It might come to one’s mind that the mixture of the races begets a horrendous and malformed species, and that nothing good could come from nothing. A wiser person would discount such speculation and take into their mind that it is the human species itself that can grab up a handful of that same nothing and mold it into a thing of intense beauty and magnificence. Such a person would quickly squeeze the shit out of the bigotry abounding from the former and smash it back into the nothingness. Darkness abounds, but it is light that makes that apparent.

 

          Loretta worked as a bar maid at a bar nearby the river and Bob worked at Erwin’s Boat, Bait, and Tackle when he wasn’t on a charter excursion as a part-time fisherman/skipper.

          Bob was tall, dark complexion, short curly black hair, thinly built but muscular. His heritage was mostly Jamaican with a touch of Creole, detectable through his accent. Loretta, on the other hand, appeared to be Bob’s opposite: five feet tall, light peach untanned but freckled skin, straight blondish hair with a touch of gray, and she was a bit chubby. As for her genealogy, she was at least 1/16th Cherokee Indian, part Scottish, part Irish – black Irish - and German. While Bob talked rather smoothly but was often easily misunderstood because of his accent, Loretta’s voice was more like listening to a stuttering telephone operator but more intelligible. The fact that their two daughters, Betty Jean and Anna Belle had inherited more white skin from their mother, than dark from their father gave an excuse for Bob, while drunk, to argue with Loretta about the question of his fatherhood and Loretta’s fidelity. This was a great reason why Loretta refused to marry Bob or Bob to marry her. A simple paternity test may have neutralized the question except for Bob’s stubbornness about the validity of the science. Having been the descendant of a voodoo priestess, Bob had grown up with superstitions and magic and was more inclined to their methods and beliefs. And so both children retained the famous Morgan last name of their mother.

 

          The meaningless and seemingly infinite indulgences of Loretta Morgan and Robert Krump Jr. which occurred in or around a lowly Baton Rouge trailer park likely resulted in the births of two beautiful daughters: Anna Belle and Betty Jean Morgan. There were likely a potential for greater numbers of siblings accounting for the frequency of the encounters, but those were no doubt jarred loose from the acrimonious behavior of a couple hell bent on insatiable satisfaction, but Belle and Jean survived. And it wasn’t until the day of her fifth birthday, August 29, that Hurricane Katrina removed the roof from their heads. Also gone were Loretta’s job, and unfortunately the girl’s father. After months of searching, the only thing they could find of him was his tackle box, full of lead, rusty hooks, and laden with water. Also inside the box was Bob’s wallet and car keys for a vehicle that no longer existed. In his wallet was one hundred sixty-four dollars, his driver’s license, fishing license, and wet pictures of his daughters which clung together, ruined.

          It was fortunate the four of them, discounting Bob, had moved from that trailer park, because it was now entirely gone. Three years earlier, after a vicious fight with Bob who had gambled off all the rent money - again, the family was evicted for failure to pay the rent. Loretta couldn’t make ends meet working as a waitress so she and her daughters left Baton Rouge together, minus their father who had lived mostly onboard a small fishing boat once moored at a harbor on the Mississippi river near the trailer park where they once lived. Looking around for miles after the storm, it appeared as if the mighty old Mississippi had staked her claim on their entire world.