Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage

I went on a pilgrimage in mid-June of this year. I journeyed across many miles of this country on a southbound trek to find myself in the real-life counterpart of the fictional home of a man who doesn't exist. I walked the streets and drove the roads that he walked and drove upon, visited landmarks and towns whose names were almost as familiar to me as my own hometown. I felt the hot, humid air of this man's home territory brush across my sweating brow and enjoyed the spicy, complicated tastes of his favorite foods. I heard the sounds of Zydeco and other Cajun music and was enchanted by the accents of the people who were the models for this man and his friends. My eyes experienced the actual places and sights my man had lived in and had derived his tortured philosophies from. I even stood on the very banks of the Bayou Teche which runs through his hometown and which figures in the fascinating history of this area, as well as the always-evolving history of this remarkable character.

Forgive the rambling first paragraph. I've just finished the 17^th installment of a series of novels about a certain Cajun detective - a fellow named Dave Robicheaux. All of which were written by a certifiable genius named James Lee Burke. He's been called a national treasure by more than one person and I'd like to add my endorsement to that description. And I wish, as I always do after finishing one of James' Robicheaux books, that he had written another 17 in addition to the ones already published.

I've never been disappointed with any of the books in this series. The stories have all been well-crafted, the characters vivid and believable and the way Mr. Burke puts words together is, quite simply, incredible. If you can't select a couple of dozen passages from any of his books that you want to cut out, put a frame around and hang on your wall, you don't have a soul in your body. If you can read his books without shaking your head in pure joy at his crystal clear descriptions and his amazingly vivid characters, you're a barbarian. I find tears gathering in my eyes over and over again when I read the tortured, conflicted but always human thoughts of his characters as they cope with the hands that life keeps dealing to them.

My envy of James' mastery of the written word is sometimes pitiful to see. If I could write a solitary paragraph that would elicit the same amount of emotion that one of his paragraphs does in me, I'd quit my day job and start writing tomorrow.

As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I vacationed in Louisiana last month and while there we made a point of spending a few days in western Louisiana, in Cajun country, specifically in New Iberia and environs. That's Mr. Burke's home (along with Missoula, Montana these days) as well as the home for his famous Cajun detective. In my correspondence with the husband-and-wife owners of the bed & breakfast where we stayed in New Iberia, after I stated my addiction to James Lee's books, specifically his Robicheaux books, I was told to “be assured that Dave Robicheax was alive and well in New Iberia!” I was enchanted by the remark and even more enchanted with the owners of the B&B when we met them. The husband was a Shelby Foote lookalike and a dyed-in-the-wool Southern gentleman who's hospitality was as genuine as his smile. His wife was an absolute dynamo of sweetness and vitality who made it a point to go way, way, way out of her way to make two tired Ohio travelers feel like we had come home. Believe it or not, a major highlight of our trip was the couple of hours we spent just talking to our hosts in their fascinating home. The Estorge-Norton B&B in New Iberia is NOT to be missed if you're traveling in the area. I've never been hugged upon departure from any hosts in any lodging establishments before in any of our travels.

We were there.

I felt a sense of deja-vu upon driving around the town of New Iberia and the neighboring towns. Jeanerette. Loreauville. St. Martinville. Abbeville. Lafayette. Even old New Orleans, the Big Sleazy itself. I'd been there with Robicheaux in many of James Lee's books. Talked to bad guys and good guys, eaten at their restaurants, drove their back roads next to bayous and along sugar cane fields and levees. I rode in a small boat through a swamp that was smack-on identical to the one described out beyond Dave Robicheaux's bait shop. It was all there, right outside my car windows, right in front of my eyeballs.

I loved it!

It was, in a lot of ways, like stepping inside one of his novels. Almost everywhere you looked there was a place that you'd “seen” before. That was sooooo cool!

But I was glad it was the quietly mundane real place rather than the one in the books. Those fictional places were lots darker, with lots more evil and lots more bad guys than the real place had. At least I hoped that was the truth.

My wife and I were sitting in a restaurant one day while we were in the western Louisiana area, eating our lunches, when a uniformed deputy sheriff came in and sat down with his wife (girlfriend?) and ate his meal at the next table. I kept glancing over at him, taking in the uniform, thinking to myself that he might be one of Robicheaux's compatriots in that world. I could walk over to him and ask him if he knew Dave and might even get a yes!

How cool would that be!

But, of course, he was a REAL deputy sheriff and may have not actually read any of Burke's books. That would have been an embarrassing moment! Besides, he was a St. Martinville Parish Sheriff's Deputy, not Iberia Parish. He wouldn't have known Dave anyhow.

Probably.

So my pilgrimage to the birthplace of one of my favorite literary characters is over. I may never see the ancient live oaks of western Louisiana with their gray beards of Spanish moss again. I may never again feel the hot, salty wind from the south on my face and see the green sugar cane fields ripple with its touch. Even New Orleans itself, with its sweaty old elegance and its wounded extremities may never feel the tread of my Ohio shoes again.

But I can always pick up one of James Lee's books and be back there in a moment. Back where Robicheaux maintains the law and suffers mightily for his endeavors with the demons that haunt his soul. And where the good guys always win over the bad guys but leave scars that fester and weep in the nocturnal dreams of its inhabitants.

And there's always the next book in the series.

I can't wait!