Postmark Bayou Chene

by Gwen Roland

  “If one of you will fill the dishpan, I’ll wash up,” Loyce said listlessly, as she pushed back her chair and felt around the wall where several clean aprons hung from hooks beside the door.

  Adam lifted the kettle from the stove and poured hot water into the dishpan. Then he dipped cold water from the bucket on the counter, testing the temperature with his own hand before leaving it for her.

  “The rest of this can heat up for scalding while I put an edge on this knife. No sense in hauling water and starting a fire in the washpot for just two roosters,” he said.

  For a few minutes the silence was broken only by the rattle of dishes in the porcelain dishpan and the shsk, shsk of the blade on the whetstone. Adam had given up trying to prod Loyce out of her gloom and had learned to settle in with her mood. The pall of grief that hung over the house brought back to him the atmosphere after the drowning of his wife, except now it was relieved somewhat by Roseanne’s careful attention to order.

  When the blade was sharp enough to suit him, Adam slid the knife into the scabbard on his belt and picked up a kettle in each hand. Steam trailed behind him down the plank walk in the October morning.

  In less than a minute he had each bird hanging by its feet from a massive oak limb that curved out over the bayou. He sliced the head off each rooster before they had a chance to squawk. As they bled into the water, he poured the contents of each kettle into a bucket. By the time the birds had bled out, the water had cooled to just the right temperature. Too hot, the skin would cook. Not hot enough, the feathers wouldn’t release. He dunked each bird up and down, soaking all the feathers equally.

  As he was tugging on a wing feather to test it, the first boat of the day came around the bend. He glanced up to see a seated man paddling a small dugout. The pirogue was not local, looked to be an old one made in the Indian style—“un pirogue sauvage,” as the Cajuns would say. The silhouette against the sunrise showed a man who was not big but with disproportionately heavy shoulders and arms. Something familiar about him made Adam stop, then stand up and stare. It looked so much like Val. He tried to recall Val’s brothers and why one of them might be paddling a pirogue through Bayou Chene.

  By then the little boat had reached the dock. The man didn’t move to the bow to tie it off. Instead, he remained seated and paddled the light craft parallel to the logs, which he grasped with one hand. That was when Adam saw the bowline lay at the man’s feet instead of coiled in the bow. He also saw the man’s right leg was stretched straight out, bound in a cast made of moss and mud.

  “Hey, Adam. You gonna give a man a hand or just let him flop around on your dock like a dying catfish, enh?” Val’s voice sounded cheerful but winded.

  “It can’t be! How can it be? What do you mean? How did you get here? Where have you been?” Adam couldn’t decide what he needed to know first, so all the questions tumbled out at once.

  He tripped over the buckets of scalding roosters in his rush to reach the edge of the dock. His left hand grabbed the pirogue, while his right gathered up the line and tied it off as quickly as he had bound the roosters’ feet. Then he stretched out a hand to Val.

  “Mais oui, I think I’m gonna need a little more help than that, or the both of us gonna get wet,” Val said. “This thing, she’s too quick in the water for me to try to stand up on one leg. You hold her tight against the log and see if I can get me up on the dock.”

  Val’s biceps corded and then released. Just like that, he was sitting on the dock.

  “Whew!” he grunted. “Been crouched in there since early, early yesterday, slept in it last night. Bought it off one of them Grand River Injuns. You heard my boat went down—not the Era, no, but the Crescent?”

  “For sure! But we heard you drowned!” Adam squatted on his heels in front of the younger man he had expected never to see again.

  “Mais, not quite.” Val took a moment to catch his breath. “It was a damn old cow, she slam my leg against something—the cookstove maybe—but I can’t say nothing ’cause it was the same cow what her tail give me a tow to the bank. Pulled me all the way up, for true, before taking off and leaving me there. Couldn’t tell where we was, but I wasn’t in any shape to go no place anyway.

  “A lot of trash float by, but I never see another soul, dead or alive. Maybe two, three hours? After a while my mind she catch up with how bad my leg hurting. And how I done lost everything ’cept the clothes on my back and the pay in my pocket. Worst of all is my squeeze-box, she at the bottom of the bayou. I tell you for truth that brought me just about as low as I ever been. I just set there and thought about the trouble I done found myself in.

  “Right about then, two Injun womans came by toting ropes. I knowed ’em from the Injun camp ’cause we sometime trade for fish over there. They was trailing my cow and looking for some more along the way. They took me back to camp and wrap my leg up like this. That was what, two or three weeks back?”

  “Well, I can’t say when it happened,” Adam offered, “but we heard about it right around the start of September.”

  Val nodded thoughtfully.

  “I figured someone was missing me by now, so I paid ’em for the pirogue and some food, with the notion that if I couldn’t make it this far, I might as well jus’ flip on overboard. Looks like I cheated them gators out of a meal, enh?”

  “I don’t know about that, you smell like gator bait.” Adam chuckled as he helped Val up on his good leg. “Let’s get you on to the house.”

  “Must be the smoked fish you smell in my sack. It’ll kill your appetite if you hungry enough, but I don’t think I could ever eat it regular. Might also be the gator oil you smelling. The Injuns believe it keeps mostiques from biting, and you know, it seem like they left me alone. I can’t smell either one of them no more, but it smell rotten when I first got there.”

  Inside Loyce had finished putting away the dishes and was hanging up her apron when she heard the uneven steps coming down the plank walk. She paused a moment trying to imagine how carrying two dead roosters and a dishpan could change the sound of Adam’s footfalls so much. Try as she might, she couldn’t identify the ka-thump, drag, ka-thump, drag coming through the screen door. Then the smells wafted ahead of the sounds, and she took a step backward to escape the assault on her sensitive nose. The creak of the door coincided with Adam’s voice singing out.

  “Loyce, look who’s here!”

  Before Adam’s words could sink in, she sensed someone’s head bending level with her chest. Instinctively, she reached out to investigate. Curls, stiff with dirt and oil, sprang under her touch. Her fingers quickly passed around to the face, reading his features.

  “Val?” Her voice was querulous. “Val!” It changed to a joyful shout.

  Two hours later Val had told his story, wolfed down the breakfast leavings, and bathed as much of his filthy body as his broken leg would allow. It was a quiet morning. Only Alcide, C.B., and Sam Junior joined Loyce, Roseanne, and Adam for ten o’clock coffee on the porch.

  Cottonwood leaves rustled in the morning breeze, and C.B. pulled Sam Junior’s blanket up higher on his head before settling into a chair.

  “Whew, Val, that was some close call!” she exclaimed. “You could be dead right now instead of sitting here drinking coffee.”

  “Well, there’s plenty who think you’re still dead right this minute,” said Alcide. “The Golden Era’s done hired another mate. Hope you don’t think they was getting ahead of themselves, but you know, like as not, bodies just ain’t recovered when people go missing.”

  “That’s right, and it’s hard to decide which is worse,” Adam said softly. “As long as they don’t find the body, you can hope. But at least, once you know for sure, you can try to go on with a new kind of life.”

  No one spoke for several moments as his remembered grief intruded on their celebration of Val’s return.

  “Reminds me of that little Voisin boy.” Alcide picked up his thread again. “Name was Calvin. Ten or twelve years old. Hi
s daddy sent him down to bail the boats one afternoon after a hard rain. They never saw him again. Can only figure he fell overboard. Never did find his body.”

  “I do remember that,” said Adam. “Didn’t miss him till he was called for supper. When he didn’t come, his mama knew something had happened.”

  “And that Neeley boy, Pank. Look how he just up and disappeared,” said Alcide.

  “Well, that was after he shot and killed his girlfriend for walking out on a Sunday with another man,” said Adam. “Don’t you reckon he run off, thinking maybe someone was gonna call the law?”

  “And then there’s the bodies that show up that we never find out who they were,” Alcide countered. “There was even one with iron cook pots tied onto him. Old man Larson pulled him up, and what a load that was! Them pots all full of water. We was on our way to this very post office—long before your time, Adam—when Mr. Larson called Papa over to help. First dead man I ever saw. Papa waving me off, telling me to keep away but me craning my neck to see for myself. They figured he was dumped off a riverboat, probably made someone mad in a card game. They even figured the cook was the one that killed ’im, since no one else on a boat would dare mess with the pots.”

  “Maybe the dead man was the cook?” offered C.B.

  “No one on a boat would kill a cook, no matter what,” said Cide with conviction.

  “So, what happened to the body?” asked Loyce.

  “Buried him right there, back from the riverbank a piece,” replied Cide. “So long ago, I think Mary Ann’s chicken yard is over him now.”

  “You know, Val, this could be your chance to get off those boats once and for all,” C.B. said to him over the top of Sam Junior’s head.

  Loyce’s heart skipped a beat. She cocked her head to catch the fullness of his answer. Val had longed to quit boats and settle down to raise bees, but both sides of his family always worked on the rivers, and he felt he’d be letting them down.

  “C.B., I been sitting here thinking the same thing, me,” Val replied. “I could help Adam in the kitchen even with my broke leg. After it comes better, I could pretty much start over. Raising all the bees I want, collecting the honey, selling it right here at the store. Get myself a little houseboat.”

  “That’s what you’ve always wanted to try,” said Adam.

  “Once I start making a living—prove I can do something besides plow them rivers,” said Val, “maybe Mama would understand. She just throw a fit when I talk about trying that before. She say we was always riverboat people, and that was all we knew, and the river was good to us.”

  “Well, if you’ve a mind to stay around here, we’d be proud to have you,” Adam said. “In fact, to make you feel at home and help overcome your run of bad luck, I’ll make you a present of that squeeze-box I never learned to play. You made it look so easy, I thought sure I could do it, but all I ever did was make the hens squawk and the dogs howl. As for Fate, he’s not been around in a coon’s age. Sam takes the fish from the Chene to him on Wednesdays now, so he don’t come this far down himself.”

  “Oh, but word drifts in now and again,” Alcide chimed in. “Sometimes about him making money and other times just making a mess somewhere when he takes over the run from Sam now and again. You know he ties up and spends the night at his last pickup place, different places depending on what route he’s running. Heard tell he had made a deal with Dieu Cavalier to pick up some cleaned ducks on his way back upstream to Atchafalaya Station the next day. Well, the next morning he got to daydreaming, I suppose, and went right on by Dieu’s dock. Couldn’t hear Dieu yelling at him over the noise of his engine. Dieu was waving a duck trying to get his attention. Well, Dieu didn’t have no other way to get rid of nine cleaned ducks so he just took matters into his own hands. He grabbed his shotgun and fired in that direction a little above Fate’s head. Dieu, not being used to gasoline boat speed, over-guessed how fast Fate’s boat was going in the slack current. Blew Fate’s hat right off, gentlemen! Got his attention all right, and they made the trade. I suppose those ducks made it to the station in time to get packed down in ice and travel first-class up north.”

  Everyone except Loyce enjoyed a laugh at the absent Fate’s expense.

  “Val, how do you feel about bunking with Mame on the houseboat now that Fate is gone? She’d appreciate the company,” Adam offered.

  “That sounds good to me, if Mame don’t mind,” Val said.

  Loyce took her first deep breath in months. The fresh October air filled her lungs to near bursting with joy.

  19

  Val, his cast removed, sat on a low stool repairing wooden frames that held the wax foundation in his beehives. Loyce was shelling dried peas. Their tapping and rustling provided industrious background music to the conversations going on around the porch. Benches and chairs were filling up as fragrances from the kitchen told everyone Adam would soon be serving up plates for early diners. Word had spread quickly that his kitchen was open, and true to Roseanne’s predictions, a sizable gathering had started milling around the porch near mealtimes. In fact, riverboat captains had been known to flirt with the wrath of their own cooks by sneaking away to sit at Adam’s table.

  That day Cairo Beauty squirmed in the rocking chair next to Loyce and settled Sam Junior on her lap, pulling his blanket tight against the November breeze. She had told the story so many times that most people on the Chene had heard it firsthand, and everyone had heard second- and thirdhand versions. Since interest wasn’t lagging, she enjoyed retelling it with new details each time around to keep it fresh.

  “Let’s see, about a week ago now, the whole thing started with the mop water,” she commenced. “Hadn’t rained enough to keep the cistern full, so I was saving what was left for drinking and cooking. For everything else I just drew a bucket full right out of the bayou, which that morning was so muddy you could cut bricks from it.

  “I remember thinking it must be raining upriver somewhere—Memphis, St. Louis, Natchez, or one of the other places I’d lived. More than likely it had been a room over a saloon, that same kind of rain pouring down on the tin roof, making so much noise I couldn’t even hear if shooting broke out below. Didn’t matter, I wouldn’t be there for long. Seems like I was always running crossways someone whose rules I couldn’t make sense of, and it was me who had to move on.

  “But not now! I had me a husband and a houseboat of my own, plenty of sunshine and all the time in the world. I hauled up a bucket full of water and knew there was nothing I could do but wait for the dirt to settle before I could mop. You can’t hurry muddy water.

  “Like I said, I had plenty time. My beans were on the stove, had been since early. They’d be tender by the time Sam got home. I stuck in another chunk of wood and figured I might as well use that waiting time to get off my feet and let Sam Junior get some sun. But not me. I tied my bonnet good and tight and turned my back to the sun, to boot. Don’t matter if I am a married woman and a mother, ain’t no sense ruining my skin and looking like a field hand.

  “I always did enjoy that view on Graveyard, upstream and downstream both, nothing but trees bending over the water. Now, it’s true that just as I was setting down I noticed that line from the stern to that live oak on the bank was stretched tight; the water’d been falling some the past few days. Well, I wasn’t about to get right back up, take Sam Junior inside, and loosen the line right then. It wasn’t enough of a slant to make my beans slosh out of the pot. It could just wait until I got up again.

  “We was so comfortable. It seemed like that rocking chair was keeping time with the current, so peaceful like. That old willow snag in the bend was bobbing along with us. It was getting on toward noon and had that midday quiet ’cept for now and then a thud whenever a log bumped up against the hull. Then a few seconds later it’d jostle out from under there and head on down toward Morgan City.

  “I’d gotten the hang of Sam Junior suckling, and it worked out for both of us. He needed the milk as much as I needed to be r
id of it. I kept him clean, full, and comforted best I could but didn’t really dote on him like you see some mamas do.

  “That morning in no time at all he dropped off to sleep, and I got a kick out of watching his hair lift like a little bird wing every time the chair dipped. I guess I dozed off, too, or maybe it was because my bonnet made like mule blinders. For whatever reason, I never noticed that old chair was creeping downhill toward the edge of the deck. Fact is, I was in the middle of trying to decide between rice and cornbread for supper when the next thing I knew that same bonnet was parting the water like the rod of Moses.

  “It seemed like I fell forever, following that bonnet to the bottom. My skirt and petticoat wrapped all around my head and arms so I couldn’t tell up from down. I fought and kicked deciding any direction was better than none. Right about the time I figured I might’s well just suck up a big old chest full of water and be done with it, I broke through. That goaded me into one more good kick, all I had left in me. I lurched ahead and even touched the hull, but it swept past with nothing for me to grip, not even a splinter. Then my foot snagged a line. It was the fish cart! Well, I didn’t do nothing but wrap one leg around that line. While I was working to catch my breath, that skirt tail swept downstream and tried to pull me right on to Morgan City, which was where that old chair was headed by then.

  “I could feel the fish swimming and bumping in the slats of the fish cart. Funny what goes through your mind. I found myself wondering if they always bump around like that and we don’t know it, or if it was just because someone was standing on them. Well, anyway, I just kept hanging on and worked my way up to the top of the cart. That line stretched and squeaked like it would break straight away, but it didn’t. Then when I just started building confidence in it, the knot slipped on the spike!