The name on the line marked informant was Gerald Vidrine, the mortician who ran Vidrine Chapel on Rue Magnolia, a soft spoken man in a gray suit who had handled the paperwork for half of Biloxi and never raised his voice in his life. Ms. Delacroix at Keesler Federal laid the three applications side by side on her desk. The first two listed people who had truly passed, and Gerald had signed them honestly, as he had signed thousands. The third listed me. It carried a forged certificate that looked perfect, and the date of my passing was a Tuesday in March, when I was in fact eating shrimp at the Back Bay.
I drove to the chapel myself. Gerald was in his office arranging flowers in a glass vase, and he stood up when I came through the door like a man who had been waiting a year for it. He did not deny a thing. He said Darryl came to him in February with a story about a family loan and a signature that needed fixing, and a white envelope with five thousand dollars in it. Gerald had said no twice. The third time, his own roof had a hole in it and his wife needed new glasses. He swallowed and looked at me. “Mr. Thibodeaux, I have wished every night that I could take it back.”
I did not say anything for a while. A clock ticked on the wall. I thought about the long years I had known this man, and of the casseroles he brought to our house when Lorraine passed, and I felt a sorrow that was nearly as heavy as the anger. Then I asked him to put on his coat. We drove together to Keesler Federal, and Gerald told Ms. Delacroix and her manager everything in a steady voice, from the envelope to the stamp. Afterward, in the parking lot, he said Monique knew nothing, and he said it so firmly that I believed him.
A forged certificate of passing gave one retired ice man the length of a single morning to bring his family back to the truth in Biloxi.
I gave my terms to Darryl in the boat shed behind the old Gulf Coast Ice plant, with my grandson Jaylen standing beside me and Monique in the doorway. The loan would be cancelled and the boat returned to the dealer. Darryl would repay the dealer every fee, plus the five thousand dollars he gave Gerald, which I would send to the families who had really been hurt. In return I would not press charges against a man my daughter had married. He would also write an honest letter to the credit union. I handed him a pen. I had brought one from my pocket.
Darryl denied it for about ten seconds, which for him was a long time. Then it came out all at once. He had wanted the boat for two years. He thought that if I was listed as gone, the application would pass without a cosigner, and he could claim later it was a clerical error. He had never thought of it as stealing, he said, only as borrowing from a future that would be his anyway. Monique put her hand over her mouth. She had known nothing about any of it, and the shock on her face was real.
Darryl snatched the pen and the unsigned letter, meaning to run to his truck and drive to the dealer ahead of the paperwork, and he bolted out of the boat shed and along the dock toward the parking lot with his shoes slapping on the boards. Jaylen shouted, “Granddaddy, he is getting away!” I told him to take a breath. The only road to the dealer that morning ran straight past the harbor, and I knew exactly what day it was.
It was the Blessing of the Fleet. Forty shrimp boats were lined along the harbor road in a parade of flags and paper flowers, and a priest in white was sprinkling holy water from a rowboat while children on the pier tossed beads. Darryl ran into the middle of it and could not get out. A little girl hung a plastic crown around his neck. A deckhand handed him a boiled crawfish. A band struck up a Cajun waltz, and an old woman pulled him into a dance. By the time he broke free, Jaylen and I were calmly waiting beside his truck.
The credit union cancelled the loan and recorded the whole matter. Gerald lost his license for a year and gave up the chapel to his nephew, but he cooperated in every way and was never charged. Darryl repaid every cent and took a job on a shrimp boat out of Biloxi, which he disliked deeply and did well. Monique stayed in our house for two months while she decided what she wanted. She decided to stay married, with conditions. Every evening she cooked for me, and every evening she apologized, and every evening I told her it was never hers to apologize for.
In the name of Lorraine, who passed in 2021, I started the Lorraine Thibodeaux Dockside Fund. It pays for ice, refrigeration and small repairs for working fishing families in Harrison, Jackson and Hancock counties. In the first year we kept forty seven boats on the water and rebuilt the cooler at the Back Bay market. One shrimper named Dewey Landry gave me a five pound bag of fresh Gulf shrimp every Friday for a year, and he refused to take a dime for them, no matter how I argued.
On the last day of the season, Monique and Jaylen and I ran the old ice truck down to the harbor for one more delivery. Darryl met us on the dock in rubber boots, sunburned and smelling of diesel, and he helped Jaylen carry the blocks into the cold room without being asked. I stood in the wind and watched the pelicans circle. Lorraine used to say that ice is only water that has made a decision. I thought about that, and I decided to forgive him, mostly.