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like red paper flowers inside the grayness of the day.” Both bad guys and good guys are con- stantly grilling food in the Robicheaux series, sending “smoke from meat fires” into the at- mosphere. The sporting pastimes of fish- ing, crabbing and boiling shrimp act as a sort of regional universal language of eating for Burke. A thermos of coffee rest- ing on the seat on an early morning drive in the “dampness of predawn” resonates with anyone who has headed out to a fish camp or duck blind, just as unwrapping po’boy sandwiches for lunch also rings true — at least in South Louisiana, it does. These are the routine acts of moving, doing and eating that simultaneously unfold during daily life in Acadiana. As any fan knows, history is central to Dave Robicheaux’s understanding of the world, defining the present and playing a critical plot element in just about all of the novels. It is unsurprising that food helps Burke to transport his readers to a time in Louisiana that some say is either vanishing or has vanished completely already. Cush-cush (or coush coush) is a breakfast dish once common in old-time Cajun homes. A few keystrokes online will reveal numerous recipes for it, but they all start with a mixture of cornmeal, milk, salt and, oftentimes, bak- ing powder. It’s then fried and stirred in a cast-iron skillet with oil until it resembles a

to Elysian Fields Dave’s character reminisces about going there as a boy with his father on Saturday afternoons, in an “era when the plank floors were strewn with football bet- ting cards and green sawdust and the owner served free robin gumbo out of big pots that he set on an oilcloth-covered pool table.” According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, robins, like most other songbirds, became protected species by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Yet custom is often more powerful than the law, a thread woven into James Lee Burke’s depictions of the past. It’s no accident that the gambling and the robin gumbo, both equally illegal, appear in the same sentence! Nostalgic reflections on cush-cush and robin gumbo aid Burke in his creation of what cultural critic Richard Slotkin has termed “mythic space,” or a place in our his- torical imagination that is larger than life and full of the emotions and meaning that define who we are as a people. The term suits per- fectly the Atchafalaya Basin that Burke con- structs within the mind of Dave Robicheaux: a mythical Acadiana before mainstream American culture took over, a place defined by food, its semi-aquatic landscape, and the proud people who inhabited it. “I wanted to drive deep into the Atchafa- laya Swamp,” laments Dave in 2002’s Jolie Blon’s Bounce , “past the confines of reason, into the past, into a world of lost dialects, gator hunters, busthead whiskey, moss har- vesters, Jax beer, trotline runners, moonshin- ers, muskrat trappers, cockfights, bloodred boudin, a jigger of Jim Beam lowered into a frosted schooner of draft, outlaw shrimp- ers, dirty rice black from the pot, hogmeat cooked in rum, Pearl and Regal and Grand Prize and Lone Star iced down in wash- tubs, crawfish boiled with cob corn and artichokes, all of it on the tree-flooded, al- luvial rim of the world, where the tides and the course of the sun were the only measures of time.” In this single rambling sentence, Burke paints a picture of a Cajun subculture mostly vanished today. Yet we might try to re-create this mythic space on our own front porch by placing beer on ice, boiling craw- fish in the yard, and cooking a pot of dirty rice, all in an effort to reconnect with who we once were or, perhaps, wish that we had the chance to be. James Lee Burke turned 82 recently, and Dave Robicheaux is growing older too, it seems. In January 2019, the prolific Mr. Burke published The New Iberia Blues , the 22nd novel in the Dave Robicheaux series that has run, astonishingly, for over 30 years.

crumbly cereal. John Folse — among many others — suggests topping it with milk or cane syrup (traditional touches). Folk tradi- tion suggests the name comes from the North African semolina-based couscous, an idea reinforced by similarities of look and texture. “It’s hard to imagine that a dish so simply pre- pared could taste so good,” notes Folse. In Crusader’s Cross in 2018, an older Dave wistfully reflects on how he and his half-brother Jimmie waited before breakfast for his mother, who “would return from the barn smelling of manure and horse sweat, a pail of frothy milk in one hand and an arm- ful of brown eggs” and who would wash her hands and arms in the sink before filling “our bowls with cush-cush.” We see the healthy and even curative aura of such humble fare in Black Cherry Blues when a character takes in a motherless child: “She raised Tee Beau as her own, fed him cush-cush with a spoon to make him strong…” Later in the same novel, Dave and his young adopted daughter Alafair are in Montana, where he prepares her cush-cush for breakfast. The scene conveys what Louisianians living else- where keenly understand — that no matter how far we stray, food is a ritual that helps us cling to a piece of home. No Robicheaux pilgrimage is complete without visiting the site of Provost’s Pool Room, today the home of an upscale restau- rant called Clementine on Main. In Last Car

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