Postmark Bayou Chene (17 page)

It had been three weeks since the explosion. No one needed to spread the news that York was recovering under Mary Ann's reluctant care. Their arguments could be heard by anyone who paddled past the front of their big house or walked the path behind it. Eventually, the patient was seen stomping around his compound, spraddle-legged under a voluminous nightgown.

The letter that led to the blast shook up more than the Bertram marriage. It shook loose something in Mame, like a clock that gets jarred back into motion after being stopped for too long. That first night she and Mary Ann took turns sitting up with York. The next morning, when her nephew went home in the pony cart, Mame rode alongside Mary Ann, carrying a fresh bundle of comfrey and the jar of honey.

She tirelessly nursed her ailing nephew through the first critical week without coming home. When she moved back to her houseboat, she brought meals to York and Mary Ann from Adam's kitchen. She tended to York during the days, while Mary Ann kept up with orders at the sawmill and charcoal pit. People began to notice that Mame's eyes focused on the present, and she carried her end of conversations as if she had not withdrawn for more than a decade.

When asked about the change, she shrugged and said, “I've grieved long enough. We lost so many during the war. After, when the sugar didn't come back, whole families left. Losing Josie, Lauf, and Beatrice on top of the others, it was too much, I reckon.”

She stopped and thought a moment before continuing.

“All those years I paid notice only to the ones leaving and dying. But there was life coming back too. Some young people like York coming home and bringing a wife from outside. New people like the Stocketts moving in from other places. I can't do anything to help the dead and gone, but these young ones are my family too. It's time for me to come back. Past time.”

If the letter dragged Mame back into the life of the community, it seemed to drive Fate away. Because of Mame staying with York, several days passed before anyone noticed that Fate wasn't living at their little houseboat tied up at the post office dock. Debris tangled in his nets as the water fell. No one saw his boat maneuvering the bayous around the Chene. Even though he had often visited around to the other swamp communities, Fate had never been away from the Chene for long. Just when Adam started to worry that they may need to drag the bayous for him, word came that Fate had been spotted upriver around Atchafalaya Station.

The sighting brought as much speculation as his disappearance. Was it a coincidence that he just up and left the very day that letter arrived? Did he think anyone cared that his grandfather wasn't really Elder Landry? Mame, herself, said she had not kept it a secret from him; she just never thought to mention it. Maybe it would have come up if Lauf had lived, but what with the drownings and all the grief that followed, she just never thought about it. Ever. Even if the news of his father's paternity startled Fate, why would he just up and leave?

No one felt Fate's absence like Loyce. She rocked and wondered. Other than when she was away at school, she had never been separated from her cousin for so long. Cousin? Not exactly. What was he now, anyway?

Her little family just kept on shrinking. Somewhere along the way—she didn't even remember when—she had found out that Josie's parents were Maudie and Elder, making
them
Loyce's real grandparents, not Mame and Elder. The news didn't affect her one way or the other. How could she miss someone she never knew?

It wasn't like losing her mother. Loyce still tried to summon her voice, her touch, the smell of her skin, but the sensations faded more each year. Even so, being lonesome for her didn't fade. It simply changed from the practical needs of a child to the deeper yearning of a young woman needing guidance into the world of adults.

For most of her life Adam, Fate, and Mame had to supply all Loyce had in the way of family. With Adam so busy and distracted, Mame so absent, she depended on Fate for help learning to tie her shoes or navigating the plank walks. He was there for whatever she needed, without ever reminding her that he had lost
both
parents.

Now the letter had changed all that by taking away Fate—one-third of her remaining family. If Mame and Michaud were Fate's grandparents, then Fate wasn't even her cousin. The more she thought on it, the more her anger grew. How was she supposed to act around him now if they weren't even kin? Is that how he was feeling about her? Was that the reason he was making himself so scarce?

As Loyce mulled over these questions on the porch, inside the post office conversations settled back into routine happenings. Customers were catching up with each other in a steady hum. Children chased around the front yard, bare feet thumping whenever they touched down on the springy plank walks. Chickens fluttered out of the way, sometimes even launching into short flights to the porch banister or a low branch in an oak tree. Boat whistles and bells sounded through the trees. Three steamboats had docked at daylight, their cooks, crews, and passengers adding to the bustle in the store.

A breeze stirred through the open window. Leaf-shaped light filtered through the sycamore tree onto the neat shelves lined with goods. Bolts of bright cloth contrasted with the sun-bleached bonnets and dresses of the customers. The smell of tarred nets and fresh fish wafted through the window to blend with fragrant cheese, coffee beans, leather, and soap inside. Layered scents of trees, soft earth, and the cow lot drifted in from the back.

“Adam, a body can look forward to coming here now that we don't have to dig through boxes and barrels for every little thing,” said a customer with one child on her hip and another holding onto her skirt.

“Well, I'd be amiss to take the credit,” Adam replied good- naturedly from the post office corner, where he was bent over a piece of lined paper, helping Madame Gilchrist write a letter. “That's Mrs. Barclay's doings; be sure and tell her before you go. I saw her pick up a comb and head out to tackle Loyce's braid,” he chuckled.

Out on the porch Roseanne was untying the twine and separating Loyce's lopsided braid into three soft tangles.

“For someone who knits nets, you surely can't make a braid,” she was saying. “Most of it comes loose and falls around your face.”

“Well, it's not like it gets in the way of my seeing,” Loyce said, but with none of her usual spirit. “Mame, on her good days, used to braid it up high like you do, but she never showed me how. So I just wind it up, tie it off, and let it be. It's good enough.”

“For one thing it's too soft,” said C.B. “What your hair needs is some body.”

She'd arrived unannounced through the back of the dogtrot. Roseanne sniffed. Loyce tilted her head in greeting but didn't offer a comeback.

“If you'd get you some of that olive wax pomade, you could make it stay in place a week or more,” C.B. continued, patting her own frizz, which Roseanne thought leaned even more toward the greenish side of yellow this morning. “When I couldn't afford olive wax pomade, I'd use egg white mixed with water, but that can get to smelling after a few days. Even so, when I barely had enough to eat, I'd save an egg in case I needed it for my hair.”

Roseanne sniffed again.

“You ain't getting sick, are you, Mrs. Barclay, what with all that sniffing?” C.B. prattled on, without stopping for a breath herself. “You being such a robust sort of woman and all, I wouldn't think you get sick much. In fact, if I was put to it, I'd have to say you are even more robust than you were last time I came over. I always been delicate, myself. Got bones like a chicken. Look at this wrist. Wouldn't you say that brings to mind a little ol' chicken neck? Just ain't never been able to get no flesh on me. I even tried Dr. Earling's Weight Gain Tonic that was guaranteed or my money back. I didn't gain even one little bit. Well, what did I do? Got my friend Minnie to write that doctor asking for my money back. She wrote a good letter too. But we had to leave that place, St. Louis maybe, before my money ever came. Sometimes you gotta leave a place before you're good and ready, if you know what I mean. Hey, you could write to him again for me, Mrs. Barclay; it was guaranteed. I'll even pay you for your time out of what I get.”

“C.B., you fall for anything anyone wants to sell you,” Roseanne said, stopping short of another sniff. “Like those French female pills to get rid of your baby. You could have died if you'd actually found some for sale.”

“Well, you ain't telling no tales there, Mrs. Barclay,” C.B. said, perching on the edge of a porch chair, her small belly barely showing under her skirt. “My friend Pearl's teeth plumb flaked off to nothing one time when she took 'em, but she said that was small enough price to pay for not having a young'un to raise. Barely able to keep her own body to soul as it was. Don't know how I got so careless, myself, but I'd just started suspecting it was on the way when Sam came on the scene. I knew I couldn't work much longer, and nothing had gone right for me in Natchez anyway. This here was the first store we came on since I knowed for sure. Even if I could have got 'em, by that time it'd probably be too late.

“Sam, now, he's looking forward to it. He said a fambly's a fambly and most men never know if the kids they raising is theirs or not. He said at least he'll know this one ain't, which he figures puts him a step ahead of most men. I reckon I'll make my mind up to do right by it, but I ain't looking forward to it.”

“Roseanne, I've picked out the fabric for my dress.” A voice rose above the din in the store. Giving Loyce's hair a final pat, Roseanne whisked back inside the store with a proprietary air, taking her place behind the counter.

“I'll be glad to order that gabardine for you, Viola, but you know, for just seventy-five cents more, you can get that dress ready made.” Roseanne paged to the clothing section and slid the catalog back to the customer side. “When you think about how long a gabardine dress lasts and the time you'd put in making it, you might do better that way. You'd be saving the cost of buttons and thread too.”

“Hmmmmmm,” Viola mused and pulled the catalog closer. Roseanne turned away to take care of other customers while the shopper made up her mind.

The bell, another one of Roseanne's ideas, tinkled as a new customer entered.

“Well lookee here! If it ain't the bamboozler from New Orleens!” A sooty deckhand removed his hat with an exaggerated bow in Roseanne's direction and grinned with checkerboard teeth.

“I thought you'd be long gone to meet your thieving, slipperyassed card shark of a husband by now. How long's it been since we dumped you off—two, three months? Reckon maybe he found someone else to help him spend all that money he stole?”

The murmuring sounds of commerce stopped as heads turned first to the man in the doorway and then to Roseanne. They saw the blood drain from her cheeks, making her eyes even darker.

“You should be ashamed to even look me in the face after abandoning me in the middle of the swamp!” she spit back.

The stranger didn't flinch.

“I'd guess you'd be the expert on shame seeing as how your man left you behind to face the crew and passengers when he took off in the night with our money and our lifeboat to boot. You mean he ain't even got in touch with you about where to meet? Or are you just waiting until you steal enough from Adam's cash box to join him?”

“Well, Mrs. Barclay, we got more in common than I thought.” C.B. peered around the stranger in the doorway. “I used to run a scheme like that, too, started it early with the peddler. See, we'd come on a boat all dressed in poorly clothes toting nothing but a little croaker sack of belongings. We'd carry on something fierce about being so scared 'cause we couldn't swim and we's so poor cause we'd lost the farm and was on our way to stay with relatives. Well, about two miles upstream from some little town, I'd start hollering that my daddy had done fell overboard. I'd jump up and down and point toward a spot in the current by the wheel. Oh, people'd gather 'round and hug me and point with me, looking for him. Before you know it, some guy would whip off his hat and start passing it around, taking up a collection for the poor little orphaned girl. I'd get off at that next town, and there the peddler would be waiting for me.”

“How'd he not drown for real?” someone asked.

“Well, all he did was just wear a rubber life vest under his clothes,” C.B. continued. “He could swim ashore in about two miles. Only once did he miss his bank and ended up at the next town and like to never caught up with me. It was during that two weeks I figured out I could do even better on my own!”

“My husband and I did no such thing!” Roseanne slammed the pattern book on the counter. “I just woke up, and he was gone. I don't know what happened to him. I don't know about any money. All I know is that he was not on the boat when morning came.”

With that she swept around the end of the counter and up the stairs.

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