by Gwen Roland
“And work! Same thing all day every day except for half a day on Sunday. Chop or saw from can’t to can’t. The only break was when somebody got hurt, and you hoped it wouldn’t be you. The worse part for me was nobody want to talk, even when we wasn’t sawing and chopping. Unfriendliest bunch you ever met. Most of them seem to come from somewhere else and didn’t know each other or anybody who lives ’round here. A few came from lumberjacking them big woods up in Oregon. Others, they came from New York and places like that. Some of them didn’t talk French or English, said they was Norwegian, but they could swing a axe or sharpen a saw like nobody’s business, lemme tell you. Cut through wood like it was butter. From what I heard, they just stay out there long as they can stand it, and then one day they up and leave when they can’t take it no more.
“Gotta admit the pay ain’t bad, but it ain’t no way to live. Maybe Fate needs some help? What’s he got going on?”
As relieved as he was to have escaped the timber camp, Val wasn’t ready to sit around the post office all day.
“We only hear of Fate when Sam’s here between runs of the fish boat, and you know Sam’s not much of a talker,” Adam said good-naturedly. “More fishermen are signing up to send their fish north with him, so I expect he’s doing all right, though. Now come on over here to the table and let me know if these dumplings will do for the paying customers.”
Val put on a smile and picked up a plate. Loyce, sharing his disappointment, shifted in her chair.
A few days later Val scraped the last bit of bee glue from a honey frame and then leaned a backward arc, stretching his muscles in the opposite direction. Bees produced the resinlike propolis to seal small openings in the hive during winter hibernation. Cleaning the frames for the new season’s nectar and pollen was the beekeeper’s job. At least it was with these newfangled hive boxes that held movable frames of flat honeycomb foundation.
Val’s grandfather had kept bees in short, hollow logs of swamp tupelo. Back then beekeepers would stand a log on end and drill a bee-sized hole in the bottom of it for an entry. A simple wooden cover kept out predators and rain. Sometimes called swamp gum trees, the tupelo produced a nectar that bees couldn’t resist and wood that they liked to live in. While the swamp tupelo didn’t produce the prized non-granulating honey of the dryland white tupelo—or bee gum tree—the quality was good enough to make the tree valuable to the honey industry. Some manufacturers, like Paul Viallon over in Bayou Goula, specialized in hives and frames made from Atchafalaya tupelo.
Val bought his hive boxes from Paul instead of building them himself because precise measurements were crucial in the modern beehives. Once assembled, the hives looked like wooden fruit boxes. He placed them on top of waist-high posts in case high water came over the bank. That extra height lifted them safely above any flood anyone could remember.
The morning was perfect for inspecting the colony and repairing the boxes. Warm, windless days of dappled sunlight had coaxed the bees out of winter hibernation. Val enjoyed watching them shoot out of the hives and then come lumbering back wearing thick yellow pantaloons of pollen. Wild honeysuckle was already vining up the hive supports. In a few weeks the colonies would be shaded under canopies of honeysuckle blooms.
In cottage gardens around the Chene bees were collecting nectar and pollen from flowering sweet peas and patches of winter greens that had grown beyond harvest into spires of yellow flowers. Peach and pear trees bloomed inside picket fences that protected them from wildlife. Along the bayou banks dewberries were blooming underfoot a month before the taller blackberries. Wild plum trees, early wildflowers under the tree canopy, even the grasses were offering up pollen and nectar to the foragers.
Val sighed with contentment as he tapped a small nail into place where an extra heavy frame of honey had pulled apart last season. What a luxury to have time to inspect the frame carefully before placing it back in the hive. This was what he needed after all! When he worked on the river, visits to the bees were quick and the hive maintenance was rushed. Sometimes he would come back from a trip to find that a bear or raccoon had torn into a hive, scattering parts all over the clearing. His bees would be long gone to find another home.
This would be his best season ever. He should make enough profit to invest in a few more hives for next year. Mais oui! He could make peace with this life, after all. First he had to make it official with Loyce and set a date. The newlyweds could have their own little houseboat by this winter, and Val would build the new frames while sitting next to his own woodstove.
He ran an expert thumb around the corners of the frame in his hand. He had built this one while sitting next to the Golden Era’s big galley stove. Crew members always mingled with passengers in the galley, drinking coffee, talking about what they’d seen and done up and down the rivers. You never knew who’d be getting on at the next landing. And what a hodgepodge of tunes and musical instruments they brought along with them! Everything he knew about music had been picked up in that way.
He could join in with an Irish jig on any river in the country, and there was that fiddling style from Maine that sounded so like the Cajun fiddle Grandpère played. Three brothers from the Sabine River in Texas blew harmonicas with a twang he hadn’t heard anywhere else. Dark-skinned Gypsies crossing their wagons and horses to the other side of the swamp drew haunting tunes from both fiddles and small accordions. The tunes would stay in his head long after the musicians had gone on their way. Val would master the melodies, eventually coming up with his own versions and passing them along to other travelers.
Val had never realized how much his traveling and music went hand in hand. In fact, that musical camaraderie was what he missed most about his past life. Now that Fate was gone so much, he and Loyce were the only musicians in the community. If he wasn’t trying to stay dead, he could go down to the wharf when boats came in. Val tapped in another nail and then paused.
Did giving up his work on the river mean he couldn’t visit in the galleys and along the decks? Visiting at the dock wouldn’t be as interesting as actually traveling from river to river taking in the tastes and smells along with the tunes, but it would be more exciting than what he had now.
Well, maybe it was time to face Mama and tell her he was alive and settled down here. For the first time he wondered how she would take the news. Mad? Oui, cher! But maybe she get over it quick when she come meet Loyce, stay a few weeks, enh? They’d throw a big fais do-do for the wedding. Mama could get to know his new family. After that he could go out to the docks and play whenever a boat was in. Mais oui, that’s what he’d do! Bayou Chene had kept his secret until its time had come. He would go straight away and ask Loyce to set a date.
Val pocketed his hive tools and strolled back down the woods path to the post office. The afternoon sun eased down behind the trees, and he picked up his pace, wondering what Adam was cooking for supper. Excited voices floated on the air through the dogtrot before he even reached the steps.
“Did you see her face when they said who they were looking for?”
“No, I didn’t see anything. I just came along when I heard about it, and I wanted to see if it was true.”
“Did they really take her away in handcuffs?”
“I heard they did, but then someone else said the deputies just escorted her out to their boat.”
People were milling in the dogtrot and even beyond it out in the front yard. Boats and pirogues were tied all around the dock, even to the trees along the bank. It was the biggest crowd Val had ever seen in one place on the Chene. He squeezed into the gathering in the breezeway.
“Who? What’s true? C.B. was arrested?” Val asked.
“No, but Roseanne was!”
25
The voices clamored from all directions, piling up on each other so that Val couldn’t identify them.
“She was standing there looking so pleased with herself when that law boat tied up. Bet she was practicing how to tell them to find C.B.’s houseboat.”
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“That’s right, but she went all white when they said they were looking for Roseanne Garnier Barclay!”
“Seems a Mr. Charles Barclay was reported missing when he never showed up where he was going, and his family said that he never came back home.”
“They started questioning the crew on a steamboat that him and his wife was traveling on. Seems Mr. Barclay disappeared during the night, and the wife got off at the next dock—Bayou Chene!”
“They probably wouldn’t have bothered coming out to the place where the wife got off except now, wouldn’t you know, a body has turned up with papers that say he is Mr. Barclay himself—but no money—which makes ’em think he was robbed and pushed overboard somewhere by somebody.”
“Now, since the wife—make that the widow—has been living out here in the swamp quiet as a mouse and not telling anyone about a missing husband—it’s beginning to look more than a mite suspicious on her part.”
Val worked his way through the crowd until he found Adam. The postmaster was upstairs, sitting alone in Roseanne’s room. He looked too big for the small rocking chair. One cheek rested in the palm of his right hand.
“She didn’t do it, Val,” he said, quietly. “I don’t know what happened to her husband, but neither does she—I’m certain of that.”
“They’ll sort it out, Adam,” Val said. “That’s what the law does. Out here everybody knows everybody else and whatever goodness or badness is in them to do. No surprises. Anyone with something mean on his mind knows what would happen if he acted out that meanness. But most places ain’t like that. That’s where the law comes in to sort it out, just like you sort out the mail and find where it belongs even when someone shifts their houseboat over to another bayou in some cove way off.”
Adam made no reply, and the only sounds upstairs came from the conversations thinning out below. As he often did in good times and bad, Adam was thinking of books—how thoroughly the legal system had failed the Count of Monte Cristo, sending an innocent man to a dungeon for almost two decades. Try as he might, Adam couldn’t recall even one book where the justice system saved an accused widow from hanging. He had never felt so hopeless.
A day passed, then another. No word came from St. Martin Parish or Roseanne. Adam told himself it would all be straightened out soon and she would be back. Then he realized that even if she was cleared of the suspicion, there was no reason for her to come back to the Chene, the scene of her humiliation. She would probably return home to New Orleans. He would never see her again. So then he told himself she was just another person who had passed through Bayou Chene on the way to the rest of their lives. He tried not to think about the rest of his life without her in it. In his mind he kept rewriting her past and his future, trying to reconcile them in a way he could live with.
For the first time in years Mame stepped in for Adam. She took over the store and the post office with friendly efficiency. She commiserated with Loyce over the loss of another friend who probably would not be coming back. In Loyce’s mind Roseanne had joined Fate in that outer-land that was not the Chene. Boats came, and people left. Loyce stayed, would always stay, whether she wanted to or not. Mame couldn’t change that fact, nor could she make the Chene the best place for a young blind woman to grow old.
Val and Mame didn’t believe Roseanne was a murderer or a thief, but the rest of the community was divided on her guilt or innocence. Since she was a newcomer and they didn’t know her husband at all, opinions on both sides were limp. The irony that Roseanne was arrested instead of C.B. was not lost on anyone.
An anxious week passed at the post office. Then the St. Martin Parish sheriff’s boat tied up in front of the Bayou Chene Post Office for the second time in history. Roseanne sat ramrod straight on the seat next to a deputy. Adam strode to the dock, thanked the deputy, and escorted her back to the porch without a word spoken between them. It was only after they made it to the kitchen that she collapsed against him.
“Oh, it was Charles’s clothes and wallet all right!” she sobbed out. “He’s dead, Mr. Snellgrove! I didn’t love him, but I wouldn’t wish this on him or anyone else.”
“Oh, my dear,” he said, patting her back rhythmically like he used to do for Loyce when she couldn’t sleep. “That’s sad for sure, but there’s comfort in knowing the truth, don’t you think? Better than wondering why you haven’t heard from him?”
“I suppose you’re right. The body was so decomposed, they don’t know how he died, and they may never find out who was responsible. Since there was no money in his wallet, they are assuming he was robbed. For now they seem convinced I didn’t know anything about it, even though my behavior was not what one would expect of a bride on her honeymoon. They hope their questions will be answered once they track down all the crew members who were on the boat that trip. Someone who was out on deck that night might have heard something that they didn’t realize as being important at the time.”
She broke into another round of sobbing, until she was too exhausted to continue. Adam stroked strands of hair out of her tears and let her rest against him. Even in her grief, she felt solid and sturdy in his arms.
“Word will get out that you are no longer a suspect, Mrs. Barclay. I’ll see to that.”
“Be that as it may, Mr. Snellgrove, I’m ruined. I’ll never have a life again. And suppose they never arrest anyone else? I will live the rest of my life under this cloud of suspicion. This scandal goes beyond any humiliation I ever feared.”
“Well, maybe that’s not all bad, Mrs. Barclay. Seems like you could be on the brink of a new life since the old one doesn’t work anymore. Did you ever look at a situation that way before? You know that’s what happened to one of my heroes—Robinson Crusoe. I know you’ve read the book, but did you know it was based on a man who really was shipwrecked and had to build a new life from scratch? I bet he’s inspired a lot of people to make do with a bad situation. Sometimes—and I’m not one to say this applies to your situation, only you would know that—but sometimes it can be a relief to lose everything and start over.”
She stepped away and looked up into his eyes.
“This is what has happened to C.B,” Roseanne’s voice was deadly quiet as realization settled around her. “Even worse, I did this to her. No matter what happens in the future, she can never prove what happened that day. She will always be the woman who might have tried to drown her baby. Just like I will always be the widow who might have killed my husband. We are just alike, after all. C.B. always said that.”
Her tears were dry now, and she went on.
“You know, it used to make me so angry when she tried to put me in her class. I suppose that’s why I took such a hard stand on what happened to her that day. And truth be told, after it popped out of my mouth that first time, I realized I didn’t even believe it! But it would have been humiliating to admit I might be wrong.”
She wept afresh as if her heart had broken wide open. Adam stepped toward her again and held her close.
“Oh, Mr. Snellgrove, I’m guilty of more cruelty than what I’ve been accused of. At least I have hope of being exonerated someday, but since no one saw C.B.’s accident, she can never prove her innocence.”
“Well, maybe this is your chance to start your new life on the right foot,” Adam murmured into her hair. “No one would have more influence in lifting that cloud from C.B. than the person who put it there.”
She didn’t answer, but her eyes filled with tears again. Adam couldn’t read the look she gave him before she turned away and trudged toward the stairs to her room. If he was ever going to say it, he knew it must be now.
“Roseanne.”
It was the first time he had voiced her given name. One foot already on the stairs, she turned in surprise at the sound of it on his lips.
“I lost my own self years ago, when Josie died,” he went on. “I somehow managed to get through by just putting one foot in front of the other, but I wouldn’t call it living. It was more like just d
oing my duty. I had family and neighbors counting on me. Then you came walking out of the woods that evening and made me want to take up living again for myself. If you have any inclination to start a new life, I’d be proud to be part of it.”
Suddenly she slumped down on the stair step as far as the whalebone around her middle would let her. The corset is holding her upright, thought Adam, like a broken flower stem Mame would splint with a twig.
And then she told him. The thing she had told one other person years ago. It came back in glimpses. Toddling behind the older cousins, trying to catch up. Being lifted into the air by the sharpfaced boy, his long legs propelling them both in pursuit of the cousins. Then the courtyard gate that opened to the garden shed. The leather-bound trunk where he stood her against the wall. Her tiny shoes wobbled on the leather strappings so that she slipped her feet wider apart to steady herself. His fingers probing, sliding her long white drawers down into a pool around her feet. Then his own pants open and a warm pressure between her legs. Stickiness. She pointed a small finger at the white stream and giggled.
There was no pain. Just the warm stickiness sliding between her tiny thighs and his fingers probing her the way her nanny would give her a bath except there was no soap, no cloth, just the wet slipperiness. The pain would come a few years later when she recalled the scene for her best friend, Marie, at the Sisters of Evangeline Convent School. How many times had it happened? Three, four, she was too young to count, so she didn’t know.
Marie’s eyes had bulged, and she had reared back like a startled pony.
“You can’t ever, ever tell anyone about that!” she whispered. “You will go to hell if anyone finds out you are soiled. And you can’t ever get married because your husband will know. He will tell on you, and you will go to hell!”
Soiled. It was the first time Roseanne thought about the curious experiences as something shameful. She was soiled.
