Jes’ Don’t Eat All Them ’Maters
by Gary Clifton
The crash of the Ball Mason jar shattering on the dock wafted across the Mississippi. The noise caused the exhausted, sweaty crowd standing about to lethargically and half-heartedly do a bone-tired startled-jump imitation.
“Squatty Body, ya dumb jackass, ya done busted the one that had some lef’,” Dupree whined. Dupree had stashed a pair of quart jars of shine in his lunchpail, and they’d nursed on both until Bull blew the six o’clock quittin’ whistle.
Squatty Body Beaudreau was a fat Cajun about twenty-five with flaming red hair which he kept tucked under a Cashony Parrish Whupcats baseball cap. “Hail far, Dupree, they’s some lef’ in this other jar. I’m ta’red, boy, and that damned boat ain’t nowhere in sight.”
1935: Dupree and Squatty Body were day laborers who rode the Emmaville Farms shuttle boat across the Mississippi during harvest seasons to pick crops. Today’s crop was tomatoes. Snake Dupree, tall, morose, with the countenance of a pallbearer at his hound’s funeral, wasn’t to be pacified so easily. “Well, dumb bunny, you ain’t a-gettin’ none of it.”
“Now hol’ on here jes’ a damned minute, DuPree. ’Twere me paid thirty cents a quart for that Jake, and unlessen you pony up, I might jes’ be a-tellin’ Bull you gotcher lunch bucket brim-loaded with them Emmaville ’maters.”
“DuPree, jes’ ’cuz you a cousin by marriage don’t mean I cain’t and won’t kick yo’ skinny ass.”
The six or seven other workers standing close, unsuccessfully mumbled a tepid round of peace proposals. A major problem was that all had labored in the blazing sun for twelve hours, nipping at hidden stashes of white lightning and a ripe red tomato or six to flavor a lunch meat sandwich. All, including Squatty Body and Dupree were bleary-eyed drunk and mostly dumber than a string of fence posts.
The only female on the dock, Large Rose Lasou, who’d spent much of her life in the nervous hospital up at Baton Rouge, was the sole member of the group who stepped up to intervene. Large Rose, like most of the people present, was related to the two combatants, but the exact connections were lost.
Rose said, “Dammit, Squatty... Dupree, that be enough. Ain’t none a’ us here ain’t got a few ’maters stashed. Ol’ Bull show up here in that Emmaville truck and commence a-checkin’ and we all get canned. Who ya gonna steal ’maters from then, boy?”
Dupree drunkenly shoved her away.
Weighing just over two-fifty, she seized Dupree in a headlock, leaned sideways and threw him headfirst over her right hip. His sparse frame hit the dock with a resounding thunk, which drifted across the rapidly darkening Mississippi.
Dupree, his manly veneer wounded by a fat girl, struggled to his feet, shoved Rose to the deck with intoxicated ferocity, then turned and laid Squatty Body low with a roundhouse right. The fat man plopped on his back beside Rose. DuPree, drunk, exhausted, and stupid, straddled Squatty, a knee on each shoulder and began pounding the downed prisoner with alternating fists.
Squatty Body managed to free his right hand, get his Barlow knife open, and stick the two-inch blade into Dupree at about the belly button level. The gush of red pouring from Dupree’s overalls and his pathetic screams floated across the Mississippi.
Unbelievably, just as the others were clawing Dupree off, a St. Charles Parrish Sheriff’s cruiser drove past on the river road. The battered old car whipped up to the dock. The officer stepped out, majestic in his tan uniform. Deputy Bomar T. “Duck” Rochambeau was a man widely feared and respected in the swamps and bayous of coastal Louisiana.
“Squatty done it,” cried the drunken crowd in a loose form of unison.
“Holy by damn,” exclaimed the coifed, pudgy lawman, a long-barreled Colt dangling at his side. “Looks to me ol’ Squatty Body done kilt Dupree and, from the puddle of that blood, he musta by damn used a dirk.”
With one hand, Deputy Rochambeau pulled large handcuffs from his rear waist and with the other drew the pistol, pulling the hammer back. With the aid of the crowd, the sobbing Squatty Body was face down and cuffed in a blink.
“Dupree needed killin’, Depity,” someone declared.
Rochambeau said sagely, “Never no mind. Squatty gotta hang for it. Nobody cain’t be a-goin’ ’bout stobbin’ folks like that.”
Large Rose stood, occupying several square feet of dock floor space. “Damnation, Rochambeau, couldn’t ya jes’ choke him a little, then cut him loose. His ol’ lady would be glad to make you a whole damned slab a’ sowbelly pie. Dupree waren’t worth a damn, no way. ’Sides, Squatty owes me a dollar and a half. Hang Squatty, and I’ll never see that money.”
Rochambeau, waving the cocked pistol carelessly said, “Rose, I ain’t a-heppin’ collect none of that prostikootin’ money somebody owes you.”
Rose dummied right up.
“Squatty, we goin’ to the Parrish Prison,” Rochambeau took the fat man’s arm.
Incredibly, the recently deceased Dupree groaned heartily, struggled to his feet, and stumbled into Duck Rochambeau’s spotless uniform.
Startled, Rochambeau stepped backward and inadvertently cranked a round in the vicinity of Dupree’s face. Dupree fell like a wet rag.
Large Rose said, “Well if Dupree waren’t dead afore, he sure as hell be now. Duck, looks like now it’s you needs hangin’.”
Rochambeau gasped, “Wit’ all dat blood on him, I seen only ghostly intentions. He were a’ready dead.”
Squatty said, “Rochambeau, them was damned ’maters got squashed when I popped him one. Ya done kilt my fav-o-rat cousin. Hand over dat pistol.”
DuPree, twice killed, again clambered to his feet, squashed tomatoes spilling from the gallouses of his overalls. “Missed me, Rochambeau, but you done roont my dinner.”
Suddenly the boat whistle sounded, and the drunken crowd scrambled aboard. Rochambeau, abandoned, examined his gory shirt and said, “By damn, Mama gonna have DuPree’s ass when she see she gonna have to re-do this shirt.”
Copyright © 2025 by Gary Clifton
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