Pamela Morsi (23 page)

Aida had been one of those rare children who
hated scary things. While her little friends had relished tales of
pirate ghosts, swamp monsters, and peg-legged Englishmen, she had
always cried at such stories and hidden her head. Even games like
"got-you" and "boo" were not to her liking. She saw nothing fun
about being frightened. And she was frightened now.

Deliberately, slowly, she pulled her hands
from the dishwater and wiped them on her apron. She listened.
Listened.

In the next room her father was snoring. The
crickets kept up their noisy chatter. The world was far from
silent, not holding its breath in fear as some bear or cat or giant
beast approached. No Baritaria pirate, wild Indian, Americaine
outlaw or escaped slave lurked in the darkness. The sounds were all
there, they were all normal. It was nothing, nothing at all. She
had simply taken a silly fantasy, she assured herself. There was
nothing to fear.

She forced herself to release her breath. It
was nothing, nothing.

She heard it again.

No, not heard it. She felt it. It was on her.
In her. Cold. It—they were here in the room. They were in the room
with her.

Aida was no longer paralyzed with fear. She
ran. She ran as if all the devils of hell were after her.

She was through the curtained door and down
the porch. Her bare feet slapped the cypress planks in a rhythm of
panic. Too terrified to scream, she raced away, away from them. She
had to get away. They pursued her. She had to get away.

At the end of the dock she stopped abruptly.
There was no further that she could go. There was no path to get
away. She could not rim on water. She was trapped, cornered. There
was no way out. No, of course there was not.

Aida trembled. She quaked and trembled at the
end of the dock. She should call out for her father. But no, she
knew her father could not help her now. There was nothing about
this that her father could even understand.

She folded her arms across her chest,
offering herself what little comfort she could. She bit her lip,
wanting to cry, but she couldn't. They were here. They had followed
her outside. They were all around her here, too. Somehow that
wasn't quite so frightening. It was not so close here as in the
house and the water was here. The evil, if it came, could be cast
into the water. They were not evil. She knew that. Still her knees
were shaking so badly that she could no longer stand and lowered
herself to sit, curled as tightly as a ball at the end of the
dock.

Cold. Cold. The coldness made her shiver.
They were speaking to her now. Speaking to her. But not in words.
They were speaking in pictures. She closed her eyes tightly, but
she couldn't blot out the sight before her. It was bright, vivid,
otherworldly, yet so very much familiar.

She was standing in a field by Laron. Poor
Laron. He looked so very unhappy. Had she made him so? No, it was
not she, she knew with certainty. It was something else that made
him so. He was unhappy, but determined. She wanted to speak to him,
but she could not. It was as if he did not know that she was there.
It was as if she really was not there. But she could clearly see
him, closer than she had ever seen him before.

He was working. Harvesting grain. The sun
beat down upon him, hot and unmerciful. Aida watched the sweat
pouring off his brow like drops of blood. But he kept working. With
great rhythm and force he moved the scythe blade back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth.

Aida watched, mesmerized. Then the
strangeness of the scene struck her. There was no grain. The land
he worked was completely shorn, all of it had already been cut and
left lying in windrows waiting for someone to gather it up. There
was nothing, nothing at all, to harvest. Still he worked on,
tirelessly, as if he could not see the chore was completed.

She tried to tell him, but of course she
could not speak. She was not actually there.

Her gaze was caught by a movement off in the
distance. A horseman was riding toward them. She strained and
squinted, trying to make him out. But she did not recognize him.
Even as the sleek, fine-flanked chestnut pulled up next to Laron's
side, it took her a moment to identify the rider. It was Armand.
Her Armand.

He looked in a way he had never appeared
before. He looked older, wiser than she knew him to be. Atop the
horse he was majestic and glorious, as if he had somehow overnight
acquired tremendous wealth and fortune. His clothes were startling
and radiant, finer than any plantation Creole's. The long trousers
were jet-black, beaded along the seams with gold thread. His shirt
glittered and shined as if light were pouring out from his chest,
illuminating him. Over it he had donned a long cape of brilliant
red that spread out so grandly it protected both him and the
magnificent horse. Incongruously, he still wore his Acadian-style
palmetto hat, but stuck in the band was a strange bright feather
cockade, such as Aida had never seen before.

Aida could hear nothing the two men said, but
clearly they were arguing. Armand pointed many times to the scythe,
obviously trying to dissuade his friend from its fruitless use. But
Laron would not quit the task.

It was foolish to try to talk Laron out of
it, she realized. Armand needed only to point out the windrows.
Men were rarely persuaded by moral admonitions. Once he understood
that the result was achieved, the grain had already been cut, the
two of them could gather it all in and be ready for winter. Aida
must tell Armand that, she thought to herself. Somehow she must
make him understand. That was what they wanted her to do. They, the
voices, were expecting that of her. She must speak to Armand. She
must make him understand.

And then they were gone. Aida gave a little
startled cry as they left. The first sound she had uttered. She
knew immediately she was alone once more.

She looked around her in the dark night,
curious now rather than afraid. A peaceful weariness settled upon
her heavily like a huge blanket. Aida sighed in relief and lay down
flat on the dock, relaxing. She breathed deeply several times,
allowing that sense of calm and peace to seep inside her and about
her, comforting her, warming her.

"I simply have to explain it to Armand," she
heard herself say aloud.

She lay several minutes at the end of the
dock and then rose to her feet and made her way into the house. She
was humming quietly, contentedly, as she entered into the familiar
safety of the little home.

Inside, "her father continued snoring
peacefully. The candle had burned down and sputtered out, but the
darkness was somehow welcome. Aida tucked away the doorway curtains
and pulled the front doors together and latched them. She made her
way to her room and stripped down to her nightclothes and burrowed
under the warm quilted covers. She closed her eyes and immediately
drifted off to deep, serene and renewing sleep.

The gray light of dawn was creeping through
the windows when she awoke. Immediately she recalled the
strangeness, Armand atop the horse, Laron working the shorn
field.

She yawned and shook her head.

"What a dream!" she said to herself.

It didn't make any sense. But then, it was
just a dream. She had fallen asleep, she told herself. Fallen
asleep without realizing. That was what it was. She had thought
that she was awake. She had thought she was being pursued by . . .
by, well it didn't bear thinking about. But of course that had been
part of the dream also.

That explanation made perfect sense.
Comforted, she rose to wash and dress and begin her day. What a
strange, strange dream! But dream was what it was.

It was only when she saw her cold dishwater
sitting on the tablette shelf that her certainty faltered.

The morning was chilly and gray. Aida wrapped
her shawl around her more tightly and pulled little Marie Sonnier
closer to her side. Aida was happy. Armand, who was poling the
pirogue, clearly was not. Although the downstream direction was no
great strain and he was able to use the pole more as rudder than as
impetus, he was in an obviously disagreeable temper.

"Where exactly are we going?" he asked Madame
Landry.

The old woman dissembled easily. "Oh not
far," she answered.

Aida had first learned about the trip when
the boatload, Armand, Madame Landry, and the two older Sonnier
children, Gaston and Marie, arrived at her home.

"We have an errand to run and we need you,"
the old woman had called out.

Her father had grumbled about her leaving him
without having remembered to cook him any breakfast. But Jesper
Gaudet had been grumbling almost continuously since the fais-dodo
two nights previous. She had jilted her betrothed and spent the
rest of the night laughing and dancing with another man.

Father Denis had not been particularly happy,
either. His words on Sunday had chastised her harshly for her
unforgiving heart. She had made no attempt to explain herself. She
wasn't even sure that she could.

She had not been upset about Laron's visit to
the Bayou Blonde. She did believe that he would be a good and
faithful husband to any woman he married. And she had always
thought that he would suit her perfectly. She no longer felt
certain about that. Her uncertainty was not something that she
chose to examine too closely. And the old priest's insistence that
she do so went unheeded. After all, she had the dream or whatever
it was to think about. And it seemed much more immediate and
important than her former betrothal.

Orva began singing a little children's song
about getting washed and dressed. Gaston and Marie both knew it, or
knew most of it, and they eagerly joined in. The tiny girl wiggled
out of Aida's arms to go sit with Madame Landry. The three voices
contrasted vividly and actually sounded sweet and soothing to the
ears.

The old woman had apparently insisted that
Armand take her out in the pirogue and that the children come also.
Felicite and Jean Baptiste needed some time together, she had said.
Aida assumed that to be quite true, but couldn't quite shake the
feeling that Madame Landry had some other purpose for their
presence.

"We have to talk." Armand leaned down and
spoke the words close to her. She startled from the feel of his
warm breath so close to her neck.

He was right, they did need to talk. She
needed to tell him about her dream somehow. She needed to make him
understand that he must talk to Laron, he must make Laron see ...
He must make him see . . . something. What exactly, Aida wasn't
certain of herself. But he was right, indeed they did have to
talk.

"Must we?" she asked, nearly whining as she
begged to put off the inevitable. "It is such a beautiful day."

"Beautiful day?" Armand looked at her as if
she had lost her mind. "It's cold and gray and looks ready to rain
down upon us any minute."

Aida giggled, feeling especially silly. "So
it is." It was the only reasonable comment to make. "I suppose it
must seem beautiful to me because I am just so happy."

The words out of Aida's mouth surprised her,
but they seemed to have genuinely angered him. Armand's jaw
hardened.

"How can you be happy when you jilted a fine
and good man?"

Aida glanced, embarrassed, toward Orva
Landry, who appeared to be deliberately inattentive to their
conversation.

"He wanted his freedom as much as I," she
said. "I know that he has been seeing the German widow. Perhaps he
loves her; certainly he cares more for her than me. You are his
friend, surely you know that to be true."

"I am sorry that you found out about Madame
Shotz," Armand said quietly. "I am sure that it was a blow to your
pride."

"My pride?" Aida looked at him curiously and
shook her head. "Perhaps a little, but I genuinely like Monsieur
Boudreau. I want him to have the life that he wants."

"What a man wants and what is truly good for
him are most often very different things," he said.

"Sometimes perhaps, but not most often," she
disagreed. "I believe that you have not a high enough opinion of
your gender."

"I believe, mamselle, that I might know more
about such things than yourself," he said.

Uncharacteristically she bristled at his
words. "I do not claim to be as intelligent as yourself, monsieur,"
she said. "But about love, perhaps a person does not have to be
intelligent to be smart."

"And you believe that you have been smart
about love?" he asked.

Aida's cheeks were flushed, but she held her
chin high. "I do know that a marriage between two people who do not
love each other is a very unfortunate thing."

His jaw hardened and his bright blue eyes
sparked with anger. "Love has many seasons and cycles. What looks
to you like a loveless marriage may just be a difficult period for
a couple who truly cares about their vows."

His words seemed fierce. Aida drew back from
his fury as her brow furrowed in curiosity. What on earth was the
man talking about? A loveless marriage? A couple who cares about
their vows? Clearly Armand was quite angry, but about what exactly,
Aida was confused.

"I am no expert in love," she told him
quietly, intent on calming his rancor. "But I think I would know if
I were in it and I am not in love with Laron Boudreau."

"So I understand," Armand replied snidely.
"You told him that you loved someone else."

Aida's fair face fired with humiliation.
Laron had told him that, he had told Armand. She looked away from
him, flustered, and desperately sought a reasonable reply.

"I simply told him that to ease the moment,"
she sputtered. "I never meant it."

"Then it's not true?" Armand's gaze was
penetrating.

"That is what I just said," she answered.