lake Martin louisiana

A man begins to row out from a grove of bald cypress trees towards open water. He is looking at the rest of the lake trying to get a sense of its size and the layout of the shoreline with its different bays when he sees a large log floating along next to the row boat. Not a log. An alligator sliding through the pea soup green liquid. A loud deep throated eruption echoes from the tangle of vegetation which is the shoreline. Not a bull frog. Paddling away, he heads to the middle of the lake to avoid the marshy shore and other submerged logs. He sees a shack of sticks and branches poking out of the flat waters. It is probably a duck blind.

Lake Martin is a broad shallow swamp lake in southern Louisiana near Lafayette. Large stands of Cypress and Tupelo trees penetrate the lake and create homes for a great number of different wading birds, as well as hundreds of alligators. Alligators float in the murky waters partially submerged. Gnarly logs. Cruising amphibians. Reptilian submarines the size of a kayak. Lake Martin borders on an enormous rookery which is home to roseate spoonbills, white ibis, cattle egrets and a variety of herons. The alligators also nest in the swamp.

Scene one. New Orleans 1951. Cascading rain. Torrents. Young children naked except for white underpants are running in the downpour through the puddles. It is warm. It is hard to see through the rain. The sound of the rain beating on the concrete sidewalk drowns out the screaming of the kids. The children are playing in a courtyard surrounded by brick apartment buildings, multistory, blocks on blocks, a square doughnut, rectilinear.

Scene two. A group of people are standing next to a canal. They are crabbing. There are crab pots in the river connected by lines running to the people on the bank. The people crabbing are the parents and friends of a young girl. They are standing on grassy land above the canal.

Scene three. A family is sitting around a table in the kitchen of an apartment. Table and chairs. White refrigerator and stove. A few cabinets. The kitchen is very plain. The window is open and a warm breeze is blowing a scrim curtain into the room. The father is talking on the phone to his mother in Chicago. It is snowing in Chicago. It is balmy in New Orleans.

There is a movie, screenplay by Somerset Maughn, starring Bette Davis, black and white and released in 1940. In the movie, Bette Davis plays the wife of a British rubber plantation owner in Singapore. He is bumbling, inept and totally not conscious that his bored wife is having an affair with another British national who owns a gambling casino. However, Bette's beau has decided to give up Bette and return to his own wife, an exotic Eurasian woman (long curled fingernails, heavy eye make up, always shot in partial shadows). The actress is clearly European but she is made up to appear Asian. Bette becomes panic stricken and summons him with a letter to have it out and salvage her dreary life. When she meets him, she becomes enraged when she discovers that he really does intend to end the affair. She, then, shoots him multiple times, dead. She claims to the Malaysian authorities that she thought he was an intruder. There is a trial and she is found not guilty. Meanwhile her hubby has no clue that she has been unfaithful and gallantly stands besides and behind her. After the trial there is a gala victory celebration at their Malaysian villa. Bette comes down the stairs, walks through a circular foyer before entering the main room where her well wishers wait. She is wearing a diaphanous, flowing gown. This sequence of 'Bette wearing gown walking' plays repeatedly on the media pad which is hung from the cypress tree in the Lake Martin swamp in Louisiana.

Downtown Opelousas, Louisiana is a hodgepodge of decrepit one story buildings. The motels in the downtown area are vintage 1950's. They look vacant. The motels located on highway 49 on the outskirts of town along the major interstate are newer, the most recent wave of development. The Super 8 off the highway has a small uninviting swimming pool which lies behind a low black railing. A man watches from his room on the second floor kitty corner to the pool. In the evening at dusk, he sees several vans pull up and a bunch of young black kids run out and jump in the pool. They play in the water for a couple of hours before they get back in the vans and go.

Holden Matthews, a 21-year-old son of a St. Landry Parish deputy, has been arrested for three recent fires set at African-American churches in Louisiana. The fires, which started in late March, 2019, occurred at St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre, Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelouas, and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas.