Postmark Bayou Chene (31 page)

“I suppose you're right. The body was so decomposed, they don't know how he died, and they may never find out who was responsible. Since there was no money in his wallet, they are assuming he was robbed. For now they seem convinced I didn't know anything about it, even though my behavior was not what one would expect of a bride on her honeymoon. They hope their questions will be answered once they track down all the crew members who were on the boat that trip. Someone who was out on deck that night might have heard something that they didn't realize as being important at the time.”

She broke into another round of sobbing, until she was too exhausted to continue. Adam stroked strands of hair out of her tears and let her rest against him. Even in her grief, she felt solid and sturdy in his arms.

“Word will get out that you are no longer a suspect, Mrs. Barclay. I'll see to that.”

“Be that as it may, Mr. Snellgrove, I'm ruined. I'll never have a life again. And suppose they never arrest anyone else? I will live the rest of my life under this cloud of suspicion. This scandal goes beyond any humiliation I ever feared.”

“Well, maybe that's not all bad, Mrs. Barclay. Seems like you could be on the brink of a new life since the old one doesn't work anymore. Did you ever look at a situation that way before? You know that's what happened to one of my heroes—Robinson Crusoe. I know you've read the book, but did you know it was based on a man who really was shipwrecked and had to build a new life from scratch? I bet he's inspired a lot of people to make do with a bad situation. Sometimes—and I'm not one to say this applies to your situation, only you would know that—but sometimes it can be a relief to lose everything and start over.”

She stepped away and looked up into his eyes.

“This is what has happened to C.B,” Roseanne's voice was deadly quiet as realization settled around her. “Even worse,
I
did this to her. No matter what happens in the future, she can never prove what happened that day. She will always be the woman who might have tried to drown her baby. Just like I will always be the widow who might have killed my husband. We are just alike, after all. C.B. always said that.”

Her tears were dry now, and she went on.

“You know, it used to make me so angry when she tried to put me in her class. I suppose that's why I took such a hard stand on what happened to her that day. And truth be told, after it popped out of my mouth that first time, I realized I didn't even believe it! But it would have been humiliating to admit I might be wrong.”

She wept afresh as if her heart had broken wide open. Adam stepped toward her again and held her close.

“Oh, Mr. Snellgrove, I'm guilty of more cruelty than what I've been accused of. At least I have
hope
of being exonerated someday, but since no one saw C.B.'s accident, she can never prove her innocence.”

“Well, maybe this is your chance to start your new life on the right foot,” Adam murmured into her hair. “No one would have more influence in lifting that cloud from C.B. than the person who put it there.”

She didn't answer, but her eyes filled with tears again. Adam couldn't read the look she gave him before she turned away and trudged toward the stairs to her room. If he was ever going to say it, he knew it must be now.

“Roseanne.”

It was the first time he had voiced her given name. One foot already on the stairs, she turned in surprise at the sound of it on his lips.

“I lost my own self years ago, when Josie died,” he went on. “I somehow managed to get through by just putting one foot in front of the other, but I wouldn't call it living. It was more like just doing my duty. I had family and neighbors counting on me. Then you came walking out of the woods that evening and made me want to take up living again for myself. If you have any inclination to start a new life, I'd be proud to be part of it.”

Suddenly she slumped down on the stair step as far as the whalebone around her middle would let her. The corset is holding her upright, thought Adam, like a broken flower stem Mame would splint with a twig.

And then she told him. The thing she had told one other person years ago. It came back in glimpses. Toddling behind the older cousins, trying to catch up. Being lifted into the air by the sharpfaced boy, his long legs propelling them both in pursuit of the cousins. Then the courtyard gate that opened to the garden shed. The leather-bound trunk where he stood her against the wall. Her tiny shoes wobbled on the leather strappings so that she slipped her feet wider apart to steady herself. His fingers probing, sliding her long white drawers down into a pool around her feet. Then his own pants open and a warm pressure between her legs. Stickiness. She pointed a small finger at the white stream and giggled.

There was no pain. Just the warm stickiness sliding between her tiny thighs and his fingers probing her the way her nanny would give her a bath except there was no soap, no cloth, just the wet slipperiness. The pain would come a few years later when she recalled the scene for her best friend, Marie, at the Sisters of Evangeline Convent School. How many times had it happened? Three, four, she was too young to count, so she didn't know.

Marie's eyes had bulged, and she had reared back like a startled pony.

“You can't ever, ever tell anyone about that!” she whispered. “You will go to hell if anyone finds out you are soiled. And you can't
ever
get married because your husband will know. He will tell on you, and you will go to hell!”

Soiled. It was the first time Roseanne thought about the curious experiences as something shameful. She was soiled.

“How will my husband know if I don't tell him?”

“I don't know for sure,” Marie stammered in uncertainty. “But I've heard your husband can tell when you get married if you have been soiled, and then you will go to hell.”

And so started Roseanne's attempts to become unsoiled. She washed her hands in the basin, not just for meals but several times a day, so often that her stepmother began accusing the servants of stealing the pale green bars of vetiver soaps. That was when she began haunting the linen closets and armoires for items, especially undergarments, in want of folding to her satisfaction. That was when her braids seemed to spring into disobedience, the ribbons defying her attempts to keep them identical in shape and spacing. The tiniest spot of rust from the clothesline would make her put a garment back in the laundry hamper to be washed again. She wouldn't leave the house in wet weather for fear of dirtying her shoes or her hems.

During the telling Adam had slipped onto the stair next to Roseanne. This time it wasn't just hearing loss that made him lean forward. He studied her face as she spoke. He could see the little girl before and after the incident. The teenager gliding among the nuns and their linen closets, looking to bring order back to her life. The horror of being forced into a marriage that she believed would condemn her not just to hell but to humiliation on earth. Her effort to avoid her groom's attentions and thus put off the revelation she had feared for so long. Her fear of being found out—soiled. For her entire life Roseanne had shied away from sensual pleasure lest she be found out.

Now Adam understood why C.B.'s forthright earthiness had repulsed her. It brought back that young man in the garden shed. Adam could also see how the perceptive, ambitious C.B. sensed Roseanne's abhorrence and resented it. The more Roseanne disapproved of her, the louder C.B. proclaimed their similarities, never guessing how far Roseanne would go in shoving her away, out of sight, even to prison.

Adam reached out and folded the weeping woman into his arms. The weight of her against his chest was a comfort to them both.

26

Roseanne slept deeply, dreamlessly, and awakened to the sound of the woodstove door clanging shut as Adam set about making a fire for coffee. That was the last bit of normalcy for the morning. It was to be a day with no precedent.

The first thing she noticed was her body. She was not curled tightly in a ball with the covers pulled up close. Her arms rested above her head and curved slightly on the pillow, palms up, fingers relaxed. Her legs stretched out, feet flopped outward. I feel like Drifter looks when she's sleeping with all four feet in the air, she chuckled. And when had she ever chuckled first thing in the morning?

The mirror reflected a smiling face as Roseanne stroked the brush through her hair. The entire length of it fell into waves where hairpins had crimped it in place the day before. No pins today! Maybe no pins ever again. She tied it loosely with a dark-red ribbon low on her neck.

Then she threw open the armoire. No stockings, too warm for stockings! And where were those little slippers? They were fine for skipping around the store all day. She loosened her corset strings and pulled her largest bodice over it. The first thing she would do after breakfast was order one of those brassieres and a larger bodice, but first she'd see if Adam had time to make lost bread for breakfast.

At the time Roseanne was waking to her new self, Sam was steering Fate's newest boat out of Jakes Bayou into the expanse of Lake Mongoulois, the widest point of the Atchafalaya River thereabouts. It was the most water he'd seen since leaving St. Louis. Today he was fishing his own nets and would run the catch up to Atchafalaya Station in time for the afternoon train.

The old skiff Sam had lost on his way down to the Chene served for those first experimental runs, but in no time at all Fate was agitating for a bigger boat to transport more fish, increasing the profit for each run. For transport these days they used an ark-like vessel with a larger engine, enough room on the deck for a drum of gasoline, a small cabin for shelter, and vast wells for storing ice and fish.

In addition to the big boat, Fate had recently come up with the flat-fronted bateau just for Sam to use for raising nets. It was no wider than the old push skiffs everyone rowed around the Chene, but it was long, almost twenty feet. Instead of sitting flat on its bottom, the front half was raked high so that the bow raised up out of the water, unless it was weighed down with nets or a load of fish. The sides were low, to make it easier to roll nets up and over them. It was equipped with a smaller engine and propeller than the transport boat, but it still sounded loud to Sam.

Noise didn't bother Fate. In fact, he liked nothing better than shouting over a fog of fumes and racket about the attributes of some new engine he was trying out. He still couldn't squat like other swampers, but he didn't stay still long enough to feel any discomfort. He scrambled around, checking the prop in the water, the fuel feed into the engine, the combustion pressure inside the engine jacket. Sam's head hurt just thinking about the noise and activity in Fate's life.

On that spring morning the Atchafalaya's banks were dotted with the pale green of new cypress needles. The river was gray and flat at dawn, but Sam knew it would be reflecting sparkles of sunlight just about the time he pulled the first net out of the water. The sun would feel good on his back because his front would be soaked. C.B. kept telling him to wear a slicker until he got better at raising nets.