Postmark Bayou Chene (22 page)

And so it went throughout the day. Dot dished up plates and washed them when they came back, passing along news from customer to customer. Loyce, who usually looked forward to Dot's company, stayed in her room. And so the weeks dragged out.

“No sense in getting your feathers ruffled, girls, I'm just here to take some of the pressure off of you.” Adam's voice was familiar to the chickens, and they settled back down on the roost.

“Sorry, girls, I wouldn't be out here so early except I was just too dadblamed tired last night to wait up for you to go to roost.”

He felt for the wooden latch and turned it, before gently opening the henhouse door. Warm, downy chicken smell wafted out along with a few sleepy murmurings.

“If I had put these roosters in the coop for the night, I could have waited till later this morning, but I'll never catch them once daylight comes.”

He ducked under the low doorway and stood for a moment to get his bearings. The proud tail feathers of the flock guardian shone white in the predawn light. Skip that one. With deft skill that comes from long practice, Adam picked up one young cockerel with his right hand and transferred it under his left arm without even waking the bird. Then he ducked his head and backed out the open doorway. Removing the top from an old fish cart, he placed the bird on the slatted floor. The sleepy rooster would probably just sit in the darkness, but Adam didn't take that chance; carefully, he replaced the lid. Good thing he did. The next bird slipped out of his grasp and flapped noisily; his squawks set off bedlam among the rest of the flock. The bird in the crate woke up and joined in the racket. Finally getting the frantic bird under control, Adam backed out the doorway and placed him in the fish cart. He propped the coop open so the rest of the birds could step over the threshold when the rising sun told them it was time.

Adam picked up the box of roosters with one hand and made his way to the dock. They would sit quietly under the tree until he returned after breakfast to dispatch them for the noon meal.

Roseanne had kept an eye on the tomato gravy and biscuits for Adam, and by the time he stepped into the kitchen, three places were set at the table. However, Loyce didn't join them until they had nearly finished eating and were planning the rest of the day. Adam and Roseanne exchanged a worried look at the way a sacklike dress hung from her thin shoulders. She toyed with half a biscuit on her plate but didn't eat any with her coffee.

“If one of you will fill the dishpan, I'll wash up,” Loyce said listlessly, as she pushed back her chair and felt around the wall where several clean aprons hung from hooks beside the door.

Adam lifted the kettle from the stove and poured hot water into the dishpan. Then he dipped cold water from the bucket on the counter, testing the temperature with his own hand before leaving it for her.

“The rest of this can heat up for scalding while I put an edge on this knife. No sense in hauling water and starting a fire in the washpot for just two roosters,” he said.

For a few minutes the silence was broken only by the rattle of dishes in the porcelain dishpan and the
shsk, shsk
of the blade on the whetstone. Adam had given up trying to prod Loyce out of her gloom and had learned to settle in with her mood. The pall of grief that hung over the house brought back to him the atmosphere after the drowning of his wife, except now it was relieved somewhat by Roseanne's careful attention to order.

When the blade was sharp enough to suit him, Adam slid the knife into the scabbard on his belt and picked up a kettle in each hand. Steam trailed behind him down the plank walk in the October morning.

In less than a minute he had each bird hanging by its feet from a massive oak limb that curved out over the bayou. He sliced the head off each rooster before they had a chance to squawk. As they bled into the water, he poured the contents of each kettle into a bucket. By the time the birds had bled out, the water had cooled to just the right temperature. Too hot, the skin would cook. Not hot enough, the feathers wouldn't release. He dunked each bird up and down, soaking all the feathers equally.

As he was tugging on a wing feather to test it, the first boat of the day came around the bend. He glanced up to see a seated man paddling a small dugout. The pirogue was not local, looked to be an old one made in the Indian style—“un pirogue sauvage,” as the Cajuns would say. The silhouette against the sunrise showed a man who was not big but with disproportionately heavy shoulders and arms. Something familiar about him made Adam stop, then stand up and stare. It looked so much like Val. He tried to recall Val's brothers and why one of them might be paddling a pirogue through Bayou Chene.

By then the little boat had reached the dock. The man didn't move to the bow to tie it off. Instead, he remained seated and paddled the light craft parallel to the logs, which he grasped with one hand. That was when Adam saw the bowline lay at the man's feet instead of coiled in the bow. He also saw the man's right leg was stretched straight out, bound in a cast made of moss and mud.

“Hey, Adam. You gonna give a man a hand or just let him flop around on your dock like a dying catfish,
enh
?” Val's voice sounded cheerful but winded.

“It can't be! How can it be? What do you mean? How did you get here? Where have you been?” Adam couldn't decide what he needed to know first, so all the questions tumbled out at once.

He tripped over the buckets of scalding roosters in his rush to reach the edge of the dock. His left hand grabbed the pirogue, while his right gathered up the line and tied it off as quickly as he had bound the roosters' feet. Then he stretched out a hand to Val.

“
Mais oui
, I think I'm gonna need a little more help than that, or the both of us gonna get wet,” Val said. “This thing, she's too quick in the water for me to try to stand up on one leg. You hold her tight against the log and see if I can get me up on the dock.”

Val's biceps corded and then released. Just like that, he was sitting on the dock.

“Whew!” he grunted. “Been crouched in there since early, early yesterday, slept in it last night. Bought it off one of them Grand River Injuns. You heard my boat went down—not the
Era
, no, but the
Crescent
?”

“For sure! But we heard you drowned!” Adam squatted on his heels in front of the younger man he had expected never to see again.

“
Mais
, not quite.” Val took a moment to catch his breath. “It was a damn old cow, she slam my leg against something—the cookstove maybe—but I can't say nothing 'cause it was the same cow what her tail give me a tow to the bank. Pulled me all the way up, for true, before taking off and leaving me there. Couldn't tell where we was, but I wasn't in any shape to go no place anyway.

“A lot of trash float by, but I never see another soul, dead or alive. Maybe two, three hours? After a while my mind she catch up with how bad my leg hurting. And how I done lost everything 'cept the clothes on my back and the pay in my pocket. Worst of all is my squeeze-box, she at the bottom of the bayou. I tell you for truth that brought me just about as low as I ever been. I just set there and thought about the trouble I done found myself in.

“Right about then, two Injun womans came by toting ropes. I knowed 'em from the Injun camp 'cause we sometime trade for fish over there. They was trailing my cow and looking for some more along the way. They took me back to camp and wrap my leg up like this. That was what, two or three weeks back?”

“Well, I can't say when it happened,” Adam offered, “but we heard about it right around the start of September.”

Val nodded thoughtfully.

“I figured someone was missing me by now, so I paid 'em for the pirogue and some food, with the notion that if I couldn't make it this far, I might as well jus' flip on overboard. Looks like I cheated them gators out of a meal,
enh
?”

“I don't know about that, you
smell
like gator bait.” Adam chuckled as he helped Val up on his good leg. “Let's get you on to the house.”

“Must be the smoked fish you smell in my sack. It'll kill your appetite if you hungry enough, but I don't think I could ever eat it regular. Might also be the gator oil you smelling. The Injuns believe it keeps
mostiques
from biting, and you know, it seem like they left me alone. I can't smell either one of them no more, but it smell rotten when I first got there.”

Inside Loyce had finished putting away the dishes and was hanging up her apron when she heard the uneven steps coming down the plank walk. She paused a moment trying to imagine how carrying two dead roosters and a dishpan could change the sound of Adam's footfalls so much. Try as she might, she couldn't identify the
ka-thump, drag, ka-thump, drag
coming through the screen door. Then the smells wafted ahead of the sounds, and she took a step backward to escape the assault on her sensitive nose. The creak of the door coincided with Adam's voice singing out.

“Loyce, look who's here!”

Before Adam's words could sink in, she sensed someone's head bending level with her chest. Instinctively, she reached out to investigate. Curls, stiff with dirt and oil, sprang under her touch. Her fingers quickly passed around to the face, reading his features.

“Val?” Her voice was querulous. “Val!” It changed to a joyful shout.

Two hours later Val had told his story, wolfed down the breakfast leavings, and bathed as much of his filthy body as his broken leg would allow. It was a quiet morning. Only Alcide, C.B., and Sam Junior joined Loyce, Roseanne, and Adam for ten o'clock coffee on the porch.

Cottonwood leaves rustled in the morning breeze, and C.B. pulled Sam Junior's blanket up higher on his head before settling into a chair.

“Whew, Val, that was some close call!” she exclaimed. “You could be dead right now instead of sitting here drinking coffee.”

“Well, there's plenty who think you're still dead right this minute,” said Alcide. “The
Golden Era'
s done hired another mate. Hope you don't think they was getting ahead of themselves, but you know, like as not, bodies just ain't recovered when people go missing.”

“That's right, and it's hard to decide which is worse,” Adam said softly. “As long as they don't find the body, you can hope. But at least, once you know for sure, you can try to go on with a new kind of life.”

No one spoke for several moments as his remembered grief intruded on their celebration of Val's return.

“Reminds me of that little Voisin boy.” Alcide picked up his thread again. “Name was Calvin. Ten or twelve years old. His daddy sent him down to bail the boats one afternoon after a hard rain. They never saw him again. Can only figure he fell overboard. Never did find his body.”

“I do remember that,” said Adam. “Didn't miss him till he was called for supper. When he didn't come, his mama knew something had happened.”

“And that Neeley boy, Pank. Look how he just up and disappeared,” said Alcide.

“Well, that was after he shot and killed his girlfriend for walking out on a Sunday with another man,” said Adam. “Don't you reckon he run off, thinking maybe someone was gonna call the law?”

“And then there's the bodies that show up that we never find out who they were,” Alcide countered. “There was even one with iron cook pots tied onto him. Old man Larson pulled him up, and what a load that was! Them pots all full of water. We was on our way to this very post office—long before your time, Adam—when Mr. Larson called Papa over to help. First dead man I ever saw. Papa waving me off, telling me to keep away but me craning my neck to see for myself. They figured he was dumped off a riverboat, probably made someone mad in a card game. They even figured the cook was the one that killed 'im, since no one else on a boat would dare mess with the pots.”

“Maybe the dead man
was
the cook?” offered C.B.