Page 41 of Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

When Justin got to the blanket, he set Adèle on the sand, and the two of them shook their bodies like wet dogs, spraying her with cold droplets.

She laughed. The cold spray was welcome in this ninety-degree heat.

“Is anybody hungry?” she asked as the two of them toweled themselves dry before dropping down to the blanket.

“Ahm so hon-gry Ah could eat an alligator,” Justin said, giving a gator-like roar.

Adèle giggled and looked up adoringly at Justin, her new best pal. “Ahm so hon-gry Ah could eat a skunk,” she added.

“Eew!” Louise remarked as she opened the metal ice chest she’d brought with them and began to lay out a picnic feast of fried chicken, buttered biscuits, potato salad, wedges of watermelon, and sweet tea.

An hour later, all the remaining food had been put away, and Adèle was sitting in the sand, hard at work with bucket and shovel, while Justin leaned back on the pillow he’d made of several rolled towels, an open Advanced Physiology book propped on his chest.

“I think I’ll go for a walk,” she said. “Anyone want to join me?”

Neither Justin nor Adèle were budging. So, Louise took off on her own, which was fine. She preferred this alone time to think, even pray, and what a place to meditate! Just as Louise loved her bayou home and its surroundings, she also had a fondness for Grand Isle, where she and her family had spent many summer days as they were growing up. While Louise and her much older brother Frank played in the waves, and their mother sunned herself on the white sandy beach, her father, a shrimp fisherman, went off on a busman’s holiday, fishing off the famous four-hundred-foot pier that led out onto the Gulf of Mexico, for the more than two hundred species of fish that reportedly abounded there. They always returned home with their metal ice chest filled with fish, fileted on the spot, to be enjoyed over the next few days. Red and black drum, flounder, sac-au-lait, lots of specks, or speckled trout, and a dozen other types, depending on the season or the time of day caught. Once her father had caught a twenty-pound Big Bull Red, so large it wouldn’t fit in the ice chest. They’d eaten fish “five ways to Sunday,” in her mother’s words, over the summer months, even after sharing half with a neighbor who’d been laid off from his factory job.

In a way, Grand Isle was symbolic of the Cajun inhabitants of southern Louisiana. Survivors. The barrier island had been hit repeatedly by destructive hurricanes over the centuries, including the one made most famous by Kate Chopin’s scandalous book, “The Awakening,” and it always came back. Just like the Cajuns, or Acadians, who had been kicked out of several countries and forced to live in the supposedly uninhabitable swamps of Louisiana, where they not only survived but developed their own foods, music, and culture which quickly matched their Creole competitors. In fact, just like Louise herself, who’d suffered through her Big Grief over the loss of Phillipe, the birth of an illegitimate child, the death of her father, brother, and mother, poverty, and the struggles with running her own business.

But now what? That’s what Louise wanted to ponder as she strolled the beach. Until Justin brought up his plans for the future, Louise would feel uncomfortable making plans of her own. But it was hard not to be hopeful. He’d told her last night that they would discuss Dr. Clovis’s offer later. But so far, nothing.

What was Justin waiting for anyhow?

While she walked and enjoyed the scenery, she was apparently the scenery for some people on the beach…men, in particular. She had to wonder if it was her recently adopted Cajun Sass that was apparent, in attitude more than anything else. It couldn’t be her bathing suit. It was no more revealing than any other one on the beach. And it couldn’t be her body, either, which was fine, but nothing overtly sexual, in her opinion. But maybe a combination of all three. Who could figure out the male mind?

A thought occurred to her suddenly. Can men sniff out a woman who is sexually active? Do they have a built-in radar for easy girls? Lordy, Lordy, do I give off a certain slut scent?

The first one who approached her looked about sixteen, freckles and all. “Hey, darlin’, don’t I know you from somewhere?” His voice cracked in the middle of his sentence.

She smiled and continued walking. He fast-walked to keep up with her, which wasn’t difficult with her being so much shorter.

“Seriously?” she said. “Don’t you need to go do your homework or something?”

“I don’t have homework in the summer,” he replied before he realized what he’d admitted.

Louise didn’t want to embarrass the kid but she also didn’t want him tagging along. “Listen, sweetie, you’re cute and all that, but my husband’s a dock worker, and he gets real jealous. Broke the jaw of the last guy who winked at me.”

“Wi-wink?” he stuttered.

Then, there was the guy leaning against a sign announcing the hours that the beach was open to the public. A lot older than her first Lothario. Maybe thirty-five, or even forty. Arms folded over an impressive chest, ankles crossed, he wore dark sunglasses, which he slid halfway down his nose to give her a better scrutiny. He was the epitome of Cajun rascal; she could tell that even before he opened his mouth and drawled, “Chère, you look good enough to eat. Lak a Christmas candy cane. Lak sweet beignets at Café du Monde.”

She laughed. “Does that line work for you, cher?”

He laughed back at her and shrugged, “Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no.”

“Well, this time it’s a ‘no’. Good luck, mon ami.”

He gave her a smart salute and no doubt watched her behind as she turned and walked back the way she’d come. She gave her hips a little extra wiggle just because she was feeling sassy.

She heard her next “pursuer” before he spoke.

“Hey, baby,” pant, pant, “where you been,” pant, pant, “all my life?” pant, pant, pant, pant.

She stopped walking, fearing the short, fat, sixty-if-he-was-a-day gentleman tracking her would have a heart attack on the beach. That’s when she got a look-see at the old guy’s attire. One of those stretchy men’s bathing suits that barely covered their you-know-what or the crack in the back. His belly hung halfway over what pretty much looked like a sling for a banana. And he had enough gray hair on his chest and arms to knit a sweater.

Is this what I’m coming to? she wondered.

Then she answered her sassy Cajun self, Heck, no!