JR Korpa
Before we could anticipate cool October air and running through the night at Halloween, there was always, for Louisiana school children, the heat of September in new blue jeans and the hyperbole of classroom calendars and bulletin board art.
We never tired of being tricked by calendar illustrations made in Maine. We took the illustrator’s word that somewhere it snowed enough at Christmas for large horses to pull car-size sleighs down snow-filled country lanes and over fields of oceanic whiteness.
Fall in Louisiana comes just in the nick of time. Summers are long, hot, moist. The heat reduces the speed of children and dogs to a slow trot. A quickened pace is encouraged only by the threat of a thunderstorm or the promise of lunch.
Thunderstorms are a welcomed event. The wind picks up as the temperature drops. In the days before air conditioning, attic fans pulled air into the house. With the first sounds of thunder, my French grandmother turned off the big fan mounted in the attic and began moving from room to room closing windows. She held the belief that lightning followed a draft.
My grandmother grew up on a farm, educated in formal French and steeped in Cajun lore.
For my Cajun French grandfather’s people, a werewolf meant to keep children home at night was the rougarou. My grandmother’s refined French name for the creature was loup-garou, which made sense. Loup is wolf in French.
My sister and I learned family myths in two languages, three if you make the distinction between so-called “book French” and colloquial Cajun. For my Cajun French grandfather’s people, a werewolf meant to keep children home at night was the rougarou. My grandmother’s refined French name for the creature was loup-garou, which made sense. Loup is wolf in French.
By the time I could read, my grandmother had, from lack of use, lost the ability to read French and never learned to read English. Her smock-pocket-size phone book held only numbers, no names. Her sevens had bars through them, a holdover from her education at the hands of recent Europeans.
Her myths were as homegrown as the okra in her gumbos.
My sister and I didn’t believe we’d become insane if we slept in the light of a full moon, but my grandmother’s belief gave us pause. My bed was beside a window that filled with moonlight. Curtains billowed inward as the attic fan sucked moist night air. My moonlit bedroom with its waving curtains was spooky, but mornings I seemed as sane as the night before.
My grandmother taught me to play poker and bourré by the light of holy candles during storms. Oh, the electricity hadn’t been knocked out. The candles offered protection against tree limbs crashing through the ceiling. I peeled playing cards from my fingertips in the still, damp air.
Mae was intentionally vague when it came to describing the Sackabilly. She liked misbehaving children to provide their own horrific details. Someone bad moving around in the night with a sack was a good start.
I might have left the likes of the loup-garou in childhood had Betsy not become our nextdoor neighbor. Betsy’s childhood bug-a-boo was the Sackabilly, a creature her grandmother Mae said lurked in the Pensacola night. Mae was intentionally vague when it came to describing the Sackabilly. She liked misbehaving children to provide their own horrific details. Someone bad moving around in the night with a sack was a good start.
The first time Betsy reported sounds in the night in her back yard or, possibly, between our houses, I assured her I’d check outside the next time my wife awoke me asking, “Did you hear that?”
What do you think made the noise? I asked Betsy.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope it wasn’t the Sackabilly.”
Great. I added a goblin to my list of possibilities when things went bump in the night.
