re: Fiction set in South Louisiana suggestions

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My Sunshine Away

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I believe Louisiana gets a bad rap.

I don't want this story to add to it, though I know it will, because people often discount what we say here. We are relegated to a different human standard in the South, it seems, lower than the majority of this great nation, as if all our current tragedies are somehow pay back for our unfortunate past. You may hear, for instance, something like, “Yes, it is a shame those folks in New Orleans drowned. But why didn't they just evacuate? Or, it is terrible about that boy being shot, but I'm sure you've heard about the race problems there.”

Another catastrophe? Another injustice? Forgive me if I don't look surprised.
This bothers me. It bothers everyone in the South.
So, in case you don't yet know, let's get this out of the way.
It's hot here, yes. It rains and at floods.

If you say. “It's not the heat, it's the humidity,” it's because you're from some other sunny place where you thought it was hot. It's both the heat and humidity. It's okay, you'll survive. There are ways to get along.

One thing you do is amplify the pleasure of meals. Three times a day you sit down with friends or family who, if you're lucky, are often the same. You take a break from the heat. You set a napkin over your lap and you can’t believe the utter joy. This tomato my just save your life, the cool fruit of it, that cold beer or iced tea your salvation. This is not gluttony.

You eat this way for a reason.

When everything else is burning, sweating, beaten down by a tortuous sun, only your tongue can be fooled. So you tease it with flavors like promises, small escapes from a blatantly burdensome land. You offer it up sharp spices, dark stews, iced cocktails. Anything you can think of to do.

There is a saying in South Louisiana that “when we eat one meal we talk about the next,” and this is true. Who wouldn't? In this imagined menu lies a future, a forecasted life, a community, perhaps even a weekend full of cheer and good food. What should we cook on Saturday? you wonder. Yes, honey, yes, darling, believe me when I say that sounds good. And at the house across the street, a similar family is doing the same. Perhaps a Sunday spent over a pot of beans. A lunch of hot po’-boys wrapped in butcher paper. It is also an unwritten rule that we don't talk politics at the table. This is not because we're dumb or old-fashioned or just too polite, but rather because we see right through it.

Middling stuff, the world. Nothing worth mucking up a fine meal.

And so the soul of this place lives in the parties that grow here, not just Mardi Gras, no, but rather the kind that start with a simple phone call to a neighbor, a friend. And after the heat is discussed and your troubles shared you say man it would be nice to see you, your kids, your smile. And from this grows a spread several tables long covered in newspaper, with long rows of crawfish spilled steaming from aluminum pots, a bright splash of red in a blanketing green of your yard. It is food so big it must be stirred with a paddle. You gather around this. You worship it. There is nothing strange about that.

Only the unfortunate don’t see it this way.

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