BOUDREAUX’S MOTHER
Proverbs 10:2 Ill-gotten treasures are of
no value, but righteousness delivers from death.
Boudreaux's mother works hard for a living. She is a roust-a-bout on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. No one messes with her because she has the reputation of being the toughest and meanest of the whole crew and nobody, I mean nobody, is going to find out if there is any truth it.
When working you can see the tobacco juice streaming down her chin and neck as she works the tobacco around her cheeks and under her tongue, occasionally spitting a large wad over her left shoulder. The men hate working beside her because frequently they become the target of the wad as it sprays their faces mixed with salt water.
At home she isn’t much different. She remains the uncouth terror of the area bars, out wrestling, out drinking and certainly out cussing everyone else.
Boudreaux’s mother lives on Bayou Lafourche, the bayou side of Highway One, just past Thibodeaux, on two acres, no wider than 30 feet from bayou to highway, with her half-sister, Lula Mae, and three children, two of them hers, Boudreaux, and Bubba. Abilene belongs to Lula Mae.
The compound looks like a circus has rolled into town. On one end is a small garden that supplies all the food for this unusual, dysfunctional family of five. On the other are the trailers, lined up like a freight train, seven trailers lined in a single row, each connected by a never-ending wide porch. Boudreaux’s mother has collected the trailers through the years from her seven ex-husbands as part of the divorce settlements.
Each trailer has its own function. One is the living room, followed by the dining trailer, the kitchen trailer, Boudreaux’s mother’s bedroom. Lula Mae’s quarters, the children’s quarters, and the laundry/bathroom (even though they do not own a washing machine, only a scrub board for washing clothes in the bayou, which isn’t used for its primary purpose.) When Lula Mae is home alone with the kids the scrub board becomes a musical instrument. Lula Mae loves leading the motley crew around the train of trailers while keeping time to the loud music with the scrub board and two spoons from Boudreaux’s mother’s best silver collection from the third marriage. Boudreaux’s mother isn’t bothered by this because she’s never home long enough to know the silver is missing.
If she isn’t on the rig, then she is at the local bars till the sun rises. Most nights she is so stinking drunk that she never finds her way home. Lula Mae usually must fetch her from some ditch the next day.
Boudreaux’s mother (no one really knows her real given name) recently stated that she needs a new trailer since seven has not been her lucky number and that eight would be exactly right. This means that she will be trolling for a new husband. She believes that eight might even bring her luck in winning the lotto and besides, Boudreaux is getting too old to keep sleeping in the same room with his cousin.
Boudreaux’s mother was recently seen outside Little Joe’s Doghouse, dressed up, fit to kill, out hunting for a man; a real man, a man that has a brand-new trailer. She is not interested in someone to take care of her. No one can do that, at least not one in his right mind. She figures that if she catches one then she only need stay with him long enough to get the paperwork signed over in her name before she gets him too drunk and helps him accidentally fall into the bayou.
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