A Redbird Christmas (7 page)

One Sunday in early January, Claude rode by the dock, noticed Oswald sitting there in his chair with his book, and pulled over to him.

“I see the girls haven’t drug you off to Lillian with them,” Claude said, smiling.

“No, they tried, but I escaped.”

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, nothing, just looking.”

“Then why don’t you come fishing with me?”

“I don’t know how to fish. Could I just tag along for the ride?”

“Sure, get in.”

It was a clear bright blue morning and the sun sparkled on the water as Claude rode all the way up to the wide part of the river. Flocks of pelicans flew beside the boat, almost close enough to reach out and touch. While they were sitting in the middle, the river was so still and peaceful; the only sound was the faint whirring of Claude’s fishing reel and the soft
plop
as the lure hit the water. Oswald was amazed at the ease and grace with which Claude cast his line out and drew it back, with almost no effort.

While they were sitting there in the quiet, Oswald heard church bells ringing way off in the distance. He asked Claude where they were coming from.

“That’s the Creole church across the river. You can hear it sometimes if the wind is right.” He laughed. “Sometimes on Saturday night you can hear them playing their music, whooping and hollering and carrying on. They like to have a good time, I’ll say that for them.”

“Do any of the Creoles ever come over to our side of the river?”

Claude sighed. “They used to, but not anymore.”

“What are they like?”

“Most of them are as nice as you could want, would give you the shirt off their backs. I had a lot of good Creole friends at one time, but after that thing with Roy and Julian we just don’t mix. After that happened everybody was more or less forced to take sides. Since the Creoles are all pretty much related to one another they had to side with Julian whether they agreed with him or not, and all of us over here had to do the same. It’s sort of a Hatfield and McCoy kind of a thing, I guess. We don’t go over there; they don’t come over here.”

Oswald, curious, asked, “What happened?”

“Didn’t the women tell you about it?”

“No.”

Claude threw his line out in the water and began to reel it back in. “Well, back about seventeen or maybe eighteen years by now we had ourselves a real-life Romeo and Juliet situation, and it’s a dang miracle somebody wasn’t murdered over it. It was touch and go there for a long time, with threats going back and forth across the river. Roy swore he was going to kill Julian and Julian swore he was going to kill Roy, and to this day there’s still a lot of bad blood between them. I think if either one of them got caught on the wrong side of the river, look out.”

Roy seemed like such an even-tempered man to Oswald. “Do you really think Roy would kill him?”

“You better believe it. Julian would do the same if he got the chance, and it’s a damn shame, too. Roy was practically raised by Julian and thought the world of him until that mess over Julian’s daughter. I don’t know the exact details of what happened, but the women do. I’m sure there is right and wrong on both sides, but I do think Julian’s pride caused most of the trouble.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah, back in the seventeen hundreds the LaPonde family used to own all of Baldwin County all the way up to Mobile. Julian’s great-grandfather got the original land grant from the king of Spain, but over the years the family sold most of it off bit by bit, got cheated out of some of it, lost a lot of it in poker games, and eventually wound up with just the land on the other side of the river.”

A small boat came around the corner and two men waved at Claude. “Having any luck?”

Claude waved back. “Not much,” he said as they went by. “Anyhow, about sixty years ago some of the farmers that came down to Baldwin County and bought land thought the Creoles were just a little too dark for their tastes and also they were Catholic and did their share of drinking and that didn’t set too well with the farmers, so there was some talk about maybe they shouldn’t be going to the same schools as their children and evidently there was going to be some sort of vote, but Julian’s father got wind of it and he pulled all the Creoles out of the county school and started one of their own. Julian was just a kid then, and he swore that when he grew up he was going to get his family’s original Spanish land grant back and kick the farmers off their land or some such crazy idea. He wanted his daughter, Marie, to marry the Voltaire boy so he could get some of the LaPonde land back in the family, but Marie wanted to marry Roy. As I say, I don’t know what all took place, but after it was over the girl wound up marrying the Voltaire boy and Roy ran off and joined the marines.”

Oswald had not been aware that Claude had hooked something while he was talking, but at that moment Claude casually reached over and pulled a mean-looking fish with a long skinny snout full of teeth out of the water and into the boat.

“What is
that
?” asked Oswald, moving aside.

“This old boy is a gar, puts up a nice little fight but not good to eat,” he said, unhooking the fish. Putting him back in the water he said, “Sorry, fella.”

The next week, when Oswald went over to have dinner with Frances and Mildred again, he asked Frances about the feud between Roy and Julian LaPonde.

Frances looked at him. “Oh, Mr. Campbell, you don’t even want to know about that; it was just terrible. I just don’t want to tell you how awful it was.” She then sat down on the couch and proceeded to tell him the entire story. “When that mess was going on, Ralph, my poor husband, had to get up and go down there in the middle of the night and help try and stop Roy from going across the river and killing Julian. And evidently, from what I heard, his relatives had to hold Julian back from coming over here and killing Roy. Julian accused Roy of ruining his girl’s reputation or some such nonsense and said he was going to shoot him if he got the chance. Ralph said poor Roy was down at the store having a fit, he was so in love with Marie LaPonde, and you can’t blame him; she was a beautiful girl. But then, as mean as he was, Julian was always a good-looking man, you have to say that for him don’t you, Mildred?”

Mildred, who tonight had black hair with a white streak down the middle, said, “I don’t know. I never saw the man.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Frances. “You weren’t here yet, but he was as good-looking as a movie star with those blue-green eyes; all the women were crazy about him. Anyhow, Roy and Marie had practically grown up together and had been in love with each other since they were children. So when he was eighteen, Roy told Julian that he and Marie wanted to get married, and Julian had a fit and said no, absolutely not, that the only way Roy could marry Marie was over his dead body. Marie’s mother, who loved Roy like a son, begged Julian to change his mind, and so did Roy’s uncle, who was his good friend, but he would not budge. He claimed he was against it because Roy was not Catholic, but the truth was Julian wanted that Voltaire land back and the only way he could get his hands on it was to have Marie marry into the family. So when all else failed Roy somehow got a note to Marie and rowed over there late one night to get her so they could run off and get married, but Julian caught them just as they were leaving the dock and drug Marie out of the boat and shot at Roy. Oh, it was terrible. People said they heard poor Marie screaming and crying and pleading with her father all the way across the river. The very next day Julian took Marie off and stuck her in a convent somewhere where Roy couldn’t find her.”

Mildred said, “Why didn’t she just leave? That’s what I would have done.”

“I don’t think it was that easy, Mildred. I think she was afraid her father would hurt Roy, or maybe being a good Catholic girl she felt obligated to do what he said, but anyway about a year later she managed to get a letter to Roy and told him she had decided to go ahead and marry the Voltaire boy. And do you know what the worst part of this story is?”

Mildred, who had already knocked back two vodka martinis, said, “That the dinner is getting cold.”

Frances ignored her sister and continued. “The worst part is after all that, the Voltaire boy lost all his family’s land gambling, and he and Marie had to move to Louisiana. So Julian broke two hearts and destroyed two lives, all for naught. It’s a real-life tragedy so we just don’t talk about it. Especially to Roy. I know he’s still in love with her.”

Mildred turned to Oswald. “It sounds like the plot of a really bad novel, doesn’t it?”

You should know, thought Frances, as she stood up to go to the kitchen, but she did not say it. She did not want Mr. Campbell to know what kind of junk her sister read and wished Mildred could be more like Dottie Nivens, who at least aspired to better herself. She read great literature, Chaucer, Proust, and Jane Austen, not those cheap romance novels Mildred always picked. As she pulled the roast out of her pink stove she also wondered why Mildred had worn that low-cut blouse that showed the top of her more than generous where-withals. Was she interested in Mr. Campbell? Or was she just not paying attention to what she put on? With Mildred you never knew.

A Small Visitor

O
NE AFTERNOON OSWALD
was standing around the cash register talking with Roy, when Roy suddenly picked up a pencil, pretended to be writing something, and said, “Don’t look now, but that little girl I was telling you about is back.”

The first time Roy had seen the little girl was a few weeks before, and then it was only the top of a small blonde head slowly rising up and appearing in the side window, then two big wide blue eyes staring in at Jack running on his plastic wheel and ringing his bells. But the minute she saw Roy she quickly disappeared from sight. Roy walked back and went outside, but by the time he got around the side of the building she was nowhere to be seen. He had noticed her only a few times, but it was always the same; as soon as she saw him looking at her, she disappeared into thin air.

The next time she came he was able to catch sight of her before she saw him. He quickly turned his back and pretended not to notice her. From what he had seen of her, she was a pretty little thing, and was clearly shy and afraid of people, but obviously fascinated with the bird. She came every day after that, and Roy got a big kick out of it.

“Who is she?” asked Oswald, not turning around.

“I don’t know. I’ve asked Frances and Dottie, but nobody knows who she is or where she came from. I just wish I could get her to come in.”

As the days went by the girl became bolder and bolder, until one afternoon when Roy opened the back door she did not run away. “Don’t you want to come inside?” he said. “He can’t come out, but if you come in you can pet him if you want. He doesn’t mind.”

Roy, seeing how small she was, guessed the girl could not have been more than five or six. She was barefoot and wearing a dirty ripped cotton dress, and she stood there, clearly torn between being terrified of Roy and wanting to see Jack up close.

“Come on in,” he said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.” The girl started to turn around and leave but Roy said, “Wait a minute, don’t go,” and went back in and picked Jack up and held his feet between his forefinger and thumb and walked to the door so she could see him. “Look. You can hold him if you want. He’s tame, he won’t hurt you.”

Jack looked at her through the screen and sang out, “Chip, chip, chip, birdie, birdie, birdie.”

After a moment the girl could not resist and slowly began to move toward the door. It was then Roy noticed that there was something wrong with her. As she came closer and closer he could see that her body was slightly twisted and she was dragging her right leg behind her. “What’s your name?” he asked as she came in, with her eyes never leaving Jack.

She answered “Patsy” so softly he could barely hear her.

“Well, Patsy. This is Jack.”

It had been Roy’s experience that at first most children this young were afraid to touch the bird, but not her. She may have been frightened of people but not of Jack. She said, “Can I hold him?”

“Sure.”

She lifted her finger and held it up, and Jack walked from Roy’s finger over to hers and sat there cocking his head and blinking his eyes. Usually in the past when he had put Jack on someone else’s finger, he had always hopped right back to him. Not this time.

“He likes you,” said Roy.

Her eyes were wide with wonder. “He does?” she said.

“Oh, yes.” At that point Jack bobbed up and down on her finger and walked all the way up her arm, sat on her shoulder, and nuzzled against the side of her cheek. “Well, I’ll be darned,” said Roy.

This was the beginning of the love affair between Jack and Patsy.

When Patsy left the store that first day, Roy walked out and watched where she was headed. He finally figured out where she lived and why nobody in town knew who she was. She had headed in the same direction where those people who lived way back up in the woods were located. She probably belonged to the same family as the two mean boys who had shot Jack in the first place, and most likely had heard about the bird from them. He remembered the first day she had appeared was the same day he had seen those boys walk by the store and look in at Jack. What a shame, thought Roy; he could just imagine what kind of life she had. But all he could do was to be as nice as possible to her while she was here. The kind of people who lived back there in the woods never stayed anywhere long. They were mostly itinerant farm workers passing through the area to pick strawberries or work the pecan crop and then move on to the next place.

After that first time, the girl came back to the store every day and played with Jack for hours. She was still terrified of people and shy with Roy, although he found she was no trouble to have around. She was as quiet as a mouse. The only time he ever heard her at all was when she was alone in the office with Jack. If he happened to pass by, he could hear her in there, just chattering away to the bird—and darned if the bird wasn’t chattering back at her. He would have loved to hear what she was saying, but he couldn’t make it out. As the weeks went by she got to the point where she would come out of the office and talk to people. When Roy first introduced her to Oswald, who was not very comfortable around children, he awkwardly reached down and shook her hand and said, “Hello little girl, how do you do,” and was amazed at her tiny hand. As she walked away and he saw how badly crippled she was, he turned to Roy and said softly, “That’s a damn shame. She’s such a pretty little kid, too.”

Roy glanced back as she went into the office. “Yeah, it makes you want to kick the living tar out of somebody, don’t it?”

The next time Oswald came up to the store, he saw Patsy in the back and she shyly motioned for him to come over. “Do you want to know a secret?” she asked.

“Why, yes, I do.”

She then motioned for him to lean down and whispered in his ear. “Jack is my best friend.”

“Really?” he said, pretending to be astonished. “How do you know?” he whispered back.

“He told me.”

“He did? And what did you say?”

“I told him first and then he told me.”

“I see.”

“But he said I could tell you.”

“Well, tell him I said thank you.”

“OK,” she said.

When he walked over to the cash register he was laughing to himself. “Hey, Roy, did you know she’s back there, talking to that bird?”

“Oh, yes, I hear her all day, just chattering away, lost in her own world. But you know what, considering what she must go home to every night, the kid probably needs some magic in her life. She can stay back there forever, as far as I’m concerned.”

Of course, when Frances and the other women saw the girl they were appalled, not only at her condition but also at how thin and dirty she was. Butch Mannich got mad and fumed over it. He had no patience with that kind of child neglect. Being a process server he had dealt firsthand with the type of people that lived back in the woods and knew what they were like. He said, “They treat their kids worse than you and I would treat a dog.”

From then on, every time Frances went in the store the sight of the girl broke her heart. She told Roy, “I’m just worried to death about her, and you just wonder what her mother must be like, to let a crippled child roam around like some wild animal. Somebody ought to do something.”

“I know, Frances,” said Roy, shaking his head. “I’ve tried to feed her but she won’t take a thing from me but a few pieces of candy. All she wants is to play with Jack all day. I feel bad for her, but she doesn’t belong to us and there’s nothing we can do about it.”