The Devil in Canaan Parish Read Free

Landry.   The Landrys had a large sugar cane plantation and owned much of the land around Techeville before the civil war. This land had been sold off over time, and the family plantation was now producing only a token amount of sugar, but the Landrys still lived there in the Grande Maison.   Mr. and Mrs. Landry, my wife’s grandparents, were Lord and Lady of the tiny kingdom of Techeville in Canaan Parish, Louisiana.   My father-in-law may have given us the car, but it was Old Man Landry who slipped the deed to our house into my dress coat pocket as he was leaving the reception hall, something he would do for all sixteen of his married grandchildren.
    Ironically, Sally did not know how to drive and never learned, thus the car became mine by default. I opened the passenger side door and held it for Melee.   She looked awkward in the front seat, as though she wasn’t quite sure how to ride in an automobile, and her shaking hands pulled the hem of her skirt down over her legs and then folded in her lap. Grabbing her bag from her hand, I tossed it into the back seat.
    I walked around to the driver’s side door and slid inside.   I was dripping wet, but the heat of the July evening kept me from feeling chilled.   Rain in South Louisiana was warmed by the heat of the Gulf.   It never refreshed you.   It felt more like jumping into a hot bath on a summer day. It made you drowsy and weak, and it fell hard, pounding the muscles in your arms, your back, your legs, pummeling the top of your head until you gave up trying to shield yourself and just let the abuse come. It was hurricane season, and so the rain was slamming down sideways, propelled by the high winds of a tropical depression.
    I started the car, and cursed under my breath at the immediacy with which the front windows fogged up.   It would be difficult to see my way home.   I turned on the lights and the windshield wipers and backed out of the parking lot. Pulling into the town square, I drove around the courthouse and then proceeded up the road to my house.   My car could have driven itself.   It was a ten-minute drive at most, and I had done it every morning, noon and evening for the last ten years. That thought, and the fact that no one would be braving the storm, made me fairly confident I could make it home without crashing the car. As we drove north out of town, the First Baptist Church with its massive neoclassical columns and white painted steeple, towered over my left.   To my right loomed the levee, keeping the Bayou Teche in check.  
    The bayou was given its name by the Indians who lived in this area long ago.   The legend was that a giant snake wound through the lands and attacked their villages.   The warriors finally killed the snake and its carcass rotted where it lay.   The depression it left became the bayou, and now the levee systems protected the good townspeople of Techeville from its bite.   Further south, there was a bridge and the road to New Orleans.   Beyond that, the levees ceased and the bayou continued wild and free, leaving the poor blacks in the Bottoms and the Cajuns in the marsh lands to fend for themselves against it.  
    The pounding rain and the constant swish of the windshield wipers lulled me into a kind of trance that was unbroken until I pulled into the long drive next to our home.   The drive went around behind the house and ended at the garage.   I leapt out of the car and ran to yank the garage door open as the rain pounded my face and hands.   Then I returned to the car and pulled it into the garage.   The sound of the rain died away as I turned off the ignition, leaving my passenger and myself in relative quiet. For a moment, I heard only the sound of the blood rushing in my ears from my recent exertion, and then I could hear the slow in and out of Melee’s breath.   From the corner of my eye I discerned the outline of her nipples beneath her soaked dress.   I had not noticed them at the store, but