by Pamela Morsi
Laron nodded as if the suggestion seemed reasonable.
Jean Baptiste huffed. "My own flesh and blood, devil-bent on usury!"
"As the old men say," Laron teased, "never play against a wiser man."
Jean Baptiste nodded. "And I can never remember that my baby brother is the wiser man!"
The three laughed together companionably. Bourre was serious card playing, but once the money was lost, all could be philosophical. And it was not as if the cash would be stuck in some wily Creole's money pouch and taken down to New Orleans. Armand would hold the coins until next week's game, when he'd probably lose what he'd won this night, if not more.
It was late, very late. Jean Baptiste set the washtub against the side of the house. Armand straightened the cards and returned them to their wooden box.
Laron fished a small bag of tobacco out of his pocket and all three men took turns filling their long-stemmed clay pipes. They rearranged their hide-seat ladderback chairs to face the wide stretch of bayou given the auspicious name of Vermilion River. Jean Baptiste raised the chimney tin of the lantern and lit a sprig of dry palmfronde. He passed the fire to Laron and Armand before sparking his own smoke. The smell of home-cured tobacco filled the air around the porch with a familiar masculine aroma. They stared out into the darkness of the evening, relaxed.
They had been friends forever. Armand and Laron were the same age and had stuck together tighter than mud on a wagon wheel since childhood. The brains and the brawn, people called them. And for good reason. With a small, almost frail, appearance, the result of childhood illness, Armand had a bright mind and a gift of speech that bordered on the eloquent. Laron was big and sturdy and muscular. He was the first man you'd call upon if you needed a stump pulled or a sunk raised. Folks said that for all the scrapes the two were involved in, the reason they never got into trouble was that if Laron couldn't bust them out, Armand would talk them out.
Jean Baptiste joined them as companions as they grew older and the three years' difference in their ages ceased to matter. Now the three sat together, quietly smoking in the stillness of a late autumn night.
The Sonnier family, Jean Baptiste's wife and children, were all abed inside the house. The peaceful breathing of a mother and children sleeping on the far side of the curtain-covered doorway was accompanied by the sounds of the night. The buzzing mosquitoes, the scratchy call of crickets, the chirp of tree frogs were punctuated by the occasional splash in the water as a big old turtle or maybe even a gator made a late-night swim.
Contented and quiet, the talk moved from cards to crops and cattle. Cotton, they thought, would be good next year. Cattle even better. Sugar; sugar was too much work, they all agreed. Not a fit crop for small farmers, petits habitants, like themselves.
Ultimately the subject turned to one often favored by young healthy men on this prairie—a subject favored by young men on any prairie or bayou or city street. The subject of women.
"I hear that old man Breaux has a niece up in Opelousas," Laron said, glancing toward Armand. "He says she's no bigger than a minute."
Armand shrugged with good grace and offered a fatalistic sigh. "There is not a wide selection of women on the bayous in any case," he said sadly. "But when a man's own height decrees he must confine himself to the females that grow no taller than swampgrass, the choice becomes limited indeed."
His brother and friend chuckled.
Armand's lack of stature was a long-time joke with the three. From a childhood of being called "shortbread" and "knee-high," Armand had developed not just a thick skin, but a confidence in himself for his other qualities. Still, when it came to courting, a man wanted a woman to look up to him. Most of the young ladies on this prairie would have to sit down to do so.
"And so you laugh at me, my friend," he accused Laron good-naturedly. "Here I pine away for want of a wife of my own while you are affianced to Aida Gaudet."
"Ah," Jean Baptiste commented. "Some men are forever lucky."
The lovely Aida was almost a legend. Armand's once funny little friend was now described as belle chose, inordinately beautiful. And it was no fib. Aida Gaudet was the most beautiful woman on Prairie l'Acadie, perhaps the most beautiful girl on the Vermilion River, maybe even the most beautiful in Louisiana. Her fine figure, perfect pale flesh, and glossy black hair set pulses racing in every man still strong enough to stir a stick.
Unfortunately, Armand Sonnier was no exception. He was in love with her. And she had promised to marry Laron Boudreau, his best friend.
"I am a fortunate man," Laron admitted, and then told Armand, "Do not worry. The right woman will come along for you."
Armand agreed, sighing a little. No one knew that his heart was already ensnared. And no one would ever know.
"It must be the biggest irony ever among two friends," Armand said. "That I would marry tomorrow if I had a woman to choose. And my best friend has been engaged nearly two years and still no wedding in sight."
"When are you getting married?" Jean Baptiste asked. "Last winter you said in the spring. In spring you said in the fall. Autumn is on us now and we haven't heard a whisper of your plans."
"We will marry in due time," Laron assured him. "It is not a thing that a man needs to rush into."
"I heard old Jesper is getting very restless," Armand warned. "He has asked Father Denis to intercede and press you two for the reading of the banns before cold weather sets in."
"A Frenchman in robes is not likely to rush me to the altar," Laron told him. "And he won't be any more likely to persuade Mademoiselle Gaudet than her father has been. That young woman does exactly as she pleases. She always has, and Lord help me as her husband, I suspect she always will."
Armand chuckled. "Do you think she will manage you as easily as she wraps that old man about her little finger?"
"I hope not quite," Laron answered.
"I'm surprised that Jesper even mustered the courage to ask Father Denis for help," Armand said. "He must be getting desperate."
"I can't imagine why. Do you think he's unwilling to feed the girl another winter?" Jean Baptiste asked.
"What is another mouth to him?" Armand replied. "He's doing so well even the priests would be jealous. That mill of his has him set up fine and proper. And his fields are as green and prosperous as any I've ever seen."
Jean Baptiste sighed with feigned wistfulness. "Ah, beautiful and wealthy, too. It is more than a man should expect in one woman."
The other men chuckled in agreement.
"And no fellow in greater need than my friend Laron," Armand added, teasing.
His friend nodded at him, conceding the point. Laron Boudreau was virtually landless, the youngest son of Anatole Boudreau's fifteen children. The law of Louisiana stated that upon death a father's property must be partitioned evenly, with every portion to have water access. Once old Anatole's moderate holding of ninety arpents was divided, Laron found his own farm to be a strip of land so narrow that a thirsty cow on its way to drink from the bayou would probably cross onto the property of his brother a half- dozen times.
"What truly amazes me, Laron," Armand said, "is that you have the prettiest, wealthiest, most sought after mamselle on the river and yet you seem loath to marry."
Laron took a deep draw on his pipe and shrugged. "I'm not the first man to get gooseflesh when the talk turns to wedlock."
"Is that what it is?" Armand said.
"Don't ride him, brother," Jean Baptiste piped in. "He is right to hesitate at the idea of marriage. A man must do it, but it is truly no bargain."
Armand turned to look at Jean Baptiste in curious disbelief. "Is my hearing playing tricks upon me?" he asked. "Is this my brother, Jean Baptiste? Jean Baptiste who was so eager to wed that he could hardly wait for his chest to fur before he tied the knot? Our Jean Baptiste, who carved Felicite's name on a tree before he even knew how to spell it! Tell me, Laron, is this my brother who speaks ill of holy wedlock?"
Laron quickly joined in. "Old m
arried men are always sighing and complaining," he answered Armand. "Pay the worn-out old poppa no regard."
The two younger men were laughing. Armand noticed that his brother was not.
"You are serious," he said incredulously. "Whatever is wrong with you?"
Jean Baptiste glanced back guiltily at the curtained doorway behind him. He answered in low, regretful tones.
"Marriage is different than I thought it to be," he told them in a soft whisper.
"Different? How so?" his brother asked.
Jean Baptiste shook his head, his brow furrowed. "I thought I was so much in love. Now I think I was just . . . I was just eager to take a woman to bed."
"There are whores aplenty down on the Bayou Blonde," Laron pointed out. "You didn't want to take a woman to bed. You wanted Felicite."
"Are you thinking you don't love her?" Armand was genuinely shocked. "What nonsense! Of course you love Felicite."
Jean Baptiste shrugged. "I entered into marriage too soon. Now I am stuck for a lifetime."
"Stuck for a lifetime?" Armand's expression was disbelief. He laughed without much humor. "You have as kind and gentle a woman for wife as any I know. Not many men would describe such a circumstance as being stuck."
Jean Baptiste shrugged off his brother's words. "Yes, yes, of course Felicite is a fine woman," he agreed. "But having a wife is not like pursuing a woman. There is no excitement in it. No real pleasure. How I envy you both. You both have fun and freedom and anticipation. You may dance and flirt and steal sweet kisses. I have only work and trouble and responsibility. One day looks to me just like the next. Oh, how I envy you."
Armand was shocked into speechlessness.
Laron was confused and uncomfortable with his friend's confession. "How can you speak so, Jean Baptiste? Felicite is a wonderful wife and devoted to you."
Jean Baptiste did not dispute him. "But you see that is the point, she is a wife," he said. "Wives, by their very nature, are neither exciting nor pleasurable."
Laron scoffed. "She must be somewhat pleasurable, my friend," he said. "You have three children and another due to arrive before Christmas, it seems."
"I like children," Jean Baptiste admitted. "But four in five years is too many. The woman has been fat nearly from the day we wed."
"Fat!" Armand howled in disbelief. "She is not fat, Jean Baptiste, she is once more and again with child."
"I know the cause, my brother, but the truth does not alter the face in the mirror or the size of her girth."
"In case you did not realize this"—Armand's words dripped sarcasm—"the begetting of those babes can be put as squarely at your doorstep as at her own."
The elder Sonnier brother shrugged. "Still," he said wistfully. "I would that I had not wed so soon. Could I do it again, I would have stayed a bachelor much much longer."
He grinned and shook a finger at Laron Boudreau. "At least long enough to try my chances at routing you for the hand of the beautiful Aida."
"You think you would have had a chance for her?" Laron asked, deliberately making his words light. "I'm not sure the taste of the mamselle runs to worn-out old married men like yourself."
Jean Baptiste laughed then. "No, I suspect not," he admitted.
"Of course not," Armand concurred. "There has never been any question that she would choose any man but Laron. It is completely like her."
"What do you mean?" his friend asked.
"We have all known Aida since she was in braids," he said. "A more foolish featherbrain was never seen on this prairie."
Armand's opinion of the most beautiful woman on the Vermilion River was well-known. He made certain that it was, since his scorn was the mask he held up to cover his feelings.
"You will get no argument from me on that," Laron said with a chuckle.
Armand nodded and continued, "Aida Gaudet chose her husband the same way she would have chosen a bolt of store-bought fabric. Value and durability come second, my friend, to what pleases her eye."
Laron laughed out loud. "And you think I am pleasing to the lady's eye?"
Armand only shrugged. There was nothing further to say. Truth was truth and Armand had faced it a long time ago. Laron's thick black hair, tied loosely at the nape of his neck with leather cord, his strong features, and his perfectly straight white teeth spoke for themselves. He had the looks to take a woman's breath away.
His friend was tall, strong, and attractive. Armand was short and very ordinary. He could still recall Aida's girlish declaration. She would be the bride of the most handsome man in the parish. Clearly his best friend, Laron Boudreau, was that man.
"I know why Aida Gaudet chose you," Armand stated firmly. "But what continues to puzzle me is why you chose Aida Gaudet."
Laron tipped his chair back on two legs and stretched out to rest his bare feet against the porch rail. He folded his arms across his chest and perused his best friend with speculation.
"My brother is truly crazy," Jean Baptiste piped in. "Every man wants her, Armand."
"Laron does not."
"Why would he not?"
"Because he has a veuve allemande to keep him warm through winter nights," Armand replied.
Laron's expression turned stony. The front legs of his chair banged against the floorboards.
"I have no idea what you mean," he said flatly.
The coldness of his friend's reply did not deter Armand Sonnier in the least. The quiet contemplation of the dark night and the aching of his own heart somehow brought forth words that he had never in his life intended to speak.
"I mean exactly what I said," he answered evenly.
It was common knowledge on the river that Laron Boudreau had taken up illicitly with the veuve allemande, the German widow. Some even said that Laron was father to her youngest child, a pretty three-year-old. Armand didn't believe that. He knew his friend too well. But he was aware that Laron spent every spare moment in the widow's company. And the very furtive nature of those visits left little doubt that the two were not merely passing comments about the weather.
"I mean exactly what I said," Armand continued. "While I am a poor bachelor near-starved for a woman's touch, my friend Laron has set up a bower as warm and lush as any married man's."
Laron's jaw was tightly set and his voice was cold. "I will not have the name of Madame Shotz spoken ill, even by my closest friend," he warned.
"And I would not speak ill of her," Armand said quietly. "I do not know her, but I do know you. If you respect her, so do I."
Laron accepted his words as apology.
"I meant merely," Armand explained more lightly. "That you seem as much at peace with your life as any man I know on bayou or prairie."
Laron hesitated a long moment before he replied. "I have found a measure of contentment with Helga," he admitted finally.
"I know that," Armand said. "And it is why I worry about your lengthy engagement to the fair Aida. It will be difficult to cast off that ease for the certain misery of husbanding a woman that you do not love."
There was silence between them.
"It will only be misery in the daytime," Jean Baptiste piped in quickly with a sigh of longing. "Nighttime with Aida Gaudet would surely be paradise."
His humor broke the tension between the two other men and they relaxed.
"Truthfully, you have the right of it, my friend," Laron admitted. "Helga is woman enough for me, but a man must marry."
None contradicted that statement. Like birth and death, marriage among the Acadian people was expected. Only the priesthood exempted a man from such duty. Laron Boudreau was no candidate for the priesthood. And he couldn't marry Helga Shotz.
Though she was known as a widow, Helga was already married.
Her dress was too plain and the neckline too high. Aida sighed sadly, but there was no help for it. Were she the daughter of a rich Creole, she could clad herself in crinoline and lace and show the swell of her bosom with impunity. But her father was a simple Acadian farmer
and Acadian women dressed modestly in homespun cottonade with an occasional decoration of linen or crochet. At least it was colorful, bright and cheery with wide stripes on the skirt and a vest corset of vivid indigo with red ribbon laces. She looked well enough, she thought.
And besides, as Father Denis would tell her, shaking his finger menacingly, vanity is unbecoming of womanhood. Easily she pushed away her mild disappointment. It was Saturday night and vanity or not, she was the prettiest girl on Prairie l'Acadie, perhaps the prettiest girl on the Vermilion River, maybe the prettiest girl in Louisiana.
At least, that was what people said.
Aida tried to hold that thought to herself with comfort. Carefully she inspected her teeth, especially the tiny chipped corner of her right incisor. At age ten she'd tripped on her own skirts and fallen against the porch. No one remembered the incident or ever mentioned the imperfection, but Aida remained ever aware of it. The chipped tooth was, she thought, her only flaw. And she knew it was her own fault. God had denied her a fine wit or a true purpose in life. He'd intended her for perfect beauty; any less than that was her own failing.
Aida had schooled herself not to smile broadly, laugh with her mouth open, or display any other expression that might draw attention to the broken tooth. If men found her tiny wavering tilt of lips intriguing and alluring, well, so much the better.
"Aida, ma petite, it is time that we go," her father called from the doorway. "I can hear already the music begin to play."
"Coming, Poppa," she answered. "One minute more."
She gazed at herself again in the mirror. Her thick black curls were tied away from her face and secured beneath her lace-trimmed cap. But the length of it was twisted and balled at the nape of her neck to remind the gentlemen, if they were wont to forget, that her hair was long and luxuriant and certain to be prized by the man who married her.
Aida was thoughtful. A prize. That's how most saw her. A pretty, gaily wrapped prize. A thing to be won and displayed like a sixteen-point deer head or a fourteen-foot-long alligator hide. Aida didn't want to be a man's trophy. She wanted to be loved.
