DR09 - Cadillac Jukebox (51 page)

     
That night we ate
crawfish at Possum's in St. Martinville and went by the old church in the
center of town and walked under the Evangeline Oaks next to the Teche where I
first kissed Bootsie in the summer of 1957 and actually felt the tree limbs
spin over my head. Alafair was out on the dock behind the church, dropping
pieces of bread in a column of electric light onto the water's surface. Bootsie
slipped her arm around my waist and bumped me with her hip.

     
"What are you
thinking about, slick?" she said.

     
"You can't ever
tell," I said.

     
That night she and I
ate a piece of pecan pie on the picnic table in the backyard, then, like
reaching your hand into the past, like giving yourself over to the world of
play and nonreason that takes you outside of time, I punched on Alafair's
stereo player that contained the taped recording of all the records on Jerry
Joe's jukebox.

     
We danced to
"Jolie Blon" and "Tes Yeux Bleu," then kicked it up into
overdrive with "Bony Maronie," "Long Tall Sally," and
"Short Fat Fanny." Out in the darkness, beyond the glow of the flood
lamp in the mimosa tree, my neighbor's cattle were bunching in the coulee as an
electric storm veined the sky with lightning in the south. The air was suddenly
cool and thick with the sulfurous smell of ozone, the wind blowing dust out of
the new cane, the wisteria on our garage flattening against the board walls
while shadows and protean shapes formed and reformed themselves, like Greek
players on an outdoor stage beckoning to us, luring us from pastoral chores
into an amphitheater by the sea, where we would witness once again the
unfinished story of ourselves.