“Because I did, Lionel,” I said, and I said it quietly, without pride, as I might say the time of day. “Ten weeks ago. Thirteen million, one hundred thousand dollars. Every machine, every dredge, every man.” Behind me, the zydeco band stood frozen with their instruments, and Yvonne set down her plate. “The yellow marsh buggy behind the garage of your son is unit eight. It is on line eight of that schedule. It belongs to the company that bought me out. Your son is trying to sell it for three hundred forty thousand dollars, and a crew boat and a pump have gone missing from my yard as well.”
Lionel did not shout, which surprised me. He sat down on the arm of a deck chair, the paper shaking in his hand, and looked at his son. “Darius,” he said, “tell me this is a mistake.” Darius said nothing. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Junior told me you came on Sunday night with a story that I had okayed it,” I said. “I did not.” Darius finally found his voice. “Uncle Clarence, they were going to be sold anyway. I only wanted a start. You had so much, and I had nothing.” “You had ten years of my training,” I said. “You had my trust. I would have given you a start.”
Yvonne crossed the deck and took my arm. “Lionel,” she said, “for forty years you have called my husband the mud man in front of this family. Tonight, in front of this family, you will say his name.” The deck was silent. A gull cried over the seawall. Lionel looked at me, a heavy man in a white linen suit, with a glass of red soda water trembling in his hand. “Clarence Batiste,” he said, in a rough voice, “I have been a fool.” Nobody breathed. “You built a fleet that rebuilt this coast, and I gave you a nickname. I am ashamed.”
A single sheet of paper laid on a party table gave one nephew the weekend to bring his uncle back to the deck in Galveston.
I gave Darius my terms on the lawn, in front of everyone, because he had made his offer in front of everyone. The marsh buggy, the crew boat and the pump would be back in my yard in Texas City before sundown on Monday. Broussard Coastal Services would be dissolved, and the paint scraped from the boom. He would sit down with the lawyers of the buyer and tell them the truth. And if he did all of it, I would not press a single charge, and I would ask the buyer to keep him on as an operator at the same pay, because he was still the best I ever trained.
On Monday morning, I stood at the gate of my yard in Texas City at six. The crew boat arrived first, on a trailer behind the truck of Lionel. Then the pump. Then, at nine, the Wilco marsh buggy rolled through the gate on its lowboy, with Darius driving the rig, his eyes red. Junior, my yard foreman, signed the receipt and took off his cap. “Mr. Clarence, I should have called you that Sunday night,” he said. “You told me the truth when I asked, Junior,” I said. “That is why the machine is home.” The big yellow buggy sat in the sun with unit eight on its cab.
Lionel came to my door on Wednesday with a pound cake from his wife, Beverly, and a card he had written by hand. He stood on the porch with his hat against his chest, and he did not ask me to forgive him. He only said, “Clarence, I want to know how a man builds what you built and never says a word.” I invited him in. We sat in the kitchen with coffee and cake until the sun went down, and I told him about the dredge in 1977, and the marsh buggy in 1989, and the nights I slept in the cab. He listened with his whole face. It was the first time we had really talked.
At church the following Sunday, the pastor asked me to stand. I thought he meant to read an announcement. Instead, sixty eight men rose from the pews, in suits and pressed shirts, the crew who had worked for me for years, and every one of them was still employed. Junior stood at the front. “Brother Batiste,” he said, “you told us you were selling to keep us working. We did not believe you. You did it.” The whole congregation applauded. Yvonne squeezed my hand so hard that I felt the ring. I looked at the floor and swallowed, because I did not trust my voice.
The money consequences were fair. Darius paid the buyer twenty nine thousand dollars for the fuel, the hauling and a damaged winch, out of his own savings, and he worked a year on the new crews without overtime. Lionel quietly closed the account that he had opened for Broussard Coastal Services and wrote me a check for the legal fees. I handed it back. “Spend it on a roof for your church,” I said. He did, and the new roof of Mount Olive has a small plaque under the eave that says only, For the mud man.
In the name of Captain Eugene Landry, who passed twenty years ago and who gave a nineteen year old kid from Port Arthur his first job on a dredge crew in 1977, I started the Marsh Buggy Fund. It pays for training, certification and the first season of tools for young people in Galveston County who want to learn heavy equipment. The first class had twelve students. A young woman of nineteen, with grease on her cheek, climbed into a marsh buggy and waved to me from the cab, and I waved back, and I thought of Captain Eugene.
The following Juneteenth, I stood at the fryer again, because I wanted to. I wore a white apron and a straw hat, and I fried forty pounds of catfish in the sun, and I enjoyed every second. Lionel arrived at noon, walked straight up to me and held out a paper plate. “Mr. Batiste,” he said, with a grin that did not quite hide his emotion, “will you let me serve you first?” The deck erupted. Darius, working the grill beside me, handed me a basket of hushpuppies and pointed at himself, and then at me. “Best I ever trained,” he said. I laughed until the oil popped.
