Chapter 7: Jambalaya

Two days. She’d been gone only two days and Richard missed his Smokey – personally and professionally. When the call came from Colonel Medford, he was on a ridge with two experienced jumpers, Marcie and Crazy Edie. “The marshal’s office called with a request for help. They just learned there’s a passel of idiots at some kind of medical seminar at the Harakiri Lodge. The burn is already started, and any northward wind shift means the lodge is torched. Leave a portal with Wainwright and Pournelle, put on your marshal’s panties, and take the backup portal to the lodge. If the wind changes, you have about forty-five minutes to get there and get the morons out.”

‘Marcie’ Wainwright and ‘Crazy Edie’ Pournelle, that would be Marcel Wainwright and Édith Pournelle, late of Cajun country Louisiana. The pair had much in common with Smokey and Richard, especially their commitment to ridding the Earth of Sa’arm.

Crazy Edie’s mother was Édith ‘Ditte’ Zabelle, a French au pair who fell in love with and married her employer’s younger brother Léon Pournelle.

And how did a Cajun man end up with a Yankee last name? Marcie’s daddy, Harold Urban Wainwright, was stationed at Ft Polk when he met and married Marcelle Petit. He ‘mustered out’ and never left.

Marcie and Edie paired up in middle school at recess when Edie charged a trio of bullies who were tying a string of Black Cat Firecrackers to a Bluetick puppy’s tail. Attacking from their rear, she managed to down two before T-Bob Landry whirled and drew back his foot. He was about to kick her when Marcel boomed from the side, “Leave that crazy coonass be, or I kick your asses four ways from Sunday! And if I see or hear about you messin’ with another dog, you won’t have an ass left to kick!”

He turned to help Edie to her feet, only to be met with her fist. “You gotta earn the right to call me a coonass, mister!” Then she grabbed both ears and laid a kiss on him, “But I haveta admit you made a very good start.” She kissed him again as the playground monitor approached and collared them both.

“We didn’t do nuthin’,” whined T-Bob, pointing, “That crazy piece a’ poontang attacked us from behind, and that pussy, Marcie threatened me.” Marcie’s new nickname stuck through sports, college, and into his smoke jumping years. He wore it proudly – sorta like the boy named Sue.

The event got all balled up with the school’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, with Marcel and Edith expelled for fighting, but the dog-abusing yahoos got off Scot-free. Apparently, the policy allowed for the abuse of a dog but not its defense. When told of their expulsion, the pair didn’t wait for parents to retrieve them but exited the principal’s office and walked arm-in-arm out the school’s front door – ignoring the shouts to stop.