Under the Bayou Moon

by Valerie Fraser Luesse

  Ellie tore her eyes away from the alligator and turned to Raphe, who was looking not at the breathtaking reptile but at her. He reached out to her, and she took his hand. Heywood looked at them, his eyes wide, his mouth open in awestruck silence. He and Raphe laid a hand on each other’s shoulder.

  The alligator remained still under the moon, drinking in soft light without the blistering heat of day until it had its fill. Then it followed the tree into the water, as if it had been sunning poolside and needed refreshment. It silently glided through the water, passing just a few feet away from the boat, crossed the slough, and disappeared into the tall grass where nothing and no one would ever find it.

  Raphe and Heywood released each other. Ellie hadn’t realized how tightly she was squeezing Raphe’s hand until he said, “Viens côté moi, Juliet—come to me.”

  He pulled her toward him until she sat in front of him on the seat of the boat, shaking. He put his arms around her and held her against him as Heywood peered into the night, hoping, no doubt, for one more glimpse of the most extraordinary vision they would ever share together, fleeting but undeniably real. The three of them were joined now and always would be. Without uttering a sound, they all knew it.

  SIXTEEN

  RAPHE AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF THUNDER, and what a blessed relief it was to escape the phantoms haunting his sleep. The nightmares hadn’t troubled him for a while now, and though he was grateful for the respite, their return caught him off guard, his defenses down. Now his brow was damp with sweat, his heart pounding against his chest.

  The scenes passing through his mind as he slept had been all the more horrifying because they were once as real as he himself was. He had endured them all in the steaming bayou heat after the hurricane that changed his life and ended those of so many others.

  His sisters had been spared the worst of the storm’s aftermath, sleeping at the church and helping the surviving women in the community cook for their men, who faced the grisly task of recovering the dead. With so many gone, even a seventeen-year-old boy like Raphe had to help search for remains, kill the snakes scrambling into houses to escape the floods, and shovel his way through the muck and mire left by a twenty-foot wall of displaced water.

  In reality, the bayou had been silent by the time he returned there after the storm. But in his dreams, all of the bodies floating in the water were screaming, their clothes ripped by the wind, their arms and legs bleeding. How would he ever explain such a thing to someone like Juliet? She felt the sadness of his loss—he could see it in her eyes and on her face—but she could never understand the sickening shock of pulling a body from the bayou only to discover it belonged to your brother, your nephew . . . your precious mother. He would never want her to understand such a thing.

  Maybe that was what had summoned the dreams—his desire to protect Juliet. It was overwhelming, his need to keep her safe, but from what exactly? Deadly storms? The daily struggle to make a living and care for Remy? Raphe himself might be the biggest threat of all to her happiness. Choosing him would mean choosing a hard life, far removed from her family in Alabama. He would sacrifice anything for her, but in the end, would he be asking her to sacrifice herself for him?

  The thought of a life without her made the hole in his heart so deep that nothing could possibly fill it. And yet he had to ask: Where does love end and selfishness begin? Or could it be possible for one to overcome the other if you loved somebody so much that their happiness was your own? All he could do was wait for an answer as he waited for daylight.

  SEVENTEEN

  ELLIE GASPED AND STOPPED IN HER TRACKS.

  “You see a snake or somethin’, Ellie?” Gabby asked, walking a couple of yards ahead of her.

  “No, but can I talk to you and Bonita for just a minute?” They were on their way to the landing with all the children after school. “The first Monday of the month is a week from today, y’all.”

  “Woo, that’s right!” Gabby said. “First Monday. Superintendent’s comin’, most likely.”

  Ellie considered her options. “Well, I guess there’s no time like the present. I’ll just tell him straight off that I don’t believe in bullying children and I absolutely will not do it. And then when he fires me, y’all can help me find a job, because I’m not going back to Alabama with my tail between my legs.”

  “Is there some reason we gotta do this the hard way?” Gabby asked her.

  “What do you mean?”

  Gabby shrugged. “Mama always says you catch more flies w’ honey than vinegar. ’Stead o’ mixin’ it with that superintendent, why not just let him think he won, and then he’ll go on and leave us alone?”

  “And how would we do that?”

  “You leave it to me,” Gabby said with a wink. “All you got to do is tell that man, soon as he gets here, that me and ’Nita’s in charge o’ keepin’ French outta this school. You do that an’ we’ll handle the rest. Don’t you worry none.”

  “You sure, Gabby?” Ellie asked.

  Gabby gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “You fool with enough kids and enough men, you gonna learn how to keep both of ’em in line. Leave the kids and the men to us. You have a good night now.”

  “You too.” Ellie was still unsure about Gabby’s plan, but she didn’t have a better one. She put her leather tote into the pirogue and pushed it off the bank, jumping into the bow just before the front of the boat went in. Then she began paddling.

  The ride home was one of her favorite parts of the day. In the mornings, she was surrounded by a flotilla of schoolchildren chattering away and calling out to ask her about the day’s lessons or point to a heron’s nest as they floated by it. But in the afternoons, they were all in such a hurry to get outside that most of them were long gone by the time she got to the landing. She had the bayou mostly to herself, taking her time and pausing as often as she liked. That was her gift to herself every weekday.

  Today was no different except—except for what? Except just being in a boat on the water made her lonely for Raphe. And being lonely for him was scarier than any Rougarou. He wasn’t what she had come here to find, yet there he was. Ellie wanted to focus on her work, her purpose, and Raphe had nothing to do with that. She conjured the image of a fiancé she had trusted turning into someone else across the dinner table, and told herself Raphe might do the same.

  But deep down, she knew that was a lie. And she had to wonder what was more unsettling: searching for the one who can make you whole or finding him. Because anything found can be lost.

  EIGHTEEN

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, Ellie arose before daylight—the old habit of a farm girl, she guessed. But it worked to her advantage because she loved watching the bayou wake up. Actually, it never slept. What she experienced in those wee hours was the transition from night sounds cloaked in darkness—the call of an owl, the plop of a bullfrog leaping into the water, wings taking flight from somewhere high above—to the louder daytime chatter of the bayou as fish, fowl, mammal, and reptile hunted, mated, frolicked, and conversed.

  Ellie made herself a pot of coffee and poured a cup, then wrapped Mama Jean’s shawl around her nightgown, lit a lantern so she wouldn’t step on a snake, and walked barefoot to the bench at the end of the dock. Dimming the lantern so it wouldn’t rip the curtain of early morning darkness, she sat down, put her feet up, and pulled the shawl around her legs, resting her chin on her knees as she closed her eyes and listened to the bayou. The rhythm of chirping crickets and croaking frogs, the occasional splash of water abruptly disturbed, the low-flute hoot of an owl—to Ellie it was music, maybe the best there was, next to the sound of Raphe’s fiddle.

  She opened her eyes and sipped her coffee, waiting for the first streak of light in the night sky. It came soon enough—first a faint silvery slit in the blackness that slowly lengthened before opening itself to sunrise colors of pale pink and coral. Before Ellie knew it, the sky was glowing with a watercolor wash of rosy orange, and she could see the singers of the swamp—the
birds dotting limbs of cypress trees, the frogs on their lily pads.

  Once the bayou was completely lit with sun, she was about to step inside for more coffee when she heard a sound off in the distance. She listened as it grew closer and closer—a boat chugging its way up the bayou until at last she could see it, first in the channel and then turning into the slough. It was, in fact, coming her way. She quickly grabbed her lantern and hurried inside, tossed off her nightgown as she ran into her bedroom, and threw on a T-shirt and her overalls.

  She stepped onto her porch to see the boat pulling up to her dock. And then she watched a lanky figure tie up and climb the ladder.

  “Heywood?” she called as she opened the screen door.

  He strolled up the dock, took off his Panama hat, and bowed. “Your humble servant.”

  “What on earth are you doing on my doorstep this early in the morning?”

  “I was out photographing the sunrise—which was a stunner, by the way—and I realized, upon completion of my artistic pursuits, that I am starving. Thought you might feed me, non?”

  “Should I say oui or d’accord if I’m willing?”

  Heywood thought it over. “Not sure. We’ll have to ask my boy Raphe.”

  “Don’t just stand there letting mosquitoes in my house—come on in,” Ellie said. “How’d you know I’d be up this early?” She went into the kitchen and took eggs, milk, and butter out of the icebox.

  “Well, you’re a country girl, so . . .”

  “Up with the chickens?”

  “Let’s just say I took a chance and won,” Heywood said with a smile as he joined her in the kitchen and built a fire in the stove.

  “Hey, will you do me a favor and go grab some bacon and boudin out of the smokehouse? I’ll pour us some coffee. Let me guess: black.”

  “Of course.” He headed for the door. “There’s still hope for hair on my chest.”

  By the time he came back, Ellie had the biscuit dough going. She rolled it out and cut the biscuits while Heywood started frying some bacon and boudin. Once she had a panful, he slid it into the oven for her and kept tending the smoky meats as he sipped his coffee.

  “When did you get back to Bernadette?” Ellie asked him.

  “Just last night. Mechanical problems on the rig shut us down early. Wish I could say I was sorry. Me and the Whirlygig lit outta Morgan City like a bat outta—well, in a hurry.”

  “What do you take pictures of this early—besides the colors in the sky?” Ellie started setting the table, putting a butter dish, cane syrup, and some of Florence’s blackberry jam in the center.

  “Oh, Ellie, you should see it.” He took a plate from a kitchen shelf and loaded it with the bacon while he kept tending the boudin. “It’s misty and mysterious and just so beautiful. The shape of the cypress trees against the sky when the sunrise first breaks through—you just can’t imagine the shadows and the textures. And the color o’ the water changes constantly from the first few seconds o’ daybreak on. It’s like lookin’ into a kaleidoscope—if you could find a kaleidoscope filled with water and cypress trees and Spanish moss—and the occasional alligator waking up from a rough night.” He moved the skillet off the heat and set the meats on the table.

  “How do you like your eggs?” Ellie asked.

  “Scrambled.”

  “Good, because that’s the only way I cook ’em.” She began cracking eggs into a mixing bowl. “How long were you out there?”

  “Several hours, I guess. I couldn’t sleep and got tired o’ tossin’ and turnin’, so I figured I might as well do something constructive with myself. Hard part was wakin’ up the Whirlygig.”

  “I take it the Whirlygig does not get up with the chickens?” Ellie said as she whisked the eggs and poured them into a buttered skillet.

  “She does not,” Heywood said.

  “I didn’t realize your boat was female.”

  “You don’t think I’d waste my precious time on the bayou with a guy, do you?”

  Ellie laughed. “No, I suppose not.”

  Once the eggs were done, she filled a bowl with them and took the biscuits out of the oven before joining Heywood at the table. She offered thanks, and they passed each other first one dish and then another.

  Heywood buttered a biscuit and took a bite. “Miss Fields!” he exclaimed. “You can cook!”

  “Of course I can cook. I was raised by Southern women. They insist that a girl know her way around a lard can.”

  “But you didn’t want to cook for those Alabama suitors?”

  “I don’t want to cook for anybody who expects me to,” Ellie said, dipping a piece of boudin into cane syrup.

  “Good for you. For the record, I didn’t expect you to cook for me. I just thought if I begged, I could persuade you.”

  “You could persuade anybody to do anything, Heywood, and you know it.”

  He dipped a biscuit in cane syrup and took a bite. “That’s the best thing I ever ate.”

  “Better than Miss Ollie’s po’boy?”

  “Okay, second best,” he corrected himself.

  Ellie took a sip of her coffee. “You said you weren’t sorry the oil rig had to shut down. Are you unhappy when you’re working—when you’re not on the bayou or pulling up to Miss Ollie’s table in New Orleans?”

  Heywood buttered a second biscuit. “I didn’t used to be. But the rigs have gotten rougher, and I guess my patience has grown thinner. Kinda tired of spending any time doing something that doesn’t mean anything to me. And believe me when I tell you—drilling for oil means absolutely nothing to me. I find the whole enterprise absolutely soul-draining.”

  “Think you might quit?” Ellie spread some blackberry jam on a biscuit.

  “I want to. Just have to figure out that pesky business of making a living.”

  “Couldn’t you fish with Raphe?”

  “Wish that were possible. But Raphe’s name is out there among the big shrimp companies, and he makes a lot more money working on their boats than he does fishing. I don’t know if casting nets would keep me in the style to which I’ve become accustomed.”

  Ellie laughed and nodded. “I can understand that, given my own very high standards. Nothing but the finest scrub board for my washtub.”

  “How do the common folk live?” Heywood dug into his eggs.

  Ellie sipped her coffee and looked at him across the table. “Heywood, I need to ask you something. Ever since last weekend, I’ve been thinking about it—the white alligator. It’s practically all I think about. And I just wondered—what do you make of it?”

  He sat back in his chair and shook his head. “Most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life. That gator was so white—so pure white—except for that one little ribbon o’ charcoal down its back. And that tunnel we went through to get there and then the slough and the moonlight—I can’t believe I didn’t have my camera with me.”

  “Did seeing it . . . I don’t know . . . rattle you at all?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Were you scared of it, Ellie?”

  “No, that’s not how I would describe it exactly. I’m not making any sense.”

  Heywood gave her a playful nudge. “Maybe it was the shock of seeing a ghostly form after I upset you with news of my impending death.”

  “You are not allowed to talk about that ever again,” Ellie said, shaking her finger at him. “I require you to live long enough to be my friend when I’m old and gray, and I will accept nothing less.”

  Heywood smiled at her. “You might go gray, but you’ll never get old. You shall forever be my hat-tossing, po’boy-chomping, hurricane-swilling Miss Ellie Fields, even when you’re walking with a cane and dipping snuff like my grandma.”

  That made Ellie laugh. “As long as I can have a truly stylish snuff box. Again, I do have my standards.”

  They ate their breakfast in silence for a minute before Ellie said, “I don’t know why I can’t stop t
hinking about it. I feel like there’s something I’m supposed to understand, but I can’t unravel it. It’s like trying to see something through smoky glass. Everything’s all shadowy.”

  Heywood took a sip of his coffee and smiled at her. “I swear, you and Raphe Broussard are dipped from the same bucket.”

  “How so?”

  “You both have a troublesome tendency to dive straight past the surface and go deep right away. Me, I like to keep an observational distance.”

  “Not sure I follow.”

  “It’s like with the alligator. You felt something on the spot and in the moment, and you let it take hold of you—both of you. I’d much rather see it through my camera lens. Then I can hold the picture in my hands and meet it on my terms.”

  “Something happened, though, didn’t it? It wasn’t just my imagination?”

  “No, it wasn’t your imagination. Raphe took us down a path, Ellie—all three of us. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see where we end up.”

  HEYWOOD HELPED ELLIE WITH THE DISHES and thanked her for the leftover biscuits and boudin she packed for him, then headed out for the Atchafalaya to do some fishing.

  Ordinarily, Ellie would relish a little time to herself on a Saturday. Mama Jean always said she had a “contemplative nature” and would “forever prefer the solitude to the clamor.” But today Ellie felt oddly restless and decided to paddle to the landing and ramble around Chalmette’s. She needed a few odds and ends for the kitchen anyway.

  Paddling the bayou made her breathe differently. No matter what troubles might be swirling in her head, the simple act of gliding over the waters of the Teche calmed her spirit and eased her mind.