Pamela Morsi

For Donna Caubarreaux, who opened her house
to me and shared her laughter and her lovely family with me,
introduced me to her four-legged clients, and was so welcoming, I
forgot I was a stranger.

And for Alma Reed, who answered my most
ignorant questions, informed and entertained me, showed me the
sights of Eunice, Louisiana, and made me eat a stuffed ponce.

Prologue

Southwest Louisiana

Spring 1820

The wedding pirogue that eased down the
gentle current of the Vermilion River was festooned in blooming
vines of honeysuckle, bright purple water hyacinths, and delicate
swamp lilies. Like everyone else on the bank, Armand Sonnier
shouted and waved at the young couple on board until they
disappeared from sight around a bend in the river. His older
brother, Jean Baptiste, was a married man now and poled the little
boat home with his new bride.

"It's so romantic!"

The words were accompanied with a soft
girlish sigh and Armand turned toward the pretty girl by his side.
She was sweet and dainty in a pink pinafore, her dreamy gaze still
focused upon the river. At fifteen he was no longer much interested
in playtime, but for Aida he made an exception. She was an only
child and Armand thought she was probably lonely. He often talked
with her and found her delightful imagination and scatterbrained
silliness to be funny and entertaining.

As the rest of the crowd turned back to the
churchyard, where the food and dancing and frolic would go on
until dawn, Armand was drawn to his young friend sitting in the
grass.

She had gathered up a few of the scattered
flower petals that had been strewn at the feet of the newly-weds.
She was stowing them in her handkerchief along with a dollop of
river sand, a tiny crawfish claw, a heron feather, and a piece of
linen string.

Armand took a seat beside her, watching
curiously.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "Making mud
pies?"

"Mud pies!" She frowned at him disdainfully.
"That's for little girls."

With her rosebud mouth, her round cheeks, and
her shiny black curls peeking out from beneath her sunbonnet, Aida
Gaudet looked to be exactly that. Armand couldn't resist the urge
to reach out and give her hair a playful tug.

She didn't allow him to draw her into the
game.

"Someday I'm going to be a bride," she
declared.

Armand shrugged in agreement. All the girls
in Prairie l'Acadie married eventually. "I wouldn't be surprised,"
he said.

"I'm going to be the most beautiful woman on
the Vermilion River and I'll choose the most handsome man in the
parish as my husband."

"You seem very certain," he pointed out.

"Oh, I am absolutely sure," she declared, her
voice lowered with mysterious intent. "Because I am the greatest
hoodoo woman in all of Louisiana."

"Oh really?" he asked, familiar with her
girlish games of pretend.

She nodded soberly. "I make cows come fresh,
keep rats from your corncrib, and can make the moon pour silver
coins into the river if I so choose."

Armand grinned. "I tremble in fear just to
know you."

"As well you should," she told him.

"And great hoodoo women get to marry handsome
men?" he asked. "It seems Madame Landry had no husband at all."

Aida shrugged in tacit agreement. "But I
will," she said. "I will have the man I most desire, because I have
made this love charm and no man can resist it."

She tied a knot in the handkerchief and held
it up for his inspection.

"Very nice," he assured her, laughing.

"When I decide who is most handsome and
deserving of me, I will bestow this gift upon him and he will be
mine forever."

"Forever?"

"Forever."

"Whether he wants to be or not?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Of course
he will want to be. I told you, I'm going to be the most beautiful
woman on the Vermilion River."

"Aida!"

She startled slightly at the sound of her
father's voice. "I've been looking all over for you," the man said.
"I told you to wait for me at the church door. We are to take
supper with Father Denis."

The bright-eyed youngster looked momentarily
horrified.

"Oh Poppa, I forgot!"

"You always forget. Now hurry! Hurry!"

She shoved something in Armand's hand as she
rushed away. Momentarily he gazed down at what he held and then
shook his head. Armand Sonnier held in his grasp the love
charm.

Destiny, a divine plan and a game of
chance.

The gleam of moonlight on the dark water of
the Vermilion River illuminated more than the broad expanse of
Prairie l'Acadie. On the porch of the Sonniers' sturdy
half-timbered house near the outside stairs, three men sat around
an overturned wood-slat washtub, their faces serious and unsmiling
in the yellow glare of the lantern.

Jean Baptiste turned over the last card he
dealt himself and looked into his opponent's eyes. "Trump is
clubs," he said evenly.

Armand glanced with feigned carelessness at
the card and surveyed his own hand once more. He forced his insides
into a deliberate calm so that his face would reveal nothing.

Armand's best friend, Laron Boudreau, sat
silently observing the two brothers. He had bourred on the last
hand, requiring him to ante the value of the pot. He'd thrown in
all he had, but it wasn't enough to earn him another play. The huge
pile of coins and paper notes on the washtub was enough to make a
man's mouth go dry and his heart beat faster. Bourre was a
dangerous game for a gambling man; big losses were common even for
a skilled player. Big stakes,

however, always drew the interest of young
men still in their twenties, still with plenty to learn, yet
confident in their own abilities.

The two Sonnier brothers, Armand and Jean
Baptiste, were alike in many ways, the same light brown hair, the
same fair complexion, the same bright blue eyes. Armand was like a
miniature version of his brother. While Jean Baptiste was of medium
height, stocky and broad-shouldered, his brother was a man of small
stature and fine-featured. He carried not an ounce of extra fat
upon him. It was only the strength of his jaw that kept his face
from appearing delicate.

"I will play," Armand announced finally,
raising that prominent chin deliberately, almost in challenge. He
had gambled against his brother many times and he knew well that
any show of his own confidence was sure to make Jean Baptiste
reckless.

Jean Baptiste gazed back at him, his face so
much like Armand's own, and nodded slowly. "Dealer plays also," he
said.

Cards were casually tossed, one at a time,
toward the center of the overturned washtub. Armand took the first
two tricks with the ace and queen of clubs. Jean Baptiste took the
third and looked across at his brother. Armand's stern
concentration wavered as a smile took over his features.

Jean Baptiste made a sound that was almost a
groan as he led his best card. Armand bested it and took the trick.
Armand then led and Jean Baptiste threw in his last with a sound of
disgust. "Take it, go ahead, take it," Jean Baptiste moaned. "It's
only money, the root of evil, and I never have enough to
matter."

Armand laughed delightedly as he pulled the
winnings toward him. "Don't worry, big brother, if your gambling
gets so bad you can't feed the family, I'll always make you a small
loan." He grinned conspiratorially toward Laron. "Five for ten is
prime terms for this bayou."

Laron nodded as if the suggestion seemed
reasonable.

Jean Baptiste huffed. "My own flesh and
blood, devil-bent on usury!"

"As the old men say," Laron teased, "never
play against a wiser man."

Jean Baptiste nodded. "And I can never
remember that my baby brother is the wiser man!"

The three laughed together companionably.
Bourre was serious card playing, but once the money was lost, all
could be philosophical. And it was not as if the cash would be
stuck in some wily Creole's money pouch and taken down to New
Orleans. Armand would hold the coins until next week's game, when
he'd probably lose what he'd won this night, if not more.

It was late, very late. Jean Baptiste set the
washtub against the side of the house. Armand straightened the
cards and returned them to their wooden box.

Laron fished a small bag of tobacco out of
his pocket and all three men took turns filling their long-stemmed
clay pipes. They rearranged their hide-seat ladderback chairs to
face the wide stretch of bayou given the auspicious name of
Vermilion River. Jean Baptiste raised the chimney tin of the
lantern and lit a sprig of dry palmfronde. He passed the fire to
Laron and Armand before sparking his own smoke. The

smell of home-cured tobacco filled the air
around the porch with a familiar masculine aroma. They stared out
into the darkness of the evening, relaxed.

They had been friends forever. Armand and
Laron were the same age and had stuck together tighter than mud on
a wagon wheel since childhood. The brains and the brawn, people
called them. And for good reason. With a small, almost frail,
appearance, the result of childhood illness, Armand had a bright
mind and a gift of speech that bordered on the eloquent. Laron was
big and sturdy and muscular. He was the first man you'd call upon
if you needed a stump pulled or a sunk raised. Folks said that for
all the scrapes the two were involved in, the reason they never got
into trouble was that if Laron couldn't bust them out, Armand would
think and talk them out.

Jean Baptiste joined them as companions as
they grew older and the three years' difference in their ages
ceased to matter. Now the three sat together, quietly smoking in
the stillness of a late autumn night.

The Sonnier family, Jean Baptiste's wife and
children, were all abed inside the house. The peaceful breathing
of a mother and children sleeping on the far side of the
curtain-covered doorway was accompanied by the sounds of the
night. The buzzing mosquitoes, the scratchy call of crickets, the
chirp of tree frogs were punctuated by the occasional splash in the
water as a big old turtle or maybe even a gator made a late-night
swim.

Contented and quiet, the talk moved from
cards to crops and cattle. Cotton, they thought, would be good next
year. Cattle even better. Sugar; sugar was

too much work, they all agreed. Not a fit
crop for small farmers, petits habitants, like themselves.

Ultimately the subject turned to one often
favored by young healthy men on this prairie—a subject favored by
young men on any prairie or bayou or city street. The subject of
women.

"I hear that old man Breaux has a niece up in
Opelousas," Laron said, glancing toward Armand. "He says she's no
bigger than a minute."

Armand shrugged with good grace and offered a
fatalistic sigh. "There is not a wide selection of women on the
bayous in any case," he said sadly. "But when a man's own height
decrees he must confine himself to the females that grow no taller
than swampgrass, the choice becomes limited indeed."

His brother and friend chuckled.

Armand's lack of stature was a long-time joke
with the three. From a childhood of being called "shortbread" and
"knee-high," Armand had developed not just a thick skin, but a
confidence in himself for his other qualities. Still, when it came
to courting, a man wanted a woman to look up to him. Most of the
young ladies on this prairie would have to sit down to do so.

"And so you laugh at me, my friend," he
accused Laron good-naturedly. "Here I pine away for want of a wife
of my own while you are affianced to Aida Gaudet."

"Ah," Jean Baptiste commented. "Some men are
forever lucky."

The lovely Aida was almost a legend. Armand's
once funny little friend was now described as belle chose,
inordinately beautiful. And it was no fib. Aida Gaudet was the most
beautiful woman on Prairie l'Acadie, perhaps the most beautiful
girl on the Vermilion River, maybe even the most beautiful in
Louisiana. Her fine figure, perfect pale flesh, and glossy black
hair set pulses racing in every man still strong enough to stir a
stick.

Unfortunately, Armand Sonnier was no
exception. He was in love with her. And she had promised to marry
Laron Boudreau, his best friend.

"I am a fortunate man," Laron admitted, and
then told Armand, "Do not worry. The right woman will come along
for you."

Armand agreed, sighing a little. No one knew
that his heart was already ensnared. And no one would ever
know.

"It must be the biggest irony ever among two
friends," Armand said. "That I would marry tomorrow if I had a
woman to choose. And my best friend has been engaged nearly two
years and still no wedding in sight."