by Gwen Roland
Scrambling to her feet, she poised to step into the unknown when something bumped her leg. The scream died in her throat when she realized there was something familiar about the touch. Another bump. She stretched one hand downward, and Drifter’s tongue met her halfway. She didn’t wonder how; she just trusted, stepping away from the barrier Drifter made with her body. Two steps, and there she was again, this time on the other side.
Heat told Loyce where she was in relation to the fire, but she’d have to depend on Drifter for the direction to take away from it. Step by step, the dog herded her away from the burning cabin. They went around trees, over logs.
Loyce felt the heat recede, but her terror intensified to the point she felt her heart would burst. Were those footsteps behind her? To the side now? Closing in from the brush? She couldn’t tell whether the crashing sounds were of her own making or whether Pank was an arm length behind, reaching for her skirt tail. Thickets caught in her clothes, branches slapped her face, mud sucked at her feet and pulled off a shoe.
Suddenly, she cried out in pain, oblivious to the noise that would give her away. Something had bitten into the tender flesh of her calf and thrown her face first into the mud. Writhing in pain, her thrashing made it impossible to listen for clues. She tried to spring back up but then realized that no creature moved under her or held her down; pain simply radiated from her calf. She rolled over and felt the pull of a vicious briar. Relief flooded through her even as she strained to sit up and unwind the thorny bramble. In her haste and confusion she ripped its length deeper into her leg but finally yanked it free.
Drifter licked her face and urged her to her feet. Air burned back into her chest as she tried to stand, tripping over the long skirt, wobbling on the one shoe and bleeding leg. She was as unsteady as a toddler, but she never had to wonder about the direction. Every time she tried to take a wrong turn, the sturdy body pushed back against her.
Ever mindful of Loyce, Drifter was following the scent trail left by the bag of pups. It was faint, but she had traced it so many times she knew the way by heart. It led to where she and Sam had been together on the big water. Sometimes the scent disappeared completely, but now and then it wafted fresh in her nostrils, pulling her and Loyce in that direction.
Loyce was breathing hard when they broke into a small clearing. She could tell there was open space around her because of the slight currents of air. She waved her hands out to the side and above her head. No branches or tree trunks were within reach. They were standing in a grove of long-dead trees known as widowmakers. Lifeless trunks spiked into the sky, releasing twigs and dried branches over time. Eventually, each skeletal top would snap with no warning and plummet to the ground. Swampers knew them to be the most insidious danger in the woods. The slightest bump of a boat or even a wave of water could launch a dagger of splintered wood.
“Drifter?” She queried, knowing the little dog couldn’t answer. “Is this the riverbank? Where are we?”
Loyce groped, unsure of where to turn. Arms outstretched, she tried to step but tripped over Drifter. As she tumbled, her hands broke her fall against a tree trunk. Unseen above them, a spire began to sway. Drifter pulled on the heavy skirt, urging Loyce onward.
30
Fate squinted across the gray expanse of Lake Chicot as he steered his bateau out of Little Bayou Chene. Sam, stripped down to his undershirt, crouched on the bow, waiting for Fate’s word to drop the three-pronged hook again. Fate realized he was sweating inside his jacket. He had not even noticed when the morning chill had burned off to noon heat. Now he slipped off the garment without taking his eyes from the lake. Still focused on the water, he absentmindedly folded the jacket and slid it beneath him to cushion the wooden seat.
When the initial search of the island had failed to find Loyce and Drifter, every available boat in the community began dragging the bayou around the post office. They searched until dark. When daylight came again, the boats fanned farther afield. Adam and Val headed to the west side of the community, while Fate and Sam turned south, where the accumulated waters flowed into Lake Chicot. It was now late afternoon, and Loyce had been missing more than twenty-four hours. The expanse of Lake Chicot looked endless to their tired eyes. The engine put-putted steadfastly into the current.
Fate mopped his face with a sleeve. The cooling effect roused him enough to talk.
“She has to be somewhere, Sam.” His voice was barely more than a whisper from fatigue and despair. “Why would she have gone to the bayou, anyway? Is it even possible she could be this far from home? But she’s not anywhere on land, and we can’t just sit, doing nothing like she’ll show up on her own. And where is Drifter? Did someone take them? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Sam shook his head, concurring with Fate’s puzzlement. Everyone had asked the same questions, but no answers came.
“Let’s start here and work our way down,” Fate said without conviction, pointing to a logjam that made an easy landmark.
Sam stood and dropped the hook again, playing out line until he felt the weight hit bottom. Fate took up the slack with the motor. They both watched as the line sifted through the water, both dreading the soft thud that meant the prongs had snagged something that was not wood or metal.
So far they had pulled up barrel hoops, buckets, and something that looked like part of a wagon wheel. The collection of relics was mute evidence that the wilderness eventually reclaimed itself from civilization. Time and again, Sam dropped the hook and let the line slide through his fingers, probing for evidence of the most recent loss.
It was futile to think they could find a body if there even was a body in the river channel, Fate thought, but he could no more give up than stop breathing. An hour passed. When Sam’s thick shoulders ached from the throwing and pulling of the weight, he maneuvered the boat while Fate dragged the bottom. They worked their way slowly down the river channel through the lake.
Suddenly, Fate’s eyes hardened. Sam saw his jaw clinch. His long arms inched along the line, willing whatever it had hooked to stay on the prongs. Slowly, ever so slowly, the line coiled on the bow. Both men stopped breathing as muddy fabric billowed into sight. Tears blurred Fate’s vision, but he continued to hoist. When the cloth broke the surface, Sam looked away to give him privacy.
But instead of the wail of grief he expected, Sam heard, “What the hell?” He glanced back to see Fate pulling up the remains of a small trunk, clasps broken, one side missing, but straps intact. Ragged clothing still trapped inside the wreck waved like a sodden flag. The remaining wooden sides gave way with the weight of being hoisted. Fate reached down and slipped the strap from the hook, sending the bundle back to the bottom.
He was still shaking from the shock when a boom rumbled in the distance. The sound came from upstream far enough away that they might have imagined it, except that blue herons and snowy egrets lifted from the shallows in alarm. Sam jerked the crank cord before Fate had a chance to sit down. They both hunched to reduce wind resistance. Chug, putt, chug, putt, the boat was slower going upstream, but still they made better time than if they had been rowing. Ten minutes, then fifteen.
Surely they had traveled far enough to be in the vicinity of the noise. The disturbance may not have anything to do with Loyce, but nothing was too remote to overlook. Two pair of eyes scanned the bank where last year’s leaves had thinned and this year’s crop had not filled in, the sparseness allowing them to see deeper into the thicket than usual.
“There!” Fate pointed, and Sam turned the boat before seeing for himself the barely visible opening.
At any other time they would have dismissed it as a deer crossing so far away from the community. But now they saw the telltale ridges in mud where a light boat frequently slid into the water. Sam leaped out and charged down the path while Fate was still tying the bowline.
Both of them noticed a rough dugout pirogue stashed under buttonwood bushes ten yards up the bank. They didn’t worry about noise as they tore through the n
early invisible path. They dodged trees and leapt over logs. Fate’s long legs made up for Sam’s head start, and he pulled ahead of his friend.
There she was! Hopping up and down, waving her arms as if conducting a choir, tilting her head in one direction and then another—listening, listening, as always. Her mouth was open, but the noise of their running combined with Drifter’s barking drowned out whatever she was shouting. The maroon traveling dress was muddy on all sides and dripping wet. One shoe was missing. Mud covered one side of her face and matted her hair. But she was upright and all in one piece. Fate had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. He scooped her into his arms with a joyful shout. She answered with just a whispered “Fate,” but it was enough.
In the commotion that followed Sam had the presence of mind to fire three shots into the air, letting other searchers know she was found. A progression of shots dispatched the good news up and down the river. Boats closest to them began arriving. People clambered up the bank, shouted questions, then fanned out to search for the shack and Pank.
Loyce was propped against a live oak trunk, the remains of her skirt hiked up above her knee, where Fate was removing the last of the thorns. She winced as he jerked the final barb and cleaned the wounds with saliva, just as he had treated her scrapes when they were kids.
“I never thought I’d welcome the sound of that noisy boat,” she murmured, still woozy with exertion and pain. “But today it was the sweetest music I ever heard.”
“Good thing we got here when we did. You were waving at the woods and backing right toward the river,” he admonished.
“Something big had crashed,” she explained. “I thought it was Pank breaking through the bushes, and I just jumped, losing Drifter for a moment. I didn’t know which way to run or whether he was about to take me down, but when I heard that rattling contraption, I knew I had to do something in hopes you would notice me. I took a chance to call out as well as waving. I guess it worked.”
“Yeh, but you could still use some work on your aim,” he grunted, lifting her upright and then swinging her into his arms like a child.
Assured that her injuries were not serious, Fate thought of nothing beyond taking Loyce home as quickly as possible. He carried her down to the bank and was settling her onto the bottom of his bateau when he heard Sam call Drifter. The little dog had not left Loyce’s side during the commotion, but Fate had not even noticed her.
“Come on, Drifter, it’s over,” Sam cajoled from the water’s edge. “You did good, girl. Now let’s go home.”
Instead of hopping in, Drifter danced and barked, running toward a willow snag leaning far out over the water. There she lay down and put her head on her paws, whining. Sam walked along the bank and squatted down in front of her.
“Hey, it’s over now, come on, let’s go home.” Still she whined and looked out over the water. He followed her gaze but saw only the willow top waving with the current.
“What? Something there?”
She didn’t move. Impatiently, Fate idled his engine, then seeing the standoff with both man and dog staring at the snag, he chugged the boat over to the trailing leaves. A burlap bag was cradled in the outermost branches hanging over the water. He stood up, steadying himself against a limb before lifting the bag. It wiggled and mewed.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he chuckled. “Sam, did you notice that Drifter had her pups?”
31
Loyce raised up higher on the pillows. Fate roused at the same time. From across the room she heard his legs unwind and a chair shift under his weight. Other feet shuffled in the dogtrot below, on the porch, everywhere. Was everyone still here from last night? Or had they gone home and come back?
Last night had been her night. Finally. She had been the one to go away and come back with a story to tell. Not just a story but the biggest story in Bayou Chene history. Encircled by Fate’s arm, anchored by Drifter and all four pups on her feet, Loyce had spun out her story like silken net from a golden shuttle. Four stories, in fact—hers, Pank’s, and two more. She made them all proud, if she did say so herself.
She drew her listeners in right at the moment she was snatched from the kitchen. She took them captive with her through that long night. Then exploring the plank walk, followed by the desperate exchange of cans and her doubts about whether it would work. She built up to the explosion and the shock of Drifter bumping against her leg. At that point she went blank and had to take Fate’s word for the events that followed. Well, Fate’s word backed up by Sam’s.
“What do mean ‘backed up by Sam’?” he’d protested. “I most likely saved your life today—that dog’s life for the second time—and you don’t even give me credit for being able to tell it straight? You couldn’t have wandered much longer in that swamp before you stepped on a snake or a gator decided to snatch a bite out of Drifter. And what if I hadn’t noticed that burlap sack? What would have become of the puppies? I guess old Pank shortchanged the toss, and it caught in that snag instead of falling all the way to the water. How much longer till that branch gave way?”
“Fate Landry, when you earn yourself a reputation of knowing the truth from a stretch—maybe a year or two of it—a body might start taking your word without backup,” she shot back.
“Quit fussing with him, Loyce, for once,” Adam had begged. “And get on with the telling.”
A chorus of voices and feet shuffling around the bed told her the audience agreed with Adam. Loyce picked up her precious thread again, this time unraveling the mystery of Pank’s disappearance. There were gasps and more shuffling as she revealed he had spied through the years without letting on he was alive.
“Not even his old mother!” Alcide shook his head in disgust. “That poor soul would’ve given years of her own life to know her worthless cub was alive.”
Other voices rose up then, recalling small livestock or tools that had gone missing over the years. York never had admitted to turning loose Mary Ann’s hogs. Had Pank tried to steal one and let them all escape? Had he been creeping around their homes at night as well as watching from afar?
“Oh, but we weren’t the only people he spied on!” Loyce reined her listeners back in. She had listened to enough skillfully spun stories to know you save the best for last.
Using no visual cues, she brought her audience to the banks of Graveyard Bayou on that warm November day. The rocking chair splashing into the water. The sound of the woman clawing her way up a fish trap. The watcher wheezing from his hiding place in the brush. Mud sucking around his boots as he pushed his pirogue from the bank. Alcide’s shout dashing the hope in an evil heart.
The chorus swelled again.
“No!”
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
“That’s C.B.’s account word for word!”
“C.B., what do you say about that?”
“Did you ever feel you was being watched?”
Loyce felt heads swivel away from her to where C.B. and Sam were standing.
“Being watched? I live next to a graveyard!” C.B. retorted. “Every thing feels out of sorts over there.”
Sam was already flushed with being named one of the heroes of the day. This new revelation—proof of C.B.’s innocence to anyone who still suspected her—nearly felled him. He leaned against the wall for support. Not only had he helped rescue Loyce but, just as surely, his own wife. He didn’t even hear the fourth and final story.
Loyce didn’t notice the loss of one listener. She was taking the others out to the big river. The night air damp on their faces. A paddle wheeler chuffing upstream. A man hunched over a cup of coffee behind the stove. Low voices whisper about happenings on the river—words not spoken when the sun is shining or even when the moon is bright. Among the dark doings a man—a rich man who didn’t know enough to stop cheating even after he had been warned. Well, he was stopped all right. When it was discovered that he was not traveling alone, a lifeboat had been jettisoned along with his body. A story not too far off fr
om true was made up and his wife—not knowing she was a widow—dumped in shame at the next stop.
Roseanne gasped. It was her turn to lean, and Adam was right there to catch her. Some things have a habit of repeating themselves, he thought. But unlike that first time a year ago, she was breathing easily underneath a loose shirtwaist. And this time she was soft in the middle, warm against his arm. Adam smiled. He figured he was the only man in the building who knew what was on page 459 of the catalog.
32
“Well, I still hang onto the notion that empty skiff started it all,” Fate said. “Bringing Drifter first, then the Stocketts following it.”
Murmurs for and against flowed around the room. He held up a hand for silence.
“But Val, you and Adam were right too. That letter started its own ruckus. Set me free is what it did, as sure as it broke the hold on Mame’s mind. That letter told me there was a reason I couldn’t squat flat on the bow of a boat like all you duck-legged boys I grew up with. It meant I could quit trying.”
Loyce sensed the toss of his head, but she couldn’t see the dark hair—worn longer than most, the green eyes daring the listeners to doubt, and the smile that said he might be kidding after all. Put it all together, and any riverboat shyster wanted that face. It partly explained why everyone but Loyce wanted to believe in his schemes, hoped for him to be right this time. She couldn’t see the things that drew other people to him, made them want to believe, even when they were making fun of his blowhard ways.
Like now. His confession about the letter was met with good-natured whoops and cries of “That’s as gooda reason as any to quit!” Then the listeners shushed themselves and leaned forward to catch the rest of the story. Fate, used to an audience, didn’t even acknowledge the brief interruption.
