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Chapter One
Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana
Fred Babineaux was halfway between Morgan City and Houma when he decided he had a brain tumor. He couldn't think of anything else to explain the king-hell of a headache swelling inside his skull. It was a tumor, he was sure of it, a tumor the size of a pink Texas grapefruit.
Fred was driving south on a narrow stretch of highway that traced the spine of a levee separating two cane fields thirty feet below on either side of the road. He was heading for Terrebonne Bay to meet with a man who wanted to buy a boat from the manufacturer Fred represented. The sale would mean a fat commission, but at the moment Fred would have forfeited that plus two months salary to make the headache disappear. He picked up the can of Dandy's Cream Soda that was sweating in the cup holder. He held it to his head for a moment hoping the cold would soothe the pain. When that failed, Fred thought maybe the problem was dehydration or low blood sugar, so he gulped half the can.
The fields below on both sides of the levee were lush with a young crop of sugarcane flourishing in the promising Louisiana heat. It was hot for late April and humid. A couple of snowy egrets stalked the edge of the cane fields stabbing orange beaks at their lunch. Here and there the familiar smear of armadillo slicked the road. Fred identified with one whose head had been reduced to the consistency of a thick roux.
His dehydration and low blood sugar theories disproved, Fred took his hands off the wheel and steered with his knee so be could massage histhrobbing temples. The radio was tuned to Kickin' 98, "Classic Country for South Louisiana, playing a mix of the old and the new, because a song ain't gotta be old to be a classic." They were playing a ballad at the moment, soothing close harmonies Fred hoped might ease his pain. By the end of the song, however, Fred knew he required pharmaceuticals.
He leaned over for the glove compartment when, suddenly, he heard what sounded like an airplane landing on the roof of his car. Startled by the abrupt roar of the thundering engine, Fred jerked his bands back to the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding a long plunge off the road. "Sonofabitch!" Adrenaline poured into his system. His heart rate soared, turning his already bad headache into severe unilateral periorbital pain. Fred looked out the window and saw the crop duster raining Gramoxone onto the sweet young cane. Maybe that's what caused my tumor, he thought. He'd been up and down these roads so many times over the years there was no telling how many gallons of herbicides and pesticides he'd absorbed. That had to be it. You could strap Fred Babineaux to the bottom of one of those noisy old biplanes, poke a few holes in him, and spray a field with whatever came out. Kill anything it hit.
Fred looked to make sure the plane wasn't coming again, then leaned over and popped open the glove compartment. He grabbed the familiar yellow-and-red box of Dr. Porter's Headache Powder, an aspirin product sold only in the deepest parts of the South. He'd bought this particular box at an EZ Mart in Shreveport the day before. To Fred's relief, the usually impenetrable plastic shrink-wrap on the brand-new box sloughed off easily and he quickly fingered out one of the folded rectangular sheets of wax paper that held the powder like a professionally packaged gram of something else entirely.
With one throbbing eye on the road, Fred unfolded the two ends of the rectangle and then the long top. He held one end closed and, with a jerk, tossed his bead back and poured the bitter powder into the back of his throat. He chased it with the remainder of his cream soda and, wincing slightly, swallowed the solution to all his problems.
In no time flat, Fred forgot about his headache. Sadly it wasn't due to the fast-acting nature of the medicine. At first his face went numb and his breathing became irregular. He considered pulling to the side of the road, but the shoulder was only four feet wide before dropping sharply into the cane fields below. The eighteen-wheeler bearing down from behind prevented him from simply stopping in the middle of the road.
Moments later, with no warning, Fred threw up violently, spewing his fried lunch onto the windshield. Panic set in as his body realized he was dying before his mind could grasp the fact, let alone ask why. Desperate to see the road in front of him, Fred wiped at the vomit covering his windshield. Smearing it only made matters worse. As if his compromised vision didn't make driving difficult enough, Fred began to hear sounds that didn't exist. His heart lapsed into what would best be described as irregular cardiac activity. But at least the headache wasn't bothering him anymore.
Fred's mind fixed on why he suddenly felt like he was dying. His wheels drifted onto the gravel shoulder, kicking up a spray of rocks that scared the snowy egrets into the sky. Had Fred been listening to the radio, he'd have heard the DJ introducing an old Dorsey Dixon song. "Here's a classic country flashback on Kickin' 98!" But Fred wasn't listening to the radio anymore. All he could hear was what sounded like a chorus of outboard motors in his head. The auditory hallucinations were part and parcel of the process taking place throughout his body, namely, the total cessation of his cellular metabolism. His central nervous system was so compromised that it was shutting down, and not temporarily.
Roy Acuff was singing about blood and whiskey mixed with broken glass strewn...
Fender Benders. Copyright © by Bill Fitzhugh. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
