The Bayou

by Arden Powell

Never mind the fact that the cop had shot first, that there might not have been any violence at all if he'd been a little less keen on pulling that trigger.

There was something almost preternatural about the way their luck ran, like they had God or the devil on their side.

Some pictures, he didn't need anyone else chancing on. Some pictures, he was a fool for daring to take at all.

"I'll burn it," Eugene promised as he put the camera aside, his mouth pressed to Benoit's shoulder, tasting the salt. He didn't burn it,

Walker and Monnet turned up a few months later, as if somebody needed to fill the gap that Bonnie and Clyde had left. Like America needed somebody to mythologize, then tear to shreds.

The flu had come creeping right up to their doorstep before deciding the town was too small to bother with.

Sometimes a man in a black suit sat on the bench by the roses and watched them, one knee crossed over the other, his hands resting neatly on top.

“A friend,” she said dismissively. “Just ignore him. He doesn’t want anything from you.”

Eugene travelled to New Orleans sometimes, when he needed to be anonymous. He only went when the loneliness had crawled up to reach around his throat, so intense he could scarcely breathe.

They sometimes found company in each other, two shipwrecked souls drifting side by side, but never for very long.

Eugene thought about Benoit’s empty apartment, his toast unfinished on the plate, and a cold, uneasy feeling told him it wasn’t temporary at all.

It had been such a long summer, the sun so bleak and unforgiving, and at the end of such a wearying decade. He prayed there were no heroes left.

It was the sort of place where one might drown on dry land if he lingered too long.

And more than that, he didn’t want to put in words the feeling he had that Walker held a far greater secret, something old and shimmering that slunk around the tip of Eugene’s tongue, deep as the bayou and twice as deadly.

Maybe they would bury him there in the yard, before the floods came. Maybe they would drag him out to the bayou and let the gators disappear his body.

“Oh, I know Johnny from way back, since I was a little girl,” she said vaguely. “A friend of the family. He knew my sister, back before—before she moved away.”

“What you need to know about Johnny, Mr. Rêveur, is that he’s not like you or I. The laws don’t apply to him. Not moral laws or natural ones. Do you understand?”

“Do you have anything to confess?” Father Latimer finally asked. "Do you?"

"If you tell anyone that you think I hurt her, I will find you, and I'll do the same to you. Do you know how quickly those gators can disappear a body?"

“We found you,” Eugene whispered. “We were just too late.” “I’m still here.”

“I wasn’t running.” Eugene's voice carried gently in the dark, like it was made for whispers.

You were just a boy, last time I was around. Louisiana is so different from where I was before.

The devil was alive and well in Chanlarivyè, just as he was all through the South. Folks didn’t need so many churches unless they had something that needed praying away.

“I didn’t push him down the stairs, but I did facilitate his death, sure. That much is true. Does that frighten you?”

“What was that old line about how children are innocent, so they demand justice, while adults would rather pray for mercy?” “I prefer justice,” Johnny said. “I like the taste of it.”

He looked less like the devil then, his eyes wide and earnest, but Milton wrote that Lucifer knew how to cry.

“You’ve always seen me, too,” Johnny agreed.

“They say the devil comes dressed as everything you’ve ever dreamed of. I never really imagined what it meant until I met you."

“Hell has no claim on me, but if it did, it wouldn’t be on account of who I take to bed.

“He left me here,” Mary Beth said. Her voice was deep and dark like decay. Lightning slashed through the trees and cast slanting shadows over her face where her eyes used to be. Her skin shone translucent, a skeleton smile behind her lips. Insects and squirming things moved in her hair. “They took my body but he left me here. I can hear you, Eugene. I can hear all of you, living your lives like nothing ever happened. I know where they buried my bones. I know my parents moved away. But he stayed behind with me. I’m still here!”

She flashed a smile. "You better run, honey. And don't ever look back."

The stained-glass saints gazed down on them in jealousy or indifference.

Nothing was real anymore. If Eugene had engaged in congress with the devil in the very church where he grew up, he doubted it much mattered.

“The devil is just the word you give to humanity’s darker impulses. You’ve seen the devil, but it was never me. And it’s not you, either.”

The creature that called itself Johnny Walker nodded to the back door of the church. “She’s calling for you, Eugene. Will you go to her?”

“Time doesn’t mean as much when you’re already dead.”

“My mother’s sister. They should have moved back to Ireland when my parents did.”