SHAME THE DEVIL (historical fiction)- Chapter 1

Thursday, September 5, 1935 

Lakeland Drive

Baton Rouge, LA

Yvonne

Yvonne controlled the pace of the front porch swing with the tap and drag of her toe, her cool cotton skirt wrinkling in her lap under the weight of her 12-week-old baby, Carl Austin Weiss, Jr., or Carlchen, as they called him. She’d worried the German moniker meaning ‘little Carl’ sounded too forceful when her in-laws first suggested it, but it had already come to fit him perfectly.

Cupping her hands under his arms, Yvonne wrapped long slender fingers around the back of his neck and sang to him, her voice soft and breathy. Carlchen pressed his bare feet into her thigh and grinned, pushing himself into a standing position. Yvonne beamed. If only Carl were there to see it.

She expected him home for lunch any minute. He’d had a tonsillectomy follow-up at nine o’clock at the practice he shared with his father, and promised he would leave the office by noon. She imagined him walking his normal route up the bustling Third Street corridor to Main Street, past the church, where he’d served as an altar boy in his youth, onto North Fifth, where his parents still lived, then making a final right onto Lakeland Drive. With Louisiana’s new State Capitol building at his back, he would come into her view. She’d watch his smile grow wide and his steps grow long. 

“Let’s wait right here for Daddy,” she said to Carlchen. “He will see how strong you are all for himself.” She lifted the baby in the air eliciting another broad toothless grin.

Passing automobiles kicked up dust, powdering everything along the three tree-lined blocks of Lakeland Drive reaching from the Capitol to North Eighth Street. The hard-soled shoes of suited men hammered on the sidewalk at a clip. Some came in groups, others alone. All walked in the direction of the Capitol. 

United States Senator Huey P. Long was in town.  According to the morning newspaper, more than four hundred new bills had been passed in the last twelve months and Senator Long authored every one of them. The number was unprecedented and today’s special session promised more of the same. This sort of massive reform was only possible under two scenarios: Huey Long either held the legislators in some kind of supernatural trance, or he controlled them with bribes and coercion. Based on her own father’s ugly past with Long, her guess was the latter. 

From her porch, she guessed at the business of each passerby. Yvonne liked to think she could tell a professor from a politician by the comb of his hair, the cut of his suit, or the measure of his step. When she’d studied at the Sorbonne, she’d sit with a glass of port on the Champs Elysèes and watch people bustling to and from the patisseries and boulangeries. It was there she learned to distinguish lovers from spouses, students from professionals, and gentlemen from scoundrels. 

In the distance, where she’d expected to see Carl, Yvonne’s younger sister had appeared. She was stomping down Lakeland Drive in Yvonne’s direction. Yvonne straightened in surprise. What was Marie doing here?

Marie held her purse under one arm, while the other swung with such force her skirt twisted around her waist and caused her blouse to come untucked. She looked as if she’d stomped the entire sixty miles from their home town of Opelousas to Yvonne’s house in Baton Rouge. Her loose curls, wild with humidity, licked at her eyes. Her stockings wrinkled at the ankle and with each step slipped further out of place. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk before her and talked to herself, a sure sign Marie had done something she should not have. 

Marching onto the porch, Marie’s momentum carried her so close to Yvonne she stopped the swing with her shins. After a deep breath, she exhaled a mess of words and sobs and gasps. 

Yvonne struggled to make out what her sister said. The Capitol. Huey Long. Her teaching job. The Negro school. Yvonne stood and with her free arm she ushered Marie into the house. Such an outburst should not be on display.  

“Now,” Yvonne said, “why don’t you start at the beginning? Matter of fact, start by explaining why you didn’t tell me you were coming to town?”  She poured them each a glass of tea and sat at the small kitchen table. 

“I didn’t know I was coming until Alice-Lou showed me the printed circular yesterday,” Marie said. “It said if any school employee who’d been let go by the State Budget Committee wanted to be reconsidered for their job they could come to the Capitol today.” Marie’s wet, brown eyes tried to read Yvonne’s reaction before she folded her chin into her neck like a guilty child. “Alice-Lou and I just want our teaching jobs back.” 

The State Budget Committee, comprised of Huey Long and two appointees, had been formed in the last legislative special session. Every entity receiving state funds had been required to submit its budget and payroll list to the committee for approval. This included the likes of every sheriff’s office, public works department, sanitation unit, fire station, and school board. The committee had summarily fired every employee on every payroll and re-hired only Long loyalists who were willing to ‘donate’ ten percent of their salary to Huey’s re-election fund.  

This procedure had worked in every Parish in the state, except for St. Landry Parish where Yvonne’s father and his allies still wielded more political clout than Senator Long. In packed public meetings and fiery open forums, the citizens of St. Landry Parish pushed back against the Long political machine leaving the State Budget Committee little choice but to publish the circular offering to hear the voices of those they’d fired.

“Marie! You should have known that circular was a ruse. You didn’t even like your job. You came here on a whim, you ...” Yvonne paused, suddenly realizing the gravity of Marie’s decision. “You didn’t tell Papa why you were coming to Baton Rouge, did you? If he found out you begged for your job, begged to the very men who’ve been trying to cheat Papa out of his judgeship. This will humiliate him, Marie. Hu-mi-li-ate him.”

Marie sat in silence, her eyes downcast.

“He will not survive another heart attack. How many times must you be told this? Your antics will kill him and I won’t forgive you for it.”

“I know. I know. I didn’t tell them I was coming at all. Mamma thinks I’m playing bridge with Alice-Lou in New Iberia. This is graveyard talk, Yvonne. I mean it. Take it to your grave.”

“I’ll add it to the list,” Yvonne said. Covering for her sister was nothing new.

Marie explained how she and Alice-Lou had taken the early train from Opelousas and were the first to sign their names on the list of employees wanting to be re-hired. Alice-Lou went in what seemed to be the main meeting room while they called Marie in another direction entirely.

“They knew who I was,” Marie said. “I heard the men whisper Papa’s name and nod in my direction. They took me into the governor’s office. Then he came in,”  she said. “Huey.” His name spilled from her mouth like sour milk. 

She lifted her glass with an unsteady hand and took a sloppy sip of tea. “I told him I loved my job and I wanted to be in the classroom more than anything,” Marie said. She hung her head at the memory. “He said if I loved teaching so much, he could put me teaching over at the Negro school, but—” Marie began to cry.

”Go on and tell me all of it, you have my word it won’t get back to Papa.  For his sake, anyway,”  Yvonne said. She gave a slow and subtle nod to Carl, who’d slipped up the side steps and stood quietly behind Marie in the open doorway to the kitchen.  

“He said he already had too many Negroes teaching school,” Marie said, again losing her composure.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Carl said. He slammed the kitchen door behind him, startling both Marie and the baby, whose cry brought Yvonne to her feet. He pulled on the back of a kitchen chair and leaned onto the table gripping its edge with his hands. The color drained from his fingertips. “They knew who you were alright. This is about his history with your father. You were a lamb before the lion. He’ll apologize for this!”

Carl’s voice was too loud, too strong, too acidic for Yvonne. Not so for her sister, though who lapped up the attention. It mattered not to Marie that Papa’s career or health were the price of admission to her one woman show. 

Yvonne kept her eyes on Carl as Marie described what she saw and felt in the room with Huey, taking her time to embellished every detail. The tension in Carl’s face; the slight flare of his nostrils as he breathed, the narrowing of his eyes which seemed to focus on some unseen enemy worried her. As diplomatic as Carl could be with a nervous patient or in a heated debate among colleagues, he simply could not stand by while someone was being mistreated.

“I’ll handle it, Marie,” Carl said, finally taking a seat at the table.

Still standing, Yvonne looked at her husband. The idea Carl could handle this was ludicrous. But she could never say that to him directly, so instead she said, “What do you mean, Carl? You can’t just walk up to Huey Long and have a chat with him.  He’s maligned everyone from President Roosevelt to Papa, you won’t be able to reason with the man.” She bounced the baby over her shoulder.  

“Nothing to reason, Yvonne. I will not have the insult linger.” He pressed his open palm to his chest for emphasis. “Huey’s behavior was inappropriate and Marie deserves an apology.” 

Marie bobbed her head up and down in agreement with Carl.

Hadn’t he heard her promise this wouldn’t get back to Papa? “But this has nothing to do with you. You’ll only—”

“This,” he cut in, practically hissing the word, “most certainly does.” He locked eyes with Yvonne, a signal for her the conversation had ended. 

She quieted. Getting Carl to change his mind would be a challenge, but she had to find a way. This was her family after all —her Papa’s reputation, her sister’s shenanigans.

Yvonne excused herself and took Carlchen to the nursery. Sitting in the tapestry-covered rocking chair, a gift from Carl’s cousin Nell, Yvonne felt a tinge of guilt for tuning out the governmental goings on, but it was endless—one day Huey Long was passing a new tax on newspaper advertising in retaliation for their coverage of his improprieties, the next he was sending his cronies to pose as election day “poll-watchers” to stuff the ballot box in favor of her father’s opponent for district judge. Politics meant conflict and she loathed conflict. Since the baby had been born, she’d allowed herself to worry only about the smaller, more precious things in her world, like feeding times and powdered creases. 

But politics permeated their lives. In the last week alone, her Uncle Paul had been fired from his position as Principal at Opelousas High School and Marie had lost her job. With the special session being called, there was certainly more to come, especially to those who opposed Long. 

Keeping Marie’s story from their father—especially if an indignant Carl got involved—might be impossible.

The nursery door creaked open and Marie entered the room with a glass of water. “Carl said to bring this to you,” she said. After taking a gulp, she added, “He said nursing makes you thirsty.”

“It does,” Yvonne answered.

“I guess it makes me thirsty, too,” Marie said.  She took another swig and tried to shoot some water out of the space between her two front teeth, but it fell from the sides of her mouth and dribbled onto her blouse.

Yvonne tried not to smile.

“C’mon Yvonne. If you don’t smile, I’ll make it come out of my nose.”

Yvonne laughed out loud. Marie could always break her.  “You’re a mess, Marie Pavy. Now go get your own glass of water and visit with Carl. You can’t just abandon your knight in shining armor.”

“My work here is done,” Marie joked. She dramatically lifted one foot and then the other and tip-toed out of the room.

Yvonne hoped the more Marie’s mood lightened, the less inclined Carl would be to do anything about the insult. Carl hadn’t been raised around politics like Yvonne had. It was foolhardy for him to think he’d get in the same room as Long. To have a conversation with him was even less likely.

By the time the baby had been fed and resting soundly in his crib, Yvonne found Carl had not only made and served lunch, but also entertained Marie and her friend Alice-Lou, who’d arrived after an unsuccessful attempt to get her job back. Carl washed the dishes while Marie dried and Alice-Lou sat at the table filing her nails. The scene was light and gay and all seemed in good spirits, but Yvonne knew her husband well. He laughed with their guests and made them feel at ease in his company, but Yvonne knew something unsettling lingered behind Carl’s cheery smile. While this turned her stomach, she chose to ignore it. She would keep the peace, Yvonne decided; she would say nothing more about it.

Includes the following: protagonist and her core wound, the hook, setting, tone and foreshadows the primary conflict and the antagonist.