IBO - Brian R. Lundin (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

the hoots of an owl looking for prey as the flies and mosquitoes bussed around their heads and faces. A bellowing male alligator announced his presence to a female urging her to mate. The croaking of frogs, and other night creatures, and the whining of crickets filled the night.
It was early evening when Cinque and Uncle Claude were hunting alligators. They were sitting on a log waiting for the female alligator to come to her nest, where her eggs were about to hatch. The slight breeze blowing off Lake Pontchatrain carried away the sickening smell of the rotting plants and animals and the sweet fragrances of the wild flowers. This added to the ambiance of the dark night as the moon faded from view behind thick clouds. Claude took some tobacco out from his pants pocket and started rolling a cigarette, after lighting it, he shifted on the log and pulled an old, worn paperback book from the other pocket and started to read it using the light of the full moon.
“I didn’t know you knew your letters,” Cinque said surprised.
“A little bit, I went all the way through the sixth grade before my papa pulled me out to help work the land, but I remember this old white lady who was the schoolteacher. The other white folks called her a “Nigger Lover,” because she tried to help the nigger children learn their letters and how to count. She told us that we were as good as anyone else and every day she would read a passage from this book, she called it pearls of wisdom,” Claude said holding up the book with no cover.
“At the time I couldn’t understand what she meant when she would read things like; “strength and wisdom comes from a calm mind, in adversity lies great opportunity, time is the most precious thing we have because we have so little of it, successful men are those who pay attention to details, but as I got older and continued to read the book I began to understand what she was talking about, she was a good white woman.”
“Hmm,” Cinque said smiling, “I still don’t understand what she was talking about. I would like to learn my letters,” Cinque said.
Claude closed the book and handed it to Cinque.
“You keep it, I will learn you what I know and as you get older and learn how to read better you will come to understand it. Always remember, a lot of black men are stupid and hindered and victimized by their emotions, especially love and suffering. Let those emotions go and you will live a longer life. This is a white man’s country and they do not like or care nothin’ about black folks. Don’t take no shit from them or anyone, and always carry yourself like a man.
Not too long ago, many black men were buried in these here swamps for nothin’. Maybe they looked the wrong way at a white woman or looked a white man in his eyes that was enough for him to go missin’ from his family. However, we have generated our share of funerals for them white folks too, some by natural causes and some assisted. I have lived by two rules all my life; be brave and take no shit from nobody,” Claude said absent-mindedly while rubbing the black gris-gris bag of herbs, animal bones and black dried mud that hung around his neck that was given to him years ago by a voodoo woman. She told him that the bag would ward off evil spirits. Claude had a determined expression on his face, combined with his tone as he said, “History is always written by the victors.”
Earlier that day Claude had found the alligator nest covered with mud and vegetation debris containing thirty unhatched eggs. He had rigged up what he called the “Gator Hammer.”
The “Gator Hammer,” was a large log suspended high in the trees with a trip rope that was directly over the nest. When the animal stepped into the nest to inspect the eggs, she tripped the rope and the log was release killing the animal. Claude had heard the soft croaking sounds within the eggs indicating they would hatch soon. The mother would return when it got dark and incubate the eggs. One of the eggs had already begun to crack and the baby alligator emitted a series of croaks indicating it was in distress.
At dusk, the high cirrus clouds above the swamp had faded to the dull gray of night and the first stars had started to appear in the clear moonlit sky. Birds soared from treetop to treetop, then perched and looked for a meal. The shadows were stretching, forming figures of the trees. The bats were out, visible only for a moment, fluttering silently in hurried, unpredictable patterns in the early night sky and disappearing in the dark.
Uncle Claude had built a lean–to of logs that they slept under when they stayed all night. Tree limbs supported a roof made of tarp and the sides were open. Uncle Claude and Cinque sat motionless, side-by-side and silent under the tarp as the darkness deepened. They listened to night sounds and the quiet sigh of the river, no sight yet of the mother, only the black shadows of the trees. Uncle Claude quietly used his skinning knife to cut a plug of chewing tobacco and put it in his mouth. Their eyes had adjusted to the dark and they both scanned the terrain around the nest, especially the path leading from the water to the where the eggs were.
“To be a successful hunter you must learn to use all your senses; your eyes and ears and probably most important you must learn how to use your sense of smell. Some people say that only dogs and wild animals can smell fear on human and other animals, but so can you. Everything has a scent and fear makes it stronger.
Once you learn its scent it will be instantly recognizable,” Uncle Claude said as he put a finger to his lips.
“Shh,” Claude whispered, “She’s a comin.”
Claude and Cinque quickly hid behind a big tree and watched as the twenty foot long creature waddled into her nest. The long reptilian tail snagged the trip rope. With a loud crash, the heavy log struck the beast instantly killing it. Claude and Cinque gently removed the baby alligators that had hatched from the nest, and carefully placed them into the brackish black swamp water constantly on the lookout for the deadly water moccasin who’s bite was fatal. Afterwards, Claude and Cinque begin to skin the animal with a short bladed curved knife that they kept razor sharp. They always started at the left leg and cut upwards, after a while Cinque was almost as good as Uncle Claude.
“Violent death is always a nasty and smelly thing. Blood and shit seems to be lovers that cannot be separated. Every animal, big or small has one last piss and shit before he dies,” Claude said pensively, during the long days and nights they spent together Uncle Claude taught Cinque his letters.
Cinque got his revenge on the Dupree’s when he was eighteen and took part in a raid on their compound. Uncle Claude led the raid. The Dupree’s compound was on the other side of the slough, a muddy, snake infested waterway that twisted and looped like a scared snake. Sand, silt and gravel bars lined its innumerable bends and curves. It dipped and formed a wide circle of dry land around its banks. The circle was the Dupree compound. It was deep dense woodland covered in decaying trees, rotting vegetation and dead animals. Nothing was harvested on the unclear land except the timber that the Dupree’s used for firewood and the marijuana leaves that were everywhere. The Dupree’s thinking that the leaves were some type of tobacco they often picked and smoked it. The entire compound had been in the Dupree family since the early forties.
In1942, Joseph Dupree, his wife Margaret, their 5 young sons and 20 relatives arrived at the compound there were about ten blacks Cajuns families living there. With guns and machetes the Dupree’s ran the blacks off the land. One of his son’s Lamont married a local hooker from New Orleans named Evette and other son’s married local bayou women. Before long, the compound was over-run with little Dupree’s and fields of wild corn that Lamont distilled into moonshine. Before long Dupree’s Moonshine was soon known as the finest in Louisiana. The Dupree’s became famous for their brew, although fame was not something they sought. They were secretive and clannish, fiercely private and anyone who ventured into their compound uninvited was at great risk. For the next forty years Joseph and his clan made and sold the whisky, paid off the local sheriff, until he died of cirrhosis. After Joseph’s death, Lamont the oldest son became head of the family. In addition to selling the illegal whiskey, he started extorting the other residents of the bayou and selling the marijuana. Henri Deveroux, an honest man ran for sheriff of the county and he campaigned on a law and order ticket, vowing to rid the parish of corruption, moon shiners, drug dealers and the Dupree’s. Henri was elected by the parish as the sheriff in 1982. Two months after his election, Henri and ten of his deputies raided the compound. One of the sheriff’s deputies told Lemont about the raid and the Dupree’s were waiting. When the sheriff and his deputies jumped out of their boats, the Dupree’s ambushed the sheriff, killing him and all of his deputies. The sheriff and his deputy’s bodies were never found.
It was two hours before sunrise as Uncle Claude and five other cousins poled their way down Bayou Segnette, near Westwego in their swamp boats while Cinque and five of the other younger clan members went overland. The Bayou Segnette State Park contains both marsh and swamp wetlands. Bald eagles and red-tailed hawks soared overhead, along with Mississippi kites, red-winged blackbirds and cardinals whose songs carried through the trees. Migrating songbirds, Egrets, Ibexes, Great Blue Herons and Pelicans were in abundance. A Macaw flew high overhead probably blown off course by a passing hurricane. The swamp had an odor of things dying and being born. Most of the damp and rotting vegetation emitted a sickening smell that mingled with the brackish muck filled waters of the swamp. A large alligator slithered near the boat gave them a questioning look, dunked his head and was gone. Over on the riverbank a hungry but patient alligator waits, anticipating his next meal. His cold never-ending stare focused on unsuspecting nutria, a large rat. A snapping turtle nearby watched knowingly from a nearby cypress tree before plunging beneath the surface of the dark, tan painted water. A large brown water moccasin glided through the water unfazed by these intruders into his world. Far ahead on the riverbank were rabbits and deer’s. An otter and a mink were swimming rapidly to the opposite bank, for they knew that sudden death was always in the water.
The overland route was heavily forested with tall redwoods reaching for the sky and the home to twittering birds and small animals. It was a rutted, overgrows and rarely traveled foot trails flushed with overgrown ferns and plants. They followed the route as it pushed over the tops of low brush and sickly looking trees that had established themselves on the trail, and carefully dipped in and then back out of small pools of stagnant water, the breeding ground for