Postmark Bayou Chene (20 page)

“Tell you what, how about taking it yourself and filling it from that barrel,” Adam panted. “Be sure and turn it off tight, now, so it won't drip. Mrs. Barclay can write it down on your daddy's bill.”

“Yessir, I can do that,” Wuf said. “Come on, Drifter, gimme a hand.”

“Now, where'd that big blue cat go,” Adam muttered. “Alcide, you hiding that big one in your overalls?”

“No such thing! You already put 'em in the scale.”

The wet slap of flapping fish drowned out conversation for the next minute.

“Wuf, what you got there?” Loyce's voice was louder than usual. “It's okay. I told him to fill it up himself,” Adam shouted up the bank.

“If they put that stuff in a lamp, won't it blow up the whole house?” Loyce replied. “It's that gasoline you keep for Fate; I can smell it.”

“Lordy, I think she's right!” Alcide had stumped up the plank walk and was sniffing the spout of the gray can. “It smells different from usual. Is this that gasoline, Adam?”

“Let's see it, Wuf,” Adam said, reaching for the can. He smeared a few drops over his burned fingers and sniffed. Coal oil was a good treatment for burns. But this wasn't oily; it was thin. Vapors shivered off it.

“By god, she's right! Which drum did you get this out of?”

“That one on the right, same as usual.” Wuf pointed to the old drum raised on a dais made from a cottonwood stump.

Adam's spine shivered like the vapors off his hand.

“Mrs. Barclay, has anyone else bought coal oil since the delivery yesterday?” He shouted up the bank in what he hoped was a calm voice. No sense in adding more fractiousness to the morning.

“Mary Ann filled up a can, that's all,” she replied.

Just the one! Adam breathed a sigh of relief.

“Wuf, you're quicker on your feet than the rest of us—run tell Mrs. Mary Ann not to use that can, run now! Don't go in the house, just yell from outside.”

The men on the dock stood still as death watching the boy disappear into the woods. Adam held his breath for every second that ticked by without the second explosion of the year coming from the Bertrams'. He didn't exhale until the pony cart came rattling through the woods. A welcome sight! Wuf sat tall next to Mary Ann on the seat, his bony chest reared back straight and proud through his overall straps. Even that brown goat bleating and stomping looked beautiful to Adam.

The cheering from the dock brought Roseanne to the porch.

“What's going on?” she asked.

“Wuf saved the Bertrams from getting blowed up is what happened!” Alcide shouted. “That's right! That boy always did have more gumption than the rest of them Neeleys put together.”

Now that the danger was over, banter on the dock picked up again.

“Remember when the church ladies pitched in and made O'Lamp Neeley a moss mattress?” a voice started off. “Someone had seen that the young'uns was sleeping on bare floorboards.”

“I remember that,” someone else chuckled. “Well, those church ladies was some mad when they found out O'Lamp didn't do nothing but rip it open and sell the moss to buy a watermelon!”

Laughter rang out over the water and up the bank. With all the commotion no one heard Loyce slap the arm of her chair.

“Hey, don't forget I'm the one who smelled it and saved the Neeleys as well as the Bertrams,” she grumbled. “And Fate's the reason that frazzling, dangerous stuff is here anyway. Him and his fancy boat. Gonna just cause trouble for everyone.”

17

August came to a close with no more mishaps at the dock during the weekly fish transports. Fate chugged in, loaded up, and disappeared in a cloud of fumes and noise. During the few minutes he was weighing fish and paying out money, Loyce could hear his voice, as usual, over everyone else's. But something was different.

Men were not just laughing at his carrying on as they once did. They were asking questions and hushing for his answers. What were fishermen pulling in at other spots in the river? What was selling best up north? And of course there were umpteen questions about that gasoline boat. How fast, how far, how much time, how much load could it carry, on and on. Seems like they all had a notion of what could be done with such a contraption. Loyce knew what she'd like to do with the noisome, foul-smelling thing if anyone asked, but no one did.

“I bet you don't know who this is.” The voice broke into her thoughts. It came from the path rather than the dock.

“Cairo Beauty,” said Loyce. “Even a seeing person could pick out the only Mississippi drawl on the Chene, and I don't need Drifter's nose to follow the trail of your Blue Waltz perfume. Come on in and let me feel that baby.” Her mood lightened when Cairo Beauty dropped by.

Cairo laughed and climbed the steps to the back of the breezeway. Entering the porch, she stood in front of Loyce, who felt around her stomach. It had expanded since Cairo's last visit just two weeks ago.

“Well, how you doing there?” Adam spoke up from where he sat peeling potatoes and reading a book propped against the dishpan. “What's the water doing down on Graveyard?”

“Come up just a tad the last few days,” she replied, settling into another chair on the porch. “That's how come Alcide was out that way setting some lines. I caught a ride to the back side of the island and walked up. I wish it'd raise faster and make it easier to tote things from the shed to the cabin we're building on the flatboat. The bigger I get, the harder all that hauling gets to be. That's what I come for today, some bigger clothes. Done let out all mine far as they'll go.”

She patted the bodice of her chartreuse frock, which was filled to capacity and a little more. Then she tugged at the buttons gapped open at the waist.

“I still have what Josie wore before Loyce was born,” Adam said. “Let me go see if I can find 'em. That'll save your money for building the houseboat and putting together Sam's nets.”

He sat the book on top of the potatoes, placed the pan in the seat of his chair, and left the porch. Soon the women could hear him moving boxes and barrels inside. Presently, he came back with two cotton jumpers designed with tucks over the bosom that spread out into roomy skirts. One was a slate blue, and the other was dark green. Each jumper came with a long muslin shift that could be worn as a nightgown or as a blouse-petticoat combination. The garments were well made and strong.

“I'll look like a schoolmarm—won't that be a wonder!” C.B. said as she held the blue jumper in front of her and grinned at Adam. “Me, who ain't never seen the inside of a school. I 'spect you haven't either, huh, Loyce?”

“Well, I certainly didn't
see
the inside or the outside,” she said, “but I did go to school in Baton Rouge for eight years. Fate's the one who talked me into giving it a try. I missed home, but it's a good thing I went, or I'd a never learned anything. I learned to read by touching the words punched in paper. That's where I learned to knit nets—they called it occupational therapy. I learned to swim and ride a horse. I learned to play the fiddle and the mandolin. Music! Of all the things I learned, that's what I wish I could have kept up.”

“Did you go to school, Mrs. Barclay?” C.B. turned companionably toward the doorway into the store, where Roseanne stood, arms folded over her bosom.

“Of course I went to school. I graduated from the Sisters of Evangeline in New Orleans,” she said, fingering the top button of her high collar, making sure it was still properly fastened.

“What'd you learn there?” C.B. asked.

“Deportment, the classics, catechism, some piano and singing,” she replied.

“I reckon the first thing I learned was how to open oysters without cutting my hand,” C.B. went on. “Don't know about that 'portment and classics, but we did have some cats hanging around that dock, and there was plenty of singing—fighting too—when the boats come in. So, I guess we got some background in common, Mrs. Barclay.”

Roseanne sniffed loudly, but C.B. rambled on.

“We was living down there at Dunbar where the oyster luggers come in. I started out standing on a bucket to reach the shucking table. The bigger kids blocking the wind off us little ones and the littlest one of all sitting in the middle of the oysters on the table. Mama was one of the fastest shuckers on the dock, so that's why they let her bring a baby too little to be any help yet. I know you're thinking about how tight a oyster closes their lips and that no shirttail kid could pry 'em open. But what you learn right off is it's not the strength in your hands but putting that oyster knife in just the right spot and twisting it just so. I wasn't more than four years old, which was a little young. Most didn't start till they was about school-age, but Mama didn't have nowhere to put me, so there I stood, starting my schooling two years early, you might say.”

Roseanne had taken a step back and refolded her arms over her chest.

“We have nothing in common, nothing at all,” she said, with more wonder than anything else. Loyce was also puzzled at the connection only C.B. could see.

“Well, what did you do after schooling?” C.B.'s voice was more than inquisitive. Loyce felt something building.

“I lived with my father and stepmother until I married Mr. Barclay.” Loyce heard Roseanne's voice change from proud to uncertain in the middle of the reply. She realized Roseanne never talked about that time.

“See! Me and you's a lot alike, Mrs. Barclay,” C.B. said, way too innocently in Loyce's opinion. “I was passed from my daddy to a peddler man when I was twelve. See, he'd reached the point of figuring out how many kids can you feed even when they all shucking. The numbers wasn't coming out so good. So, when this oyster peddler took a shine to me, it seemed like a good chance for all of us. He taught me how to do the things that please a growed man. I got pretty good at it too. So good that he started loaning me out to pay debts to men who beat him in card games. By the time I was fourteen, I'd found out that making my own living got me a bigger dip out of the pot than just hanging around someone else's pot hoping for whatever they saw fit to pass along to me. So, I struck out on my own one night when the peddler was sleeping off a drunk. Your daddy passed you along to Mr. Barclay. I just got an earlier start at being kept.”

Roseanne sniffed loudly and turned back into the store without a word.

“C.B., you oughtn't fool with Mrs. Barclay like that,” Adam admonished.

“Tell me why not?” she chuckled. “Someone's got to, or she'll drown next time it rains with her nose so far up in the air. Oh, speaking of drowning, did you hear about Fate's boat? Sam told me all about it. Fate paid him and eight more fishermen for a day's catch. Then he laid all them fish on ice in his boat and covered 'em with it too. So loaded down it was just about flat in the water, or so Sam tells it. He aimed to tote all of it to that railroad at Atchafalaya Station. You know he'd made two, maybe three trips already. Thought he could save some time and make more money by taking a bigger load.”

Loyce's hands stopped on the line she was knitting, but she didn't say a word. It was Adam who asked, “What happened?”

“Well, from the way Sam tells it, Fate miscalculated the amount of that gasoline he needed to make it all the way upstream with such a load of fish and ice. Most they can figure out is that the extra weight and going against the current sucked up all his gasoline along about two-thirds of the way. But he didn't give up. He just set about tryin' to paddle that big load upstream, even though he should of knowed better. Sounds like he made it a ways before the current pushed him into the bank, where he broke his paddle trying to get back out into the water. By the time the
Mollie B
came by the next morning and gave him a tow, his ice was melted and that whole load of fish was stinking to high heaven. He dumped fish overboard all the way back. They left him up there at the big dock in Atchafalaya Station washing the slime out of his boat.”