The radio at my uncle’s camp on Bayou Lafourche only got one station, and the station only ever had one man talking on it. He read fishing reports. Wind southeast ten to fifteen, seas two feet, speckled trout biting on the outgoing tide by the Grand Isle bridge. He had a slow voice and he never played music and he never said the call letters.
The summer I was fifteen I noticed he was reading the reports for the next day. Then I noticed he was right. My uncle told me not to talk about it, and to take the radio inside when a storm was coming, because that was when the man started reading other things. Names, mostly. My uncle said you did not want to be home when he read yours.
The camp is gone now, taken by Ida. I drove down there last month and stood where it had been. In the marsh grass, under the water, I could hear a slow voice reading the tides.
This is as far as the free sample goes — the rest of Bayou Hymnal is waiting for you.
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