Rick Duhé just wanted to go home.
* * *
"OK, Mom," Rick Duhé shouts into the phone. "Well, I hope you are having a glorious birthday evening."
The thunder is so loud that Duhé's voice can hardly be heard; lightning has knocked out his connection twice. Each bolt seems to grow brighter and brighter, illuminating his small living room. There isn't much to see: a broken wicker rocking chair, a rowing ergometer, a rickety card table, and two folding chairs. A six-pack of Cajun Cola sits on the mantle, each can turned so that it faces out in perfect alignment -- a trick Duhé learned in the soda business.
Hanging up the phone, Duhé welcomes me in and offers me a seat. He is greatly relieved that neither of his parents mentioned Cajun Cola. Even now, in April 1990, nearly a year after his bankruptcy, his dad will usually ask, "Has anything happened with it?" What he's really asking, as Duhé knows, is whether they will see any of their money again. Duhé has asked me not to reveal how much they invested; he wants to spare them further embarrassment. Suffice it to say that they invested far more than anyone else. "I know the money was given out of love, but something like this can tarnish your relationship with your parents," Duhé says softly. "It's more me than them. I don't think I'll ever feel OK about who I am until I pay them back."
Of course, they wanted to protect him. But they couldn't do much. Last July his mother sent him a clip from the local newspaper. Thought you'd better read this, she wrote in a note, before you get into town. All he had to read was the headline: "Cajun Cola Sinks." The same reporter who had heralded Cajun Cola's arrival was now announcing its departure. "I guess you know you've made it when your bankruptcy hits the first business page," says Duhé. "I was a celebrity. My failure could not go unnoticed." The story reported that Duhé had filed for personal bankruptcy, a Chapter 7 liquidation, listing more than $500,000 in debts with assets estimated at less than $50,000. His attorney, Ralph Scott Bowie Jr., figures that maybe half of those debts relate to Cajun Cola. It was hard to tell, he admits, because Duhé didn't have much documentation. Some of the creditors' names, though, are familiar: Lin-Chris Munchies, $3,500; KTUX-FM, $10,000; Eisenberg, $14,000; Daytona Budweiser, $16,000; Nancy Menasco, $20,000. Documents list about 75 creditors.
For a time, Duhé talked of reorganizing. I'll take a job, he told Bowie, and work on Cajun Cola in my spare time. But after reviewing the documents and talking with Duhé, Bowie concluded that "he had no apparent ability to reorganize." A friend from his church, Bowie practically had to deprogram Duhé. "Put Cajun Cola out of your life and behind you forever," he told him. "Line up all your debts, declare bankruptcy, and start a new life, a life without Cajun Cola."
A life, he might have added, without many of the things Duhé had relied on: the Honda Accord he used to load with Cajun Cola; his tile-roofed home, from which he conducted much business; and, most irreplaceable of all, his pride. "It hurts to lose," says Duhé. "For a long time, I tried not to think about it."
Look at how far you got, folks told him. How many people could come up with something like that and actually make it happen? Others assured him that his failure was just a detour on the way to success, a "mini-M.B.A.," as Duhé puts it, "in the school of hard knocks." After all, he came out of no where and sold 30,000 cases of the stuff, more than 700,000 cans, which translates into roughly $150,000. "The kid will be back," predicts Canfield. Some days, even Duhé believes it.
But then there are times like this rainy night in Atlanta -- where he came, he says, "to forget Cajun Cola and get a fresh start" -- when he feels as haunted as he did in July 1989, creeping back to Shreveport to confront his creditors at a formal meeting. The nine-hour drive gave him plenty of shuddering time. What if I run into someone I owe money to? he worried. "I was afraid," he says. "In Shreveport, Rick Duhé will always be remembered for Cajun Cola. And there was a time when the mayor and the town were very appreciative of the positive press I was bringing them." Arriving at his parents' home after dark, "I just wanted to turn around and leave," he remembers. Instead, he lay awake, "anxious about who would show up," he says. In his mind, he saw Canfield pointing an accusing finger, a red-faced Eisenberg, a mob of creditors calling him a con man. "In my heart," says Duhé, "I know that's not what I am."
Before the creditors' meeting, he stopped in on an old friend, looking for moral support. "Well," he said along about mid-morning, "I guess I've got to go face them." He straightened his tie, drew a deep breath, and marched out the door.
No one showed up.
Feeling "pretty beat up," Duhé drove back to Atlanta, giving himself a pep talk. At least he had a job now. His former employer had hired him back in its Atlanta office. No, he couldn't go back to being the person he was before Cajun Cola, he reasoned. And he couldn't be Mr. Cajun Cola anymore, either. He needed a new identity, one that absorbed what had happened to him. "I don't want to be an old man, sitting in a rocking chair saying, Remember 1988? Remember The Wall Street Journal?" he says. "That peak in Shreveport was it. I don't think I'll ever see anything like that again. I need to heal."
And as Duhé well knows -- he holds a master's degree in counseling, after all -- catharsis is part of the process.
The sunny morning after the ferocious rains, I visit him again. He offers me one of the folding chairs. "I haven't really settled in," he says. Soon he is telling the Cajun Cola story al
