If Wishes Were Kisses: Six Beloved Americana Romances, a Collection (Small Town Swains)

by Pamela Morsi

  Spent and sleepy, they lay wrapped together in a blanket sheltered by the windbreak of poles and brush. She rested her head on his chest. And he toyed with the sweet-smelling wildness of her loosened hair. As they faced the end of their time together, they reminisced about the beginning.

  "I couldn't believe it," Laron admitted. "I was green and ignorant and just plain scared. I thought that it couldn't be true. You weren't really going to touch me, of that I was certain."

  "You didn't make it easy for me," she told him.

  "How could I?" he asked. "When you knelt down in front of me, I thought you were going to pray."

  "I was praying. Praying I could go through with it," she said.

  Laron shook his head, fondly recalling the night so long ago.

  "When you took me in your hand I closed my eyes and convinced myself that I was imagining the whole thing."

  "And I thought you closed your eyes because you liked it so much!"

  "I liked it too much. I told myself that I was back in my own sleeping cot, dreaming of you and holding myself."

  She chuckled. "Perhaps had it been your own hand, monsieur," she said with feigning complaint, "you would have comported yourself more ably."

  Laron growled and pulled her closer to him. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

  She shook her head.

  "Oh Helga, my sweet Helga," he said. "After three years I am still embarrassed and ashamed. Right in your face! One touch of your lips and I go off right in your face."

  She began to giggle, remembering.

  "You're laughing at me!" he complained and pointed an accusing finger. "You were laughing at me then."

  She admitted as much.

  "In truth, I think it was good that you were obviously so unfamiliar with the carnal," she told him.

  "Why is that? Because you enjoyed being my teacher?"

  Helga was thoughtful for a moment. "The years of my marriage I . . . well, I didn't enjoy sex. Helmut was often drunk and he was never . . . never tender. I had never initiated the act, not ever."

  Laron rubbed her arms to ward off the chill he knew she always felt when she spoke of her husband.

  "Helmut took what he wanted from me; I never gave anything," she said. "If you had been more knowledgeable, more demanding, perhaps I could not have given to you, either."

  "I am more knowledgeable now, am I not?" Laron asked her.

  She huffed irreverently. "You are far too clever a pupil for this teacher," she told him. "You have learned your lessons so quickly and so well, did I not know better I would think you were having a tutor on the side."

  He pinched her backside playfully. "Careful, Madame Shotz," he said. "A woman making unfounded accusations may well find herself across my knee."

  "Oh please non, monsieur," she said, her voice tiny and theatrically pleading. "My big derriere is still stinging from the last time!"

  He laughed heartily and then pulled her close to look into her eyes. The mood sobered.

  "What I intended to tell you," he whispered, "before you teasingly changed the subject, is that you should never believe that somehow you are responsible for the failure of your marriage with Helmut. It was not that he was domineering and that you needed to control. It was not that he was powerful and that you wanted that power for yourself. It was not that you required a lesser partner. Never, never think that. Now I am knowledgeable and I am demanding. Yet you still give to me fully and unhesitatingly. The difference, my Helga, is that while I take from you, I give also. That is the way it should be. So that one partner need never fear to end up empty."

  "Empty," she repeated the word like an echo on her breath. "That is what I most fear about the years ahead. That without you they will be empty."

  "You will have Karl and Elsa and Jakob," he told her. "And you will have the certainty that I have loved you truly and as God surely intended. And that love will be with us always though we never touch again."

  "Perhaps when the children are gone, in our old age maybe—"

  Laron placed a silencing finger against her lips.

  "It is too dangerous to wait, to hope. Know that if heaven grants that I can be with you, I will. And I will know that if you ever feel that you are free, you will seek me out."

  She kissed him then. And he held her tightly in his arms. The vaguest gray light of dawn was lightening the eastern sky. Their time together was almost a thing of the past. They clung to it and to each other, in their hearts both praying for a miracle.

  Armand awakened slowly. He was cold, gritty, exhausted. The ground beneath him was harder than rock and every muscle in his body ached from misuse. He had never felt better.

  In his arms lay the lovely Aida Gaudet, now Aida Sonnier. There was a strange rhythmic sound coming from her throat and he listened to it critically and grinned. The most beautiful woman on the Vermilion River was snoring.

  Her hair was everywhere. Those long dark locks that he had never before seen completely loosened were upon him like silken ties, binding him to her forever.

  The sun's warm glow had not yet reached the place where they lay, but it was morning nonetheless. The first morning of their married life.

  She had been right, of course. He'd thought to remain chaste until they were in more suitable surroundings. He dreamed of her, loving her for the first time, atop a warm overstuffed mattress, on fresh cotton sheets strewn with herbs and the glow of one candle lit at the bedside.

  Yes, that would have been nice. It still would be nice. He wanted to have her there. And he would. He would have her there. And he would have her on the floor in front of the fireplace. He would have her in the hayrick. Upon the kitchen table. In a prairie field. Could such a thing be done in a pirogue? If it could, they would.

  The nature of his wicked thoughts was tightening the front of his trousers. She was sleeping so soundly. He disengaged himself from her embrace and moved away, careful to tuck the blanket in around her so she would not be chilled. He hesitated only long enough to place a gentle kiss upon her brow.

  "Rest yourself, my love," he whispered. "You're going to need it."

  He walked toward the shoreline, dusting the sand from his clothes as he went. She had been right. He had already been worried that her desire for him would have faded with the charm. Waiting another day or perhaps two would have made him far more pessimistic and unsure.

  Perhaps it was that she had lived so long without confidence that she knew so well how to shore it up for others. He had never consciously worried about his ability with women. But she was no ordinary woman. And he wanted her to find him as no ordinary husband.

  He had only meant to touch her, hold her. But when he had seen her passion and watched her reach fulfillment with only the caress of his own hand, he had felt a power and a certainty that transformed him. In a flash of an instant as her body clenched against his hand he had changed from hesitant bridegroom to insatiable lover. It was a conversion that they could both appreciate.

  Love. Sexual union. Procreation. Eternity.

  Armand sighed with appreciation as he stared out at the waves rolling into Vermilion Bay and pondered their meaning. The sea was good for that. Good for pondering. And for men such as the Sonniers the sea was truly a link with life itself.

  Far to the north in a place that existed now only in the memories passed down, Acadians had built their lives, their culture, on the Bay of Fundy. The sea had been their source of strength and hope and survival. The lands they had farmed had been culled from it. The ships sailing upon its surface gathered fish and lobster and crab. Their ways and seasons were prescribed by the tides. They were a seafaring people.

  Even now, though they had been land-living, prairie people for two generations, the terms and phrases that flowed from their tongues were spawned from the sea. The prairie itself was like a sea of grass, slow-rolling like waves. They were creatures of the sea and it would always be with them, even if only in their hearts.

  Armand s
tared out at the rolling water before him. Waves rose and broke and receded to rise once more. So much like life, he thought. The deceptive appearance of changelessness while change was constant.

  He thought of Laron and Helga. His heart ached for them. He had been sympathetic to his friend before. He had felt sadness, but he had not been able to comprehend the agony. Now, knowing love, knowing the oneness of a man and his mate, he understood fully for the first time the harrowing pain of this parting. If only there were something that he could do.

  His brow furrowed in thought. Aida had been right about their first night together. Perhaps she was also right about the vision. There was no question in his mind of what she had seen. And why would she have seen it if it meant nothing? Maybe there was some answer within it.

  Calmly, deliberately, he seated himself on the edge of the water. Like a man mesmerized he stared out on the breaking waves and forced himself to think. He had to think. He simply had to think harder.

  Deliberately in his mind he went over what Aida had seen again. Looking critically at each piece of the strange puzzle. Laron had been trying to cut grain that was already cut. Armand had gone to stop him. But Armand did not point out to him that the grain was lying in windrows around him. For some reason it was not possible for Laron to see that. But Armand could see it. Armand could see it plainly, or at least he could have if he had looked.

  "Well now I am looking," he whispered quietly to himself. "Now I am looking as carefully and as fully as I have ever done in my life."

  Armand leaned forward thoughtfully, elbow on his knee, chin in his hand.

  A careless word—Madame Landry's voice lingered in memory. Careless words were everywhere, he realized. Careless words had set everything in motion and careless words might well be the key to setting it right again. It was all there in careless words. And careless words were all around him.

  Laron: I want to kill him.

  Helga: We cannot live in sin.

  Aida: There must be some other way.

  Madame Landry: Something must be done and soon.

  Helga: I do wish he was dead.

  Aida: You are the answer, Armand.

  Laron: He had fled to Texas.

  Himself: A widow has rights over her husband's property.

  Laron: I want to kill him.

  Helga: I wish he were dead.

  Aida: There must be some other way.

  Madame Landry: You, mon fils, are the center of it.

  Laron: There is a price on his head. He won't be back.

  Helga: I would marry you in a moment.

  Laron: I want to kill him.

  Helga: I wish he were dead.

  Aida: Armand, you are the answer.

  Madame Landry: They call you the veuve allemande, the German widow.

  Armand sat up immediately; he held himself still a long moment, thinking, waiting. Madame Landry was not one to speak careless words.

  "I have told no lies about my marital status," Helga had answered her.

  "It was I who first called you the German widow," the old woman replied.

  Armand's eyes narrowed. She'd said something else. Something else important. Something that day, that very day she had said something else.

  Armand strained his memory trying to recall. They were still sitting at the fire. They were drinking the badly brewed coffee and chatting about the house and Madame Landry had said . . . she'd said . . .

  "No one knows what happened to him. The syndic, the judge we had then, had to declare him dead."

  "The Spaniard," Armand whispered to himself.

  He'd moved on or was killed in a drunken brawl. His belt buckle was found in a gator's belly.

  Armand sat there, still, silent, waiting, waiting for a long, long moment. Then he jumped to his feet and whooped for joy.

  "Armand?"

  He heard Aida call to him and he turned in her direction. She was sitting up wrapped in the blanket, looking sleepy disheveled, and incredibly desirable.

  "Armand, what is it?"

  "I've figured it out!" he hollered, running toward her. "I understand the vision!"

  Chapter Twenty

  Felicite had finally given in to sleep. And the new baby, the one his wife had decided to call Jeanette, for him, was tucked in and sleeping soundly in the little reed-woven creche that had cradled her brothers and sister in their first weeks of life. Jean Baptiste had done what he had to do. He had cleaned up the baby, then his wife and the bed. He had taken the afterbirth and buried it in the fence row. He had fired off two rounds to announce to the neighbors that they had a new child, and it was a girl. He had done all this between frequent and hurried trips to the outhouse. The "love charm" that had been so unkind to his stomach intended, it seemed, to be equally unpleasant to his bowel.

  "Are you still not feeling well?" his wife had asked him.

  "I am fine," he told her, leaning down to brush her cheek. "I am as fine as any man can be."

  "She's a pretty baby, isn't she?"

  He nodded. "Oh yes, all our babies are."

  "But she is especially so," Felicite insisted.

  "She will always hold a special place in my heart," he said.

  She smiled at him and her brow furrowed slightly. "I know that you were not happy about another baby so soon."

  "I never said—"

  "You don't have to say things, Jean Baptiste. I am your wife in all ways. I can sense how you feel."

  "Well, I was wrong," he told her.

  "I promise that we won't have another so soon."

  "I don't recall that you are solely responsible for these children," he said. "And unless you wish to live apart from me I don't know how we are to stop them from arriving."

  Felicite lowered her voice to a whisper, as if she feared the baby might hear. "Madame Landry says that I will not get pregnant if you pull yourself out before you expel the semen."

  Jean Baptiste gave a wry shake of his head. "I begin to think that old woman doesn't like me much."

  Felicite's expression registered surprise. "Why would you say that?"

  "Never mind. I ... I was aware that a man can . . . withdraw his seed ... to spare a woman childbearing. Father Denis, of course, speaks against it. But when a wife is weak or ill . . . well, Acadian men say, what does a priest know of marriage?"

  "I am not weak or ill," Felicite admitted.

  "Do you want more children?"

  "I want what you want."

  "No Felicite, speak plain; you did so when you were in labor with our Jeanette. Speak plain to me now."

  She swallowed hard and then looked him in the eye. "I love you, Jean Baptiste. I want you as my husband and I will do whatever it takes to keep you." She looked down at the tiny child she held in her arms. "I love babies. I love to hold them and touch them, they smell so good and smile so sweet. I would willingly have a dozen. But I can be content with these four if I have you in my arms."

  He looked at her for a long, long moment. She was his Felicite. The girl that he had loved when they were too young to love. Yet she was not. She had become a woman. When he hadn't been watching, she had become a woman. If no other lesson was learned this night, he had understood at least that. She was a woman. And until now he had remained a boy.

  He looked back over the last months, the last years, as time had left him untouched. He had longed for the warmth and security of marriage, but had grumbled under the weight of its responsibilities. He had relished the pleasure of having a wife and whined about the burden of keeping one. Not anymore.

  "Felicite, do you ever worry about all those Boudreau children?"

  "What?" She looked at him, puzzled at his question.

  "Laron's parents, old Anatole and his wife, had fifteen children."

  "Yes, I know."

  "And all those children, except for Laron, are married now and having children of their own."

  "So?"

  "So who are all those Boudreau children going to marry, I ask you? They can't
marry each other, and come mating time the Boudreau children are going to want to wed."

  Felicite looked at him askance.

  "Why, you get those frisky Boudreau boys desperate for loving," he continued, "and they are liable to marry some fat French woman or a Creole or, heaven forbid, an Americaine."

  "Oh surely not."

  "It could happen, my dear. It could happen." He leaned down and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her against him. "Who is going to marry up all those Boudreau children?"

  "Who indeed?"

  "Why, the Sonniers, of course," he answered.

  "What exactly do you mean?" she asked.

  "What I mean, my dear wife, is that perhaps it is our God-given duty to produce as many children as heaven sees fit to send our way."

  "Jean Baptiste—"

  "We won't do this selfishly, we'll do it for the poor Boudreau children."

  Slowly, ever so slowly, she grinned. "I suppose we could, just for their sakes, of course."

  "I love you, Felicite. Have I told you that recently?"

  "Not recently enough."

  "Well, Madame, it is very true. I love you. I love being the father of your children. And if we have only these four or fourteen more, I will love and want and cherish each and every one."

  "I love you, Jean Baptiste."

  He kissed her then, really kissed her, in a way that he hadn't done in months.

  She looked up at him and sighed, starry-eyed, and he leaned down to place a tiny kiss on little Jeanette.

  "Sleep now and rest, my love," he told her. "There will be little time to do so later."

  He was right about that and she followed his suggestion. Now with night waning Jean Baptiste sat in the small hide-seat chair and watched the two of them in quiet, almost reverent repose. As soon as the sun was up there would be friends and family everywhere. There would be noise and music and jubilation. But right now, in the little room where Jean Baptiste had been born, in the room where he'd brought his young bride, in the room where he had seen with his own eyes the miracle of his daughter Jeanette, in this room and in this time there was wonderful peace.