These Sheltering Walls: A Cane River Romance (21 page)

                                                ****

            Gideon
toweled off his hair and stared into the mirror. He’d told himself all day that
his nerves would settle down before supper time. That had been a lie. He went
into the kitchen and grabbed his phone from the counter.

            “You’re
calling to see if I need anything, right? You’re definitely not calling to
cancel,” Tom said as he picked up.

            “I’ll
bring Bix and Ruby, but I’m not staying.”

            “Sorry,
can’t hear you over the sound of the water boiling. I’m hanging up now. We can
talk when you get here,” Tom said.

            “I’m
just not a social person. I never have been. You know that.”

            “You’ve
sat through plenty of suppers before. And I really am hanging up now.”

            Gideon
started to speak but there was a click and Tom was gone. He let out a growl and
put the phone back on the counter. He still wasn’t staying. He didn’t want
Henry to be afraid of him, but now that he was minutes from seeing her, he was
convinced this wasn’t the way to do it. His nerves were frayed at just the
thought of sitting across a table and making small talk. Forcing them both into
a situation where they were uncomfortable was a terrible idea and would
probably make everything worse. Add in one nosy old couple and Tom, and it just
might be a recipe for alienating Henry for good.

                                                                        ***

            Henry
parked in front of the little white house next to St. Augustine’s parish. She
was early and she didn’t even know how it happened.

             Father
Tom was lucky to live and work right on the Cane River Creole National Historic
Park. She walked up the little path, inhaling the scent of late summer and
Cajun spices. Her toes were feeling a little bit pinched in the new strappy
sandals she’d chosen and she was glad there wouldn’t be much standing around. Kimberly
always said to wear them around with a pair of socks for a few hours, just to
make them comfortable, but as usual she hadn’t thought of her advice until it
was too late.

            Henry
smoothed down the skirt of her summer dress and hoped it wasn’t too fancy for a
cook out. Or too casual. It had been so long since she’d been to a crawfish
boil that she hadn’t been able to decide whether to wear jeans and a T-shirt or
something more for a garden party. She never spent much time on picking outfits
but after half an hour, she’d finally been so irritated with her own indecision
that she closed her eyes and grabbed the first thing she touched. It was a
little less formal than she was used to, but the little tulips on the pale
green fabric seemed cheerful and carefree, something she desperately wanted to
be herself.

            The
weather was perfect for an early September cook out and she’d decided to let
her hair down this once. Although she’d been meaning to get to a salon, she
never found the time and the blond now looked like highlights, overtaken by her
natural dark brown color. She brushed the waves back from her face, glad not to
feel the pinch of the perpetual ponytail.

            Father
Tom must already be cooking. There was a little table set up with a red checked
cloth and chairs. A plume of steam rose from somewhere just out of sight.
Instead of knocking on the front door, she continued around the corner and
spotted Father Tom seated in front of a bucket.

            He
looked up as she called out a greeting and he waved an ear of corn. “I lost
track of time. Did you knock?” He stood, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.

            She
shook her head. “No, sir. Followed my nose.” She glanced around. “I’m early.”

            “You’re
right on time. Gideon went to pick up Bix and Ruby. They’ll be here in a bit. The
mudbugs are in the bag, waiting for the corn and taters to get cookin’. Have
some sweet tea. Or a Coke from the cooler. Or a beer from the fridge, if you’re
more of a beer person.”

            “Thank
you,” she said and poured herself some tea. The cold, sweet liquid brought back
a hundred childhood summer nights, when the neighbors would gather at one house
or another and share the weekend catch or some later season corn.

            “Do
you like to cook?” he asked.

            “Not
really.” She smiled. “I’m still planning on taking part in the jambalaya feed.
Gideon knows I can’t cook and he offered… or I asked... I’m not sure how it
happened, now that I think about it. But anyway, I can’t really cook but I will
try and participate.”

             “Eating
is participation, too.”

            “I
can definitely eat. I can shuck corn, too,” she said, setting her glass on the
table. They worked in silence for a few moments. “And I can make a mean waffle.
Just so you don’t think I’m entirely without culinary skills.”

            “I’ve
never been convinced that cooking is a skill. Sure, you can learn to follow a
recipe, but there has to be something more. You have to enjoy the process.” He
picked up another ear of corn and started stripping away the husk with quick,
sure movements.

            “Have
you always loved cooking?”

            He
nodded. “Mamas around the country make sure their kids learn their reading and
arithmetic. Mine, good Creole mama that she is, made sure I learned a few
dishes, like gumbo and red rice. I took to the lessons so she taught me
everything she knew. Blackened catfish, spoon bread, grillades, crawfish
boulettes, sweet potato pone, chess pie, swamp chili, la reine cake.” He
smiled. “When they come visit every now and then, we like to get busy in the
kitchen. It gives us a chance to talk. Same as when I was a teenager. I loved
the concentration that comes with the chopping, the way a person couldn’t walk
away from a roux, the whole day process of simmering and tasting and adding
spices. That sort of time and attention can’t be faked.” He dropped the corn in
the bucket and reached for another. “Gideon, on the other hand, has always been
preferential to the eating part.”

            Henry
smiled but said nothing. She wanted to know about Gideon as a teenager and hear
about the parents that Father Tom was still close to, but it seemed like such a
private topic for two people shucking corn for a country boil.

            “Do
you know what happened?” Father Tom asked.

            She
froze, her hand hovering over the bucket.

            “The
whole story. Not just what Gideon tells people,” he said.

            She
held the ear in her hand, feeling the rough leaves under her fingers. “He told
me his name the other day and I―”

            “His
name? You mean, his birth name?” Father Tom’s brows had shot up.

            “I
didn’t ask him,” she said. “Or, maybe I did. I can’t remember how it happened.”
He must think she was purposefully forgetful.

             “This
morning I did an internet search on him.” It was embarrassing to admit that
she’d poked into the personal history of someone she knew. It wasn’t the type
of person she was.

            “Good.
I’m glad. Gideon doesn’t think what happened to his family can possibly be any
kind of excuse for what he did.” He held up a hand. “I’m not saying murder
isn’t wrong. It is and he knows it. But it’s not the whole story. I think it’s
impossible to understand him without knowing it all.”

            She
wanted to understand Gideon, more than she’d wanted to understand anyone
before. “Would he mind us talking about him? I feel like I’m trespassing in
some way.” Her voice sounded shy and uncertain in her ears.

             “I
see why he likes you.”
Tom said. “And if it makes you feel
better, we can talk about me. And in talking about me, we can talk about him.”

            Laughing,
she nodded. “When they get here, we’ll just be two people working on supper.”

            Father
Tom reached for the last ear of corn. “So, I came to live with Sally and Vince
because my step daddy was perpetually underemployed and somehow he thought that
was my fault. You’ve heard the saying ‘knock you into the middle of next week’.
Well, he never succeeded but he sure liked to try.”

            “I’m
so sorry,” Henry said. Lisette had never been very affectionate, but she’d
never hurt her, not like that.

            “I
was eleven when I met Gideon. He was thirteen and he’d been through a lot of
foster homes by then. We were both tough, angry kids who thought the world was
out to get us, and figured we’d be better off if we got a few kicks in first,”
he said. “People see us together and think that he’s been my personal mission. They
think he’s the sinner and I’m the saint, that I somehow saved him from a life
of crime.”

            He
paused, looking her straight in the eyes. “I knew what Gideon was going to do.
I gave him money I’d saved, talked over which buses to take and how to find the
guy. He never told anyone, so I didn’t pay for my part in the murder. But it’s
as much my past, as it is his.”

           
Truth.

            “Our
foster parents were devastated. Crushed. The sons they’d accepted and loved
betrayed them, saving up money and planning this crime for months, lying in the
worst way.” He stared at his shoes. “They had a son that followed Gideon
around. Gideon loved him, was real kind to him. Anyway, Austin was only five
and couldn’t understand why his big brother, his buddy, was gone. Watching what
happened to them after Gideon was arrested, it changed my life. I saw what sin
does, how it rips apart a family and breaks hearts. It took Gideon’s crime to
show me what I had.”

            He
said, “People look at us and think I saved him. But it’s really the other way
around. Gideon saved me.”

            She
looked down at her hands and realized she hadn’t been working at all, the corn rested
there, half-shucked.

            “Of
course, he can’t see it that way,” Tom went on. “He’s convinced that nothing
good can ever come from what he did and that he’s doomed to wander through the
world, paying for his crime.” He sighed. “He’s come a long way, but he’s still never
accepted that he’s forgiven.”

            “The
night of the Zydeco Festival, he told me something. He said he could never date
Alanna because she wanted to save him.”

             “True,
we all see what we want to see, and maybe Alanna only sees a man she can change.”

            “But
maybe he does need someone like her so he can move on and be happy.” She hated
saying the words. “If he won’t listen to you, maybe he’d listen to her.”

            He
stood up and carried the corn to the pot of boiling water. He snapped the corn
in pieces, tipped it into the water and reached for a large bowl of small red
potatoes.  “Or maybe Alanna doesn’t see that he’s unhappy. Maybe she just sees
him as a brooding, dangerous killer who’ll only tamed by her gentle, womanly touch.”

            She
let out a guffaw. “Dangerous?”

             “So,
you’re not afraid of him? Not even a little?”

            “Not
even a little,” she said.

            He
seemed to find that amusing.

            “At
least, I’m not afraid of him that way.” She watched him add a plate of cut
sausages to the water. The seasoning filled the air with a familiar spice. She
hadn’t realized how much she missed the low country boil suppers, cooked outside
on a warm summer evening.

            He
turned from where he was spreading newspaper on the table. “So, you
are
afraid of him.”

            “Of
course not. Not that way.”

            “In
some other way?”

            She
didn’t know how to answer. “I barely know him.”

             “You
know him better than almost everybody.”
He stirred the boiling
water and poked at a potato. “But you don’t trust him.”

            Henry
was aware of the bright sunlight and the fact she was wearing a pretty
sundress, standing in the middle of summer supper party, and yet was somehow
entangled in a very honest conversation.
You deserve to be able to tell the
truth.

            “I
don’t think you should trust anyone who has nothing to lose.”

            He
unfolded another sheet of newspaper and reset the plates. His eyes were sad. “That’s
very wise,” he said.

            The
sound of a car in the driveway made them both turn, and Henry ran a hand over
her hair. She’d only met Bix and Ruby a few times, but if they were like Tom
and Gideon, she didn’t know how she was going to get through this meal. It
seemed as if none of them were capable of a simple conversation.

            She’d
thought that her life would be better with a little honesty, but now she felt
as if she’d made a mistake. What she wouldn’t give for a few hours of mindless chatter.
The alternative, sitting across from Gideon and letting go of all her pretty
white lies, was asking for trouble.