Chapter 23

Christmas Eve: that was the traditional big party with my family and the whole rowdy bunch was at Tootie's for an informal get-together with tables loaded with everybody's favorite recipes for pies and snacks. Nieces and nephews showed up with their spouses and "friends" and it was noted that Uncle Dan's wife was the youngest of the bunch. It was interesting, but no hurdle. Cindy was dragged into one conversation after another, and after a little initial apprehension on my part, I soon noted that she was quite comfortable surrounded by members of her new family.

Oh, I shouldn't have worried. Early in the afternoon I was seated on the sofa with a crowd, and with space at a premium, Cindy was perched on my knee, innocently dressed in a pine-green sweatshirt that fitted her loosely but accented that head of red hair like a spotlight.

Jerry's youngest son Rick was feeling particularly feisty and popped up, "Uncle Dan, if I'd 'a known you wanted a YOUNG wife, I could fixed you up a LONG time ago."

I was taken aback. I don't think he really meant to be disrespectful, but I noticed the room get quiet. And then Cindy stuck her tongue out at him.

"Hmph! Rick, Rick, Rick..." she said. "He wasn't lookin' for a young wife. HE didn't know WHAT he was missing until WE found each other!" And she twisted and kissed me. "Right, babe?"

"Absolutely right, sweetie. And, uh, Rick, until you fooled Miss Britney there, any THREE of your previous girlfriends wouldn't've added up to half a Cindy in intelligence."

Britney, Rick's freshly-announced fiancée, giggled. "Uh-huh, Uncle Dan. He used ta not date women whose IQ's were higher than their hip measurements." She punched him playfully. "That meant he settled for a lot of fifties." Giggle. "So a couple of 'em would have made two or three Cindy's on weight, maybe."

Jerry laughed. "He's got you there, son! What'd that last one wanna be? A nail technician?"

Britney punched Rick again. "Yeah, I'm what, the first girl you dated that graduated college?" Britney was a school teacher. "Oh, heck! I'm the first girlfriend YOU'VE had that didn't have to sing that song to remember the alphabet! 'Sides, I talked to Cindy. I KNOW what she's gonna do..."

Tootie stepped in. "Yeah, she's gonna graduate high school when she's freakin' FOURTEEN!"

Cindy got off my knee, walked past Rick and gave Britney a hug, and stuck her tongue out at Rick again. "You better be nice to her, Rick. She carries enough sense so that you'll survive on this planet without having to collect roadkill." And she went in the kitchen and collected up a paper plate full of little snacks, then sat back on my knee and made an obvious show of feeding me.

Tootie got up to do something and walked by, stopping to give Cindy a hug. "Way to go, Cin," she said.

After that, I pretty much didn't worry. She was family. Yeah, another one of Uncle Dan's strange ways, but family nonetheless.

A pleasant time was had by all. The informal appetizers and gumbo of Christmas Eve was succeeded by a full layout of food on Christmas. The week between Christmas and New Year's was filled with socializing with family and old friends.

Somewhere in there, Cindy and Hanna conspired for another episode of cutting strange holes in the sky while Greg and I swapped the tires on my Cessna. The skies darkened early in December and suppertime found us at Greg and Hanna's eating schnitzel and drinking wine. And yes, in good German tradition, Cindy had her glass.

The other thing was a "fais-do-do". For you poor folk who didn't grow up in south Louisiana, that's "Fay-doe-doe" and it's Cajun, almost literally, for "bop 'til you drop", an impromptu party of music, food and friends. It went down starting with a phone call from my brother.

"Yeah, Jerry, what's up?" I answered.

"We got the pavilion at the parish park for Thursday. Family, friends. Music. Your cousins. They wanna know if you can come an' bring Cindy. And your bass." He continued, "It's gonna be fun. An' if Cindy doesn't leave after this, she's a keeper." He laughed out loud.

"I thought I was pushing it with Christmas Eve, " I said. "Lemme talk it over with her."

"It's a good chance to show her the rest of the bunch, Dan."

"I know," I said. "Including that part of the family tree that has root rot."

"You'll be on stage with them, boy. You get to play Cajun music with your cousins." My cousins were just a stage above 'garage band' except they were pretty adept at the music indigenous to south Louisiana. One played fiddle, another accordion, a third guitar. They could usually scare up a drummer and I'd filled in on bass guitar more than once.

The venues tended towards small drinking establishments and social events like this one.

"I'm leanin' that way. But let me run it by Cindy before I say okay." I kicked the recliner back in our living room as Cindy came through the door with a bowl of popcorn.

"Who's that, baby?" she asked.

"YOUR brother-in-law. Wants to know if you want to go to a party with a bunch of drunk Cajuns."

Her eyebrow arched. "Do we KNOW any of them?"

"Yeah," I said. "You married into the bunch. They want me to help out in the band."

"You mean that Cajun stuff we were listenin' to at Tootie's? I'd buy a ticket to watch that."

I laughed again. Jerry chuckled. "Sounds like a 'yes' to me."

"Okay, we'll be there." He gave me the details. I dutifully repeated them to Cindy as she sat beside me. I hung up.

"Baby, this ain't gonna be like Saturday nights at the park. This bunch doesn't do ANYTHING without alcohol, so there's gonna be some pretty serious drinkin', and they can get kind of raucous."

"I can handle that, Dan. They're goin' there to have a good time, right?"

"Yeah. Jerry will be there early makin' a big pot of gumbo, and there's gonna be plenty of food. And beer. Lots of beer. And if it runs true to the last one, last summer, there's gonna be a margarita machine, plus a soda fountain."

"Sounds like a production." She regarded me with a little smile. "Call Tootie."

"Tootie? Why?" I asked.

"'Cuz she said I needed to learn to dance. Said these things always have dancin'."

"Yeah, there is that. YOU call 'er. Tell 'er to come over tomorrow evening and I'll do a pot roast and we'll trade dinner for dancin' lessons."

"And I can watch you cook that roast," she said. She flipped her cellphone open and commanded "Tootie" then she smiled at me.

I laughed. "I don't EVEN want to know what word you use to call Jerry!"

She stuck her tongue out at me. "Oh, hi, Tootie!" Pause. "Yeah, remember you said I needed to learn to dance?" Cindy leaned over to put the phone between our ears so I could hear.

"Yeah, hon," Tootie answered. "SO I guess ya'll are goin' to the fais-do-do, huh?"

"Uh-huh," Cindy said, a little more excited than me. "Dan's gonna play with the band."

Tootie snorted. "Band! Huh! Get four drunk coonasses (the colloquial term Cajuns called each other) together and they call it a 'band'. But Dan's gonna play, huh?"

"Yes, he is," Cindy said. "And there's gonna be dancin'. An I don't want to look stupid."

Tootie laughed again. "Babe," she said, "with that bunch you could slide across the floor on your belly pushin' a peanut with your nose and you'd look like the upper tier. But me an' Mike are gonna be there, too."

"Good!" Cindy said. "Anyway, your brother's cooking a roast tomorrow an' want's ya'll over for dinner. And bring some of that music."

"We'll do that. His roast ain't as good as mine, but I'm just happy that I don't have to cook tomorrow."

"'Kay! We'll see you about what? Four-thirty? Give us time to talk an' stuff!" Cindy's eyes twinkled at me.

"Sure. Can I talk to your worthless husband?"

"Hi, Toot," I said. "What's up?"

"Just want to see if I can bring something..."

"Pie?" I asked. "You can buy one. Just want a little something for a dessert."

"You got it, brother," Tootie said. "An' now I got something to look forward to at that fais-do-do."

"Yeah," I laughed. "Bye!"

"Bye, Tootie," Cindy said, and then closed the phone.

She smiled at me. "Looks like we got ourselves another event, honey!" and she pushed popcorn into my mouth.

Dinner the next day was just fun. We talked, ate then retired to the den and Tootie and Mike and I got Cindy up to speed on the two dances necessary for survival at a fais do-do.

"Remember, baby," Tootie said. "It's not complicated. These are made to be done by drunk Cajuns." And she showed my Cindy how to do the two-step and the waltz, at least the rudimentary versions we grew up with.

Tootie and Mike left us and we shut the house down before heading to the shower together. The hot water and soft hands worked wonders easing the stress out of me. Stress? Not really. And if there was any stress, soft loving with Cindy would've driven it from my happy universe.

That put us getting up the next day tangled together, letting the first conscious move I made be a kiss on the top of that tousled copper head. Her first sound was an "Mmmmm" and then a squeeze, pulling us closer together. "G'mornin', love," she said.

"Mornin', punkin," I said. "What's for breakfast?"

"If I help in the kitchen, can we do grits'n' eggs'n'bacon? Hmmmm?"

Now, by this stage of our relationship, Cindy could've asked me to walk barefoot over hot coals and I would've been peeling my socks off, so cooking breakfast with her was obviously an easy thing to accept. We staggered together to the bathroom. I hit the sink first, washing my sleepy face giving her time to free up the toilet, then we changed places.

The kitchen was a happy set of collisions as we laughed our way through breakfast prep. The coffee was dripping as we hit the table with our plates. After the meal, we opened the curtains on the window to our back yard and watched the birds feeding on the ornamental berries of the hedge.

We bumped around the roads together, had a light lunch, then ended up back at the house in time to shower and dress for the evening.

"I'm assuming, hon, that this event doesn't call for my little black dress, huh?" she swirled out of her closet with that simple black sheath in front of her almost naked body.

"Uh, no ... You're going to be trouble enough in jeans, cutie," I said.

"Okay," she grinned, "jeans it is. Now, what about a shirt?" she pulled another hanger out of the closet, showing me long-sleeved, pine green cotton. "You like me in this one," she said.

She was correct there. Her pale natural complexion and aged copper hair color were spotlighted by that dark green. "Yes I do. But I don't know if I want you THAT stunning, sweetie."

She stuck out her bottom lips, feigning a pout. "I think you have a burlap sack in the garage..."

"No, brown's bad, too..." I laughed. "Go with green."

We walked into the pavilion together, me with my bass slung on my back in a gig bag, Cindy on my arm looking like a vision, every hair in place, those green eyes twinkling, and a winning smile. And everybody wanted to see Uncle Dan's new wife. I made a noble try at trying to remember names. I was successful with relatives, but their wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, oh well, the target moves too much.

I left Cindy to her own resources and went to the stage to meet my cousins to get set up for the music, then retrieved Cindy. We did a little food sampling, settling on Jerry's rich gumbo for our dinner meal. We were chatting with a succession of people when the sound system squealed.

"If Uncle Dan will work hisself up here, we'll play a little music," the fiddle player said.

I winked at Cindy. "Stardom calls, little darlin'."

"Just remember, there, superstar, that you gotta dance with me sometime tonight." She hauled my face down and kissed me, a move that got squeals and catcalls from the surrounding crew.

I took my spot on the stage, and off we went. Bass player in a Cajun band. Tough job, especially when you realize that the musical structure is driven by the archtypical Cajun musical instrument, a diatonic accordion, is tuned in a single key, in this case the key of C, so it wasn't hard to follow the music, and Cajun music is folk music, not fancy. We did the fast ones, two-steps, and the slow ones, waltzes.