A group of friends streams their gaming on Wednesday nights. But not all the action is on the dining room table.

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Chapter 9 -- Gumbo

"We're lost."

"No, we're not," Brian assured me for the third time, the truck bouncing its way from pothole to pothole on the deeply rutted and far too narrow dirt road he'd turned off on. "It's a shortcut."

"A shortcut to where? If we'd stuck to pavement, we coulda been in Baton Rouge by now," I said, then let out a squeak of mixed alarm and pain as we bounced through another rut. I was glad we were in his truck and not my little Fiat.

Brian rolled his eyes at me, but the grin never left his face. "What, you tellin' me you've never been out in the *oof* real bayou?" He asked, slowing down to ease into the ditch on his side of the road and maneuver around a cypress hanging too low for the truck to pass under.

"This isn't the bayou. This is the opening shots of the movie before we wind up at the murder hobo's shack," I said, frowning and rubbing my temple where the last bump had sent me head-first into the window. "See? It's right there." I pointed at the shack in question, ahead of us and on the left.

"And that's the paved road again right next to it," Brian argued, pointing. "Murder hobos never live on the paved road."

"There's a first for everything."

"Is there?" He asked me, then pulled over into the dirt lot next to the shack. "Well then, let's find out."

Brian hopped out of the truck and started toward the shack, but stopped when he realized I hadn't followed him. Instead, I sat resolutely in my seat, studying the rather dubious building.

I'd seen places like it before, sure, but mostly in the post-hurricane clean-up period when people were scrounging for shelter and scrapping what they could. The walls were a mixture of old tin and cedar slats, though the roof itself looked to be more recent, with only mild rust spots breaking up the metallic gleam of the bare tin in the sun. The doors were open, and a couple of moisture-wilted fans spun lazily on the broad porch at the front of the building. "Delray's" was written on the big sheet glass window in white paint, rough and streaky.

If this wasn't a murder hobo shack, then it was the place where the unlucky couple met the murder hobo before being led *to* the shack.

Brian came back to the truck and opened my door, giving me an annoyed look. "Come on, you said you trusted me."

"Yeah, but-- is that an alligator?!" I asked, the chain link fence behind the place finally catching my attention, as well as the long brown and green shape behind it. "It is!"

"That's just Zeke," Brian said like it was nothing.

"It has a name?" I looked to the building, then the gator, then back to Brian again.

Brian sighed. "This is why I haven't brought you here before. Listen, it's fine. It's an old family place, and the food's great," he said, looking defeated.

Shit.

I looked at the place again. Then I looked into Brian's sad eyes.

"If there are any eyeballs, gonads, or brains in anything I eat here, it will be in your floorboards before we get home," I warned him, sliding down into the narrow space he'd left between himself and the truck. Getting down out of the thing was always an adventure, but the baby bump made it more so, and I found myself unsteady on my feet in the red clay and brown dirt that made up the lot. I wobbled, but Brian caught my shoulder and held me steady.

"Deal," he said, his expression brightening as he gave my shoulder a squeeze. "But if you love it? You owe me."

"Deal," I agreed reluctantly, as Brian's thumb continued to caress my collarbone.

Once again Brian was grinning as he slid his hand from my shoulder to the middle of my back and began leading me toward the building, kicking the truck door closed behind him as we went.

As we passed through the doors and my eyes adjusted to the light inside, I realized that the interior of the place was a lot nicer than the outside. The concrete floor was bare but clean, and the large room was filled with a mixture of weathered and beaten chairs, stools, and old dining booths, with equally worn-looking tables, but it was all clean, and the smells wafting in from the double doors at the back of the room, between the glass-doored cases of drinks, had me fighting to swallow before I drooled all over myself.

Of course, Brian noticed.

"Now, THAT is a proper reaction to Delray's," he said, finally taking his hand from my back, walking over to the double doors, and pushing them open. "Hey, Lorne!" He bellowed, then walked back over to me.

Moments later, a figure burst through the doors, looking for all the world like one of the worst stereotypes of Louisiana imaginable. His white tee shirt was covered in stains, as well as the apron he wore over it, his arms thick and red from the flash of fire and slick with sweat, and his face equally red, his thinning hair pulled back from his face in a low ponytail. I could see the resemblance between him and Brian, in their height and lanky builds, but it was immediately obvious that this man enjoyed eating his food as much as he enjoyed making it, having at least forty pounds on Brian.

"Lordy! If 'taint lil' cousin Brian, outta da city t' bum about wit us Cowpeas!" He said, marching forward and wrapping Brian in a massive hug, lifting him off the floor. "Been a bit, cuz, been a bit!"

"Hah! Yeah, sorry about that. You know I couldn't stay away forever, though."

"You bet! Don' feed ya right in da city, eh?" The big man laughed, poking Brian in the belly with one of his thick fingers before turning his grin on me. "And who's da lady?"

"Oh, ah. Lorne, this is Leigh. Leigh, Lorne," Brian said, rubbing his neck awkwardly. I gave him an annoyed look, but he just shrugged helplessly.

"Hi," I said, holding out my hand for a shake, only for the man to take it and lift it gently, kissing the back.

"Whatsa pretty ting like you doin' wit a Venable, huh? We Cowpeas got all da good looks," he said, waggling his eyebrows at me and winking.

I couldn't help but laugh, which seemed to be the right answer since it got an even wider grin out of the man, whose eyes were twinkling as he took a step back. "Waiddaminit. Dis is Leigh?" He asked, giving Brian a disbelieving look. "Well, Brian talk about you all da time. Way he say it, we thought you was a guy!" Lorne said, laughing loudly. "I'll be sure ta let Cousin Ella know he been keepin' you away!"

With every word that left Lorne's mouth, I could see Brian turning redder and redder, and I was sure I was doing much the same, but that only seemed to make his cousin even more amused.

"Cut it out, will ya, Lorne? And knock it off with the accent too. That's terrible, and Uncle Delray would smack you if he heard you."

Lorne gave Brian a sour look and crossed his arms. "Hey, now. That accent makes me bank when the tourists come through. Don't go ruinin' my mystique, cuz." Then he turned to me and winked again. "It is good to finally meet ya, though, Leigh. We've heard a lot about ya, so it's nice to put such a pretty face to the name."

"I, I'm not..." I started, but just couldn't find the words.

"The usual?" Lorne asked, turning to Brian again and wiping his hands on his apron.

"Yeah, for both of us. Go light on the spice on Leigh's."

"A'ight, gimme twenty, and it'll be out, take a seat and grab a drink."

"Can do," Brian said, though his cousin was already disappearing through the double swing doors. Brian shook his head, then came over and put a hand in the middle of my back again, nudging me toward the drink coolers. More quietly, he continued. "Sorry about that. Lorne can be a bit much."

"Cowpea?" I asked, grabbing a blue cream soda out of the rack.

Brian chuckled and grabbed a sarsaparilla out of one of the other cases. "It's Coupe," he said, pronouncing the name coo-pay, "but Lorne and his sister used to wind Uncle Delray up by mispronouncing it on purpose. Don't let the outfit fool ya: Lorne spent a few years as an attorney before moving back home to help watch Uncle Delray and Aunt Lois and still does pro bono work for some of the folks around here. Only reason it's so quiet is it's early on a Thursday afternoon: if we'd come down here after work on a Friday, or on the weekend, this place would be full up. Uncle Delray's gumbo is a bit of an institution around here."

"Is it now?" I asked, as more mouth-watering aromas drifted out from the room beyond the doors. We settled down at one of the booths, and I popped the top off my bottle and took a long sip.

"Yeah. And before you ask, no: I've tried to get Lorne to share the recipe with me, and he refuses."

"Course not," Lorne yelled from the back room. "Ain't no Venable getting the Cowpea secret recipe!"

I quirked an eyebrow at Brian, but he took a swig of his own drink before saying anything else. "There was... history between the families before Mom and Dad got married. Something about a stolen mule or something."

"Borrowed mule! Borrowed!"

I tried not to laugh, and very nearly succeeded.

Brian rolled his eyes. "Borrowed," he said, extra loudly. "Without permission. It's complicated."

"I'll bet," I agreed, trying unsuccessfully to hide my grin behind my bottle.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, just soaking in the ambiance. The fans in the room did little more than stir the muggy late August air, and I could hear an old Elvis song playing from some hidden speakers nearby, somewhat indistinct and interrupted by the sounds of the animals outside, and the occasional slap of water that I was sure was the alligator behind the place getting up to something.

Okay, so maybe this place wasn't so murder-hobo-ey after all.

"So, ah, Leigh."

"Yeah?" I asked, opening my eyes again. Brian was giving me an odd look, but before he could say anything else, we both heard the double doors to the kitchen open.

"Two bowls of authentic Cowpea gumbo, cornbread on the side. One of them family-spiced, the other tourist-grade," Lorne said, setting a steaming bowl of soup in front of each of us and smiling.

"Tourist grade?" I asked, feeling somewhat offended even as I leaned forward to get a deeper sniff of the heady tones drifting out of the bowl.

Lorne laughed. "Brian, let her take a nose full o' yours," he said, shifting our bowls so that now Brian's was before me.

I gave Brian a nervous glance, but all he did was shrug and grin like he knew what was coming. A little irritated at their seeming shared opinion that I couldn't handle it, I leaned forward once again and took a deep breath...

"Ack!" I jerked back and coughed, immediately reaching for the napkins on the table to stop my sinuses up. "Holy crap!"

Now they were both laughing, loud and long, even as Lorne swapped our bowls again. "If Brian has one saving grace, it's that he has a proper Cowpea appreciation for the finer things in life."

"Like chemical weapons?" I asked between bouts of blowing my nose and wiping it.

"Well, that's why you got the tourist grade," Brian said, picking up his spoon and taking a bite of his soup. I watched as the sweat beaded on his forehead, but nothing else even hinted at the utterly inhuman level of spice I knew he had just eaten. He caught me looking and winked before going for another spoonful.

With my nose clear and dry, I finally grabbed my own spoon and dipped it into the murky bowl before me, lifting a healthy little pile of okra, shrimp, and other mysteries out. I took one more sniff, reassuring myself I had the right bowl, before eating it.

"*Mmmm-mmmm.*"

Lorne pulled a chair up to our booth from another nearby table and spun it around, straddling the back and grinning at us. "And yet another woman falls for the charms of the Cowpea gumbo recipe."

"Mmm-mmm," I moaned again, around a third spoonful of soup.

"Y'know, y'leave this chump in the mud and stay with me, and you could eat this every day."

"Lorne...." Brian started, but his cousin cut him off.

"Y'know, back when he was in high school lil' Brian here would bring every girlfriend he got here on their first date. Impress 'em with our food, then ply 'em with the Venable wiles."

"I didn't..." Brian started, then gave me a worried look. I raised an eyebrow, and he sighed. "Uncle Delray's gumbo is the best, and I got the family discount."

"And made good use of it too," Lorne said, with a mock disapproving tone. "But then you moved off to town and started going to that lefty college and haven't brought a girl by since. Just you on your lonesome when you come down for the holidays."

"It's a long drive for gumbo," Brian said, red in the face as much from embarrassment as the heat of his soup.

"But she's worth it?" Lorne asked, looking from me to Brian, then back again.

"I'm paying," I said, doing my best to hide my own embarrassment with a forced laugh.

"Wha? Well, we can't have that!" Lorne said, taking a tea towel off his belt and smacking Brian upside the head with it. "If this lout won't pay for ya, then Lorne's got ya covered. Call it a thank you for keeping my cousin in line."

"I'm not--"

"We're not--"

I looked at Brian.

Brian looked at me.

Gumbo dripped.

With a resigned slump of my shoulders, I gave Lorne my best smile. "I'll do my best," I agreed. "But I'd like to pay anyway."

"We're cash only."

"Oh." I blushed. "Ah, in that case, thank you?"

Lorne laughed again, then stood up. "You city kids. Brian used to know better, but he's getting soft. I'll leave you two to it and be back with some beignets for dessert here in a bit."

"You don't have to--"

Brian held up his hand to stop me. "If Lorne's making beignets, you don't say no."

Once more, Lorne laughed as he disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving us alone with our meal.

The frogs sang. The fans whispered. The King crooned.

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NOTES: Don't forget, Chapter 10 is available now to read at the BCTS Patreon! Parts here come in a week after they appear there. All my stories that are up over on Patreon are free to read, and since I've seen that it's confused some folks, no, you don't even need to have a Patreon account to check them out, so do it!

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