Pamela Morsi (19 page)

"Well, look who is here!"

The statement of surprise came from Emile
Marchand.

Oscar Benoit sniggered under his breath.
"Never known him to show up when there was real work going on."

A chuckle of agreement moved down the line of
men like a contagion.

"Bonjour, Father Denis," Jean Baptiste said,
stepping up to greet the man. "Welcome to my home."

The priest gave him a hasty, halfhearted
blessing.

"Come and have coffee," Jean Baptiste
continued. "You have walked so very far. If we had known you wanted
to attend the hulling bee, we would have sent someone in a pirogue
to fetch you."

"Hulling bee, is it?" the priest looked
around him critically. "It looks more like a fishing party."

The men offered good-natured
disagreement.

"Alas, our women keep warm and dry with the
cotton," Hippolyte Arceneaux piped in sarcastically. "While we poor
men are left outside with the gray and drizzle. Nothing to give us
comfort but cold coffee and wet fish."

That comment evoked guffaws. Even Father
Denis joined in.

"Would you care to linger with us, Father?"
Jean

Baptiste asked. "Or would you prefer to join
the women under a roof?"

"Oh no, I can't stay long," he said. "I only
came to speak with your brother."

Jean Baptiste spotted Armand. "He's here to
see you," he reported.

Of course Armand had heard Father Denis's
words but he was quite reluctant to rush to the old priest's side.
His unwillingness was not because he loved fishing, but rather a
great aversion to having to deal with one more uneasy problem.
Reluctantly he began pulling in his line.

"May I fish with your pole, Uncle Armand?"
little Gaston asked excitedly. The boy's own had proved unlucky
that morning. He'd not caught even one measly throwback.

Armand ruffled the boy's hair and handed him
the pole.

"Clearly the fish are having trouble swimming
around all this other bait," he said to Gaston, indicating the
long line of fishermen. "My hook is always their favorite."

Around him the other men scoffed
good-naturedly. The boy looked up at him, his trusting eyes
wide.

"Give it just a tiny flick of the wrist when
you toss it out," Armand suggested quietly. "No grand gesture, like
a beau making bow to a mamselle, just a tiny flick, like a husband
bidding his wife to dance."

Gaston nodded solemnly.

"The big catfish know that gesture," Armand
assured him. "As soon as they see it they'll hurry to the end of
your line."

Biting the side of his small mouth in
concentration, the child attempted to follow his uncle's
advice.

Armand squeezed his shoulder before turning
toward the long-robed priest.

Armand offered a polite word in greeting.
Father Denis answered with a blessing.

"What is it, Father?" he asked as the two
stepped away from the riverbank. "You wished to speak with me?"

The cleric gave a quick disapproving look at
the palmfrond hat that remained on Armand's head but made no
comment.

"It is a beautiful day," Father Denis
commented conversationally.

Armand raised an eyebrow. "It's drizzling
rain."

The old priest shrugged. "Even the worst of
times are the gift of our Father in heaven," he replied.

Armand shrugged a tacit agreement.

"Let us walk, shall we?"

Armand followed the priest's lead and they
slowly made their way along the high ground path, pausing to turn
inland when they reached the cypress pieux split rail fence.

"We have had cross words," the good father
stated calmly as the two reached beyond the hearing distance of
the others.

"It is not the first time, Father," Armand
replied.

The years of tutelage and obedience were long
in the past. Armand had long since spoken his mind with the priest
and as often as not that frankness had brought discord.

"I have offended you somehow and in some way
that I did not intend," the old man said. "And I find that I much
need your help."

"If this is about the school, Father," Armand
told him, "I have said all that I wish to upon the subject."

"But not all that needs to be said has been,"
he answered.

"Father, I will not—"

The old priest held up his hand.

"You are correct, my son, when you say that
after twenty years I should understand your people better," he
said.

Armand nodded agreement.

"I am a man of God, but I am also a Frenchman
and will always be so. You and your people"—he shook his head—"they
are a breed still strange to me, strange to most anyone, I
think."

"We are not strange to ourselves, Father,"
Armand replied.

"Well said," the priest admitted. "It has
been so many years that you have been away from anyone but your
own. You have become distinct and strangely unique in your ways.
The people here have grown less French in their ways than many of
the Africans that have not one drop of French blood inside
them."

Armand wondered how the father could know all
this, then determinedly shrugged off what sounded to him very much
like criticism. The two had reached the corner of the fencing and
could walk no further. Armand leaned back against the cypress pieu,
spreading his arms along the top railing and propping one bare
foot upon the bottom.

"It is the French themselves who taught us
that we are not French," he countered.

"Yes, yes, I know," Father Denis said
patronizingly. "But that was all a very long time ago."

"A long time ago?" Armand's tone of voice
lowered and intensified. "It was a very long time ago. But if we
forget this wrong," he said, "if we say what

is past is past, if we do not tell our
children the story of how we came here and why, all that pain and
rage and death will have been for naught."

The priest's expression was solemn. "The
Bible tells us to forgive our enemies, Armand. To bless them that
cursed you and pray for them that despite-fully used you."

"And we do, Father," Armand told him. "We
wage no war. We plot no revenge. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards,
Creoles, or Americaines, they are all safe here in this place. We
laugh, we dance, and we welcome strangers among us. We live on as
God intended. But we will not, cannot, forget our past, and we
shall not allow our children to do so."

Father Denis observed his pained expression,
but eventually nodded.

"All right, Armand," he said. "I will not ask
you to bring your people around to my way of thinking."

"Good."

"But I still ask you to help me to start a
school."

Armand stopped in his tracks and huffed with
indignation. "You have not heard a word that I have said."

"I have heard every word," Father Denis
replied. "But none of it convinces me that these children should
not learn to read."

"There is no need," Armand insisted.

"I would do nothing to turn the children
against the old ways," the priest assured him. "You are right when
you say that there is much evil in the world and that it is good to
stand clear of it. But it is a perilous idea to believe that
ignorance can be a protection. We must know what dangers lurk
around us or we should never be on watch to avoid them."

"To know the dangers of the world, Father, is
to be tempted by them," Armand said.

"But without temptation there is no virtue,
no choice to do right. We would all choose for children the good
way, but in truth they each must at some time choose for
themselves."

Father Denis glared at him sternly. "You
always think that you know what is best, Armand Sonnier. That is
always what you think. When I pushed you to become the judge, I did
it because I believed in the strength of your mind. But your vanity
has blossomed with your age."

The priest's words were soft, but their
meaning was a condemnation.

"God has granted you much capacity for
knowledge," he said. "I do not see yet that you have acquired much
wisdom."

Aida Gaudet wanted to crawl into a rabbit
hole and pull the dirt back over to cover herself up.

"Aida Gaudet to be the new treater?" Armand's
tone was incredulous.

"I know it's a silly—" Aida began.

"It's my idea and a very good one, I am
thinking," Orva said sharply.

Aida had mentioned Orva Landry's plan to no
one, not even her own father. She knew that it would seem foolish,
ridiculous. She was not a treater and she never would be. Women
like her were not chosen for such tasks. Women like her were the
decorations of a community, not the pinions.

Aida watched Armand. He looked down at Madame
Landry, seated heavily upon a short stool in the middle of her
garden and then over at Aida. He swallowed determinedly as if
choosing his words and turned back to the older woman.

"I am not saying that Mademoiselle Gaudet
could not be a fine help to you, Nanan," he said quietly. "She
could be a companion, assist you in the garden. But learning the
cures and charms?" He glanced toward Aida. And then smiled with
genuine sympathy. "Why, la demoiselle has much too much to think
about already."

Aida wanted to defend herself, but when she
looked into his eyes she could not. Armand was correct. She was not
nearly smart enough to become the treater. She'd known it all
along. That Orva Landry even suggested that she could was
ludicrous. But the old woman seemed wholly set upon it.

She sat stubbornly amid the remainders of her
garden plot. The uncut corn was drying on the stalk, a few late
tomatoes still hid among the vines, and a dozen brightly colored
gourds were ripe enough to pick.

"The young woman has an interest," Orva
insisted. "She has an interest and she shows an aptitude. That says
enough for me. Would you have me ask the voices for your sake?"

Armand cleared his throat nervously. Clearly
he did not want any sort of personal consultation with the
voices.

"I wouldn't truly be the traiteur," Aida
assured him with sincerity. "I would just grow the herbs. I can do
that. It's simply gardening. And you will tell me how to put them
together. You will keep the secrets of the charms and cures."

"Men don't keep those secrets," he told
her.

"Of course they don't," Madame Landry agreed.
"And I'm not asking you to keep them. Just to write them down. They
need to be written down and I'm not the one to do it."

"It will never work," Armand insisted. "If
you must apprentice someone, it must be someone who can be
treater."

"There you go again! Thinking that you know
everything." Orva huffed in disgust. "Has this current load of
lessons you've been burdened with taught you nothing at all?"

Young Monsieur Sonnier appeared distinctly
uncomfortable.

"I would think," the old woman continued,
"that between that fat old priest's book teachings and my personal
guidance, the brightest young man on the Vermilion River would have
learned that things are not always exactly as they appear. But no.
You believe you know best for yourself, best for everyone. It's a
conceit, young man, very much a conceit."

Aida watched as Armand's cheeks reddened. She
felt immediate empathy for him. How strange that a man as smart as
Armand could be made to feel as silly and foolish as she often did
herself. He looked strong and determined, his blue eyes intense.
Without thinking she reached out to touch his arm.

He flinched slightly beneath her fingers and
glanced up at her, startled.

"Excuse us for a moment," she said to Madame
Landry. "I need to speak a word with Monsieur Sonnier."

The treater nodded and Aida led a reluctant
Armand out of earshot. She regretted her action almost instantly.
She could not offer wisdom or even reason. He would think she had
gotten far above herself if she did. All she could speak was the
truth.

"I know that I am no choice for this burden,"
she whispered to him. She kept her head high. She would not be
ashamed of who she was, not in front of him. "I don't know a lot. I
lose things. And I don't have a very good memory."

Armand said nothing. It would have been
polite if he had begged to differ with her. But she took it as a
compliment that he didn't immediately agree.

"Surely a true treater will come along and
Madame Landry will recognize her straightaway," she continued. "It
is a strange idea, indeed, that I could be of any help to Madame
Landry. But she thinks it will be so."

"It is not for me to say who the treater
should be," Armand said finally as he watched the determined set of
her shoulders. "I just thought that it would be . . . it would be
someone other than you."

"I agree completely," Aida told him, grateful
that he was not openly derisive of her. "It's not a job I would
want. And I am sure that another woman will come along who will be
perfect for it. But until she does ... it is only an afternoon or
two spent in the old woman's presence. Will it be so much work to
write down what she has to say?"

"No, I suppose not," he admitted.

"Until the true treater comes along, I can
listen and learn what I can. That will not hurt anyone," she said.
"And it will be a good thing to have the cures written down on
papers, don't you think?"

He shrugged, but appeared to be conceding.
"It could be a good thing," he agreed finally. "A written record is
always a hedge against disaster or uncertainty."

"Then you will help me?" she asked. "You will
listen while she tells me and you will write it down?"

"All right."

"Thank you, monsieur. Thank you so much."
Aida smiled broadly at him, inordinately happy and pleased.

Armand gave her a strange look. "You have a
chipped tooth," he said.

Aida covered her mouth, embarrassed.