Postmark Bayou Chene (29 page)

“How did Cide manage?” asked Adam.

“Oh,
m'sieu!
He worked just as hard as I did, but he talked the whole time! Never heard him take a breath that I remember,
non
. And he'd go after li'l bunches of moss that didn't seem worth it.”

“Well, it seemed like you'd be plenty tired enough. What happened at night that you didn't sleep?” Loyce asked.

“The first night wasn't so bad, if you don't count the bites. We stayed in a little slab shack Cide has in the woods. Lets anyone use it, but that night we was the only ones sleeping there. It was dry inside, and we made a fire. We threw some of the moss on the floor and just slept right on top. When it started warming up, them ticks and chiggers, they got to squirming, don't you know. After the cold settled in again before daylight, they stopped, that's for true, but I don't know which was worse, having my blood froze in my body or sucked out of it.

“Next day we run into some of them boys over by Canoeville. They started talking about this haunted houseboat where they was staying at. That Sinnet boy, Ursin, he just bought it from some man out on Deadman's Bayou. Been tied out there for about ten years or more, and he wanted it just for moss picking and running his nets in the spring. Well, Cide, he figured they was fooling with Ursin; you know the Sinnets got Chitimacha kinfolk, so they
real
superstitious. Cide up and says, ‘Shore, we gonna go over there tonight, and I betcha there's nothing I can't figure out.'

“So, after another day of reaching and twisting and pulling down and stomping, I was so tired I figured it didn't matter if I bunked with the devil hisself. Fact is, the evening started off pretty good. We had shot us a couple a squirrels while drifting down to the houseboat, and Ursin, he had already caught some fish, even in this weather. Injuns can do that, you know. Wasn't long we had the squirrels cooking down pretty good and was getting ready to fry the fish when all hell done broke loose.

“That woodstove he started clanking and clattering like buckshot was dancing around in a iron skillet. Then the damn thing started shaking till I thought the stovepipe was coming right out the window. I was all set to head outside and get in Cide's boat when that stopped.

“The next thing we knowed, it sounded like rats—big ones—scampering all over under that floor. Now you know nothing can live under there, but it sounded like all kind of critters was just running this way and that. Poor Ursin, he was 'bout to jump overboard when it stop. Just like that. None of us could make out what it was all about, but it hadn't hurt nobody, and we was some tired out. So, we all just rolled up and went to sleep where we could find us a spot.

“Since it was Ursin's houseboat, he got one side of the bed. John Paul, another one of them Chitimacha relatives, got the other side. Rest of us made pallets 'round the floor since we had plenty moss. That's the best thing I can say about moss picking is you always got your bed with you, if you don't mind company. My head was so heavy I went to sleep 'most as soon as I hit the floor, me.

“Can't say how long I been sleeping when the next racket broke out. Seemed Ursin's shotgun had flew across the room all by itself and hit the back of the bed right above John Paul's head. Or at least that's all we could make out, after we lit a lamp to see what had made all that noise. There was the gun, lemme tell you, laying right on top of them two boys. Well, that was enough for me. I wasn't scared of no ghostses, but I didn't wanna get shot by no flying gun neither, so I set up against the wall for the rest of the night. Far as I know, there wasn't no more trouble, but my head hurt so bad the next day from not getting to sleep I couldn't hardly hold it up.

“We worked all that day, and me, I figured no matter what happen I can sleep tonight. Well, it started before we even lit the lamp! Heard the biggest racket you can imagine—a roaring and a thundering like a stampede of cattle outside in the damn bayou, but there was no place for a stampede even if there was some cattle. I knew there wasn't nothing 'cept woods and water out there, but I was on my way to open the door and see what it was all about anyway when this rooster—I mean a full-size rooster—flew through this knothole in the wall that was no bigger than a twobit piece. He flew around the room two, maybe three times before he slipped right through the woodstove grate and up the chimney. Or I guess that's where he ended up. It happen so quick I can't say for shore if he ever came out on the outside.

“I told Cide, ‘This was your idea; how about you sit up till daylight so's the rest of us can get some sleep.'”

“What'd he say?” Loyce asked.

“He just laugh, him! Say he already heard about that li'l houseboat for years, that no one owned it for very long 'cause of all the racket. Now that he done seen and heard it hisself, he could understand how come it changed hands so often. He said nobody had ever been hurt or kilt by whatever it was, just inconvenienced.”

“Did he have a notion about why it happens?” asked Adam.

“Most anybody knows, 'cording to Cide, that it was used as a doctor's office out here during the war. Must have been a lot of soldiers from both sides died in it. Might even be the reason the place where it was tied up for so long is called Dead Man's Bayou. Cide's figuring that maybe them ghostses is still fighting the war.”

“So, you saying this might be the end of your moss picking?” Adam queried.

“You bet,
cher
!” Val exclaimed. “Figure up all the time we already done put in and now we got to spend weeks curing it, watching it weigh less every day? It just don't seem to pay at a penny a pound,
enh
?”

24

Val's restlessness returned as soon as his body recovered from the moss-picking venture. He and Loyce played music to relieve the tedium of the shut-in days, but he had no new tunes to bring her. They were simply banging out the same old melodies that they had played with Fate, except now the fire was gone. That high-flying energy he used to feel when they were all together had vanished. He had felt it only once since moving to the Chene—the night Fate showed up at the New Year's dance. That was when Val realized the exhilaration had sparked between his two friends; he had only shared in their glow. Now Fate was gone, probably for good.

Val's misgivings about trying to settle at the Chene mounted alongside a growing dread of telling Loyce. What would her life be like if he left too? What would his life be like if he stayed? The boat whistles were already calling to him. St. Louis. New Orleans. Mexico. Never again would he stand on deck and watch those distant ports chuff into view or shrink in the
Golden Era'
s wake.

Early March took a welcome turn toward spring, and Val could finally walk about the island checking on how well his bees had overwintered. The sunshine coaxed alligators, snakes, and turtles out to bask on logs and sandbars. Around the homes and houseboats chickens scratched for early grubs and sprouting grasses.

Hive inspections showed Val the bees were finding abundant forage, but it would still be weeks before he needed to add more frames. He fidgeted and paced. One day Alcide suggested that the impatient beekeeper could make some quick money at a timber camp.

“Why, Val! People are coming from all over tarnation to make money in these woods,” Cide thundered. “You don't need to sit here and let 'em get ahead of you! It's just a pastime for anyone who can swing an axe. Nothing but a pastime, I tell you. I made plenty of money in the timber camps when I was young, and I'd do it again if I wasn't a married man.”

Despite lingering misgivings from the moss-picking excursion, Val thought it over and joined the next crew boat that stopped for supplies.

Days passed, a week and then two. Loyce was embarrassed at the relief she felt during Val's absence. Until New Year's Eve she had been poised to plan a future with Val. Marrying would give her purpose, a life of her own. He had always cared for her, and she loved him dearly. She was just waiting for him to say the word, so she could say yes. Her alternative was to grow old on the post office porch.

Then Fate had busted into her life again. That's what always happened with Fate. The tumult of emotions, the heat charging through her veins during the waltz, shattered her future. She couldn't be Val's wife or anyone else's. She was imprisoned in a no-man's-land.

When the small steamer returned for more supplies, Val was aboard, gaunt and wizened.

“Ooohhh,
mais cher
,” he groaned, inhaling deeply of Adam's chicken and dumplings in brown gravy. “I'm so hungry, me, I could eat the feathers you pulled off them roosters. We ain't had nothing but salt pork on biscuits for the longest time. They don't come in for groceries soon enough, and we run out of most everything but coffee, pork, flour, and lard. On Sundays somebody would take their half-day off to shoot a few squirrel, but just drop in that hot lard with no seasoning, they taste like squirrel cracklins.

“One of the worst things besides the food was the smell. All of us slept in one bunkhouse not much bigger than Cide's moss-picking shack. Built out of green slabs that shrunk all crooked when they dried. Big cracks in them suppose to let the air in and the smoke out, but mostly they just let the mosquitoes in. Wood bunks nailed to the wall with li'l flat moss mattresses covering the slats. We was all stacked in there like firewood. No good way to heat up more than a kettle full of water at a time, so bathing was just a dip in the cold river, where you wash yourself and your clothes all in one lick.

“And work! Same thing all day every day except for half a day on Sunday. Chop or saw from can't to can't. The only break was when somebody got hurt, and you hoped it wouldn't be you. The worse part for me was nobody want to talk, even when we wasn't sawing and chopping. Unfriendliest bunch you ever met. Most of them seem to come from somewhere else and didn't know each other or anybody who lives 'round here. A few came from lumberjacking them big woods up in Oregon. Others, they came from New York and places like that. Some of them didn't talk French or English, said they was Norwegian, but they could swing a axe or sharpen a saw like nobody's business, lemme tell you. Cut through wood like it was butter. From what I heard, they just stay out there long as they can stand it, and then one day they up and leave when they can't take it no more.

“Gotta admit the pay ain't bad, but it ain't no way to live. Maybe Fate needs some help? What's he got going on?”

As relieved as he was to have escaped the timber camp, Val wasn't ready to sit around the post office all day.

“We only hear of Fate when Sam's here between runs of the fish boat, and you know Sam's not much of a talker,” Adam said good-naturedly. “More fishermen are signing up to send their fish north with him, so I expect he's doing all right, though. Now come on over here to the table and let me know if these dumplings will do for the paying customers.”

Val put on a smile and picked up a plate. Loyce, sharing his disappointment, shifted in her chair.