Lies Agreed Upon

Lies Agreed Upon

By Katherine Sharma

While some historical events mentioned in this novel are factual, as are geography, certain locales, and certain persons and organizations in public view, this is a work of fiction whose characters and their actions are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations or events is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author, nor does the author pretend to private information about such individuals.

Copyright © 201
3 Katherine Sharma

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1482786265

ISBN-13:
978-1482786262

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my husband Lalit for his patience during the many late nights
that I spent with the characters in this novel. The final incarnation of their story was made possible by the honest opinions and warm support of the enthusiastic readers among my friends and book club members: Mary Andert, Susan Friedman, Darlene Heusser, Laurie James, Jeanne Koehler, Tracy Platt, Ellen Singer, Julie Tate, Nancy Taylor and Ellyn Wallen. My thanks to Lorraine Asencio, Barry Harwood and Susan McRoberts for proofing and polishing. I also want to express my appreciation to my son Arjun for his suggestions, and I am deeply grateful for the professional critique provided by Nancy Cushing-Jones and Barbara Weller of BroadLit. Finally, I must thank Raj Naik for the book cover design.

DESCENDANTS OF ANTONIO CABRERA

1
Bones

As he steered his boat into the bayous that September morning,
 Junior LeBlanc never imagined he would literally raise the dead. The veteran alligator hunter was morosely anticipating disappointment, exhaustion, or even injury given his recent run of bad luck. But bones floating up from a watery grave? No, he did not expect that.

There was only a week left in Louisiana’s alligator season, and the gator hunter was just five reptiles short of
“tagging out” on his permit quota. It was not a difficult goal, and the baited hooks in his trapping ground had yielded far more in less time last year. But everything was conspiring against him. First, it had poured blinding rain for two days, so he could not go out at all. Then the skies had cleared, but Bobby, his partner and cousin, came down with the flu. This left Junior on his own to struggle with hauling line while simultaneously shooting any thrashing catch. Plus, he had to lift all those pounds of limp gator into his boat. He’d almost been grateful for his paltry one-gator haul yesterday—almost.

At the start of today’s run, Junior had begun to hope his luck had changed. He
had no complaint about the weather. As he set out, the sun pushed aside the last veils of pastel clouds and conjured wisps of steam from the bayou’s soupy water. The brightening sky limned the waterlogged brush and the occasional moss-draped bald cypress, a lonely mast from a vanished forest armada.

Ailing Bobby had sent his oldest son, 18-year-old Kevin,
providing Junior with a helper for the strenuous, sometimes dangerous work. The team was quickly rewarded when they found a good-sized alligator on their first line. That’s when the good omens were eclipsed by near disaster.

Junior, because he was stronger, had chosen to pull up the heavy hooked reptile and had delegated the close-range kill shot to Kevin. But, at the sight of the
snapping monster, Kevin froze. When Junior yelled at him to shoot, the panicked Kevin responded by shutting his eyes, pulling the trigger and putting a hole in the side of the boat. Junior supposed that he should be glad there was not a bubbling leak in his keel, or his head.

Junior eyed Kevin
sourly as they motored along with the single alligator that the teen had finally managed to kill on his third try. Kevin rewarded his scrutiny with a nervous smile and a defensive hunch of his skinny shoulders, keeping his feet timidly tucked away from the now-lifeless jaws of their gator carcass. Junior resigned himself to another bad day.

After that first catch, the alligator
harvest stalled. Inspecting the next series of lines, Junior found either untouched bait or empty hooks dangling above the sluggish bayou.

Then his boat rounded a bend, and
Junior saw that the next line was pulled taut into the water. Whatever was at the other end was heavy enough to bend down the sturdy tree branch that secured the line and baited hook. Junior started to hope that the day’s foray might yield another prize after all.

Recalling the previous fiasco with Kevin, Junior ordered the teen to pull the line while
Junior aimed the rifle’s barrel at any beast that surged up. Kevin panted and tugged, and the surface bubbled promisingly. Then the tea-dark water was pierced by the twig fingers of submerged tree limbs. Junior’s heart sank as he glimpsed the gleam of an empty hook lodged in a deeper tangle of branches and sodden debris.

“Damn,” Junior muttered, letting the rifle’s muzzle droop. “Pull dat tree up more, Kev, so I can get holda
it and loose up dat hook.”

Kevin grunted and struggled with the sodden wood’s resistance. The sunken tree slowly rolled and
rose into the light and air—and in its arms, it carried a gruesome apparition.

“
Jesus,” blurted Junior as he suddenly stared into vacant eye sockets. A brown, slime-slick human skull was speared on a pike of black branch, a crooked twig emerging wormlike from one empty orbit. Yellow teeth grinned above a missing lower jaw.

Kevin yelped, stumbled and dropped the line from shocked fingers
. Tree and skull vanished back into the water with a burbling splash.

“Oh, my God, we found a dead body,” gasped Kevin. “We better call the police.”

“Da hell we will,” answered Junior, who had quickly recovered his usual dour aplomb. “You wanna get lotta police an’ boats here to spoil my huntin’ when I only got a few days lef’ to tag out? Whoever dat is can wait ’til da season’s done. Now pull up dat sinker tree so I can get my hook, Kev. Never mind da skull. It ain’t gonna bite.”

“Bu
t—” Kevin started to protest and then nodded quickly as Junior’s eyes narrowed into a commanding glare. Beads of sweat from exertion and apprehension shone on the teenager’s brow as he hauled, averting his eyes as the skull rose once more to stare accusingly at them. Junior leaned down toward the water to grab the tree and then grapple with the snagged hook. Kevin was amazed by Junior’s calm demeanor, although Kevin noted that Junior did keep his eyes studiously turned from the dead visage that hovered only a foot from his own.

The veteran hunter was about to jerk the hook free of the dead tree and let its macabre
burden sink back into the swamp when his eye was caught by another metallic gleam.

“Wait a sec,” Junior ordered Kevin abruptly. “Don’
t let dat tree slip yet. Pull it up more, boy. I see gold shinin’ unner dat skull.”

“
What is it?” gasped Kevin, peering anxiously over Junior’s shoulder.

“Looks to be a gold necklace.” Junior grunted as he leaned lower. Through the warping water he could make out what looked like a tangle of fine gold chain with a gold
en cross pendant edged in delicate filigree. He plunged his arm in and fumbled at the tantalizing yellow flicker in the murk. His fingers brushed cool metal, pinched and pulled. He felt it slide sinuously onto his palm, but then the prize seemed to wriggle like an eel and slipped free. He watched in frustration as the golden strand eluded his snatching fingers, whirled with a last sun-kissed gilt flash and disappeared into the muddy depths.

“Shoot. I bet dat was solid gold,” sighed Junior. “Sorta antique lookin’, too. I coulda got good money for it. Well, lemme get dat hook and slap bait on it.”

“It’s not right to steal from a dead body anyways,” said Kevin with a wide-eyed, solemn face. “Robbin’ a grave is askin’ for bad luck. Maybe the police are lookin’ out for that necklace, and if you sold it, they’d come askin’ how you got it. Seems like we could get in trouble. Like coverin’ up a crime or, um, or hinderin’ some investigation.” Kevin liked TV crime dramas.

Junior shrugged and slanted an amused glance at Kevin’s worried face. “
Stop frettin’ over our frien’ dere. Dat skull been soakin’ a real long while. It’s not gonna complain for havin’ to wait a few more days.” Junior freed the hook from the tree and let the dark branches sink, carrying their baleful denizen out of sight. He speared a hunk of raw chicken on the reclaimed hook, set it dangling over the water and motored away without a backward glance or another word.

Kevin chattered anxiously about the event to
Junior’s stiff back for a bit, speculating on how the skull ended up in the swamp. Junior’s determined lack of response eventually brought the younger man to a sputtering halt, and only the rattle and cough of the outboard motor broke the silence between them.

Despite their good intentions to later report their disturbing find, the end of the alligator season was marked by several days of storm
s so violent that vegetation was swept away and even the paths of bayous shifted in the flooding. Trying to retrace their storm-altered trapping route, they could not relocate the spot where they had pulled up the skull. The men mutually agreed it was no longer useful to alert the authorities about the incident, or their delay in reporting it.

In fact, the two spoke of the lost skull only once more. At the LeBlanc family’s Thanksgi
ving gathering later that year, Kevin diffidently approached Junior as he stood guard over a deep-frying turkey. “It just don’t sit right with me sometimes,” whispered Kevin. “What if we’re keepin’ closure from a grievin’ family, or even helpin’ a killer get away?”

Junior fixed the younger man with exasperated eyes. “You ain’t gonna get in trouble, Kev, if dat’s your worry. Dat skull won’
t talk, even if it gets found. We tried to do right, but f’sure da bayou wanna keep dat secret. Believe me, dat was ole bone. You got all kinda dead Injuns, runaway slaves, an’ unlucky Cajuns in unnerwater graves out dere. Dat skull’s been restin’ down dere so long any people mighta mourned, or run from justice, is long dead.”

Kevin nodded, relieved to be absolved of his niggling sense of responsibility.

“No reason to stir up new trouble. Any trouble from dat lost soul is over an’ done,” Junior asserted.

Junior
would never know how wrong he was.