My Father Bet My Year at the Boucherie, So I Signed It Myself and Named the Terms novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: The Fire
On Christmas Eve the levee along Henderson Lake was lit for three miles.
There was a bonfire every quarter mile, and a hundred trucks were parked nose to tail on the grass.
It is an old custom in St. Martin Parish.
Families stack pine logs and driftwood into tall teepees on the levee and burn them at dusk, so that Papa Noël can find his way up the bayou.
The children shriek, and the men drink coffee with something in it.
The old women pass out gumbo from the backs of pickup trucks.
I stood at the foot of the biggest fire in my mother's green dress under my good wool coat.
I held the school bag of drawings in my arms.
Margot stood beside me in her red coat with her hand in mine.
She had not let go since we got out of the truck.
Behind us the plant crews had come.
I counted them as they arrived out of the dark in groups, in white rubber boots and canvas coats, with their tools on their belts.
There were four hundred men, or near it.
They did not mingle with the families.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Father Bet My Year at the Boucherie, So I Signed It Myself and Named the Terms are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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