A Day in the Sun
Born fifty yards from where he lay, the cottonmouth stretched his full five-foot length on the decaying sweet-gum log. He would have been virtually undetectable except for the flicking of his long forked tongue, picking up the scent of blood in the water. Using the trademark of the pit viper, a dark cavity behind his slightly upturned snout, the snake detected the mammalian warmth of the woman whose legs dangled idly over the edge of the bateau, pale flesh flashing against the dark water. But his hunger drew him instinctively to the stringer of bluegill that he recognized as food.
With barely a ripple, the cottonmouth slid off the log, heading toward the boat with the blood trailing from the hook-ripped gills of the fish. He swam high in the water, his springlike body sinuously twisting back and forth, scarcely disturbing the glassy surface.
Catherine glanced at her husband, drowsing beside her in the willow’s shade, his head pillowed on a boat cushion. Then she gazed back at her red and white plastic cork, floating on the tea-colored water that winked with sunlight. Sighing deeply, she savored the July warmth and the coolness of the water on her feet as she moved them slowly back and forth.
“Mama, I’m thirsty.”
Catherine turned toward the sound of her younger son’s voice. “Cassidy, I told you not to swim here. It’s dangerous.”
She glanced at the pirogue fifty feet away, in which her oldest son, Dalton, sat in the shade of a huge cypress, his cane pole gleaming in the moss-tinted light.
“Mama!”
Catherine saw Cassidy’s eyes grow wide in fear as he stared at her feet, still dangling in the water. Then, following his gaze, she saw the smooth serpentine motion of the big snake moving rapidly toward her son.
“No!” She kicked at the cottonmouth but missed, only provoking it with her splashing.
Frozen in the water, clinging to the side of the boat with both hands, Cassidy gaped at the cottony white mouth of the snake, opened wide three feet from his face. Its long, curved fangs protruded like miniature scimitars.
Catherine grabbed Lane’s heavy K-Bar knife from the seat behind her, holding it with both hands. She swung it at the snake’s head just as it shot forward toward her son. The blade hit the open mouth at an oblique angle, clipping off the left fang and slicing through the mouth and the spade-shaped head, as far back as the eyes. The elliptical pupil went suddenly blank.
Blood spouting from its mortal wound, the great snake writhed and twisted in the water, churning it into a reddish pink froth. Then it grew limp, as though the current of life had suddenly been turned off, and settled slowly downward in the dark water, its still-open white mouth catching a final flash of light.
Catherine and Cassidy, the glazed look of shock in their eyes, took simultaneous breaths of relief. Both of them were still at a point of fear beyond speaking.
Lane brushed his chestnut-brown hair back from his eyes and sat up. He wore a pair of cut-off marine fatigues and black Converse tennis shoes. Taking his knife from Catherine’s still trembling hands, he thought briefly of how he had used it in the steaming jungles of the South Pacific and on the frozen, barren slopes of Korea. “I didn’t know you could handle a knife like that, Cath. Guess I’d better mind my manners around you from now on.”
“It—it was trying to hurt my baby!” Catherine cried. She bent over and put her arms around Cassidy, who was still hanging onto the side of the boat.
“If I’d been able to reach the knife, I’d have cut that snake into a thousand pieces!” Cassidy boasted. In the manner of ten-year-old boys, he pulled away from his mother, trying to brush off his own display of fear. “And, Mama, don’t call me baby!”
“You can forget that, boy,” Lane said, smiling. “You’ll be her baby till you’re forty… maybe longer. That’s just the way mamas are about their youngest child.”
“I can’t stand that!” Cassidy muttered, climbing over the gunwales. He grabbed the jug of iced tea from the bottom of the boat and poured a tall paper cup full. With a sheepish glance at his father, he turned the cup up and drained it.
Catherine stared at the fading pinkish tint of the water where the big snake had gone under. Suddenly she began to shake, and tears rolled down her pale cheeks, carrying a slight rose color from the late-morning sun.
Lane took her in his arms. “It’s all right, Cath. That cottonmouth’s nothing but turtle food now.”
He felt his wife’s warm supple body pressing against his, and in spite of what had just happened desire stirred inside him. He had always considered it strange and wonderful that Catherine could still affect him like this, even after twenty years of marriage.
Clearing her throat, Catherine spoke in a voice drained of strength. “I was so scared, Lane! I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life.”
“But you didn’t let that stop you. You killed it anyway.”
It had to be just dumb luck for her to catch that thing in the mouth with the blade. I probably would have missed, and I’ve lived with that K-Bar for years. Lane realized now how fortunate they had been. A five-foot cottonmouth had enough venom to kill a horse. Their son would have been dead within minutes after those long fangs had done their work.
“I’m swimming back now.” Cassidy stood on the bow of the boat, preparing to dive in and swim back to the pirogue, where Dalton sat staring at them, having seen the splashes but not understanding yet what had happened.
Catherine turned quickly around, grabbed Cassidy by the arm, and pulled him down on the seat. “You stay right where you are, young man! Didn’t you learn anything from this?”
“Aw, Mama!”
“It’s clear open water between here and the pirogue, Cath. Let him go.” Lane opened the lid of his tackle box, lifted out the top tray, and took out a Colt Woodsman wrapped in an oily cloth. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“You’re worse than he is,” Catherine snapped, “and you’re a grown man.”
“What just happened was a fluke, Cath. Couldn’t happen again in a million years.” Lane pulled back the receiver of the pistol and jacked a .22 long rifle cartridge into its chamber. “Besides, I don’t miss with this.”
“Yeah, Mama. Don’t be a spoilsport,” Cassidy chimed in. “We’re supposed to be having fun today.”
Catherine gazed at the bright expanse of water between her and the pirogue. Feeling outnumbered, she merely shook her head.
To clinch the argument, Lane said, “Coley said he and his buddies always swam out here and all over the Basin when they were growing up. They’re still alive and kicking.”
Catherine thought of their close friend, Coley Thibodeaux, whose camp they were staying at in the trackless Atchafalaya Basin. Though he was slightly built and confined to a wheelchair from his wounds at Tarawa, he didn’t let that interfere with his law practice or with his job as State Representative in the Louisiana House. “Coley’s too tough to die,” she said. “If the Japs couldn’t kill him with their rifles and bayonets, a snake surely couldn’t.”
“I rest my case,” Lane replied, grinning.
Catherine knew exactly what Lane’s remark meant—that he had seen twice as many campaigns in the war as Coley and had survived them all.
“Yes, but he’s just a boy.”
“He’s my son.” Lane stated the words as if they imparted invulnerability to Cassidy.
“I give up.” Catherine threw out her hands in exasperation. “But watch him closely.”
“Yippee!” Cassidy shouted gleefully, hitting an almost splashless dive off the bow of the boat.
Lane watched his youngest son swim effortlessly through the sun-sparkled water toward the pirogue. As he felt the balanced weight of the Colt in his hand, he wondered why the male of the species seemed always to have to prove things to other people. Or was it only for themselves that they felt obligated to walk for no logical reason along the blade-thin edge of danger?
*
“You’re getting to where you can fry fish almost as good as these Cajuns, Cath.”
Lane sat next to Catherine in the porch swing that he had hung for Coley on the little front gallery of the camp. Nestled among the giant cypress, the tiny cabin stood on pilings seven feet above the shadows and forty feet out from the shoreland of the lake.
“After all the K-Rations you’ve eaten, I think you’d say the same thing if I fried up some shoe leather.”
Catherine thought of the days and nights, especially the long nights she had spent during the months Lane had fought in Korea, and of the fact that a North Korean mortar shell had almost taken him away from her. Two wars in the past ten years were more than enough for her; she prayed there would be no more.
“You know better,” Lane chided playfully. “Even Coley says you’re cooking like a native, and his mother’s act in the kitchen was a hard one to follow, if you can believe half of what he says about her crawfish etouffee and shrimp creole.”
“I guess they weren’t too bad, especially considering they were cooked on a butane stove. Anyway, you’re putting some weight back on.” Catherine patted her husband’s flat stomach, which had been as sunken as an old man’s when he came back to her from Korea three months before.
“You can’t get out of jail till you pay the money, Cassidy! Just put that little silver dog back where it came from.”
“I can too! The warden gave me a pardon.”
“What kind of stupid rule is that?” Dalton challenged. “You just made it up.”
Catherine glanced through the screen door where her sons were playing Monopoly by the light of a Coleman lantern. “Can’t those two get along for ten minutes without arguing?”
“I’d think they were sick if that happened.” A smile flickered at the corners of Lane’s mouth. “They’re good kids, though. You wanna know something? I don’t think I’d take a good team of mules for those boys.”
“I should hope not.”
Lane held Catherine’s face in both hands, gazing into her blue eyes. “And I wouldn’t trade their mother for Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable together, even if they were sitting in a brand-new Rolls Royce.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Well, I wouldn’t if it was just a Chevrolet…” Lane leaned back against the swing, gazing thoughtfully at the dull amber glow of the lantern. “Maybe.”
“No more fish for you, Lane Temple! You’ll do your own cooking from now on.”
Lane sat up quickly and pulled Catherine into his lap, putting his arms around her waist. “Never again, Cath. I won’t do it again.”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“No more wars. I don’t care what happens—I’m through going off to war.”
Catherine ran her hand through Lane’s thick hair and rested it on his shoulder. “What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m finally accepting the fact that I’m home again. I’m going to live.” Lane stared at the dock and the glow on the water and, farther out, the starlight gleaming on its dark surface. “I’m staying home from now on.”
Catherine felt a sudden chill at the back of her neck, as though Lane’s words carried an icy edge. “We won’t let anything take you away from your family again, and that’s all there is to it.” She hurried her reply, but the words fell as flat and empty as pin-pricked balloons.
Out near the shoreline, a chorus of tree frogs began their nightly serenade, backed up by the deep bass of a bullfrog somewhere in the shallows.
Lane eased Catherine back onto the swing, stood up, and walked down the steps to the dock, where the aluminum bateau and the handmade wooden pirogue floated side by side in the still water. Sitting down, he leaned back against a piling and stared out across the lake.
Catherine left the swing and went to join her husband. “How did work go this week?”
“Better.”
“Come on, Lane. Brevity is for Coley and your other men friends. I want some of the column, not just the headlines.”
Lane chuckled and folded his arms across his chest. “Well, let’s see… Harry Truman called and said he’s definitely not running for president again. Ike dropped by and wanted to know what I thought of his choosing Richard Nixon for a running mate…”
Catherine grabbed Lane’s ear, twisting it between her thumb and forefinger until he cried out in pain.
“Okay—okay! Can’t you take a little kidding?”
“Sure. Now let’s hear about your week.”
“All right. I picked up a simple battery case. Fellow got in a fight at Dad’s Bar.”
Lane’s voice carried across the water to the base of a tupelo gum, where a racoon, nibbling on a small catfish he had just caught, stopped eating, turned in Lane’s direction, and then, sensing no danger, continued his supper.
“Imagine that—a fistfight in a sedate place like Dad’s Bar.”
“Must have been a serious breach of etiquette,” Catherine chimed in with a straight face.
“Someone probably used a salad fork for the main course,” Lane added, nodding solemnly.
“What else?”
“Some guy called from out of town, wanting me to handle a land deal for him. Crain, I think he said. Bruce Crain.” Lane gave Catherine a puzzled look. “Said he was from Chicago and wanted to invest in some timber and farmland down here.”
“How’d he get your name?”
“Said a friend of his recommended me.” Lane shrugged. “He didn’t say who.”
“Did he sound serious about it, or like one of those fly-by-night characters?”
“He knew a lot about real estate. Who knows if anything will come of it or not.”
“Anything else interesting?”
“Some drunk ran a stop sign and hit one of Coley’s friends. Coley wants me to handle it. Says this past legislative session wore him out.”
“I think Coley’s health is failing him.” Catherine’s face clouded. “He looks kind of peaked to me. Maybe he’s not eating like he should.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t cook very much, living alone. I know I wouldn’t.”
“You’d do good to open a can of tuna,” Catherine added matter-of-factly. “Maybe we should ask Coley over for supper more often.”
“Yeah, let’s do that.” Lane’s brow furrowed in thought. He started to speak, then glanced up at the pale shine of the cabin door.
His expression wasn’t lost on Catherine. “Go ahead. What’s on your mind?”
Lane took a deep breath. “Maybe we ought to leave Baton Rouge, Cath.”
“Whatever for?”
“Well…we’ve had a lot of trouble here, haven’t we?”
Lane found it hard to forgive himself for the affair he’d had with Bonnie Catelon, the daughter of the second most powerful political figure in Louisiana. Catherine had stood by him in spite of it all, but the guilt he carried around, like an unnecessary cross, now seemed a permanent part of his makeup.
Catherine knew what Lane was thinking. “‘…Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark.’ Paul said that almost two thousand years ago, Lane. It’s still good advice today.”
Lane nodded slowly, trying to push the past back into the past where it belonged. “You’re right.”
“The children are finally settling down in school and making friends. Your law practice is coming back.” Catherine pressed her husband’s hand. “People make what they will out of whatever place they’re in. This is our home now, darling.”
“And there’s always Coley,” Lane added. “He’s the best friend a man could have.”
“We’re staying, then?”
“This is our home, Cath.”
“That sounds so nice. I wish I’d said it.”
—
Author’s Statement
HEART AND SOUL is number three in a series of six novels that depict the history of America through the lives of a family of six, from 1946 to the day of President Kennedy’s assassination. The setting is the area around Baton Rouge, Louisiana—New Orleans, the Atchafalaya Basin, and parts of Mississippi.
Lane Temple, an attorney originally from Mississippi, has been asked by his best friend, Coley Thibodeaux, to run for his seat in the Louisiana State House of Representatives, as he is retiring. Although the novel is set in an era of America’s traditional values, politics has a value system that does not align with the overall country’s. Lane decides to throw his hat in the ring even though he has one very powerful enemy housed in the State Capitol. In these opening scenes, Catherine’s sudden chill at hearing Lane’s words, as well as a total stranger asking for Lane’s help in buying land, hint at the darkness ahead.
The land in question is revealed to be part of the right-of-way for Eisenhower’s Interstate system. Though Lane has scant knowledge of the fraudulent land deal, he is framed by his political enemy and sentenced to Angola, perhaps the most dangerous prison in the country.
As a retired parole officer, I believe the prison scenes are authentic, although toned down.
Meanwhile, Coley has enlisted the aid of Maria Genero, a well-connected and wealthy lawyer from New Orleans. Together they are making progress, when the mysterious disappearance of a key witness threatens to thwart their efforts to uncover the truth about the plot against Lane.
HEART AND SOUL is set in a time when family and extended family came first. They ate together, celebrated together, and could be relied upon in times of trouble. Most friendships were solid and long-lasting. A man’s word was as good as a contract. The unique and colorful Cajun culture enlivens and adds a special flavor, and the Atchafalaya Basin is a scenic dream.
Robert Funderburk was born by coal-oil lamplight in his home near Liberty, Mississippi. He graduated from Louisiana State University in 1965, and served as a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force Reserve from 1965 to 1971. His writing experience includes seventeen published novels, one a national bestseller; one hundred and ten poems and seven short stories accepted by various literary journals; and one chapbook. He was a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee. Along with his wife, Barbara, Robert lives and writes in the peace of their home on fifty acres of wilderness in Olive Branch, Louisiana.
Embark, Issue 25, October 2026
