Beau kept one wind-burned eye on the road and the other on his grandpa. When Leon hit the cinnamon paste in the middle of the sandwich, the old man’s face pulled back like the punch of taste had knocked off all his wrinkles.
“What is that? Whatcha put in here?” he asked, his cracked old finger prodding among the shrimp as if he expected to find a baby alligator.
“Cinnamon. I thought you’d like a little cinnamon to cut all that cayenne,” Beau said. It was not just cinnamon, but mostly. It had taken him eight hours to match the smell rising from the big bed of thistles he found the day before yesterday. Beau worked from memory, uncertain until now that he had gotten it right.
Leon peered at him with eyes as sharp as a young pool shark. Beau waited for the question “where’d you get that idea?”, but instead Leon just gave him a nod.
“Yeah. That’s just what I’ve been waiting for.” He kept his eyes on Beau long after the boy had turned his back to the road.
Lake Maurepas is, in a way, a great holding tank for the swamps gathered up between the Mississippi River and the west end of the long and shallow Pontchartrain. They rode I-55 over the bridge that split the two lakes like a high concrete collar at Manchac and pulled off the interstate before it rose again above the swamp to carry drivers on to Ponchatoula.
Bud Robicheaux had his fan boat chained up where he promised Beau it would be. Mud still spattered the flat aluminum hull from their fishing trip two nights earlier. It had taken a promise of three bottles of Johnny Walker before Bud risked the wrath of his father’s finding he’d lent out the boat. Bud lost on the deal; Beau would have gone much higher, having seen all those thistles.
Beau lifted his grandpa into the boat and belted him to the seat.
“We’re heading back southwest across the lake,” he told Leon before placing the big ear protectors on his head.
“Blind River?”
“Up Dutch Bayou, just before Hope Canal.” His grandpa nodded, his eyes still taking in Beau like a boy looks at his father, or a lover finding love returned. For a moment, Beau worried that this would end in one last great disappointment, but the lingering scent of cayenne and cinnamon on the old man’s fingers sent his mind back to the thistles and he grinned. “Let’s get to it.”
The spot was easy to find. Beau had caught a bass, which beat Bud’s largest by half, just before he caught the scent. The fish was back underwater—big boss on a full stringer—when the scent of Le Conte’s thistle wormed in between the hot sun in the Spanish moss and the warm dank smell of water on Beau’s hands.
It was not just the smell of thistle, though. Beau might have left it alone, if it had been. There was something sharp woven around that scent. It was like cayenne and cinnamon, but hotter and more rich, more fresh. He had made Bud drive them to ground and he hiked upwind through the dense brush until he found the dry pool.