A River in a Bottle

By Mark Lutenbacher

A charming little story about a summer spent growing up in southern Louisiana. The narrator goes on adventures with his sister Little and Owny. Along the way they meet a special little boy named Abe, who has a fascinating collection of bottles filled with water.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Lutenbacher
• Release date: Dec 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9780692349977

Mark Lutenbacher

Mark Lutenbacher, born in 1953 to a Louisiana family with deep Cajun roots, was educated by the Christian Brothers at De La Salle High School in New Orleans and attended Tulane University where he earned a degree in History. His early career was devoted to the advertising, marketing and public relations industry. In middle age he became a middle school History and Geography teacher, a devotion which ended abruptly as a result of the effects of Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005. An accomplished photographer and artist, he has been a summer camp counselor working with 9, 10 and 11 year old campers, a carpenter’s assistant and a long time employee of the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. A River in a Bottle, his first novel, draws its theme from his love of family, children and the historic traditions of life in southeastern Louisiana.

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A River In A Bottle

Mark Lutenbacher

A River In A Bottle

Copyright © 2011 Mark G. Lutenbacher

New Orleans, Louisiana

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Sic Transit Gloria Ripari

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All persons, places, events and circumstances in this work are purely fictional and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual circumstances, events, persons or places is purely coincidental.

Any duplication, reproduction, transmission, mechanical, verbal or electronic, without the expressed written permission of the author is strictly prohibited.

Dedicated to the children of the world.

In grateful appreciation for the older ones who told the stories.

Thanks for the assistance of Mother, Bryan, Kay, Margie and John.

A River in a Bottle

by Mark Lutenbacher

…but a stream was welling up out of the earth and was watering all the surface of the ground.

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"Let the rivers clap their hands,

The mountains shout with them for joy…"

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"Streams will burst forth in the desert,

And rivers in the steppe…"

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Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb…

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…may He rule from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the Earth.

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A river rises in Eden to water the garden…

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Rivers of living water will flow from within…

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…boughs as far as the sea, roots as far as the river.

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…founded it upon the seas, established it over the rivers.

Contents

Chapter 1 - HOME AGAIN

Chapter 2 - FREE TO WANDER

Chapter 3 - ROSE OF WINTERVILLE

Chapter 4 - THE HOT AIR BALLOON

Chapter 5 - NO MIRACLE FOR ABE

Chapter 6 - THE CEREMONY DU BAZANGO

Chapter 7 - THE BIG KID

Chapter 8 - LITTLE HITS THE JACKPOT

Chapter 9 - LA BOUCHERIE AND FAIS DOO DOO

Chapter 10 - INDIAN MOUNDS

Chapter 11 - THE BLACK CAT MAN

Chapter 12 - A FISHING TRIP

Chapter 13 - LA CHAT NOIR

Chapter 14 - CROP DUSTERS ARRIVE

Chapter 15 - WELCOME COUSIN CAMILLE

Chapter 16 - FLOWER DAY

Chapter 17 - CAPTAIN DIDLEY’S APOLOGY

Chapter 18 - FLYING

Chapter 19 - A LETTER ARRIVES

Chapter 20 - CRY ME A RIVER

Chapter 21 - THE LAST WALTZ

MAP

APPENDIX

Chapter 1 - HOME AGAIN

The war had been brutal. I was home again albeit emotionally, psychologically and physically damaged. It was September 1945 when I arrived at the Baton Rouge railroad station. There to pick me up and bring me home were my uncle and my sister Lillian.

Momma had passed away the previous year and my sister was now living with our closest relatives Uncle Don and Aunt Clare in New Orleans. In their correspondence my sister expressed the opinion that I should spend some time at the farm, our ancestral home. She thought it would do me good. I eagerly agreed.

During the long drive to the farm Uncle Don expressed his condolences over the death of my Momma. Away at war, I regretted not being able to attend the funeral or comfort my sister. I remembered the tears Momma shed the day I departed for Pensacola Naval Base to report to the USS Lexington. It was February 18th, Momma’s birthday. That day for Momma was just another bittersweet day just as those she’d endured during her long and difficult life as a hard working widow who raised two children during the Great Depression.

Frank, you and Lillian have inherited all the property as sole heirs of the estate. Aunt Clare and I will care for your sister until she finishes college, Uncle Don informed me. I was comforted by his generosity. I would not have to support my sister. Lillian said she wanted to become a veterinarian. I was not surprised about her choice of professions.

My Uncle went on to tell me that prior to Momma’s death, he and she agreed to explore the farm land for oil. The exploration was originally proposed by your cleaver sister. The results were quite positive, indeed. Oil was discovered in copious quantities. You and your sister will never have to worry about money, Uncle Don explained. The comment took me by surprise and my anxiety started to wane. I’d considered reopening Momma’s store and bar room and becoming a one armed bartender to generate some kind of income fearing no one would hire a one armed man.

When we arrived at our big old family house, I discovered much had changed since I’d been to war. The store was shuttered closed but the gasoline pumps remained operational and were being manned by one of Momma’s farm workers, Stodough who’d set up a tire repair and automotive service station of sorts. The sugarcane fields were fallow, the crops had been replaced by a dozen or so black horse head pumps which labored up and down twenty-four hours a day to pump our oil from the ground into large holding tanks where the barn used to be. Many of the cypress weather boarded out buildings were gone and I supposed all the artifacts and memories contained therein as well.

The time was getting late and Uncle Don wanted to get back to New Orleans before dark. So I bid my sister and uncle goodbye when they dropped me off at the front door. Lillian made me promise to write her often and off they drove.

I breathed a sigh of relief upon entering the familiar but dusty old house and proceeded immediately to the parlor to have a drink. With cocktail in hand, I sat down on the sofa and took a long look at the large oil portrait of my Grandpa pictured in full nineteenth century admiral’s uniform and holding a pair of brass binoculars. A sterling silver pocket compass dangled from his belt loop.

There on another wall hung a picture of my Daddy in the full Navy mufti of a World War I captain. Below his broad epaulet festooned shoulders were on his chest campaign ribbons and the spread of his pilot’s wings.

An unquenchable smile came over my countenance when I noticed there on another wall I hung a color oil portrait of me, with both arms, in full dress blues painted from a photograph Momma had taken at my U.S. Navy commission ceremony. She’d written she had had it painted.

My family held a long and distinguished tradition of service in the U.S. Navy. So naturally when the war broke out, I joined the Navy. After boot camp Uncle Sam chose to make me an officer supposedly because I had graduated from high school but I think someone recognized my last name, the descendent of a family with a history of service the Navy. I was trained and taught to fly an aircraft in only three months.

After another drink I remembered the last time I had been home and the night before I went to war, folks threw me a small going away party and referred to me, elbow on the bar, dressed in khakis, wearing the lieutenant junior grade insignia, as a ninety-day wonder. But there was nothing wonderful about the war or the day I lost my arm.

On October 25, 1944 the carrier turned into the wind and my squadron of F6F Hellcats launched into the air to engage the enemy in the Gulf of Leyte. The Zeros dove out of the rising South Pacific sun and the deadly dogfight had just begun when my fighter and I were hit on the port side by massive machine gun fire. The enemy’s plane was so close I could see the smile on my adversary’s face as I was hit.

Several minutes later I found myself floating down to the vast ocean. The wreckage of my aircraft, named Lady Luck had crashed and was quickly sinking in the distance. There was no parachute from my copilot. He had apparently been killed.

I hit the water hard. I realized I had been severely wounded yet I was horrified as I watched my cherished WW I sterling silver pocket compass sink into the deep. I winced in severe pain and noticed I was bleeding and had lost most of my left arm.

A few hours later by some miracle, I was rescued just barely alive by one of our task force escort vessels. Once ashore in Pearl Harbor, I spent the next ten months recuperating from my physical combat wounds. Yet somehow I was mentally broken. Thankfully, I was able to function rather normally but had terrible anxiety about what to do with the rest of my life. I wondered about the value of life itself. I was only twenty-two years old.

Finally home again I was now happily confined, no, ensconced alone in the countryside of Louisiana, a rich one armed young man.

I decided to venture into Momma’s dark and eerily quiet bar room and country store. The empty scene made me sad. A deep groaning sadness came over me brought on by the irretrievably happy times now long past and gone forever. A time when kids were innocent and good people tried to make a decent living in a poor, but civilized world. I couldn’t stay in the empty store and was about to cry so I found a bottle of fine cognac from behind the bar (there were hundreds of unopened bottles of various liquors behind the bar) and brought it into the house, lit a fire and took very drunk that first evening. I fell out to the songs of the croaking frogs on the bayou, the strings of cicadas in the willow trees and the comfortable and familiar rumbling of a freight train passing through the night across the highway. Ships’ horns blew on the Mississippi River in the distance. Perhaps it was the cognac but for the first time in years I felt like everything was going to be alright.

A few days later I resolved to accomplish a chore I had long ago neglected. I would paint the floor of a veranda, a porch if you will, on a plantation cabin in the back of the property which had been damaged long ago.

With my brush and paint can in hand and a pint of good whiskey in my back pocket I set out to trek to the old cabin along the bayou and down a well worn path, past Le Grande Garcon the majestic oak tree. I was pleased our beloved ancient live oak tree was still alive and growing.

Much to my surprise waiting there for me there on the porch steps was my best friend Owny. I heard he’d served as Admiral Spruance’s executive chef. Amazingly he had committed to memory the recipes his grandmother had cooked just by watching her for all those years he was growing up. Owny always did have a great memory.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s Superman. No, it’s Frank! I heard you were back. My super powers told me you would come here sooner or later. I’ve been sitting here thinking, just meditating. Been here almost every day since I heard you were home, Owny said greeting me with a smile.

Hell, I was wondering if you made it back in one piece. I’m happy to see you old friend! I gushed as I shook his hand. We sat down on the cabin steps and celebrated our reunion with several pulls each from the whiskey bottle. The soothing amber liquid sloshed inside as the sunlight flashed reflections off the bottle into our eyes.

I pointed to my missing arm. Don’t worry old boy, every superhero has a weakness. Your disability won’t keep you from much. You’ll get used to it. You’re better off than a lot of the wounded, Owny said.

Neither one of us was terribly interested in talking about the war. I started to paint. He stayed on the steps and kept me company. He asked me if I realized that we’d burned this porch nine long years ago. We took a few more sips from the whisky bottle and began to recount the events of that magical summer and everything that had happened to us.

Owny and I remembered those days, with wry smiles while I painted the scorched porch of Abe’s cabin until the setting sun brought an end to my work. We walked back to the house, and entered the cold dark silent store. I lit a kerosene hurricane lamp and placed it in front of the mirrored the bar. The eerie yellow glow sent slivers of flickering light throughout the dusty store and animated our illuminated ghostly shadows against the walls.

I poured each of us a very stiff drink and we took our old bar stool seats at the end of the bar where we used to sit as kids. We laughed about the folks who were around us back then. I found out Rose had passed away shortly after we went off to the war, in the spring of 1943. We mused about whether or not it was an ironic coincidence that Rose had a penchant for singing river related spirituals. We wondered if Abe was still alive.

What are you going to do for a job, my friend? I asked Owny.

Got me a job as a chef in the dining car of the City of New Orleans Pullman passenger train that passes right across the highway, he pointed at the front doors of the store. What are you going to do?

I told him I probably would never have to work another day in my life. Maybe I’ll go to college, I speculated, too soon to tell. I know I want to try to forget the horrors of war. I want to try to be as happy as we were that summer nine years ago.

Chapter 2 - FREE TO WANDER

I used to call my little sister Little. In fact almost everyone called her Little. Her real name is Lillian but when she was born I was quite young and could not pronounce her name properly. Her name rolled off my tongue as, Little. The nickname stuck. She was a very tiny baby after all, and always very small for her age, so the name seemed to fit. She and I grew up here, on this farm in a big old house.

The house was connected to a country store that also featured a liquor bar on the back wall, behind the grocery aisles. My Grandpa built the store after World War I and the front of the structure faced the two lane blacktopped highway, a major north/south Louisiana thoroughfare. There was a big parking lot in front paved with white rangia clam shells. When the cars and trucks pulled up their tires made a unique crunching sound as they rolled over the shells. Lots of side roads and driveways in southern Louisiana were surfaced with the shells which Momma said came from the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain.

The front door of house faced a yard with a grassy lawn and a mimosa tree planted by my Grandpa which Momma particularly loved. The wide tropical tree grew funny fluffy pink flowers and made seeds contained in green pea pods in the summer.

There was a large concrete paved driveway there where the grass ended and on the other side of the tarmac was the bayou. In the distance barely distinguishable on a clear day was a trucker’s weigh station. Otherwise the place was surrounded by fields of sugarcane and pastures with thick growths of hardwoods and palmetto palms beyond the bayou.

Grandpa died on Mardi Gras Day 1934. He had stopped serving liquor in 1920 and died just three months after Prohibition ended. Upon his death our Momma was left to manage the business of the store and run a working farm while Daddy was away in the Navy. Momma’s store and bar provided the only drinking establishment within twenty miles of here; she had a minor business monopoly. There was a constant flow of business.

Momma was a beautiful, outspoken woman who in order to manage the business had to be authoritative. She assumed total command of everything when our Daddy went to heaven in 1935. Unfortunately she had to raise us kids alone.

Back then we lived in difficult times. The nation was in an economic depression, people were out of work, times were tough. But we lived in a world where it seemed people had a more kind, gentle and caring nature, despite our common poverty.

Then there came that beautiful summer when I was eleven years old, and Little was eight when I developed the overwhelming wanderlust to explore the vast property I could see from my bedroom window that stretched from the house to the river.

Momma was very protective of Little and me and when I begged her to allow us to leave the protection of the house, to look around the farm, in other words to let us out from under the wing as it were, it was at first to no avail. My desire only grew stronger the more she resisted. So I resolved to gently beg by asking her every morning at breakfast if Little and I could go out and play beyond the confines of the immediate surroundings of the house. I was curious about everything on and around the property.

Please, can we just go wander around? We won’t get into any trouble, I pleaded every day.

I’ll think about it, she’d respond dryly with no apparent intent to allow us to wander. She was worried about our safety I suppose.

Momma finally relented after about a week of my badgering. I was ecstatic when one morning she commented casually she supposed we were old enough to watch out for one another. I knew her comment was veiled with subtle permission. We would be allowed to be free to wander away from the house.

If ya’ll are old enough to leave the house then you’re old enough to earn it. Both of you will now have chores to perform around the house to help me and Rose, Momma informed us and began to assign us certain tasks which must be accomplished prior to our playtime. I have only two rules, you must promise to keep. Do not leave our property and be home before dark.

Little and I promised, got up from the kitchen table and bolted out the back door slowing down only enough to decide which direction to walk in a world we had seen only from an open door or an upstairs window. Outside my sister and I were happy to be alive and we smiled at one another. We understood each other without a spoken word. It felt good to be free wander wherever we wanted.

We tried to venture out into the fields and pastures every day thereafter, weather permitting. Away from the cool shady confines of the house I became more aware, sensitized, to the environment around me. I realized how oppressively hot and humid the fields can get in the summer. The humidity soaks the air with the sweet smells of honeysuckle and night blooming jasmine and mixes with the sweet and sour airs of wet ploughed earth and the odors of the lush vegetation growing in the fields.

In the morning the delta’s gentle night breezes fade away by sun up. The sun quickly evaporates standing water and dew along the bayou. Sugarcane fields groan in clouds of sweet smelling steam that rises up engorged, green and vibrant with life to meet the sky. Willows and cypress trees hang limp as stillness settles on the earth in preparation for the coming of the summer sun’s brutal rage.

Cumulus clouds the size of mountains climb to the heavens. The sun plays upon these rugae of mountains. The hot water laden air causes a billowing metamorphosis among gigantic clouds to move them higher and higher into the sky as the sun rises. Atmospheric pressure from above flattens the highest of cloud tops into cruel angry black and white anvil shapes. The altitude condenses the water in the top of the cloud which reliably produces rain somewhere sooner or later.

Around noon the color of the now amassed huge puffs of clouds and anvil tops change color from pearly white to silver gray. Air temperatures in the fields climb to 100o, or above. Cicada locusts begin to screech in the pecan trees. Thunder claps in the distance as skies darken ominously. Soon tropical rain falls in torrents as lightning reigns and fills the air with the smell of ozone. Thunderous concussions of cracking lightning vibrate the tin roofs of the sheds and glass in the windows and it seems shakes the whole world itself.

When the rain stops brutal sunshine returns, dissipates the clouds and bakes the fields. As the rain water evaporates, earthy smells join the thick saturated air. There is an unmistakable odor of rotting vegetation, wet hay and cow manure. The late afternoon heat overwhelms cattle which huddle near the hedgerows seeking some semblance of shade. Water in the bayous and the fields and pastures rises again into the atmosphere to evaporate and build tomorrow’s silver mountains of clouds. I climb them in my mind. Only a kid’s curiosity is more compelling than the oppressive heat of a lush Louisiana summer.

At first Little and I wandered aimlessly among the fields and pastures closest to the house and along their hedgerows and barbed wire fences, curiously exploring. Some days we followed the routes of the cow paths through the pastures.

It wasn’t long before we found a particular path along the bayou which eventually led us to a terrifically enormous, Spanish moss draped, live oak tree. The tree’s knarred bark was as thick as a hammer handle. I estimated it would take about fifteen kids Little’s age holding hands to encircle this magnificent plant.

Some of the tree’s longest limbs were bigger than a regular tree and reached to the ground far away from the massive trunk. In places some of these outstretched limbs had re-rooted themselves in the black fertile soil and turned skyward. Beneath the tree there was a distinct aroma rising from among the piles of rotten branches, old acorns and last year’s wet brown decaying leaves. Both of us were captivated by the tree.

It was Little who expressed a sincere desire to climb it and ascend to the topmost branches. At first Little sat on the long low branches and pushed herself up and down with her legs to bounce on the springy branches as if she were on a flying horse. In a matter of minutes she figured out how to climb the entire tree by shimmying along these low branches upwards to reach the trunk where she found knots and holes which allowed her to climb even higher.

I soon learned her climbing technique and joined her way high up to sit comfortably in the nooks of the tree’s massive V-shaped branches. From here we found an unobstructed view of the flat delta land for miles in every direction. We could see the smokestack of a passing freighter plying its way along the river, slowly moving past us on the other side of the levee.

The canopy of the tree provided us shade and a cool reliable wafting breeze. Tucked into the nooks we felt comfortable amidst the thick leafy foliage and believed we were rather invisible. A clean smell of damp earth wafted up from the ground beneath us.

When we got home that afternoon we were excited to tell Momma what we had discovered on our trip. I naively assumed we had been the first people EVER to discover the oak.

Momma said, Oh we all know about that tree. We call it Le Grand Garcon, the Big Boy. The tree is so dear to us we speak of it as if it were a person. The neighbors figure it’s about a thousand years old. It grew so big because it has the perfect growing conditions. Like all life on earth it depends on water and good soil. It’s close to the Mississippi River which gives it both the life giving water and the rich alluvial soil it needs to thrive.

A visit to Le Grande Garcon became the primary destination of our daily walks and explorations. One day from high up in the tree’s branches we could see, in the distance, one of Momma’s rental properties, a small plantation cabin across a wide pasture. The cabin faced the levee and the river road. We could see the back porch of the place. There a boy named Abe lived with his mother.

Little and I noticed after a while that he often sat outside under the covered veranda of the cabin. He was funny looking. His head and face were very round. He had short cropped hair and squinty brown slanted eyes. The boy was bigger and older than me by several years, perhaps a teenager.

Day after day, we saw the boy, rocking in both hands, variously shaped clear glass bottles containing small amounts of water. As he sat on the porch, he would shake or rock a bottle of water repetitively and obsessively in his hands so that beams of direct sunlight reflected off the bottle and the liquid inside it. The reflections of sun beams shone on the boy’s smiling face as light pierced his eyes which made him shutter as their prisms illuminated him. He stared into the bottle, focused on the reflections of the sharp blinding rays. Sometimes the light glanced off of his bottle only to strike our eyes from far across the pasture.

As the early days of June moved toward the summer solstice we noticed other facets of Abe’s life with his bottles. For instance, depending on which bottle he would bring out and the time of day, some bottles took on the pink blush of dawn’s light. When he came out about noon the sun glinted off his bottle with sharp, glancing, slivers of green, purple, or gold light. In the afternoon, some bottles’ liquid shone brown and dirty. Others gleamed green with a flush of algae. Dusk brought on a purple tint coloring the water bottles a comforting hue of royal blue. Some bottles caught the green flash of the long setting summer sun and the pastels of the passing clouds.

There was no doubt the boy was dazzled by his bottles of water. We never saw him without his bottle of water. He pleased himself with them as he rocked with a discernable rhythm as he turned and twisted the bottle. His round little face flushed with happiness, his tiny slanted eyes squinted in the refracted light. Eventually his rocking caused convulsions that shook his body violently. He twitched uncontrollably, his head, neck and torso shuddered. His eyes rolled back into his contorted face in ecstasy. The water’s reflections of sharp light filled his head and the lights meandered into his brain.

Then the twitching stopped. His arms fell limp, the bottle into his lap. In a few minutes he recovered his composure. Then the process began again predictably.

Sometimes Abe set a bottle down on the hand rails of the balustrade surrounding the cabin’s veranda. Then he would lean in closely to study the water inside the bottle only to become dissatisfied with it at rest. He’d pick it up again and resume his rocking.

I wondered what made him behave this way. Why did he do this? How was this comforting to him? What about the flashing light captivated him for so many hours?

One thing was for sure and that is, nothing distracted him from focusing on the