“Lemme go back a lil’, I think it’ll add some much-needed context. This is before the diner and the *men in black*, before my trip to Paris and the sheriff’s wife… this goes all the way back to childhood, my friend.” Remy leaned back against the chair, his eyes narrowing like he was about to unearth some buried piece of himself. I noticed his frame then—tall, maybe six feet at most, but lanky. His arms, still muscled under the layers of time, hinted at a dangerous past hidden beneath the ink crawling up his neck. Tattoos like shadows just below the collar, barely concealed.
I figured I’d let him go on. There was something gnawing at my gut. The guy was obviously a hustler, but maybe there was more to the story. Hell, it was better than going home to the wife and Bowser’s slobber. I wasn’t drunk enough to spend another night in the doghouse.
“I was born the son of a carpenter,” he began, his voice soft but carrying a weight. “My father built Lutherville and Goan Pass with his own two hands. Had the emotional capacity of a desert stone, but he raised me with a strong hand.” He smiled faintly, like he could almost hear the thud of his father’s hammer echoing in his head. “Now, my mother, she was the lover of the two. God’s gift to this land. I swore she could make the ground sprout in any season. A devout Christian woman…”
**Memories**
“Remy!” The voice was bright and commanding, cutting through the thick Louisiana air like a summer storm. A beautiful, brown-skinned woman stood at the edge of a weathered porch, her head wrapped in a vibrant scarf, her body draped in a floral-print cotton dress that fluttered lightly in the breeze.
She smiled as she cupped her hands to her mouth. “Boy, yo ears still ain’t workin’?”
A young Remy lay on his back in the front yard, a makeshift world unfolding in his hands. He flew a toy UFO, chasing a plastic dinosaur through an imagined sky, completely absorbed in his game.
His mother’s figure came into focus as she stepped off the porch, into the small gated front yard. Her lips moved again, but the words were muffled, distant. The swim hole had left him with an ear infection the week before. Doc LePell said it’d take a few more days for the hearing to return.
With a grin, Remy rolled over, shaking off the dust. He scrambled to his feet as his mother reached out her hand. Small and trusting, he placed his hand in hers and followed her back inside.
The sun still hung heavy in the sky, casting long, burning shadows over the porch. It was 6:30, that hour when the light slanted just right, setting the world on fire before it sank below the horizon.
“Your father’s gonna be a bit behind today, lil’ love,” his mother wrote on a small notepad, sliding it across the kitchen table with a playful smile as she put the final touches on dinner. “So we get to listen to a new record before he gets home. Our little treat, Rem.”
She moved with grace through the room, humming softly to herself as she picked up a small stack of vinyl records. Every Wednesday, she’d go grocery shopping, and the market was next to a record shop. It was their tradition—one new record for the family to sit around and listen to, usually something light, something soulful.
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But this time, there was a glimmer of something different in her eyes as she pulled a particular record from the stack. It had been given to her by a traveling salesman, a strange man who had all sorts of odd trinkets and jewelry. But it was the record that caught her eye.
The title on the cover read: *You’ll Wish You Could Go Back.* Remy would never forget it, though it was like the name seared itself into his mind before he even realized it. His mother seemed delighted as she placed it on the turntable, setting the needle down with a gentle hand.
The sound was low at first, just a soft hiss before the music came through. Something familiar yet distant. The record skipped once, then twice, but his mother carefully fixed it each time.
Then, suddenly, the world shifted.
Remy turned his head, and when he looked back, his mother was gone. Not gone like she’d stepped out of the room, but *gone.* She didn’t return for a day and a night.
When she did finally come back, Remy’s father yelled until the sun rose the next morning. The whole house trembled with the sound of his rage. His mother just stood there, changed somehow, like the light inside her had been snuffed out. Something darker had taken its place. Her words came slower after that, her eyes lost their warmth.
“My father said it was drugs,” Remy’s voice cracked, bringing me back to the bar. “Said schizophrenia ran in her family. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t something you could diagnose or medicate away. She saw somethin’ more.”
He let the words linger like smoke in the air, staring into his glass as if searching for something he lost a long time ago.
And damn if I didn’t feel the weight of it too.
**side note on Remy’s mother **
**The Storm that Killed a Family**
As the weeks turned into months, my mother’s decline was steady but brutal, like watching a storm tear through the only home you’ve ever known, piece by piece. She’d wander the house at odd hours, her hands shaking, muttering to herself about things that weren’t there—things I couldn’t see but that haunted her every moment. Some nights, I’d wake to find her standing in front of the window, staring out into the dark bayou as if something out there was calling her. She’d hum strange melodies that sent chills down my spine, her eyes distant, unrecognizable.
The woman who once filled our home with laughter and warmth had become a shadow of herself. Her hair, once neatly wrapped in bright scarves, became unkempt, her skin pale and clammy, her dresses hanging loose on her frail frame. My father, a man who could break stone with his hands, looked smaller every day. He didn’t know how to fix her, and it was eating him alive. The arguments between them turned into silence, then that silence stretched into weeks. He’d sit at the dinner table, hands trembling, staring at his food while my mother would sit across from him, mumbling cryptic phrases under her breath.
It was after one of those nights that we found her in the yard, barefoot, walking in circles in the mud. She was holding something in her hands—a record, the same one she’d played the night she changed. She was shaking so bad she couldn’t even speak. That’s when my father knew it was time. The doctors said it was a breakdown, that her mind couldn’t handle the weight of whatever she was carrying, but they didn’t understand.
The day we took her to the hospital was a quiet one, an oppressive kind of silence. The kind that makes you feel like the walls are closing in. My father’s face was a mask of grim determination as he helped her into the car. She barely resisted, her eyes glazed over, staring at nothing. I watched from the doorway, the only witness to the collapse of the life we once knew.
The hospital room was stark and sterile, a cold contrast to the warmth that had once defined our home. My mother lay on the bed, looking more like a child than a woman. The doctors talked about treatment plans and medication, but none of it seemed to matter. The light in her eyes was gone, snuffed out by something that couldn’t be fixed with pills or therapy.
She would spend her days in that hospital, drifting in and out of a fog, her mind forever trapped in the dark space that record had opened. The doctors would try to diagnose, to explain, but it was clear to me: what had taken her wasn’t something they could see or measure. It was an emptiness, a darkness, something that had reached out from beyond the veil of normalcy and consumed her.
And as I sat there, watching her fade further away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the record had never just been a simple piece of music. It was a harbinger, a dark omen that had set the course for our lives, twisting them into something unrecognizable.