“You morons better back away,” he heard her say. “An’ you better git yo’ casket ready, ’cause when Johnny B hear what you tryna do, he gonna tear off yo’ heads an’ piss down yo’ neck-holes, so you jus’ keep yo’ damn han’s to yo’self an’ back away, or you be sorry!” she blustered.
Johnny’s teeth clenched in rage at the sound of the raw fear in her voice; no-one was gonna make his baby-girls scared like that; he was supposed to look after them, and keep this kind of stuff from happening. Just then, a male voice, late teens by the sound of it, chimed in.
“Yeah, whatever; I heard ’bout this cousin o’ yawn, I hear tell he ain’t all that, and what I seen, I know fo’ fact he ain’t all that neither, he jest a big ole slow-learner, big ‘n’ stupid. Now, you gonna come quiet like, have some fun, an’ be good li’l gals, or do we got to bust you up some first? Don’t make no difference to me you ‘wake or ‘sleep, it still gonna be good fo’ us!”
That did it for Johnny; those creeps were planning on taking his baby sisters whether they wanted to or not, and in his book, that meant just one thing: dead; they were gonna be dead, but they were gonna hurt bad first…
Looking through a gap in the cane he saw three strapping youths, dressed like typical farm hands, in plaid shirts with rolled sleeves, dusty jeans, and clumsy work boots standing in a half circle around the girls, cutting them off from any escape. The two girls, one dark and pale-skinned, the other a rich honey-blond, polar opposites, both of them pretty as a summer’s morning, were holding each other tightly, a look of fear on their sweet faces he’d never seen before, and he saw red. In two quick strides he was through the cane, and as the largest of the boys, a hulking individual with a mop of greasy hair sensed him and half turned, Johnny punched him on the back of the head, sending him flying.
The other two turned in surprise, just in time for the one nearest him to catch a kick in the crotch that pulped his testicles. He dropped with a whistling scream, vomiting even as he clutched his genitals, but Johnny wasn’t watching him, he’d already grabbed the third boy by his bunched shirt-front and flattened his face with a flurry of vicious jabs. The boy’s face exploded in a welter of blood, his head snapping back from the force of the punches as Johnny’s killing rage vented itself on him.
The feel of Odelie’s hands tugging on his arm, and her voice, shouting, pleading with him, brought him back to his senses, his face flushed and his chest heaving as he fought to shove his rage back down inside.
“Johnny, Stop! Fuck, you gon’ kill him, boy! Back it off, Johnny, he done. JOHNNY! Stop it, we OK, stop it, don’ kill him, he ain’t wuth it!”
The look of stunned shock on blonde Melette’s sweet little face as he glanced in her direction finally snapped him out of it, the rage flowing out of him as quickly as it had come, leaving him weak and breathless. He sank to his knees, overcome with shame at what he’d just done, at what he’d just shown his baby girls he was capable of, and both girls flung themselves on him, thinking he was hurt.
“Johnny, are you Ok? What you doin’ here, how you get here, where you hurt, whut happen you, tu de’pouille, es-tu blesse? (are you OK, are you hurt?) Look at your han’s, they covered in blood!” gabbled Melette, but Odelie grabbed his face and pulled him around to look in his eyes.
“You OK now, Johnny? Husha, Mel, he OK, ‘s’not his blood, they ain’t never laid a hand on him! Boy, Lil John, I was never so glad to see your sweet face, an’ that God’s truth; when you come bustin’ outta nowhere and beat their punk asses, I near-on did what Maw-maw give me croton-oil for! Now I know what Jean-Noel say ’bout you the gospel’s own truth; you a badass, Jean-Bastienne, I jus’ glad you our badass! How’n hell you get here jus’ when we need you most?”
Johnny started to tell the girls about how he’d had a six-day leave saved-up so he’d come home to see his maw-maw when a piteous groaning dragged his attention away from his story, to where the boy he’d kicked in the crotch was still curled up in his own world of pain. The largest of the trio was out cold, and the one Johnny had battered was likewise out of action, blood bubbling from his flattened nose and between his split lips as he breathed. Johnny gently untangled the girls’ arms from around his neck and leaned down to cuff him ungently, making sure he got his full attention.
“OK, you li’l frog’s dick, who-all’s idea was all this? You better answer up real quick, or I mo hurt you some more, an’ your two li’l boyfrien’s fast asleep, so that mean you got my undivided attention, you followin’ me, asshole?”
Any bravado the boy might have felt died away when he saw his buddies lying battered, bleeding, and unconscious a few feet from him. He told Johnny everything, about how they’d seen the girls, two pretty teenage girls on a deserted street, and flagged them down on a pretext, jumped into the cab, and forced them to drive to this isolated part of Force Drive; his defense, that they weren’t going to hurt them, just play a little, made Johnny’s blood pressure and temperature start to rise, something the girls saw right away, so they pulled him away and made him call the sheriff instead. Johnny gave precise instructions to the dispatcher, and ten minutes later a deputy’s cruiser rolled up.
The deputy called in assistance, and the three boys were cuffed and bundled into the backs of the cruisers while a deputy took the girls’ and Johnny’s statements and contact details. When they left, Johnny walked the girls back to their car, waited for them to turn, and then followed them home.
Melette was quiet on the ride home; normally she was a chatterbox, but she was quiet all the way home, and took the tongue-lashing from Maw-maw for getting in such a pickle in silence. When their maw-maw had finished with the post-mortem, she hugged them both fiercely and told them they could stay home the next day, they’d had a real fright and needed time to recover. She never said a word of reproach to Johnny, and when he dropped by on his way back from helping his uncle, he found a fresh Bundt cake, his favorite, waiting for him.
*
Lying in their room that night, the two girls discussed the day’s events. Odelie in particular couldn’t seem to get the picture of Johnny erupting out of nowhere and saving the day out of her mind. Melette, her twin sister, knew exactly what she was thinking; the same thing had been playing through her mind all evening.
“Mel? You ‘sleep?” whispered Odelie.
“Are you kiddin’? I dunno if I can ever sleep again, not after today! Only good thing was li’l Jean-Bastienne showin’ up in the nick o’ time an’ kickin’ those assholes through next week!”
There was a long, pregnant pause, then:
“Mel, you think Johnny got someone special, like? I mean, he always seem like he alone, I don’ know anyone he dated, I don’ think he ever dated anyone; you think he lonely?”
Melette looked closely at the pretty brunette, pretty sure she knew what she was really asking her.
“Honey, whether he lonely or not, ain’t nothing we can do ’bout it; Johnny a man grown, an’ make his own choices; he leave to go make somethin’ of himself, an’ one day he choose the person he think right for him, mebbe he bring her back here, an’ there ain’t nothin’ we can do ’bout it… no matter what we want for him… or what we want for our own self…”
Odelie’s head snapped around to stare at her sister.
“Did you just say…?” and Melette nodded unhappily.
“I know what you want, baby, I always did; I want it too, it’s been all I wanted since I was li’l girl, same as you, but fact is, we too young, an’ we ain’t never gonna be what he wants, neither one of us; Johnny meet a girl one day, mebbe in the city, he marry her, an’ that be that, an’ we might as well ‘cept it.”
Odelie climbed out of her bed, and slid into bed with her sister, snuggling down against her like they had when they were young.
“When I was just six years ole I wanted to marry Johnny,” she murmured. “He so big, an’ nice to us, he allus look out for us, ‘specially after mama an’ papi gone; he jes’ treat us like we somethin’ precious to him, like he knowed we needed big brother to get us through, an’ he jes’ step-up an’ step-in; remember how he allus take us frog-stickin’ an’ catfishin’ when he din’t have to, he so much older’n us but he real nice from the get-go, he buy us candy, an’ he tell us scary stories; you remember? That one time when we was eight or nine he take us fishin’ with him down the bayou an’ we stayed in Big Jean-Bastienne’s fishin’ shack at Ghost Lake, you remember that? He tell us ’bout parlangua, an’ rougarou, an’ to look away when we see the fifolet, an’ how Marie Laveau come an’ use gre-gre on us we don’ behave…”
Melette hugged her twin sister closer, her own memories of how Johnny had always been there for them crowding into her.
“Odie, you ‘member how he allus take blame any time we mess-up, and he take a whuppin’ from maw-maw for it? He never once let on whut we did, he jus’ took it, an’ he never take it out on us; maw-maw she beat him somethin’ fierce but he take it so we din’t have to; I used to think he so brave, doin’ that for us, an’ he never once held it over us, he never once say ‘this what I do for you, now you owe me’, he jes’ keep on bein’ Johnny and watchin’ out for us.”
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling in silence for a moment, taking Odelie’s hand when she stroked her hair.
“I ‘member goin’ to Ghost Lake, Odie,” she murmured, “I ‘member real clear, we so scared o’ rougarou so he put thirteen beans ‘cross the door so rougarou cain’t come in, an’ he promise on his mama’s heart he keep rougarou an’ all the other monsters ‘way from us no matter what, you ‘member that, Odie? An’ now today…”
Odelie wrapped her arm around Melette’s waist and huddled against her sister, burying her face in Melette’s shoulder before speaking, her voice soft but still clear in the silence.
“Remember he tellin’ us ’bout Pere Malfait just a bidin’ out in the swamp, waitin’ fo’ li’l gals who get lost in the swamps, so we got to stay close by him, how scared we was ‘case Pere Malfait come an’ get us anyway? He say sorry for scarin’ us so nice I wanted him to scare me some more, jus’ so he can say sorry so nice all over again. Ever’ time we need him, he there, he always there, ever’ single time; why it so wrong to want someone that good for you? Tell me baby, ’cause it really hurtin’ me inside…”
Melette held her sister closer, tears brimming in her eyes as Odelie cried into her shoulder; for the first time the girls finally shared what they’d done privately so many times in the past, crying themselves to sleep over the one man in the world they were not allowed to want, who would never want them, and for what could never be.