Shadows of Home: A Woman with Questions. A Man with Secrets. A Bayou without Mercy Read online

  Shadows of Home

  Deborah Epperson

  Shadows of Home

  By: Deborah Epperson

  Copyright © 2017 by Deborah Epperson

  All rights reserved.

  Email: [email protected]

  These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, place, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Deborah Epperson.

  Publisher: WRITE MONTANA Publishing

  Cover Design by: SwoonWorthy Book Covers

  Acknowledgements

  My sincere appreciation to my critique group: Debbie Burke, Dr. Betty Kuffel, Marie Martin, and Ann Minnett, and to Sami Rorvik for her suggestions and beta reading. Many thanks to Tom Kuffel (formatting and technical support) for his expertise and patience.

  To my husband and children, I give my love and appreciation. And thanks to Jasmine for your devotion and making me smile every day.

  My deep gratitude goes to Capt. Wendy Billiot, The Bayou Woman. In addition to being a Coast Guard licensed boat captain, Capt. Wendy is an award winning writer/author, photographer, Wetland Educator and tour guide, and recipient of a 2015 Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana Coastal Stewardship Award. An expert on Louisiana bayous and wetlands, this mother of five graciously shared her knowledge and insight with me, while in the midst of planning a wedding and running Camp Dularge, her fishing camp and home of her Bayou Woman Adventures. Somehow, this Bossier City native found the time to help me with everything from photos of Caddo Lake, critiquing, and being my “everything Louisiana” advisor. Check out Camp Dularge and her children’s books on a subject dear to her heart, America’s vanishing wetlands, at Capt. Wendy’s blog, Bayou Woman. Life in the Louisiana Wetland at: http://bayouwoman.com

  Dedication

  To Ida Mae Vonderheide, my late friend and the best neighbor in the world. In the thirty years that I was blessed to have her as my friend and neighbor, I never found anything that she couldn’t do. Plumbing, electrical, even roofing. I trailed after her in awe as she put in phone lines, fixed leaky pipes, and diagnosed correctly why my car refused to start.

  My husband worked out of state for years and the kids left for college. But even though I lived alone much of the time, I never worried because Ida was just a phone call and a couple of acres away. Once, I was caring for my dad who had dementia and his bathroom sink started leaking. When Ida heard about it, Ida and her sister, Martha (another wonderful neighbor), came over and worked until midnight to fix it!

  Although Ida left us too soon, I think of her every day. When I pick up the phone, I remember Ida put those phone lines in. The barn lights: Ida’s handiwork. The list of places Ida touched goes on and on. Even when I turn onto the dirt road we live on and see the county road sign, I am reminded of my cherished friend and neighbor. The name of our road—Vonderheide Lane.

  There is a Chinese Proverb: A good neighbor is a priceless treasure. The author of that proverb must have had the good fortune to have a neighbor like Ida Mae Vonderheide.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  About Caddo Lake

  Novel Excerpt: Breaking TWIG

  About the Author

  “And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” Khalil Gibran

  PROLOGUE

  Elita Pearl Dupree was born on the edge of a mystery created by God Himself.

  Legend has it that not long after the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, the Great Spirit warned a Caddo Indian chief to move his village to higher ground. For reasons unknown, the chief ignored the Great Spirit’s warning. Soon afterwards, he and his warriors were out hunting when the ground beneath them began to shake violently. The frightened men rushed back to their village and found it gone, submerged forever beneath the murky waters of a newly formed lake.

  Many dispute the Indian legend, preferring to believe a 100 mile logjam clogged the Red River and formed the 25,000 acre lake. But Elita and her family believed in the legend of the earthquake. For over a century, the story had been handed down from one generation of Duprees to the next. Elita believed because her mother said it was so. Among her clan, that’s reason enough.

  But now, her beloved Mama has passed on to that place where the answers to all of life’s mysteries are revealed. And so, five years after the haunting death of her father drove Elita and her mother to the tangle of skyscrapers called Chicago, Elita is boarding a plane for Louisiana, the land of her birth.

  She’s saying adieu to paved streets to walk barefoot down dogwood-lined dirt roads and linger beneath bald cypress rising from soggy beds, their limbs spread wide in welcome. A recital by fish crows and barred owls will replace the blare of horns and wail of sirens. Instead of contemplating the gossip of colleagues, Elita will seek the counsel of her kinsmen, those wise enough to keep close to the land surrounding this sprawling, fertile water.

  She’s taking her mother home to lie beside her father and brother and all the Moreaux and Dupree kin gone before. On a bluff overlooking her beloved bayous with their yellow buds of spatterdock and masses of white water lily blooms, Madeleine Moreaux-Dupree will rest. A canopy of Spanish moss swaying from century-old oaks will cool her, while mourning doves serenade.

  As her dear Mama slumbers in eternal peace, Elita alone will face the demons waiting in the mist shrouding this feral swamp—the same demons that in 1965 sent her and her mother fleeing to the city of steel and wind. Maybe somewhere in this maze of sloughs, bogs, and bayous, Elita will unearth a way to escape the quagmire her life has become and experience quietness of spirit and peace of mind once more. Perhaps, in this land where time seems to have stood still, she’ll find her bearings again and in doing so, rediscover her true north.

  Elita is taking her mother back to the mystical land of their ancestors, back to those mysterious waters of Indian lore.

  She’s going home to Caddo Lake.

  CHAPTER 1

  March 27, 1970

  He stared at her. With his skinny legs planted firmly in the thick vegetation lining the shallows of the opposite bank, he clearly belonged at Caddo Lake. He opened, closed, and then opened again his mouth, as if asking the question she’d been asking herself for the past three days. Where do you belong, Elita Pearl Dupree?

  She stared back, as curious about him as he was about her. Had
he been fishing in Moccasin Bayou the day it happened? Was he a silent witness to her daddy’s so-called accidental drowning? Her heartbeat quickened as he waded a few steps closer. Did he know the truth? Was he searching for a way to tell her some dark secret he’d kept for the past five years—a secret that could liberate her heart from a burdensome pain and free her mind of its constant doubts?

  “Elita.”

  She flinched.

  Matt Dupree joined his niece on the dock. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She smiled and pointed at the great blue heron on the opposite side of the bayou. “I was admiring that fellow and didn’t hear you walk up.”

  Matt nodded. “Guess it’s been awhile since you’ve seen one of those.”

  “I saw one at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.”

  “That’s not the same as seeing them in the wild.” Her father’s younger brother slicked back a wayward tuft of black hair rising out of a stubborn cowlick, a feature shared by many a Dupree, including Elita. “What do you think? Has the Caddo changed much since you and your mother left in ’65?”

  A mild winter had given way to an early spring in the Louisiana Parish named after Caddo Lake, a sprawling maze of bayous, sloughs, and coves that straddled the Texas-Louisiana line some twenty miles northwest of Shreveport. Yellow-green needles adorned stately bald cypress, while Spanish moss swayed from their limbs like the wind-blown tresses of platinum-haired angels. Lily pads sporting yellow and white blooms adorned much of the water’s stained surface. A choir of prothonotary and yellow-throated warblers flitted across the tops of trees lining the banks of Devin’s Cove, an inlet named for her great-great-grandfather and owned by the Dupree family since before the Civil War.

  The grounds of her uncle’s fishing camp were lush and green. Unfortunately, much of the green was poison ivy. This noxious plant, along with the alligators, water moccasins, and snapping turtles that stalked the land and water served as a reminder that the Caddo could be as deadly as it was enchanting.

  The great blue heron rose from the water, holding his long neck in a graceful S-curve even in flight. He turned south, exposing his blue-gray belly and shaggy neck to them as he navigated a path down the center of the bayou, taking with him all his secrets.

  Elita turned to her uncle. “It looks the same. After five years, it looks exactly as I remembered it.”

  Matt smiled. “The Caddo doesn’t change. That’s the one thing you can depend on.”

  But something was different. Was it the Caddo? Or something in her?

  Her uncle placed his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry about your mother. Madeline was a wonderful woman. It was a nice service and a good turnout.”

  “I thought Royce would come,” she said. “I saw his brother in the crowd, but not him.”

  “He’s gone a lot since going to work for his family’s oil company.”

  She pulled away. “I thought Royce became a doctor. That was always his plan.”

  “Reckon he changed his mind. He went to work for Sutton Oil about three months before his father died.”

  “From the time we were kids, Royce swore he’d never work for his father’s oil company. He’d be a doctor even if it meant being disinherited.” Elita pushed her dark hair behind her ears. “The University of Texas accepted him into their medical program.”

  “He went one year and dropped out.”

  “Why would Royce abandon his dream of becoming a doctor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The last letter I got from him was in March of ’66. He wrote that he was engaged to a girl from Texas. Some months later, one of Mama’s sisters wrote that the wedding had been cancelled. Did that have anything to do with him leaving medical school?”

  Matt shrugged. “Maybe you’ll have a chance to ask him before you go back to Chicago.”

  “I’m not going back, at least not until the end of the summer.”

  “You’re not?” he asked, one brow lifted. “What about your job at the hospital and your classes? Don’t you have another year of pharmacy school left?”

  “I’ll have to make up some of my classes, but the hospital will give me a leave of absence.” Elita scanned the cove again. “There are things around here I need to take care of, things I need to work out. I’d like to rent one of your cabins if you don’t mind waiting for your money until Mama’s life insurance comes through.”

  Matt took a couple of steps back. “Rent? You’ve been in the city too long. This is your home, Baby Girl. You’ll stay with Mamaw Pearl in the main house and I’ll hear no more of this nonsense about paying rent.”

  “There’re only two bedrooms.”

  He pointed at the largest cabin, the one closest to the lake. “I sleep there most nights. That way I can stay up late tying flies or go night fishing without disturbing your granny.”

  “Well, if you’re sure I’m not putting you out.”

  “Not one bit,” he said. “Speaking of Mamaw, she sent me to get you. Your Texas cousins want to tell you goodbye. After all, it might be three whole days before we see them again.”

  She laughed. Half of her cousins lived in Louisiana, while the other half resided just across the state line in Texas. None lived more than fifty miles from where they were born. Except for those who served time in the military and a second cousin who’d spent a year in the state pen for borrowing, as he called it, a fellow’s car without permission, no Dupree had ever left the shadow of Caddo Lake except for Elita and her mother. At the time, their kin viewed it as treason, but later most came to realize that she and her mother had no choice but to leave. Otherwise, Madeline would’ve lost her mind for sure.

  * * *

  Elita’s grandmother, Pearl, lived in a shotgun house made of cypress stained forest green to match the half-dozen one-room cabins her son rented out to fishermen and hunters. The house was split down the middle by a wide dogtrot or hallway and got its name from the fact that a person so inclined could stand at the front door, fire a gun and the bullet would travel clean through the house and out the back door.

  Two bedrooms lined the west side of the dogtrot, the front one being Mamaw Pearl’s. The east side of the house faced Devin’s Cove and consisted of one long room, a combination parlor and eat-in kitchen. In the winter of ’56, after Mamaw slipped on some ice and broke her leg coming back from the outdoor privy, Elita’s daddy and her Uncle Matt added an indoor bathroom off the kitchen. Wide porches bracketed the house, the front one screened-in to protect against mosquitoes. Every room, including the porches, sported ten-foot high walls and a ceiling fan to make the heat and humidity tolerable.

  Mamaw Pearl adjusted the faded brown cushion on the back of her platform rocker. “Have you finished writin’ thank you cards to those who sent flowers to your mother’s funeral? It’s been a week now. Folks will be expectin’ a card.”

  Elita sat down in one of the ladderback chairs that lined the east wall of the screened porch. “I mailed the last of them yesterday.”

  Pearl gave a solitary nod of approval. “Good thing Madeline’s funeral wasn’t today.”

  Elita watched the last drops of rain drip off the eaves of the tin roof. A midday shower had provided enough drizzle to settle the dust and delay her trip to Moccasin Bayou, the place where her father supposedly drowned in July of ’65. Some folks, including Elita, found it hard to believe a man who’d spent forty years on the waters of Caddo Lake could accidentally turn his pirogue over and drown. Thus, many believed he’d committed suicide because of his feelings of guilt over a recent family tragedy.

  A couple of months before his death, Yancy Dupree had been watching his five-year-old son, Ricky, while Elita and her mother set out purple lantana and nasturtiums in the hopes of attracting more butterflies to their flower garden. The boy was a human tornado, spinning from one adventure to the next, testing the patience and stamina of any would-be babysitter.

  Her brother’s real name was Richard Yancy Dupree, Jr., but Elita
called him Ricky-Tick because he was forever playing with and loving on Yancy and Matt’s coonhounds. Consequently, Mama was always checking him for ticks. Every couple of days Madeleine would find one and act as if she’d discovered a new star. She’d show the tick to her husband, tell him to keep his flea-bitten hounds penned up, and order Ricky-Tick to stay away from the dogs. But her reprimand didn’t stop her son anymore than Yancy’s fence stopped the dogs. The mongrels just dug under or climbed over the fence or, with Ricky’s help, got out the gate.

  Elita blamed those dang dogs for her brother’s death almost as much as she blamed her daddy. Yancy had ducked into the garage for a couple of minutes to get more string to make a new fishing line. When he came back outside, his son had vanished.

  Everyone looked for that boy. They called his name for a good twenty minutes before Elita noticed the dogs were out of their pen. About that time, they heard Matt’s favorite hound, Jughead, baying. He’d treed something for sure.

  Ten minutes later Elita and her family found the dogs. The hounds were barking at a hissing raccoon clutching a limb halfway up a giant live oak that stood some sixty feet high and eight feet around. The stupid dogs ran around the tree, stopping only to jump against the reddish brown, rough-ridged bark of the huge oak.

  Elita raised her hand to shade her eyes from the dancing speckles of sunlight that punctuated the dark green canopy of leaves. The raccoon ran up the shallow-furrowed trunk to seek refuge on a thicker limb. That’s when Elita saw a kid’s red tennis shoe stuck in the fork of two limbs draped in weeping garlands of Spanish moss. She knew in an instant her brother had climbed that damn tree after the coon and fallen.

  Her mother saw the shoe too. She screamed for her husband, pointed to the red shoe, and grabbed at her throat with both hands as if life itself was choking her. Perhaps it was because when Yancy walked out from behind that tree carrying Ricky-Tick’s lifeless little body, Madeleine fell to her knees gasping for breath. Ricky’s head lolled to one side, his neck broken.