Even though not his grandson by birth, and no matter how old and thus how much of a man he thought he was getting to be, 16-year-old Delford Drake III tended to do what all of Jean-Luc Dubois's grandsons actual and informal did: exactly what old Père Dubois said.
“Calm down, Dell – restez tranquille, s'il vous plait.”
Rest tranquilly (be quiet) if you please – Père Dubois had used his knowledge of words French and English had in common to reinforce the idea he wanted to get into Dell's mind. He knew that Dell's intelligence would pick that up and switch gears from its over-excited mode, and that would also allow the calm that the older man's presence brought to the teenager to settle in.
“I'm sorry, Pèpè,” Dell said, adopting the French informal term for grandpa, “but this boy keeps talking to everyone about how he's going to beat me tomorrow, and I'm sick of it!”
“The first thing you have to think of is that people try to beat you in your head first, Dell, by stealing passion and energy you need to do what you need to do,” Père Dubois said.
Dell considered this.
“Wow, Pèpè – never even thought of that.”
“The second thing is something you shared that your grandmother taught you: 'Tomorrow is not promised.' Let us spread that out a little more and eat upon it.”
The two were sitting in the Dubois front yard at opposite ends of a twelve-foot table, the wind blowing into their faces and into the field across the road. The Black French Louisianan host went inside the house and came back with poor boy sandwiches and pommes frites for both of them.
“All right!” Dell said.
“So, let us pray and then let us eat – voila! So then, Dell, if we spread out your grandmother's saying upon the Lord Himself saying, 'Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things,' then we understand what your grandmother wanted you to know: Tomorrow is promised – but is it promised to you or anyone else?”
“You know,” Dell said, “I was just reading in James, how the Lord wrote through him that when we make our plans we should say, 'If the Lord wills.' I didn't even understand what that meant until you said it.”
Père Dubois smiled, but there was a tinge of sadness in it.
“When I was a young man, I worked for a Monsieur Fop. Monsieur Fop was le grande homme – the big man of the region. His family had managed through shrewd dealing not only to retain his family's lands held in slavery, but through the use of the law since the end of Reconstruction had been able to convince many of the descendants of those his family held in cruel bondage that there was nothing better for them to do but come back and sharecrop for the Fops. People were picking cotton there when I was a child and a young man in as close to slavery-level poverty as one could see in the 20th century.
“Nevertheless, Monsieur Fop's cook died, and I was recommended as the protege whose recipes were nearest to what Monsieur Fop wanted, so I was fetched from the job I was working and sent over there.”
“Fetched?” Dell said. “Isn't this 1960 or something?”
“A little past 1970,” Père Dubois said, “but if a man is rich enough, has family legacy and connections big enough, and the common people around him poor and ignorant enough, the year does not matter. But note well here: God also thought as you did about the time.”
“I had been fetched because Monsieur Fop's birthday was the next day, and the grand man of course had to have his grand spread. I was too young to run the kitchen really, but I was big and strong and had this same voice and calming way blossoming out even as it is mature now, and it was an emergency.
“I learned quickly about Monsieur Fop, his proud and wicked ways, and how his whole staff of workers feared and hated him. I heard the big man himself going on and on and on about his guest list – the other big men and women were coming and he was going to have this food and that food and this entertainment and that entertainment and expect to receive this gift and that gift and perhaps even the key to Baton Rouge. I remember hearing him say that he was just going to add the state to his holdings.”
“He was joking, right?” Dell said.
“Yes, but no – he was planning to announce his run for governor as well.”
“Oh, this is terrible!” Dell said. “He'd make a terrible governor!”
Père Dubois smiled sadly.
“The next morning, the family I was working for before I went to the Fop estate came to get me and said that I could come back and work for them. During the night, Monsieur Fop had decided he did not need to wait on his guests to enjoy all the splendid food that had been made the day before, and had his night maid prepare him a late evening meal, upon which he choked to death.”
Dell jumped.
“By midnight, all that splendid food, and all that could be carried off the house and off the property – all made from wages unjustly withheld from 18 generations of Black workers – was also gone, never to be seen again.”
“Yikes, Pèpè – that is deep,” Dell said. “Wow.”
“Nor is it yet finished: in getting the body of the grand man out of the house, no one remembered to check the kitchen. Long before midnight of that day, that house had burned to the ground. By the next year, the debt on the lands had been discovered, and the property was seized and sold off to the highest bidder. By 1982, it was what it is today: a strip mall.”
“What?”
“Tomorrow came right on,” Père Dubois said, “but it was just not promised to Monsieur Fop. Keep this in mind as you consider this braggart competitor of yours, Dell, and stay calm.”
It rained so hard all the next day and into the next that all outdoor events were canceled. An October hurricane had drifted up to fall apart off the Carolina coast, and a big rain band made it into southern Virginia where Lofton County was.
Dell came back to see Père Dubois three days later, in the first sunny day after the rain – but it was chilly, as the last of the summer's heat had been washed out. Dell's news was chilling as well.
“Pèpè,” he said, “My big-talking competitor has lost his voice, maybe for good – teenagers usually don't get Covid, but he's been partying hard and came down with it. He's in Lofton Dynast Hospital, and they just put him on a ventilator!”
“Mon Dieu – aider!” Père Dubois cried.
“My God, help – yeah, I never thought I'd be praying for my competitor, and I had started to be happy about what happened because I was so mad at him, but then I remembered: who knows what is going to happen to me and my mom tomorrow? I had to get my whole life together with the Lord, Pèpè – He can bring any of us down a peg when we get beside ourselves!”
“Ah, merveilleux,” Père Dubois said. “Marvelous -- so young and yet gaining such wisdom! Let us pray together for the young man, and then there will be more sandwiches and pommes frites and we will thank God for them and chew and swallow carefully and be humble, so that God may grace us to see tomorrow.”