Aachoo Voo, Private Eye Episode 27 There Is No Peace And Quiet In A Swamp NEW EPISODE UP NOW!!!!!

 

........DIARY ENTRANCE EPISODE.......

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode 27

There Is No Peace and Quiet In a Swamp

We are here. But where in God's Name are we? I don't know. MiMi Voo doesn't know. Hopefully God does but if MiMi doesn't know where we are here in her very own swamp, we are lost. It's over. Done. Fini. Deja fini. Hopeless. Mon Dieu! We are fee fah founce. We are foufou. Or foo foo or fi fie fo fum however you spell it! We are perdue. LOST! Well, for a few panic stricken moments anyway. MiMi was trying to take me to the hiding place cave/cove where she said the Voo fortune was hidden. (And said had been hidden since Jean Lafitte the French pirate had been invited to supper lo, many years ago by one of her ancient ancestors.)  Said ancestor had supposedly relieved the pirate of his on board treasures with the help of his own diabolical crew (though they had no ship of their own nor were they pirates.) They were robbers and thieves and they all had scurvy but they were not pirates. Nor were they Voos.

They were Breauxs.  (She pronounced it Bros.) Forced out of Arcadia in Nova Scotia back in the day of the Grande DeRangement, they had kicked around hither and yon and picked up many savory and unsavory skills and habits. One branch went here and became priests. One branch went there and became...other things. It was from this branch that MiMi had descended. Voo Bayou was originally Breaux Bayou, you see. It had been MiMi's inheritance and she had given it to Poppi Voo when they'd met and married. They had then changed it's name forever daring anyone living to call the place Breaux Bayou again.  It was not a name recalled with fondness but with great disdain and she set about cleaning up it's image. Which worked like a charm until my parents had been forced to move down there when my brother had made his unexpected arrival. Needless to say, when Patricia Paramore Voo came to the small and low brow Louisiana Parish, she had also brought back the long simmering disdain flooding back in like a tsunami. Swamp folk are known to hold grudges. (To originate them, it is said and cherish them to the grave.)

You must forgive me. I got distracted. I had heard bits and pieces of the wild tales about my grandmother's ancestry and had assumed it was mostly lore and myth but I could never be sure. Poppi had never corrected me when I asked questions and he'd always shook his head and gave my father "that look" when the subject arose. MiMi Voo's mysteries were hers to divulge at will and to subtract from and add to like any good Cajun historian. We came to expect deviations now and then.

           

An alligator ate our pirogue. No, not our pierogi. (I wished we'd had some dumplings!) I was starving. No, our boat, Our canoe. An alligator ate our boat. Came right up out of the murky green swamp and ate it right out from under us! CRUNCH!  You could have heard my screams from miles away. I was terrified. MiMi just grinned and poked the thing with her umbrella and said, "Lands Sakes, Cheri, it ain't nuthin' but an ole gator!  He just hongry fer a beignet! Well, I reckon he done got all of 'em!" I stared at her like I didn't know who she was. I was soaking wet, hanging on to a bit of boat and all I could think of was .....my Grand Mere has lost every bit of English grammar she had learned in New York City! My parents would be mortified. Poppi Voo would be smiling from ear to ear with stars in his eyes because MiMi's Cajun vernacular was part of the reason he fell in love with her at first sight and first hearing. I just wasn't used to hearing her go full "Swamp Girl" in some time. She was loving it.

It had been her idea to get in the canoe and go on a picnic as we floated along dodging things that looked like they could have been starring in their own horror movies. And the noises! Good grief!  Nightmares, crime scenes and New York City parades had never produced sounds like that! I would have put my hands over my ears but they were too busy covering my eyes. Which made it hard to swim. I knew my mother would be devastated if I had fled to Voo Bayou only to drown alongside my grandmother. She would have much preferred that I'd been run down by a Black and White cab on 5th Avenue. She could never show her friends a Louisiana newspaper obituary. She would die of shame. I had already tarnished the sterling reputation she had so meticulously invented for herself with my incarceration even as she had enjoyed the notoriety of it. If I had never been proven not guilty of the crime she told me she was going to put me up for adoption. My father reminded her that I was a grown woman and therefore ineligible for her foolish threats. I entertained myself for a short while with the thought of being a part of a normal family with normal names but it gave her too much joy. So I dropped it.

Now here we were waterlogged and covered in green slime and I didn't know  what to do. I had survived more unthinkable things than you could ever think of in the big city. Yet here I was anticipating a demise one could only read about in a comic book while surrounded by lamenting bullfrogs. It was sad. Finally, MiMi Voo slung me onto a chunk of canoe and pushed me towards the shore just as the gator showed back up for seconds with his entire family. All his kids were ugly. I would have kissed that shore too, but it seemed to be moving.  In a blind panic, I picked up my brave, exhausted, crazy little grand mere and I ran.

                                                              

That ancient homestead had never looked more inviting. A welcoming committee of assorted cats, dogs, raccoons, possums and possibly a baby Bigfoot accompanied us to the porch excitedly but I slammed the door in their faces and we collapsed on the floor. Later, I pried the black tattered umbrella out of MiMi's hands and put us both to bed in fresh dry clothes where we slept for three days. After three days and nights of unending indescribable nightmares, I opened my weary eyes to the sight of a big horrid creature bending over me all cloaked in black. I sat up and screamed my lungs out and MiMi Voo dropped her black hooded raincoat and fainted dead away. It was storming like crazy outside, it was dark and cold and I was shaking like a leaf. I just let her lay there. I didn't want to tell her I was getting homesick for New York with it's familiar crime and chaos. I already knew that a new grudge would soon be added to her ever growing list and I just didn't want to be number 847. (My mother held the record for at least six hundred.)

                                                                                

             

                                                           

To Be Continued in Episode 28.

or when I darn well feel like it!!