Summer Of The Loup Garou

Childhood Summers Down In Bayou Country

When I was just a boy, I would spend a month every summer with my Aunt Barb down in Port Fourchon. It was always a strange and exciting time for a boy who’d grown up in the big city of New Orleans. The shrimp and oyster boats were foreign to a kid who’d grown up 90 miles inland. Here, it was a straight shot out of Bayou LaFourche to the open Gulf of Mexico. Small fishing boats shared the docks with the big crew boats that shuttled men dozens of miles out to the deep water oil rigs. This was the home of that thick Cajun accent that pervades every B movie made in South Louisiana.

Port Fourchon was a sleepy little town that looked much the same as it had fifty – maybe even a hundred years ago. The town was perched at the tip of Highway 1. There were exactly six pot-holed asphalt streets that made up the center of town. Every other road was paved with oyster shells. My Aunt Barb lived near the end of one of these shell roads dubbed Theriot Street, with an old wooden dock out back where my Uncle Al tied up his shrimp boat. Their house was built of ancient cypress, weathered and hardened by the relentless Louisiana sun. Try to drive a nail into that stony wood, and you’d like as not bend it in half. Their house stood twenty feet up on stilt pilings, and underneath was a boy’s dream collection of amazing stuff – from the maze of tanks my uncle used to raise soft-shelled crabs, to smelly old hunting and fishing gear. Everything about this town bore the scent of salt water and old bait. It always took a few days to become accustomed to the smell, and then I hardly noticed it anymore. But I never got used to the taste of the well water, which reeked of rotten eggs.

I loved exploring this alien landscape with my cousin Larry. He lived here all his life, and knew where all the neat things were. One of the places we liked to hang out was the landfill. There were plenty of treasures to be found there, from a wicked hunting knife with a cracked handle to the collection of old Playboy magazines that we squirreled away in the piles of junk under Aunt Barb’s house. Once we saw an alligator that had crawled out of the swamp to sun himself catch a seagull distracted by some scrap of food. We marveled at how fast that ‘gator was! No wonder the ever-present coyotes gave them a respectable berth.

The swamps were filled with alligators, poison sumac, and snapping turtles the size of a kitchen table. The hundreds of bayous twisted and turned and all looked the same – you could get lost for a very long time if you took a wrong turn, especially at night. I suspect that’s why my Aunt was always telling us to be “toes on the porch” by seven o’clock or the Loup Garou would surely get us!

I remember MeeMaw’s stories of the Loup Garou from the time I was very little. Now, she was no relation - everybody in town called her MeeMaw. She owned a little drugstore on the main road in town. At the front of the store sat a polished old rocking chair covered with a hand stitched cushion stuffed with Spanish moss. You could tell because here and there a little peeked through a loose seam. The cushion had a pattern of pink and yellow roses and was flattened and worn to show this had been her favorite chair for many years. My favorite place to sit was cross legged on the hard wooden floor in a rapt circle of kids as she told stories of how she had been a nurse in the war, and how she met a handsome soldier with a broken leg that found and married her when she came back home. She told stories of fancy costume balls, powerful hurricanes, and how she had met President Eisenhower and how he had kissed here hand. But our favorite story was about the Louisiana shape-shifter known as the Loup Garou.

“The Loup Garou wears the visage of a grand chien or a wolf, and prowls de swamp at night. When the air is still, its howls float through the cypress trees. Hunters find deer and wild boar half eaten – but no tracks around the carcass. No one knows exactly where the Loup Garou come from – some say it is the Lord’s punishment for breaking Lent seven years in a row, others believe it is the curse of a voodoo woman that has been cheated. And still others may have become Loup Garou because they revealed the creature as human by drawin’ its blood, then makin’ the mistake of tellin’ de secret! Revealing a Loup Garou dooms both souls to haunt de swamp at night. The Loup Garou find le jeunes enfants good eating, chere! Children that wander into the swamp at night are gobbled up and never seen again!”

MeeMaw would pause for a moment, reveling in the rapt silence of her young audience. Her eyes would grow wide and she’d whisper in French "C'etait la voix de loup-garou?” We’d all strain our ears to hear over our thumping hearts. Suddenly, she’d go “AAAAA-WOOOOOO!" and all of us would scream…

My First Crush

Years passed, and Larry and I were too old to listen to those stories anymore. Our thoughts bounced between fishing, hunting and girls – especially Jeanette Prejean, the prettiest freshman at Fourchon High. During the summer she helped out at her Dad’s Ace hardware. She had long, blonde hair that framed her face in golden ringlets, crystal blue eyes, and a smattering of freckles on her sun kissed shoulders that we daydreamed about following to those soft warm places where they stopped.

One day, I went into the Ace hardware, with the sole purpose of gazing upon her angelic face. I stepped into the store from the bright Louisiana sunshine, and stopped for a moment so my eyes could adjust to the light. The tiny store was jammed from floor to ceiling with thousands of tiny parts that were vital to the function of something or other. But being a city kid used to calling the landlord whenever something broke, I had no idea what any of these things might be used for…

“Can I help you?”

Still in a daze, her voice startled me. I hadn’t really thought about what I might say to her.

“Ummm, no. I’m just looking.”

“So you’re looking for a present then?”

“Huh?”

“Most people know what they want when they walk into a hardware store – unless they’re buying a present for someone. There are some nice power tools in the first aisle, and the hand tools are in aisle two.”

I was beginning to feel like a complete idiot, but I did manage to stammer out a “Thanks!” and obediently go in the direction she had pointed.

I figured I needed to buy something now, but I only had about three dollars in my pocket. I wandered down the aisles, stealing glimpses of Jeanette as she bit her lip concentrating on the book she was reading, “The Call Of The Wild”. I found it strangely thrilling that she read books like that even when it wasn’t required for school.

Finally, I just picked up a box of two inch wood screws and walked to the register with my story.

“Found it! I know my Dad needs some of these!”

“I guess you don’t like your Dad very much…”

There was a short pause as she waited for me to catch her meaning. I actually didn’t like my Dad very much, since he left my Mom and me and moved to Houston with his girlfriend. The only thing I ever got from him was a card on my birthday and Christmas with a check inside. Perhaps subconsciously the box of screws was a comment on our relationship. Realizing this was exactly what Jeanette meant, I grinned. She met my smile with a beautiful laugh that rang like a church bell. I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard.

I was also quite embarrassed by that awkward exchange, and rarely went into the hardware store after that. Instead, I would be riding my bike down the street at just the right time to watch Jeanette walk home in the dazzling afternoon sunlight, like a golden vision in a red canvass apron. Then I’d head out to the landfill to meet Larry.

“Look at the size of that one!”

Larry pointed to the pack of coyotes scavenging at the edge of the landfill and keeping a wary eye on us. One of them was a full head taller than the rest, and it had a shorter, stouter muzzle. Its coat was an unusual color, and I wondered if it was a cross with a Golden Lab Retriever as its shoulders were broad and muscular like a swimming dog. Larry went around the upwind side of the trash heap, while I inched closer from this side. The coyotes are used to human presence, but they still won’t let you get TOO close. The big one met my eyes for a moment, and we both froze. In the silence, Larry stepped on something and the noise broke our trance. The coyotes went crashing into the trees, and I heard Larry running behind them. I laughed – the coyotes would be far too fast for Larry to catch on foot. So I waited so see his whooped butt come out of the woods.

Instead, I heard a yelp of pain that sounded like Larry – only it sounded like something else too. So I went in the direction of the sound, but I heard nothing more. I called Larry’s name – no answer. I circled deeper into the woods, trying not to lose track of where the landfill was. I did not need to get lost in the swamp with darkness coming on. A full twenty minutes later, Larry answered my call.

“I cornered that big one!” Larry said. “I got a piece of it with my knife!” He was referring to that old hunting knife we’d found that he now carried everywhere.

“Looks like it got a piece of you as well.” I said, pointing to a tear on Larry’s sleeve.

“It’s just my shirt – it hardly touched me at all!”

Back at Aunt Barb’s, we debated whether a coyote could mate with a regular dog to produce the animal we’d seen earlier. Of course, we told Aunt Barb Larry’s shirt got torn on a rusty piece of metal while we were poking around the landfill. Larry got sent to the doctor for a Tetanus shot to add insult to injury.

The only real fight Larry and I ever had was that same summer when I asked Jeanette to the CYO dance. For a year Larry had been pining away talking about how terrific she was, but he never got up the courage to ask her out. So, tired of hearing it, (and having a pretty hard crush of my own), I asked her to the dance first. Later, out at the landfill, I told him she was going to the dance as my date. His eyes just narrowed and he punched me straight in the face. Stunned, I sat on the ground as he stomped away. We never discussed the incident again.

Jeanette and I never got to that dance. Her mother called and told me she was too sick to go out. I stopped by to drop off the corsage I’d gotten for her and to see how she was feeling. Her mother allowed me to see her for a few minutes. Jeanette was on the living room sofa, covered with a thick blanket. She was feverish and sweating with her blonde ringlets pasted to her too pale skin. Her lips looked unnaturally red against her white skin. She thanked me for the flowers, but I barely heard the words as I was heart struck by the effort it took to say them. Mrs. Prejean had not been exaggerating, so I did not stay any longer.

It was a long time before Jeanette returned to Port Fourchon. Rumor had it she was at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans to be treated for leukemia or Lupus or something. I imagined with sadness those beautiful blonde curls falling out after radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

It had been an eventful summer, and finally I had to go back to school in New Orleans. I enjoyed one last heaping plate of fried catfish with my Port Fourchon family. I liked it here, and I was going to miss it until I could come back next summer.

The Following Summer

While I was in back in New Orleans working in a restaurant at night and struggling through Trigonometry my junior year, Jeanette returned to Port Fourchon High. At first she wore a stocking cap as her hair had just started growing back. Larry finally did ask her for a date, and they became one of the class’s steadiest couples. By summer when I returned she would wear her hair short sometimes, or she would wear a wig that was longer for going out. But her hair was never again the spun gold I remember from when I first met her…

Of course, being the hot new couple made things a little different for Larry and me. What ever we did, it usually included Jeanette and I would be the “third wheel”. It wasn’t so bad at the movies, but it was maddening when we went to the fair and they would cozy up together on every ride, leaving me to sit with some six year old kid praying he wouldn’t puke cotton candy and corn dogs in the seat.

So, although it was awkward at times we did all become friends. On those long, hot summer afternoons we would hang out at the landfill and pass around a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill while Larry smoked cigarettes he stole from his Dad. We’d pass the time complaining about our parents and teachers, and we’d often end up telling stories. I don’t know exactly how we hit upon this formula, other than Jeanette loved to read - so perhaps Larry and I both sensed she might be impressed with a lively tale.

Larry said once “I once caught a catfish so big I could put my whole head in its mouth!” That was quite a tall tale – I’d seen that catfish, and while it was a good size, maybe 20 pounds or so, you could at most fit your fist in it’s mouth.

I countered with “I once made dinner for the mayor of New Orleans, and he came back to the kitchen to personally thank me!” That was a bald-faced lie. The mayor had come to the restaurant where I was working, and I probably made his salad. But he never spoke a word to me, and he never came back to the kitchen. But hey, no one else knew that.

Jeanette loved the attention from our testosterone-driven sport of lies. Larry and I enjoyed the competition, and the reward of her sparkling laughter. Her laugh was still as pure as the one that had smitten me in her father’s hardware store so long ago.

The days began getting shorter, and summer was coming to an end. We had a lot of good times hanging out at the landfill. We had found a certain magic testing the limits of our imaginations that I came to cherish. But lately, Larry and Jeanette had become preoccupied and secretive, always whispering together and getting quiet when I came into earshot. Finally, out at the landfill, they let me in on the big discussion.

“Remember those old tales MeeMaw told about the Loup Garou?” Larry started. “It turns out they’re true.”

Figuring this was the start of a truly tall tale, I let him continue.

“That big, unusual coyote we saw that day was actually a Loup Garou hunting with her pack!”

Then Jeanette quietly added “It was me.”

Something in Jeanette’s eyes and the quiver in her voice told me this was not the usual tall tale. But it was too far-fetched to be true. So I just listened to see where this would go.

“When I was very young, I got very sick with cancer and the doctors couldn’t help me. MeeMaw brought me to a voodoo woman she knew, who performed a ritual with my parents one night that turned me into a Loup Garou. That stopped the cancer, and I could live a fairly normal life. For a few days each month, my folks just said I was staying with relatives.”

Jeanette paused for a moment to search my face for signs that what she’d said had sunk in.

“Last summer, Larry caught me by surprise, and accidentally drew my blood with his knife.” Jeanette said, pointing to a little scar behind her right knee. “At that moment, I became human again, and Larry knew my secret.”

I couldn’t believe Larry could know something like that, and not tell me! This had to be one heck of a tall tale!

“At first, everything seemed fine. But then the cancer returned. We tried the doctors again, but the answer was the same. Even with their best efforts, they said I would die in a year. My hair started to grow back because we abandoned the chemo treatments. It’s not because I was cured.”

I was stunned. If this was true, what an incredible weight on her tiny shoulders! I could only think of what it might take to make her better.

“So how do you become a Loup Garou again?” I said, momentarily forgetting I wasn’t really convinced they existed. “Are you going to get the Voodoo woman to cast her spell again?”

Jeanette looked down at the ground “It doesn’t work that way. She can only cast the spell upon a person once.”

“So you’re… gonna die?!” The thought was almost to painful to form into words. They might tell a tall tale about Loup Garou, but you don’t kid about the big “C”. Especially not with Jeanette’s history. I didn’t know what to think now.

Larry stepped forward and put his arm around Jeanette’s waist. “Do you remember those stories MeeMaw told about the Loup Garou?”

“Yes…”

“Well the other way to return to being a Loup Garou is to tell the secret. Like we’re doing now.”

I thought about that for a minute.

Jeanette broke the silence.

“We talked long and hard about dumping this huge secret on you. But you are the one person we felt we could trust to keep it.

I’ve been a Loup Garou for as long as I can remember. When a Loup Garou is young, they are very wild and they are the ones that all the bloody stories are about. As we grow older, we can hang onto our human side better. Some Loup Garou have even been known to secretly cull oysters for their fishing buddies in exchange for a beer and a belly full.”

There was something bothering me, and I now realized just what it was.

“In those stories MeeMaw told, both souls become Loup Garou. So for you to change back, Larry would have to become a Loup Garou as well!”

Larry answered “Right. As of tonight I will be a Loup Garou, and the most dangerous sort. Jeanette will do her best to keep me in line though!”

Jeanette smiled in agreement.

“I will take him deep in the swamp, and we won’t come out until he learns some manners!” With that, she laughed her sweet laugh for the last time I would ever hear it. “We need to get going because it’ll be dark soon. There will be questions from Aunt Barb and probably the police. We’re sorry to have to do this to you, but you cannot tell our secret or they will hunt us down and shoot us.”

I wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but the sadness in her face told me she believed it. And since she’d been one of these creatures for a while, I would assume she knew what she was talking about.

We had one last group hug, and Jeanette and Larry walked to the edge of the landfill. I half expected them to start laughing at the wonderful joke they played on me, but they showed no signs that this was a hoax. They turned to look at me, and then at each other. Suddenly, their clothes dropped to the ground and one golden wolf and one dark grey wolf leapt into the woods and vanished into the shadows.

Twenty Years Later

Nobody has seen Jeanette Prejean or Larry Arsenaux since that day. I guess they liked their wolf form so much, they just never bothered to change back. Or perhaps their disappearance had been hard enough to explain, and to reappear would raise questions that couldn’t be answered. MeeMaw added a new tale to her repertoire – one about two teenage lovers necking at the landfill one full moon night and dragged into the swamp by the Loup Garou. Funny how close she’d come to the truth.

I still come down here to fish with a few buddies of mine. They think I’m crazy, but I’ll carry a six-pack down to the landfill at the end of the day and sit and remember my best friends as a kid, and that summer of the Loup Garou. I’m not sure if it was the beers or a trick of the light, but I think I saw them peering from the moonlit shadows one night. But I know a thing or two about wild animals, so I’m always careful not to fall asleep out there, and I always carry that broken-handled hunting knife just in case…