Not everyone called him that—just females aged thirteen to fifty-five, almost all of whom had contended with his roving eyes or hands. When he wasn’t towing cars or hitting on underage or married women, Cory Marais was in the swamp: fishing, crabbing, tossing beer cans, absorbing the marsh’s reptilian putrescence into the crags of his sunburnt skin. He wasn’t old but he looked ancient, which made his advances even creepier.
“Y’all need a tow?” He leaned an elbow out the window of his cloud-gray truck. A wad of chewing tobacco sat lodged in his cheek.
Eureka hadn’t thought to call a tow truck—probably because Cory’s was the only one in town. She didn’t understand how he’d found them. They were on a side road hardly anybody drove on. “Are you clairvoyant or something?”
“Eureka Boudreaux and her five-dollar words.” Cory glanced at Ander, as if to bond over Eureka’s strangeness. But when he looked more closely at the boy, Cory’s eyes narrowed, his alliance shifted. “You from outta town?” he asked Ander. “This kid hit you, Reka?”
“It was an accident.” Eureka found herself defending Ander. It bothered her when locals thought it was Cajuns versus the World.
“That’s not what ol’ Big Jean said. He’s the one said you needed a tow.”
Eureka nodded, her question answered. Big Jean was a sweet old widower who lived in the cabin about a quarter mile off this road. He used to have a hellish wife named Rita, but she’d died about a decade ago and Big Jean didn’t get around too well on his own. When Hurricane Rita bulldozed the bayou, Big Jean’s house was hit hard. Eureka had heard his hoarse voice say, twenty times, “The only thing meaner than the first Rita was the second Rita. One stayed in my house, the other tore it down.”
The town helped him rebuild his cabin, and even though it was miles from shore, he insisted on propping the whole thing up on twenty-foot stilts, muttering, “Lesson learned, lesson learned.”
Diana used to bring Big Jean sugar-free pies. Eureka would go with her, play his old Dixieland jazz 78s on his floor console hi-fi. They’d always liked each other.
The last time she’d seen him, his diabetes had been bad, and she knew he didn’t make it down those stairs often. He had a grown son who brought his groceries, but most of the time, Big Jean stayed perched on his porch, in his wheelchair, watching swamp birds through his binoculars. He must have seen the accident and called for the tow. She glanced up at his elevated cabin and saw his robed arm waving.
“Thanks, Big Jean!” she shouted.
Cory was out of his truck and hitching Magda up to his tow. He wore baggy, dark-wash Wranglers and an LSU basketball jersey. His arms were freckled and huge. She watched the way he connected the cables to her undercarriage. She resented his low whistle when he surveyed the damage to Magda’s rear.
Cory did everything slowly except hook up his tows, and for once Eureka was grateful in his vicinity. She still held out hope she might make it to school in time for the meet. Twenty minutes left and she still hadn’t decided whether to run the race or quit.
Wind rustled the sugarcane. It was nearly fauchaison, harvest time. She glanced at Ander, who was watching her with a focus that made her feel nude, and she wondered if he knew this country as well as she did, if he knew that in two weeks farmers would appear on tractors to sever cane stalks at their base, leaving them to grow for another three years into the mazes children ran through. She wondered whether Ander had run through these fields the way she and every bayou kid had. Had he spent the same hours Eureka had spent listening to the arid rustle of their golden stalks, thinking there was no lovelier sound in the world than sugarcane due for its reaping? Or was Ander just passing through?
Once her car was secured, Cory looked at Ander’s truck. “Need anything, kid?”
“No, sir, thank you.” Ander didn’t have the Cajun accent, and his manners were too formal for the country. Eureka wondered if Cory had ever been called “sir” in his life.
“Right, then.” Cory sounded offended, as if Ander in general was offensive. “Come on, Reka. You need a ride somewhere? Like to a beauty salon?” He cackled, pointing at her grown-out dye job.
“Shut up, Cory.” “Beauty” sounded like “ugly” in his mouth.
“I’m teasing.” He reached out to tug her hair, but Eureka flinched away. “That the way girls style it these days? Pretty … pretty interesting.” He hooted, then jerked his thumb toward the passenger-side door of his truck. “Okay, sister, haul it in the cab. Us coon-asses gotta stick together.”
Cory’s language was disgusting. His truck was disgusting. One glance through the open window told Eureka she did not want a ride in that. There were dirty magazines everywhere, greasy bags of cracklins on the dash. A spearmint air freshener hung from the rearview mirror, leaning on a wooden icon of Saint Theresa. Cory’s hands were black with axle grease. He needed the kind of power wash reserved for soot-stained medieval buildings.
“Eureka,” Ander said. “I can give you a ride.”
She found herself thinking of Rhoda, wondering what she’d say if she were sitting in her shoulder-padded business suit upon Eureka’s shoulder. Neither option constituted what Dad’s wife would call “a sound decision,” but at least Cory was a known phenomenon. And Eureka’s sharp reflexes could keep the creep’s hands on the wheel.
Then there was Ander.…
Why was Eureka thinking about what Rhoda, instead of Diana, would advise? She didn’t want to be anything like Rhoda. She wanted to be a lot like her mother, who never talked about safety or judgment. Diana talked about passion and dreams.
And she was gone.
And this was just a ride to school, not a life-changing decision.
Her phone was buzzing. It was Cat: Wish us luck leaving Manor in the dust. Whole team misses you.
The race was in eighteen minutes. Eureka intended to wish Cat luck in person, whether or not she ran herself. She gave Ander a quick nod—Okay—and walked over to his truck. “Take the car to Sweet Pea’s, Cory,” she called from the passenger door. “My dad and I will pick it up later.”
“Suit yourself.” Cory heaved himself into his truck, annoyed. He nodded toward Ander. “Watch out for that dude. He’s got a face I’d like to forget.”
“I’m sure you will,” Ander muttered as he opened the driver’s-side door.
The inside of his truck was immaculate. It must have been thirty years old, but the dashboard shone as if it had just been hand-polished. The radio was playing an old Bunk Johnson song. Eureka slid up on the soft leather bench and fastened her seat belt.
“I’m supposed to be back at school already,” she said as Ander started up the truck. “Would you step on it? It’s faster if you take the—”
“Side roads, I know.” Ander turned left down a shady dirt road that Eureka thought of as her shortcut. She watched as he gunned the gas, driving with familiarity on this seldom-traveled, maize-lined road.
“I go to Evangeline High. It’s on—”
“Woodvale and Hampton,” Ander said. “I know.”
She scratched her forehead, wondering suddenly if this kid went to her school, had sat behind her in English for three years in a row or something. But she knew every one of the two hundred and seventy-six people at her small Catholic high school. At least, she knew them all by sight. If someone like Ander went to Evangeline, she would more than know about him. Cat would be absolutely all over him, and so, according to the laws of best friendship, Eureka would have his birthday, his favorite weekend hangout, and his license plate number memorized.
So where did he go to school? Instead of being plastered with bumper stickers or mascot paraphernalia on the dashboard, like most public school kids’ cars, Ander’s truck looked bare. A simple square tag a few inches wide hung from the rearview mirror. It had a metallic silver background and featured a blue stick figure holding a spear pointed toward the ground. She leaned forward to examine it, noting that it bore the same image on both sides. It smelled like citronella.