Tiffany:
In December of 2015, Rachel and I were halfway through the first draft of our book before one of us came up with the novel idea (pun intended) of actually visiting the town we were writing a whole story about. We’d both been to Louisiana before, but neither of us had spent much time outside New Orleans. In my case, I’m not sure I’d even ventured very far from the French Quarter. Our plan was to split our week-long tour between the two places that held significance in our novel: New Iberia and New Orleans.
Our flight arrived late, and the moon was up when we landed. Sitting in the passenger’s seat of the rental car on the way to our Bed-and-Breakfast in New Iberia, giggling whenever Rachel succumbed to a bout of laughter at the fact that my bucket seat was about six inches shorter than hers and made me look like a kid, I stared out at the black wilderness beyond the highway. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the airport through dense forest and flat farmland, and the way was not well-lit. At one point, the headlights reflected off a sign that read “Beware of Bears,” and it didn’t look like a joke. We laughed at the idea of a swamp bear, pondering what one would look like: something dank and hairy, possibly slime-covered, crawling out of the darkness surrounding the car… On second thought, we reflected, maybe it wouldn’t be quite so funny to see one.
Beyond the road, flashes of moonlight reflected off swamp water beneath tangles of cypress trees, and Spanish moss draped the bare branches in ghostly finery. To me, Louisiana looked like an alien world, a place where any number of sinister things could be hiding in the shadows. What new ideas would it inspire? I shivered with anticipation and excitement.
The sun had disappeared by the time we reached the halfway point between New Orleans and New Iberia, so we stopped in a little town called Morgan City to eat some BBQ and stretch our legs. In the restaurant, Fox News played on the flat screen T.V. in the corner, and a man sat at a table alone, wearing a camouflage baseball cap embroidered with a bald eagle on a background of American flag. He looked up from his plate of brisket and ribs when we walked in, with a sort of startled double-take (I assume because of our interestingly colored hair: bright pink for Rachel, and intense purple for me at the time), and I half-expected him to growl “Y’all aren’t from around these parts…” Rach and I exchanged wide-eyed, jittery grins: we were definitely not in Portland anymore.
We stuffed ourselves full of BBQ, took pictures of everything, and headed back to the rental where there were more snorts of laughter as soon as I sank into my six-inches-too-short seat that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to adjust. This happened every time we got into the car. The whole trip.
Our B&B was right on New Iberia’s historical Main Street, just a couple of blocks from where lots of the action in our book takes place. It was pitch black when we arrived; past check-in time. Since we had instructions on how to get into our room without disturbing our hosts and we were wound-up in anticipation to see the places we’d already written about, we decided to take a walk.
Main Street was deserted at that hour, and except for a couple of bars, all the shops were closed for the night. But the whole area blazed appealingly with Christmas lights and street lamps. We meandered all the way down to where the buildings began to thin out, giggling like a couple of lunatics as we passed the townhouse where one of our characters lived, a bar where he probably drank his Sazeracs, and the boutiques where other characters went to shop. Just walking by the gazebo in Bouligny Plaza, all decked out in garlands of pine and red ribbons, brought on a fit of jumping-up-and-down giddiness and selfie-taking. Our characters had been there! We could feel their presence, like affable friends whose realness we’d forgotten in our old age. Physically being in these places pulled us out of our own fiction and plunged us into a world that was suddenly, magically tangible.
It wasn’t until we were about two-thirds of the way back to our B&B that we heard footsteps behind us. We looked over our shoulders and saw a couple of guys, walking fast. Our grins faded as we realized that it might have been really stupid of us to just go traipsing around in an unfamiliar neighborhood at night by ourselves. In an effort to conquer our anxiety, I remarked quietly, in my best narrator’s voice: “Rachel and Tiffany, authors of the Broken Rings Trilogy, decided to visit the hometown of their first novel… and they were never seen or heard from again!”
We snickered, but picked up the pace, repeatedly glancing over our shoulders. We were whispering to each other (Are they getting closer? Do they seem drunk? Do you have your phone handy?), a sliver of anger—that we’d been forced to stop being happy to make way for an all-too-familiar fear—poking through our anxiety. But just as I was wondering if we should start running, one of the guys behind us called out in a jovial southern drawl: “Don’t worry, we’re not following y’all! We’re goin’ this way!” Rach and I slowed and half-turned around to see them wave genially at us before heading off down a side street.
We stared after them in stunned silence before dissolving into relieved laughter, and I wondered if this was what people meant when they talked about Southern Hospitality.
stuckandmericle.com 