CAJUN - A Collection of Short Stories

Bayou GaucheEven though they had nothing but each other, five kids and fresh seafood, Sible loved her husband, Russell Thibodaux, very much, even though he wasn't as pious as she. He eked out a living doing carpentry jobs for others who, like them, lived in Mr. Simon Simoneaux's dilapidated, old rentals. One day, after he built them a house boat to get out from Mr. Simoneaux's control, he decided to keep his boys at home so he could take the pirogue out to fish. The water was choppy, and he knew red fish loved to bite in choppy water. Even with his wife's warning that they were completely off the grid, he went ahead with his trip; and, indeed, caught two red fish for a coubion, but lost his life to the hurricane that had been brewing. Sible was finally free to marry the God-fearing man she thought she loved in her youth, much at the dismay of some of her children. Or was she?Emile Clama and the AtchafalayaJoostin Wilson and the first his four wives named his only son Henry II. Later, he realized that was too staid for a Cajun boy and renamed him Emile Clama. In this fictional story, Joostin was so happy to have a boy to go fishing with him that he took him out every day his wife would allow upriver, to the freshwater part of the lake. He was always in search of the tastiest fish, Sac-a-lait. He had numerous, humorous adventures on the lake with fishing, especially the one time his boy snagged a blue tarp with a "peoples in it." That started Joostin's trouble with the law, which didn't end there.Culture ShockKaren Cantrell and her five-year old, Mikie, were looking forward to going fishing in Cameron, La., and to the male companionship of her brother-in-law, Travis, but something went horribly wrong. Lost, running out of time and unable to find a road sign, Karen was surprised by a hairpin turn, spun around and crashed into a steep ditch. Mikie was thrown from the car and lay unconscious yards away amid swarming mosquitoes. Hurt, herself, Karen had to run nearly a mile before she encountered a primitive community who did not speak her language. Could she find the help she so desperately needed there?On a "Wing and a Prayer:" Memoir of a Third-Generation Cajun"Pulling herself up by her bootstraps" became Peggy's way of going through life. She always lived in a house filled with mystery, except what she could discern from her Mom and Dad's reaction to things. As the oldest child of the oldest child, she was trapped for some time between the Cajun French culture, which was backward at best, and the Anglo culture, which was certainly more promising. She couldn't even relate to her siblings and cousins, who were a good deal younger than she, and her sister, Gail, who was next in line, was already afflicted with the mental illness about to ravage the family, It was a strange, if not a lonely existence living out what she considered to be a normal life and later discovered was anything but normal.