Sea Lovers (32 page)

For four more days and nights, Nikos suffered. Bleeding relieved him for a few hours, then the fever shot up again and he couldn't stand. Mathilde finally resorted to cutting his soles, and just as the farrier had described, a stream of pus, blood, and gas erupted from the wounds. She wrapped the feet with gauze soaked in vinegar, and the next day he got up again, though he was so weak from hunger and loss of blood he had to hang his arms over the stall gate to keep from sinking down.

It's never easy to watch an animal in pain, but if half of that animal is a man and he puts his trust entirely in your hands and you love him, well, what must that do to you? It wore Mathilde down to a hard nub of despair. The fever returned; the horn of the hooves cracked at the toe; on one foot the bone protruded through the sole. Nikos lay on the floor sweating and moaning. He said that he could see his island; that he would take her there. He called out names she didn't recognize, spoke in a language she didn't understand. His pulse was slow, his lips dry and swollen; tears leaked noiselessly from his eyes. The last night she sat on the floor with her back to the wall and his head in her lap, moistening his lips and forehead with water from the bucket; it was all she could do. He slept a little and so did she, her head dropped forward on her chest.

When she woke he was gazing up at her, his eyes spectral and distant. “Do you have a pistol?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I have my father's.”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“I do,” she said.

“Go and fetch it, dear heart,” he said. “I'll never get up again.”

Joseph Petrie, Mathilde's trusted groom, walking along the path to the barn, saw through the heavy morning mist a wraith of a figure—he thought it was a ghost—stalking through the knee-high grass between the house and the old storage barn. Her head was bowed, her hair a wild tangle falling over her shoulders. The wet grass parted before her as she advanced. She seemed to float across the field like a skiff in a marsh. He crossed himself and hurried along, not looking back until he was at the barn door. She was gone. He went inside, greeted his equine charges, and began his morning chores. He was forking a net of hay into the pony's trough when he heard the sharp pop of a shot fired at some distance. Joseph thought little of it; doubtless it was an early hunter out to bring down a duck for his dinner. The pony shoved him aside, eager for his breakfast, and the groom laughed softly, patting his thick neck. He was an old fellow, his mistress's first mount. Joseph took up a pitchfork and began mucking out the stall. He heard the
coo-coo
of a dove. A flush of sparrows rose up from the azalea bush outside the window and then he heard footsteps, unhurried and light, along the path. He didn't think it could be his mistress. She had been too ill to come out for over a week, and even if she had recovered, she wouldn't come from that direction. Then he recalled the ghost he'd seen in the meadow. His scalp prickled. He stepped into the aisle and propped his fork against the wall, squinting at the bright empty space beyond the open door. The footsteps stopped. He blinked, touched his eyes and looked again.

A woman stepped into the light. He would say later that she simply appeared out of the air. She was dressed in a summer gown covered by an apron so saturated with blood a butcher would have declined to wear it. Her head was lowered, her arms hung limp at her sides, her left hand gripped a pistol. It was the pistol Joseph recognized, his dead master's pistol, and then the woman lifted her eyes and he saw that it was not a ghost but a real woman, and that it was Mathilde. “I need your help,” she said.

“What's happened?” he cried, bustling toward her with the certainty, he would later vow, that she had come back from some other world, and as it turned out, he was right.

“A poor, sick monster has dragged himself into the feed barn,” she said. “I've put him out of his misery. I want you to help me bury him.”

Joseph Petrie was well paid and sworn to secrecy, but he told his wife what he buried that day, and she told a friend, and soon the story, embroidered with colorful variations, was general knowledge. A few incredulous locals wanted to sneak in from an adjoining farm, dig up the grave, and see with their own eyes what was in it, but Father Desmond got wind of the scheme and threatened anyone who took part in such an unholy business with eternal damnation. So Nikos was left to rest in whatever peace he could find. Mathilde withdrew from the world, at first because she was too heartbroken, and then because she was too ill. By Christmas she was dead. Before she died she gave a great deal of money away, all to the benefit of local charities and schools. She endowed a library, a music series, and a racetrack. Her passing was an occasion of sadness to her community, and her wishes regarding her own remains, which were detailed in a codicil to her will, were respected. She asked to be buried without ceremony next to the unmarked grave near the pine woods. Joseph Petrie knew where this grave was and should be consulted on the matter. She bequeathed him a prime piece of land, all her horses, and her thanks for keeping the promise he had once made to her. For her own grave she requested a plain stone with her name and dates engraved upon it, no more. For the unmarked grave she ordered a second stone to bear the name Nikos and a peculiar epitaph: “His soul goes whinnying down the wind.”

Over time much has changed on the bayou. A hurricane blew down the ruins of Mathilde Benoit's house a few years ago, and the rising water washed out the last bridges and the few remaining houses in the town. Most of these were owned by fishermen and trappers, who survived the storm by jumping out their windows into their boats. The rice fields turned brackish long ago, and the only thing that flourishes in the mud is crayfish. In the spring the heavy rains flood the former streets and fields, right up to the edge of the pine forest, but when the waters recede, the two gravestones are still in place. If you go to Acadiana in the dry season, you will find them there.