Postmark Bayou Chene (37 page)

“There!” Fate pointed, and Sam turned the boat before seeing for himself the barely visible opening.

At any other time they would have dismissed it as a deer crossing so far away from the community. But now they saw the telltale ridges in mud where a light boat frequently slid into the water. Sam leaped out and charged down the path while Fate was still tying the bowline.

Both of them noticed a rough dugout pirogue stashed under buttonwood bushes ten yards up the bank. They didn't worry about noise as they tore through the nearly invisible path. They dodged trees and leapt over logs. Fate's long legs made up for Sam's head start, and he pulled ahead of his friend.

There she was! Hopping up and down, waving her arms as if conducting a choir, tilting her head in one direction and then another—listening, listening, as always. Her mouth was open, but the noise of their running combined with Drifter's barking drowned out whatever she was shouting. The maroon traveling dress was muddy on all sides and dripping wet. One shoe was missing. Mud covered one side of her face and matted her hair. But she was upright and all in one piece. Fate had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. He scooped her into his arms with a joyful shout. She answered with just a whispered “Fate,” but it was enough.

In the commotion that followed Sam had the presence of mind to fire three shots into the air, letting other searchers know she was found. A progression of shots dispatched the good news up and down the river. Boats closest to them began arriving. People clambered up the bank, shouted questions, then fanned out to search for the shack and Pank.

Loyce was propped against a live oak trunk, the remains of her skirt hiked up above her knee, where Fate was removing the last of the thorns. She winced as he jerked the final barb and cleaned the wounds with saliva, just as he had treated her scrapes when they were kids.

“I never thought I'd welcome the sound of that noisy boat,” she murmured, still woozy with exertion and pain. “But today it was the sweetest music I ever heard.”

“Good thing we got here when we did. You were waving at the woods and backing right toward the river,” he admonished.

“Something big had crashed,” she explained. “I thought it was Pank breaking through the bushes, and I just jumped, losing Drifter for a moment. I didn't know which way to run or whether he was about to take me down, but when I heard that rattling contraption, I knew I had to do something in hopes you would notice me. I took a chance to call out as well as waving. I guess it worked.”

“Yeh, but you could still use some work on your aim,” he grunted, lifting her upright and then swinging her into his arms like a child.

Assured that her injuries were not serious, Fate thought of nothing beyond taking Loyce home as quickly as possible. He carried her down to the bank and was settling her onto the bottom of his bateau when he heard Sam call Drifter. The little dog had not left Loyce's side during the commotion, but Fate had not even noticed her.

“Come on, Drifter, it's over,” Sam cajoled from the water's edge. “You did good, girl. Now let's go home.”

Instead of hopping in, Drifter danced and barked, running toward a willow snag leaning far out over the water. There she lay down and put her head on her paws, whining. Sam walked along the bank and squatted down in front of her.

“Hey, it's over now, come on, let's go home.” Still she whined and looked out over the water. He followed her gaze but saw only the willow top waving with the current.

“What? Something there?”

She didn't move. Impatiently, Fate idled his engine, then seeing the standoff with both man and dog staring at the snag, he chugged the boat over to the trailing leaves. A burlap bag was cradled in the outermost branches hanging over the water. He stood up, steadying himself against a limb before lifting the bag. It wiggled and mewed.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he chuckled. “Sam, did you notice that Drifter had her pups?”

31

Loyce raised up higher on the pillows. Fate roused at the same time. From across the room she heard his legs unwind and a chair shift under his weight. Other feet shuffled in the dogtrot below, on the porch, everywhere. Was everyone still here from last night? Or had they gone home and come back?

Last night had been
her
night. Finally. She had been the one to go away and come back with a story to tell. Not just
a
story but the biggest story in Bayou Chene history. Encircled by Fate's arm, anchored by Drifter and all four pups on her feet, Loyce had spun out her story like silken net from a golden shuttle. Four stories, in fact—hers, Pank's, and two more. She made them all proud, if she did say so herself.

She drew her listeners in right at the moment she was snatched from the kitchen. She took them captive with her through that long night. Then exploring the plank walk, followed by the desperate exchange of cans and her doubts about whether it would work. She built up to the explosion and the shock of Drifter bumping against her leg. At that point she went blank and had to take Fate's word for the events that followed. Well, Fate's word backed up by Sam's.

“What do mean ‘backed up by Sam'?” he'd protested. “I most likely saved your life today—that dog's life for the second time—and you don't even give me credit for being able to tell it straight? You couldn't have wandered much longer in that swamp before you stepped on a snake or a gator decided to snatch a bite out of Drifter. And what if I hadn't noticed that burlap sack? What would have become of the puppies? I guess old Pank shortchanged the toss, and it caught in that snag instead of falling all the way to the water. How much longer till that branch gave way?”

“Fate Landry, when you earn yourself a reputation of knowing the truth from a stretch—maybe a year or two of it—a body might start taking your word without backup,” she shot back.

“Quit fussing with him, Loyce, for once,” Adam had begged. “And get on with the telling.”

A chorus of voices and feet shuffling around the bed told her the audience agreed with Adam. Loyce picked up her precious thread again, this time unraveling the mystery of Pank's disappearance. There were gasps and more shuffling as she revealed he had spied through the years without letting on he was alive.

“Not even his old mother!” Alcide shook his head in disgust. “That poor soul would've given years of her own life to know her worthless cub was alive.”

Other voices rose up then, recalling small livestock or tools that had gone missing over the years. York never had admitted to turning loose Mary Ann's hogs. Had Pank tried to steal one and let them all escape? Had he been creeping around their homes at night as well as watching from afar?

“Oh, but we weren't the only people he spied on!” Loyce reined her listeners back in. She had listened to enough skillfully spun stories to know you save the best for last.

Using no visual cues, she brought her audience to the banks of Graveyard Bayou on that warm November day. The rocking chair splashing into the water. The sound of the woman clawing her way up a fish trap. The watcher wheezing from his hiding place in the brush. Mud sucking around his boots as he pushed his pirogue from the bank. Alcide's shout dashing the hope in an evil heart.

The chorus swelled again.

“No!”

“Well, I'll be damned!”

“That's C.B.'s account word for word!”

“C.B., what do you say about that?”

“Did you ever feel you was being watched?”

Loyce felt heads swivel away from her to where C.B. and Sam were standing.

“Being watched? I live next to a graveyard!” C.B. retorted. “Every thing feels out of sorts over there.”

Sam was already flushed with being named one of the heroes of the day. This new revelation—proof of C.B.'s innocence to anyone who still suspected her—nearly felled him. He leaned against the wall for support. Not only had he helped rescue Loyce but, just as surely, his own wife. He didn't even hear the fourth and final story.

Loyce didn't notice the loss of one listener. She was taking the others out to the big river. The night air damp on their faces. A paddle wheeler chuffing upstream. A man hunched over a cup of coffee behind the stove. Low voices whisper about happenings on the river—words not spoken when the sun is shining or even when the moon is bright. Among the dark doings a man—a rich man who didn't know enough to stop cheating even after he had been warned. Well, he was stopped all right. When it was discovered that he was not traveling alone, a lifeboat had been jettisoned along with his body. A story not too far off from true was made up and his wife—not knowing she was a widow—dumped in shame at the next stop.

Roseanne gasped. It was her turn to lean, and Adam was right there to catch her. Some things have a habit of repeating themselves, he thought. But unlike that first time a year ago, she was breathing easily underneath a loose shirtwaist. And this time she was soft in the middle, warm against his arm. Adam smiled. He figured he was the only man in the building who knew what was on page 459 of the catalog.

32