Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche Read Online Free Page B

was blowing my hair, and the warm sun
chased off the last of the night chill of the swamps. I
scooted around in the seat. “Are you wondering why
we’re going on down to Morgan City?”
    Jack shrugged. “Not particularly.”
    I couldn’t help grinning, imagining just what shape
our world would be in if everyone possessed Jack’s
unquenchable thirst for knowledge. “You know, I told
you this guy was supposed to be in the Bahamas”
    “Yeah, but his old lady doesn’t think he is.” He
looked around at me.
    I nodded. “Well, she was right. He isn’t. At least,
not where he’s supposed to be”
    “Huh?” He frowned at me. “How did you find that
out?”
    “Keep your eyes on the road, and I’ll tell you. It was
simple. I called. John Hardy isn’t registered at the hotel where he said he was going to stay. He was sup posed to be in room four seventeen, but there isn’t a
four seventeen.”

    He glanced at me, a puzzled frown on his face.
“Didn’t his old lady have the number? Why didn’t
she call?”
    I shrugged. “I long ago gave up trying to figure out
the fairer sex”
    “So what made you decide to call?”
    “The phone number his secretary gave me” I read
it off to him. “One, eight hundred, seven-three-nine …
room four one seven”
    He gave me a blank stared and shrugged. “So
what’s the big deal?”
    “So, for hotel chains, eight hundred and eight
eighty-eight exchanges are usually informational and
reservation numbers. Stop and think. Have you ever
called an eight hundred number to reach an individual’s room in a hotel?”
    Nodding slowly as the explanation sunk in, he said.
“So, when you-Hey! Look at that, would you? That
city limits sign.”
    I looked around in the direction he was pointing. A
large sign by the side of the macadam road announced
the city limits of Maida, Home of the Bayou Teche
Loup Garou Festival! At the bottom of the sign was a
caricature of a sway-backed horse chewing on a fence.
    Jack shook his head. “What are they talking about?
What’s a loup garou?”
    Laughing I explained that it was an old French myth. “Supposedly it claims that witches can change
men into animals.”

    He rolled his eyes and flexed his fingers about the
steering wheel. “Like a werewolf, huh?”
    “Not exactly,” I replied, remembering stories from
the old ones whispered around a fireplace on cold
winter nights out on the Louisiana prairies. “Different
animals. Not all loup garous were bad. I remember
one story about a white eagle loup garou”
    “A what?” He responded in disbelief, thinking I
was pulling his leg.
    “White eagle. The way the story went was this man
was gone from his family for a long time. He wanted
to see them, so a witch turned him into an eagle so he
could fly back and see his wife and children, which he
did. Men are turned into horses or cows or just about
anything. Whatever the witch decides.”
    Jack blew out through his lips. “Weird. You know,
these people are weird. Nice and friendly, but weird.”
He paused, then added, “I don’t know about you, but
I’m hungry.”
    “Then find us a place to stop,” I said, nodding to the
little town ahead of us.
    Later, a mile beyond the Maida city limits, we
passed the Louisianne Casino on Highway 182. A few
miles farther, we found the sign marking the turnoff to
Benoit’s Hunting Lodge, exactly where Laura Palmo
had said it would be. I expected a clamshell road, but instead a narrow macadam road twisted back through
the cypress and wateroaks of a vast swamp sprawling
over several hundred square miles between the IntraCoastal Canal and Highway 182.

    The brown water of the swamp lapped at the edges
of the asphalt road. The thick shadows cast by the
canopy of leaves overhead held in the heat rising from
the earth. The appearance of a swamp is deceiving,
not cool as perceived, but instead suffocating, for there
is no breeze to stir the air, to dissipate the