In Class Exercise: Setting

Landscape:

-In the Louisiana bayou

-murky oxbow lake off the Mississippi River

-General Grant hid his ships there during the Civil War

-cypress trees/knees with Spanish moss hanging from them

-dock that’s been added on to as the family has grown and the lake has receded

-mosquitoes that will carry you away

Ambiance:

-spooky

-rural

-antiquated

Characters:

-a lonely old woman whose family lives far away

-she is shriveled with age, but still retains the dignity of someone with money

-her face is riddled with laugh lines and sun spots

-she clutches a coffee cup filled with community coffee and a dash of Kentucky bourbon

Paragraph:

In the Louisiana bayou, on the shore of one of the state’s oldest Oxbow lakes, sits the happiest house in Caddo parish. The house is happy because it is waiting, but the woman on the sun porch is unhappy because she doesn’t believe she can wait any longer. You see, the house is more patient than her, it always has been. She would like to go take a dip in the lake, maybe fish a bit off the dock, but the weather today had other plans. So she’ll drink her morning coffee with bourbon here on the porch and watch the rain drip drip drip into the lake. It’s hard to imagine that over a hundred years ago the lake was filled with warships. Today, it has only one small one motor boat captained by the man who only fishes in the rain. He claims he catches more fish then, but she is certain the only thing he’ll catch today is a cold. It is unseasonably cold for July. She hopes that it will warm up before her family arrives next week. Then she will be happy. Then she won’t have to wait.