The Aumaille Swamp Tour Co.

Part 1

I've worked for the Aumaille Swamp Tour Co. for thirty-two years now. Once upon a time, the Aumaille family owned this entire town. They had hundreds of acres of sugar cane crops, and lived in a big colorful Creole mansion that sat about 100 yards away from the swamps. Now, the dwindling descendants of the family run a swamp tour out of the delapidating remains of that mansion. Most of it had been burned during the Civil War, when the Union Army had set fire to the surrounding sugar cane fields and vegetable gardens. After the war, the family's slaves did not return to become sharecroppers as was common. No, they ran far away and had preferred to brave the smoldering sugar cane and risk starving to death than stay at the Aumaille's. Leaving no one but the family, who's skills were limited to ordering around slaves, to try and care for the large home.

As the story goes, it wasn't just the cruel treatment from the Aumaille family, but the land itself that drove the slaves away. They claimed something evil lurked in the swamp, something that would steal their children at night, and bring disease to all the slave quarters. We're fairly certain now that it was gators that would snatch the children, probably as they played on the water's edge in the cool night air; and all that water breeds mosquitoes, which these days we know carry yellow fever and all kinds of illness.

Sometimes I feel wrong for even working here, knowing what went on on this land. I think the Aumailles felt the same way. The last direct great-great-great-grandson of the family lives in Mississippi now, and only comes down once a year, or after a severe storm, and even then he gets in and out as fast as he can. William Aumaille VI admitted to me once on one his brief trips, "I tell you what, John, ever since I can remember, it feels like this place don't want me here. I get this creepy crawly feeling in my skin and I just sign whatever papers need signin' and then I skedaddle. I can't help it, this damn place must be haunted or somethin'. Ever seen any ghosts here, John?"

"No, not a one," I replied. He laughed nervously, clapped me on the back, and headed out the door to his rental car. I think it was more guilt than ghosts. After all, we were instructed to not to mention the atrocities his ancestors committed while they lived here. Like the family wanted to change history to be all marble floors and hoop skirts. No, we couldn't talk about who polished those floors or who sewed those skirts, and the blood they shed in doing so.

On one particularly warm evening in June I sat filling out expense reports in my office, which had originally been the children's play room. None of the old furniture was left, it had been replaced by my cheap desk, and sometime in the 1940s an indoor bathroom had been installed. The window unit air conditioner couldn't keep up with the heat, and it certainly did nothing for the humidity. Sweat dripped down my neck and the usual "old house" smell became almost putrid. I decided to take a smoke break out by the dock. That smell was just too awful to sit in.

I grabbed my cane and made my way outside to the gravel parking lot. I'm only 58, but I walk like an 82-year-old. I used to be a tour guide, you see, but there was...a bad accident. It doesn't matter. I'm not a tour guide anymore. Just an office manager with a gimpy leg.

I crunched through the gravel to the dock, and noticed one of our tour boats was missing. It was late for a tour to still be out, and Sheryl, the lady who books the tours and runs the gift shop had already gone home. She never left before all the tours were back. The mean old bitch could never pass up a chance to slip in her, "the south will rise again," speech to tourists as they browsed our sad little gift shop. Most of the time they nodded politely, other times they were rightfully offended by the bits of racism she peppered in. She's been warned several times. I would have canned her ass, but William Aumaille VI said he just didn't feel right firing a 76-year-old lady, no matter how bad for business she was.