CHAPTER FIVE
December 19, 2012 AD – 12:46 PM,
9 Miles Northwest of the Moondance
15:46 GMT
• • • • •
“Dawlin’, I’m gonna go up and check da navigation, again. When I get back downstairs, I’ll cook up some lunch, cher.”
Although he could minimize it when he felt the need, Dwayne Boudreaux had the stereotypical accent associated with the native population from the southern part of the state of Louisiana. The formal name for these indigenous people was Creole, but they called themselves Cajun and were known colloquially as coonasses. They considered it a badge of honor, despite the seeming juxtapositional insult.
His wife, on the other hand, was from New Orleans proper; old blood stock. They also had an accent that was uniquely theirs. Oddly, it had a similar cadence and tonality to New York and New Jersey speakers. Natives of New Orleans were just as proud of that strange accent as the Cajuns were of theirs. Janine spoke to Dwayne’s back as he walked over to the stairs leading up to the bridge.
“Honey, why do you bother with the autopilot if you’re just gonna double-check it every thirty minutes.”
Dwayne stopped at the foot of the wide spiral staircase on the side of the main cabin room and looked back at his lovely wife. Janine never looked up from her current e-book, but Lola, the dog, did. She lifted her head off Janine’s leg when she heard her master speak. Her ears perked up, and she started to jump off the couch to join him up in the pilot house. Dwayne held his palm out to her but didn’t speak. Lola instantly stopped moving and laid her head down again. Then Dwayne spoke.
“Good girl.”
Janine stopped reading and looked up at him with a snarky expression.
“Excuse me?”
Dwayne smiled at her with his best courtroom face.
“I was talking to the dog, cher. Not you. However, to answer your question… I do it because I can, my dear. A Captain is the king of his ship when at sea. As it turns out, I don’t trust all of my electronic subjects and servants. Some of them could be conspiring a takeover behind my back. A king’s duties are never done.”
Janine laughed out loud at him.
“Well, your majesty, your queen is going back to doing something useful, reading. You go on upstairs and interrogate your equipment. I’ll have none of it. Off, you go.”
She brushed her hand in the air at him and chuckled. Then she put her head back into her Kindle and put her other hand on Lola’s head to rub her ears.
Dwayne blew her a kiss and then the short, portly man skipped up the wide spiral stairs to the bridge, while he happily hummed to himself.
Dwayne Boudreaux was a very happy man. He was sure of that. He was also sure it was not because of his brand new fifteen million dollar yacht that he was piloting across the Atlantic ocean. Nor did it have to do with the fortune he amassed from his part in the massive group settlement from the class-action suit over the Katrina disaster. He never found any joy at all from that. He grew up next to the Ninth Ward and his college roommate his freshman year at Southeastern Louisiana University was from there. Dwayne went home with his college roommate, Jackson, for Thanksgiving that year and met his entire family clan. They were decent, respectable people who worked hard to make a living in the service industries surrounding the Big Easy. Jackson’s grandfather was a janitor at Tulane University in New Orleans, where Dwayne would finally get his Law Degree in the unique French Napoleonic legal system of Louisiana.
That legal system was not the only French influence in the state, much less in the city of New Orleans. The old city district of New Orleans is remarkably similar to the old city district of Paris. The natives of New Orleans have one of the most complex mixtures of ethnic and cultural backgrounds in the entire country. Add in the value of the port of New Orleans to the economic well-being of the entire country, and the city of New Orleans is not just unique, it’s important. With a legacy spanning several centuries, New Orleans has played a defining role in significant portions of America’s long and colorful history.
After graduating top of his class and breezing through the Bar, Dwayne set up his first legal practice in the Crescent City. It didn’t take long before he made a name for himself. Long before the horrible events of Hurricane Katrina in late August and early September of 2005, Dwayne Boudreaux had become a star in the Crescent City legal system. More than one Governor of the state had sought out the services of the law firm that now held Dwayne’s name in first partner position.
Boudreaux, Meyer, and Graphia was arguably the best known law firm of one of the oldest settlements in the southern United States. In addition to the litigation division that Dwayne headed up, they had a criminal division led by Dwayne’s first partner with the name of Derek Meyer and an entertainment division run by the last name partner, Tom Graphia. The state’s Governors almost regularly used the criminal services of Dwayne’s firm to fend off Federal racketeering and corruption charges. Hollywood used his firm to grease the palms of the appropriate state officials responsible for allowing a regular stream of film and television productions to be in the state. Dwayne personally began taking on bigger and bigger opponents in litigation cases that began to be high-profile and precedent setting. His courtroom success rate mirrored the financial success of his entire firm. Dwayne and his partners were regular fixtures at any high-level event that happened anywhere in the southern half of the great state of Louisiana.
Dwayne Boudreaux was successful, and he lived a blessed life.
However, this was not why he was happy.
The reason Dwayne was happy was simple. A little over a year ago, he sold off everything that he owned. He left the firm that held his name on a sabbatical that had no time limit. He pulled his fourteen year old son and his twelve year old daughter out of school. Finally, he grabbed his beautiful wife and their new puppy, then loaded them all aboard this highly-customized floating five-star hotel suite of a yacht. Then he left the city of his birth and life behind.
This was not some mid-life crisis of a wealthy man. This was an intentional voyage of discovery. In what could only be described as an epiphany, Dwayne had begun a spiritual journey which led to the realization that he and his family needed more of a connection to each other, and to the rest of the world. His children grew up privileged and rich. It was unlikely that his son or his daughter would ever experience the simple joy of a Thanksgiving meal with the salt-of-the-earth people who once inhabited the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans. That experience changed Dwayne forever. His college roommate’s family no longer lived in their old neighborhood. Everyone left after the flood. The flavor of the big city, the emotional lagniappe and the jambalaya of sights, sounds, and soul of New Orleans changed forever when the levees broke that horrible rainy night.
The city was still rebuilding, but the city was different. It took hundreds of years to make New Orleans. The melting-pot of life known as the Crescent City, which had been the result of millions of residents over time, was essentially starting from scratch.
Dwayne ate soup at a small tavern once in the countryside of England. Tavern owners will sometimes have soup stocks cooking in the kitchen that have been cooking for decades or longer. Even during World-War II, these soups never stopped cooking over a low flame. Constantly replenished but never emptied, these stews have some part of them which is from the first batch made so many years earlier. The tavern owner came out from the kitchen and personally delivered the bowl of soup to Dwayne’s table. He apologized before Dwayne even picked up his spoon. The tavern owner told him that during a harsh winter in the 1950’s, the soup that his forefathers had been keeping in the tavern name for over a century spoiled when the power went out for a week. They had to start a new soup, and this stock was less than fifty years old.
This stunned Dwayne. He didn’t know what to say.
The tavern owner politely excused himself and left him to his pre-apologized soup. Dwayne was no stranger to food. No one who li
ves more than a week in Louisiana is a stranger to fabulous food. Every corner deli serves food fit for a king. Louisiana cajun cooking is unique, and true fans of the style are never satisfied with cuisine from anywhere else. So when Dwayne ladled up his first spoonful of soup, which was older than he was, he wasn’t sure at all what he would taste.
But it was heaven.
Even to a palate that was as sophisticatedly singed-off as the one in Dwayne’s mouth, the taste was exquisite. Layers of flavors unfolded on his tongue like nothing he had ever endured. This was a dish that the tavern owner had felt the overwhelming urge to come out and apologize for; to a man who would never have known the difference. He had to try hard not to pick up the bowl and drink it.
Dwayne spent the next week visiting taverns like a madman. He tried stews that were in their sixties. He tried stews in their hundreds. He finally tried a stew that was the oldest he could find.
When he finished his quest, he was not only full gastronomically, Dwayne felt mentally satiated.
He finally understood why the first tavern owner had felt the need to approach a stranger from a strange land, and apologize. Nothing can replace time.
Just like those remarkable English stews, the flavor of old New Orleans was the product of hundreds of years of life being stirred into the city. The current flavor of New Orleans was only seven years old and counting.
This was the start of the journey that Dwayne began on Friday September 1, 2005. That was the day when the horrors that were in the New Orleans SuperDome, and the flooded streets of his hometown, finally became known to the world. After he spent the next five-and-a-half years putting a price on the suffering that his poorest neighbors and childhood friends had to endure, because of government and leadership failures of the most obscene kind, he packed up his family on this miniature cruise ship and left the port of New Orleans behind.
The yacht had a state of the art satellite transceiver system which Dwayne used to maintain a link with the world. His children used the high-speed connection to continue their studies remotely, and his wife used it to complain to her friends back home about how beautiful the boring, flat ocean was. However, none of that bothered Dwayne. He was slowly getting to know his family for the first time. From New Orleans, they followed the Gulf coast around to Florida. From there, they cruised through the Caribbean and down to the Yucatan. Then they headed back east through the Antilles, and now they were heading to Africa. Over the past year, he learned the art of sailing across open ocean. Then he earned his Nautical Pilot Certification for easing the way in large ports and overseas. Now, he was ready to make the trans-Atlantic jaunt to Cape Verde. Then it was north to the Strait of Gibraltar and into the birthplace of modern history. He and his family were going to learn, first-hand, where the story of human civilization began.
That was why Dwayne Boudreaux was happy.
The other members of his family, however, did not share Dwayne’s enthusiasm.
His youngest daughter, who was now thirteen years old, was the most vocal of all about her disapproval of their family journey together when the trip began. She had just made the cheerleading squad at the most popular Catholic all-girl school in the entire city of New Orleans and the surrounding area. Her life was all planned out, and it was going to be joyous. Then her Daddy went and ruined it all. For well over a year, she had pouted on the main deck in front of the boat. All while tanning her way across the Gulf and the Caribbean, and now halfway across the Atlantic ocean.
If she tanned any further, Dwayne wouldn’t be able to recognize her.
Of course, none of this mattered to Dwayne’s daughter, Dawnne. All she knew was that her father pulled her out of the only home she had ever known. Then he dragged her halfway around the Gulf coastline followed by an endless series of Caribbean islands, which all looked the same to her. She hated him for that.
Dawnne Boudreaux was not a friend of her father’s; not at the moment.
Dwayne didn’t care.
His daughter would learn what he wanted her to learn. Dwayne was patient, and she was a captive audience.
His son, Trés Boudreaux, didn’t feel much better about the situation. Now fifteen years old, he resembled more of a young Greek god than he did a spoiled, rich, teenage New Orleans boy. Dwayne thought he would never hear the end of it when he finally had to sell the boy’s pride and joy, his convertible red sports car. Dwayne had purchased it for him when he was fourteen and got his Learners Permit to drive. However, Dwayne wasn’t stupid. He knew why Trés really missed that car. It had little to do with the German engineering or the Spanish leather seats. It was about the 250 horsepower engine under the hood and the 130 miles per hour on the speedometer. That was another reason Dwayne was glad to get his son out of the city. It was easier to keep an eye on him here on the boat, and it moved a lot slower than his sports car.
The only good thing that had happened on the trip so far was his two children seemed to be getting along. For the first time in years, Trés was sitting next to his sister and not fighting. In fact, the two of them had been inseparable for the entire thirteen months that the family had been on this journey. They apparently bonded over their hatred for their father. At this moment, Trés was lying next to his sister on the deck in front of the massive custom yacht. Like Dawnne, he had turned golden brown from the sun. He also had a simmering anger directed at his father. Thirteen months at sea and port had done nothing to temper either of their feelings toward Dwayne.
Then, there was Janine. This personal journey Dwayne was on wouldn’t have been worth it, if not for Janine. That was not to say, however, that Janine understood what her husband was doing or why. All Janine knew was she loved her husband and wanted to be with her husband. She would stand by her man through anything, and she would make her children stand by their father, too.
Janine truly loved Dwayne, and she would not leave her husband. She didn’t know why he had to do this, and Dwayne had stopped trying to explain. However, Janine appreciated the journey she and her family had been on for these past thirteen months. It was not, however, what she expected her life to be as a New Orleans Socialite. She missed the nightlife of the city. She missed the stores and shopping. She missed her big house and her friends and her family. However, she had not been this close to the man she loved since she fell in love with him so many years ago. For that reason, she was going to make the most of this time together. She didn’t care if her spoiled rotten children sat on the hot deck for the whole journey and whined.
Janine, on the other hand, loved the air-conditioning in this wonderful yacht. She was still in the main cabin with her feet propped up and Lola, the pit-bull, sitting next to her. Lola was one-and-a-half years old now. She was just a puppy when Dwayne got word the yacht he had been designing was ready. Shortly after that, the family left on the boat, and they had all been at sea since then.
The puppy was ecstatic on the ocean. She ran up and down from one end to the other of this amazingly large boat. She had more fun when they stopped and played. Lola jumped into the water and came back up the stairs on the diving platform off the back, just like the other kids. She enjoyed the water more than she enjoyed the land, and she had spent the vast majority of her young life at sea. Lola was a beautiful dog. Her coat absorbed the sea water, and she glowed. Thin white fur covered her from head to toe except for one patch of brown over her left eye. It gave her a comical look that softened her pit-bull face.
Dwayne stepped off the staircase and turned forward into the bridge. Although the boat was on autopilot and everything was programmed by GPS, Dwayne felt compelled to walk by and check every once in a while. He had, after all, passed the Nautical Pilot Certification test and felt guilty about not actually standing in front of the wheel. However, he knew Janine was right. It was superfluous to do so because the ship was guided by latest equipment in computer navigation. The autopilot system knew exactly where it was going, and how to get there by itself. It also knew exactly what
was around it because of the on-board anti-collision detection radar. In fact, as Dwayne stepped in front of the radar screen, he saw there was a ship less than nine miles south of his boat, the Saint of the City. According to the radar data, this boat was stationary.
‘It’s probably some fishing boat,’ Dwayne thought to himself.
He did some mental calculations and realized it would only be a couple of minutes before he was past the closest point he and this unknown vessel would be, about seven miles apart. Dwayne quickly put the other boat out of his mind. He began thinking of Africa, instead. They were making pretty respectable time, but he wasn’t sure how long it would take to get there. He considered punching it up on the computer, which would tell him exactly when they would arrive at Cape Verde. But he changed his mind when he felt his stomach growling at him. Besides, he knew he still had a couple of days of peaceful solitude in the wide open ocean before they got close to any type of land. Dwayne had learned to appreciate the peace and quiet, if only to make the most of the silent treatment his kids had been giving him for the entire trip. The thought of his kids made him lean over the panel and look out at the front deck.
Like twin golden statues, both of his children were lying on their backs baking in the Atlantic sun. Almost on cue, they turned over onto their stomachs at the same time. His daughter Dawnne, reached back and undid her swimsuit top and let the straps hang down onto the chair, ensuring her tan would be unbroken by any lines. It had become a point of pride with her. Dwayne chuckled to himself as he leaned back up and took one last look at the instruments.
Suddenly, as he was staring at his equipment bank, he heard a loud sizzling pop. Then he saw smoke and a flash of fire come from several of his instruments at once. Before he could react, he heard screams coming from the bow of his boat. He lurched forward over the smoldering panel and looked back down to the front deck. What he saw took the breath out of him. Down on the deck of his fifteen million dollar yacht, his two golden skinned children were screaming. Their hair was crackling with sparks and flames, as they ran back toward the cabin. Dwayne only saw them for a second before they ran into the cabin below him. As he continued to stare in disbelief, the reclining chairs that his two children were lying on, and all of the seat pads everywhere around the entire deck, suddenly smoldered dark brown then burst into multicolored flames.
Before he could process what he was seeing, the instrument panel he was leaning against sizzled and sparked, again. Above him, heat began emanating from the roof, and Dwayne felt it on his scalp. Everywhere he looked, the ocean began to steam. The engines suddenly died, and he slammed forward, banging into the console in front of him as the boat dropped out of cruising speed. The panel he was touching sparked one more time then shorted out. A pervasive hissing sound seemed to come from everywhere, and the only other sound was the screams from down below. Dwayne snapped out of his inaction and quickly jumped into the stairwell. He tripped as he took the first step and fell the entire way down into the cabin below him.
The fall might have saved his life because moments later the helm console burst into flames with an explosion of glass fragments littering the air where Dwayne’s head was only a few seconds before.
At the bottom of the spiral staircase landing, Dwayne picked himself up and looked around the room. The noise was painful. Lola was now in attack mode on the carpet in the middle of the room barking at everything and everyone. His wife, Janine, was screaming and standing on the sofa in front of the plasma screen, which suddenly turned on then exploded into itself with a loud crackle and a pop. Dwayne’s children were several feet inside the door to the front deck, and they were still screaming, too. The skin on the backside of their bodies was boiled up like a bad scalding burn, and the back of their hair was almost singed entirely off.
The momentum of the boat had been quickly dropping speed since Dwayne left the bridge. Then suddenly, they were dead in the water. As he looked out the window, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Dead fish began popping up, and a white film was forming over the entire surface of the ocean. The water looked as if it were boiling. Everywhere he turned, Dwayne could feel heat burning into his skin. The electronics in the entertainment system behind him began sizzling and popping. The electrical sockets throughout the room began to short out inside the paneling. Dark char lines began to creep along the walls following the electrical wiring throughout the boat, and the cabin suddenly began to smell as if it were burning.
Dwayne had no idea what was going on, but he knew something was terribly wrong. He grabbed Janine and Lola, then yanked them toward the grand staircase to down below. He shoved them both down the stairs and then went back and grabbed Dawnne and Trés. Dwayne took off for the staircase again as he pulled their blistered bodies, one under each arm. They were both in too much shock to notice their skin peeling off under their father’s arms. Their bodies had already turned off the pain receptors in their burnt and blistered backs. It was fortunate that Dawnne was topless when the radiation hit. The fabric would have melted into her back. Both of their swimming suit bottoms had burst into flames when the material reacted with the solar radiation and then melted into the top layer of their buttocks. Except where their suit melted into their skin, neither of them had more than severe second-degree burns and blisters. They were just burned entirely on the backside of their bodies.
Dwayne ran to the stairway with his children in tow and headed down below taking two steps at a time. When he got downstairs, Janine was in shock and Lola had stopped barking. They were quietly standing together against the wall a few feet inside the hallway. Dwayne ran past them with the children and stopped in front of the door to the engine room.
Just as Dwayne pulled open the heavy door and was ready to throw Dawnne and Trés down into the engine compartment, he felt something slam into the boat. The impact was so hard, it picked him up off his feet and shoved him into the bulkhead on the opposite side of the doorway. Dawnne and Trés landed next to Dwayne against the wall, then the three of them slid onto the floor as a group. His wife and Lola were also thrown into the air, and they landed in a heap, in front of Dwayne.
Before he could move, Dwayne felt and heard something pushing against the outside of his boat.
He had no idea what was happening, but the one thought in his mind was to get his family into the engine compartment. Then he would lock the door behind them.
As Dwayne was struggling to get his feet back under him and stand up with his children, his wife started screaming, again.
So did the dog.
His children had stopped momentarily, but they started back up, too.
Over all of this din, Dwayne suddenly heard someone’s voice yelling out.