Hannan - Alluvial cities

For Ed, Junior, Pete and Dan2005 Fifty-five years ago, when the water in Half Moon Bay was still sweet
and the grass grew nearly all the way out to Bay Eloi,
Pete and me would hunt rabbits on the island. I know my way around curves in the dark of three AM, through Bayou Terre Aux Boeufs to Black Bay, how to slide in gaps between shoals of oysters, feel my way through knees of cypresses, till I reach the opening of Breton Sound, dark as my black hairs and thick with spring tides. We bounce in a lake skiff, Pete and me, twenty miles south-southeast to Breton Island, twenty-gauge barrels broke down in our laps. We beach the boat and mount the ancient silt where black mangroves and wax myrtles stand taut as our young skin and butch-waxed hair. Theres more tail shaking these bushes than the houses on Conti.

I light a smoke and pull on Petes bourbon. The shotgun swings between my knees and I can almost feel the choke explode at the thought: Ill shoot every rabbit I see. Out here the brackish marsh turns briny like perfumed skin sweats when you rub it. The barrier islands swell at the Gulfs touch as salt currents swirl and rush into the body of the sound. Out here you smell the fertile mud mix with salt, the way youd think the First Day smelled. In the dark I breathe out over the waters of Bay Eloi, until the sun bursts from the marsh.

The morning is a good one to be twenty, walking through spartina grass to flush rabbits. These days, you cant hardly find where Breton Islands at.
The Gulf and storms have chewed it all to hell,
and the deep-draught ships have eaten away the old marsh.

They dug the MRGO in 1958, right through the heart of Alluvial City, Hopedale and Shell Beach. Down Florissant Highway me and my son bounce through cypress groves and water oaks, past St. Bernard Cemetery, old as dirt, to Bayou La Loutre.

Theyve already cut the road past Blackie Campos dock. Years ago I fished with a cane pole and a spark-plug off the asphalt that now is scree along this new canals banks. Theyll dig all the way from Breton Sound to the pontoon bridge at Paris Road. The dragline chews through mud like a catfish and flips to spit the spoil on the banks. The boy asks why it stinks so bad. I tell him its because things die to feed the oyster grass and Roseau canes, and its the smell of death that makes all the redfish, trout, and flounder live in the marsh.

He barely hears, runs and jumps feet-first into the sludge, giggling waist-deep in the earth. Along the channels shore the mud slides like the flesh piled around my gut and cheeks, once packed as firm as levee dirt. These mounds will sag more with every day they dig the outlet further toward the river and let the Gulf seep inside these brackish bays. The salt will kill the cypresses and lilies, turn the banks hard as smokers veins. I cough and taste its tide deep in my lungs. Last week I broke a loaf of St.

Josephs bread and tossed the pieces out in our front yard to keep our new house safe and ward off storms. I dont know whats in the earth that does it, makes loaves become the father of God, and brings old men to see themselves erode in mud while young ones fling themselves in it for fun. By now the boy is covered head to toe, and I can feel the dug mud in my gut. I hose him off as best I can, and he laughs: the mud smells of trout hell catch some day. I see the way of flesh as it pools at my feet.