The Devil in Canaan Parish (2 page)

“Miss Mouton,” I said.
 
“I’m Bram Palmer.
 
Would you like to come to my house to meet my wife?”

“It’s Melee,” she whispered.

Her father turned toward her.
 
I saw the muscles in his hand flex and the slightest flinch of her shoulders away from him.
 
I realized that he was exerting an enormous effort to restrain himself from cuffing her, and the dejected way she hung her head made me know that she was used to it.

“Oh, yes, well Melee, would you like to come?”
 
I asked, trying to collect myself.

“Yes sir,” she answered.

“And you’re old enough, right?” I said, suddenly remembering to ask.

“Yes sir, I’m eighteen.”
 

“And you’ve been a maid before?”

“No, sir,” she shook her head.

“Now, that don’t mean nothing do it?”
 
Mouton asked, anxiously. He stepped slightly forward into my line of sight.

“Well, it would be preferable,” I replied.
 
“But if she’s a good worker, and respectful, I think she’ll be fine.”
 

Mouton sighed. “C’est bon, c’est bon! Tank you, Mr. Palmer,” he said, extending his hand to me.
 

I shook it and nodded. “Not at all.”

“You take good care of my Melee, now,” he forced a smiled.

“Of course,” I assured him, turning again toward the girl. She was staring through me again, at that spot somewhere behind my head and beyond the store itself.
 
There was no indication of any emotion from her about the news that she would be coming with me to my home, perhaps to work for my wife and I for quite some time. She seemed indifferent to her fate.

“Adieu, Melee,” said Mouton.
 
He leaned forward to attempt to embrace her, and she turned her cheek toward him.
 
He gave it a quick peck, and then replaced the hat on his head.

“Adieu, Papa,” she murmured, not moving her eyes from that far-away spot.

Mouton turned with a grunt, and hurried out the door, perhaps afraid I would change my mind.
 
The cowbell hung from the door-handle made a noisy clang after his departure.
 
I followed behind him, removing the key from around my neck, and locking the door.
 
As I peered through the glass, I saw no sign of him.
 
The dark slanting rain had already swallowed him up. I flipped the “
Yes, We’re Open!”
sign over to
“Sorry, We’re Closed”
, and then turned back to the silent figure beside me.

“Well, I’ll just collect my things, and then we’ll go, alright?”
 
I announced, not sure why I felt the need to ask her permission.
 
She nodded, still not stirring from her strange trance.

“Follow me.”

She floated behind me down the aisle and waited next to the lunch counter as I removed my apron and hung it up.
 
I grabbed my raincoat and hat from the coat rack and put them on.
 
Then I went to the light switch and shut them all down.
 
The only light in the building now shone through the crack around the office door where I knew my father-in-law would be staying for at least another hour, finishing up the day’s receipts.

“Good night then, sir,” I called.
 
I heard him mumble something in reply.

I opened the back door and held it wide, beckoning for Melee to come.
 
Awoken from her reverie, she stiffened her shoulders and walked toward me.
 
The rain was pounding outside, spraying my face through the open doorway.
 
I had my umbrella with me, and I opened it, while holding the door open with my elbow.
 
I didn’t need to direct her.
 
She joined me under the umbrella, and I turned and slammed the heavy door.
 

My car was a few short paces away in the parking lot, a 1948 metallic green Buick Roadmaster. Bordelon had given it to my wife as a wedding gift. It was brand-new then, top of the line.
 
“Nothing but the best for my Sally,” Bordelon had crowed. He gave her the keys at our reception, and she shrieked and ran outside in her wedding dress to see it.
 
She was crying and hugging him around the neck, over and over, as all our guests came outside and gathered around to admire it. For the rest of the reception Bordelon strutted from table to table, high on the congratulations he was receiving.
 
It was one of the most ostentatious displays the town had seen since before the Great Depression.
 
It was a sign that better days were ahead.

The car was also a means for my father-in-law to briefly escape from the shadow of his father-in-law.
 
The Bordelons were not wealthy.
 
The drugstore had provided them with a comfortable living, but they still had to work for it.
 
Charlie Bordelon’s real money came from his wife, Alice Landry.
 
The Landrys had a large sugar cane plantation and owned much of the land around Techeville before the civil war. This land had been sold off over time, and the family plantation was now producing only a token amount of sugar, but the Landrys still lived there in the Grande Maison.
 
Mr. and Mrs. Landry, my wife’s grandparents, were Lord and Lady of the tiny kingdom of Techeville in Canaan Parish, Louisiana.
 
My father-in-law may have given us the car, but it was Old Man Landry who slipped the deed to our house into my dress coat pocket as he was leaving the reception hall, something he would do for all sixteen of his married grandchildren.

Ironically, Sally did not know how to drive and never learned, thus the car became mine by default. I opened the passenger side door and held it for Melee.
 
She looked awkward in the front seat, as though she wasn’t quite sure how to ride in an automobile, and her shaking hands pulled the hem of her skirt down over her legs and then folded in her lap. Grabbing her bag from her hand, I tossed it into the back seat.

I walked around to the driver’s side door and slid inside.
 
I was dripping wet, but the heat of the July evening kept me from feeling chilled.
 
Rain in South Louisiana was warmed by the heat of the Gulf.
 
It never refreshed you.
 
It felt more like jumping into a hot bath on a summer day. It made you drowsy and weak, and it fell hard, pounding the muscles in your arms, your back, your legs, pummeling the top of your head until you gave up trying to shield yourself and just let the abuse come. It was hurricane season, and so the rain was slamming down sideways, propelled by the high winds of a tropical depression.

I started the car, and cursed under my breath at the immediacy with which the front windows fogged up.
 
It would be difficult to see my way home.
 
I turned on the lights and the windshield wipers and backed out of the parking lot. Pulling into the town square, I drove around the courthouse and then proceeded up the road to my house.
 
My car could have driven itself.
 
It was a ten-minute drive at most, and I had done it every morning, noon and evening for the last ten years. That thought, and the fact that no one would be braving the storm, made me fairly confident I could make it home without crashing the car. As we drove north out of town, the First Baptist Church with its massive neoclassical columns and white painted steeple, towered over my left.
 
To my right loomed the levee, keeping the Bayou Teche in check.
 

The bayou was given its name by the Indians who lived in this area long ago.
 
The legend was that a giant snake wound through the lands and attacked their villages.
 
The warriors finally killed the snake and its carcass rotted where it lay.
 
The depression it left became the bayou, and now the levee systems protected the good townspeople of Techeville from its bite.
 
Further south, there was a bridge and the road to New Orleans.
 
Beyond that, the levees ceased and the bayou continued wild and free, leaving the poor blacks in the Bottoms and the Cajuns in the marsh lands to fend for themselves against it.
 

The pounding rain and the constant swish of the windshield wipers lulled me into a kind of trance that was unbroken until I pulled into the long drive next to our home.
 
The drive went around behind the house and ended at the garage.
 
I leapt out of the car and ran to yank the garage door open as the rain pounded my face and hands.
 
Then I returned to the car and pulled it into the garage.
 
The sound of the rain died away as I turned off the ignition, leaving my passenger and myself in relative quiet. For a moment, I heard only the sound of the blood rushing in my ears from my recent exertion, and then I could hear the slow in and out of Melee’s breath.
 
From the corner of my eye I discerned the outline of her nipples beneath her soaked dress.
 
I had not noticed them at the store, but sitting in the car caused the fabric to pull tight across her chest.
 
I found myself turning toward her, watching the up and down pattern of her breasts as her lungs filled and emptied of air. I was surprised by the sudden tug I felt in the crotch of my pants, and I quickly cleared my throat to break the silence.

“Are you ready to go in?” I asked.

She turned to me and nodded.
 
The garage was small.
 
Not big enough for me to go around the side and open the door for her.
 
I pulled her bag from the back seat, stepped out, and then reached my hand in.

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to slide your way out,” I said.
 

She gathered her skirt up and reached for my hand.
 
The delicate fingers were rough and strong, and she held my palm in a firm grip.
 
The touch sent an electric current through me, and I struggled to compose my face muscles after she emerged from the car. I had to reach around her to close the door, and at that moment, my chest brushed against her back, and I could feel her muscles tense.
 
I turned to look at her and she gazed up at me, waiting for my next direction.
 
I froze for a moment, suddenly wishing I had taken a longer way home and engaged in some small talk in the car, but at that moment I heard the screeching of the kitchen screen’s door in the back of the house and knew that my wife was waiting for us inside.

Chapter Two

The house that Sally and I lived in was built in the Acadian style. The whole structure was elevated four feet off the ground on brick columns. The high, sloped roof formed two large porches that ran along the front and back of the house. From the front door, one-stepped into a large gallery with a dining room on the right and parlor on the left.
 
These two rooms had French doors opening onto the porch, allowing for ample space to entertain guests who could mill about from dining room to gallery to parlor, out the doors to the porch and back in again.
 

The back of the house held the bathroom and master bedroom to the left, and a large, eat-in kitchen to the right.
 
A swinging door connected the dining room to the kitchen. The bedroom had another set of French doors opening to a private, screened-in porch in back.
 
The kitchen’s screen door also opened onto the back porch, but the two areas were separated by a half wall.
 

There were no other bedrooms in the house. Upstairs, a long, open attic with windows on either side of the house was where we kept our storage and also a makeshift room for our maids.
 
This was called the
garconniere
and was reached by a narrow staircase from the kitchen.
 
Ten years ago, my wife and I had planned to partition off this space to make additional rooms for the children.
 
Through the course of our marriage it became evident that this would not be necessary.
 
Sally had been unable to have children.

As I walked with Melee under the umbrella toward the back steps, I could see my wife sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper and smoking a cigarette.
 
I could tell by her posture that she was trying to appear nonchalant, but I also knew that she had just opened the kitchen door to check why it was taking me so long to come into the house.
 
Her blond hair was neatly coiffed and her long painted nails and lipstick matched the large red strawberries that decorated the white cotton dress she wore.
 
It was hard to tell she was only 33 years old.
 
She had aged so drastically since the day I first saw her at a Catholic college in New Orleans.
 

When I met Sally, I was a soldier fresh from the war and not sure what to do with myself.
 
My father had been a traveling salesman of religious artifacts: bibles, crucifixes, rosaries, statues of the Virgin Mary and St. Francis, St. Christopher charms, and the like. I spent my childhood living in greasy run-down motels, boarding houses and the backseat of the family car. We traveled back and forth across the southern coast. Through Galveston, Biloxi, Mobile, Panama City, and Jacksonville my father went door to door or set up camp outside of church revivals. We spent the hurricane season mostly in Savannah, but my father always wanted to be back in New Orleans by Mardi Gras and the Lenten season.
 
New Orleans was a mecca for my father’s wares. From Catholic nuns to Voodoo priestesses, the demand was great, and my father would sometimes set up a stand in Jackson square.
 
These times were always the happiest for me, because we’d have enough money to get a small apartment where my mother could cook us cornbread and red beans, and I could go to a real school.