The Cazadores Lounge and Lonely Place

Chapter 1

Until the bus hit a bump at the north end of town and jarred me awake, I’d been sleeping since somewhere in Arkansas. I stretched my arms high over my head and looked around. Cold light from streetlamps passed through the window next to my seat one after another, illuminating the sidewalk and the businesses beyond.

I’d missed the first few blocks, but the cop shop passed by, and a little later the Five-and-Dime and a Red Rooster drive-in. Then what looked like a school in yellow brick, and a mom and pop café. Soon we passed a white stucco garage and then a barber shop. And several other little businesses were there too, all crammed together in the main business district. Side streets radiated out from there in all directions, most of them lined with the citizens’ houses. So Normalville, USA.

The sun had been gone almost an hour. I thought we were on our way out of town when the brakes squealed. The bus slowed, and the bus driver turned right, guiding our bus into a small station at the south end of town. Good. It would be good to stretch my legs.

Bordeaux, Louisiana, the driver said. Snack stop. We’ll be here 20 minutes. If you don’t continue with us, thanks for choosing Greyhound. Then he opened the doors. As the bus sighed and the smell of diesel flooded through the accordion door, he went down the few steps and crossed the parking lot toward the terminal.

I picked up my duffel bag, a brown canvas thing I’ve had most of forever, and got in the queue in the aisle. Everyone wanted to stretch their legs, it seemed.

When I finally stepped down, I moved to one side and looked around. The night was warm, if humid. The moon wouldn’t be up for another hour or two, but it would be close to full, and I was wide awake. And this was my destination. Not Bordeaux, but southern Louisiana.

So I counted myself among those who would not be continuing on and set out walking to the south, anxious to begin my exploration. The driver was true to his word, and the bus passed me about a half-hour later.

Yeah, walking. Not that I have anything against cars, but after I left the Marine Corps—I viewed that as a 21-year civilian-appreciation course—I decided I wanted to see the country. I like to walk, and I like having nowhere to be and nobody to report to. So I’m taking my time and really seeing the places I want to see.

A few cars passed in either direction, and maybe twice as many pickups, but mostly I was alone on the road. I’d been walking almost four hours when I saw a glow in the road maybe a mile ahead. I figured it might be an all-night mom and pop gas station and convenience store. The glow wasn’t big enough to be a casino, even one of the small ones they have down here. But that’s all right. I could use a soda or maybe a bottle of water. They might even have a place to sit down for a few minutes.

Some ten or fifteen minutes later, I finally started around a curve in the road and caught my first glimpse of a red neon sign, I was surprised to say the least. I guess the name of the place was what grabbed me: The Cazadores Lounge and Lonely Place.

From what I’ve read, this is an area where most places out in the sticks are called Joe’s Mudbugs or Hebert’s Swamp Donkey Filet Gumbo or Thibodeaux’s Catfish Emporium. If you don’t know much about Louisiana, a mudbug is a crawfish. A swamp donkey is an alligator. And most of the places out in the sticks are made of plywood or old highway markers, and usually the whole structure is barely wide enough to hold a sign at all, much less a large one in neon red.

So The Cazadores Lounge and Lonely Place stood out. A place with a name like that, you almost have to stop and look inside. Besides, I was walking, so I had plenty of time to decide. Still, I could get a beer, sit as long as I liked, then maybe find a place to hole up for the night. The dense woods on either side of the road would serve well enough if nothing else was available. Or too expensive.

The other thing that surprised me about the place was its size. As I moved closer, it just kept expanding. When I could finally see the whole thing, it looked like some kind of warehouse. It was huge, probably 150 yards end to end and maybe a third that deep.

It was set maybe 40 yards off the road on the other side of a crushed gravel parking lot on a low rise tucked back into the same dense, black-green, towering woods and snarled underbrush. I could only see the top half of the building above the vehicles in the parking lot.

I slowed a little, but I stayed on my own side of the parking lot and kept walking. Maybe I’d drop in. Maybe I wouldn’t.

The building was concrete block construction, all painted white. There was one large light mounted on a telephone pole at either end of the building, and then another, smaller light under a beat-up aluminum hood over the door. The lights at the end were aimed so that each of them covered about half of the parking lot.

The lot was full, mostly with older Ford and Dodge pickups, but there was probably a couple dozen cars too. The roofs and hoods and trunks and load beds were all dim and ghostly looking in the light. The predominant color was rust. All the cars were long, low-slung boats from the ‘70s and maybe early ‘80s. I didn’t see any compacts or subcompacts, and I’m betting there wasn’t a Prius in the bunch.

Just like a warehouse might have looked during the night shift. Still, I’d never seen a warehouse with a neon sign and a red-vinyl padded double door.

The door was off-center, nearer the left end of the building, and the light centered above it spilled a wide pool of light in front of the entrance. Each half of the door had a small, diamond-shaped window set in it. Maybe four inches wide and six top to bottom. In the glow of the lights, the windows glinted like they were painted over with purplish blue ink. There were other windows along the wall too, but not really. They were narrow horizontal slits evenly spaced up high, maybe a foot below the eave.

The neon sign itself was centered on the building to the right of the door. It pulsed with every other step, like it was calling to me. And like I said, the building was long, which gave me a lot of time to think about it.

The three big air conditioner units humming on the roof finally made up my mind. It would be good to get out of the heat and humidity for an hour or two.

I stepped off the road and started across the parking lot, my boots crunching the gravel.

I was only three rows of cars and trucks from the door when the right half opened.

I stopped.

The door slapped hard against the wall and started slowly rebounding.

Chapter 2

A big guy came through the opening first, laughing.

I was still maybe twenty feet from the door. I took a half-step to the right, into the shadow of the cab of a pickup.

The guy was maybe 6’2", maybe 200 pounds, so about my size, but a lot younger than my 38 years. He was probably in his early 20s, and he looked like a football player. A light-blue t-shirt strained over his broad chest and shoulders under a button-down dark-blue denim shirt that was hanging open, like a jacket.

The t-shirt was tucked into faded jeans behind a wide, plain, black-leather belt with a brass pass-through buckle. Scraggly light-brown hair protruded an inch or two from beneath a generic blue ball cap and hung to just below his ears. It looked like he usually wore it combed back along the sides in a DA that had come loose. There was some kind of logo on the front the cap in a long oval, but I couldn’t read it. A sweat stain showed salt-white around the brim.

His right arm was extended behind his waist, and he held his left arm shoulder-high in front. That’s the one he’d used to shove the door open. His right hand appeared next, hooked fingers-to-fingers with a smaller, finer, delicate hand and a narrow, creamy mocha forearm. Then came the upper arm and shoulder, and the girl—well, woman—who owned them.

She was older than he was. She might’ve even been in her 40s. I’ve noticed that dark-haired women don’t show their age until they hit around 50. But I figured she was probably in her mid to late 30s. So close to my age. She was petite and very pretty, maybe 5’2" and trim, maybe 110 pounds.

Her hair was coal black—so she was probably Cajun from what I’d read—parted in the exact center of her head and combed straight down. It hung along the sides of her face and draped over her shoulders to the middle of her back, perfectly framing her large, dark eyes. Her nose was small but noble, her chin rounded, her lips full and luscious and stretched into a broad grin. She was obviously enjoying herself.

The air was still. The smells of cigarette smoke, beer and whiskey whirled out behind them, mixing with the dusty smell of the gravel parking lot.

As the door sucked shut behind the girl, the big guy pulled her to the left. The motion caused her pleated black skirt, which hung to a few inches above her knees, to swirl around her. She wore mid-calf black leather boots with a zipper running up the inside of her calf. The thin soles scraped on grit on the concrete pad. The right side of her white peasant blouse flashed in the yellow glow of the parking lot lights. The bottom of it, though it was meant to be tucked in, hung outside her skirt.

Neither of them seemed to notice me, but people usually only notice things that are directly in front of them. Or things that move suddenly.

I stayed still. From my vantage point I had a three-quarter view of the man’s front and his left side. I could also see most of the woman and her left side.

Still grinning, he turned to face her as he released her hand. He tipped his ball cap back slightly, then moved both hands to her bare shoulders and pressed her gently back against the white concrete block wall. He leaned in for a kiss.

But the woman turned her head sharply away to her right. No! she said, then looked at him again and wagged one finger side to side. Her smile worked its way to her eyes. No, no, no, Clarence. You said you wanted’a come outside to talk. In the way of Cajun women, her accent sounded almost as if she were from Brooklyn. And as if she were just a little drunk.

The big guy leaned back. "Oh, but I do, Marie. I do wanna talk."

Marie. A pretty name, and common in Acadia.

The guy grinned and glanced away for a moment, as if checking for prying eyes, then looked at her again. But I do my best talking with my hands.

The girl used her butt to lever herself a few inches away from the wall and swayed slightly in a breeze that apparently only she could feel. I guess she’d had a