Bayou Farewell The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast

One "You want to do what?" says Papoose Ledet, his balding head sticking out the forward hatch of a whitewashed shrimp boat. He's changing the oil of his 671 Detroit diesel engine-and that's all I see: his head sticking up out of the foredeck. I stand opposite Papoose on a wooden wharf, my backpack hanging from my shoulders, my sleeping bag held on by bungee cords. I explain my idea of hitchhiking down the bayou on boats just as two of Papoose's sons whiz past me. They're carrying bundles of green shrimp netting and various ropes to be employed during the night's trawling just ahead. A gaggle of laughing gulls hover noisily overhead. My idea makes no sense at all to Papoose judging by the look on his face. He pulls himself out of the forward hatch and walks slowly toward the gunwale nearest the wharf, eyeing me intently, wiping grease from his hands with a rag. His sun-weathered face squints in the midafternoon June heat, sending remarkable creases from just below his eyes all the way to his jawline. We don't shake hands. "You ever been down de baya before?" Papoose asks in his heavy Cajun accent. Down here the word "bayou" comes out "baya" and "down de baya" means, in effect, "our home," chez nous, that watery rural Louisiana place located at the very end of the world just the way locals like it. Not too many outsiders, lost or otherwise, wander this deep into the region. And certainly none walk up asking for rides aboard working shrimp boats. "No," I tell Papoose, lowering my backpack to the wharf. "This is my first trip down here." "What about shrimpin'?" he asks. "You know anyt'ing about shrimpin'?" "No," I say again, confessing my knowledge of Cajun fishing customs is nil. "Mais, je parle un peu de francais," I say, hoping to establish a connection. "And I have a great love of boats and I'm happy to work as an unpaid deckhand." Papoose's facial expression still doesn't budge. "I just want to float down the bayou with you," I say. "That's all. It doesn't matter how far you're going. I'm just traveling. I just want to get downstream." Suddenly he looks a bit less confused. He doesn't exactly smile, but the idea starts to sink in. "Just travelin', huh? Like a tourist?" I nod. "Well, okay den. Why didn't you say so? Put your pack in de cabin." I see his hand, still stained with engine grease, suddenly outstretched toward mine. I cross the wharf and shake it. "I can take you as far as Leeville, an hour and a half downstream. I'm going shrimpin' down dere right now." Papoose is the first fisherman I've met, after a brief search, who's heading my way-and just like that, in the melting swelter of the South Louisiana sun, I have my first ride. Papoose unties from the dock and we begin floating down the sleepy olive-green water of Bayou Lafourche. His quick invitation to board belies the myth of bad-tempered swamp people hostile to all outsiders. In reality, bayou Cajuns turn out to be some of the most hospitable people I've met anywhere. "Bayou" is a Choctaw Indian word meaning sluggish, slow-moving stream, and this one, Bayou Lafourche, is maybe two hundred feet wide and ten feet deep, situated about an hour and a half southwest of New Orleans. It follows a southeasterly course toward the Gulf, and as it passes through the tiny Cajun town of Golden Meadow, where I met Papoose, it's lined with all manner of fishing vessels tied to wooden docks cushioned with used-tire bumpers. These range from the vaguely tugboat look of shrimp trawlers to the longer bargelike proportions of oyster boats to the quicker, smaller crab boats, many barely bigger than rowboats with outboard motors. Papoose's fifty-year-olTidwell, Mike is the author of 'Bayou Farewell The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast', published 0000 under ISBN 9780375420764 and ISBN 0375420762.