Moonwater

By James Pumpelly

Young Professor Garo Daigle returns to his Louisiana backwater home, after a four-year absence, hoping to make amends with his evangelical parents. His hope is quickly turned on its heels by the suspicion of murder, infidelity, and the onus of political corruption. Their reconciliation efforts are marred by pessimism, a dogma on the edge of despair, and a tragic certainty that the Creator is a threat to human existence.
Reverend Elwood and Mother Daigle annoy and twist their prodigal son's memories into wrenching confessions, youthful pangs of unconsummated passion, and imagined escapes. These acts become the nexus between the feverish past and a palpable paradise, with Julia Delacroix's fervent love as his guiding star. The succubus of torrid dreams as real and present as hunger and thirst. His longing is easily satisfied, if only his heart will surrender.
A cast of rascally characters and the sensuously beautiful Julia he left behind - who, in his absence, has borne a child christened in his name – create the turmoil propelling the plot through three generations relived over a long weekend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667887364

Book preview

From deep in the purple stillness came an eldritch

wail alerting the cypress sentinels of the swamp –

the mother of loneliness had suffered travail.

I

Unbending her fiery splendor on cypress knees, pagan Dawn crawls out of the smoking swamp, splaying her blood-red rays over Bayou Rouge, seeping through long-leafed tupelo and moss-draped oaks to spot the mildewed walls of Garo Daigle’s gabled loft.

Disturbed under heat-heavy splotches dappling his musty sheet, Garo yawns, stretching his un-rested frame to an upright pose. Squinting road-weary eyes, he sniffs at the hint of frying bacon, a hot iron skillet wreathing its Sabbath offerings up the dank of narrow stairs - the gable landing creaking under his mother’s stealthy step, her practiced push on the warping attic door.

"Mo-orn-nin’ son, the centaur-screech of rusting hinges companioning her across the pine-plank floor, the fraying rug of nylon stockings. Good t’ have yuh home on somethin’ other’n a holiday."

Arranging one-handedly a braid of pewter hair, she frames asperity:

So, what’s chased yuh home, son? What’s made yuh drive fer night n’ day jist t’ git here n’ collapse in th’ attic? Must be somethin’ big. Huh? Huh? Somethin’ dark n’ ugly a-botherin’ yuh, child. A mother knows when somethin’s-

Spanish moss, a yawning Garo fends, accepting a demitasse trembling from her gray flannel sleeve, the sensuous aroma of New Orleans coffee the one southern urbanity her rude religion allows. The moss is so profuse on the oaks that the sun only peeks through in patches. Garo surveying the angled plaster overhead: silhouettes of boles, limbs, leaves, and moss in carnal masquerade before the invading fire of dawn.

Same ol’ Garo, his mother summoning disgust, stretching audibly to smooth into something she deems presentable his blond and sleep-rumpled hair. Always avoidin’ th’ truth. Always a-talkin’ his way round things that matter t’ git t’ what glitters ‘n glints.

Humph! The scour of four years absence not erasing her biting words, her morbid tears, the nauseating whiffs of conflicting powders and dime store perfumes - a remembered revulsion rising yeastily in Garo’s chest. What is, is, Mother, and there’s nothing you nor your temple of doom can do to alter it.

Bending over a two-handed sip of chicory and dark roast coffee, he winces from its tongue-stinging heat. Why don’t you believe your own cant? he challenges, blowing across the lava of beans steaming from the crazed china cup. According to your incredibly literal Bible, it was God, Mother, God Almighty who created the world. Not your bumbling bishop. And as I recall, the first chapter of Genesis states God was pleased with what He saw. Not to mention, He created the earth and the heavens in a paltry seven days. God Almighty, Mother, not your-

"Stop! a finger reeking of onions and pork fat stabbing his empurpled lips, the cotton-thick air absorbing her venom before the sorcery of words can poison. Stop ‘fore yuh go a’blasphemin’ yo’self! And it was six days, not seven, she snaps contemptuously, further discussion having the threat of discovery, some hidden sin she may find repulsive; a vacant fear in her writhen face, her thin-lipped twitch-of-a-saintly-smile. God hears us, Garo Oliver Daigle, hears us whether we like it or not. ‘Sides, th’ Bible’s th’ same for ev-ver-ee-one!"

A boding detachment hollowing her voice, the sanguine promise of the nascent morning vanishing before her menace, what light has penetrated the room now banished by a blackening cloud, a gust of wind, an ominous, Stygian darkness thickening the heavy air - the vast, bleak waste of things dead and dying between them.

Igniting, by long years of habit and woe, the kerosene lamp on the mildewed nightstand, she fumbles a phosphoric flame, adjusting the wick, her quivering hands clack-clattering the globe back in place, conjuring from the smoke-smeared glass a dim remembrance of light - lurid circles jouncing over plantation scenes in the water-stained wallpaper, figures under pale-shadowed oaks, repetitive covens of long-skirted ladies close-cringing as gossamer ghosts – the while, returning the lamp to its mark in the mold, and cracking balefully:

"As I was tellin’ ya, Garo, God hears us, like-it-or-not!"

As if, he muses, startled by freakish flashings and threatening thunder. Better shut the windows, he warns; Mother Daigle shuffling warily to a flapping fray of flour sack curtains to huff down the dingy pane.

"So, why did yuh come? she persists, patting the footboard of the night-mussed bed before perching with diligent stiffness, ‘cause o’ poo-uhr ol’ Brother Felix? one fisted hand stifling a retching rattle, a cough dying away in a sigh. They say it might’a been muhr-duhr. Probably was, yuh know, Mother Daigle oracular, clearing her throat, her swampy voice a dark glissade of mystery. Yo’ daddy fears it so…a revelation while a-searchin’ out last Sund’y’s sermon, it was. A vision."

Trailing off, her skull-bleak pallor takes on a ghoulish glow, a stab of lightning grazing her sweat-polished features like a glint from an upraised blade, a reflecting flash from a marble sarcophagus recumbent by the iron fence footboard.

Chilling, Garo manages, bone-rattling cold. Shucking the night-sweated sheets, he swings a bare leg off the side of the bed to question the pine plank floor, his stockinged feet in search of remembered moccasins. Where-where’ve you put them?

Not there anymore, mutters the marmoreal figure. Hadda toss ‘em last time I was up. Seems th’ rats ate th’ soles clean out.

What better homophone to begin such a morning! he marvels, grateful that in his exhaustion he’d kept on his socks from the day before. The first cruel howls of wind-driven rain rattling and lashing the window, the murky, musty attic room closing grave-damp and dark about him; his mother’s eyes a screech of disgust down the chalk of his naked flesh.

If a bare arm or a hairy leg offends you, Mother…. Cut it off, he thinks ruefully, recalling the Master’s words, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Give me a moment and I’ll rustle together a few fig leaves.

Oh, I reckon it’s alright with th’ Almighty, since I had t’ suffer th’ pangs o’ yo’ birth, Mother Daigle flashing an indulgent smile before averting her eyes, in doubt of the Almighty’s complicity. ‘Sides, yuh still haven’t tol’ me why yo’ home, her forced smile transmuting to a smirk as she bends for his night-thrown clothes on the handwoven rug. And don’t think yuh can keep it from me, she scoffs, presenting his rumpled jeans, her thin lips curling in scorn at the suggestion of sin. I know it’s somethin’ bad. Always has been, child. Always will be, too, long’s yuh give th’ devil control of yo’ life.

Clang! Clang! Clang! The downstairs grandfather clock scattering hours like Rockefeller’s dimes, contemptuous of dwindling time.

That’s why I left Louisiana, Mother, Garo hobbling and kicking at least two offending members into the ready cover of denim. Left you and Dad to fend for yourselves in the swamp - and the devil, too, for that matter. Thought a college in Vermont was far enough away from the hellish old fiend he wouldn’t find me. Kind of a reverse hex, what with Jonathan Edwards running him out of New England so many generations ago.

An’ th’ reason yo’ back? she retorts, what remains of her scorn softening to a simper, that the boy even remembers the likes of Jonathan Edwards a talisman of haunting contrition.

Spanish moss. And things similar. Gray threads, past and present, crossing and re-crossing till nary a star can be wished upon through the maze. Defunctive dreams. Yes…and the savage penury of ignorance, he adds hastily, turning to spare her an impish grin. "And because, just like your icon - that beer-sopping rascal Martin Luther – just like he said, when pressed to answer his inquisitors: Ich kann nicht anders."

Which means? asks the idol worshipper, ignoring the frothy portrayal.

Which means…well, which means: ‘I can’t do otherwise’, his bright wit, challenged by his dull and umber past, provoking a penitent blush.

Th’ still, small voice? she queries, wringing her age-spotted hands with the nervosity of a pacing Pilate, "could it be yo’ conscience harkin’ yuh back? Yo’ daddy ‘n me’s been a-prayin’, yuh know. Been a-fastin’ two days a week for yo’ eee-ter-nal soul."

The image of his hatchet-faced mother and turkey-throated father locking their larder, depriving their palates of a Biblically blessed pleasure (if not blessed, at least parodied in mountainside miracles - and all on his behalf) enough to furrow his untroubled brow, his sea-green eyes threatening a salty mist.

A cove of memories, tranquil and warm, lulling him back to innocence. To a time when the old frame house was alive, clamorous with voices and laughter, redolent with his grandmother’s hot blobbering cobblers and molasses-dark, crisp pecan pies. His grandfather’s rocking chair chuckles, the faint, haunting cherry of his pipe. Back to when stout wooden Indians still colored a boy’s fancy - one ride into town to the tobacconist’s den worth a year of anticipation, ever behind his grandfather’s pipe living adventures to challenge credulity.

And to a time when he still believed his father, his Billy Sunday sermons; that the family’s Christmas pilgrimages were funded by revivals in the bayou’s holiness church not something he comprehended. Nor the tender tugging, at his callow heart, by the sublime soliloquies of one Julia Delacroix’s hazel eyes. That little dark-haired girl, in that little dark-scared church, hinting of something grander than he could fathom: the summer somnolence of a shaded afternoon, the moss-hung dalliance of a swamp-skirted path, the moist-palmed thrill of a dainty hand, all disallowed by his gypsy youth. The rural ramblings of his revivalist parents affording but a fleeting permanence. A folding tent. An aluminum house trailer. Or the puffery of wealth in a third-rate motel room night-lighted by neon flashes of Vacancy.

Hypnotic flashes.

Blinding, crackling flashes.

A sudden crash of thunder hurling him back through the darkness. Back to a dark dismay, to the terrifying monotony of hard driving rain - to a howling in the face of the wind:

"Aaalll-might-tee Gawd! Have mercy on my poo-uhr lost boy. Sa-weeet Ja-eee-sus! It jist hit me why he’s home!"

A twisted hemp of raw, guttural groans binding Garo to the open attic door. Sneakers untied. Polo caught at his chin. Mother Daigle wailing as plenipotentiary for God’s Kingdom of Love:

"It’s that wench, Julia Delacroix! She’s gone ‘n called my boy, connivin’ by th’ death of our poo-uhr Brother Felix. Baitin’ her trap with th’ soul of a saint. Aaalll-might-tee Gawd!"

It’s been how long, Mother? four? five Christmas seasons? Garo shivering like the instant aggravation of one walking through an unseen spider web. Not that it matters. One year would be more than affection could bear. But a wench? he poses sardonically, adjusting his pullover, then stooping to tie his laces. I’m surprised, Mother. Surprised you’d deem yourself divine before your time. What have I missed in my absence? Has God no judgments left to pass?

Are yuh comin’, or not? From the dimness below comes the grumbling of the ravenous reverend, his gravelly voice thunder-rumbling through the coffin-narrow hall and up the yaw of yellow stairs. I’ve got a flock t’ feed, Mother Daigle, and th’ hour’s late!

Sounds like yo daddy’s hungry, the shepherdess slipping the noose of Garo’s query, chuckling awkwardly over shuddering shoulders, her head thrown back like swallowing a pill. And well he should be, too, th’ ol’ rascal a-knowin’ I’ve cooked up yo’ fave-or-it breakfast. Lusterless eyes and the flit of a phantom smile making more egregious her aura of death. "Kill th’ lamp, son, ‘fore yuh come. Don’t want th’ place a-burnin’ down on top our heads, now do we? If yo daddy ever gits th’ gumption to run th’ wires up here, we won’t have t’ worry ‘bout it. Bu-u-t, till that un-likely day...."

The cheap sweetness of a bath powdered arm feigning a hug before she passes to the landing, the loft door slamming behind her like a slap.

Fasting two days a week? Garo snuffing the lamp. Sunday must not be one of them. Perhaps Monday? Yes, Monday. The true day of rest after a Sabbath of surfeiting and sainthood.

Familiar as an old mistake and futile as regret – E A Robinson

II

Peering down the slant of stairs leading to the hallway below, Garo shields his eyes from the glare of a bulb swinging naked over the double front doors, his other hand finding a long, jagged crack down the stairwell wall, a boyhood map to the world below, the domain of all things good. The bulb and its chain, now above and behind, throwing shadows down the hall. The pounding rain, the rattling wind, submerging in memory’s flood.

A verandah expanse of Yuletide joy, of lights and boughs, of candy-cane stripes adorning the crude colonnade. Of Grand-mere and Grand-pere with arms outstretched to the patter of little feet, Grand-pere’s tales of gators and ghosts all near as the moonlit swamp. Of Santa, a sleigh, his airborne reindeer in flying search of a chimney, one starry-eyed peek up the lichened brick converting myth to the thrill of certainty.

A turn from the doors and to the back of the house recalling the wind and rain. The odiferous hall, to the rear-quartered kitchen, a tunnel of loath escape, an eerie wraith of steam and smoke afloat in the shafted light, the long, narrow, low-ceilinged room a-throb with a painful pulse. The dull, amber glow of a grease-grimed bulb overhanging his mother’s pride, her desperate hold on a tawdry life by the grip of a mawkish past: her great- great-great-grandmother’s table.

English oak, oblong and claw-footed - one heavily carved post supporting the warp of its time-darkened top - the heirloom table has the patina of another age. A daguerreotype sturdiness. A dark strength suggesting tragedies beyond the scar of two poorly conceived and recently added leaves. The whole still sacred in the grotto of the past, Mother Daigle spending hot, humid hours hunching over its sheen, its antebellum glimmer - cutting patterns for a long sleeve dress; peeling shrimp for a Sunday gumbo; soliciting tithes from the parish poor; counting coins for an African mission - peering back on a chivalric past, the table’s luster of lards and oils no less portentous than crystal.

This grand ol’ piece’s seen it all, she bloviates with peacock pride. "Goes clear back in th’ Fontenot family t’ th’ General his-self. Biloxi Cott’n Mag-nate, Ferdinand was. Built my great-great-great-grandma a stilted mansion on th’ bank of th’ Misses-sip - well, on th’ bank fer a time, any-hoo, till a sandbar moved th’ river a ways east. Confederate General, he was, of core-us. Had th’ fi-i-i-nest bunch o’ darkies yuh’d ever want a-carin’ for yuh. Loyal folk. Cried like they’d been dunked in th’ pepper sauce when th’ Yanks came a-trampin’ in. Didn’t wanna leave th’ family, no. Nary a one of ‘em, I tell yuh. Too bad we can’t still git along like ‘at, ever’body a-recognizin’ their Rightful Place. Their Duties to one ‘nother. It was Christ-like, I tell yuh. Cah-rice-like. Why, it’s right there in th’ Bible. Right there in black ‘n white - red, if yuh got th’ red letter eee-dish-un – Jesus a-sayin: ‘Except ye become as little children’."

And this morning, she is no less colorful, the holy historian hurling commands. "Sit down, son. Sit! Sit! Sit!" the rain a-rat-tat-tatting the windows round the cornered table as if the Confederates are still marching in. As well they should be, the copious meal bestriding the table no less munificent than its rich and fabled past:

Steaming stacks of whole-wheat flapjacks. Obscene slabs of melting butter. Sweating pitchers of maple, boysenberry, and blueberry syrup around a great brown jug of blackstrap. Lazy Susans of currant, strawberry, and elderberry preserves; of prunes and figs, apple butter, peach butter, and orange marmalade. Triple tiers of crisp golden cornpones, sour-milk biscuits, and great smoking squares of Sally Lund. Platters of fresh brown eggs, some fried in bacon fat inches deep; others, wet-scrambled and peppered with onions and cheese. Rashers of bacon, slab thick and piled atop pork links and patties. Huge crockery bowls of cheese grits and butter; of oatmeal, brown sugar and cream; of a hot-peppered, onioned-up, egged-over, rice-stirred, bacon-fried local dish referred to laconically as rice-n-egg. The cornucopia including African baskets long warping under Anjou and Bosc, Winesap and Rome, all peeking through fat fragrant fingers of ripening bananas. Tupperware pitchers of frozen juice: orange, apple, prune, and grape – the grape leftover from last Sunday’s communion.

And smallest of all, a squat little drip pot of coffee. A minuscule, wood-handled, aluminum pot. A pot nearly lost in the cotton-stuffed grace of a black mammy heat pad surmounting a mis-fitting leaf.

Innocuous as the little container may appear, its slow-snaking voodoo aroma of French roast, drip-grind, chicory-rich, molasses-thick, sugared-up, cream-clotted, bite-yuh-on-the-heel and kick-yuh-in-th’-calf-einated coffee is a toast to the antebellum past, one demitasse of which can peel lead paint from a ballroom wall.

Mother Daigle barking obstreperously, holding Garo in a veritable chokehold as she eye-wrestles him to his chair:

"Sit down, son. Sit! We gotta hurry, ‘cause yo’ daddy’s gotta git spruced up. Adding, as she scrapes back a slatted chair, me, too, when yo’ finished. Gotta carry th’ perishables on down th’ rescue mission. Yo’ daddy ‘n me feed th’ winos most ev’ry Sund’y, yuh know. Me with th’ leftovers. Yo’ daddy with th’ Livin’ Word."

Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Garo smiling inwardly - at his mother for her garish goodwill; at himself for having forgotten her Sunday sainthood, the gospel glory of her over-larded table.

She’s not a-tellin’ yuh all of it, Gar, his father commandeering the far end of the table, helping himself to the biscuits, deftly severing their smoking middles, arranging the halves along his pink Melmac’s faded rim. She still plays a mean squeezebox, when put upon t’ try. Don’t have no music down th’ mission house, yuh know. Gotta bring it yo’self.

"Grace, Elwood, the hovering accordionist interposes, better ask th’ Lord’s blessin’ ‘fore yuh go a-diggin’ in."

Jist bein’ mannerly, Elwood’s meaty jowls a washboard of muscle as he grinds down a quick bite of anger, "jist’ a-waitin’ on our son t’ take his seat…if-yuh-don’t-mind!"

Mother Daigle sighing into her chair, fidgeting her restless, sweating hands into a fold of saintly submission, her blood-flecked gray eyes misting, condemning lips hissing, "Father, forgive ‘em, for-they-know-not-what-they-do!"

"Why don’t you ask the blessin’, boy, the big man’s fiery, russet eyes reconnoitering before the strike. Whoa! forgit th’ gravy, Mother?"

Ran outta flour, Daddy, ‘n found weevils in th’ spare. I’ll git more come Mond’y, Madonna-mama mumbles. "Now, could somebody please say th’ blessin’?"

Gar! the preacher delegating his deity-addressing-duty with military dispatch.

Garo responding with metered piety:

Good bread, good meat. Good God, let’s eat!

A crash of thunder serving for the dour and disapproving.

Think I’ll commiserate with a cornpone, Garo lards over resounding silence, put it out of its misery. But not before I dress it up a bit…the butter, please.

Is a little respect too much t’ ask? blurts an indignant Mother Daigle, giving a vigorous shove to a Pyrex rectangle mounded with Government Issue.

What do you mean, Mother, Garo intercepting the fragile dish before it slides to shattering oblivion. Doesn’t the good book tell us to cast our bread upon the water? that it will come back buttered?

Comes from Sister Delacroix, smacks his father, forking under the bacon for a half dozen links of sausage. Pays tithe on her welfare that-a-way. Gives us a tenth o’ what she gits.

"Gives us most all her butter, Elwood, Mother Daigle corrects, but it’s not like she’s doin’ without. She can’t eat it. Thinks she’s got blood pressure, or somethin’…or maybe hardenin’ arteries…wh-which her daughter has a case of, too, if yuh ask me. Only it’s a hardenin’ of somethin’ else. Appending, in response to Garo’s choke of astonishment, her heart, son, her heart I’m a-talkin’ ‘bout."

Have t’excuse yo’ momma, the reverend opines, removing, from a mound of sugar lumps, an inherited silver spoon to ding his empty cup, takes exception t’ Sister Delacroix’s religion. Thinks she’s responsible for that hell-bent girl of hers, what with Julia givin’ ‘er a bastard for a gran’baby, ‘n all.

Well, it’s more th’ not tellin’ ‘at bothers me, Mother Daigle sententious, screeching her chair along generational grooves in the linoleum to stand and administer the coffee. "Th’ li’l wench’s never tol’ ‘er who’s th’ daddy. Then, t’go ‘n hang a handle on it like Oliver. Makes folks think it was Garo ‘at done it. Three…four years now I’ve been a-hearin’ it - th’ whispers behind my back; suspicions growin’ bigger ‘n meaner since we took over yo’ dead folk’s place. Oliver, she calls it. Oliver! Seems like a lot o’things ‘ave gone wrong since we quit our revivalin’ ‘n took up a-pastorin’ th’ church: a good Quaker pres-a-dent a-turnin’ bad up th’ White House was trouble enough, but now a peanut farmer’s a-raisin’ stink t’ git a turn at th’ bat, an’-an’-"

From your point of reference, Mother, you could do worse, Garo glancing furtively about for a napkin to wipe something sticky from the polka dot pink of his placemat. A good Baptist, Jimmy Carter is. Or that’s what I read in the press.

Whad-I-tell-yuh? a gloating Elwood booms, transfixed on the subject of Julia, if yo’ momma has anything t’do with it, Sister Delacroix’s gonna have a fight on her hands outside th’ purh-lee gates.

The keyword is ‘outside’, alright, mutters Garo. The allusion to heaven prompting: But what’s this about murder? Felix Robicheaux, I mean. Anything to it?

Well, now…I wasn’t gonna bring it up, Garo, the reverend growls, forking a runny fried egg into grease-glistering halves. Know how yuh feel, his unshaven neck a straining bulge as he slurps down the egg with the pulp of a pork link. Know how yuh feel ‘bout that Delacroix girl, ‘n all.

Truth’s, truth, Elwood, spits a sullen Mother Daigle, ‘sides, better he hears it from those who care ‘fore th’ gossip gits to ‘im in town.

Truth? Gossip? Garo repeats, as if the words herald frightening finality, …never the twain shall meet.

Flapjacks? the old preacher reaching for the pyramided platter in