Bayou

CROC'S ORIGIN ONE

Harlan Boudreaux didn't worry about the goings-on of outsiders. He kept to himself, by himself, in the same shack where he'd been born seventy years before.

His younger brother fled the nest like an eager bird with its first feather, and only visited three times after he left. Once, when Mama died. Then again two years later, after Papa joined her. The last time was forty years ago, to show Harlan his wife, and the toddling baby girl they'd lovingly named Cherie.

Harlan never had a wife. His one true love was the swamp, and the few women he'd courted over the years wanted no part of it. Jeanie had tried. She'd stayed for a year before demanding they move to town. Said life was better there. Said it was more comfortable. Called his way "unhealthy". Considering she'd been dead nearly twenty years, Harlan was confident she'd been wrong.

He had every comfort a man could need. He grew more food than he could eat and sold the excess to buy what he couldn't grow. He wore suits to town, kept his home in good repair, and he didn't have to deal with the building chaos outside his solitude.

The world was constantly changing, declining. It'd been a subtle shift at first: the clothes people wore, the way they spoke, the cars they drove. Then the clothes grew tattered as they remained the same, and too big as the people wasted away. Mouths flipped, smiles becoming frowns—even scowls—whenever he drove through town with a fresh load of produce.

Who'd have ever thought Harlan Boudreaux would be considered a rich man?

An old rich man.

An easy target.

That was his worry today. Each time he left, it felt like he might never return, and he'd be damned if he let himself die anywhere other than where he belonged. That was why he'd decided today would be the last time he'd ever step foot out of the bayou. He was going to bring his savings, sell his last load of vegetables, and buy up enough supplies to get him to his death. He was old enough it wouldn't take much.

Harlan lugged the last crate onto his fan boat and made the long trip to the place he kept his truck. Then he loaded the truck, and the gun he kept beneath its tattered bench seat. It wouldn't do him much good against a group, but it had been enough to deter any trouble so far. He could only pray it would be enough today.

The dirt road leading into town was disappearing beneath fresh grass, had been for quite some time. If Harlan didn't know the journey by heart, he doubted he'd be able to follow it. Another reason it was time to retire. Old men forgot things. His papa had forgotten everything by the time he passed, and Harlan didn't know which was worse: being robbed and killed away from his home or lost just within reach of it.

He straightened in his seat as the first signs of civilization came into view. There was once a time when Harlan could understand his brother's desire to leave. The Creole style architecture, with its big, sprawling porches and intricate iron lace, was a sight to see. Or, at least, it had been many years before. Now, the houses were stripped bare, ransacked, with nothing left except the doorless, windowless, graffitied bones of what had once been. Iron lace buried beneath honeysuckle. Porches collapsing into pampas grass.

The folks who'd lived in those big houses had gone on to safer places, and the only people left were the ones who couldn't afford to do the same. And Harlan, of course, who knew the only true safety was disconnection.

Dirt gave way to pavement as decrepit homes became lived-in shacks, then storefronts as he made it to the entrance of town. There were days, long ago, when he would curse the empty streets, knowing it would be hard, if not impossible, to sell his load. Now, he wished some of the people would leave. They crowded the sidewalks on either side, spilling into the road as they rushed back and forth, scrambling as if life was a race with no finish line.