“I don’t think I know that species, ‘lunker.’ ”
“Oh, the local state fish-and-game people built’ em years ago. The floods, and the poisonings and such, wiped out the local game fish. The Teche was getting bad algae blooms, almost as bad as that giant Dead Spot in the Gulf. So, they cobbled together these vacuum-cleaner fish. Big old channel catfish with tilapia genes. Them lunkers get big, bro. Damn big. I mean to say, four hundred pounds with eyes like baseballs. See, lunkers are sterile. Lunkers do nothin’ but eat and grow. While the lab boys were messing with their DNA, they kinda goosed the growth hormones. Now some of those babies are fifteen years old.”
“That seems like a very daring piece of biological engineering.”
“Oh, you don’t know Green Huey. That’s not the half of it. Huey’s a very active boy on environmental issues. Louisiana’s a whole different world now.”
Fontenot brought them breakfast: oyster omelets and eerie sau-sages made of congealed rice. The food was impossibly hot — far be-yond merely spicy. He’d slathered on pepper as if it were the staff of life.
“That lunker business was an emergency measure. But it worked real good. Emergency all over. This bayou would be a sewer other-wise, but now, the bass are corning back. They’re working on the water hyacinth, they’ve brought back some black bear and even cou-gar. It’s not ever gonna be natural, but it’s gonua be real doable. You boys want some more coffee?”
“Thanks,” Oscar said. He’d thoughtfully poured his first chic-ory-tainted cup through a gaping crack in the floorboards. “I have to confess, Jules, I’ve been worried about you, living here alone in the heart of Huey country. I was afraid that he might have found you here, and harassed you. For political reasons, you know, because of your time with the Senator.”
“Oh, that. Yeah,” Fontenot said, chewing steadily. “I got a cou-ple of those little state militia punks comin’ round to ‘debrief’ me. I showed ’em my federal-issue Heckler and Koch, and told ’em I’d empty a clip on their sorry punk asses if I ever saw ’em near my property again. That pretty much took care o’ that.”
“Well then,” Oscar said, tactfully disturbing his omelet with a fork.
“Y’know what I think?” said Fontenot. Fontenot had never been so garrulous before, but it was clear to Oscar that, in his retirement, the old man was desperately lonely. “People are dilferent nowadays. They buffalo way too easy, they lost their starch somehow. It has something to do with that sperm-count crash, all those pesticide hor-mone poisonings. You get these combinations of pollutants, all these yuppie flus and allergies…”
Oscar and Kevin exchanged a quick glance. They had no idea what the old man was talking about.
“Americans don’t live off the land anymore. They don’t know what we’ve done to our great outdoors. They don’t know how pretty it used to be around here, before they paved it all over and poisoned it. A million wildflowers and all kinda little plants and bugs that had been living here a jillion years… Man, when I was a kid you could still fish for marlin. Marlin! People these days don’t even know what a marlin was.”
The door opened, without a knock. A middle-aged black woman appeared, toting a net bag full of canned goods. She wore rubber sandals, a huge cotton skirt, a tropical-flowered blouse. Her head was wrapped in a kerchief. She barged into Fontenot’s home, took sudden note of Kevin and Oscar, and began chattering in Creole French.
“This is Clotile,” Fontenot said. “She’s my housekeeper.” He stood up and began sheepishly gathering dead beer cans, while talking in halting French.
Clotile gave Kevin and Oscar a resentful, dismissive glance, then began to lecture her limping boss.
“This was your security guy?” Kevin hissed at Oscar. “This bro-ken-down old hick?”
“Yes. He was really good at it, too.” Oscar was fascinated by the interplay of Fontenot and Clotile. They were engaged in a racial, economic, gender minuet whose context was a closed book to him. Clearly, Clotile was one of the most important people in Fontenot’s life now. Fontenot really admired her; there was something about her that he deeply desired, and could never have again. Clotile felt sorry for him, and was willing to work for him, but she would never accept him. They were close enough to talk together, even joke with each other, but there was some tragic element in their relationship that would never, ever be put right. It was a poignant mini-drama, as distant to Oscar as a Kabuki play.
Oscar sensed that Fontenot’s credibility had been seriously dam-aged by their presence as his houseguests. Oscar examined his embroi-dered sleeves, his discarded gloves, his hairy flight helmet. An intense little moment of culture shock shot through him.
What a very strange world he was living in. What strange people: Kevin, Fontenot, Clotile — and himself, in his dashingly filthy disguise. Here they were, eating breakfast and cleaning house, while at the rim of their moral universe, the game had changed entirely. Pieces swam from center to periphery, periphery to center — pieces flew right off the board. He’d eaten so many breakfasts with Fontenot, in the past life, back in Boston. Every day a working breakfast, watching news clips, planning campaign strategy, choosing the cantaloupe. All light-years behind him now.
Clotile forged forth sturdily and snatched the plates away from Kevin and Oscar. “I hate to be underfoot here when your house-keeper’s so busy,” Oscar said mildly. “Maybe we should have a little stroll outside, and discuss the reason for our trip here.”
“Good idea,” said Fontenot. “Sure. You boys come on out.”
They followed Fontenot out his squeaking front door and down the warped wooden steps. “They’re such good people here,” Fonte-not insisted, glancing warily back over his shoulder. “They’re so real.”
“I’m glad you’re on good terms with your neighbors.”
Fontenot nodded solemnly. “I go to Mass. The local folks got a little church up the way. I read the Good Book these days… Never had time for it before, but I want the things that matter now. The real things.”
Oscar said nothing. He was not religious, but he’d always been impressed by judeo-Christianiry’s long political track record. “Tell us about this Haitian enclave, Jules.”
“Tell you? Hell, telling you’s no use. We’ll just go there. We’ll take my huvvy.”
Fontenot’s hovercraft was sitting below his house. The amphibi-ous saucer had been an ambitious purchase, with indestructible plastic skirts and a powerful alcohol engine. It reeked of fish guts, and its stout and shiny hull was copiously littered with scales. Once emptied of its fisherman’s litter, it could seat three, though Kevin had to squeeze in.
The overloaded huvvy scraped and banged its way down to the bayou. Then it sloshed across the lily pads, burping and gargling.
“A huvvy’s good for bayou fishing,” Fontenot pronounced. “You need a shallow-draft boat in the Teche, what with all these snags, and old smashed cars, and such. The good folks around here kinda make fun of my big fancy huvvy, but I can really get around.”
“I understand these Haitians are very religious people.”
“Oh yeah,” nodded Fontenot. “They had a minister, back in the old country, doing his Moses free-the-people thing. So of course the regime had the guy shot. Then they did some terrible things to his followers that really upset Amnesty International. But… basi-cally… who cares? You know? They’re Haitians!”
Fontenot lifted both his hands from the hovercraft’s wheel. “How can anybody care about Haiti? Islands all over the world are drowning. They’re all going under water, they’ve all got big sea-level problems. But Huey… well, Huey takes it real personal when charismatic leaders get shot. Huey’s into the French diaspora. He tried twisting the arm of the State Department, but they got too many emergencies all their own. So one day, Huey just sent a big fleet of shrimp boats to Haiti, and picked them all up.”