Crimson Bayou

by C. L. Bevill

  Investigator Caraby had been cleared of the actual deed by John Henry. The only proviso was if the medical examiner’s estimated time of death was off. However, Dara had his insurance card in her possession. Tomas said he hadn’t looked at her things, so it hadn’t come from him. If that was so, then exactly how had Dara managed to place her hands on the card, and what was she planning on doing with it?

  Mignon cursed silently at herself. The previous night had been a rare opportunity, and she’d missed it. John Henry and Caraby had been receptive enough to talk openly about the case. What she wanted to know was what had prompted Caraby to visit the school in December? He was a felony investigator, so he investigated felony crimes. What possible felony had been committed at Blessed Heart just before Christmas? She had forgotten to ask, and she mutely damned herself for the oversight. In the state the two men had been in, one of them might have actually answered her.

  There were Dara’s parents who weren’t really suspects. They were simply what they were. Parents. Not the best of parents and far from the worst. They wanted the best for Dara, and they wanted her to believe in the things that they believed in. Faulting them for those flaws would be like cutting off her nose to spite her face. If they had had murder in mind, then why put her in Blessed Heart at all?

  Mignon considered. Because they wanted her to give the baby up for adoption, but if they discovered that she wasn’t going to do that, then what would they have been capable of doing? Murder? All to keep Dara from having a baby whose father was a Gullah?

  Callie suddenly called for Mignon’s attention and thoughts of murder dashed from her mind. The remainder of the class seemed to fly by. Girls chattered while they drew and re-drew items while Mignon unexpectedly discovered that she truly enjoyed the classes much more than she would have ever imagined she would.

  •

  That evening Robert returned to the farmhouse with a six-pack of Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale and a welcome smile. “I ain’t the type to bring a bottle of wine,” he explained.

  Mignon opened the door for him to come inside, but he shook his head. He handed over the beer with a big grin. “A fella from New Hampshire done introduced them to me. You put those bad boys in the ‘fridge, and try ‘em later. You can even give one to John Henry and that uptight Simon ifin you want.”

  “I don’t think Caraby will be coming by for a brewski anytime soon,” Mignon said wryly, then added mockingly, “I’m not sure about John Henry either.”

  Robert wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Oh, don’t be that way, honey girl,” he soothed. “That boy don’t know what he be missing, and ‘sides, you gots to expect that he’d be mad at ya’ll.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You off and playing de-tective all the time. He just don’t want his gal putting herself in harm’s way.” He chuckled. “I mean, my goodness gracious Aloysius, you done asked someone ifin he killed Dara right to his face while he had a shotgun within handy-dandy reach. I’m thinking that weren’t going to get you awarded the Nobel common-sense prize.”

  “I was pretty sure you didn’t do it,” Mignon said crossly.

  Robert said, “And a good thing too because the only thing I done murdered is a six-pack of Miller’s late last night. Lined them boys up like soldiers and knocked them off with my slingshot.” He grasped her shoulder warmly and then let go. “Come on, then.”

  “Where?” Mignon said with amusement.

  “My mam would like to visit with you. She’s plumb worried about you.” Robert shot Mignon a fleeting dark look that said volumes about what he thought about her worrying Thereze for even the briefest amount of time.

  Mignon hesitated. Back into a pirogue again? Back into the black waters of the bayou again? “Uh…”

  Robert grabbed one of her arms and tugged her out of her house. She had been cleaning up the debris of the previous day’s problems. Three garbage bags full of items that were too damaged to use sat on the edge of her porch waiting for a trip to the local dump. “You fall offa a horse, you gots to climb right back on again,” he pronounced.

  “That wasn’t a horse,” she stated firmly. “Oh hell. Let me lock up.”

  “Good.” Robert laughed. “We’re gonna make a bayou gal out of you yet.” He ticked items off on his fingers as she went back in and retrieved her keys. “Wrestling alligators. Picking cottonmouths up with your bare hands. Doing cartwheels in a pirogue while shooting at poachers with one hand. Yep. The kind of gal all them boys are gonna be running after with a club in their hand.”

  Mignon paused. “If someone tries to club me,” she said sincerely, “I’ll club back.”

  “That’s part of the appeal, ma p’tite cousin,” he chortled.

  •

  They went back to the first dock that Mignon had been to, and Robert settled her into a different pirogue than she’d been in before. He put a battery-powered lantern in the stem of the boat. Then he found his with another lantern in his hand, and cast off the two lines before they made their way into the bayous. In the jumping and dancing shadows caused by the gently moving lanterns, the trip didn’t seem half as long this time. Mignon learned that she was more relaxed on this outing. She wasn’t so afraid that she was going to sink into the darkness.

  After a while she said to Robert, “Are you angry with me because of what I thought?”

  “About Dara?” Robert said musingly.

  “Yes.”

  “I was,” Robert answered honestly. “I was angry enough to et a lemon whole.” He paused to stroke the pirogue away from a stump, and Mignon admired his effortless technique. “But I had a whole lot of time to think ‘bout it last night. I’m thinking you wouldn’t be you, ifin you dint think what you had. The best part was that you decided I couldn’t do it, without any real evidence. Else you wouldn’t have asked me the way you did.” His handsome face looked back at her, and for once, the amicable amusement was absent. “Took a chance on me. It means something.”

  Then Robert looked away, and Mignon stopped paddling for a moment. He went on, “Half the Creoles think Tomas Clovis done Dara in. Half of ‘em think that he weren’t capable of it. Means someone else had to strangle that poor girl.”

  Mignon started to hear the sounds of the enclave. People were laughing and talking loudly while someone sang a dirty ditty about a girl named Sue. Faint lights shone through silhouetted trees, revealing the location of the group of little houses on their tiny isolated island.

  Robert stopped paddling and said, “You got John Henry to think that someone else might be responsible. Best they look at all the angles before going after Tomas like he was already pronounced guilty. The Clovises think right highly of you for that. So do a lot of other folks. I don’t rightly understand who flattened your tires, Mignon. Mostly Creoles out there at that dock. But Mam and I think you best not spend a lot of time by yourself from here on out.”

  There was more than one message in his string of sentences, and Mignon struggled to read between the lines. She said, “I’ll try not to be alone as best I can.”

  Nodding, Robert added with a mocking grin, “Ifin you got to go to the john, best you take one of the boys with you. Hee-hee-hee.”

  “Hee-hee,” Mignon repeated sardonically. “I think I can go to the bathroom by myself.”

  “Couldn’t the last time out here,” Robert stated and resumed paddling.

  A minute later, they came in view of the enclave. Lights were burning brightly, and a small bonfire was ablaze near the front of the dock. Several men stood around it boisterously talking and laughing. One pointed at Robert and Mignon and said, “Hey boys, look who be here!”

  Two men argued affably over who would get to lift Mignon out of her pirogue. “I hear she falls in a lot,” said a third in explanation while Mignon grimaced. “Don’t worry,” said someone else. “Ain’t no feral dogs around here.”

  She nodded and let someone pull her out onto the dock. It was Phillipe Dede, the man who Leelah Prudhomme had direc
ted to dance with her on the night of the fais do-do. Then Mignon abruptly realized it had only been four days before. That night when Tomas had taken her out of the enclave seemed like an eternity before.

  “Mamselle Mignon,” Phillipe said with a big smile. His green eyes sparkled in the bonfire’s light. “I never did get to talk to you again.”

  Robert yanked up the two pirogues and collected Mignon with a fluid move that would have made ice dancers envious. “And you ain’t gonna tonight. Mam wants to talk to Mignon. Phillipe, why doncha go talk with your wife?”

  “Hey,” Phillipe protested playfully. “I talk with my wife once a year, whether I be wanting to or not!”

  Thereze was sitting on the loveseat in her tiny living room. She was covered with a crocheted afghan and sipping a cup of tea. Her feet were tucked underneath her, and for a moment, Mignon hesitated because tonight Thereze looked much sicker than she had on Friday night. The shadows drew hollows in her cheeks, and her hair was in disarray. There was a clump of hair on her shoulder that forcibly reminded Mignon that the older woman was undergoing treatments for the cancer that was so violently attacking her body. “Ah, Mignon,” Thereze said, and even her voice sounded frail. “Chère, I’m so glad to see you. We were all so worried.”

  Mignon knelt at Thereze’s front and took the older woman’s hand in between her own. The fragile hand trembled, and the skin felt like diaphanous paper. She was almost afraid to look at Thereze’s hand for fear of being able to see through the skin to the ailing and weary muscles and tissue underneath.

  Robert reached around Mignon and plucked the clump of hair away without making a noise. “I’ll get you something to drink. You want something to et, Mam?”

  Thereze shook her head. “I et something before you came.” Robert stopped to glare down at his mother. And Thereze added protestingly, “I did. A whole half-sandwich. Swear to God!”

  “Here you go, Mignon,” Robert said behind her and positioned one of the two mismatched kitchen chairs. Mignon rose up, keeping Thereze’s hand within one of hers, and perched on the edge.

  “She likes coffee,” Thereze called to Robert. “I don’t care for nothing else, ifin you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind,” Robert said right back, but his voice was indulgent rather than stern.

  Mignon was at a loss for words. Dying, came to her head. Thereze is dying. There wasn’t a question about it. Whatever kind of cancer she had was the kind that would put her in an early grave. Words seemed wretchedly weak. Words seemed like they would be an abomination to even think of uttering. Nothing that could be said would ever achieve the level of sorrow that Mignon felt that this bright woman was dying at such a young age, and she found she didn’t want to try. “I— ” she started, and then her mouth closed again. She hadn’t even wanted to say that much.

  Thereze put the cup of tea down on the little table beside the loveseat and gently patted Mignon’s hand that was holding Thereze’s other one. “You don’t have to say nothing, Mignon. Ain’t no one that can say much ‘bout things like this. I pray to God. He listens, and when I go to Him, I’ll get to be with all the ones who passed afore me.”

  Mignon opened her mouth again. She quickly glanced over her shoulder at Robert and found him stationary in the little kitchen, staring down into a sink with his hands clenched on the sides of the little counter. His knuckles showed white, and for a moment, she was caught up in their combined dilemma. Thereze was dying, and she was Robert’s only parent. He would have the comfort of his other relatives, but none of them could take Thereze’s place.

  She looked back at Thereze and used a free hand to brush away a tear that was objectionably forcing its way out of the corner of her eye.

  “There. There,” Thereze said comfortingly. “I reckon Grannywoman told you about my illness. Well, I cain’t hide it much, can I?”

  “I asked Mrs. Prudhomme,” Mignon said tiredly.

  “Shore you did, chère,” Thereze said. “Folks be curious. But we try not to give the sickness a name. Gives it power over us. It don’t need no more power.”

  Mignon took that to mean that Thereze didn’t want to talk about the cancer that was the immediate focus of her short existence. She nodded once and smiled tentatively at the other woman. “I’m glad you sent Robert for me. I wanted to come back, but I was a little afraid of the pirogues.”

  Thereze giggled like she had the other night that Mignon had seen her. It made Mignon feel good for a single moment before she remembered that Thereze only had a few giggles left in her life. “I heard tell about your experience with the little boats. It takes a gal a little bit to get used to them there things.” Her voice lowered to a clandestine whisper. “Robert fell off a time or two when he be a little boy. Don’t you let him tell you nothing else.”

  “I heard that,” Robert said. “I never fell in. Not once. Except mebe the time Fred pushed me in because I knocked over his still. And that dint count.”

  “Well anyway,” Thereze’s voice went up into a cheerful animation that Mignon could tell was half-forced. “I wanted to tell you some things about your folks. It came to me that you dint get to hear such stories about your folks. So I’ll tell you so all you remember ain’t the bad things.”

  “That would be nice,” Mignon said earnestly. She’d never hoped to hear the private family stories that people she knew often told about their relatives. But she’d often wondered what it could be like for her.

  “Your mama was a bit older than I be,” Thereze started, and Robert dragged up the other chair to listen. He patted Mignon on her shoulder and settled down. “But she liked to rhyme them nursery tales. She had dozens memorized. She used to teach the little girls the rhymes. You so little when she died, I bet you don’t remember much of that.”

  Mignon had remembered the rhymes but not much else about the woman who had been her mother. She avidly listened to Thereze.

  Chapter Twenty–six

  Tuesday, March 18th – Wednesday, March 19th

  I like cocoa. I like tea.

  I like sitting on the Creole’s knee.

  Down in the storm shelter, see my Auntie Carolee,

  Sitting on a Creole’s knee.

  - Children’s jump rope rhyme

  Mignon spent almost an hour with Thereze and Robert speaking about her memories of Garlande Thibeaux. When Thereze’s voice began to falter, Robert gave her an uncompromising look, and Thereze said her farewells with a fond smile at the younger woman. Then Robert swept his mother into his arms and carried her into the tiny bedroom, gently bullying her in a low tone. “Now you up and done it. You all tuckered out, and tomorrow you going be going back to the doc’s. Off to bed with you, Mam, or I’ll make you eat some of my spinach casserole.”

  Staring after the pair, Mignon was swept away by a series of emotions. Sadness, envy, anger at a God who could allow such a thing to happen, and others that she didn’t want to name else they overcome her being at that very moment in time. She stood up and stretched limbs that had been locked in place too long and went outside, gently shutting the door behind her.

  The night air smelt of the lingering dogwood blossoms. It wouldn’t be long before the pinkish-purple blooms would blow away, and their delicate aroma would inevitably fade away until the following spring. Even the trees that rooted into Mother Earth spoke of life and death. It was the thought of the never-ending cycle that made Mignon her shut her eyes.

  A moment later, Mignon opened her eyes and carefully went down the little house’s stairs. Walking a ways, she finally passed into the shadows of one of the stilted houses and hesitated, wrapping her arms around her body. The March temperatures weren’t cold, but as night fell, the wind could bring a chill that required a light windbreaker or a sweater. As she didn’t have one, she used her arms and tried not to think about what lay ahead for Thereze and Robert.

  A string of electrical lights ran down to and upon the dock, revealing a few men still roaming around that area, intent on their busine
ss. The bonfire was just a pile of glowing embers, and the wind idly pushed at the embers with invisible fingers. One of the men came over and stomped the cinders out.

  Mignon hadn’t replaced her watch, so she had no idea of the time. Just above the tree line, rising in the east, the moon was full and as plump as a woman about to give birth. She clutched her arms closer and glanced slowly around her. The enclave appeared a little different since the last time she’d seen it. Quiet as a library, most people were inside and doing whatever they did in their little homes. The other ones were rapt on their activities, fiddling with the engine of a boat with a flashlight or chopping a pile of wood sections into quarters with an axe and a colorful analysis of what he was doing as he was doing it.

  Keeping to the shadows, she wondered if her life would have been like the lives in this place given alternate circumstances. Mignon shook her head. There wasn’t any point in wondering things like that. It wouldn’t do her any good, and it wouldn’t give her any peace. Above her she heard the laughing giggles of a pair of children playing some amusing game and she hesitated.

  For some reason she suddenly thought of John Henry. Still very much angry with her, she doubted if he would be speaking with her until his aggravation dissipated. He had given a press interview that day and stated categorically that Tomas Clovis was only a suspect in Dara’s murder and still wanted for questioning. The St. Germaine’s Sheriff’s Department was asking for assistance from the public. Anyone who had information that might be pertinent had been asked to phone their tip line. There hadn’t been a printed comment from Caraby, but Mignon didn’t doubt that he was still on the investigation. John Henry seemed to trust him, despite the insurance card being in Dara’s possessions.

  Then there was some movement by the dock, and Mignon stopped to look. Sister Helena got out of a pirogue and climbed onto the dock like an expert. Mignon frowned. How had the sister come to be such an expert with the tricky little boats? But then, the sister had been in the area for many years. She talked quietly with the two men on the dock for a moment and then walked carefully toward the little houses.