Etienne chuckled as he continued strolling on ahead. The creep!
She scurried to catch up. “That wasn’t very funny.”
“Actually, I’m meeting a friend. And if you keep chattering away, my friend will be frightened off.”
“A friend? Why would a friend be frightened off?” Oh, it must be one of the agents in the Secret Service making a covert contact with him. Or could it be…oh, no…could it be a woman?
Her heart constricted. I don’t care. I don’t care.
Hah!
I do care. I do care. Darn it, but I do care.
“Shhh,” he warned in a hushed voice as he came to a bend in the stream. “There’s my friend.”
“Where?” she whispered, her head swinging back and forth as she scanned the area. The whole time, she kept an eye on her slippers, as well. Now that Etienne had mentioned snakes and her vulnerable feet, she couldn’t stop hearing little slithering noises. “I don’t see anything except that big boulder in the water over—Oh, my God!” The boulder was moving toward them. Kerplop, kerplop, kerplop…
What she’d thought a green algae-covered rock was actually a hulking monster of a turtle—at least two hundred pounds and three feet across. It was the ugliest animal she’d ever seen.
“Meet Maurice.”
“Maurice?” she squealed, jumping behind Etienne for protection as the lumbering beast poked a parrot-beaked head from its armor-plated shell and stared at them through beady eyes. Black leeches and other slimy critters clung to its exposed body joints. “Your friend?”
He nodded. “An alligator snapping turtle. Isn’t he a beauty?”
Harriet peeked up at Etienne to see if he was kidding, then back at the hissing reptile, which had high ridges and a long tail that were, indeed, similar to an alligator’s. Then Harriet danced around from foot to foot. She’d forgotten to check for snakes in the last second or two.
Etienne smirked at her. “Maurice was born when I was five years old. See that knife blade sticking out of the shell near his neck? I put that there when Maurice was a few months old. We were having a wrestling match over a war-mouth bass I caught.”
Etienne grinned like a young boy, and she could just picture the scamp going one-on-one with a baby turtle. “Who won?”
“Maurice,” Etienne admitted with a grimace, “but he’ll carry my mark for the rest of his life. How you doin’, Maurice? Have a wife yet? No? Me, neither. Too much trouble? I agree. Wenches tease you, then refuse to please you. Is it the same down there on the bottom? Bloodsuckers, you say? Yep!”
Maurice’s only contribution to the one-way conversation was an occasional soughing hiss as he sucked in drafts of air. Then, as quickly as he’d emerged from the water, Maurice sashayed over to the edge of the stream and submerged himself. While he propelled his ponderous body along the bottom, the only evidence of his path was a trail of silt that rose to the surface.
Etienne smiled at her, and she smiled back.
The shared moment was precious, and Harriet wished she could hold it in her hands and never let go. I love you, she thought, and for some reason forgot to add stupid.
“You reckoned I was meeting a woman, didn’t you?” he drawled, breaking the thread of intimate camaraderie.
“No, I thought you were adding animal sex to your necrophilia.”
He laughed and chucked her under the chin. “You were jealous when I mentioned a friend,” he gloated with amusement. Then he tensed suddenly, frowning with concern. “Why do you keep fidgeting from foot to foot?” He contemplated her for a moment before a lazy smile spread across his lips. “Do you have some of those pesky red ants on you? Perhaps in your drawers? Maybe I should check.”
Harriet shook her head at him and laughed, despite herself.
“They like to nestle in hot, moist places. Yep, you’d better drop your drawers.”
“Talk about lack of subtlety!” But she could deliver tit for tat any day. “I’m not wearing any underwear.”
“Neither am I,” Etienne came right back, flashing a one-upmanship grin at her.
She chalked an imaginary one in the air for his side. “You certainly recover quickly from your fits of frustration.” His roller-coaster moods were enough to drive a poor girl batty. One minute he scorched her with one of those man-looks, and the next he laughed at her.
He shrugged. “If I don’t laugh, I might cry.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“It’s that bad.”
Twang, Twang, Twang!
“What is that?” Harriet exclaimed. “Oh, I see. It’s just a frog, but what an ungodly noise it’s making. I thought frogs were supposed to ribet.”
“It’s a toad, not a frog. And that one’s a male spadefoot toad,” Etienne corrected, peering through the bushes at a stout little varmint about three inches long. The toad was sitting on a lily pad near a half-submerged gum tree log.
“We’re in luck. They rarely come out in daylight.”
Harriet squinted to see what was so special about this animal. Its unwarted, smooth skin was brownish black with an olive hue, highlighted by two stripes down the back. Ted the Toad was bellowing out what she presumed must be a mating call, his entire body vibrating with the intensity of his resonation.
The wartless stud was doing something else interesting while beckoning his significant other. With his nostrils and mouth tightly closed, he expelled air from his lungs into a throat sac under his chin, causing it to balloon up into an enormous, almost transparent bubble. The female species in toad-dom probably considered it very sexy, comparable to big pecs or six-pack abs.
Oh, yeah, here came Tootsie Toad, bee-bop-hopping over to Ted’s pad. With almost no foreplay—a six on the MCP scale—Ted jumped on Tootsie’s back and locked his forelegs around hers.
When Harriet’s eyes, as well as Tootsie’s, grew wide at Ted’s endurance, Etienne explained, “The thumb and inner fingers of the male’s front hands have horny growths on them called nuptial pads. That’s so he can hold on to her if she changes her mind.”
“Oh, you!”
“Really, it’s true. Look closer.”
“I am not going to stand here and watch two toads have sex. You really are a pervert.” She laughed and started to walk back toward the house.
“I think God missed a step in the evolutionary process,” Etienne concluded as he followed her. “He forgot to give those horny spurs to men. If he had, women wouldn’t be able to stop in the middle of the act.”
“You are outrageous,” Harriet said, turning and walking backward while she talked. She was still scanning the path warily for snakes. “But you see, God didn’t make a mistake. He gave men something even better, something he didn’t give to the lower animal classes.”
“And that would be?” Etienne made a great show of closing the distance between them with a big toadlike hop.
“A heartbreaker smile and a talent for slick sweet-talk, both geared to wear a woman’s defenses down.”
Etienne favored her with one of his heartbreaker smiles. And the butterflies in her stomach went wild. But then Etienne froze, glancing upward.
What now? Uh-uh! She wasn’t going to fall for that trick. He was pretending there was some danger, like the snake hunt, hoping she’d leapfrog into his arms, dropping her drawers in the process. She cut him one of her I’m-no-fool scowls.
“Harriet, remember when I told you to be careful of snakes?” he said cautiously.
“Yes.” What if he wasn’t teasing? She looked down in panic. Not a reptile in sight. The stinker!
“Well, try to remain calm, honey. I have something to tell you, and I want you to remember that not all snakes in the bayou are poisonous. In fact, most of them are completely harmless.”
“What’s your point?”
“Do you promise not to scream?”
“I’ll scream my head off if you don’t stop razzing me. I’m not afraid of snakes, by the way. Just cautious.”
“You’re not afrai
d of anything, are you, darlin’?” He came up close to her and held his arms wide open.
“As if!” she snickered.
“The most harmless of all the bayou snakes aren’t even on the ground,” he continued in a patient monotone, as if he didn’t want to alarm her. He continued to hold his arms wide open. “They’re…tree snakes.”
Tree snakes? The fine hairs on the back of Harriet’s neck and all over her arms came to attention in a slow-motion wave, just before she forced herself to look upward. Dozens of slender, slimy black snakes hung from the tree limbs, just waiting to fall into her hair, or slither down the neckline of her gown.
“Yikes!” Harriet screamed so loud the earth seemed to shake; then she launched herself into Etienne’s waiting arms with such force that she knocked him over. The snakes probably fell from their perches with all her flailing about, but Harriet wouldn’t know. Scrunching her eyes closed, she was still screaming into Etienne’s ear. He was sprawled on his back on the path with her plastered on top of him.
The brute was laughing so hard tears streamed down his face. “They’re just…they’re just vines,” he finally sputtered out.
Harriet stilled. The man is sick. Sick, sick, sick! “Are you saying those aren’t really snakes?”
“I never said those were snakes. I merely gave you a short lecture on the types of snakes in the bayou. You know what a lecture is, don’t you, honey?”
“You are such a toad,” she stormed, pounding his chest.
“There’s one other thing we men have that toads don’t.” Etienne chortled, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist with his horny hands. His “other thing” was prodding her with intimate insinuation.
She snorted with disgust and tried to peel herself off of him. “I would imagine that toads have that appendage, too.”
“Not that, sweetheart. What we men have that toads don’t is a brain to outmaneuver the ever-devious, reluctant female.” He ran both palms from her shoulders to her rear in emphasis of their positions. The lech had her right where he’d wanted her. “Dumb-men jokes aside, you were just outsmarted, Dr. Ginoza.”
And Harriet realized that she was.
Chapter Sixteen
“You’re playin’ in my orchard,
Now don’t you see.
If you don’t like my peaches,
Stop shakin’ my tree…”
Etienne heard Abel’s strong baritone voice ripple out into the evening air, accompanied by the raucous squawk of a mouth organ, as he and Harriet neared the house. Laughter and talking followed, coming from the kitchen. Then the lyrics and music started over again.
Abel must be teaching Saralee to play her new gift. It was just like him to pick a bawdy song.
In the distance, he saw Cain striding toward the bayou stream and a waiting pirogue, his medical satchel in hand. One of the black families from a neighboring area must have requested the services of the swamp doctor, as Cain was sometimes called, although there were probably other physicians, black and white, given that appellation, too. All day long, former black slaves had been lined up outside the large cabin Cain used as a clinic.
Cain had been absent from Bayou Noir and his practice way too long. Cain, too, had demons to exorcise.
They’d both fought in the war for what they’d considered noble ends. But neither of them saw much fruit for those efforts. More than six hundred thousand men from both sides had died, and what had been gained? Slavery had been abolished, but the Negroes were still in bondage. In fact, for many of them, conditions were worse than before.
And Cain, a doctor, had to live with the fact that only one out of three wartime deaths resulted from actual battle. Most soldiers had died from disease.
Now a new sound drifted on the wind…sweet and poignant, pulling Etienne from his dismal musings. It was the mouth organ again, but this time an intricate trill of notes wailed of profound heartache and yearning. Of the three of them, Abel was the only one able to express his inner pain and rage…through his music.
Saralee’s reedy, childlike voice sang the same lyrics to Abel’s accompaniment, adding innocence and hope to an age-old message of despair. Oh, the words were light, but Abel’s rendering was dramatic and full of anguish.
Etienne looped an arm over Harriet’s shoulder and put a fingertip to her lips, cautioning silence. She tried to swat him away, having proclaimed there would be no more touching, but he held tight. Too bad he didn’t have a set of those frog spurs.
“Listen to this,” he whispered. “There isn’t an instrument in the world Abel can’t pick up and play.” A complicated melody of improvised, syncopated rhythms and drawn-out notes followed with an underlying layer of the low-down blues music that Abel favored. Devil music, as Blossom would say.
Harriet tilted her head in appreciation. He could tell she was still mad at him for his trickery, but her insatiable curiosity won out.
“Was he always gifted?”
“Even as a child. I can remember him making music by blowing on a blade of grass or banging on a gourd with a stick when nothing else was available.”
“It’s too bad he never got to study music.”
“Oh, he did. Abel studied classical music in Paris under the best of teachers…piano, violin, all the highbrow instruments. And composition. But once he discovered the trumpet, he never looked back.”
“Can he make a living with his music? I mean, it’s hard even in modern times unless the artist is really famous.”
Shrugging, he took her hand, lacing their fingers, and drew her toward the house. Closing his eyes for a moment, he relished the contact of his skin against hers, restraining himself from raising her hand and brushing her knuckles against his lips.
The effect this strange woman had on him was alarming. Oh, the knee-buckling ecstasy of their numerous couplings back at Simone’s, that he could understand. But she affected him in so many ways. A passing glance, an accidental brushing, her kisses—oh, Lord, her kisses! He had to pace himself with her, allow himself only small doses of physical contact, or he’d be overwhelmed. As helpless as a bird without wings. Or a frog without spurs, he thought with a grin.
He didn’t love her. Hell, no! And thank God! He didn’t doubt the existence of love. He just wasn’t capable of it himself anymore…there were too many empty holes in his soul. He certainly didn’t think she loved him, either—with or without the “stupid” tag. She was feeling the same lustful impulses that he was.
“Did you hear me, Etienne? Can Abel subsist on his music?”
“Huh?” He shook his head to clear it of all the unwanted questions. “Oh, I suppose. There’s a demand for musicians in all the sporting houses and music halls, especially in New Orleans. Abel could play with any band he wanted, or start his own. And composers, like that Stephen Foster, seem to be able to make a good living from the sale of their sheet music. Besides, his stepfather and mother hit a bonanza during the Gold Rush in California. Abel has a generous income without ever working.” He hesitated, then added, “But what Abel should really do is return to Europe, and take Simone with him.”
“Because there’s more tolerance there for mixed couples?”
He nodded.
“But he won’t go, will he?”
“Probably not. There’s bayou mud in his blood, same as mine.”
“I must have bayou mud in my veins, too. I feel such a harmony here. I can’t explain it…it just seems like home.”
Etienne felt a warm flush of pleasure at her words.
“When I get back to the future, I’m thinking of moving from L.A. to Louisiana. Wouldn’t it be funny if your house was still here? And I bought it and lived here? Ha, ha, ha! Now that would be true synchronicity.”
“Yes, that would be very funny. Ha, ha, ha,” he responded sarcastically. His warm flush turned to a cold pall. “Maybe I could haunt you.”
Etienne knew she would be going away, and he eagerly awaited that day. But, perversely, he didn’t like hearing her talk
about it. Or being so enthusiastic. And the fact that he cared one way or the other really annoyed him.
“You’re playin’ in my orchard,
Now don’t you see.
If you don’t like my peaches,
Stop shakin’ my tree…”
Abel’s voice belted out the song once again in a solo rendition different from the previous ones, complete with rumbling insinuation and sultry double entendres. That was how all his music was—changing, improvising, embellishing. Each version different from the last. Then, too, he’d probably had a cup or two of Blossom’s home brew.
Etienne laughed. “That should be our song, Harriet.”
She gave him one of her disapproving glares, but surprisingly she didn’t pull her hand from his clasp. He squeezed his palm tighter against hers and watched with satisfaction as her color went high.
“Really, you harp on everything that’s wrong with me, but you won’t stay out of my orchard. And you damn well keep shakin’ my tree.”
“Well, just keep your tree in your orchard and everyone will be fine.” She did try to pull her hand away now, but too late. “Know this, honey: I’m not plucking any more peaches. Harvest time is over.”
He couldn’t resist then. Raising her hand to his lips, he kissed each of the separate knuckles. With his thumb pressed against her wrist, he felt her pulse jump, then race with excitement. Aaah! So, the merest caress from me affects her. “Why such vehement protests, chérie? You professed to love me just a short time ago. I thought—”
“You thought a woman in love would be an easy lay?” she finished for him and managed to pull her hand away. With both hands on her hips, she glowered at him.
He bit his bottom lip to stifle a grin. “I wouldn’t have said it in quite that way. But, yes, I’d like to lie with you—easy, hard, all ways. Is that what you meant by ‘easy lay’?” Meantime, he’d backed her up against the wall of the veranda.
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