Pamela Morsi (9 page)

Jean Baptiste picked a bed across the room
from his brother. Armand was thoughtful as he readied himself for
the night.

"You made quite a scene with Mademoiselle
Gaudet," he said finally.

"Helping her with her dancing slippers?" Jean
Baptiste chuckled. "It was a bit of fun, wasn't it?"

"It's a good thing that you're married,"
Armand pointed out. "Otherwise she might have gotten the wrong
idea."

His brother laughed as if the thought were a
pleasant one. Stripped down to his smallclothes, he stretched out
on the bed and stared up at the roof beams.

"Her feet are just as tiny as you'd expect
them to be," Jean Baptiste said thoughtfully. "Dainty and pretty,
just like the rest of her. And the scent,” Jean Baptiste took a
deep breath as if he were breathing it in once more. "I couldn't
quite place it. Was it was lilies or roses or ... or something
else?"

"Well," Armand pointed out, "most women smell
good."

Jean Baptiste sighed and offered a noise of
agreement as he rolled over on his side, punching at the moss-fill
pillow to get it just right. Yawning and sleepy, just before dozing
off he added, "Felicite smells like milk. I swear she's not going
to get the last baby weaned before the next one is here."

Armand lay awake a long time.

The rough dark gray bark of the tupelo
scratched Helga's backside, but she paid it no notice. Her arms and
legs were wound tightly around Laron, but her passion was
spent.

They held their position for as long as they
could. Eventually the strength of his legs gave way to the waves of
relaxation that settled upon him and he eased her feet to the
ground.

"Your drawers, Madame," he said, finding them
on the ground and shaking them out before he handed them over. His
teasing tone was typical. Acadian women wore no such garment and
Laron had declared them to be a needless, silly affectation of
clothing.

"Drawers are the fashion now everywhere," she
had assured him. "Only the most poor of peasant women would go
around with their buttocks unsheathed."

Laron had laughed at that. "With all of the
skirts you women wear, I hardly think that you are very close to
nakedness."

He had not convinced her to give them up.
Instead he teased her relentlessly about wearing them.

"So when did the smoking start?" he asked.
"And why on earth is Karl so unwilling to go to bed?"

Helga hesitated momentarily. "The smoking
began on Wednesday, I think," she answered. "He came home from
fishing and was green as duckweed. The smell of supper had him
puking off the back porch."

Laron chuckled and shook his head. "I
remember that first time myself," he said.

"I didn't see the tobacco until Friday," she
continued. "We had a bit of a row. Or at least he did. I refused
to discuss the subject and he lit up very defiantly, as if he were
trying to force me to lose my temper."

"You and Karl argued?" Laron seemed
surprised.

"He just . . . well, there are things ... we
do not always agree."

His expression slowly changed from confused
to amused as he gazed down at her discomfiture.

"We do not always agree," he quoted her. "So
you have made your home a democracy these days, Madame? The
influence of consorting with the Acadian men, no doubt. And I have
always thought of you as a very autocratic German empress."

Helga was grateful for his humor. "I still
say what goes on under my own roof and you had best not forget it,"
she told him.

He grinned. "You may have total dominion of
the roof, Madame, if I may have an equal say under the
bedclothes."

She smiled back at him as they reached the
porch. "Nothing will go on under those bedclothes tonight,
monsieur," she told him. "As long as my son lays in the chair by
the hearth, you and I will lie as chaste as nuns."

"As nuns?"

They stepped in through the back door. Young
Karl was where they had left him, still sprawled uncomfortably in
a chair that was never meant for sleeping.

"Maybe I could carry him upstairs," Laron
whispered.

Helga looked up at him. "And if he wakes are
you ready to sit until dawn continuing your history lesson?"

Laron made a disagreeable face. Helga stifled
a giggle.

Stalling, she silently straightened the items
stowed on the kitchen shelves as Laron divested himself and hung
his garments on the hook beside the bed. There was virtually no
light within the cabin and she couldn't see the man across the room
from her, but she didn't need to see him. She knew the width of his
back, the length of his thigh, and the breadth of his shoulders
with more familiarity than she knew her own life. He was her man
and she loved him. She had never meant for that to happen but it
had.

The creak of the ropes sounded as he crawled
into the bed. She moved toward the sound. He had scooted to the far
side and held the blanket open welcomingly. She leaned forward and
kissed him on the forehead.

"I must look in on the little ones," she
whispered. "Go on to sleep."

He didn't argue as she made her way across
the room and up the ladder to the loft. In the dim light seeping
through the shuttered window she checked on her son. He slept
peacefully on his mat, his sweet blond curls tousled around his
head. She squatted down beside him and gently removed the thumb
that was tucked so securely in his mouth.

Quietly she made her way to the larger
sleeping mat. Elsa, too, was lost in dreamland.

Helga began removing her own clothes and
hanging them beside her daughter's. She loosened and undid her
braid. Finding Elsa's brush, she began drawing it through her hair,
not bothering to count the strokes.

"I know why Monsieur Boudreau travels all
this way."

In her heart she heard Karl's words once
more. She had never meant for her son to know. She had never meant
for it to go on this long. She had never meant—but what had she
meant? A simple thank you. That should have sufficed.

Helga put the brush aside and lay down with
her daughter. She was eager to sleep but knew it would not come
easily. She listened intently, hoping to hear the snores of her
lover. Laron expected her to come to bed. If he fell asleep he
would not know that she had not.

She hadn't meant to fall in love with him.
She hadn't meant to take him as a lover. She had only been saying
thank you to the man who had saved them after her husband deserted
her.

Helga closed her eyes, willing sleep, but
none came.

She had seen him first on the day Jakob was
born. She had been far along in labor when a very frightened Karl
had brought him into the house. By his manner of dress she
recognized him immediately as one of the Acadians that lived on the
river.

"Lazy, worthless people!"

That's what her husband had called them. And
Helmut certainly should know lazy and worthless when he encountered
it, they were so much his own personal traits.

But this Acadian had proved his value when
her child came into the world and into his arms. She remembered
those first moments watching him hold her son, cooing to the child
and speaking to him in French. She wondered tiredly if the Acadians
were like the Gypsies she'd heard stories about. Did they perhaps
steal children? Might being stolen possibly be the best thing for
Jakob? She wanted what was best for her baby. She wanted what was
best for all her children.

It had been less than a year before Jakob's
birth that Helmut had dragged them to this place. He had said it
was a farm, but it had been only a decrepit hut in the
wilderness.

She knew that they must be hiding out. Not
she and the children, of course, but Helmut. He must be hiding out
again from a judge or a posse or an angry citizen whom he had
cheated. Helga had spent much of her life with Helmut hiding from
someone. They had lived in a half-dozen places in the strange new
country. Helga would settle in, try to start a life, and then it
would all be over. Someone would be robbed or cheated and they
would hurry away in the dark of night.

But never again. With two small children and
one on the way she had said, "No more!" And Helmut Shotz had taken
his gun and their stores and merely rowed out of their lives.

It hadn't taken long for Laron Boudreau to
realize that they were hungry and destitute. He began to provide
for them. He brought salt and flour, meat and game. He taught them
to fish and forage and get by in the wet inhospitable climate that
was Louisiana.

But she had had things to teach also. He had
been an innocent, inexperienced young man of barely twenty. She had
taught him to be her lover.

Fall was branding time in Prairie l'Acadie.
Traditionally all herds, cattle and hogs, were set free on All
Saints' Day to winter as they would. For this reason careful
marking would ensure that all animals would be returned to their
rightful owners when spring was upon them.

Armand loved working the cattle. The horses
were well trained to turn and cut the cows from the herd. As
drover, Armand sat high in the saddle, letting the fine bay gelding
do the work of separating the animals out one by one.

Then all that was left to do was to throw a
lasso around the cow's neck, a skill at which Armand excelled. Once
it was roped, Jean Baptiste or Laron or one of the other men who
were larger and stronger than he would throw the animal to its
side, tie up the legs, and endeavor to keep it still while the
white-hot metal of the brand was sizzled into the tough hide of its
flank.

A half-dozen men had come at dawn to help
with the branding, with more joining them as the day wore on.
Friends, neighbors, those who had just needed or would soon need
help themselves. The women, as expected, were cooking up a feast to
reward them. And children cavorted and played as if the day were a
celebration rather than merely hot, hard work.

The Sonnier brothers were considered highly
successful cattlemen with a combined herd of nearly a hundred
head. They had always worked together since the day their father
had gone off to fight with Andrew Jackson to liberate New Orleans.
The two boys had stood together at the dock as he packed his
pirogue. Jean Baptiste had been twelve, already lanky and tall, his
skinny legs still clumsy for him. Armand had been nine, very small
and thin, but sturdy, his father insisted. Armand had grown
sufficiently sturdy.

Sonnier kissed them goodbye and spoke to them
as men.

"It is duty that bids me go," he said. "A man
must always follow his duty."

The boys nodded, too young to fully
understand.

"It is my duty to go and your duty to stay
and care for this farm and for your mother."

"I will, Poppa," Jean Baptiste promised.

"And I can help," Armand assured them
both.

He had nodded proudly. "A man is lucky who
can count on such sons," he told them. "I trust you to do your duty
until I return."

The boys did as he had bid. But he was never
to return.

It had been a frightening time and a crushing
blow to two young boys. And the grief of their mother had been
harrowing to witness. The brothers, who for most of their lives
until then had been separated in age and experience and
temperament, now clung together solidly to do their duty as they
had promised.

They cared for the farm, the land, the herd.
And they had dutifully, lovingly cared for their dear maman until
the day three years earlier when they laid her for all time in the
solemn silence of the churchyard.

Perhaps these experiences made them closer
than other brothers. Whatever the reason, the two worked well
together in the saddle, cutting and moving the herd with
dexterity.

A scraggly young bull slipped around Jean
Baptiste's horse unexpectedly and was headed with determination for
the safety of the brush. Armand heard his brother's curse and set
chase. The young bull had too far a lead for his own horse to cut
it off. Skillfully Armand twirled the rope above his head until he
was certain of its velocity and threw the looped end true and right
around the animal's neck.

There was a cheer of approval as Armand led
the bawling angry miscreant toward the branding fire.

"Well done," Jean Baptiste congratulated
him.

"We'd best make a steer of this one," Armand
suggested. "Or we might not catch up with him next year."

Jean Baptiste considered a moment and then
shook his head. "No, I rather admire the ones that try to get away.
He'll make us a fine breeder bull in a couple of years."

Armand bowed to his brother's decision,
although something about the reasoning bothered him. He returned to
his work, only to be distracted a few moments later by the arrival
of Aida Gaudet.

She was in the midst of the gathering,
laughing and looking pretty and capturing the attention of all the
men. Armand doffed his hat and gave her a polite nod, then he
quickly looked over at his brother.

Jean Baptiste had ridden up to greet her
formally and to look down into her eyes and tease her. Mademoiselle
Gaudet was delightfully attentive and giggled several times. Armand
felt his entire body tense. He was thinking to speak to her, to
distract her, to distract his brother when a movement at the corner
of his eye caught his attention.

"Sacre!" he cursed. His nephew Gaston and
little Valsin Hebert had moved in close to play a game of "I Am Not
Afraid" with the teeming cattle. Armand raced over to scold the
boys and scoot the little ones back away from the dangerously
unsettled herd.

The drama caught everyone's attention and not
a moment later Armand heard his brother's voice raised in
anger.

"Madame Sonnier!" Jean Baptiste called out to
his wife. "Can you not watch your children?"