I found this in my collection and realized it had been inadvertently deleted from the site and it was not my intention to take it down. I had fun writing it and it allowed me to revisit some old stompiong grounds which still tug hard at the sleeves.
A jambalaya pot of bayou experiences...
I could still taste the sweetness of the early satsumas as I tossed the peels onto the surface of the perfectly polished coffee table; a wine stem half empty of its French Bordeaux on the table before me. For whatever reason her words rattled around in my brain for a few moments looking for some safe space on the recesses of the cerebral cortex to bring some measure of clarity to whatever she was intending to tell me. I didn't really care; I'd heard it all before. I just had not been paying attention until recently.
"Maynard, I'm going to go on up to the Lake house for a few days, you know, to get away for a while and get my head on straight." My wife of 14 years said to me as I sat there on her woven horror of a couch.
She had three pieces of luggage near the door with the keys to her new car in her hand and a floppy straw hat on her head.
"Would you be a dear and help me get these to the car, Maynard?"
I looked up at her like she had a giant fucking snot crust right across her brow. Rising from the couch, I picked up the glass and walked silently out into the immense kitchen, poured the Bordeaux down the sink drain and walked out the backdoor before taking a seat at poolside with a fresh Landshark Lager in hand. By the time I finished the first bottle, she was gone.
I've come to hate Bordeaux wine and it's a shame. It's one of the finest French wines and ages very well and for some reason my wife Cynthia began ordering it regularly when we dined out and bottles of it began appearing in the household. I think my festering hatred of it took strong root when I found two stems with remnants of the vintage remaining on the dresser in one of the guest rooms along with a pair of gold cufflinks with my initials MB engraved on them. I didn't own or wear gold cufflinks, ever.
The phone buzzed in my pocket.
"Maynard, please remember to feed Thomas and make sure he gets out for a while before you go to bed. You know what happens when he doesn't."
I just disconnected. Thomas is her fucking dog and the damn thing craps on the kitchen floor if he isn't let out every evening to do his thing. He is usually out in the garden during the day so it's not a problem. It's not my problem anymore anyways. Thomas is at the Humane Society Center looking for a new human being to make miserable. Cynthia just didn't know it yet.
After the next two lagers I started thinking more clearly. Along with the Bordeaux and that fucking dog, another thing had really been getting on my nerves lately; this great big monstrosity of a house. Cynthia inherited it from her grandmother and it had been in the family for over 175 years with each generation building additions to it except this one. It had 8 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms not to mention TWO front living rooms, a parlor, dining room, library, enormous kitchen and more nooks and crannies than I could ever care to count.
The house had a deep granite lined basement with a wine cellar and still had leaded glass windows dating back to the mid nineteenth century with a roof that was slate and copper rather than shingles. If there was anything Cynthia valued as much as life itself it was this house. I fucking hated it.
So, at the age of 39 years and standing in the foyer of the house I loathed, I polished off the 4th Landshark and took a good look around. She would have arrived at the lake house right about now and if practice was any indication ...
The phone in my pocket buzzed.
"Maynard, the house, the lake house ... Maynard, there was a fire." She said in near hysterics.
"And ... and there is a body, a dead body in the ruins. Maynard, did you hear me, a dead body!?!"
"Probably a bum, Cynthia, probably a bum."
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I was never born for this. Hell, I shouldn't have been born in the first place but for a drunken serviceman taking liberties with a young semi-virgin who had never gone further than a stray finger in her quim on a jalopy's backseat. The first time was primetime and Marie Blanchard found herself with a baby in her belly and one of the country's finest unwilling to step up to the plate. If he had he probably would have been locked up for statutory rape in any event.
Instead he found himself in the clutches of a very angry and determined Charles P. Maynard who captured the boastful son of a bitch outside a dusty longneck bottle joint in Port Allen, Louisiana and offered him a picture of death at the hands of a fifty eight year old grandfather with steely blue eyes and an iron grip. The story I've heard over the years is the fellow, my dear old dad, lost his natural ability to ever bring pleasure to any young lady that met his fancy. I don't know if it is true or not but nobody ever saw hide nor tail of him again.
Charles P. Maynard was an ornery cuss of a man who eventually died at the age of eighty seven. He was also my great grandfather and the only real father I ever knew. My mother's folks had been killed in a car accident when she was little and Charles took over as guardian. I don't know the whole story but it was decided to give me the name of Maynard in his honor, Maynard Blanchard, two last names.
It was a scrappy, moderately successful growing up in the Maynard household. Charles was a wheeler dealer in timberland; 'land rich' he used to say 'with an empty wallet'. He exaggerated of course, we never lacked for anything. Every year he took us on a vacation to the gulf coast and Christmas was always plentiful. Mother ended up marrying a druggist when I was 13 and I opted to stay with Charles in Baton Rouge rather than move to Mobile with her when given the choice.
That was a good thing in hindsight. She ended up running off with a trucker to Mexico before settling down in Sacramento, CA. I still get picture postcards from her once in a while to let me know how she is doing although I haven't seen her but a couple of times since Charles passed.
It was coming out of LSU years ago that set me on the path I'm on now. I graduated with a degree in structural engineering and was hired on with a firm out of New Orleans that wanted a road warrior, somebody who could live out of a suitcase and work anywhere on moments' notice. The pay was good, the work was interesting and I literally didn't have a house or home; I lived entirely out of a hotel room unless I was back on weekends in which case I stayed at Charles...
*********
I caught a glimpse of her from across the hotel bar in downtown Jackson, MS. I had been working the road for a couple years at that point and was doing a job on a large construction site a couple blocks away. She stood out with short cropped blond hair and a tight top that accentuated her full bosom and she wore a bold red gloss on lips that cried out for an embrace or so the liquor told me.
I tugged another swig of courage and made my way slowly down to her end, pausing here and there; I didn't want to be obvious. She was holding court with two other women, girls I should say. We were all early mid- twenties.
"Don't you work down on the new Lenders State site?" She asked me right out of the blue before I could even set my heels to introduce myself.
"Yes, Ma'am, I'm doing engineering work for them. I'm Maynard Blanchard, pleased to meet you." I shook her hand politely.
"My pleasure, Maynard, I'm Cynthia Dawes and these are my friends, Priscilla and Candice. Are you going to be working on that site until it's done?"
The two friends were eyeballing me up and down and Cynthia was smiling pleasantly.
"As long as they'll have me."
I bought the next round of drinks and had a long conversation with the three of them and that night I would have fucked any one of them or all of them if given the chance. They knew it too and were just plain awful about it; hardcore cockteasers each one of them.
I did find out that Cynthia worked in the office building across from the construction site but she didn't share any more information than that. She must have seen me on site from her office is what I surmised.
After an hour of talking with them three well -heeled men made their way to the group and it looked like I was about to become the odd spoke in the wheel. One of the fellows, a guy named Michael Bishop who looked to be in his early-middle thirties was apparently Cynthia's current interest and I could sense the testosterone stoking up the flames of his ego. It didn't matter to me. He was a soft white collar kind of guy who didn't look like he did much work of any kind. If his cockiness fooled him into any sense of false bravado I would have kicked his ass into the pavement however there was no need for any of that. I simply struck out with the wrong ladies so after finishing the night with a shot of red on the rocks I headed for my room.
The next evening I was nursing a beer in the same hotel bar while trying to catch a bit of the game on the TV overhead when she slipped onto the seat next to me. This time she was wearing just a pair of jeans and an Ole' Miss tee shirt with sandals. The bright red lip gloss was gone too, replaced with a subtle pink hue.
"Miss me?" She asked.
"I've been pining away in my beer all night." I chuckled. "The bigger question is Mr. Bishop missing you?"
"Oh don't worry about him. He's busy."
I didn't worry a bit about him and forty five minutes later we were upstairs with all four pieces of her clothing on the floor of my room and her heels kicking at the ceiling. She was certainly talented enough to pull me three times before she hopped in the shower and dressed to return home.
A couple nights later it was a repeat and it continued like that for the next month or so until Cynthia ended up spending the night. At breakfast the next morning she shared a couple interesting pieces of information; first, she worked for her daddy who also was the developer who owned the project I was working on across the street from her workplace. Second, she was announcing her engagement to Michael Bishop at a dinner party Friday evening.
"So why are you here with me?" was my immediate question.
"Because I like you and you are really good in bed."
Those are two very good reasons under different circumstances but as soon as a ring slips onto the finger they become sore excuses. I liked her too and she was damn good in the sack. She continued.
"Maynard, there's more to it than that really. I was fascinated with you as soon as I saw you trying to sneak your way over to our side of the bar that night; I knew when I first laid eyes on you that you were special, different."
