Two Visions of the Dubois Family Miracle
Papa Dubois Smiles In His Sleep
Madame Ébène-Cerise Dubois was an early riser, a bit earlier to wake than her husband, Jean-Luc.
She was in the habit in the winter of looking at his deep mahogany face as the sun rose out of the southeast, and so in a straight line in January from their new place in Houston, TX.
New place. Not new home.
There had been no such thing after Hurricane Katrina had swept away their home deep in the bayou country of Louisiana in 2005 – literally, there had been nothing for their entire community to go home to. The Gulf of Mexico had reclaimed that entire bayou – the shore of Louisiana had come right up over their homes and stayed there.
Anyone who did not know – or speak French – might have thought that Monsieur Jean-Luc Dubois nightly spoke of his affairs with “Katrina L'Ouragan” and thought he had a mistress, but no: for almost 15 years as of January 2020, he nightly relived their family's desperate struggle for survival, and the indifference of so many to the Black French-speaking community that still lived in the remote parts of Louisiana … how they had been made unwanted refugees in their own country, and how after New Orleans was more or less rebuilt in the eyes of the nation, the rest of those displaced had been forgotten as the financial crisis that would make an even greater wreck than Katrina came along.
Madame Dubois woke up just a little earlier to encourage her husband with her smile, and a kiss, and maybe a bit more … it helped him get up and do what everyone in the family had to do, even though by 2019, Madame and Monsieur Dubois had each passed 70 years of age. They, and their children who had not moved out of Louisiana for better fortunes years before, all had to work to survive, with no hope yet of retirement on Houston's rents.
Jean-Luc Dubois went on to work without complaint, his sadness and his resolve as one to spare his wife harder labor outside the home. The aging giant had retained much of his strength into old age, for he had never stopped working. He once had his own restaurant in Louisiana, and the money he had saved had given him and his family time to resettle and secure a home – but it was not enough to last 14 years without everyone contributing to the rent.
All of Monsieur and Madame's children elsewhere in the country and the world sent home all that they could to help, but “rent is low in Houston compared to San Francisco or Paris or New York – they can only do so much and live themselves. No parent should wish to bankrupt his children, while he can help it,” the Dubois patriarch said, and so went to work as a chef in another person's restaurant while Madame Dubois, from home, went to a local commercial kitchen with her daughters and her youngest son and prepared the blends of spices and sauces that, on the surface, had made their family restaurant great.
The Duboises' youngest son, René, had gotten their online business up and running, and ran all the distribution and shipping with the help of his brothers-in-law. The business was profitable, and the family reinvested as much as they could, but the community had been scattered, and the Duboises were always getting calls from people that, 14 years later, were still struggling much more desperately as lost homes and resources and family members combined with aging to create terrible situations. Jean-Luc and Ébène-Cerise could not bring themselves to ignore the cries of their neighbors, even though they realized how desperate their own situation could become if their health began to fail before the business provided them a retirement.
“If only we could restart the restaurant … .”
Jean-Luc Dubois had considered it, but in 14 years, had not attempted it for one practical reason, and one personal reason.
“It would take too much of our family nest egg to try to break into the market in Houston, with little guarantee of success in this saturated market – it is almost the same problem as it would have been 20 years ago in New Orleans.”
And the personal side of that problem came right after, although uttered only to Madame Dubois.
“Without the means to put support and strength into a community returning support and strength, it is no use – Dubois à la Maison [Dubois at Home] will never be at home again. The hungry mouths of the cities run from taste to taste, ever consuming, never satisfied – here in Houston or in every major city of the country, we would be reduced to trying to compete to please the restless palate of those without connection to anything but their need for novelty. If I were a young man, alone, perhaps I would risk it out of resentment of the need to have to try … but … .”
He would shake his head, and in French, the sentence finished grimly: “pas de joie de vivre,” which translates to “no joy of living.”
Jean-Luc and Ébène-Cerise Dubois had been married for 55 years. For 14 years approaching 15, Ébène-Cerise Dubois had not known her husband to face his day with any joy except for gratitude that le bon Dieu – the good God, as it went in French – had spared him and his entire family's lives, and that He had given them strength to keep going. He never complained. But she knew he was tired, and was focused on building enough of a nest egg so that Madame Dubois could make it after his death. Once their online sale of spices and sauces took off enough, and he built that nest egg to where he wanted it, he was going to be ready to die.
So, Madame Dubois, who was not willing to be a widow yet, woke up, smiled, and prayed, all day long. Every day she said to her husband: “Lache pas la patate” – literally, “Don't let go of the potato,” actually meaning, “Don't give up,” and she did all she could to keep him encouraged, but the problem was beyond her, and she knew that.
Madame Dubois was at home wherever her husband was, but she knew: he needed something more. He needed to be at home again, somehow. It would take a miracle. She prayed for it every day, and they kept going and going and going, not dropping the potato, not giving up … until on January 25, 2020, as the sun rose over the Gulf out of the southeast and shot its first beam across her husband's face, she saw the herald of the miracle. He was smiling in his sleep. Le bon Dieu had broken through, somehow, and showed the mind of Jean-Luc Dubois something different.
“You are smiling – tell me so I can smile even more,” she purred to him as he woke.
He sat up in bed, his silver hair and strong, deep brown body passing through the rose-gold of dawn as he did so.
“Last night, I dreamed that Dubois à la Maison had reopened in a new place … not quite on the old lines, and not anywhere like Louisiana, but … but there were many people there like our people … I don't mean that they spoke French or anything, but they were Black people like us … a community in which to give and receive support and strength.”
“Well, Rene and I have been doing research … we know you are not happy here, too close to home and yet too far … it would be easier to start over somewhere else, if we could afford it, and we are all working hard, trying to find a way.”
“I know, and I love all of you even more for considering my feelings. It is so hard, my Black Cherry [Ébène-Cerise literally translates as black or ebony cherry], but I do not complain because none of us need to be discouraged, and because le bon Dieu does not need to be offended and dishonored by one who knows how He has blessed us to even be alive and together. I am 73 years old, and my strength has not yet seriously diminished, and my work is still valued in the world – and, we have a growing business once again. I have nothing to complain about … although it is very hard, my wife.”
“I know,” she said. “I admire you and love you so much for not giving up on everything, when it hurts so much.”
“I have been tempted,” he said, “but then I wake up and see you and think about how good le bon Dieu is, and I can't let Him down or you down.”
“He isn't going to let us down,” she said, “and we can ask for what we need, Jean-Luc.”
He considered this, and then stretched.
“Last night, I saw what I need to finish my life in peace,” he said. “I feel better having seen it … but at 73 … it would take a miracle.”
“I've been praying for that miracle for almost 15 years,” Madame Dubois said. “Now you have been shown it. Somehow I think we are both going to see it, soon.”
Meet Chief Inspector Dubois, 99 Percent of Why Darcy Bowler Came to Justice, 100 Percent Ready for a Career Change
1,200 miles away in Big Loft, VA, the Dubois's firstborn son, Jean-Paul Philippe Dubois of Interpol, was an hour further into his day, and was about to go to a breakfast to discuss a change of career.
Chief Inspector Dubois – as his title more or less transliterated into Lofton County's parlance – had put 21 years into the Judge Advocate General service of the military, and then retired with honors as a major and had accepted a job at Interpol, where he had worked for ten years, and was presently in the United States again on the tail end of the most difficult case he had ever worked. From the international perspective, Lofton County's best law men had assisted him in closing a 10-year hunt of three of the worst international mass killers in the world.
However, the pursuit of the Beauty Killers and the capture of the surviving one, Darcy Bowler, was being read just a little bit differently in Virginia.
Chief Inspector Dubois had not come home to take a job as a police officer or even lawyer after he had retired from the military for a simple reason. He had the ebony color of his mother and the temper of his father when angered, and the need of his homeland to subordinate Black men to maintain the fiction of White supremacy would have led to him being offered positions that were frankly insulting compared to his record and thus demonstrated skill. Jean-Paul Philippe Dubois was not the one for that kind of foolishness.
There was also the financial consideration – between his military pension and his check from Interpol, he was able to send a lot of money home to assist his parents because the euro was higher than the dollar. He also had been building a nest egg, knowing that one or both of his parents might have to stop working – it was considerable, and he would not have been able to build it had he chosen to come home to Louisiana and take the average salary or have to start his own law firm.
Chief Inspector Dubois had no other family … like his father, he was particular, and he had heard too many stories about the life of military men and their wives. He had considered marriage in France while working at Interpol, but … like his father, he longed for a home that he could never go back to, and it would be too much of a burden to place on a French woman who could not understand what he was seeking.
Every which way, everywhere in the world, in the back of his mind, Chief Inspector Dubois looked around and built that nest egg with something else in mind: the bayou community he had and every member of his family for generations had been born in was scattered, but there had to be some place that Dubois à nouveau à la maison – that the Dubois family could be at home again, in a new home where they felt the strength and the support of their community and could give it back again, where even if the Cajun and Creole flavor of the Black soul could never be found anywhere else, at least the core was the same.
And then, he had arrived in Lofton County, Virginia, and the racism of the mainstream news in that very conservative region of southern Virginia – it was named for a Confederate general, after all – had caused the very people and community Chief Inspector Dubois was looking for to come to light at last.
The Big Loft Bulletin would have gotten away with ignoring Chief Inspector Dubois entirely, and wanted to – the editors wanted nothing to do with the idea of a celebrated Black police officer while Lofton County's police departments were under pressure to at last integrate their departments. Chief Inspector Dubois was the very last thing anybody wanted to see – had he been Black French it would have been fine, but the fact that he was an African-American was just too big of a problem for the local politics.
But, as it happened, the precinct charged with assisting Homicide with the last murder of the Beauty Killers was the Blue Ridge precinct, and its new commander had served with Chief Inspector Dubois in the Judge Advocate General wing of the U.S. Army. Retired Colonel H.F. Lee was the new captain at Blue Ridge, always ran from public credit in the press (much as the ancestral uncle he resembled avoided it), and had formed a deep bond of friendship with retired Major Dubois while they served together. The two men referred to each other as “mon frere,” or “my brother,” and the colonel-turned-police-captain would not permit the Big Loft Bulletin to praise him to the exclusion of his fellow veteran.
Had Lieutenant Hummel from Homicide objected, Captain Lee outranked him … but Lieutenant Hummel was a pragmatic man who was glad for the help from the man from Interpol, and was an humble man who got his joy from his work and did not need much public praise. He fairly measured the thing up: the man from Interpol had done 99 percent of the work to solve the case.
This left Chief Inspector Dubois the spotlight, and he took it with the gracious commanding presence that befit a man who had led teams of investigators around the world.
The Big Loft Bulletin could not deny Chief Inspector Dubois, so they tried to diminish him … that failed too, but they still tried as the politics around policing heated up again, knowing their rival paper was going to play the thing up to the skies.
The Lofton County Free Voice was Lofton County's first Black news organization to ever survive more than a week – and it had started in 2019 with a bang and had kept on banging without ever giving anyone a central location to attack unless they were setting a trap. They were good at luring their enemies into said traps and destroying them both rhetorically and in person – they had gotten Captain Lee's cousin, Captain Ironwood Hamilton in Tinyville, VA, to assist them and their supporters on a sting to lure out the region's most corrupt police officers. They had succeeded more resoundingly than the South had seen since the Deacons of Defense had come through … and by the way, that had started out of Bogalusa, Louisiana.
Which is why, as Chief Inspector Dubois noticed how the reporters from the Free Voice treated him, that he had found his way into the presence of the Dubois-type of people again – no, they didn't speak Cajun or Creole French, and they probably wouldn't know how to make file gumbo to save their lives, but, that just meant there was a market for a certain family restaurant in the area, centered in a strong Black community. The men from the Free Voice were much more despised than even Chief Inspector Dubois himself, but they stood tall like his father and himself, unbowed and unbothered, got business done, and walked away in power, not only indifferent but utterly triumphant over their rivals.
Chief Inspector Dubois hardly had time to do his research before the Free Voice, in the person of its editor-in-chief, reached out to him again – but he had time, and what he had discovered had stunned him.
Lofton County, like Big Loft its county seat, was 39 percent Black, so it had a community robust in numbers. The thing that had caused all the resentment: the community had gotten completely organized and was getting its will done. The Gilligan House Stand had been that trap for corrupt police officers – it hadn't gotten all of them, but well over 100, and some from some very high places, including the police commissioner in Big Loft with two of his deputies and two of his three secretaries!
That whole situation had set up Captain Lee to solve the Soames case, which had gotten a ton of the rest of the corrupt officers discovered and put out after a couple in the Blue Ridge neighborhood had called the police to come beat down a few Black art students but also had given away the fact that they and their neighbors were funding a deadly scheme of murder and mayhem right through the police department to remove everyone in the region who opposed the building of a new private prison!
But, the key thing there had been the lawsuits that had happened – because the Free Voice had survived and was thriving and did the research to back up its sources, more stories of police brutality came out – and soon enough, Big Loft and its police department were over their financial heads in lawsuits. A settlement had been reached for an undisclosed sum, but it involved the police department having to make major changes to satisfy its terms – and one of those was proportionate representation on the force. That meant that the department would have to at least integrate its force … and parity would mean four out of every ten officers would have to be Black, sooner or later. Either that, or the community would blow the settlement deal up!
There was more … the end of the Soames case had verged right on the Ridgeline Fire, and 12,000 Black and Latino servants, working that day in those big mansions in the three of the six Ridgeline neighborhoods destroyed by the fire had not escaped the swift-moving blaze. The city of Big Loft had initially counted only homeowners and their families in its tally. The Black and Latino community had responded by shutting the city down – 60,000 people not only had walked off their jobs, but had driven or rode into downtown Big Loft on their way to the appropriate offices necessary to get their family members counted and the appropriate murder charges filed on the arsonist.
And then, it happened again – 100,000 members of the Black and Latino community had taken a second week off and locked up the county roads as part of the Great Memorial Motorcade going to the site of the fire to memorialize their dead. The property owners who had not wanted them to have access had been absolutely run over – Big Loft's mayor had caved in by necessity to keep those 100,000 from again locking down the downtown.
The point had been made: the Black community had organized to the point that they alone had changed the county. The Latino community was much smaller, but was willing to follow the Black community's lead. The two communities were 42 percent of the county. Lofton County's usual leadership and supposedly favored citizens had met their match in the Black community – adding the Latino community was overkill. Big Loft and Lofton County, proud enclaves of original conservatism as defined in 1867 – “Keep the N****r Down! – had been humbled. That explained the rage of the Big Loft Bulletin … impotent but definite as yet another Black man ascended to prominence in the county.
But at least Chief Inspector Dubois wasn't going to stay. That was the default consolation position in the mainstream coverage across the county. They didn't understand the welcome mat being rolled out, and his own personal reasons to consider that welcome.
The Beauty Killers case had sapped the joy from Chief Inspector Dubois's career in Interpol, over all ten years. He had worked it while doing everything else he was assigned, and had noted something: it should not have required him to catch the Beauty Killers, except that they were gorgeous American women of European descent, and they just glided through all kinds of rules and regulations not meant to constrain women like them. This was the legacy of Europe colonizing the world … its mass killers had long had free reign everywhere.
The Beauty Killers worked their advantages to the hilt, using the pride and lust of officials in every place to access their targets, get in, and get out. All three women were running profitable businesses – plural – while doing this. It was too easy … and although European police and Interpol were not like, say, working in Lofton County's police departments, not even everyone there wanted to see big, Black Dubois bringing in three lovely White women in handcuffs and shackles. It was too much a reversal of what history was supposed to look like, in the relations between Europe and Africa in the modern age.
So instead, he had met devastating scene after devastating scene, and officials already embarrassed at their incompetence not wanting to be further embarrassed by Chief Inspector Dubois and his team even though said officials had called Interpol to help. It was the compounding of the unnecessary deaths … and the fact that his superiors at Interpol kept calling him away from that just as soon as he was making good progress … only to send him right back to the next iteration of the same problem. In January 2020, now Interpol was rejoicing and putting him into the spotlight for his great work … but there had been almost one thousand bodies because of how certain of his superiors had handled his caseload.
2020 would have been year 11 at Interpol, but Chief Inspector Dubois had seen enough. He would close his career in Interpol with a 100 percent case solve rate after all – retiring indisputably on top, leaving for “personal reasons.” There were many, including seeing all those bodies that had needlessly perished, all around the world, because his dogged 10-year effort to catch the Beauty Killers had been largely unsupported. Now, Interpol was making much of his talent … but they would have to get along without it.
Again: Jean-Paul Philippe Dubois was not the one for foolishness. Like his father, he never complained, save for filing his official requests, noting his superiors' denials, filing his appeals, and noting their denials. He never complained, never broke professional frame … but those rejoicing in January at Interpol would be crying in March. Chief Inspector Dubois would have the last word as he went out the door.
But then, what to do?
Although Chief Inspector Dubois maintained a strong position about international life offering more opportunity to Black men like him than life in general in the States, his heart called him back to the States more and more as his mother and his father both passed 70. He had taken six months' leave from the Army to assist them after Hurricane Katrina, and at that time they were only in their fifties … but things were different now.
The whole idea that Jean-Luc and Ébène-Cerise Dubois still had to work every day when they had eleven children said a lot about income depression for Black men in the States, but also about the fact that some of the Dubois brothers were not paying attention, and others had not had the opportunity to know all that could be done in the 21st century. Baby brother René was at the same time the most adept and the most devoted at home, but he had no authority among his siblings … the brothers not doing enough laughed at him and his tireless efforts, and the brothers doing everything that they thought they could did not think they had time to learn more.
Yet again, the eldest brother, Jean-Paul, was not for the foolishness, the most like their father in his vigorous years of the past. When things got too tight, and even he could not send enough, all he had to do was call home, and his brethren got smarter and came up off the rest of the money to bridge the gap! Occasionally he had showed up on a brother who was getting too casual – and what you did not want was for big brother Jean-Paul to have to fly in from wherever to your wherever and dress you allllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way down about “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
This was why at the end of 2019, René had asked his elder brother to come home.
“If we could just get and stay organized, the business is at the point that we could get Papa et Maman
retired in 2020 – or not retired! We could have enough of a base to provide Papa et Maman a chance for one more big move – one more chance to find a way to restart that restaurant with those of their children and grandchildren and friends that want to do this again with them, and be happy!
“Papa is too tired to insist on his rights in the family … it takes all his energy to just fight old age and grief and PTSD and depression to stay alive for Maman, but he is exhausted and ready to die, and Maman will follow him right into the grave if we don't do something about it. They need this change next year, Jean-Paul. They need it. We won't have them in 2021 if we don't give them what they need. I can't get enough of the others to see it – but we owe our parents this and I can't make it happen without you!”
“René, it's December, and in February, I will be home for good.”
But where was home to be?
Captain Lee of the Big Loft police force had been first to bid for Lofton County, Virginia, openly, but Chief Inspector Dubois had gently rebuffed him … all of Lee's horses and all of Lee's men, in three centuries of American history, could not drag Chief Inspector Dubois to work on an American police force that was not already fully integrated and supportive of Black officers.
However, the cunning of Lees, and their unwillingness to accept no unless you had someone named Grant to force the issue, was retained by the great-great-great nephew of General R.E. Lee who was most like him. Once rebuffed, Captain H.F. Lee backed off on his initial approach,, saying at once that “I would never ask you to do anything that would expose you to disrespect, mon frere.”
But then, there were all these other opportunities in Lofton County and nearby Roanoke County… its robust veteran services in general, its robust Black veteran community, its robust investigation things happening with the Free Voice … .
Captain Lee just dropped clues for his fellow investigator to pick up, including the secret to his own dramatic progress in managing both his PTSD and his bipolar disorder: the help of his fabulous Black therapist at Roanoke's VA hospital, Captain Josiah Thompson. That – to work with a therapist who would understand Chief Inspector Dubois' type of PTSD issues because of shared American Black and military history – appealed strongly to the inspector, particularly since anybody who could help a Lee get himself together had to be really good.
And of course, Captain Lee had done an interview with the Lofton County Free Voice about the Skylark Massacre and Chief Inspector Dubois's centrality to solving the case, and nothing succeeds like respect and love publicly expressed. This had touched the heart of the inspector, because Captain Lee was risking the ire of his entire department by doing that. That was the other thing about Lees … they would put themselves on the line to get whatever they wanted, and clearly, Captain Lee was willing to do whatever was necessary to convince his friend to stay in Lofton County.
Captain Lee's interview had only opened the door wider to the outreach the Free Voice itself was quietly doing … they had covered Chief Inspector Dubois with praise and support, and had defended him handily against the efforts of the mainstream papers to degrade the public's idea of his contribution to that shocking case. They had connected with someone at Interpol who knew of Chief Inspector Dubois's struggles, who had given them access to key information – they did their research and legwork, and they, too, were not for the foolishness.
And then James Varick IV, the editor-in-chief of the paper, had arrived to do the personal interview … and Chief Inspector Dubois felt like a long-lost twin brother had walked into the room. Mr. Varick was eight years younger, but the stature of the man's soul and his dedication to improving his community recalled Jean-Luc Dubois at his best, working with everything he had and everything he could influence to better the lives of those in the community around him.
The interview had come and gone; the two men had talked into the night about what was going on in Lofton County, and how Lofton County's Black people had taken their power back and were building the future they wanted to see for themselves and for their children, and how quiet Black people with roots in the county who had big money were adding to that pot by the billions, and –.
“We have just purchased Lofton National Bank, lock, stock, and barrel. Not even I am publishing that yet, but, we have it. Given the international news about this new disease that may be on the move, we are just quietly building it up … but the point here is that we have it. Since September, Lofton County has been openly doing us insult, but it did not think of what would happen if the insulted ones moved all their resources out of all banks but one. We are 39 percent of the county, and the Latino community is small enough and sensible enough to be resting in our shadow, bringing the total number of money in the county to be moved to one bank up to 42 percent of total deposits.
“So: on the economic side this year as we did on the media and direct action side last year, we are readying ourselves to reward and sustain whom we will, and punish whom we will for disrespecting the community.”
“Y'all are not for the foolishness, eh?”
“Not at all, Chief Inspector Dubois. We are striving to fill all gaps to that.”
Then, James Varick IV had lowered his voice, knowing his host loved a good mystery.
“We even are crafting as much of a legal and law enforcement solution as we can, despite the rage of the local establishment. I suppose you've heard of the idea that some police departments are floating that since they can't have their crazier members come up into our communities and get their jollies by beating Black people down, they are not going to give us service at all.”
“I have. The idea is growing louder and gaining support – the era of the video camera has made it hard to not be held to account, but some people don't want to be in situations in which they can and will be held to account.”
“They think we will beg them to come back,” Mr. Varick said. “Now, this is not every law enforcement official in Lofton County. There are some good and fair men. You know Captain Lee, and I would have to say that Captain Oriole of Western and MacMurray of Eastern up here in Big Loft are good and are leading their precincts in the right direction. Commissioner Scott up here is also getting better – I don't think he likes us, but he doesn't think we should be beaten down either, and he has been firing officers left and right who abuse the community.
“In the rural areas … at least we have Captain Hamilton in Tinyville, although Sheriff Nottingham, a man who participated in the Tinyville Massacre as a teenager and cheered his elder brothers on in doing a lynching, is a constant problem. But he is 67. We are putting Hamilton up as his replacement if he wins this next election, although Hamilton doesn't know it yet.”
“Y'all move big and don't beg,” Chief Inspector Dubois said.
“Oh, pandemic or no pandemic, Lofton County ain't seen nothing yet,” Mr. Varick said. “There is a place even for your specialized skills, since you have shared with me that you are retiring from Interpol this year.”
“Tell me more.”
“The right man to talk to would be Mr. Jetson Black, who bridges the gap between the newspaper world and larger investigative work. He did the legwork to break the Soames case, and then passed the baton to Captain Lee so PIP's involvement would not be known.”
“PIP?”
“I'll let him explain it to you tomorrow morning, but let's just say that when it comes to investigative work on cases old and new, we have already made the any police who don't want to service the community correctly or at all obsolete. We hand off cases to men in the county that will do the job right, and watch the carnage and let them take the heat. Even Captain Lee, brilliant as he is, does not know quite the extent to which he works for PIP now.”
So, after a few hours' rest, Chief Inspector Dubois the morning of January 25, 2020 went with great curiosity to meet with Mr. Jetson Black – “and son, is he jet black!” – as the joke went about one of Virginia's finest private investigators who also did a great deal of work with the Innocence Project in its perch at Charlottesville, VA. Again, for Chief Inspector Dubois, this was like meeting another brother, and brunch turned into lunch and dinner.
“PIP – Parallel Investigation Protocol,” Mr. Black explained. “The fact of law enforcement actively working to return Black men to prison and thus to the status of chattel slaves per the 13th Amendment is well-known – perhaps not at all places at all times evenly, but it is a long-standing reality. Exoneration work has to assume, therefore, that such injustice has been done, and then find the evidence to bring the truth to light in spite of the entire criminal justice apparatus being organized against truth and justice in order to to fulfill its other goals. Thus already, in looking into criminal matters of the past, we have to bring the best principles of criminal and journalistic investigation to bear and create a parallel track to official law enforcement's work.
“What is going on in Lofton County is that our people have been building the foundation for a fully resourced environment since the white supremacists showed their Tiki torches and their behinds up in Charlottesville – they realized then that we've got at least one more year with President Trump letting these late-coming Confederates run wild, and that their friends in policing were going to try out what they could get away with. Exoneration is necessary, but that's what happens when you have to come from years behind. In a fully resourced environment for investigation, you can nip some of those problems from the start, and even get some things done from behind in mass.
“So, our friends started planning the Lofton County Free Voice as a media organization – it draws fire for what it says, but folks don't notice PIP. Mr. Varick, his nephew Nathan Turner, and I have trained their entire staff as robust investigators, one and all, from the beginning. A Black billionaire took note, and considered his grandson's future, and came home to his Lofton County roots. That added all the money necessary to start in 2019. We knew the usual white supremacist suspects in Lofton County would start acting out – that would lead to lawsuits backed by scrupulous research and evidence, and then settlements Lofton County would pay out to try hush up one fire after another. More money.
“Then, good Captain Hamilton got all relaxed – really a swell and mellow fellow – and didn't object to PIP people, working in their media organization personae, investigating the death of J. Oscar Rett right along with him as long as they didn't get in his way. Literal parallel investigative environment. Captain Hamilton is brilliant. But so is PIP – they reached the exact same outcome on the exact same time frame, and so co-solved, just from different directions.
“The challenge is that crime scene investigation is a different animal than what Mr. Varick and Mr. Turner know, and because I am limited by not having been a police officer for so many years. Captain Lee and Captain Hamilton have been giving classes to my students at the Innocence Project on generalized principles, and they don't know PIP is learning too, but it certainly would be nice to have a world-class Black police officer bridge that gap, in a fully resourced environment.”
“I just have one question for you,” Chief Inspector Dubois said. “Do people like gumbo up here?”
“Yes, but, we can't get it how it should be – not enough people from Louisiana around here. But hey, I've read your record. I know what happened to your family during Hurricane Katrina, and who your father is. We will welcome you and your family and everything about you – if y'all come to build and work, come on! Get here before the rush of Black excellence and talent arrives in Lofton County, because by the time our friends in Lofton County get things good and going, all kinds of Black people wanting the best chance of life in the nation will be coming!”
The Two Visions Come Together
The next morning, Madame Ébène-Cerise Dubois woke up, and saw her husband smiling again in his sleep. It was Sunday. They got up on that day to go to early services at St. Georges Parish in Houston, and then enjoy the only day off the whole family could share. Monsieur Jean-Luc Dubois generally cuddled up in his chair with some small grandchildren and slept most of the day because he was so tired after working 48 hours a week at 73 years old, but first, he and his family always went to worship.
“I saw the miracle you have been praying for again last night!” he said to his wife as they put on their Sunday best. “I do believe something is about to happen now -- le bon Dieu does not tease His children!”
Off they went to church, and were singing when a familiar voice added his bass-baritone harmony to the family sound – Jean-Paul Philippe Dubois, fresh from the airport, sat down with his family at St. Georges Parish.
It is possible to do a New Orleans second-line praise break in a Black Catholic church in Houston. This is what happened as people who knew the Duboises caught their joy that their eldest son was back at home, for good.
And speaking of home … the eldest son sat down with his family and explained everything that he had seen and done and learned in Lofton County, VA about the Black and Latino communities there, and the White people who were supportive. There were certain drawbacks – there was not a Black Catholic parish in the county or any significant population of French speakers of the Cajun or Creole persuasion – the culture on the surface was completely different.
But what Lofton County had, at the core, was the same kind of Black people Jean-Luc and Ébène-Cerise Dubois desperately needed around them. They could not be happy or settled without what they had at the bayou: a community of robust, no-nonsense Black people and their friends, of a mind to build, work, and enjoy together.
René Dubois watched the miracle occur with tears in his eyes as hope came back into the eyes of Papa et Maman. Jean-Paul had come through. He always did. But this was what René Dubois had been praying for in asking for his brother to come home and get things figured out before it was too late.
“Well, René, the home we needed didn't exist, prior to now. Five years ago in Lofton County, this opportunity for all of us did not exist, and, like Papa, I've never been at home since Katrina either. But now I think I can be, and I think as many of us that want to can be as well … I think it is safe to say that after years of praying and wishing and hoping and seeking and struggling, I think it is worth a good Dubois Family try!”
He paused, though, and then said, “But, Papa, it is up to you. I'm not the head of this family. You are. I haven't committed yet to Lofton County. I'll come back here and take on your support and Maman's if that would make you happier – my military pension is enough to retire both of you, and René and I can get this business popping and get our less thoughtful brothers in line so you can retire in style.”
Jean-Luc Dubois considered all of this, and then slowly smiled, more brightly than since “Katrina L'Ouragan,” that bad and wild monster of a she-weather-beast, had scattered her victims to the four winds.
“Jean-Paul, you and I are very much alike. We don't go for the foolishness, and we know where we are at home. I hate being in Houston, so I don't want you here … but if you think that Lofton County is the place for us, then I believe you. You have seen pretty much the entire world, and you have never come back and talked about any place to us with this much joy and conviction. You have never described a place with such support and strength as this, that we could pour our remaining strength and support into – and you have researched the restaurant market, I trust.”
“Papa, they are begging for Dubois à Nouveau à la Maison up there, for Dubois to be at home again and open up his kitchen again.”
The whole family who had loved working at Dubois à la Maison beside Papa Dubois brightened up.
Jean-Luc Dubois then turned to his youngest son.
“I know the spice and sauce is important to you, my son.”
“Papa, we were just marking time with money here in Houston until we could do it all. We can easily make adjustments – the Internet is everywhere. We get a commercial kitchen up yonder, and we roll again.”
Jean-Luc Dubois considered all these things, and then sighed, and then smiled.
“You, Jean-Paul, have shown me what I have seen, these two nights – and I told you, Maman, that le bon Dieu does not tease His children! I would be lying if I said that at 73, I was not afraid to move to a whole new state and start life over, but I know that you are showing me what I have already seen! It will not be the same as before – the world has changed and is changing too much – but, it will be whatever le bon Dieu will make it! Let's do it – and after 15 years, it is about time I said something else, too!”
He leaned all the way back, and his family started laughing as his eldest and youngest son got behind him just in case he fell, but everyone had gotten up and get ready because they knew what was coming as he rebounded in full voice – !
“Laissez les bons temps rouler!”
Let the good times roll, possibly heard from Houston back to the bayou, and to the new home the Dubois family was going to – for just a minute, age rolled off Jean-Luc Dubois, and he was the vigorous young man his sons remembered, bigger and stronger than anyone but God, the loudest voice in the world but thunder, and as merry as Christmas every day. The world and he had changed too much for things to be the way they were before, but still …
“He's back!” René Dubois said to his eldest brother.
“Yes, sir, he is – and all I have to do is train Lofton County's PIP team of investigators in order to keep him settled – and be paid well for work I really will enjoy. Le bon Dieu keeps doing what He does best!”
“Merci beaucoup,” René Dubois said as he looked up through the sky, and his brother joined him before they embraced each other and danced their own second line before returning to the family celebration.
"Let the Good Time Roll." Looks like Lofton County is gonna get a taste of some Cajun cooking! Excellent episode for your Lofton County group.
They are going to get a whole novel length-tale, Lord willing ... Chief Inspector Dubois was in my Maynia mystery as a guest and has popped up investigating some strange fractal cases in Alien Art Hive, and will give Captains Lee and Hamilton some time off as leads in my next long-form effort ... he and Jetson Black, who was a guest in last year's Nanowrimo ... boy will THAT be a story ... meanwhile, you know how certain Dubois brothers are not pulling their load for their parents in THIS story? We may find this week that "this time, they have gone too far," and big brother Jean-Paul may have to lay down the law ...
Okay, you have my attention! I'm so looking forward to your book store so that we can easily find all these stories!
And excellent trailer for "this time, they have gone too far"!
I need to take a week off from creating to even attempt to get that bookstore under control ... I produce regularly in FOUR communities ... but it is coming along ... I may time my break with the Ink Well break so I can have it all in place by the beginning of the year... meanwhile, la familie Dubois will be getting some things under control shortly, as a team effort ... editing this week's story to get it out to the Ink Well this evening (or, early tomorrow, depending on your time zone)!
Indeed! We are doing the same in The Ink Well, using the break to do other things that we need concentrated time for. One blessing is that we can add to it over time, so I may concentrate on a core structure and more as we can.