Free Christmas in Dogtown by Suzanne Johnson Page A

only smaller. Neat brick houses, brown winter lawns, flat terrain, and a tang in the air to remind people that they lived on a fragile piece of ground tucked between the Mississippi River and the Maurepas Swamp .
    At the end of downtown Paulina, she drove north, slowing as the two-lane highway became narrower and the encroachment of swamp on either side grew closer. A rooster wandered across the road in front of her as she turned onto an unpaved, rutted path cover ed in oyster shells and gravel.
    Dogtown was literally a crossroads. At the center of the cross sat a twenty-foot statue of a bear carved a couple of centuries ago out of a cypress tree. She couldn’t explain why a place called Dogtown had been built around a bear totem. Uncle Aim claimed the statue was actually not a bear but the rougarou, a legendary swamp beast some of the older Cajun folk still believed in, and that a lot of people put more stock in their hunting dogs than their relatives. Resa figured that was as good an explanation as any.
    Just to the north of the crossroads sat Madere’s Meats, a small cinderblock building with a narrow room in front holding a display case and counter. The bulk of the building was devoted to the sausage- and boudin-making in the back. The smoker ate up a sizable piece of the backyard. Resa’s great-grandfather had begun the business in the 1920s, it passed to her grandfather in the 1940s, and Uncle Aim took it over in the 1980s, still using the old recipes. People from three parishes would drive in on Saturdays to buy boudin and andouille at Madere’s and eat catfish, gator, and crawfish at Caillou’s Fine Dining, on the south side of the crossroads.
    About fifty people lived in Dogtown, and Resa figured at least forty-nine of them were either related to the Maderes or the Caillous by blood or marriage.
    She spotted the single-wide trailer that lay behind the store but wasn’t yet ready to face the White Castle , as she and her cousins had named the place back when Uncle Aim lived there. She’d get the required visit to Mom done first.
    Her daddy had died in a hunting accident when Resa was eighteen and already at college. It made his death seem less real since she had already moved away; she could just pretend he was still around. But during the Christmas holidays, the one time each year she made herself return to Dogtown for a day or two, she still expected to see him in the yard, tinkering with his boat motor or hitching the trailer to his pickup for a day of hunting. It left an empty place in the landscape that her brain hadn’t yet incorporated.
    Mom met her at the front door of the little redbrick family home, the excitement on her face at seeing her only daughter making Resa fe el both guilty and trapped.
    “ Hey everybody, Theresa’s here!”
    Oh, Judas on a pony— a freaking welcoming committee.
    “Hey, Mom.” Resa let herself be enveloped in the ample arms of Jeanne Madere and herded into the living room, where a parade of cousins once-, twice-, and three-times removed patted, hugged, and generally agreed that it was about time Theresa Ann Madere came home to take care of her mama.
    Resa didn’t say so, but God help the person who tried to take care of Jeanne. The woman was a category five force of nature.
    “Hey there, beautiful girl.”
    Resa turned to the only person who could’ve convinced her to return to Dogtown and stick her hands in a bowl of ground meat and rice. Jeanne might dole out guilt and persuasion, but it was for Emile Madere that Resa had come. He’d aged visibly since last Christmas. His silver hair was thinner and tired creases carved ruts down either side of his mouth above his heavy beard, but his brown eyes still danced with life and she’d bet the long, nimble fingers that pulled her into a tight embrace still played a fiddle so sweetly it could draw tears.
    Resa had loved her daddy with all her hear t, but Uncle Aim held her soul.
    “I knew you’d come home. Let me look