Under the Cajun Moon (34 page)

“Yeah, it’s an old Cajun saying: ‘Don’t drop the potato.’”

“What’s it mean?”

Travis went to a cabinet in the kitchen area and began rooting through the cans, obviously hoping to find something we could eat for dinner.

“I’ve heard it used two ways. Sometimes it just means ‘don’t give up’ or ‘hang in there.’ Most of the time, it’s more specific than that and means ‘don’t let go of what’s truly important, particularly your Cajun heritage.’”

I came over to the counter and sat on the bar stool there, watching as Travis pulled out several types of soup, chili, and beef stew.

“I can’t imagine what that would be like, to belong to something that way.”

“What do you mean,
cher
? You’re French Creole, aren’t you? That’s something to belong to.”

“Not these days. In the beginning, of course, early Creoles formed a very tight-knit people group, from what I understand. But that’s back when ‘Creole’ meant one thing, someone who was born in the New World to parents who were from the Old.” I added that over the years the term had slowly shifted and changed so much that nowadays most people weren’t even sure what Creole meant anymore. “Some people think it’s just a style of cooking. Others think that’s what you call someone of mixed race, or anyone in Louisiana with a French surname. Take your pick. How can I belong to something that nobody even knows what it is?”

Smiling, Travis admitted that I had a good point.

“Listen,” he added, “I could go outside and run lines or do some frogging or something and catch us a nice dinner, but I just don’t dare, considering how busy things are across the water. Somebody might spot me. Right now, I think the best I can offer is this enticing array of canned goods.”

“At least it’s food,” I said, realizing that I was hungry. “My vote’s for the beef stew.”

“Beef stew it is,” he replied, returning the other cans to the cabinet.

“Anyway, from what I can see, being Cajun is really significant—it’s an identity, a community, a way of life, a style of music, a form of cooking, a language…” My voice trailed off as I couldn’t think of how to say what I wanted to say. How could I explain that I had spent my entire life on the outside looking in, in almost every circumstance? Whether at school, work, or play, I had never found a place where I belonged. Even in my own nuclear family I was the third wheel, the one left out in the cold while
my parents enjoyed living in their little nation of two. “I’m just envious, I guess. It must feel good to be a part of such a thriving people group, even one that has suffered persecution as the Cajuns have. The whole Cajun experience defines you. It lets you be who you are within a safety net of absolute acceptance.”

Travis was quiet as he opened the stew, dumped it onto two paper plates, and heated the first one in the microwave.

“Chloe, do you know what people called you behind your back when we were teenagers?” he asked suddenly.

The microwave beeped.

“Ice Queen?” I replied, stiffening.

“Yeah. I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

Pulling out the plate, he added a fork and a paper towel for a napkin then slid both across the counter to me. I looked down at the stew, my appetite suddenly waning, wondering why he had brought that up.

“Even back then,” he explained, “I knew it wasn’t true. The guys all said that you were snobby and aloof, but that’s not the Chloe I could see. The Chloe I saw made herself an outsider on purpose, not because she was a snob, but because she didn’t know how to be an insider. Just now, to hear you talking about Cajuns like that, I have to wonder if that’s what the problem was, the whole safety net thing. Have you never had in your whole life the feeling that you belonged somewhere and that you were totally loved and accepted?”

I was dumbfounded, not just that he had had the nerve to say that to me, but that he had been so incredibly perceptive. I’m not sure why I was surprised. He was, after all, the first one to fully believe my innocence after I was released from jail. Obviously perceptiveness was his special gift.

“Eugenie and Sam. They gave me lots of love. But even as a very little girl I can remember standing at the sink with Eugenie, washing dishes together, and wishing my arms were dark brown like hers instead of pale and freckled like mine. Of course, I was just a kid. I didn’t understand the issues they faced, had never heard of civil rights, and didn’t know what prejudice was. All I knew was that I wanted so much to be their daughter.
I guess, even then, I didn’t really belong. One look at my blue eyes and blond hair made that obvious. An outsider yet again.”

A beep announced that the microwave was finished, and Travis pulled out his plate of stew. He set it on the counter and then surprised me by reaching out and taking both of my hands in his. I thought he was going to say something important to me, but instead he simply bowed his head and asked a blessing for our food. After his “amen,” he gave my hands a squeeze and let go.

“Ah, well, at least you always have the love of your heavenly Father,” he said before taking a bite of his stew. “He
is
love, after all.”

“Yep, as long as I follow all the rules.”

“What do you mean?”

I swallowed my bite of the stew and dabbed at my mouth with the paper towel.

“Religion. It’s filled with rules. Do this, don’t do that. Don’t get me wrong, that’s one of the things I’ve always liked about the Bible, that it lays things out very clearly. I guess you could say it was the original guide to etiquette.”

Travis looked at me, his mouth agape.

“What?” I asked.

“The Bible might have rules for living a more godly life,
cher
, but not for being loved. God’s love doesn’t hinge on anything. It just
is
.”

Leaving his stew to get cold on the table, Travis moved to a small desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a Bible. For the next ten minutes, he went through it, reading me verses about the nature of God’s love, ones that he said showed how it was unilateral and undeserved and unearned and unfailing and unending. As he read and talked, I began to think that he was right: God’s love wasn’t earned, as I had assumed, it just
was
. Here I’d been afraid to pray for fear of seeming like an ingrate, when in fact Travis said God didn’t care what I came to Him about as long as I came to Him!

“This is what real love looks like,
cher.
It’s about grace, not rules. Yes, there is judgment, and that judgment is fierce and eternal. But even that comes out of God’s love. He sent his Son so that whosever believes can
come. You don’t have to be on the outside looking in on that one. There’s your safety net,
cher
. There’s your acceptance. If you’re a believer like you say you are, then you’re
in.”

In any other situation, I might have felt that I was being preached at or talked down to, but Travis was just so genuinely enthusiastic that it didn’t come across that way. In fact, as he continued to share with me from the Bible and from his heart what the character of God really looked like, a new understanding began to dawn on me. Many of the things Travis told me I had heard before, but somehow the way he explained them made sense in a whole new way.

“If you want to know for sure what it feels like to be a part of something bigger than yourself, listen to this from Ephesians,” Travis said finally. “ ‘There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.’ If that’s not His way of telling you that you belong,
cher
, then I don’t know what is.” With that, he closed the Bible and gave me a triumphant smile.

“Thanks, Travis. You’ve given me a lot to think about and a whole new way to look at my faith.”

“Well, I’m sorry to go all preachy on you,” he replied, “but all of sudden God just laid this stuff on my heart. He
loves
you, Chloe. He always has and He always will. No matter what you do. You can’t earn it. It’s just there.”

I looked at this man who was standing in front of me, Bible clutched in his hands, earnestness written all over his handsome face. What I had done to deserve such passionate concern for my heart or soul I had no idea. I just knew that of all the people in the world who could have been pulled into this situation with me, I was infinitely grateful it had been Travis Naquin.

After we finished our stew and had cleaned up the kitchenette area, I asked Travis if he had a map of Louisiana. He felt sure that he did, so as he poked around in drawers and cabinets looking for it, I tried to remember the basics of latitude and longitude I’d long ago learned in school. From what I could recall, measures of latitude were those parallel, horizontal lines on a globe that were identified in degrees. Within those lines, even more precise lines could be indicated by the use of “minutes” and “seconds.” All three numbers written together as degrees, minutes, and seconds were considered to be “coordinates.” The coordinates of zero degrees, zero minutes, and zero seconds—expressed as 0˚ 0' 0"—fell right at the equator. All of the latitudes that came above that were considered “North.”

Similarly, measures of longitude were those lines that ran around the globe vertically. Also measured in degrees, minutes, and seconds, the coordinates of 0˚ 0' 0" longitude passed through the prime meridian, which was in Greenwich, England. Left of there, all the way to the international date line, longitudes were considered “West.” That was why the line in the poem,
North and West you may search for things gone amiss
, made so much sense, especially given that he had capitalized the words “North” and “West.” By combining a pair of coordinates to find where a specific line of latitude intersected with a specific line of longitude, one could
actually pinpoint an exact spot on the globe. No doubt, if we could find the coordinates we were looking for, the treasure would be waiting for us there.

“Found it!” Travis said triumphantly, pulling an old map from the back of a drawer.

He spread it out on the kitchen counter, and together we played with the numbers we had recovered thus far, which were 16, 18, 29, and 45. We weren’t sure how those numbers should be arranged into coordinates, so I asked Travis for a pen and paper where I wrote down letters substituted for numbers: X˚ X' X" N/Y˚ Y' Y" W. Under that, I started listing the various possibilities of how the four numbers we had might slot in, starting with 16˚ 18' 29" N/45˚ Y' Y" W. But given the possible variations of four numbers plugged into six places, I decided that would take too long.

Instead, we worked backward, starting with the map of Louisiana. By doing that, we were easily able to conclude where one of the numbers in our equation fell, simply because 29˚ N passed right through Louisiana. Better yet, 29˚ 45' N cut directly across Paradise! Thus far, then, our coordinates could be expressed as 29˚ 45' X" N and Y˚ Y' Y" W.

Unfortunately, the 16 and the 18—the numbers from Conrad and Sam—weren’t nearly so easy to pinpoint. Looking at the map, we realized that either latitude, 29˚ 45' 16" or 29˚ 45' 18", could be correct. To make things even more complicated, the 16 and 18 could have been a part of the longitude instead. A reading of 91˚ 16' 18", for example, crossed Paradise, though 91˚ 18' 16" fell west of there.

Combining the readings that did land squarely on Paradise gave us several possibilities, but without all six numbers to work with, the readings still weren’t specific enough to pinpoint the treasure. Given that each degree of latitude was about seventy miles apart, it was obvious that even one mistake could take us far off course. Using the four numbers we had and looking at the map, we both thought it was safe to assume that one of the missing numbers was 91, making the known parts of our formula now 29˚ 45' X" N/91˚ Y' Y" W. But even if our guess was correct, it wouldn’t do us any good unless we managed to discover the final, missing number and then figure out where that and the other two we already had should
go. I thought of the line from the poem,
The treasure they only together can find.

My father hadn’t been kidding about that.