Postmark Bayou Chene (2 page)

“A dog, Loyce, a drowned dog, or just about anyway,” I grunted and kept on rubbing at that dog's chest. Then I pushed hard right under her rib cage, making water dribble from her mouth.

“What do you mean just about? Is it dead or not?”

“It's a she and more dead than alive.”

I pushed harder. More water poured out, and she roused up enough to cough.

“That sounds more alive than dead to me—bring her on up here,” Loyce bossed, just like always when I'm about to do something anyway. She thinks she's got to be the one to come up with what I aim to do next just because she's four months older than me.

I took my time tying that skiff to the dock, and, sure enough, I heard Loyce slap her leg with her hand. That's what she does when she gets testy and I'm out of reach. When I picked up the dog, water dripped from both ends of her onto the plank walk for the twenty steps it took me to get to the porch. It still takes Loyce more than thirty, like when we were little.

“Hey, what you got there, Fate? Baiting with dog now?”

I swiveled my eyes over and saw Valzine Broussard standing at the edge of the woods path coming from the docks. Val's part Irish, which might explain all that yellow hair and a leaning toward clothes you don't see around here much.

“Not exactly, but dog might work better'n some bait I've used,” I said. “She drifted up just now tied to that blue skiff over yonder.”

Val squinted toward the dock. He's part Cajun, too, and talks sort of Frenchified sometimes.

“I seen plenty boats on the river,” he said. “Don't hardly see no blue and black 'tween here and Morgan City. That's for true.”

Like I didn't know that. Here on the Chene we use red and green. Maybe the old Cheners made a good trade with a steamboat for some red and green paint—I don't know. If there's a better reason, no one old enough to remember it ever told me. All me or anyone else knew was that our boats had always been red and green.

“And high sides like that usually mean a boat come off the Mississippi, not out in the swamps like this,” Val went on.

He was just showing off for Loyce now, in my opinion. He's been sweet on her all his life. Seeing as he's first mate on the
Golden Era
, Val thinks he knows more than anyone else about what kinds of boats come from where. Just because he's been on boats since he was so little he had to tie hisself to the deck to keep from blowing overboard. I know all that about him, and more, because we been best friends forever. Like I knew he was gonna right then give that silky red scarf a twirl around his neck. It's one of the things he does when he's thinking hard.

He was right about them high sides, I'll give him that. It don't get rough enough for high sides, even out on the 'Chafalaya, unless there's an uncommon high water or a bad storm. That skiff had to come from up the Mississippi.

“That's right, would've come down through Lake Mongoulois,” I said, beating him to it. “Some poor upriver person done lost his boat, his dog, and everything else, probably dead to boot.”

“Well, either keep standing there talking, and we'll bury her later, or bring her on up here and see if we can save her,” Loyce said.

She had the door open, so all I had to do was duck through and carry that sad little bundle to the back of the stove, where there's always a box of rags. It was warm back there and felt good when I crouched down to make a little nest with my free hand. I moved the pup to the crook of my elbow and rubbed her with the towel Loyce had ready. Then I laid her down to see what would happen next. Nothing.

When I stood up, Loyce was pouring scalded milk halfway up a cup for Val. Two more cups already had milk in them for me and her, like usual. She put the milk pan back on the stove and picked up the coffeepot with her right hand, using her left to steer the spout over the cups. When it was aimed just right over each one, she moved her hand down where she could feel the temperature of the cup change as the hot coffee eased up the side of it. She always clangs the pot when she sets it back down on the warming eye. She likes being in charge of such a loud sound.

“Let's give her time to warm up,” she said, handing me and Val our cups.

We followed Loyce through the doorway and along the dogtrot that divides the post office side from the house side. The porch runs across the whole front of the building, giving a fine view up Jakes Bayou toward Lake Mongoulois and, if you turn the other way, downstream toward Bloody Bayou. I had the habit of sitting out there watching everything wake up since my houseboat faces the wrong way for sunrise.

It's always been my favorite time of day, just before everyone else starts stirring in the houses and houseboats along the banks. In an hour or so skiffs and pirogues would be tying up at the dock in front of the post office. People on foot and horseback, most of them kin to me one way or another and some more than once, would start turning onto the dirt road that runs along the bank, scaring late-leaving possums back into the woods for the day.

Then the steamboats that had laid over for the night would fire up. Loyce could always beat me at identifying their whistles. Some pitched so high they hurt your ears, others so low you felt them in your stomach more than heard them. A few were pure as the calliope on a showboat; others sounded like a boar hog with the croup. No matter how they sounded, they was all saying the same thing—it was time for deck hands to leave whatever pastime they had found and get ready to cut loose for Morgan City to the south or the Mississippi River and parts north. Smaller packet boats would be redding up for trips east through Bayou Plaquemine or west by way of Bayou Teche.

Railroads suck off a lot of the boat traffic now, but Bayou Chene draws more commerce than you might expect right smack here in the middle of the 'Chafalaya Swamp, and almost all of it ties in some way or another to the post office and general store, which has been run by different branches of my family going way back.

But for right then it was quiet in that time between the owls and roosters. The air was still night cool. I could tell by looking at Loyce she was waiting for the first rays of sunlight to fork through the tree trunks right at the waterline and play across her face. I'd watched her wait for that signal more mornings than I could count. It was her way of knowing that daylight had come again. She's been blind since before she could walk, much less remember.

Loyce tells it this way:

Oh, I knew something was up when I heard Fate's bailing change tunes while I was still at the top of the stairs. I'd stopped to hitch up the knot at the end of my braid. I listened awhile before starting down again. I like to slide my hand along the banister just to feel the smoothness. It's cypress, like the rest of the house built by Great-Grandpa Wash Landry for my Great-Grandma Viney, who was Viney Seneca back then. That was during the westward expansion frenzy of their day, after President Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon. Most everyone back in civilization thought the president had slap lost his mind, but the people out here didn't care one way or the other.

Lots of people started coming through the Chene then, some on purpose and some just getting sidetracked on their way somewhere else. Men living in surveying camps or timber camps said a lot of things to Bayou Chene girls in those days, and Wash wasn't the first one who had taken a shine to Viney. She didn't pay his court much mind and barely noticed when his camp pulled up stakes and moved on. Then one cold winter night, more than a year later, Wash came knocking on her daddy's door, telling Viney his surveying stint was over and he was ready to settle down.

Not one to let romance turn her head so far as to get a crick in her neck, Viney agreed to marry Wash Landry if he built her a proper home. No little ol' slab and moss shack like some swamp families made do in but a two-story house of planed cypress like the ones rich people all over the country were building from 'Chafalaya cypress. They said termites didn't eat it and bees didn't drill it. I don't know about all that since termites would drown in a hurry out here, and I've felt sawdust drifting down from many a buzzing bee on my porch. But I
can
tell you it smells like fresh cypress needles no matter how old it gets.

Anyway, from what I gather, Viney wasn't setting outrageous standards for Wash. Timber made its first big boom around then so that more big houses were mixing in with the older shacks and houseboats lining the banks. A fair number of sugar plantations were taking hold by then, too, even some sugar mills. So, once Viney was solidly on board, so to speak, Grandpa figured it made good sense to go ahead and build their house big enough to run a store on one side. Being a surveyor, he was good with figures, so when the U.S. Postal Service thought Bayou Chene was big enough to have a post office, he got the contract. Our family has been right here ever since.

I never got to meet Great-Grandpa Wash or Great-Grandma Viney, but they say she once killed a wildcat under the steps with a broom. If you're only gonna pass down one thing about a person, that says a lot.

But that was then, and now was now. Wildcats didn't lurk under steps around the Chene anymore, and I had to start early on the net I was knitting for Alcide Verret. So, instead of waiting for the fresh milk Papa was probably squeezing out of the Jersey right about then, I just poured a slug from the day before into two cups—then three—when I heard Val's voice. He can show up most any time.

I can't say I miss being able to see since I can't even remember it. Papa said it started as an ear infection that got worse instead of better, and by the time that got me to a doctor in Morgan City, it was too late to save my eyes, but they did save my brain, which if I would've had to make the choice myself is exactly the way I would have gone. Like I say, you don't miss something you can't remember, but at times I do squirm under the pure inconvenience of it. I could tell from the rainwater Fate was pouring back into the bayou that our Grandma Mame wouldn't be watering the geraniums and hollyhocks in front of the porch that day. Then he stopped bailing.

Without even thinking about it, I was following his movements out of habit and nothing better to do. The bailing can in mid-scoop plinking water onto the bottom of his boat. His paddle grabbing hollow wood. Something sizable being lifted, dripping, from the bayou. The cough. Then his boots coming heavier than usual up the plank walk. Only twenty steps, as he never lets me forget. Sighted people act impressed as all get out at how much I know about what's going on, but it's just a matter of paying attention, that's all. They could do the same if they just took time and paid attention.

Like right then. I just stood still and waited, knowing that whatever had interrupted Fate's morning was going to bust in on mine. That's what always happens with Fate.

“Well, either keep standing there talking, and we'll bury her later, or bring her on up here and see if we can save her,” I said. “Val, you can put the mail over there for Papa; he's still in the cow lot.”

“
Mais cher!
How you knew I had the mail?” Val asked, tossing the sack on the bench where I had pointed.

“Unless you've taken to wearing leather chaps and picked up a limp since the last time you were here, I figure you're toting something on one shoulder that smells like the mail bag,” I told him.

I swear, sometimes sighted people are so simpleminded. It's as if being able to see with their eyes keeps them from using their other senses.

After we settled the dog behind the stove, we took our cups out to the porch, but there was no settling down for Fate. That's the way he is when something's on his mind. Before Val and I were half through with our coffee, he was back in the kitchen messing with that basket full of nearly dead dog. I heard him dragging her from behind the woodstove and figured I better go on and help before he worried her slap to death.

I took the towel from Fate, knelt down, and started rubbing from her ears all the way to her tail. She was cold and limp from one end to the other. Soon her coat was barely damp, but I still couldn't feel any sign of life. Had I imagined that cough down at the bayou bank?

“I don't know, Loyce, I done seen my share of drowned critters, and I'm thinking this is one of 'em,” Val said. I was already thinking the same thing myself. No surprise. Val and I think alike uncommonly often. Fate says Val's sweet on me. I guess that could be so. I know he treats me better than my own cousin. Besides, we never hear stories floating back down the river about Val being shot at or chased by some father or jealous husband. Those rumors been drifting back from Fate's tomcatting since he should've been too little to know what it was all about.

Right then, Fate fetched another towel he had put in the warming oven. I edged away so he could wrap it around the dog. Just like him to drag this thing in, stir everyone up, and then we have a mess on our hands. We squatted there together, him breathing uselessly on my neck while I rubbed her chest some more under the warm towel. Suddenly I felt a quiver run through the body, right before Fate and Val started yammering, “Look her eyes are opening,” and elbowing each other like they were responsible for breathing life back into her all on their own without any help from God or me and my hard-rubbing hands.