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It Rained So Hard On Mardi Gras Day

by Edwin Rawlsen

It rained so hard on Mardi Gras day that chickens were not chased on horseback.  Musical instruments were not played.  Necklaces of beads were not thown.  No one marched in their feathered costume, and the police did not have to escort any parades down the streets of town.  However, that did not mean that the police force of Maureaux had nothing to do. The Chief of Police, Byron G. “Bass” Theriot, called the men out to headquarters early on Mardi Gras Day for a special meeting.

The men, Bertrand and Sorrel, had a bit of trouble getting to headquarters as there was already a foot of water in the road. When they arrived at headquarters, the men were offered some king cake made by Klein’s bakery next door. The Chief was always good that way. He always had something on hand to eat, even if he did call the force out in the rain at the crack of dawn when he could have just told them that, since the parades were cancelled, they were on patrol.

At the meeting, the Chief announced that the men were to work on some of their cold cases, so Bertrand and Sorrel went into their office and pulled out their cold case file. There was only one cold case. Bertrand secretly pulled the baby from the king cake out of his mouth and hid it in the back of the otherwise empty cold case file drawer.

The Dufrey brothers were suspected of having narcotics and selling narcotics and transporting narcotics. In fact, they weren’t just suspected of messing with narcotics, everybody knew that they did, and it was only a matter of time before the whole youthful population of Maureaux would be corrupted and end up going nowhere even faster than they would otherwise.

The Dufrey brothers were weasely underfed pasty white boys who had pierced eyebrows and goatees and shaggy clothes and no visible means of support. That is how everyone knew that they were involved in narcotics. Bertrand and Sorrel and the Chief knew that the Dufreys had been to Mexico for New Years; that was inside top secret police department information.

Bertrand and Sorrel didn’t even have to discuss their mission. They doggedly loaded themselves into the police car. The water was about one and a half feet deep in the headquarters parking lot.

The Dufreys were staying in an old Acadian style house that had been owned by their old aunt who passed away two years ago. The house was on piers well off the ground, and backed up to the bayou. There wasn’t much furniture in the house, and it was musty and damp on the sunniest day. On that Mardi Gras day, the house was forlorn inside and out. The Dufrey brothers were looking at the TV when the police drove up gingerly in all of the water. The brothers weren’t actually watching the TV because it didn’t work. In fact, nothing worked because there was no electricity at the moment. When the brothers saw the police car they looked at each other in dismay and panic. They saw Bertrand and Sorrel put on rubber boots, but the water was already over the tops of the boots when the officers stepped out into the yard.

The Dufreys looked around as if looking for a place to hide. They didn’t know why the police were there, but they would have appreciated the opportunity not to find out the exact reason.

As the officers were getting closer, the water was getting deeper and the Dufreys were getting more nervous. The officers managed to get up on the porch, and they were about to knock, or just bust in and do whatever they were supposed to do, when suddenly the Dufreys didn’t see them anymore. They seemed to be off of the porch.

“It’s a trick,” said one brother, but the other brother ran out the back door. The water was so high that the pirogue which was normally kept under the house and tied with a rope to discourage theft, was floating next to the porch on its rope tether. The brothers grabbed their paddles, jumped in the pirogue, and paddled off down the bayou.

The rain had let up a bit, but the sky was very dark, and in the darkness, in the front yard of the Dufrey brothers place, under about two inches of water, there was a blue light flashing on the top of the squad car.

The Dufrey brothers paddled to their cousin Elvin Robichaux’s house. Elvin was making a huge gumbo and generally doing what he would have been doing that Mardi Gras day anyway, rain or shine, which was making gumbo for a load of cousins. In a thick Cajun accent, he told the Dufrey brothers to come on in and celebrate Mardi Gras the best they could. The numerous cousins who were already present in the Robichaux’s house agreed, and Old Tant See said something in French, and they all laughed.

As he stirred the gumbo, Elvin looked at the Dufrey’s brother’s numerous piercings. Their ears were pierced, their eyebrows were pierced, one of them had a pierced lip, and one had a pierced nose. “You know,” said cousin Elvin, “Effie works for a doctor in New Iberia, and she said that a man came in with a pierced ear and it got infected and they had to cut it off.”

“No, cousin Effie IS a doctor in New Iberia,” corrected one of the cousins.

“And the fellow came in with a pierced nose, and she had to cut that off,” finished the cousin.

“No, the fellow came in with a pierced something else,” muttered another cousin.

Old Tant See said something in French and they all laughed again.

Meanwhile, back at the Dufrey’s house, Bertrand and Sorrel dragged themselves out of the water and on to the porch. They looked forlornly back at the submerged squad car and decided to search the house. They went through the open front door and searched every inch of the house, but there was nothing there. When they got to the back porch, they found the Dufrey’s second pirogue, and paddled that back to headquarters.

Chief Byron G. “Bass” Theriot was a smart man, so he did not need an explanation as to why the men returned in the pirogue rather than the squad car. And he was a kind man, so when Bertrand and Sorrel started to speak, he said, “Well, now, that’s what God made insurance for, huh?” About that time the phone rang. It was one of the Dufrey brothers reporting that their pirogue number two was missing. And the Chief was happy to inform them that it had already been recovered.

The Dufrey brothers arrived shortly in pirogue number one. They thanked the Chief and remarked on the efficiency of the force and the speed with which pirogue number two had been located. The Chief was modest, and offered king cake, and slapped them on the back and said not to worry, that Bertrand had already found the baby.

After a nice visit at headquarters, the Dufrey brothers each got in one of their pirogues and paddled home.

The first thing the Dufrey brothers did when they got back to the old house left to them by their aunt was to check under the rear seat of pirogue number two, the pirogue used by the officers to return to headquarters. Carefully duct-taped under the rear seat of pirogue number two was twenty-eight thousand dollars. It was all there and all dry and secure in carefully packed plastic bags. That was the good news.

The bad news was that right when the Dufrey brothers were checking the pirogue, Bertrand and Sorrel came back to try to retrieve the squad car because the water had receded.

It took most of the evening and all of the skill and cunning of the Dufrey brother’s lawyer, who also happened to be their cousin, Elvin Robichaux, Jr., to convince Chief Byron G. “Bass” Theriot that the $28,000.00 was the Dufrey brother’s college savings. The worst part of it was, the next day, Ash Wednesday, Elvin Robichaux, Jr. made the Dufrey brothers go to Mass, and then they all went directly to the bank and set up a trust fund into which the $28,000.00 was promptly deposited so that the Dufrey brothers could finish college.