“I figure we stay in the car until we’re introduced,” Kelly said.
“Good plan.”
The screen door flew open and a huge man came out, followed by a woman almost as big. Not fat, either of them, just built large and powerful. I could see immediately that the man was related to Jubal. They had the same eyes and the same mouth. One of his many brothers?
He shouted something at the dogs and they all came to him and sat, quivering.
“Y’all can come out now,” Travis called to us. “Let the dogs sniff your hands and you’ll be okay. They’re hunting dogs, not guard dogs. Cousin Caleb breeds the best black-and-tans in the state of Florida.”
“Georgia and Mississip’, too,” the big guy bellowed. Then he had his arms around Jubal and was pounding him on the back hard enough to kill a normal man. Travis embraced the woman, then they switched and did it all over again.
Introductions were made all around. Caleb was officially Celebration Broussard, but like all but one of his brothers, he had simplified his name “when Pappy went away.” His wife was Grace. Behind the two of them a boy-young man, really, about fourteen or fifteen-had come out of the trailer and was introduced as Billy, their son.
“Lord have mercy!” Caleb shouted when all that was out of the way. “If that ain’t the finest rig I ever did see. You do all that work yourself, Dak?” Dak allowed as how he had, and the two of them talked pickup trucks while Billy’s eyes went straight to the red Ferrari… and the gorgeous woman who had been driving it. The pimply-faced little jerk. He blushed when Kelly shook his hand. Out here in Everglades City, he probably never saw a pretty female except on television.
“Y’all been driving a long time,” Grace said. “You must be real hungry.”
“We had some ham sandwiches at a 7-Eleven,” Travis said. “Don’t put yourself out, we’re fine.”
[168] Well, I wasn’t all that fine, I was famished. But I was far too polite to say so.
It didn’t matter. Grace would have stuffed food into our mouths with a funnel, if that’s what it took. Pretty soon we were sitting around a big table groaning with fiery, rich, fattening Cajun food, and there’s no finer food in the world.
Jubal was on my right, and he jabbed me with an elbow. He had a twinkle in his eye and was practically wriggling with suppressed joy.
“Watch dis, Manny,” he said, then bowed his head, but looked up under his brow.
“Would somebody say grace?” Jubal asked.
“Grace,” Travis said.
“Yes?” Grace said.
Jubal giggled, and soon we were all laughing. Not much of a joke, I guess you had to be there. Jubal could be so childlike and innocent, and when he laughed it was almost impossible not to laugh with him.
“… and tell my peckerwood little brother not to let another five years go by ’fore he visits us again,” Caleb finished.
“Amen,” Jubal said, with feeling. Travis nodded, looking a bit guilty. Well, he should have been, if the brothers hadn’t seen each other in that long.
Then we all dug in.
I’d already demolished a plateful before I realized the big table was actually too big. Too big for the trailer, anyway. I saw then that Caleb and Grace had added on to the rig, tearing out one side, welding a second trailer to the one out front and then adding a structure on behind that. No telling what all was back there. Welding was one of Caleb’s many professions, along with carpentry and plumbing and “anything needs doing around here.” It looked like very good work to me, not the sort of redneck chaos I’d expected when we pulled up in front.
When we had each turned down a third invitation to eat more, Grace got up and called me and Kelly and Dak and Alicia to the doorway leading further into the trailer-building. We found ourselves in a narrow hallway with doors on each side.
[169] “We’d all love to sit around and chat with y’all all night,” she said, “but Travis says he wants to get an early start, so I figure y’all better catch a little rest. When Travis says early, he means early.”
It turned out all the doors were bedrooms. Grace opened a door and beckoned. On the other side was a room clearly belonging to a girl. From the rock star posters on the wall my guess was she would be twelve or thirteen. The room was immaculate, and smelled slightly of a floral air freshener. There were towels and washcloths neatly folded on the double bed.
“This is Dottle’s room,” Grace said. “She’s my eleven-year-old. The bathroom’s down at the end of the hall.”
“Oh, Grace,” Kelly said, “we don’t want to put your daughter out of her room. We’ll be all right just to-”
“Don’t you worry about Dottie, honey. She’s stayin’ over, slumber partyin’ with friends, and I’m sure they’re havin’ a ball. Probably all still awake. Y’all get some rest now, hear?”
She closed the door, and Kelly leaned close to my ear and spoke softly.
“I should have known nobody in the Broussard family would have only one child,” she said. We tried to laugh quietly since the walls were thin. It turned out there were eight bedrooms in the rear extension, one for each child, with Caleb and Grace’s bedroom in the original trailer. “Just added a room on every time a new one was born,” Travis told us later.
We sat on the bed and fooled around a little, then admitted to each other that we were worn out from the long drive. We got into bed, and I was asleep instantly.
BREAKFAST WAS RUSHED. Travis kept us all moving. Me and Dak and Kelly were bleary-eyed, Dak muttering that if he never saw another crawfish it’d be too soon as he carefully sipped at a glass of milk. Alicia was one of those hateful people who woke up with a spring in her step and a song in her heart. She hummed as she made one of her horrible concoctions in Grace’s blender, adding who-knows-what that [170] she’d brought along herself to whatever fruit Grace had handy, then even got Grace to taste it. Grace was either an accomplished liar or she actually dug the stuff.
Travis and Jubal had been up all night and didn’t look the worse for wear. They each downed cups of strong coffee while I nibbled on the buttered toast Grace had made when she couldn’t persuade me to let her get out her skillet. We all drank lots of coffee.
I got in Blue Thunder and Kelly sat in the back of the Hummer with Jubal. That was Kelly’s idea. We’d decided we didn’t want to leave the two of them alone unnecessarily or they might cut us out of the spaceship project. I didn’t know what Kelly could do to prevent that, but if someone could, she was the one.
When Caleb started his pickup it shuddered hard enough to rain flakes of rust down on the dirt. He put it in gear and started out… and the whole tailpipe and muffler and cat converter assembly fell off. Caleb sprang out of the truck, grabbed the pipe, and tossed it on the side of the road.
“Dak, that is the sorriest truck I ever saw that could actually move,” I said.
“He done used it hard, all right,” Dak said. “Especially when you consider it’s only four years old.”
I looked again, and saw he was right.
“Running through salt water, carrying heavy loads down roads ain’t much more than deer tracks… it takes it out of a vehicle. But don’t be fooled. That engine is excellent, he’s got good struts and good rubber, heavy-duty power train. Caleb just don’t give much of a… flip what the thing looks like.”
We got under way as the sun was just breaking over the eastern horizon. I hoped we weren’t trying to sneak up on anybody, since Caleb’s truck with no muffler was now about as loud as an armored invasion.
We had left the Ferrari at the Broussards’ and I could soon see why. That Italian terminator would have high-centered out within the first quarter mile as we bounced over a deeply rutted road into the swamp. [171] Actually, further into the swamp, as daylight had made it clear that Caleb and Grace’s place was already well into it.