Bayou My Love: A Novel by Lauren Faulkenberry

I?”
    “You
know,” I said, turning to him, “why don’t you take your—”
    Jack
interrupted, saying to Remy in a cool, even voice, “You don’t want to start
this here. Trust me on that.”
    Remy
stared at him, stone faced.
    “Hey,”
Buck yelled. “Am I going to have to drag you out of here my own self? I ain’t
going to bother the sheriff with this nonsense again.”
    “Guess
you don’t have what I need after all,” Remy said, turning toward the front of
the store. “Watch out for those fires, Mayronne,” he said over his shoulder.
“Be a shame if you got burned up in one.”
    I
turned in time to see Remy’s smirk turn to a sneer as he ambled down the aisle
to the door. On his way past the stock boy, he said, “What are you staring at?”
and knocked a box of screws from his hand. They clattered as they tumbled
across the floor.
    “Hey,”
Buck called from the counter. “Next time I don’t ask nicely.”
    Remy
laughed, shoving the front door so the bell clanged.
    The
door slammed behind him, and Buck shook his head.
    “Sorry
about that,” Buck said to me. “Every place has its trash. Can’t keep it hidden,
no matter how hard you try.”
    “It’s
OK,” I said as I handed him my credit card.
    “Sorry,
honey,” he said, pointing to a sign beneath the cash register that said Cash
or Check Only.
    I
sighed. There was more than four hundred dollars’ worth of supplies at the
counter and less than thirty in my wallet. “I don’t suppose there’s an ATM
around here.”
    Jack
gave Buck a nod, leaning against the counter. “Just add it to my bill.”
    “That’s
not necessary,” I said.
    He
smiled down at me. “You can pay me back later.”
    Buck
pulled a receipt book with carbon paper from under the counter. After
scribbling some numbers, he passed it to Jack to sign. “All right, son,” he
said. “Y’all need a hand getting this in the truck?”
     
    ~~~~
     
    When
we were out of the parking lot, I turned to face Jack.
    “What?”
he said, his eyes on the road.
    “Who
was that guy?”
    “Remy?
Just a hooligan with nothing better to do.”
    “Seems
like he knew you pretty well.”
    Jack
raked his fingers through his hair. “Everybody here goes back a long way,” he
said. “Hardly anybody ever leaves.”
    “What’s
he got against you?”
    “He’s
got something against everybody. He never could seem to keep on the right side
of the law. Or the right side of anyone in general, for that matter.”
    He
bristled, though he was trying to stay calm. There was something specific
between the two of them, but it was clear that Jack had no intention of
revealing it to me.
    “Buck,
though,” I said. “I like him.”
    “Yeah,
he and my aunt, Josie, took me in after my parents died.”
    “You’re
lucky to have them.”
    “Don’t
I know it. They should have turned me out a dozen times, but they never did.”
He winked and said, “I was a bit of a troublemaker.”
    We
sped along the road by the canal, windows down to let the marsh breeze in. With
so many deep bends in the creeks and so many bayous, it seemed there was more
water than land here. It was as if we were on a series of islands with secret
connections.
    “You
didn’t have to spot me back there,” I said. “I could have gone back later with
cash.”
    He
smiled that crooked smile. “Well that would mean losing even more time that you
could have been painting or caulking or staining. And I wouldn’t want to get
you behind schedule.”
    I
stared off into the marshland. There was going to be trouble if he could read
all of my thoughts that easily.
     

 
    Chapter
5
    Vergie’s
house needed more than I could actually do in six weeks with my limited budget.
The trick with a flip was that you had to fix the biggest problems that would
be the deal-breakers for buyers, but not improve so much that you drew
attention to dozens of smaller things that needed updating. Otherwise, you were
in an endless cycle of repair that would burn