✍Twenty-one Years Post-K / June 2026
~ Fiction ~
Roman à clef, cher!
Created AI-free
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
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Yours Truly in a Swamp
June 2026
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✍
Yours Truly in a Swamp
June 2026
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Twenty-one Years Post-K
by
Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
Best viewed for color contrast on a computer
or phone screen with a black background.
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The Sunset Limited
outbound from New Orleans to Los Angeles,
and points between, is
Amtrak's designated Train #1.
Sylvia and Dillard are in the Observation Car having coffee from the train's snack bar, with sandwiches they bought on Saint Claude Avenue in New Orleans. They are listening to Balthazar, who recently repatriated from an offshore oil rig job.
He arranged to join up with the two
Red Warrior Women
for the ride back to Lafayette.
They met at the loading gate under the Conrad Albrizio murals.
The murals, dating from the 1950s, were nearly lost to lime blooms
following Hurricane Katrina, when the Union Passenger Terminal was pressed into housing prisoners from the nearby flooded
Orleans Parish Prison ~
and the terminal was without air conditioning.
"In 1934," Balthazar continues his story, "Myrna Loy and William Powel stared aboard this very train in the film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's mystery novel turned stylish black-and-white post-prohibition cinematic jubilation,
THE THIN MAN.
"In the final scene, outside of Lafayette, the train fades down the tracks flashing a drumhead round sign on its last carriage, proclaiming: Sunset Limited."
Balthazar chews one of the sandwiches and says, "Hard to believe that film was shot ninety-two years ago."
The train has halted near Avondale.
Outside the observation car windows we see mounds of trash marching off to landfill eternity.
Sylvia points at the towering stacks and grumbles,
"On top of Mount Katrina,"
as the mountain of debris is known to locals and train regulars.
Katrina is Hurricane Katrina, which evacuated New Orleans, August 29, 2005
Doors closed, keys turned locks, and Life ended as lived before. Both for the dead (1,392+), and for the living who later returned.
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"The dogs barked,
but the caravan moved on.
"A Turkish proverb," Balthazar tells us.
Our train whistles.
We roll on...
Along the tracks at a brownish green spot on the West Bank past the Huey P. Long Bridge, lays
a ghostly yacht beached
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| Sea Oats |
Mast snapped off and lost.
Discarded vessel.
Forgotten now, twenty years later. Hull so faded you can no longer make out her name. Keel sprung for sure.
There she sits, someone's lost dream sailing along on sea oats grown up to her gunnels.
Further down the line, next to the Mississippi River levee, we pass a small Cajun farmhouse, with outside stairs and unpainted cypress walls. It is surrounded by flocks of grey and white geese.
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| Foie gras |
"Some French Quarter tourist will eat one of those birds' liver tonight,"
Balthazar tells the women.
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"In another ninety-one years the Louisiana Life we live will be lived differently and by new carpetbaggers who will likely love it as we do now.
"That is if it's still here."
We are still here,
and better off as Sailors on a train than geese on a platter.
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© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
LAGNIAPPE DU JOUR:
Next Month's Column 
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posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 6:48 AM
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