A Twisted Ladder (18 page)

Daddy took another stab. “Crêpe Nanou was it? That where y’all went to eat?”

Ethan cleared his throat. “Sir, just so you know, I’ve been very respectful with your daughter.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, Daddy,” Madeleine said.

“How do ya like that,” Daddy said.

Ethan added, “Anyway, Miss Madeleine here barely gives me the time of day. Pert near had to set an appointment through her secretary just to trick her into goin out.”

“That so?” And before Daddy even turned his head, Ethan had managed to sneak in a look toward Madeleine, which she in turn absorbed with only the slightest flash of the eyes.

Ethan replied, “Yessir. Kinda humbling too, considering her secretary’s also my secretary now.”

“Ethan’s come on board as a liaison to Tulane’s psych department,” Madeleine said.

“So you’re working together,” Daddy said. “Isn’t that nice. Guess it makes sense to have a neuroscientist hangin around a bunch of headshrinkers.”

“Not exactly working together. We’re both in the psych department, but his program is very closed and hush-hush.”

The truck hummed beneath them, and the swampland crept in closer around the highway. Daddy’s interest in the subject seemed to have evaporated. The song on the radio changed to a sleepy, sensual blues hybrid by Buckwheat Zydeco.

Ethan glanced toward Madeleine. “Tell me again what we’re gonna be doing out on that swamp, darlin?”

“Collecting flowers for Sam to use at the flower shop. She wants to do an All Souls Day display on the second, with water hyacinths, or whatever pretty thing we can pull out of the bayou for her.”

“Sounds relaxing.”

Daddy said, “Y’all can sit around and blow bubbles in the lily pads. Me, I’m goin fishin.”

Madeleine smiled at her father, then looked out as they sped through the swamplands and could already see drifts of water irises in bloom. Easy and nice out there on the water. She couldn’t wait.

Out of nowhere Daddy muttered, “Can’t take it no more”; he reached over and switched off the radio.

The truck fell to white silence. Madeleine looked at the now-vacant digital display and then eyed her father, wondering if the music had stirred the old confusions in him.

“You all right, Daddy?”

“Just like some peace and quiet every now and then, that’s all. Can’t a man just enjoy a little silence?”

ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF
Houma, Bayou Black formed a glittering arrow that shot from the Mississippi feeders out to the Gulf. As if the mighty river had gotten antsy during her run and sent forth a projectile just so she could reach her destination that much sooner. Over time, she and her feeders had taken over forests and cane fields and saw to it that like the water, the landscape never grew stagnant. Otters were almost as common out here as feral cats, and so were coon or skunk or possum. Down the bayou, at the end of the little clamshell road, stood the old LeBlanc cottage, like Charon watching over the River Styx. Neither Madeleine nor her father mentioned to Ethan how they’d pointedly avoided setting foot inside the house.

Another day
, thought Madeleine.
We’ll tend to Marc’s things later
.

Looking at it now, the most basic, raw Creole construction, it seemed both sweet and horrific to her, her childhood home was simple and loyal, unable to protect, and ultimately abandoned. Madeleine looked away from this place where she and her brother had spent their first days in the world, and where he had spent his last.

Jasmine bounded around the rear of it and came shooting back from beneath the structure, cobwebs and a dried elderberry leaf spiked to her hair. Madeleine brushed her off, glad to fuss a little and divert her focus.

As Daddy and Ethan loaded her brother’s skiff into the water, Madeleine took out her cell phone and tried calling Chloe. The image of that girl, Severin, had been haunting her, and Madeleine wanted to make sure she was being tended to properly.

“LeBlanc residence.”

“Hello, Oran? This is Madeleine LeBlanc. Is Miss Chloe there?”

“She’s not at home.”

“I see. Did she get the messages I left for her?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Because I wanted to ask her some questions about Severin.”

“Mm hmm.”

Madeleine sighed. “Will you pass along the message to call me?”

“I . . . Well, yes ma’am.”

“Thanks Oran. Bye-bye.”

The boat was in the water and Ethan pulled forward to park the truck over by the cottage. Jasmine skipped past Ethan down the dock and hopped over the seats to her favorite perch.

“You done making social calls?” Daddy hollered over the motor.

Madeleine tucked the cell phone into her pack and Ethan offered his hand to help her step off the dock. She thanked him, absently, while inwardly resolving that she was going to find out what was going on with the little girl Severin whether Chloe cooperated or not. Shoeless and unwashed; too ragged, too wild, serious neglect was going on, and Madeleine wasn’t about to just let it go.

The boat was suddenly in motion, the old Creole cottage disappearing behind them as they sped forth. The movement freshened her lungs with cool oxygen, and they passed forests of tall pine and oak until the trees became shorter: alder, elderberry, and scrub. Chinese tallow were turning ruby with the change of season, and the purple aster bloomed with wide red eyes in the centers of the flower heads. Bayou Black seemed to have the spirit of Halloween about it, with a bite of ionic charge that relayed echoes from another world.

The bayou broke free from the developed neighborhoods. They passed through the concrete-and-steel saltwater intrusion lock that acted as a valve, blocking the brackish water from mingling with the fresh, and then they entered the wilds. Here, the trees stretched once again higher and even higher toward heaven, grand water cypress with their priestly robes of Spanish moss.

Jasmine darted back and forth along the bottom of the skiff, peering over the side at her reflection as it zoomed across the surface of the water. Finally the bayou and cypress trees fell back, too, and they entered open fields of water hyacinths that spread like a royal carpet laying the way to the Gulf. All of it—the swamp and the marsh, and all the flora and creatures that lived there—was Bayou Black.

Here in the salty marsh, in the field of saline-tolerant flowers, Daddy cut the motor and secured the skiff.

Madeleine shrugged off her button-down shirt, leaving just her bathing suit top and cutoffs, and slipped into the water. Ethan followed in his swimming trunks. Daddy had his fishing hook baited and cast on the opposite side of the boat before they’d even dampened their hair.

“How’s the water?” he called.

Madeleine wiggled her toes as the cool liquid permeated her sneakers. “Feels like heaven.”

“I’ll second that,” Ethan said.

The flower collection baskets, fashioned out of old crab pots, floated on a towline. The water level hit at about chest height so they walked easily as they collected specimens.

“Gators ever come out this far?” Ethan said, looking around.

Madeleine laughed. “No, city slicker. They like the freshwater better, over yonder in the cypress forest. Not so big on the salt marshes. But it’s best to keep an eye out anyway because you never know. Everything that lives out here is just plain tough. Animals, bugs, plants.”

“I guess they’d have to be.”

They bent their bodies so that only their heads were above the surface, and they moved forward in slow-motion giant steps through the water, no sound but the occasional splash and Daddy’s spin cast. Ethan took a breath and disappeared beneath the surface. Madeleine parted a path through the flowers, avoiding an area of stagnant water where brown foam floated in drifts. She wrinkled her nose. Scum like that tended to breed unfriendly organisms, and this particular slick emitted especially vile odors. She moved on to fresher patches.

Ethan surfaced again. “Can’t see a damn thing under there.”

“What were you looking for?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Fish. Critters. Pretty pair of legs.”

She smiled, looking down at the water. She could see about an inch below the surface before everything faded to black.

“Any rules as to which of these flowers we should get?” Ethan said.

Madeleine untangled one of the irises and put it in the basket. “Go for the ones with full buds that haven’t bloomed yet.”

Ethan gave a grunt and rose from the water.

“What’s the matter?” Madeleine said.

They were higher on a sandbar now, and the shimmering, silken plane rested at his rib cage.

Ethan shook his head. “Nothin. Somethin slimy just tickled my leg.”

“You really are a city slicker. Haven’t you ever come out to the bayou?”

“Been to it. Just not
in
it.”

“Well, you never really know what’s brushing up against your leg down there. Could be fallen branches or fish, or maybe something you’d just as soon not know about.”

“Damn, woman. You’re not putting my mind at ease here.”

She smiled. “When Marc and I were kids we never gave it a second thought. We went swimming in the bayou all the time. And then one day we went free-diving with friends. Looks a whole lot different when you’re using a mask.”

She remembered being surprised at just how forbidding the water had looked beneath the surface, even with the aid of a mask. The bottom had been dense with trees and charcoal swamp litter, and swamp gas had bubbled up in a promenade of sparkling columns. Everything was black, including the water, and visibility stretched only a few feet.

Ethan said, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“What did you see down there with the swimming mask?”

“Still hard to see anything, really, even with the mask. Lots of shadows down below. In fact, I was straining so hard to see this one big lump that I got right up to it before I realized I was nose-to-nose with an alligator.”

“What!”

“Oh, he wasn’t gonna hurt anybody. They’re not usually aggressive with people.”

“Usually.”

“Well, yeah. He was just lying on the bottom with these alien-looking eyes encased in these great big waterproof bubbles. I swear he looked like he was smiling.”

She recalled the dim outline of him, the corners of his lips curved up at the ends and sharp triangle teeth in a jack-o’-lantern grin. Ever since then she’d wondered how many times she and Marc had gone swimming, not realizing
what
they might be swimming
with
.

“You mean to tell me you were down there pettin a smiley alligator like he was an ole pussy cat?”

“Good lord, no. I hopped out of that water like it’d begun to boil.”

Ethan stared at her for a stark, suspended moment, arms folded across his chest. About twenty yards behind him, the boat rocked as Daddy cast his line back into the water.

Madeleine rose to a full stance. “Don’t worry, whatever slimed your leg just now, it probably wasn’t an alligator.”

Ethan said, “You gonna get that one?”

“What one?”

“That.” He unfolded his arms and stepped toward her. “Perfect one . . .” He reached for her and she straightened in surprise, and then he continued just beyond and grasped a robust iris with fat buds that were barely shy of bloom; all the while his eyes never strayed from hers. “. . . right there.”

She felt his leg brush her knee, and she instinctively smoothed her hand over his arm, leaving a trail of pearl droplets. Skin at once fiery and cool from the sun and water. His head remained bent over hers as he passed the iris to the collection basket.

“Your old man lookin at us?” Ethan said.

Madeleine’s gaze flicked to the skiff and back. “Can’t see through that drift of flowers if we’re down low in the water.”

They simultaneously sank to chin level. He touched her waist underwater, fingers on bare skin.

She grinned. “I hope you both realize he has no business being nosy or playing chaperone. I happen to be a grown woman.”

“Oh, yes ma’am. I realize you’re a grown woman all right. I got that message loud and clear.”

Then, in those shadowed waters of Bayou Black, their legs intertwined, their arms tangled, their frames loosened and became weightless. He pulled her close. She felt his chest press against hers, and then felt his lips press against hers. Water lapping softly, with garlands of irises lacing around them. Their bodies bobbed in gentle unison with the current.

“Your hair looks real pretty when it’s wet, Madeleine.”

“I like the way your skin smells in the sun.”

And then he kissed her a second time, his legs fitting with hers. She let her eyes close and the world fall away, with no care to creatures beneath the surface or whether smoke was smoke. He held the small of her back and it seemed that her spine unwound in an arch toward him, her muscles forming a magnet to his, their bodies suspended outside of gravity so that they were two coiled strands winding around one another, twisting to become a single unit. Fitting together with perfection as though they could zip into place. She ran the tip of her fingernail gently up his neck.

“Kissing you in this bayou was a baaaad idea, Madeleine,” he whispered.