Postmark Bayou Chene (27 page)

No doubt she and Val would face their share of hardships after they married. She had confidence in his steady strength to guide her through them, just as he led her through the stormy evening to the dance. She knew they were headed for a lifetime together, even though he hadn't mentioned anything yet. Maybe she should bring it up herself after the New Year.

As they tuned up the fiddle and squeeze-box, more people came through the door, letting in fresh bursts of cold air. Eventually, the latecomers were all in, and the door stopped banging. Loyce felt the heat from the coal oil lamps taking the chill off the room.

“Looks like everybody's here,” Val said in her ear over the din of conversation. “What say we start with ‘Gay Gordons' tonight?”

She struck the first notes of the old Scottish tune, and Val's squeeze-box followed. Before the introductory bars were over, a wheel of dancers took shape around the room. No caller was needed because everyone knew the steps, whether or not their ancestors had ever set foot in Scotland. They twirled to the marching tune, forward and back, passing the ladies over to the inside of the circle and then under the arch to a new partner. Loyce could feel the building sway with their movements.

She didn't have time to catch her breath from that vigorous tune before Val launched into a favorite of his Irish family, “The Red Haired Boy.” As he sounded the notes of the introduction, the dancers moved out of the circle and into opposing lines for a contra. Loyce's fiddle picked up the melody, and they were lost in simple steps and flowing music.

The hours flew by, and so did the dances with historic names like “Indian Queen,” “Black Nag,” “The Irish Washerwoman,” “Jefferson's Reel,” and “Washington's Quickstep.” Along with the Cajun and Irish music he played with his family, Val had learned the music of every culture he encountered in his travels up and down the rivers. He also had picked up endless tales behind the dances and tunes.

He had told Loyce that when the colonies broke from British rule, they weren't about to give up their favorite dances, so they just renamed them and substituted tunes that sprang up around campfires and hearths in the New World. Descendants of those colonists brought the dances and tunes westward, which is why on New Year's Eve 1907 the tunes from village greens in England were bouncing off the walls of the Bayou Chene schoolhouse in merry company with Irish, Scottish, German, and French Canadian melodies.

“Take a break,
cher
, and go dance before we shut down,” Val told her during a pause late in the evening. Families with children were already leaving so that mostly couples—courting and newly married—were left on the floor.

Loyce felt along the fiddle case and turned her instrument to fit inside its molded shape. Before her hands had finished snapping the clasps, Alcide was at her side, leading her to the floor for the start of the “Virginia Reel.” A newcomer wouldn't have known a blind girl was among the dancers whirling on the floor. Right hand allemandes, left elbow swings—wherever she turned, the other dancers knew to catch her hand or arm. She flew down the hall and back again.

Of the people in the hall that evening, only she and Val knew that the dance was once the favorite of England's Queen Elizabeth. Back when it had gone by the name “Sir Roger de Coverley.” When the colonists renamed it the “Virginia Reel,” they also danced it to fresh tunes springing from the New World like “Turkey in the Straw,” “Uncle Penn,” “Oh! Susanna,” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

That history made sense to Loyce. Sure, the tunes they played tonight made her lonesome for Fate, but she wouldn't think of giving them up because of forlorn associations. In fact, in some way they were comforting. They transported her back to the many evenings when Fate had joined in playing twin fiddles with her.

After two more rousing tunes the dancers begged Val to slow the pace before they passed out along the floor. He picked up Loyce's fiddle and began playing the Irish tune “Star of the County Down” as a free waltz to close the evening.

“How about it, Miss Loyce? C.B. is putting Sam Junior to sleep, and I need a partner.”

“I'd be happy to, Sam,” Loyce said with a smile, as she held out her hand in the direction of his voice.

He smelled of fish and tar, and his steps were clumsy, but Loyce was happy to dance out the old year with her friend's good-hearted husband. The first verse of the melancholy waltz was ending when she felt a gasp of cold air and heard the door slam shut. Seconds later Sam's clumsy steps halted, and he opened the embrace that had held her to him.

“May I?” Fate said.

Before she knew what was happening, his arms were around her, his breath—still cold from the outdoors—on her face. Without even thinking, she melded against him and rested her head on his chest. They fell into perfect step.

“This is nice,” he said, running the fingers of his right hand from the nape of her neck to the crown of her head, before tucking her head under his chin.

Loyce didn't know whether he meant her new haircut or the sensation of holding her against him, but it didn't matter. They had learned to waltz to the plaintive old tune when they were kids, Fate watching the grown-ups and telling Loyce what they should do to keep from stepping on each other's toes. They had been so close that it was second nature for her to anticipate the slightest inclination of his body in any direction and go there.

But tonight the old comfort surrendered to a new feeling. Her breath caught in her throat. Blood rushed to her cheeks. Is this what fainting felt like? Fate must have sensed her confusion. He held her even closer. She felt the solid strength beneath his clothes. She breathed in the scent of him. How she had missed that!

Loyce wanted nothing more than to press herself closer, closer. His breathing ruffled the fringe of her curls and sent a shiver down the length of her body. Again, he must have sensed something. She felt his head incline as if to look at her face. He stood stock still for the briefest moment, and then she felt his breath softly on her lips. Confusion flooded her senses.

He had hugged, patted, squeezed, and tickled her as long as she could remember. But Fate had never kissed her. Cousins don't kiss. Remembering they no longer shared that special intimacy, she stiffened in his arms. This is what he did with other girls, the ones he dallied with and left.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Her voice broke the easy mood of the waltz. “It's not likely you're just passing through on New Year's Eve. Must be business, or you would be at some shindig in Baton Rouge or Lafayette.”

“What's it matter to you?” His voice sounded more confident than she remembered. “Truth be told,” he continued, smoothing his hand down her back to the slim waistband of her dress, “I just wanted to see out the old year with the people who mean the most to me.”

He pulled her even closer. His embrace, like his voice, was also more confident, more in control. Loyce didn't have the upper hand. She didn't like the change.

“Hmmmph!” she said, straightening her shoulders and lifting her head from his chest.

“I know you, Fate Landry, and I take that to mean you must be hiding from someone to be out here in the swamp tonight. You don't just ignore us for months and then show up like nothing's happened.” Her voice was rising and then broke off abruptly as they bumped into another couple. Loyce caught a hint of Roseanne's vetiver soap.

“Well, maybe it's past time for someone to start asking questions,” Roseanne was saying. “Look at her over there pretending like nothing happened, just holding her head up proud as can be.”

Just as Loyce realized Roseanne and her partner were stopped on the floor, she heard Adam's voice.

“Mrs. Barclay, all I'm saying is we've never had to bring the law in before, and there's a lot of people who like C.B. and Sam. Say they fit in real well around here.”

“What's this about Sam and C.B.?” Fate stopped, and Loyce felt him turn away.

“Mrs. Barclay is bound and determined to bring the law out here to investigate whether C.B. tried to drown that young'un a month or so ago when he fell overboard,” someone offered.

“She fell overboard too!” another voice chimed in. Loyce recognized Viola Persilver from over on Bayou Cozine.

“That's what she wants everyone to believe,” retorted Roseanne.

“Mrs. Barclay, I'd be careful about accusations if I was you, considering your own situation!” Viola shot back.

“She was soaking wet when I brought Sam Junior to her!” Alcide Verret's booming voice joined in the chorus that was turning into for and against.

“Anyone would have the sense to make it look like she had fallen overboard too!” came a strident voice Loyce couldn't immediately place.

“Now hold on. Sam works for me, and I can say—” Fate started.

“You weren't even here, haven't been here for so long you don't deserve an opinion about anything that happens out here.” Loyce raised her voice above the din and stepped out of his arms.

“I'm telling you, she looked like a woman who'd seen a ghost when I handed him up to her!” Alcide continued over the mayhem.

“Well, of course she did, after she thought she'd gotten rid of him and you come toting him back!”

“What do you mean by ‘got rid of him'?” Sam's voice drowned out the others. “C.B. never hurt that baby, and anyone who says so will have to take it up with me!”

“Hurt Sam Junior?” No one had noticed that C.B., holding the bundled Sam Junior, had walked onto the floor. “I know where this started! Mrs. Barclay, you are a scheming, mean, dissatisfied, and rejected woman, jealous of me and mine. You ain't got a family of your own that wants you so you just have to take it out on someone.”

Val had stopped playing and was placing Loyce's fiddle back in its case. He methodically put on his coat, picked up his accordion in one hand, the fiddle case in the other, and headed for the door. If conditions continued to escalate, he didn't want anything to happen to the instruments. He had played many a dance along the rivers that ended in brawls, sometimes with knives and guns coming into play. He strode quickly across the plank floor that just a minute ago had been bouncing to the feet of happy dancers. Now it was covered by the same people shouting and pushing to make their points as they took sides.

After stowing the fiddle and squeeze-box in his boat, Val went back inside. Loyce was standing uncertainly on the edge of the crowd. Fate was in the middle of the knot, waving his hands and trying to talk above Roseanne's voice.

“C'mon,
cher
, let's get you out of here,” Val said. “Here's your wrap; the weather's still nasty out there.”

“Not as nasty as it is in here,” she declared.

They shuffled slowly through the edges of the crowd and across the threshold, Loyce draped in her cloak and feeling for the next step. Back in the boat, she sat quietly while he untied the line and tossed it on the bow. The rain had stopped falling, but the wind was still blowing drops from the trees. She shrugged deeper into the cloak and thought that 1908 was getting off to a rough start.

Loyce stayed in bed the next morning, listening to Fate chatting in the kitchen as if he had never been away. Adam would ask a question now and then. Roseanne's laughter drifted up, along with the fragrance of lost bread. Lost, that's what Loyce felt like—lost in her own home.

She was ashamed to go downstairs. Surely everyone had noticed her confusion in Fate's arms last night. How was she supposed to act around them today? Would they mention it? Or just exchange looks? As if she couldn't
feel
when someone was doing that to her!

And Fate, the cause of it all, blabbering away down there like nothing happened. That's what burned her cheeks the most. They flamed from her just thinking about the smug way he held her, like he owned the right! She flounced over in the bed, and the moss mattress crackled in response, but when she heard Fate's familiar tread coming up the stairs, she froze. She held her breath to keep even that from him. He paused. They both listened to the silence on the other's side of the door.

She continued listening as he left. Down the stairs, out the door, and along the plank walk. His stride was stronger and wider than before. Eighteen steps. He had outgrown her once and for all.

23