Beau Bayou and the Mergirl

Beau Bayou was the finest trumpet player in New Orleans. His real name was something ordinary like Henry Brown, but the girls all called him Beau because as well as being a fine musician he was handsome too. So handsome they said that when he smiled his face lit up like the starry sky over the bayou on a clear summer night.

       Sometimes in the evening after the day’s work was done and everyone had eaten their fill of gumbo or jambalaya or fried catfish or whatever they had to fix up for supper, a little breeze would begin to cool the city. It danced across every front porch and over each back stoop. It even leapt onto the wrought iron balconies up in the fancy French Quarter. The breeze blew for everybody, but mostly it blew for Beau.

       “I can blow high and I can blow low,” it whispered to him. “I can blow fast and I can blow slow. Life is more than just working and eating and going to sleep. Life is for dancing, too.”

       Beau heard and without a word he would pick up his horn and follow that breeze down to the docks. There he would blow a single long note. It echoed up each street and into every open window from the front parlor to the back kitchen.

       All over the city, women would cease gossiping and fanning themselves. Men would stop rolling dice and dealing out cards.

       “Beau is on the bayou.” They’d look at one another with knowing smiles. Any weariness they felt was gone. “Beau is on the bayou tonight.”