Cinnamon, Cayenne and Fire Read online

  “You make that po-boy good?” Grandpa Leon asked. The swamp had filled to choke the roadside with green again, and Beau was glad that black stretch was behind them.

  “Yeah, but hold on,” he answered. Beau’s window was down, but he cranked the wing vent over to scoop the hot air across him and, hopefully, push the smell of the sandwich out the passenger window. Beau nodded to go ahead and Leon pulled the shrimp po-boy out of the sack. It took the old man’s knife to get through the half-inch of plastic wrap.

  Even with the wind blowing past him, Beau’s eyes started to water. The half-cup of cayenne he had mixed into the mayonnaise was almost enough to draw tears out of the air itself. He scooted over and put his face out the window in order to keep from wrecking the truck.

  “Good?” Beau yelled through the wind. Grandpa Leon tore the end off the hoagie with his teeth and smiled wide around chomping bites.

  Few people realize the sense of taste begins with the nose. Leon probably began to lose his nose before the bad burn, but it was not until he returned from Angola that he admitted it. After three months of his grandpa moping at the dinner table, grimacing at gumbo and etouffee as if they were tofu soup, Beau started experimenting. He bought spice in bulk: paprika, garlic and onion powder, round balls of black pepper, and lots of cayenne. After the first set of chopped onions put Beau in the shower, flushing out his eyes, Leon dug a pair of safety goggles out of the garage.

  “Put some of this on too, before you start in on the cayenne,” Grandpa Leon said. He scooped a big glob of Vaseline out of the tin and smeared it around Beau’s face before smooshing the safety goggles on top of it. It seemed silly to the boy the first time, but it made a good seal and he soon bought tins of the stuff as large as the spice jars.

  Beau’s first big gumbo attempt was at a slow boil when his mother staggered into the room, still wearing her Piggly Wiggly smock covered in a sheen of deli potato salad. Ms. Fouche, the downwind neighbor, had called from her sister’s house to complain she had been driven from her home by some voodoo gumbo bomb.

  Beau tried to wave his mother off, but either she misheard the words coming from under the four layers of wet bandanna covering his mouth, or she was too angry to listen. Lucienne held her breath, grabbed the potholders, and the pot, and headed for the back door. She probably would have made it if her welling eyes had not blurred the corner of the table. It speared into her hip, enough of a jostle to send the lid clattering to the floor. The bloom of cayenne wafting up out of the gumbo overwhelmed her.

  Eyes clenched shut; she set the pot down on the table, most of it hanging off the edge, and backed away in retreat. Beau leapt on top the counter with a cry, his heart hammering at the fear of boiling water searing his flesh.

  From his perch, Beau watched in disbelief as five quarts of gumbo, thickened with five cups of diced cayenne peppers, hit the floor and splattered across linoleum, metal cabinets, appliances, under appliances and out the door into the dining room.

  It took five days of cleaning, and a new linoleum floor, to get the sting of cayenne out of the air. Mostly out, anyway. Scrubbing the cracks in the wood flooring of the dining room, nearest the kitchen, still could draw out a tear or two.

  The few bits of sausage and shrimp left in the bottom of the pot raised tears in Grandpa Leon’s eyes, and a smile that confirmed they were not just from the spice. With that, Beau’s mother could not end the cooking experiments. She did forbid them in her kitchen. Beau—experimental chef—continued his voodoo magic in the garage, preferably when Mrs. Fouche was upwind.