Nothing but Blue Skies Read Online Free

corn meal from cooking. “You making out all right?”
    “Just fine,” said Frank, “just fine.”
    She went back inside and Frank wandered around the back, looked out at the dark water of the bayou, at the other houses and docks on its shore. Here and there boats were drawn up and there were piles of crawfish traps, net floats, defunct outboard motors, galvanized tubs and caved-in Styrofoam boxes.
    Mr. Bouget held up two bottles of beer to call Frank in and Frank joined him. Inside, loud rhythmic accordion music played on the stereo. “Is that what they call zydeco?” Frank asked.
    “Zydeco!” said Mr. Bouget. “Spare me, cher! Zydeco num’ but nigga music.”
    “You’re listening to the sweet sounds of Ambrose Thibodeux,” said Gracie helpfully. Her mother returned to the kitchen and her father went into the living room to turn the music down. Gracie leaned over and said, “You should have never told them you were Catholic.” Frank didn’t mind. Though he rarely went to Mass, he took what he thought was the Bougets’ view, that Catholics were different people.
    Frank ate without having any idea what he was eating, except for the rice it was ladled onto. It was filled with beans and thick, furiously spicy sauce. Frank ate an enormous amount of it because it was better than anything he’d eaten in a long time. He ate so much that the family was fascinated by it. He drank a bit too much, and in his inebriation he knew how they approved of his overeating, both as a sign of admiration for Mrs. Bouget’s cooking and as a sign to Mr. Bouget that he was comfortable with their family. He stuffed himself more than he really wanted to and elevated his voice. The Bougets asked Gracie vaguely set-up questions that would allow her to talk about her education and prospects. She had just finished at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. “Up in Lafayette!” shouted Mr. Bouget. That seemed to be the important part to him.
    After dinner, Mrs. Bouget took Frank back to a huge closet where she was storing Gracie’s trousseau — endless handmade quilts, sheets and pillowcases. Never have to leave the bedroom,thought Frank. While they were looking at the trousseau, Gracie and her father set up the slide projector. Gracie was filled with comic glee and Frank was uncertain what was causing it. They went back to the living room, turned out the lights and projected a photograph of the family standing in front of Bouget’s Lagniappe Furniture headquarters in the Algiers section of New Orleans. Mr. Bouget was wearing the crown that he wore for his portrait on the front of the local outlet. Gracie looked proud in her white cotton dress.
    “Sonofagun, look at Fais Dodo smilin’!” called Mr. Bouget to these images of himself. “He the king of the outlet!”
    “He smilin’ good now!” called Gracie.
    “Show respect, Gracie,” said her mother. “College smarty.”
    By ten o’clock, Frank and Mr. Bouget were both drunk and standing next to the bayou in the dark. There was a roar of nocturnal insects. Frank’s high spirits had declined to a polite stupor.
    “Want to run my pirogue, Frank?”
    “No, sir. I can’t see, hardly.”
    “Call me Fatso, Frank.”
    “Okay,” said Frank, but he couldn’t do it. Fatso wasn’t a nice thing to call someone where Frank came from. But anyway, here came Fatso under his own steam.
    “Frank, once Gracie come home from college, it was like she was lookin’ for somethin’, somethin’ she couldn’t find here in La Teche, somethin’ she used to have but she lost up there at the college, and now she’s back hangin’ out at the old plan’ation thinkin’ she can call back all them dead Creoles. I tell her, Cher, they gone, they gone. And guess what? They are gone but we are not. No sir, we are not. Anyway, all I’m tellin’ you, Frank, is I know this girl ’bout as good as a father can, and you need to be paying extra close attention ’cause they ain’t gonna make but