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.

well.....

They would burn bright for a few months and then die hard, the same as all the others before them.

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 Church might be divided on the topic, but things were different in the South. There wasn’t a God-fearing soul in Louisiana who didn’t believe in ghosts as well as the great savior in the sky. There was voodoo in the soil, his mother always said, running in the water and making everyone half mad. Ghosts and rougarous and the devil, wandering the streets and waiting to pull your soul down into the murky waters of the bayou.

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.

They were close to the bayou, almost on its front step. It was the sort of place where one might drown on dry land if he lingered too long.

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.

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

“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.

“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.”