by Gwen Roland
Clothilde said Roseanne needn’t resort to such drastic measures, even if her mother’s side of the family did tend toward roundness. She could just set her mind to follow the Garnier example of self-control. It was only a matter of training herself to eat very little and to always wear close-fitting waists. Even though other matters of discipline came easy—she had the most perfect cursive handwriting in her class and the most precise satin stitch in her embroidery circle—Roseanne’s self-control fell short when it came to food.
To get her mind off the empty platter, or maybe to hide the evidence, she picked up the dishes and carried them to the porcelain dishpan, only to find that it was already full of dirty cups and plates. Before she realized what she was doing, she had filled a kettle from the water bucket on the counter. While it heated on the stove, she started clearing the table of non-kitchen items. Fishing gear went into a wooden crate by the back door. The shuttles were stacked neatly in a basket that had held only a dirt dauber’s nest and husks of dried garlic.
When the water was hot, she poured it over a bar of Octagon soap in the dishpan and breathed in the fragrance she remembered from washdays, when the kitchen girl would haul baskets of laundry from the clothesline. Later the clothes would be stored away in armoires and linen closets throughout the house, carrying their fragrance with them. When no one was looking, Roseanne would refold every piece in her own armoire so that each set of stockings, individual handkerchiefs, and every pair of drawers were precisely creased and stacked. Then she would make her way through the house from room to room, linen closet to armoire, bringing the folds up to her standards. She didn’t know why she kept this self-imposed duty a secret or why it made her uncomfortable to hear her stepmother brag on the kitchen girl’s attention to detail.
Order, order, Roseanne had to make order. When she was still in braids, she would check the ribbons throughout the day to make sure they were evenly placed and tied exactly the same way. Roseanne had looked forward to wearing her hair up and not having to keep an eye on the braids throughout the day. But the grownup style brought no relief. She stabbed more pins into her hair throughout the day, chasing down any curl that sprang out of control. By nightfall her head ached. She went to bed earlier to get relief from the pins.
Order. That was the reason she couldn’t walk out of the post office kitchen without washing the dishes, even though she told herself it was just a good way to express appreciation to Mr. Snellgrove for the breakfast. It took three kettles of hot water to wash all the dirty crockery and utensils, and when she finished, the chaos in the rest of the room looked even worse.
Roseanne kept moving, making order despite the tight waist, which was even more constricting after the heavy breakfast. She bent to pick up a pair of muddy boots from the floor and became light-headed. She put a hand on the table to steady herself until it passed. She swooned again when she stretched to lift a broom under the cobwebs drifting from the ceiling. There was no way to take a deep breath. She would stop in mid-stride, lean on something, and breathe shallowly until the dizziness passed.
When Adam came to cook the noon meal, he stopped in the doorway. “Oooh, Mrs. Barclay! What have you done in here?”
“Just a little spit and polish, Mr. Snellgrove,” Roseanne said, smoothing down her straining waistband and surveying her work with satisfaction. She had made order out of chaos and cleaned up the evidence of her extravagant breakfast. If only a life was as simple as a kitchen, she thought, and all secrets so easy to keep.
7
“Drifter, cow pen!”
Fate’s voice carried to the porch, where the dog was stretched out by Loyce’s foot. She rolled her eyes in his direction and slapped her tail once, but that was all. She’d been that way ever since the snake fracas—claimed her spot next to Loyce and wouldn’t budge. When even Loyce gave up trying to shoo her off, Fate knew the little dog possessed extraordinary determination and concentration. All he had to do was figure out how to make that work for him.
“Drifter, cow pen!”
This time he waved toward the pen to give her a hint, to at least start her looking in the right direction. So far the Jersey, who stretched her neck over the picket fence and mooed in Fate’s direction, was showing more interest than Drifter. This brought hoots from the porch.
For four days in a row every trifler and rattlehead on the Chene had been educating each other on the fine points of dog training by pointing out what all he and Drifter were doing wrong. All he wanted her to do was learn the names of places in sight of the post office and then go there on command. It just didn’t seem like so much to ask, when he was the one who saved her life.
Oh, he knew Loyce and Val both claimed to have had a hand in it, but they got all closed-mouthed when Fate asked them plain and simple who pulled her out of the water and pumped on her till she coughed up that belly full of bayou. Without that, none of the other would have amounted to a hill of beans. But the way she stuck by Loyce now, anyone would think Fate had been just a bystander that day, like all those gawkers and jaybirds on the porch right then that didn’t have nothing better to do than interfere with his dog training.
The sun climbed higher and hotter, but that wasn’t the only reason sweat was running down Fate’s shoulder blades. The few times that ungrateful pup did snuffle in the direction he told her—whether it was the dock, the outhouse, the clothesline, the picket fence, or the cow lot—those knuckleheads all whooped it up and swore that her change in direction was more accidental than intentional.
He was just about ready to give it up when he had one more idea.
“Maybe if you’d come down here and act like you wanted to go somewhere, she’d catch on,” he yelled up at Loyce.
“I got better things to do than fool with a dog, and so do you,” Loyce yelled right back. Fate heard the slap on her thigh and how it made the speckled butter beans dance in the pan on her lap. Of course she couldn’t stop there.
“Shouldn’t you be running nets today?” she went on. She could be real bossy for such a little thing.
“Awww, they’re full of buffalo, and it’d be a lot of work for nothing,” he explained, even though he shouldn’t have to. They were his nets. “Alcide ran his yesterday, and even after selling to the cook of the Teche Trader, he had some left over. No one wants to eat buffalo when there’s catfish.”
As you’d find out if you talked to an expert like Wambly Cracker, he wanted to add and would have if there had been time enough to enjoy his cousin’s reaction to the peddler’s name. Wambly had figured it out, wrote it down on paper and everything—buffalo weigh in at ten, even twenty pounds each, and sometimes when the water’s high, they’ll pack into a hoop net so tight you can’t run a knife blade between ’em. But fish buyers pay just two cents a pound for them and only buy a few each week. Mostly what you can sell goes to feed the riverboat crews, who don’t have much say about what gets put in front of them.
Catfish, now, that’s a different story. They taste better, buyers pay four cents a pound, and they can live in the fish cars riverboats tow alongside. Buffalo die right off in a tow car, so they’ll never make it to a market in New Orleans or Morgan City.
It just didn’t make sense to waste time with buffalo unless a fella was to get up extra early and beat someone like Alcide to the next riverboat cook that docked at the Chene. Fate was not aiming to be that fella. Of course, if a fella could think of a way to get buffalo to those Jews that Mrs. Barclay knows about, it would be a different story. He needed to ask Wambly. You could bet if there was anything to it, Wambly would know.
Fate would have said all that and more just for the fun of riling his cousin, but right then he needed to concentrate on dog training.
“C’mon, Loyce, let’s just try one more thing,” he pleaded. “Help me out here—I know she’ll do it for you.”
“Just once, I mean it!” She set aside the pan of beans and started feeling her way to the banister.
Fate watched Loyce toe her
way down the steps. Like always, her shapeless dress was pulled in around her middle by apron strings—probably in knots already. He had been unknotting them for her since they were kids. She got impatient and jerked the strings, then before you knew it, there was a knot so tight you had to fetch an ice pick to pry it open.
As usual, there was more of her hair outside her braid than in it, making sort of a fringy frame around her face. He figured her eyes would have been the same blue-gray even if she wasn’t blind. The color fit with her light-brown hair, kind of like a great blue heron wading along a sun-streaked bayou bank. That comparison was one of the few things she didn’t mind him saying about her looks. She never could catch on to the notion of color, no matter how many times Fate tried to explain it, but she did understand that everyone likes to watch blue herons fishing along the bank.
Her skin brought to mind the Jersey cream he watched her skim by touch. Beat anything he ever saw the way she could slide a big spoon right between the cream and milk, feeling the space between them. He didn’t know what she’d make of that comparison, so he played it safe and kept that likeness to himself. Not that he ever paid much attention to what she looked like. Loyce was just Loyce, whether it was the sight, smell, or sound of her.
What really got to him was watching her come down steps. She didn’t look at her feet like sighted people do. No sir! She came chin up, head high and tilted to one side—listening like—tapping for the next step with her toe a little bit ahead of the rest of her body. To him that listening stance made her seem more tuned in to the workings of the universe, like she knew something other people, especially Fate, didn’t know yet. Add that bossy voice, and you got the notion she was a force.
Yet at the same time she was so little, bones like a chicken. It was all Fate could do to leave her alone when he thought she needed help. After all, she was his cousin, more like a sister really. He’d watched out for her since back when she was taller than him, not that she ever heeded any of his warnings about anything.
“When are you going to start acting like a blind girl!” he had admonished when he found her dangling from a pothook in the kitchen.
That was the day she had climbed up to the cupboard to put away jars of figs Adam had left to cool on the counter. When she slipped, only the knot in her apron strings kept her aloft until Fate reached her. Was she grateful that he saved her from landing in a pile of broken jars and sticky figs? Not unless you’d call bloodying his nose with a kick grateful, which Fate certainly did not. Even though his eyes stung and his breath caught at the unexpected blow, he managed to keep a grip until she was safe on the floor again.
Another time he found her swatting from tree to tree behind the cow lot, where she had wandered off the plank walk trying to find a setting hen’s nest. She could have ended up in the woods or stumbled into one of Val’s beehives. She thanked him that day with a thrown egg, which he dodged because he knew to be on guard for it. Plus, not being able to see played the devil with her aim.
There were countless other times he stepped between her foolheartedness and danger. Her response was always the same: “Who are you to tell me how a blind girl is supposed to act? How many do you know? I think when you get right down to it, I’m the authority on this!”
She learned words like authority up there at the Blind School, going all the way through the grades like it was nothing. Book learning came easy for her.
Fate put aside his thoughts and met her at the bottom of the steps.
“Here, let’s get set up in the right direction,” he said, taking her by the hand and facing her toward the cow lot. Drifter turned with Loyce and looked from side to side.
“I think she’s catching on!” Fate said excitedly. “Now just hold this rope while I put the other end around her neck.”
Fate carefully arranged both ends of the rope, took one more look at his subjects, then pointed while shouting, “Drifter, cow lot!”
The black tail waved, but nothing else moved.
“Maybe if there was something to get her attention,” Val said from the porch.
Fate narrowed his eyes at Val, trying to determine whether his pal was making fun or being helpful. Well, nothing else had worked. In one smooth motion Fate picked up a stick and tossed it toward the Jersey cow. Just as quickly, Drifter shot after it, hit the end of the rope, and flipped backward, jerking Loyce down on top of her.
Drifter’s squeals were nearly drowned out by “Fate Landry, what’d you do!” Loyce pushed against his hands as he lifted her from the ground and dusted the back of her dress before leading her back to the porch.
“Whoahoa! I’m guessing someone taught her to retrieve. This here is some kind of retriever dog. Loyce, we could make some money just renting her out to hunters. I’ve seen pictures in the papers of rich men who pay to—”
“No one in Bayou Chene is going to pay to rent a dog!” she said, plopping hard into the seat of the rocking chair for emphasis. “For the last time I’m telling you to find that dog a home.”
Loyce’s fuming was cut short by the scraping of Val’s chair on the porch floor.
“Would you look at that?” He stood up and took off his cap as if it helped him see clearer. He always did that. Fate thought maybe it was something they taught him on the river.
Val squinted again and continued, “Some real sights have drifted around that bend, but this might be the strangest of all.”
“What? What is it?” Loyce tilted her ear, her version of Val taking off his cap.
“Is that a silk parasol? What color would you call that outfit?” Fate said, adding an extra dose of wonder to his voice. He knew he was aggravating her but couldn’t help himself.
“Fate Landry, you tell me what it is this second, or I’ll sic Drifter on the seat of your baggy britches,” she said. Drifter thumped her tail at the sound of her name.
“It’s a flatboat, Loyce,” he explained. “Just a regular old flatboat poled by a regular-looking fella. Looks like they got everything they own with them.”
“He’s toting a parasol?” her voice slid up, suspicious, alert, feeling her way one step ahead of Fate.
“Nope, that’s the girl with him. Or woman. Can’t tell which. Skinny, skinny little ol’ thing. Sitting on a chair in the middle of the flat dressed in something shiny about the color of a lemon. Holding a purple parasol like she’s scared to death of the sunlight hitting her face, which from here looks white as a catfish belly. Her mouth is moving, but it don’t appear he’s paying any attention to what she’s saying. Just keeps poling that flat like his life depended on getting to our dock.”
“Chartreuse, Fate. That color is chartreuse.” Mrs. Barclay had heard the commotion and walked out to the porch. “I’ve seen fabric samples like that but never imagined someone buying anything that color. And that violet parasol!” She sniffed and went back inside the store.
Fate and the others watched as the man squeezed past the woman in the chair to reach the bowline at the front of the flat. He hopped onto the dock and snubbed the line to a post. The woman continued to talk, but instead of replying, the man walked silently to where she sat and took her proffered hand. Then he led her carefully through their stacked possessions. After helping her onto the dock, the man stood back to let her pass. He followed her up the plank walk, blocked from view by her parasol.
“Josie Landry?” was the first two words out of the man’s mouth.
Before anyone could say anything like “Josie’s been dead for more than ten years,” Drifter shot off the porch, just like Fate had been trying to get her to do for days. She scooted around the woman, right into the man’s arms. From that vantage point she licked his face while squealing in a high-pitched way. Her tail drummed against his thigh. Fate noticed the stranger didn’t back away from her tongue; in fact, he looked like he might start licking her back.
“Maggie! Maggie! Girl, I thought you drowned, but I guess you thought I did too! How’d you get here before me?”
The man talked as if he expected an answer from the wriggling black mass in his arms. The dog squealed louder, sliding into a yodeling howl. If it was too loud in the stranger’s ear, Fate couldn’t tell it by watching. Before the man buried his face in the fur under Drifter’s neck, Fate saw he was covered with fresh pink scars as if the skin had been peeled away from his forehead, cheeks, and nose. The dog didn’t notice the man’s face had moved; her tongue flicked the air above his head, unable to stop the frenzied greeting.
“I guess you own a blue and black skiff? I’m Lafayette Landry, but everyone calls me Fate. Where you coming from, and how’d you lose your rig? What kind of boat is that anyway?”
The stranger blinked slowly, looking for all the world like one of Mary Ann’s calves, thought Fate. The whiteface kind with the wide-spaced eyes. The bovine resemblance grew when he blinked a few more times before answering.
“Sam Stockett of St. Louis, and my wife here is C.B. McKernan Stockett of Natchez. Is Josie here?”
Fate noticed that besides being taller, the flamboyant woman was also somewhat older than the man, who appeared to be in his early twenties. Putting on his best manners, Fate nodded to her in greeting and then opened the screened door into the store.
“Please to meet you, ma’am. Mrs. Barclay’s in there to take care of you. Tell her to send Adam out, if you don’t mind.”
“Thank you kindly,” she said as she swept through the door, flourishing the parasol closed only after she was safely out of the sun.
Fate leaned against the screen door frame in order to follow the conversations in both places. Mrs. Barclay looked up from the far side of the room, where she was unpacking canned goods and putting them on a shelf. This was gonna be worth paying attention to.
First of all, Mrs. Barclay didn’t bother saying “Howdy” or “Kiss my foot” or anything else but just sniffed and stood looking at the woman from the flatboat. Even if that had not been Mrs. Barclay’s reaction to most anything new, it was easy to get struck dumb at the sight of the stranger.
