The Pieces of My Self

26 - The Bayou's Children

LILLIAN

The Road to Nowhere, 10 June 2174, Friday

With Debra in stress recovery mode, I wanted to probe Henri Knightly's childhood. Sometimes context, history, and associations are important in trying to break crypto. The people who make a difference in our lives become pieces of ourselves. Their names and artifacts can open doors—embedded in passwords and keys.

There was an article in the Archives about Knightly's birthplace—Houma, once part of Louisiana. Time and rising water erased the town, but a small village popped up approximately 20 miles away. It was built along a bayou after the Second Great Flood. The place was called New Houma, like so many other "new" towns trying to re-establish their identity. It seemed possible that some inhabitants of this isolated spot knew Knightly.

I drove west out of Covington in a Sammy, then south, into the morning sun.

After miles of ruler-straight, heat-shimmering asphalt roads, with waterways on either side, the highway to New Houma degenerated into narrow paths with few signs. There were spots where gravelly wisps of the old road dipped into shallow fords, and other places where the roadbed disappeared below alluvium. The sections of good road were often less than a foot above the water level.

It was early afternoon when my car rolled past two corrugated metal sheds and a hand-painted sign that marked arrival in New Houma, population 156. The air-conditioning on my Sammy had failed ten miles earlier, so my shirt was now soaked in sweat.

Main Street was a patchwork of asphalt and gravel that connected mobile homes and a few ramshackle houses. Cars, boats, and trailers, tucked inside open chain-link fences, used front lawns as parking lots.

The street paralleled slow-moving water where two houseboats were moored. A hydrogen fuel station bridged the road and the canal, servicing both motor vehicles and boats. The main electrical power appeared to come from an off-grid bioreactor tower.

A single shrimp boat, the Hanh Phuc, with its spider web of masts, outriggers, and green netting, was fueling.

The largest structure in town was a 3-story warehouse next to a large parking lot with several cars and haulers. I pulled into an empty parking spot, got out, and instructed the Sammy to stay.

I slung a small backpack over my shoulder while surveying what seemed like the end of the earth—a claw of land pushing back against the sea. I wondered if New Houma would eventually give way to New-New Houma as the waters inevitably rose.

The warehouse seemed to be a hub of activity, with people carrying boxes from the building to trucks parked out front. An ethnically mixed crowd gathered under a tin-roofed pavilion, eating lunch at a half-dozen picnic tables.

One woman, perhaps in her mid-thirties, dressed in blue shorts, sandals, and a tank top, got up from a table and walked toward me.

"Hi, I'm Sootima. We don't get visitors here too often. Can I help you?"

"I'm with the community college in Covington and I'm researching the history of this area. Is there anyone here who might remember what happened in the early 2140s?"

"Maybe. Your best bet is the Culture Center. It's over there, around the side of the warehouse." She pointed to a one-story building with a placard on the front that read: New Houma Culture Center: Good Food, Good Memories.

I thanked her and started toward the structure.

"Wait," she said. "Nobody's there right now, but I think it's unlocked. Go in and I'll get my mom."

When I opened the door, a bell rang.

I saw the Houma story—the collective memory of a village and its people—laid out across a large room. A bead curtain cordoned off another section, which I assumed to be an office.