I don't think there was a way I could have prepared myself for what the shack and the grounds around it would look like when I set eyes on it again. I was lucky I was arriving at night when so much of it wasn't visible, but I saw the deep holes dug in the front, and when I set eyes on the galerie and saw the way it leaned, the railings cracked and broken, the floorboards torn up in places, my heart sank. One of the front windows was broken wide open. Grandmère Catherine would have been in tears.
"You sure you want to go in there?" Paul asked when we came to a stop.
"Yes, Paul. I'm sure. No matter what it looks like now. It was once my home and my Grandmère's home."
"Okay. I'll go in with you and see what he's up to. He might not even remember you, the way he is," Paul declared.
"Careful," Paul said when we stepped up to the galerie. The boards complained loudly; the front door squeaked on its rusted hinges and threatened to fall right off when we opened it, and 'the house itself smelled like every swamp creature had made some part of it its home.
There was only a single lantern lit on the old kitchen table. Its tiny flame flickered precariously as the breeze flowed unabated through the shack from the opened rear windows.
"All the bugs in the bayou have come in here, I'm sure," Paul said.
The kitchen was a filthy mess. There were empty whiskey bottles on the floor, under the tables and chairs, and on the counters. The sink was filled with dishes caked with old food and the floor had food drippings decomposing on it, some of it looking like it had been there for weeks, if not months< I took the lantern and walked through the downstairs.
The living room was in no better condition. The table was turned over, as well as the chair in which Grandmère used to sit and fall asleep every night. There were empty bottles in here too. The floor was plastered with mud, grime, and swamp grass. We heard something scurry along the wall,
"Probably rats," Paul said. "Or at least field mice. Maybe even a raccoon."
"Grandpère!" I cried.
We went to the rear and searched and then walked up the stairs. I think the effort it took for Grandpère to climb those steps saved the upper part of the house from the same abuse and deterioration the downstairs suffered. The loom room was not very changed, nor was my old bedroom and Grandmère Catherine's, save everything that could have been opened and searched had been. Grandpère had even pulled off some wallboards.
"Where could he be?" I wondered.
Paul shrugged. "Down at one of the zydeco bars, begging for a drink maybe," he said, but when we descended the stairs again, we heard Grandpère Jack's shrill screams coming from the rear of the house. We hurried around back and saw him, naked but caked with mud, swinging a burlap sack over his head and yelping like a hound dog after game.
"Stay back," Paul advised. "Jack," he called. "Jack Landry!"
Grandpère stopped swinging the sack and stared through the darkness. "Who's there? Robbers, thieves, git on wit' ya!"
"No thieves. It's Paul Tate."
"Tate? You stay away, hear? I ain't giving you nothin' back. Stay away. This is my fortune. I earned it. I found it. I dug and dug until I found it, hear? Back, back or I'll heave a rock at yer. Back!" he screamed again, but he backed up himself.
"Grandpère!" I cried. "It's me, Ruby. I've come home."
"Who? Who's that?"
"It's Ruby," I said, stepping forward.
"Ruby? No. I ain't takin' the blame for that. No. We needed the money. Don't blame me. Don't go blaming me. Catherine, don't you blame me!" he screamed. Then, clutching his burlap sack to his chest, he went running toward the canal.
"Grandpère!"
"Let him go, Ruby. He's gone mad from the rotgut whiskey."
We heard him scream again, and then we heard the splash of water.
"Paul, he'll drown."
Paul thought a moment. "Give me the lantern," he said, then went after Grandpère. I heard more splashing, more screaming.
"Jack!" Paul cried.
"No, it's mine! Mine!" Grandpère replied. There was more splashing, and then it grew quiet.
"Paul?" I waited and then charged, through the darkness, my feet sinking into the soft swamp grass. I ran toward the light and found Paul gazing over the water.
"Where is he?" I asked in a loud whisper.
"I don't know, I . . ." He squinted and then he pointed.
"Grandpère!" I screamed.
Grandpère Jack's body looked like a thick log floating along. It bounced against some rocks and then got caught in the current and continued on until it became entangled in some brush that stuck up out of the water.
"We'd better get some help," Paul suggested. "Come on."
Less than an hour later, the firemen hoisted Grandpère Jack's body out of the water. He was still clutching his burlap sack, only instead of buried treasure, it was filled with rusted old tin cans.
How could I have a more horrible homecoming? Despite the terrible things Grandpère Jack had done and the pathetic creature he had become, I couldn't help but remember him when I was a little girl. He had his soft moments. I would go out to his swamp shack and he would talk about the bayou as if it were his dearest friend. At one time he was a legend. There wasn't a better trapper. He knew how to read the swamp, knew when the waters would be rising and falling, knew when the bream would be running, and knew where the 'gators slept and the snakes curled.
He liked to talk about his ancestors then, about the scoundrels who raised hell on the Mississippi, the famous gamblers and flatboat polers. Grandmère Catherine said he spun most of it out of his own imagination, but it didn't matter to me whether it was wholly true or not. I just liked the way he told his tales, staring out at the Spanish moss and puffing on his corncob pipe as he rattled on and on, pausing only occasionally in those days to take a swig from his jug. He always had an excuse for it. He had to clear his throat of the grime that floats through the air in the swamp or he had to chase a cold away. Sometimes he just had to keep his gizzards warm.
Despite the break between Grandmère Catherine and Grandpère Jack after he had contracted to sell Gisselle to the Dumas family, I sensed that once, a long time ago, they were true sweethearts. Even Grandmère, during one of her calmer moments, would admit that he had been a strikingly handsome, virile young man, dazzling her with his emerald-green eyes and his sun-darkened skin. He was quite a dancer too, who could cut up the floor better than anyone at a fais dodo.
But time has a way of drawing the poisons in us to the surface. The evil that nestled under Grandpère Jack's heart seeped out and changed him—or, as Grandmère was fond of saying, "turned him into what he was: a no-account rogue who belongs with the things that slither and crawl."
Perhaps he had turned to his rotgut whiskey as a way of denying what he was or what he saw reflecting back at him when he leaned over his pirogue and gazed into the water. Whatever it was, the demons inside him got their way, and finally they dragged him down into the waters he had once loved and cherished and even worshiped. The bayou out of which he'd made his life had claimed his life.
I cried for the man he was when Grandmère Catherine first fell in love with him, just as I imagined she had cried for him when he had stopped being that man.
Despite Paul's pleading, I insisted on staying in the shack. If I didn't force myself to do it the first night, I would find reason not to the next and the next after that, I thought. I made my old bed as comfortable as I could and, after everyone had gone and I had said good night to Paul and promised to be waiting for him in the morning, I went to sleep and passed out quickly from total exhaustion.
It didn't take an hour or so after sunrise for all of Grandmère Catherine's old friends to learn of my return. They thought I had come back intending to look after Grandpère Jack. I rose early and began to clean the shack, working on the kitchen first. There was little to eat, but before an hour had passed, Grandmère's old friends began arriving, each bringing me something. Everyone was shocked at the condition of the shack, of course. None had been inside since Grandmère's death and my departure. Cajun women throw themselves at someone else's chores as if they are all of one family when that person is in need. By the time I turned around, they were all scrubbing down the floors and walls, shaking out the rugs, dusting the furniture, washing windows. It brought tears of joy to my eyes. No one had cross-examined me as to where I had been and what I had been doing. I was back, I needed their help, and that was all that mattered. Finally, I felt I really had come home.