Flambeau Dancers

By Kerlin Sutton

The author presents a historical fiction tale of the heart. The characters bring life to the ever present culture clash between north and south Louisiana. Bizarre antics, outrageous personalities, and a search for truth invite the reader to laugh, love, and cry with a passion unique to the storys time and place.

There is a New Orleans and there is a Louisiana with both a north and a south culture division and also a clear physical separation. There was a plantation, though not named Yucca, but not a Little River Community or a town of St. Maurice, but there could have been..
Excerpt from the prologue

Selected works by the author of photography and short stories are offered as Lagniappe!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524566289

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Kerlin Sutton. 753665

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920122

ISBN:   Softcover     978-1-5245-6629-6

             Hardcover   978-1-5245-6630-2

            EBook         978-1-5245-6628-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 12/08/2017

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For Ellen Nita Sutton Donaldson

A flambeau is a flame—a torch that gives forth a bright light.

The truth can come as a flambeau and bring light into darkness. We can, if we so chose, dance throughout the otherwise dark night with the help of our flambeau.

If the flambeau before which we dance is true and fair to all, then our dance will be joyful. If it is not so and truth is not found, truth will come, of its own time, but it will carry a bill for the dancers to pay.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One The Pea Patch

Chapter Two Mavis

Chapter Three Contraband Bayou

Chapter Four Mad Dog’s Marina

Chapter Five Aunt Clio

Chapter Six The Pelican

Chapter Seven New Orleans

Chapter Eight Rain

Chapter Nine Lord! Lord!

Chapter Ten Christmastime

Chapter Eleven Printemps

Chapter Twelve Haunted House

Prologue

Sherman Parish is located just north of a clear and present line across the state of Louisiana. Though never shown on maps, it is ever there to divide Sherman Parish, with its pine-covered low hills of the northern half of the state from the river bottoms and the swamps of the southern half. Only thirty miles separated the Pea Patch on the north in Sherman Parish from the village of St. Maurice on the south in the parish of Lafitte. Although they were geographically quite close, they were on the other side of the world in their cultural heritage and as clearly defined as their map lines.

Sherman was pine hill country and mostly Protestant with an American lineage. Lafitte was French and Catholic; their ancestors had come from France. Later more French came, this time from Quebec. The two quite different cultures, north and south, often met and, sometimes, though not often, collided. This story has been composed mostly of hot air, yet there is a measure of truth present underneath. Such was the disorganized land that was the home of the Durhams—of Camille and Paxton, Mavis and RW, and Aunt Clio. It was also the homeland of Wilmer Groat of the Pea Patch and others that were made completely of the humid hot air of Louisiana, air with only an occasional cool breeze to stir the heat. There is a New Orleans, and there is a Louisiana, with both a north and a south cultural division and also a clear physical separation. There was a plantation, though not named Yucca, but not a Little River Community or a town of St. Maurice. But there could have been.

Louisiana was the land that, in 1692, Robert Cavalier de La Salle claimed for King Louis XIV of France. It was a vast land, occupied by alligators and Indians. It was a wild and diverse territory and remains both wild and diverse in many ways. The Indians are gone, but the alligators have remained and thrived. Many people and customs have prevailed over the years that have passed and have replaced the Indians, but not the alligators. The first Europeans to come were the Catholic French, who soon brought their voodoo slaves from Haiti. Even more doctrinaire were the Spanish Catholics that next ruled the territory. The Americans that followed brought their English language and their many Protestant versions of Christianity. Catholicism was pressed on to their slaves by their masters and was in part imposed on their voodoo. This mixture yet lingers in dark places in Louisiana.

Its presence is best known in the old town of New Orleans and can also be found at night on the swampy bayous.

Let us find a site between the two states of Louisiana to begin our story. The Pea Patch will do nicely.

Chapter One

The Pea Patch

Wilmer Groat looked more like one of the local redneck farmers of Sherman Parish than he did of someone that was the governor of the state of Louisiana. This was possibly the leading reason that he was now the governor and not a local redneck. He stood on the screened back porch of the shotgun house that had, for many years past, been the Groat family home. It was no longer a family home, for Wilmer was the sole owner and periodic occupant of the Pea Patch in the backwoods parish of Sherman in northwest Louisiana. It was now his, entirely, as there were now no other Groats to claim ownership. It was more home to him than was the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge, miles to the south, which was the home that he had fought all odds, for so long and hard, to acquire.

He put on his denim overalls and stood, barefoot and quite dominating, in the front room of the small cabin and delivered a tirade that was directed at the only other occupant of the room, Sherman Parish Sheriff

T. J. Moss, who interjected a weak Sure, Governor, sure after every opportunity offered by Wilmer. Moss mopped his brow and edged toward the front door. Wilmer’s voice was loud and needed to be to carry over the noise that was being made by his guinea hens out in the yard, beyond the back steps of the cabin. Guinea hens were kept as much for their guard-dog caterwauling as for their eggs.

Now, TJ, I made you, and you know that now, don’t you, son? You know that if I made you, then I can break you—you listening to me, TJ?

Sure do, Governor. Now I know that, I sure do, Sheriff Moss said as he edged closer to the door. Groat was getting wound up.

Well, you see, he continued, you got to get some culture on your side, boy, and get yourself lots of help. I’m going to help you one more time because I’m going to need you to help me run for reelection. I’m trying to keep it simple for you. You see that, don’t you?

I sure do see it, Governor. I sure as heck do.

"You are too damn country acting, TJ, and that Durham