Postmark Bayou Chene

by Gwen Roland

  Roseanne sniffed again.

  “You ain’t getting sick, are you, Mrs. Barclay, what with all that sniffing?” C.B. prattled on, without stopping for a breath herself. “You being such a robust sort of woman and all, I wouldn’t think you get sick much. In fact, if I was put to it, I’d have to say you are even more robust than you were last time I came over. I always been delicate, myself. Got bones like a chicken. Look at this wrist. Wouldn’t you say that brings to mind a little ol’ chicken neck? Just ain’t never been able to get no flesh on me. I even tried Dr. Earling’s Weight Gain Tonic that was guaranteed or my money back. I didn’t gain even one little bit. Well, what did I do? Got my friend Minnie to write that doctor asking for my money back. She wrote a good letter too. But we had to leave that place, St. Louis maybe, before my money ever came. Sometimes you gotta leave a place before you’re good and ready, if you know what I mean. Hey, you could write to him again for me, Mrs. Barclay; it was guaranteed. I’ll even pay you for your time out of what I get.”

  “C.B., you fall for anything anyone wants to sell you,” Roseanne said, stopping short of another sniff. “Like those French female pills to get rid of your baby. You could have died if you’d actually found some for sale.”

  “Well, you ain’t telling no tales there, Mrs. Barclay,” C.B. said, perching on the edge of a porch chair, her small belly barely showing under her skirt. “My friend Pearl’s teeth plumb flaked off to nothing one time when she took ’em, but she said that was small enough price to pay for not having a young’un to raise. Barely able to keep her own body to soul as it was. Don’t know how I got so careless, myself, but I’d just started suspecting it was on the way when Sam came on the scene. I knew I couldn’t work much longer, and nothing had gone right for me in Natchez anyway. This here was the first store we came on since I knowed for sure. Even if I could have got ’em, by that time it’d probably be too late.

  “Sam, now, he’s looking forward to it. He said a fambly’s a fambly and most men never know if the kids they raising is theirs or not. He said at least he’ll know this one ain’t, which he figures puts him a step ahead of most men. I reckon I’ll make my mind up to do right by it, but I ain’t looking forward to it.”

  “Roseanne, I’ve picked out the fabric for my dress.” A voice rose above the din in the store. Giving Loyce’s hair a final pat, Roseanne whisked back inside the store with a proprietary air, taking her place behind the counter.

  “I’ll be glad to order that gabardine for you, Viola, but you know, for just seventy-five cents more, you can get that dress ready made.” Roseanne paged to the clothing section and slid the catalog back to the customer side. “When you think about how long a gabardine dress lasts and the time you’d put in making it, you might do better that way. You’d be saving the cost of buttons and thread too.”

  “Hmmmmmm,” Viola mused and pulled the catalog closer. Roseanne turned away to take care of other customers while the shopper made up her mind.

  The bell, another one of Roseanne’s ideas, tinkled as a new customer entered.

  “Well lookee here! If it ain’t the bamboozler from New Orleens!” A sooty deckhand removed his hat with an exaggerated bow in Roseanne’s direction and grinned with checkerboard teeth.

  “I thought you’d be long gone to meet your thieving, slipperyassed card shark of a husband by now. How long’s it been since we dumped you off—two, three months? Reckon maybe he found someone else to help him spend all that money he stole?”

  The murmuring sounds of commerce stopped as heads turned first to the man in the doorway and then to Roseanne. They saw the blood drain from her cheeks, making her eyes even darker.

  “You should be ashamed to even look me in the face after abandoning me in the middle of the swamp!” she spit back.

  The stranger didn’t flinch.

  “I’d guess you’d be the expert on shame seeing as how your man left you behind to face the crew and passengers when he took off in the night with our money and our lifeboat to boot. You mean he ain’t even got in touch with you about where to meet? Or are you just waiting until you steal enough from Adam’s cash box to join him?”

  “Well, Mrs. Barclay, we got more in common than I thought.” C.B. peered around the stranger in the doorway. “I used to run a scheme like that, too, started it early with the peddler. See, we’d come on a boat all dressed in poorly clothes toting nothing but a little croaker sack of belongings. We’d carry on something fierce about being so scared ’cause we couldn’t swim and we’s so poor cause we’d lost the farm and was on our way to stay with relatives. Well, about two miles upstream from some little town, I’d start hollering that my daddy had done fell overboard. I’d jump up and down and point toward a spot in the current by the wheel. Oh, people’d gather ’round and hug me and point with me, looking for him. Before you know it, some guy would whip off his hat and start passing it around, taking up a collection for the poor little orphaned girl. I’d get off at that next town, and there the peddler would be waiting for me.”

  “How’d he not drown for real?” someone asked.

  “Well, all he did was just wear a rubber life vest under his clothes,” C.B. continued. “He could swim ashore in about two miles. Only once did he miss his bank and ended up at the next town and like to never caught up with me. It was during that two weeks I figured out I could do even better on my own!”

  “My husband and I did no such thing!” Roseanne slammed the pattern book on the counter. “I just woke up, and he was gone. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t know about any money. All I know is that he was not on the boat when morning came.”

  With that she swept around the end of the counter and up the stairs.

  14

  The last customer had paddled on down the bayou and Adam was sweeping up when he heard Roseanne’s door open and softly close. Her step was hesitant coming down the stairs, so different from her clattering and slamming ascent that morning. Adam kept his eyes on the pile of dirt he was corralling toward the breezeway. He followed the little mound, stepping and sweeping, until it was whisked into the evening. He had never bothered to sweep before she came to live with them. There wasn’t time or energy back then, or so it seemed.

  “I guess you’ll be wanting me to leave,” she said.

  “Don’t know why that would be the case,” he said mildly. “There’s two sides to every coin.”

  The unexpected kindness in his answer deflated her, and she collapsed into the nearest chair.

  “It’s not at all like he said,” she began. “It’s true that boat forced me off under a cloud of suspicion, but I don’t know what my husband is up to; he’s never done anything like this before. He had been excited, agitated even, about winning a lot at bourre that last afternoon. Apparently, some of the men sitting in hadn’t played before.”

  Adam chuckled. “Oooh, Mrs. Barclay, now that’s a card game where you can lose a pile of money quicker than a frog can snatch a fly.”

  She relaxed even more and continued.

  “Charles said they were a bunch of rubes and sore losers. He said he wasn’t going to play anymore, but after dinner he went out for a walk and a cigar.”

  Roseanne smoothed her waist down and sniffed. She took an additional breath before confessing.

  “Mr. Snellgrove, this was not the first time Charles had been accused of improprieties during card games. The heat of argument seems to be what he enjoys most about playing any kind of game, be it croquet or cards, even dominoes. He is ruthless about winning.”

  Roseanne was silent a moment. Was she examining her husband in a new light or just pausing while she made up the rest of the story? Adam couldn’t tell. She continued.

  “He didn’t come back, so I assumed he had decided to play cards after all. The next morning I discovered he had never come to bed. By making some inquiries, I also found out that he had once again won a great sum from a group of men who were set on getting their winnings back. When my questions led t
o the realization that he was not on board, a search of the boat revealed the lifeboat was also missing. That’s when everyone jumped to the conclusion that he had escaped with his ill-gotten goods, leaving me in the wake of his troubles. Bayou Chene was the next stop, so they put me off here. It was so humiliating to be dumped off with only what I could carry—I still don’t know how I summoned the nerve to walk over here. Don’t you see why I couldn’t tell you what happened? It was just too embarrassing. And now everyone knows! Or worse yet, they think I’m a thief!”

  Adam combed the left side of his gray mustache with one finger, a sign he was giving serious thought to the situation. He regarded her with the same open gaze and inclined head that made customers tell him things they didn’t tell other people, even those closest to them. His voice was kind but frank.

  “My advice is to write your family and let them know your predicament. They’ll send you money; you can go home.”

  Roseanne breathed as deeply as her corset would allow and decisively placed both plump hands down flat on the table.

  “There’s no way I can go back there, Mr. Snellgrove. There’s something else I haven’t told you. While Charles was truthfully on a business trip to New Iberia, we were also on our wedding trip.”

  Adam gazed thoughtfully at her face, smoothing his mustache twice, deciding whether to inquire further.

  “Pardon my saying so, Mrs. Barclay, but that doesn’t sound very romantic.”

  Roseanne shuddered and narrowed her eyes. “It was far from romantic, Mr. Snellgrove. I never wanted to marry Charles. I would have been content to stay on at the convent and take orders. In the short time we were man and wife, I’m sure he wished I had done so.”

  “You don’t strike me as particularly interested in religion, Mrs. Barclay.”

  “That’s discerning of you, Mr. Snellgrove,” she said with a wry smile. “In fact, I’m not in the least religious, but it seems a safe and orderly life.”

  “And I have noticed your fondness for order, Mrs. Barclay,” he added with a nod and a small smile of his own.

  She went on as if he hadn’t spoken.

  “To tell you the truth, my first feeling was relief when he could not be found. Later, of course, I began wondering what was to become of me.”

  “Become of you? Surely your family will not hold you accountable for his actions!”

  “I don’t even have to wonder about that, Mr. Snellgrove. My marriage was a business deal between the Garniers and the Barclays, not a matter to be taken lightly, especially when the bride is thirty-five years old. For me to try to return now—a shamed woman—would be humiliation beyond what I could bear, even if they would take me in.”

  She paused as if considering whether to say more. Then with a shake of her head, she plunged on.

  “Charles was the second son of a wealthy English family. Since he didn’t inherit anything when the patriarch passed, he sold every thing he owned to buy passage on a steam ship to this country. Upon arrival in New Orleans he began making the rounds to likely individuals and lending agencies. It wasn’t long before he met my brother, and they became friends.

  “Charles borrowed enough money from my family to purchase a share in a shipping company. Through his own connections in England, the venture was such a success that he was able to pay back the loan in less than a year. He was so much more serious about business than my own brother, that Father began thinking of him like another son. He was always at our house. As time went by and I remained single, Father put more pressure on me to respond to Charles’s suit. To tell you the truth, I never felt that he had a personal interest in me but that our marriage was no more to him than another business deal with permanent opportunities for both families.”

  “Was there another young man you preferred?” Adam asked. “Surely your family would have allowed you to marry any worthy suitor?”

  “No, there wasn’t.” Her eyes slid off to the side in that evasive way that made him think of catfish looking for escape through slatted wood.

  There was more, he was sure of it. He waited for the revelation, but it didn’t come. Instead, she shook herself as if coming awake, and her voice took on the professional tone she used in the store.

  “So, you see, I can’t go back and have everyone look at me as a soiled and discarded woman! I will make my own way before I could do that!”

  “And how do you plan to do that, Mrs. Barclay? You’re not going to live like you’re used to on what I can pay, for sure.” Adam’s voice was kind but certain.

  “I could help you expand your business, Mr. Snellgrove,” she said, some of the spunk coming back into her voice.

  “Expand?” Adam looked from the left side of the breezeway to the right. “Make the store bigger? I don’t think we’d have enough customers to warrant that, Mrs. Barclay.”

  “Not the store, Mr. Snellgrove, your cooking! There is nowhere for a traveler to get a meal around here. Just think about it; for example, you could multiply the profit on a can of syrup by selling it over hot biscuits. I must say you make the lightest biscuits I’ve ever tasted, Mr. Snellgrove.”

  Roseanne had missed lunch. Her stomach rumbled at the thought of Adam’s biscuits.

  “Catfish, squirrels, venison, eggs, milk, vegetables from Mame’s garden. These are all free for you, Mr. Snellgrove.” Roseanne’s stomach rumbled louder at the thought of what he could do with those ingredients. “You could turn these into meals, while I run the store and help you in the post office. It wouldn’t be that difficult to convert Fate’s old room into a dining area; it’s right next to the kitchen. I do believe you could double the profit you are making now.”

  “You may have something there,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s time for me to think about putting something by for Loyce’s future.”

  Then, as if to dispel the dark cloud of her past, he added, “Let’s go whip you up a batch of lost bread for supper, Mrs. Barclay.”

  15

  Loyce closed the outhouse door and felt around for the wooden latch. Out of habit she turned it so that a stiff breeze couldn’t swing it open and make it a danger to small children, who could fall headfirst through the hole. A useless caution in this case, she thought. She had been the last child born on the place, and there weren’t likely to be any more in the future. As for breezes, they were as scarce as tits on a boar hog, and it would be that way until the September storms blew in. No relief for a month! The heat pulled on her shoulders like a net anchor.

  That’s why everything’s askew, she told herself. If it would just cool off a bit. She didn’t have the energy to even brush out her hair but just bundled it up and retied it every morning. If Roseanne didn’t notice and find time to brush and braid it, the knots stayed another day. Now and then she even slept in her clothes, something Roseanne had accused her of in the past.

  Her nets were tangling up even more than her hair. Some days she had to rip out yards of the knotted string. Nothing had been going right for weeks, not since the day York’s still blew the lid off her family.

  She couldn’t remember when her family tree had been set in her mind; that went back way too early. She had always known more about Josie’s side. She could recite it like the alphabet, without even thinking. There was Great-Grandpa Wash Landry and Great-Grandma Viney, who had given birth to Grandpa Elder. On the other side Great-Grandpa Bertram and Great-Grandma Bertram produced Grandma Mame. Then Grandma Mame and Grandpa Elder married and had birthed Josie and Fate’s daddy, Uncle Lauf.

  Well, that’s what she had thought until somewhere along the way she found out that Josie had belonged to Grandpa Elder’s first wife, Maudie. That didn’t matter back then, but now it just added to the quicksand feeling that came over her whenever she tried to untangle her family ties. The same quicksand that had taken away her cousin and best friend.

  Fate and Loyce had clung to each other when all the grownups in their lives disappeared—three of them lost forever under a steamboat and the other two
just temporarily, although Mame stretched the meaning of the word temporary to new limits. Adam came back first, but he was like a hen too small for an oversized clutch of eggs. He tried to take care of all of them, but there wasn’t enough of him to go around. Meanwhile, Mame seemed as lost as her drowned children.

  So, it came down to just Fate and Loyce. By then their school went all the way to the sixth grade. Every morning they walked across the island together. Ambling home, most days she could remember more of the lessons than Fate did, especially when it came to spelling. She couldn’t see the writing and reading but made up for it by listening, something Fate couldn’t do if his life depended on it.

  By the end of the third grade the teacher suggested that Loyce would benefit by living at a special school for the blind in Baton Rouge. By then writing and reading took up so much of the school day, it did seem like a waste of her time to just sit while the rest of the class scratched away on their slates. Still, it was only because Fate wouldn’t shut up about it that she decided to try one year—fourth grade—away at the Louisiana School for the Deaf and Blind in Baton Rouge.

  Oh, was she homesick! The sounds and smells were so different. And the food—it wasn’t really bad; it just lacked Adam’s special touch. She made it through those first days by practicing in her head how she would describe everything to Fate. The years flew by, and before she noticed what was happening, she had finished not just the fourth but the fifth, sixth, seventh—all the way to the eleventh grade. And all because of Fate.

  She had always thought of Papa’s side of the family as the strangers. Grandma Eugenia Snellgrove was the outsider who had moved to the Chene, bringing little Adam. There were no other local connections for that side of Loyce’s family, and to make it worse, Grandma Eugenia moved away before Loyce was even born. Like so many people who had moved outside the swamp, she never made the trip back to visit. Adam wrote her a letter now and then, but mostly they just all went on with their lives.