French-Accented Spanish Moss - Chapter 1: Cigarette Burns

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The bar-fenced Texas ranches of sharp defoliated bushes along I-10 enclose lethargic cattle grazing on dry vegetation. Little changes on the horizon to keep the mind occupied on any highway in East Texas. The broad plots of land are replaced first by oboe-like towers of petroleum refineries in the Houston area. On the far side of the Sabine River, swamps and canals welcome motorists far more appropriately than even the signpost that reads Bienvenue en Louisiane. Vermilion Parish lacks color and is flat, dry, and shapeless in late December. The heat is unimaginable in the summer, they say. With the exception of piles of sand and construction stones outside a construction firm, the nearest natural hill is over one hundred miles away. My father told me the highway through Louisiana was uneventful; I was glad to turn off at Lafayette and head south at sunset. “Also,” he firmly reminded me several times, “mind the speed limit when you cross the border. The laws are different in Louisiana.”

In order to get a true sense of traveling in the United States, I keep a vow to avoid corporate hotels. No Quality Inn, La Quinta, Super 8, or Clarion can ever blend into a community like a Mom and Pop motel where I can park my car right outside the entrance of my room. There is nothing better than a cheap, neat, clean, and welcoming spot to put my head down for the night.
Except for the Vermilion Motel in Abbeville. I paid for my room through a slot at the reception much like a ticket window at an old movie house and received a loose metal room key. I went back to my car to collect my luggage while taking note of my surroundings. The motel’s parking lot is contained by the row-house attached rooms and a chain link fence. The best illumination for the facility came from the headlights of my car. There were a few others parked at random points in the gloomy L-shaped lot. I dragged my wheeled bag across the ripped up surface to my door, inserted the key, and turned around just to make sure I was alone. Before I pushed the door open, I had already regretted not booking a better hotel. This, I thought, is where the mob gets together before deciding under which levee they’re going to bury the bodies.
The best thing about my room is that during the entire length of my time inside, nothing on the floor moved. The radiator has been busted for decades as can be seen from the advanced stage of oxidation on the coils. I will sleep in the cold tonight. At least I am in the Deep South in the early winter and not Idaho. My queen-size bed is covered with a bed spread riddled with holes from cigarette burns. The transparent sheet also has tears in it, but from an unknown source. I block out my mind’s natural curiosity to solve this riddle, take a big breath of stale cigarette air, and shrug my shoulders. I dump my daypack on a once upholstered chair whose feet have either been eaten away by the teeth of a dog or the nails of a cat; I cannot tell which. The bathroom is a chilly mélange of cracked, rusty, and non-functioning fixtures. The shower is of an indiscriminate distribution of colored tiles last seen on the set of the Brady Bunch. The doorknob on the warped timber door to my room is flimsy at best. I do not feel safe in my room and instantly recall countries whose reputation for insecurity should make me feel better for being in my own.
I regret having paid for the room, knowing I will not get a refund. Sleeping in my midsize rental sedan seriously crosses my mind. One night, I say to myself. Tomorrow, I will shower and be out of here at dawn. In fact, I just might skip the shower.

Remaining in my room not being an option and energized by having reached my destination, I hop into my car and aimlessly drive around Abbeville in the early evening. The town is shut down, as I have arrived on the one night of the year when there is practically nothing open. I knew this was a distinct possibility and was very comfortable wasting a few gallons of gas cruising the grid of streets instead of sequestering myself at the motel. Just maybe there would be an open restaurant or lounge.
The Beehive is a redneck bar if there ever was one. It is a windowless rectangle with a large screen monitor, two pool tables, and an assortment of beer paraphernalia, either inflatable or in the form of an analog clock on faux timber paneling.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asks me. She keeps one hand free and in the other a lit cigarette. She and all the other patrons noticed me immediately as an out-of-towner. The men in the Beehive jerked their chins over their shoulders to catch a glimpse of me. The rancid blue pall of cigarette smoke reminds me no-smoking regulations have yet to take effect throughout Louisiana.
I ran my eyes from one end of the bar to the other. There were no taps.
“What’ve you got in a bottle?” She knew I was referring to beer and not the upper shelves of bottled spirits in front of the spotted mirrored wall. A DJ, rather notable for Christmas Eve entertainment options, put on Kenney Chesney at an ear-splitting volume.
She rattled off five or six mass-produced brands of tasteless liquids, all of which ended in the word “light.” I selected the least offensive, moaned silently, and paid her half of what the same would cost me in New England.
Eddie, to my left, is a pipe fitter for an oil company in the Gulf of Mexico. It took some time for him to warm up to me; the bottle of Bud Light I sent him did the trick. His friendly demeanor aside, I had a hard time getting past the coincidence that he sounded and looked just like James Carville. In fact, the shiny bald crowns of three or four men in the Beehive could have passed them for the annoying and erroneous political pundit. Eddie, in his later thirties with a scruffy goatee, has been lamenting about the breakup with his girlfriend. “She just up and got married behind my back!” he exclaimed. I never inquired about his personal life, but he needed someone to unload on. I was willing to listen. In bars, people with the inclination to listen more than speak are a rare breed. “In fact, I’d still been seein’ er for three weeks afterwards. Then finally one of the folks at the Parish courthouse told me of the marriage license and showed me a copy.” It pays to know someone where public records are kept.
I actually liked hearing all the details of this flannel-and-suspenders infidelity. Eddie served his purpose; I had someone stable to talk to and he prolonged my inevitable return to the Vermilion.
Chris works intermittently behind the bar. In his mid twenties, he is, as the locals refer to themselves with some self deprecation, a first class coonass. A dark green serpent-like tattoo encircles a part of his throat and neck. He proudly wears a tattered baseball cap with on oversized paper clip just like Larry the Cable Guy. His language is as profane as the toxic lyrics from the adult version of The Twelve Days of Christmas now blasting from the amplifier at painful levels. He, like the others, prefers to be at the Beehive than to pretend to enjoy the company of their family, if they have any. “Put that in your notebook, Rich!” he screams at me after making a wise comment, tripping on a table leg, or completely missing the cue ball with his pool stick. I don’t regret talking to him, as he will never remember me anyway. Unable to refuse the numerous shots bought for him, his drunken behavior later on in the evening provoked those who know him well enough to show him and his older wife the door. I think his rolling around and bouncing on the floor with his legs intertwined with his wife’s while yodeling did the trick.

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Photos

Vermilion Motel
Sometimes you win....