ladies.

Now, I would not be marrying until I was almost twenty-seven years old, which meant that I had been a sexually mature male for some fifteen years or so. In my day women just didn’t have a roll in the hay with you because they wanted to themselves, at least not the sort of women a prosperous young plantation raised lawyer came in contact with. Nor was there unlimited free streaming pornography in the comfort of your own home. In 2012, of course, only the saddest and least attractive of men have need of prostitutes. But when I was a young man it was a necessity. Either you were celibate until you wed relatively late in life or you paid a woman to pretend to enjoy copulation with you. As my male readers will understand, most men ended up paying for sexual services before their wedding, and after it as well.

Which is where I met her. She actually came highly recommended to me by a client. In those days brothels were not what they are today-sad places with blacked out windows, masquerading under euphemism of Massage Parlor. Of course there was the lower class whorehouses with bare planks and homely women, but the ones that I and my peers patronized were well maintained and appointed with the latest fashions and the most attractive and well mannered women. The ladies were charming and well spoken and one could even imagine that one was not in the company of whores.

But that illusion did not last long, of course. I’d rut my whore and leave, go home to my stately Spanish home and review my briefs or pen a letter to my sister Mary, who had long since been wed herself and was now living in Georgia. But not with her, not with my beloved. The illusion never wilted. It was as if all the ridiculous romantic poetry I had read in college (times were different then, and the artistic movement of Romanticism was all the rage, just as videos of friends farting in each others sleeping faces is the fun thing now) had been distilled down into a single point of heart rendering sentiment. I am embarrassed as to what a fool it made me.

A short note-all quotations are paraphrased from my memory, which has been stuffed over the past two centuries. Sometimes I think I will have written something that is one hundred percent accurate, and then she would remind me that it didn’t happen that way, or that she wasn’t even there when I am convinced that she was. I am