Postmark Bayou Chene (13 page)

Now catalog pages snapped from across the porch, signaling another project launched.

“Loyce, I've never ordered a ready-made dress.” Roseanne's voice was matter of fact. “I'm leery of the whole process—working from drawings, size charts, and fabric descriptions. I'm accustomed to seeing the fabrics and feeling them against my skin. Back home a seamstress measures me for every new dress, and we have several fittings before it is finished. I just don't know about this.”

“How can it be that complicated?” Loyce queried. “Other people have always decided what I'm going to wear. Just so it's short enough that I don't trip over the hem, nothing else matters much.”

“Of course, how could you know?” Mrs. Barclay rose from her chair and tapped across the porch. “Here, feel my bodice.”

She picked up Loyce's hand and guided it to a high collar, stiff as bark, pressed into the skin beneath her jaw. More unyielding fabric pulled across her collarbone into sleeves tight as winter stockings but without the stretch. Her middle was hard as a china doll. A corset! All the grown women at Loyce's school had worn them. All except the cook whose big soft bosom used to be as comforting to a sick child as the cocoa and toast she brought to their beds.

“My word, Mrs. Barclay, how do you get anything done girded up like that?”

For the first time Loyce heard her break into a deep laugh. At least her voice had taken off some layers.

“Just call me Roseanne, Loyce,” she said, still laughing as she quick-stepped back to her chair. Then she took a sniffy little breath of air and started over. “Things are so different out here. Back home dressing is not about getting things done. It's about looking appropriate for the occasion.”

“What occasions do you dress for like
that
?”

“Oh, just about everything—outings of any kind, art exhibits, musical performances, plays, lectures, as well as just gatherings of acquaintances for dining and visiting. Entertaining is important for my family's businesses.”

Loyce's attention jerked to a stop at the mention of music. “Oh, what I'd give to hear some of that music!” She sounded wistful. “We used to go to concerts a couple times a year when I was at school. I even heard a woman sing from an opera once, and the magic of it just opened me all up inside. Now, sometimes when a showboat comes through, I'll get to hear a fine piece of music, but I can't remember it long enough to get back home and try to play it. And Val brings me tunes he picks up on the river, but it's not the same kind of music.”

“Oh yes, we attend operas regularly,” Roseanne said. “I can't say many of them resonate with me. Mostly it's about the dresses, the hats, the hairstyles.” She chuckled again.

Then Loyce heard her sigh and turn more catalog pages, stopping now and then to take a better look. The turning slowed, then was broken by spells of silence.

“Where are the housedresses? Here we go! Not just a straight sack style like you wear nor a tight bodice like I customarily wear. Sort of in-between. Slightly gathered top caught in at the waist. I can do whatever a day's work calls for and still look decent. Just to make sure it fits, I'll even get a size larger than usual,” she said. “What do you think about a russet—that's always one of my best colors. And maybe the dark blue.”

“You're asking the wrong person about that!” Loyce couldn't help but laugh. Sometimes the people who were around her the most forgot she didn't see.

“Pardon me, you are right about that,” Roseanne chuckled. “But you can help me with another decision. After ordering two dresses, I'll have enough left out of my $3.50 to buy either a larger corset or a pair of comfortable walking shoes. My feet hurt all the time, but the looser dresses won't bring much relief if I'm still wearing a tight corset. You just don't know what it's like to never be able to take a deep breath. You are so slender you can get away with just a chemise under your dresses. If you had a curvaceous figure like mine or if you ever start wearing fitted tops, you'll know what I'm talking about.”

Loyce was only half-listening now. She was still thinking that it might be worth girding up her bosom or any other body parts if it meant she could sit in a big crowd of people listening to beautiful music. Not that she was ever likely to get that chance. She was jerked back to the reality of the porch when Roseanne turned a page and gasped.

“Oh my goodness, look—I mean, listen to this, Loyce! The drawing shows what appears to be a corset with the bottom cut off, leaving the midsection completely unbound—a secret that would be all too plain to anyone who accidentally brushed against a woman who dared to wear such a thing. Really, all it amounts to is a sling contraption that simply pillows the bosom! The caption under the drawing says it's a
brassière
. French—no surprise there. It's described as a ‘healthful' alternative for vigorous exercise. Of all things! It's a scandal, that's what it is!”

She sniffed and quickly turned the page. It was Loyce's turn to chuckle again as she picked up her shuttle and cotton line.

After more scratching and erasing on the order form, Roseanne finally sighed and settled on the shoes.

“I'll just eat less and try to let out my old corset strings until I can afford a larger one,” she said. “Well, Loyce, this catalog order marks the first time in my life that I have spent money I earned myself. It's a good feeling; I just wish there was more of it.”

Loyce paused in her work and tilted her head to one side as if hitting on a brand-new thought herself.

“Tell you what, Roseanne. I have some money saved and nothing to spend it on, so how about I give you enough for that new corset. In return you take my measurements and order me a new dress as well. Do they have one my size colored like a great blue heron?”

It was a morning well into June when the dresses were delivered in a crate of dry goods from Morgan City. By that time Roseanne had caught up with stocking the store's backlog of inventory. She opened the crates the same day they arrived, a novelty for the customers, who were accustomed to scavenging for items they wished to purchase. Roseanne would have the goods displayed on shelves or tables by the next afternoon, but first she had to run upstairs to try on the dresses.

Her bedroom door had barely closed when she removed the fitted bodice and unlaced the old corset with a sigh of relief. There was a zigzag of cord across her skin where she had let it out way past modesty's sake. She laced up the new, larger size, guessing at how tightly to draw it in so that it would just fill out the new bodice. Then she pulled the lightweight, cotton print dress over her head. While buttoning the bodice front, she shifted her bosom from side to side and found there was still room to loosen her corset even more. Oh, could life get any better! She didn't take the time to loosen it at the moment since she could already breathe more deeply. Besides, there was a crate still waiting for her to unpack. She flew back down the stairs, feeling unfettered for the first time in years.

A few hours later the flow of customers thinned out as people began heading home to start afternoon chores. The new frocks had launched Roseanne into a celebratory state. Loyce was out front to keep company with any customers who dropped in, making this the ideal time for Roseanne to wash her hair. She stopped by the porch to tell Loyce and then whisked out to the cistern with two buckets.

On the porch Loyce's rocking chair creaked to fit the rhythm of her shuttle. Knitting could be satisfying like that. Put the twine in your left hand, then the right hand moves on its own, in and out. She didn't even think about it. Val had told her that the shuttle she used and the knot it made were the same all around the world. The very same! He read to her about it one afternoon from that magazine of the National Geographic Society. Now wouldn't it be fine to just pick up something like that and read about shuttles on her own? But she wouldn't stop there.

“Hmmph!” She had butted in to his reading. “If I could read, I'd be learning more than shuttles and knots. I'd read about explorers and thinkers. What people eat in other countries. I'd find out how cotton goes from being a plant to a piece of cloth. And what about thunder? No one on the Chene can explain to me what makes that booming noise during summer storms and why we don't hear it in winter when it rains every day. There's smart people out there who know so many things, but they're not likely to come here and tell me about it.”

Val hadn't said anything, just turned another page. For some reason that vexed her even more. People liked to watch her demonstrate how braille worked, but truth be told, most of what she could get in braille was for youngsters learning to read—there wasn't much for grown-ups. Oh, Adam was happy to read to her from his books, but even she understood that was easiest done by daylight when he was already so busy. And Adam's books were mostly novels from a much earlier time. What did she care about old stories and make-believe characters? She wanted to know real things!

After stewing awhile, she had felt ashamed for cutting in on Val, who could have been doing something other than sitting on the porch reading to her. Whether or not he really was sweet on her, as Fate kept saying, he clearly thought about her even when he was away from the Chene. Her room was decorated with little gifts brought back from his travels. Things no one else would guess she was interested in. A smooth rock from the Ohio River because there were no rocks in the swamp. The face of a tiny monkey carved into a peach seed. He even guided her fingers around the features to give her an idea of what a monkey looked like. Val understood her restless curiosity the way no one else did, and he got such a kick out of bringing the world to her. At least as much of it as he could carry in his own hands.

“I do appreciate you reading to me and telling me what you see up and down the rivers,” she had said by way of apology, “but that only makes me want to know more. Like that World's Fair in St. Louis that even Wambly Cracker went to and learned all kinds of things that he won't do nothing with but botch up. Imagine the things I could have learned there just by listening, touching, and smelling. It wouldn't matter that I can't
see
—I just need to get to where it's going on!”

How high-handed she had been with Val! They were used to listening to each other sound off, but maybe that day she did make him feel a little guilty about being able to just take off and go places while she was stuck there every day of the year. Other than a few dances at the schoolhouse or a showboat passing through now and then, there wasn't much at Bayou Chene for a blind girl to do.

Oh well, for every time Val had listened to her complain about being a prisoner, she had listened to him wish he could get off the river and settle down. He had even hinted that he'd like to settle down right here on the Chene. Fate said if Val did that, the next thing they'd know he would be asking Loyce to marry him! That's Fate for you, thinking up stuff that might bring more complications than it would solve. Loyce figured it all came down to everyone wanting what someone else has, even for a little while to see how it fits.

Suddenly through that quiet afternoon—so quiet she could hear fish rippling just under the water, not even breaking the surface—she felt someone watching. Not close, not like the kids who sneaked up behind her chair and had her guess their names. It was like a furtive breeze on the back of her neck. She felt it the way she could feel a hand passing close but holding back from touching her face.

Why watch someone rocking and knitting a net? She stopped rocking, tilted one ear up, and held her breath to get a better listen. Was she imagining it? No, a low growl was purring up from Drifter's throat. Loyce felt the little dog ease up from her napping position to her feet, softly, just like when she was creeping up on a lizard. Both of them tensed, waiting for the person to step out and yell a greeting. Seconds ticked by. She couldn't stand it any longer.

“Who's there?”

No answer.

“You! That's watching me. Who are you?”

Drifter growled again. Across the bayou on Indigo Island—a stagnant hole of no use to anyone—unseen by Loyce, two buttonwood bushes eased back into place.

After that afternoon Loyce strained to hear any new sound through the usual clamor around the post office. An unfamiliar voice or a new step that could explain her uneasiness. Days passed, and nothing out of the ordinary happened. Eventually, she shook it off and even blamed her own imagination for Drifter's continued anxiety. The little dog went beyond keeping her company, staying so close underfoot that Loyce stepped on or tripped over her several times a day.

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