T-Garçon of Grand Isle

By Lana Laws Downing

In the 1920s, following the death of his parents, young Alphonse Henri Caillet moves to his grandmother’s home on Grand Isle, a tiny island off the coast of Louisiana. Islanders have no bridge, no electricity and no running water. Alphonse tries to fit in at Grand Isle school, but bullies tease him and give him the nickname “T-Garçon.” Alphonse and his grandmother have little money, but they find inventive ways to supplement their meager income. His grandmother is a healer—a traiteur—and a midwife. Alphonse takes on a summer job entertaining wealthy children from New Orleans who vacation on the island. He fulfills his wish to search for Lafitte’s treasure. T-Garçon’s wise grandmother does her best to raise him to be an accepting, responsible, God-fearing young man. Above all, she wants Alphonse to have an education. She loves rearing her grandson, and Alphonse begins to thrive in her care on this tiny island of legend and lore where neighbors help one another.

Books by Lana Laws Downing;
Grand Isle Farewell 2020
T-Garçon of Grand Isle 2018
Jon Teel 2018
Heaven and High Water 2011

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483491912

Book preview

T-Garçon

of

GRAND ISLE

Lana Laws Downing

Copyright © 2018 Lana Laws Downing.

Pencil drawings by Grace Faucheux and Maddie Hamlin. Photography by author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9192-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9191-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018911790

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date:  10/10/2018

For our granddaughters, Maddie,

Alex Ann, and Isabella Hamlin,

who love Grand Isle.

FOREWORD

ON THE COAST OF Louisiana there is a small island, separated entirely from the rest of the state by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Barataria Bay. Grand Isle is an idyllic place, verdant, windswept, fragrant with honeysuckle and tropical plants—most of the time. Periodic hurricanes bring winds and flood waters that leave the tiny island in ruins. Still, families that settled the island nearly three centuries ago continue to live on Grand Isle and love the island like no other place on earth. This is the story of one such woman, Granmere Eloise Broussard Caillet, whose ancestors came long ago to Grand Isle. It is also the story of her grandson, Alphonse Henri Caillet, son of Eloise’s son Henri Caillet, an islander, and his wife Victoria O’Malley Caillet, who was born and reared in New Orleans. Eloise Caillet and her grandson Alphonse lived on Grand Isle during the 1920’s, when the island existed in near-total isolation. Elected officials might get to Gretna, parish seat of Jefferson Parish, once a year, or they might not. Grand Isle had no electricity, no natural gas, no indoor plumbing, and no real roads or streets. The road that would become Highway 1 was not much more than a dirt path because there was no bridge to the island, although a bridge was in the planning stages.

TURTLE FARMING

ALPHONSE HENRI CAILLET WAS small for his age of eight years, five months, and three days. His head reached only to the shoulder of the next shortest boy in third grade at Grand Isle School. Alphonse and his grandmother lived together in the center of the island in a small cottage raised high on pillars of soft, homemade red bricks. It had a cypress-shingled roof and a wide gallery across the front. They lived on a lane shaded by windswept live oaks whose branches met to form a living canopy over the narrow path. Nearby was the white clapboard Catholic church, which they attended whenever a visiting priest offered Mass. Alphonse’s parents had died in an influenza epidemic when Alphonse was very young.

Alphonse was a beautiful child. His grandmother knew it, but Alphonse did not. He thought of himself as too thin, too short, too blond, and definitely not tough enough for Grand Isle School. His granmere, on the other hand, saw his potential. His cotton top of white blond hair would darken. The spindly legs would grow, his fine features would lose their baby look, and he would become a very nice-looking man. She saw her dead son, Alphonse’s father, in him.

Granmere Eloise Caillet was a diminutive, handsome woman. She weighed no more now than she did at the age of fifteen. She had a thick head of gray hair that she usually kept in a bun piled on top of her head under one of her work hats, or at the nape of her neck under her Sunday hat. She had a high forehead, a delicate small nose, and piercing brown eyes, unlike her grandson’s clear blue eyes.

Alphonse did not remember his parents, nor did he remember the baby sister who died with them. He thought he could remember the house in which he lived when he had a family, but he was not certain. Granmere had one photograph of Alphonse and his family, which she kept on the ledge above their whitewashed fireplace. In it, his handsome papa stands behind a chair in which his mama is seated, holding baby Alice on her lap. Alphonse is standing in front of his papa, his hand on the arm of his mama’s chair. He is very young, perhaps two years old. Alphonse often stared at that photograph, which was in a cardboard frame marked, Theodore Felix, Photographer, Carrollton Avenue, New Orleans.

Granmere sometimes watched Alphonse as he handled the photograph; he seemed to be soaking it in. He appeared happy most of the time, but she knew that in his heart her grandson longed for his lost family. She also knew his life at school here on Grand Isle was not always easy. Above all else, Granmere wanted her grandson to have an education, no matter what it took. And she knew she loved the child fiercely with all her heart.

Alphonse felt safe and content in two places: in the cottage he shared with his granmere, and at Mr. John Ludwig’s turtle farm on the bay side of the island. He worked after school at the turtle farm for the sum of ten cents a day. At all other times, he was at the mercy of the boys who resided on his lane. They were not bad boys, really, but they easily fell into that unpleasant pattern of bullying those weaker than oneself. There were two families of them, big strapping boys who lived to torment Alphonse. They never called the small boy by his given name.

"Hey, T-Garçon, they called as he ran as fast as his short legs could carry him. We gonna get you after school, or, We gonna beat out your brains when we catch you!"

Other times, they focused on his striking blond hair, so different from their own dark hair, and called him tete de blanc—white head. This was not a terrible thing to call a person, but their tone and taunting laughter made it sound like a curse. In truth, much of the time, the life of Alphonse Henri was not a happy or an easy one.

His job at the turtle farm gave him a great amount of satisfaction. He was in charge of the baby turtles. He had to put out of his mind the fact that they would soon provide turtle soup for rich patrons of fancy New Orleans restaurants. Each day, he cleaned the water pan, put fresh sand in the pen, and fed his babies whatever Mr. John could provide of the scraps from his hotel dining room. They nibbled on fresh vegetables and fruit or a bit of meat or fish when it was available. After the turtles grew in the pen for a time, Mr. John released them into the wild to continue growing. In a few years, he would pay trappers to recapture the creatures to sell at the market.