Pamela Morsi (39 page)

Jean Baptiste lowered his head guiltily.
"Armand, the only piece of wisdom I can offer you about marriage is
that it is not a line from here to happily ever after or from here
to death do us part."

His brother was thoughtful for a moment, and
then as if noticing it for the first time he held up the thick
piece of braided hemp in his hands.

"Marriage is not a line at all," he said.
"It's a series of loops or coils like the ones in this rope. At the
top is total bliss, at the bottom abject misery. Sometimes you are
high on the loop and sometimes low. Most of your life you are
somewhere in between. At times you know how happy you are and
believe that it must go on that way forever. At others you may
think that you cannot bear the pain any longer and want to throw
the coil away completely. What you must remember is that the loops
are never ending. When you are low, so low you are agonizing, you
must simply have faith that the coils head upward next toward
happiness once more."

It seemed to Armand later that the coils he
was living through these days were very tightly wound. One moment
he was happy and jubilant, the next deep in despair.

That night he had made love to his wife in a
real bed for the first time. It was Aida's own girlhood bed, laid
with fresh cotton sheets and strewn with sweet herbs, and one
candle glowed from the bedside.

They had reached the high desperate peak at
the same instant and had thrown themselves together from that
precipice. It had been exquisite. Afterward, however, he had lain
awake worried.

"Armand," she'd said sleepily beside him.
"What is wrong?"

"Nothing," he assured her.

"It is something. Is it about Laron and
Helga?"

He turned to her and pulled her into his
arms. "No, my love. I was thinking about my brother."

"Jean Baptiste?" Her expression was curious.
"He seems very happy about the baby."

"Yes, he is," Armand told her.

He was quiet for a long time, looking into
her eyes, wanting, hoping.

"Do you mind very much that you are married
to me?" he asked.

She lowered her eyes, afraid to face him.
"No, Armand, I am happy about it."

With one finger he raised her chin, not
allowing her gaze to evade him.

"Do you love him still?"

Her brow furrowed momentarily. "Laron? No, I
told you. I did not love him at all."

"Not Laron, Jean Baptiste."

"Jean Baptiste?"

"Yes, Jean Baptiste."

Her brow furrowed in incredulity. "Your
brother, Jean Baptiste?"

"We know no other."

Aida sat up in bed, pulling the sheet up to
cover her nakedness, and stared at her husband in disbelief.

"You think that I loved your brother?"

"I know that you loved him," Armand said. "I
cannot and will not ask you to change the past. But what I must
know is do you love him still?"

Aida continued to stare at him.

"You see, Madame Landry warned me that my
careless words to Laron were going to cause him to turn from you.
It was only natural that you would fix your choice on another man.
Jean Baptiste was there and he was so smitten with you. It would
have been hard for you to resist that."

"You thought I would break up your brother's
marriage?" Her tone was not pleasant.

"At first that's what I thought," he said.
"Before I really knew you. I know now that of course you would
never have done that. The two of you would have just been
unrequited lovers. In anguish from afar."

Aida maintained her silence.

"But when we ate the love charm, I became
really frightened. If you were under the spell of the charm and
were to see Jean Baptiste, nothing might stop you from being
together. So I ... so I purposely drew you to me and kissed you. I
must not have eaten any of the charm. I felt nothing but the . . .
the desire that I have always had for you. I maneuvered you into
this marriage and I will try to make you happy. But I must know. Do
you still love him?"

Aida got up out of the bed. She didn't even
bother to drag the sheet with her. Stark naked she stood in the
room and gazed around as if looking for something.

"I wondered where this had gotten to," she
said as she crossed the floor to pick up the wooden battoir with
which she did the wash.

She turned and raised it high over her head.
To Armand's total surprise she brought it down in fury, aimed right
at the most vulnerable part of him.

"Aida!" he hollered, jumping out of range and
then out the other side of the bed.

"You idiot! You fool! You . . . you ... I
can't think of anything bad enough to call you!"

She raced to the other side of the bed and
swung the battoir at him once more. Thankfully missing again.

"I have always thought you were so smart, so
smart," she snarled at him angrily. "But you are the most stupid,
stupid man that I have ever met in my life."

She swung at him again. Armand was backed
completely in the corner and frantically tried to appeal to her
reason.

"Aida, please, put down your weapon and we'll
talk."

"Talk! I never want to talk to you again,
Armand Sonnier. I have always known that I am not as smart as you.
But you always treated me as completely without sense at all. And
this . . . this just proves that you believe it. I would not, ever,
never, not in a million years fall in love with a man who was
already married. That is the most stupid idea that any woman ever
had and I would not have it. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, yes, my darling. Please put down the
bat, my darling."

"And as for you maneuvering me into this
marriage, you haven't enough sense," she declared. "I maneuvered
you! I wasn't affected by that love charm, either. I knew I wanted
you and when you kissed me and caressed me, I knew that if I were
compromised you would have to marry me."

She ground the words out through clenched
teeth.

"When you managed to restrain yourself, I
wasn't disappointed just because I wanted you. I was afraid that
you might get away. So I insisted that I was compromised. And I
insisted that I must be married."

She threw the battoir from her. It clattered
along the floor. Her fury and anger turned to other emotion as her
beautiful eyes welled with tears.

"You have never thought me anything but some
silly decorative flower. I have value beyond my appearance. I am
... I am a flowering herb. I have beauty, but I have power, too. I
loved you and I wanted you. When I broke my engagement to Laron,
Armand, it was for you."

"Aida," he whispered and pulled her into his
arms. "Aida, I have loved you all my life. Even when you were
affianced to my best friend, I loved you. I spoke to you as if you
were silly and treated you as if I didn't care for you because I
was trying not to. I was trying not to love you as I always
have."

"I love you, Armand," she whispered against
him. "In all my life, the only man I have ever loved is you."

The next morning as he headed down to the
church

to speak with Father Denis, Armand recalled
his wife's sweet words and they brought a smile of satisfaction to
his lips.

She loved him. He loved her. Now all that was
to be done was to make things right for Helga and Laron.

"I cannot do it," Father Denis stated
flatly.

"It is perfectly legal," Armand told him.
"The law was made for situations exactly like this."

The old man tutted disapprovingly.

"I wanted you named as judge, Armand Sonnier,
because I believed that you were honorable and principled."

"And I believe that I am, Father," he said.
"I believe that what I am doing is the best thing, the right thing,
and the perfect solution to the problem at hand."

The old priest's huff was skeptical.

"Laron and Helga love each other. They have
been living in sin, but they want to repent of that, to 'go and sin
no more.' We can give them the opportunity to do that.'

"It would compound sin upon sin to bless a
marriage that is unlawful and bigamous."

"I have issued the declaration of death. It
is therefore neither unlawful nor bigamous," Armand said.

Stubbornly the priest shook his head.

"Helmut Shotz is dead, absolutely and
incontrovertibly dead to the state of Louisiana."

"What is truth for the state of Louisiana,
young man," the priest answered, "is not the same as truth for the
Holy Roman Catholic Church."

Armand's expression turned shrewd. In life,
as in the game of bourre, it was best to let one's opponents take
the easy tricks, puff up their confidence, so that one might more
easily overwhelm them at the last. Father Denis had already thrown
in his best cards. Armand moved to play his own.

"Father Denis, are you still praying very
hard for your new school?"

The old man raised an eyebrow and regarded
Armand questioningly.

"I know what it is you want," Armand said.
"You want a school to teach our children about reading and writing
and the world outside ours. But we are very leery of such teaching.
We want our children to grow up just like us, farmers, cattle
herders, fishermen. Most of us would not voluntarily send our
children to school. But if it were the law, if the parish law
required that all children attend school, no man or his family
would go against it."

"You are telling me nothing that I do not
know," Father Denis said.

"You need for me to make such a law, Father.
You will never have your school unless I do. And I am loath to make
it, because I worry about our children also."

"What are you saying?"

"If you will honor the death declaration and
accept the marriage of Laron and Helga, I will decree that all
parish children be given education."

"That is blackmail," Father Denis
accused.

Armand grinned at him. "Father, the Lord
works in mysterious ways."

The old priest was thoughtful, pensive,
considering. Armand knew he had found the chink in his armor.

"Her husband is dead," Armand assured
him.

"Madame Landry believes it to be so, and so
do I. The paper only officially declares what we believe
already."

He wasn't convinced.

"What we believe or want to believe is not
equal to what we know to be true. There is no grave, no body, not
even word that the man has died."

"But Madame Landry—"

"The old woman is an herb healer not a
soothsayer," Father Denis insisted. "She cannot know things beyond
us."

"She is the traiteur, Father. She talks to
the voices," Armand said.

The old priest scoffed. "She thinks she hears
Joan of Arc on the river. That is superstition and none of the
Church."

"Who is to say what is real and is not?"
Armand asked.

"I am to say it," Father Denis replied. "I am
to say it and I do say it. Helmut Shotz is not dead until he is
proven dead. You may declare him dead a hundred times, but until I
see that he is dead, his widow will not be married in my
church."

"They need not marry in your church, Father.
They can marry elsewhere. You need only to accept their marriage,
bless it, and regard it as true."

"You think some other priest would marry them
quicker?" Father Denis asked incredulously.

"It need not be a priest, Father. Helmut
Shotz was Lutheran, Helga's first marriage was in their church. She
and Laron could wed there also."

Father Denis scoffed. "Wedding in a Lutheran
church is the same as no wedding at all."

The two men stilled at the words. They
stopped and stared at each other.

"She was married to this Shotz by a Lutheran
minister?" Father Denis asked. "No Catholic priest or prelate
officiated?"

Armand shook his head. "No, Father."

The old priest smiled. "Then as far as I am
concerned, the woman has never been married at all."

The wedding of Helga Shotz and Laron Boudreau
was one of the happiest ever celebrated in Prairie l'Acadie. The
couple was dazzlingly attractive. Laron, as always, was resplendent
in knee-length culotte, formally donned with silk hose and leather
boots. His indigo-blue jacket was buttoned high, just to the knot
of his yellow silk tie.

Helga looked startlingly different divested
of her drab German clothes. With Aida's help, she had donned a
striped skirt of pale green and purple and her corset vest was
vivid red.

Virtually every human being within fifty
leagues of the parish had shown up. The Boudreau family alone was a
monumental crowd.

Father Denis officiated. After effecting
Helga's conversion to Catholicism, he was eager to lead her out of
sin and to bring her, much welcomed, into the fold.

The wedding was quiet and solemn. The Mass
was said, the wine was tasted. The vows were made. It was not
Armand but Karl Shotz who stood as garcon d'honneur beside the
bridegroom. His chin was held high with pride, and the young boy's
bearing was already much that of a man.

When Father Denis pronounced them husband and
wife a cheer of joy went up from the crowd. Laron kissed his bride,
lovingly, longingly, lingeringly, until young Karl tapped him on
the shoulder and reminded his new father that the couple was not
alone. The well-wishers laughed uproariously. The happy couple
blushed with chagrin and happiness.

Ony Guidry struck up the fiddle and the
dancing began. Food for the feast had been brought from every
household and the long planks that had been laid out were filled
and weighted down with it.

The Shotz children had been totally taken in
by the Boudreau family and at the wedding Jakob and Elsa found
themselves completely surrounded by their new relatives, tantes,
oncles, and cousines, many many cousins.

"How many cousins do I have?" Jakob had asked
Father Denis, overwhelmed with his good fortune.