Devils Bayou

By John DeMers

1811 – Slaves from Devils Bayou and other plantations along the Mississippi River join in the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history. On their way to “conquer” New Orleans, the rebels are gunned down by plantation owners and federal troops. Many of the captured are executed, their heads displayed on pikes along the River Road. Even toddlers carried by their parents are severely punished - for the rest of their lives.

1956 – International celebrity artist Stephen Winston, co-founder of the Devils Bayou Art Colony, disappears during a summer session. He leaves a studio of overturned easels, squeezed-out paints and splattered blood, presumably his own. His wife, fellow artist Stella Winston, is released after initial suspicion. Returning to Louisiana a year later to have Winston declared legally dead, Stella then disappears from her own life story.

2021 – After a long, quiet life as a wife and mother on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Stella Dorn passes away while trying to organize her papers. Few know anything of her past, yet that doesn’t stop Stella’s son from contacting her grandson, a federal attorney in Washington. Sam Jacobs takes on the estate case only under duress. He promises he’ll search quickly for whatever might belong in the estate. The narrative points him first to New York City, then to the French Quarter and Garden District of New Orleans – and finally to the house at Devils Bayou itself.

New Orleans native John DeMers uses his sixth published novel to explore the myriad ways the distant past can suddenly become not so distant at all. In Devils Bayou (One River Books, $15.95), DeMers follows Sam Jacobs as he peels away the layers of time. The attorney discovers that, while most of us spend finite periods on this earth, some conspire, for good or ill, to achieve something quite different. In the nature religions brought by slaves from West Africa via the Caribbean, eternal life occurs considerably south of Christianity’s billowy heaven.

“It has taken me five novels set elsewhere to find the courage to take on my own complicated hometown,” DeMers says. “I have always considered New Orleans fairly enlightened compared to the rest of the South when it comes to race relations. Certainly, today’s white New Orleanians are aware of how much of ‘our’ culture we owe to numberless African Americans. I was drawn to this story, which came to me in a nightmare, by the chance to feel my way along our very tangled path.”

According to DeMers, one of the joys of penning Devils Bayou was revisiting in his imagination dozens of experiences that helped form him – from bonfires along the Mississippi River each Christmas Eve to multi-course dinners with cocktails and wine at restaurants like the fictional Julien’s, from boutique French Quarter hotels with “slave quarters” to renovated shotgun houses in the Marigny. All things carry the exotic imprint of France and Spain, and all bear the shameful marks of Black slavery.

DeMers is the author of 57 previous fiction and nonfiction books, including the Chef Brett mysteries beginning with Marfa Shadows (the wilds of Far West Texas) and New Wine (the fictional Greek island of Delfinos).

• Language: English
• Publisher: John DeMers
• Release date: Feb 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005906115

Book preview

1

I woke abruptly from a bad dream, one of those whose ambiguity is matched only by its violence. The only thing I could remember from it was that I was about to die.

With impressive persistence and undeserved charity, my real life flooded in as soon as my eyes cracked half-open in the darkness. It was three days before Christmas, my two children were asleep downstairs, I had early meetings at the DOT. And the space beside me was icy, profoundly empty. That last puzzle piece assaulted me last, I’m certain, because it intended to stick around. And my iPhone, its ringer silenced, was still managing to vibrate for all it was worth on the dark wooden night table.

We are taught from a tender age to dread such calls, the kind that come at – what? – the screen on my phone said it was 2:47. We don’t really get many calls at such a time, no matter how many timezones our extended family might live in, and they are almost exclusively bad news. In ways I’m still struggling to calculate, this call would prove no exception.

I yanked the phone from its charging cord, stumbled around the bed to the window and pushed open the slightest edge of curtain. Yes, I might have been looking to see if my wife’s car was there - though I maintained, even in that moment without witnesses, that I was checking for the promised snow. There wasn’t any snow falling in McLean, just a soiled dusting from three days earlier. There wasn’t any car either. Only then did I click the screen to take the call.

He-ll-oo, I sputtered, my voice sounding small, muffled and foreign in the silent bedroom. Even to me. The garble might have given the caller pause, or maybe it was only the technology.

Sammy. It’s, uh, Warren Dorn.

The mystery of the name was one too many, striking me as familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. This produced an uncomfortable and what felt like endless silence. Just as I was about to give up and say something truly dumb, the words left my lips.

"Uncle Warren?"

Sure is, he said.

His words were brighter than his tone. I thought my uncle sounded tired. Then again, it had been – calculating quickly – more than twenty years since we’d last had reason to exchange words. After those years, beginning when he was an adult and I was still a child, he might have gotten tired indeed.

I have some news, Sammy. So I wanted to call you myself.

No one had called me Sammy in a very long time.

It’s your grandmother, he said.

What’s happened?

Well, son, you know she’s been doing very poorly? This seemed a question, but I suspect we both knew the technically true answer was no, I didn’t know. "She has been, Sammy. And tonight she passed away. She was eighty-three. We can all be glad she’s not suffering anymore."

What was it?

The cancer, of course.

Well, yes, I said. The man had a point. Quite a few relatives on my mother’s side of the family had died of the cancer over the decades, as I’d learned the hard way, checking the history to fill out medical forms of my own. Perhaps my mother had as well, though if I didn’t know that now, I probably never would. That’s really rough, Uncle Warren. No matter how long it’s been since your previous conversations, a certain intimacy somehow creeps in when you’re related to someone by blood. An intimacy that’s frozen somewhere in the past.

Yes, it was. But she died at home, with hospice. It was the way she wanted it. I was struggling to comment when Warren Dorn beat me to it. "I mean, if you’re going to die of the cancer."

Yes.

I wanted to give you the news first, a heads-up, Sammy. You know, before you heard about it, or maybe saw anything in the papers, or –

"Uncle Warren, I – I don’t think I’m following you. Newspapers?

You know. He said nothing else for a long moment, clearly gathering that, beyond his being with or near my grandmother when she died at home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I was more estranged from my mother’s family than he or even I had realized. My mother had left us, after all, when I was practically a baby.

It’s her art, of course, he said, as though that explained everything.

Sure, but – I stumbled. I was out of my depth, so I figured stumbling forward might be better than standing still. "I know she painted a few things. I think my mother left something somewhere, if it’s not lost in her moves. I figured her painting was, you know, some kind of hobby."

It might have been whatever passes for static in the age of wireless communication, or it might be that my uncle laughed and moved quickly to cover it up.

"It was a good deal more than that, Sammy. Didn’t that mother of yours teach you anything?"

I decided that question would have to keep - in for a penny, in for a pound.

"No, she didn’t, I blurted sharply, probably saying more than I wished. But I looked her up on the internet one time. I knew her so little, almost not at all, especially after Grandpa – I stopped, hurting a little, or more like a lot. After he passed away, you know? And here I am a lawyer who looks up anything and everything on the internet. But other than offer to check her criminal records for $19.95, the internet didn’t tell me a damn thing. She was just a regular lady, right? No matter what I thought –"

No, Sammy. There was that laugh again. It was making me angry. I kept reminding myself that here was a man whose mother had just died, and I really could stand to be more sympathetic when something about him rubbed me the wrong way. "But I do think I know what happened, son. What name did you search for?"

Stella Dorn, of course.

Why, there! That explains it.

What?

She became Stella Dorn when she married my father. But she had another name before that.

Like what? A maiden name? I didn’t know if people like Warren Dorn really still called it that, or maybe birth name or whatever else, but it was too late in every sense to worry now.

"No, Sammy. She was married before. That name."

I, uh, I, well, I never knew about any of that stuff.

Barbara’s fault, Sammy, like I always say. We’re not exactly bursting with pride about the way she treated you. And your father.

Just the facts, please. "So, my grandmother was married before Grandpa and had a different last name. Are you trying to tell me, she was somebody?"

Yes. That’s exactly it. And I’m more than trying, son. You should look up ‘Stella Winston’ sometime. You’ll get a really different result. I’m sure of it.

More awake now, I made it downstairs past my kids’ silent bedroom doors to the kitchen and managed to get some coffee on. I tucked the phone between shoulder and ear, dropping it only twice, as Warren Down filled me in on some details.

Grandma Dorn, as I guess I would have called her if I’d had reason to call her anything at all, had been sick for going on five years, which apparently impressed the oncologists no end. An initial diagnosis of breast cancer had led to a double mastectomy and considerable hope – at least until malignant cells started turning up in her stomach, throat, liver and finally bones. Just about everywhere except her lungs.

Thank God she quit smoking, Uncle Warren said. We both had to laugh.

As for her art, though I intended to do a bit of research myself, my uncle did let on that my grandmother had been both accomplished and well-paid at one point – the mid-1950s, he said – and had even helped her then-husband start an art colony. Her work was respected and exhibited at the time, he said, which made me think of the few simple, amateur pieces I’d seen and wonder – what the hell happened? Uncle Warren guessed she had retired at some point, though her later work made that statement almost unnecessary.

But what happened?

That, Sammy, my mother never told us. He thought a moment. And that nobody seems to know. I’ve asked and I’ve dug around a bit, here and there. Eventually, when the cancer took over, you know, all the rest seemed so lost in the past that it didn’t matter.

I can understand that.

It was my turn to question. And you think there will be media coverage?

Yes, I do.

Wow. All this time I didn’t know she was a big deal.

Sure, son. She was. But there also was a big, well –

What?

A big scandal, I guess you’d say. He paused. Sammy, I’m sure you’ll read all about it. But it was Stephen Winston, and he was an even bigger deal. At least way back then.

I’ve never heard of him. For whatever that’s worth.

He was a professor, at NYU, and a kind of art celebrity, I guess you’d call him. An artist and an art critic too. He was twelve years older than my mother and already married – that much I do know – and Stella was one of his students. Basically, that didn’t stop him for one second. It was in all the papers, in New York especially.

But they got married?

"Eventually, yes. But there was all kinds of nasty talk. Even in the sleazy art world, so it all must have been very nasty."

Wow. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t keep myself from asking the oldest question in human storytelling. "And then what happened?"

Uncle Warren chuckled and probably would have kept on chuckling, except he forced himself to focus.

Listen, son. You and I both know you’re going to look all this up, right?

Well, sure.

And it might be I’m not remembering it all right anyway. But I’m afraid if we keep going, I might forget the reason I called you.

Reason?

Well, of course to tell you the news. I wouldn’t exactly count on my dear sister to take care of that any more than anything else, would I?

I didn’t respond.

So now, Sammy. I really would have called you. But there is this other thing, and I think it’s big, and it might even be kind of urgent, based on what I’ve been telling you. My mother wasn’t, especially after the cancer, well, son, she wasn’t exactly the most organized person you ever met.

I see. I mean, she’s not the first old person –

It’s worse than that, Sammy. I mean it.

Are you telling me Grandma didn’t have a will?

Not at all, son. Best I can tell, she might have had three, four or five of them, and I can’t find a damn one.

So you’ll need a probate attorney in Maryland to figure –

No, Sammy, you still aren’t getting it, are you? There might be a good deal of money involved, and property, and lots of paintings that are spread all around.

But they’d be somebody else’s property, right? The paintings, I mean. That should be easy.

I’m afraid, nothing about this is easy. My uncle cleared his throat. I heard him click his tongue against his teeth and lips, disappointed that I was such a slow student. "There are other people, Sam. A gallery. Plus a foundation. And they never get tired of suing each other. Even after all these years. And sure, a little of this is in Maryland. But most of it’s in New York and down in Louisiana, and who the hell even knows what the law says there?"

"It’s French, I think.

Whatever, son. This family needs your help.

You’ll be delighted, I said with major-league sarcasm, that I’m licensed to practice law in the District and in Virginia. Not in Maryland. Not in New York. And definitely not in any damn Louisiana.

"I’ve been checking. There’s reciprocity –"

Cripes. Like that’s easy, especially these days.

Sammy, listen.

I have a job and I have kids. To my horror, I stopped several paces short of declaring "I have a wife. I’d vowed to check where that might turn up in the Five Stages of Grief. Maybe denial" turned inside out. But there was no time for that right now.

We’ll do whatever needs to be done, Sammy. To help you. We’ve got a little money set aside. I think my mother really wanted to see this settled right.

Whatever the hell that ends up meaning.

"Sure. But it’s the life’s work of two people, not one, we’re talking about here – Stella Winston and Stephen Winston. It’s gone unsettled for a very long time, Sammy, with all these people grabbing for any piece of the pie they can. Don’t you owe your grandmother a decent effort to settle it now? And maybe we’d just be doing the right thing by my mother and her, you know, legacy. At long last."

That was too much. I had been silent for a long time, remembering my grandmother, of course, but mostly remembering my grandfather. I was still just a kid when he killed himself. I’d cried inconsolably at his funeral. I had to be carried out of the church. Some days it felt like I was still being carried out of that church.

And now, this?

Listen to me, Uncle, I said as firmly as I could. "I can’t work in even one of those states, and I do federal transportation law, for Christ’s sake. And if all these other parties are what you say, they can afford plenty more lawyers than you can. Do you understand? They’re not going to roll over and let us carry off whatever is in the treasure chest, if there even is a treasure chest. Come on. It sounds to me like this Winston character was a bigger deal anyway, right? You said he was. He’s the one with the gallery. He’s the one with the foundation. Let them worry about it, is what I’m saying. I don’t care if he’s a rickety old bastard now or been dead a million years, you should try to work with his lawyers – and leave me the hell alone."

"Sure, Sammy. Sure. We could do what you say. Sure. Except for one little detail."

"It should be easy. Two choices: Either this guy is living or this guy is dead. And either way, he can afford more lawyers."

You’d better listen to me, son, Warren Dorn growled, ignoring everything I’d said, his frustration turning his words into a warning. "Stephen Winston disappeared from the art colony he ran with my mother, with your grandmother, in 1956. And he was never seen or heard from again."

2

The loud thump of a closing door awakened me the next time, some unknown number of hours later, and I was curled up stiff, tight and sore on the couch next to our unplugged Christmas tree. I couldn’t remember any precise end to my conversation with Uncle Warren, except that I never told him anything except no.

Nor could I remember crawling onto the couch with any intention of sleeping. It did look like there was pale, misty daylight coming in through a slit between curtains. And I did feel cold from falling asleep without covers. But most of all I felt confused, disrupted, displaced and desperate. Kristen was leaning, looking all too fresh and showered beneath her gray down jacket, against the inside of the front door. Her hand still clutched the silver knob.

I’m sorry, Sam, she said. I must have looked up at her as though I didn’t understand English. "I mean, for waking you. Not for – well, you know, this. I had no idea you’d be sleeping right here."

I had no idea either.

So, I’m sorry.

Of course, was all I said, waiting for her to say whatever she had come here, to our home with our children, to say. By all appearances, she thought of two or three ways to start before choosing the one I probably liked least. Look, Sam, David is here with me.

Like waiting in the car?

No Sam, like standing outside this door.

You’re kidding me. Really?

Listen, Sam. Everybody kept telling me to listen. First my uncle, and now my wife. I was beginning to think I had a listening disorder. He said he wanted to –

Protect you? I interrupted.

Well, he wanted to be close, in case I needed him. In case, you know –

"In case I did something crazy?"

I told him you wouldn’t.

Gee thanks, Kris. But he’s right outside the door, listening?

Right.

By now I was sitting straight up on the couch. The light was growing brighter outside the window and I figured my kids would be the next things streaming into the room. I didn’t want them rubbing their eyes and hearing their mother tell me – God knows what.

So, what is it, Kristen?

It’s Christmas.

Yes. I nodded at the shadowy but decorated tree. There were a few wrapped presents around its base, which also featured a tree skirt appropriately red and green, with splashes of brown trying to resemble reindeer. I’ve figured out that much.

"So Sam, David and I have decided something. About the kids."

What? This was taking a very wrong turn.

We’ve decided to take them with us to Aspen for Christmas and New Year’s. David has a really awesome great condo there and –

"Our kids?" In retrospect, that had to be one of my dumbest questions ever.

Of course. David doesn’t have any – you already know that, right? And there’s plenty of room. Anyway, he’s already bought the flights and, well, we’re just here to pick them up. It will be a great holiday. They like to ski. You know that, Sam.

But –

Look, we decided not to worry much about their packing. We’ll grab a few basic things and pick up the rest when we’re there. We need to be at Reagan in a couple hours. We also – She stopped, having a related thought but battling over whether to actually say it. "We also thought it would be best this way."

Without any time, I explained, perhaps to no audience beyond myself, "for me to do something crazy."

You really need to know: I kept promising him you wouldn’t.

That’s great. I’m so reassured.

She took a step forward, and I caught the slightest hint of sympathy. Or maybe empathy. In such moments, the two things look so much alike. She started to unzip her jacket to the unfamiliar red sweatshirt she was wearing underneath, then suddenly stopped cold.

Sam, I hope you understand –

Her train of thought was halted be a single word, stated as a question, in a very quiet voice very close:

Mom?

Maia, two months short of 9, stood at the start of our hallway alongside the stairs, with her brother Rob, aged 12, directly behind her. Both looked sleepy, but sleepy was quickly going into hiding behind worried.

Yeah, said Rob. What are you two talking about?

Perhaps because I couldn’t quite answer that question, as much as Kristen wished I might, I didn’t. We stared at the kids and then at each other, and then at them again.

Great news, kids, Kristen announced. Uncle David is taking us to ski in Aspen for Christmas. We can stay past New Year’s.

Huh? offered Maia, insightfully.

Leave it to Rob, surely a lawyer in the making, to cut to the chase.

But Mom, he said, nudging his chin in the appropriate direction. "We have like a tree."

"There’s a lot of pretty trees in Aspen, Robbie. They actually grow there. I promise."

But what about Dad? This was Maia, God love her.

He’ll be fine, Kristen said. A sterling endorsement. "He’s got, you know, lots of friends."

If you’ve never heard the sound of a tunnel with no light at the end of it, you’d definitely hear that sound in the way Kristen said friends. I looked at Maia and then at Rob, and then I heard my voice say something I didn’t think I’d live to hear.

Mom’s right, I whispered, smiling tiredly, rubbing my eyes before settling my elbows on my legs. I really do.

It took some doing after that, but Kristen and I divided our kids by gender and helped each toss a few necessities into the nearest carry-on, reminding both to grab toothbrushes – which was funny, since those would surely be the easiest items for them to replace. Then we all engaged in hugs, and then Kristen opened the door to David, wearing a down jacket that more or less matched hers and holding his green wool hat in his hand. He told my kids good morning as Kristen moved to his side, merely nodding at me. With relief, I figured. He really had been listening.

Maia raced without warning back inside, propelling her small self into my arms.

Have fun, Daddy, she squealed with her eyes pressed closed against my side.

Yeah, Dad, said Rob, following his sister into my embrace. You have like a good Christmas, okay?

David picked up the two small suitcases. Kristen took each child by a hand. And then they were gone.

It took me a while to shut the front door. I mumbled something, without knowing what, on my way back to the couch, then picked out a sight that annoyed me, obviously, more than it ever should have. Trundling across the burgundy and gray area rug toward the thin, brightening sliver of sun, I bent and plugged in the Christmas tree. The lights came on, supplying what little magic electricity could.

It took me three calls in quick succession for Warren Dorn to pick up. Like me what suddenly seemed a lifetime ago, he’d been trying to get a little sleep.

3

Warren Dorn drove into DC from my grandmother’s house seven miles east of Salisbury on the Eastern Shore. It actually was snowing most of his three-hour drive, just enough to scare off uncommitted motorists without slowing him down more than a minute or two. He was standing and checking his wristwatch, a worn, brown leather satchel pressed under his right arm, when I walked into Union Station to catch both him and my train.

Sammy! he shouted when my accelerated step caught his attention from the crowd.

Uncle Warren! I felt a smile fighting its way onto my face.

He was smaller than I remembered him, and naturally, his hair was silver. Still, his wrinkles rode his tanned skin with some grace, turning white only around his deep-set green-brown eyes. He was wearing rumpled jeans and a University of Maryland basketball parka. I saw bits of my mother in him, and apparently the feeling was mutual.

You’re my sister’s boy all right, he crowed, vigorously shaking my hand before our formality disintegrated into an extended bear hug. I always did see a lot of Barbara in you.

Thanks. Yes, that was sarcasm.

Except you grew up.

Why, you did too, uncle.

Growing up sounded a great deal more palatable than growing old.

He looked me over, not uncritically, and that forced me to do much the same to myself. If my kids had packed for Aspen like minimalists at Kristen’s instruction, I made them look like Victorians touring Africa with an army of luggage bearers. I had on a gray suit with the tie loosened, the easiest way to carry a suit on a train or plane being on you. I had a small case, holding a clean shirt, underwear and toiletries, plus the latest John Sandford thriller, a notebook and a pen I could get to during the ride. Something inside me never knew what to pack when I didn’t know where I was going, or exactly why.

Also, getting out of that house seemed better sooner than later, and definitely before the good cheers of Christmas attacked from all sides. Something was comforting in the chaos of a train station.

I had indeed made it to my first meeting at the DOT, an overlong legal team progress report that seemed so unimportant that I left my comments with an assistant and headed out before my second meeting could get past coffee and breakfast from Duck Donuts. I spun and grabbed a sweet future spare tire with maple and bacon, not wishing to seem ungrateful.

Son, offered my uncle, nodding to his satchel, let’s find a place we can grab some coffee and I can spread this all out for you.

We did. And he did, explaining that here were a few things I could peruse on the train – once he had provided some context, of course. He’d picked them up from his mother’s study, which he admitted had become quite a pack-rat mess in the past few cancer-shadowed years. Once he’d set the stage, I told him I was impressed with the job he’d done with only ten or fifteen minutes before hitting the road.

Uncle Warren opened the satchel to a small printed photo of himself and the lady I recognized as his mother, though mostly because she looked like I imagined my own mother might look at eighty. In truth, my mother was two years younger than my uncle, but the suggestive power of the photograph was uncanny.

It was in the eyes, I decided. There was mischief in those eyes, not to mention a kind of angry strength,