Bayous and backroads

A big paper map in one hand, the steering wheel in the other--I amble off the main highway for something less traveled. Today I want to see what’s behind the tourist brochures and swamp tours. So I fly down lonely roads of crushed, white shell (recalling Barbara’s comment last night: They use the oyster shells for gravel here. That’s the one problem I got with Louisiana – there’s no rocks! She cackles Why, if you wanted to throw a rock at something – or someone – you can’t, you just can’t! Doesn’t matter how mad you are! There’s no rocks!), across ghostly bayous and houses that grow increasingly ragged. Enjoying the open road ahead, I speed past some of the best photographic material, determined to get there. Until I realize that I’ve just sped past some the best photographic material because I’ve been so determined to I had to get to some other place….I hit the brakes.

It’s rusted and turquoise. Enormous river boat laying on its side, in the gently churning water and muck of the roadside canal. Bones from a broken mast rise partially out of the water. Then there’s another mast, another boat, huge boats, half sunk and rotting. A strange cemetery. I count 5 from the car.

I grab the Nikon. Jump from the car and sprint across the field to the canal, like a 5 year old, just to feel my legs moving in the sun and wind. They’re standing there watching me, two fishermen on an old, but operational, boat. I wave as I run by them and playfully lift the camera (see, it says, I’m a tourist!).

I snap my shots. Stand for a minute. Then walk back.

His name is Ivey. They fish for shrimp, mostly shrimp. When I ask how long, he only smiles and says, years, ma’am, years. When I ask if I can take his picture, he smiles slightly and says, why shore, ma’am. Never lifting the hand from his head.

Then they tell me the story of the turquoise boat – Ike got that one. The others, oh who knows anymore. But that one, they could ‘ave saved it. Ah was he-ah fo Ike. See the lock on that door-ah, ma’am, the watah was high than that. The boats were moving all ovah the place, an ah was he-ah, on this boat.

Were you scared?

No ma’am. You have to sit out thah storms a'times – an thas what ah did. If ya leave it, it ges swallowed up. The river water, it rocks the boat so, comes overboard to drown it, if no one’s the-ah to right her. But they didnah and that boat jus leaned over – but it could have been saved.

The other broken boats - why are they left here, drowning like that, why don’t they fix them?

He smiles, amused, Why, they’re broken! Not going tah work now. Why they ah half filled with watah. What’s more tah do but let ‘em sit?

But there are so many – I mean, you could fix it, have a boat, couldn’t you?

He shrugs, too much work and he doesn’t have the time.

We’re both laughing by then, trying to understand the world of the other.

His partner has no teeth, and hides behind the fishing nets except to ask me if I’m working at the community center. When I tell them where I’m from, they wave off Seattle, too far away.

We wave goodbye and I promise myself that I’ll take the same route back and get those shots I’d overlooked earlier…trying not to hear Frost laughing at me with the line:yet knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

A turn here, a turn there. I’m shortly in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere to be, no one to know any of it. It feels both devilish and delightful. A sunny afternoon all to myself, to do as I please as I please to do it.