A Matter of Honor (F)

I have known Mr. Arnaud Etwal who was from Dominica since I was a boy of 4.  On Sundays, occasionally, my grandmother would take me down to the municipal pier where Mr. Arnaud sometimes would be entertaining “Those People” as my grandmother called Yankees. His blue crab, always called Winnie after his mother—sometimes a female, sometimes a male as I later learned--lassoed by a four-foot leather thong, would twirl and scuttle and then jab with its claws at a piece of chicken or fish on the end of a sharpened stick, and the tourists would take pictures and put dollar bills in Mr. Arnaud’s upturned straw fedora.

 

I was very impressed that my father knew Mr. Arnaud well—the first time I saw the two of them together was on my grandfather’s boat. As it turned out, Mr. Arnaud when he was 16 began working as a deckhand for my grandfather who was running a fishing charter out of Pass-a-Grill. He would only go down to the pier to make a little extra cash when the boat was not going offshore. My grandfather’s boat was Lucky Strikes, which his clients believed a clever turn of phrase that would bode well for the fishing and we in the family knew he began to think of as a thumbing of his nose at the surgeon general.

 

Mr. Arnaud could fix everything on the boat. He fixed the engines, he fixed the radio, he fixed the reels, he fixed the drinks, he fixed the breakfasts and he fixed the lunches, and I was told many times that Mr. Arnaud would never lose a fish once the leader was in his gloved hands.

 

That Mr. Arnaud now lives free of charge above my office where I run my financial advisory service astonishes most people who know the story. 

 

When I was 11, and Mr. Arnaud 27, my grandfather cut his hand on an oyster shell. The gash was deep and jagged, and later he told how he kept it in seawater for nearly ten minutes since it was a bad one, but the wound did not heal and a week later, he was coughing up blood. In this way, coincidentally, he found out about his cancer.

 

The month was March and by August everyone pretty much believed my grandfather would not see the holiday season. By September, even my grandfather admitted to me, “Sonny, I’m feeling a might bit poorly”, and he decided to have an attorney draw up a will. His house and all his belongings, he left to my grandmother and his boat and all the fishing gear, he left to Mr. Arnaud. 

 

My father and his two brothers were not happy.

 

My grandfather also allowed Mr. Arnaud to start sleeping on the boat which was seen as a sign that my grandfather was nearing the end. This decision further infuriated my father, and for the first time that I can remember, he began to refer to Mr. Arnaud as “grave-robbing darkie trash”. My mother would not allow any other epithet to be spoken in her house, but when my father and his brothers and I were out in the yard picking crabs or peeling shrimp, I would hear the kind of words that were I to have spoken them--well they would have led to an extra-large helping of Ivory soap being adminstered by my mother’s hand.

 

My father practiced locally as a heart surgeon and was on staff out at Bay Pines, the V.A. hospital. My mother reminded me often that he was a serious man who had serious work to do and that I should not distract him with frivolous matters. Of course, now I am not sure how a boy would make the distinction between serious and frivolous at all times, but in truth my father would take me fishing out of Big Bayou into the bay when he could and once or twice a week would find the time to play catch with me in the side yard. My uncles ran a painting business of a sort, and they would come by at odd times during the day in the summer and would also play catch with me and sometimes fetch with our yellow lab, Betsy.

 

The day after my 12th birthday, my grandfather died. My mother told me by telling me he had passed, which is the same word my grandmother used. My father just said that his father was dead and that he was better off because he was only being treated to endure the pain and could not have been saved. Two days later, on October 14th, 1971, my grandfather was buried at 10:00 in the morning. After the funeral ended and all the guests left the cemetery, my father and his brothers got in my dad’s green Chevy Monte Carlo and drove off.

 

The rest I know from newspaper clippings and what my mother and grandmother told me. I never spoke to my uncles after that afternoon. According to my mother they went up to North Dakota or Wyoming or someplace like that. My father and his brothers drove out to where my grandfather’s boat was docked, and once there, they shucked off their jackets and unknotted their ties and tossed them on the hood of the car.

 

Mr. Arnaud was seated on the bench on the port side and was splicing lines when the three men approached. According to another boat skipper who was resetting his dock lines, my father stepped onto the boat and raised my Louisville Slugger and shouted at Mr. Arnaud that he was a “goddamn grave robber”, but the swing of the bat just glanced off of Mr. Arnaud’s shoulder and Mr. Arnaud lunged up from the bench and shoved a marlinspike into my father’s throat. Somehow, and this according to my uncles’ accounts, my father raised the bat again, and Mr. Arnaud stabbed my father in the neck a second time. And then my father slumped against one of the fishing chairs and fell to the deck and bled to death right there.

 

My uncles never stepped onto the boat. The skipper from Sea-Deuced tried to help Mr. Arnaud stop the bleeding, but they couldn’t manage the wounds. The coroner and the sheriff both agreed that it was self-defense because the local D.A., according to a conversation my mother said she had with him, told them that when my father raised the bat a second time Mr. Arnaud clearly had to protect himself. 

 

My mother said it was mostly that local officials didn’t want the story to linger into high tourist season. Besides, she said, even my uncles confirmed the events that Captain Doug said he witnessed that afternoon and, after all, Mr. Arnaud did try to save my father.

 

So now Mr. Arnaud, who lost the boat when my grandfather’s customers either died or stopped returning, works three or four days a week on a charter boat where half the passengers vomit on the deck and think chum is disgusting. Mr. Arnaud says that bobbing about over a reef is not true fishing, but he likes being on the Gulf. He lives upstairs over my office because my grandfather loved him like a son and intended for Mr. Arnaud a roof over his head and a livelihood. 

 

In this way, as best I can, I honor my grandfather’s wishes. Ladson 2014