Under the Cajun Moon (48 page)

“Listen, Chloe,” he said in a voice filled with pain, “if I don’t make it, tell TJ—”

“No!” I cried. “Tell him yourself. I’m coming in. Watch out.”

Before he could reply, I scooted off the ledge, feet first, and passed through what felt like a mile of air before I hit the cold water. Plunging down into it, I forced myself not to panic lest I forget which way was up. Instead, I simply held my breath and let my body rise to the surface until it popped out and I could breathe again.

“Where are you?” I called as my teeth began to chatter, though whether from cold or fear I wasn’t sure. Floating in complete blackness was a horrifying feeling—scarier, even, than jumping off the ledge had been.

“Right here,” he replied from not too far away. “Chloe, you’re crazy.”

“About you, yeah,” I said, paddling toward his voice until I felt his hand reaching for me. Moving closer, I slipped my arm around him to hold him up, and together we managed to propel ourselves to the wall. There wasn’t much there to hold on to, but at least we could stabilize ourselves against something solid.

“Got any more boats handy?” I joked, thinking of the endless series of watercraft we had gone through yesterday. But then the image of that sideways boat outside filled my mind, the one that had long ago washed ashore in a hurricane. Trying to distract us both, I asked Travis to tell me more about it, if he had any idea what the
C
and
M
still visible amid the faded letters stood for.

“That boat belonged to my grandparents. I can’t quite remember, but now that you say
C
and
M
, I’m thinking it might’ve been called the
Cajun Moon
.”

Something bumped against my leg underwater. Trying not to imagine what might be floating in there with us, I kicked it away and focused on the man I was holding in my arms.

“The
Cajun Moon
? Travis, do you know what that means?”

“No, what?”

“My father’s poem. That boat is the thing ‘gone amiss.’ ”

“ ‘ ’Tween hill and dale and dock and dune, It’s out there, under the Cajun moon,’ ” he replied slowly. “The treasure.”

“The treasure. It must be buried under that boat, under the
Cajun Moon
.”

Chuckling, we managed to hug there in the water, relieved at least that we had followed the recipe to the end.

“Ah,
cher
,” Travis said, his breath warm and close. “Whether we make it or not, I want you to know—”

“Shhh,” I whispered, holding a finger to his lips. “We are going to make it. I promise.”

But, of course, I wasn’t nearly as sure as I made my voice sound. If this really was the end, more than anything I wished I could see his face one last time, that I could look into his eyes. I wanted it so badly that my imagination even began playing tricks on me, for it was as if I really could see him.

I realized suddenly that I really
could
see him.

Whipping my head upward, I blinked at the sight of blue, blue sky. The cap was sliding away from the mine’s opening.

“Depending on who that is,” Travis whispered, “we’re either saved or we’re dead.”

Peering upward, I watched as several faces appeared at the opening and voices called down to us. I held my breath until I knew for sure that these were friendly faces and not the Henkins. Sure enough, it sounded to me like the state police. With them was an old man, calling down to Travis.

“Grandpere?”
Travis replied.
“C’est toi?”

Could it possibly be Alphonse Naquin, the missing man himself?

“Oui, c’est moi.
Looks like I got here jus’ in the nick of time too.
Pouyee
, you two sure picked a strange place to go for a swim.”

At least now I knew where Travis had come by his sense of humor.

Soon a rope was dropped down and a rescue worker began descending into the shaft. He tried to take me up first, but I insisted that Travis should go. Travis, however, would have none of that, despite his injuries. Finally, I compromised by letting the guy lift me first, but just to the level of the
tunnel my mother was on. Once there, I borrowed a waterproof flashlight from the rescuer and promised I would be back right away.

“You and your mother should be able to get out at that end,” the man replied. “You’ll see what I mean when you get there.”

Dripping wet, playing the light’s beam on the white walls, I raced back up the tunnel toward my mother. I found her standing atop the pile of rocks, looking up to where more rescue workers where breaking through the ceiling at the crack.

“We did it, Mom!” I cried, mounting the pile of rocks to climb up and give her a hug. “We made it.”

Despite my wet clothes, my mother surprised me by wrapping her arms around me and holding me tight. She stopped short of saying she loved me, but somehow I knew that she did. A voice called through the widening hole above us, telling us to hang on just a few more minutes and they would have us out of there. My mother released me from the hug and sat down on one of the huge pink rocks.

As we waited, I pointed my flashlight toward the small chamber that I had accidentally busted open earlier. From where I stood, I could see what looked like a very old wooden trunk, almost completely crusted over in salt, sitting inside. If my father’s treasure was buried under the
Cajun Moon,
then what was this?

Holding my breath, I approached the trunk and forced open the lid. Nestled inside was row after row of fleur-de-lis statuettes. Even there in the semidarkness, their surfaces sparkled with gold.

L
OUISIANA, 1768

With a smack, the baby’s first cry rang out loud and clear. Jacques could hear it through the window from where he sat out on the front porch in the rocking chair.

“It’s a boy!” someone cried from inside. Like an echo, the words were repeated all over the house, upstairs and down, in voices both young and old.

A boy
, Jacques thought, grinning. After four great-granddaughters, it was good to hear that someone had finally given him a great-grandson. Angelique had never cared whether the newborns were boys or girls, merely that they were healthy. Judging by the chatter coming from the window, the child and mother were doing just fine—and that was good news for all.

“Papa, did you hear? It’s a boy,” Simone said from the doorway. “Should I wake
Maman
and tell her?”

“No, dear, I’ll do it. You take care of your new grandchild,” he replied, reaching for his cane.

Gripping it tightly, Jacques rose carefully to a standing position. The old injuries ached even more today than usual, but somehow he didn’t mind. In one way or another, this family was going to continue forward through the generations. His four daughters had all married good men
and carried on the bloodline, if not the Soliel name, to children of their own. Now the grandchildren were having children, and life was rolling along as it should.

Moving slowly, Jacques ambled across the porch, down the front steps, and around the side of the house, choosing the well-worn path that led to the smaller home he and Angelique shared out back. She had been having a bad day and had taken to her bed soon after breakfast. Knowing their granddaughter was in labor, though, she had asked Jacques to keep vigil for both of them and to give her the news as soon as he had it.

Pushing open the door to their house, Jacques stepped inside, hobbled across the main room, and entered the bedroom. An oil lamp glowed on the table there, bathing the room in a warm light. Angelique was asleep, but she stirred when he came in, waving him over and giving him a tired smile.

Propping his cane against the wall, Jacques carefully slid onto the bed next to her, took her hand, and entwined her fingers with his. He asked how she was feeling.

“Not well, but that’s not important now. What of the baby?”

“It’s here, it’s healthy, and it’s a boy.”

That seemed to wake her up a bit more. Shifting her weight so that her head tilted against his shoulder, she gave a long, contented sigh and thanked Jacques for being the bearer of such good news.

“How time flies, eh, my love?” she whispered. “It’s been forty-nine years since our first child was born, but I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing all day, Angelique. These children, they don’t know how good they have it. How you did it, caring for me and the baby all at the same time, I’ll never understand.”

“You pulled through, Jacques. That’s all that mattered to me. That’s all that has ever mattered, that you lived, that you hung on even though you wanted to die.” Her voice grew shaky with emotion as she continued. “I’ve been trying to do the same for you now, but I’m afraid I can’t hang on much longer. I’m just so tired, you know?”

“Shhh, don’t talk about that,” Jacques said, holding her hand more
firmly in his. Truth be told, lately he had begun to think that it was a race to the finish for both of them. While he couldn’t bear the thought of losing his precious wife, he, too, had been hanging on for her sake, just to spare her the pain of losing him.

“We’ve been blessed with far more years on this earth than either of us had the right to expect,” he said gently. “Most folks never see sixty—or even fifty, for that matter. Yet here we are, both still alive at seventy-one. I’d say that’s pretty amazing. We still have each other, we have our family, we live in this beautiful place…”

“Coming here was the right decision,” Angelique agreed, a comment she had made often in recent months. Though it had been difficult to pull up roots from the German settlement where they had raised their family, the move down to this region had been the right choice in the long run.

The whole shift had begun several years ago when three of their granddaughters had fallen in love with a trio of handsome young Acadian refugees who had been temporarily stationed at their settlement. None of the girls had ever found suitors among their mostly German neighbors, but those three Acadians, cousins by the name of Naquin, were another matter altogether. Handsome and hardworking—not to mention French-speaking—there had been an instant attraction on both sides.

Soon, all three couples had married and moved down to the Atchafalaya Basin to live among other Acadian families there. The government had been encouraging all Acadians to establish themselves along the buffer zones and had even given them land, seed, guns, and tools in order to help them do so. It had taken a while to carve out a new life from the wilderness, but with the Acadians’ strong bonds of community—not to mention a lot of help from local Indians—they had managed not just to survive but thrive. When their new settlement was firmly established, they began sending for others to come down and join them.

When an incredibly beautiful island was discovered in the midst of the swamp, Jacques and Angelique’s oldest daughter had come to them and asked if they might consider purchasing the entire tract of land so that they could all settle near each other there.

They had been such careful stewards of the gold over the years that
it was not a decision they had made lightly. Their intention had always been to make the gold last as long as possible, passing it down through the generations.

Years ago, in the beginning, they hadn’t touched the gold at all. Consumed with Jacques’ recovery and Angelique’s pregnancy, they had simply had the trunk stashed in a corner of the bedroom, where it sat, if not forgotten, at least ignored. They were both ambivalent about the statuettes, anyway, considering how much grief and pain they had caused them both.

Eventually, though, as the effects of Jacques’ injuries had made it nearly impossible for him to work more than a few hours a day even after he was healed, he had broken down and melted one of the statuettes and turned it into an ingot. Selling it to a wealthy Indigo dealer had netted him even more money than he had expected. By his calculations, if he and Angelique continued to live frugally, they could survive for several years from the income of a single statuette. He had created a better hiding place for the gold then, and though he had never been truly happy with where it was kept, at least it had never been discovered inadvertently by anyone else. As time went on, he would melt down another statuette here and there to supplement the income from his part-time work in the tool shop. Many of his injuries were permanent, so the gold helped to compensate for his disabilities.