Postmark Bayou Chene (39 page)

Out there
. To Loyce the place that once stood for loss and longing now held shining promise. Wherever they lived
out there
she would have running water, an indoor bathroom, gas heat, sidewalks.
Out there
held solutions to the things that made life dangerous and confining for a blind woman at the Chene.

“Heck, now that Fate's showing off motors, you'll be shopping in cities up and down the rivers,” said Adam. “It'll be like carrying that mail-order catalog wherever you go.”

“But wherever she goes, she won't find anything prettier than this!” C.B. announced as she twirled through the back door in a new chartreuse skirt and bosom-hugging top. Her hair once again glowed with her favorite yellow dye. “Mrs. Barclay, you can accuse me of anything, anytime, if the apologies always include a new frock.”

“C.B., you are the only person who could ever get me to order something that color.” Roseanne shook her head in mock sorrow. “Take that as a compliment if you like.”

“Well, maybe you should be thanking poor old Pank for that frock,” chimed in Alcide. “He's the one who set the record straight for both of you. There's no telling what all he knew about the doings up and down the river, not just around here. The way he'd been spying for all those years—eight? ten maybe? But we'll never know because he took 'em to his grave.”

Loyce shivered at the memory of the blast in her ears. She tried to put it out of her mind along with the unsavory stories Pank had related during his last night on earth. For Roseanne's benefit Loyce was glad she had paid attention to the story of Charles Barclay's murder. And even though most people at the Chene had already moved beyond the rumors about C.B., Loyce was happy to be the one who cleared her friend's name beyond any doubt. As for Pank, his remains now rested in the graveyard where he had once spied on the yellow-haired object of his dreams.

“All of it might still be a secret if Drifter hadn't been watching out for me,” Loyce added. “And I could have ended up as one more story about a mysterious disappearance.”

At the sound of her name the little dog thumped her tail on the floor. The movement disturbed Jack, her remaining pup. He hiccupped and rolled over on his back, four white paws paddling the air. Adam and Roseanne had quickly claimed Jack because he looked most like Drifter. Sam, Alcide, and Mary Ann had snatched up the other three before anyone else had a chance to see them.

Fate looked up from where he was snapping the locks on his own bag and ruffled Drifter's ears. “The day she showed up, I told you she could be a help, Loyce; now you gotta admit I was right!” Before Loyce could counter a reply, he added, “Here comes Mary Ann, now. Everyone ready?”

They all trooped out to the pony cart, which Mary Ann had draped with ribbon and flowers for the sendoff. Fate hoisted Loyce up to the seat beside Mary Ann and then climbed into the back of the cart with their luggage. Adam and Roseanne linked arms to follow along the woods path to the dock. Mame and Alcide fell in step together. Sam, carrying Sam Junior, walked beside C.B. Drifter trotted in and out of the party with Jack running to keep up. Neighbors lined the path to join in the merriment, beating on pots and pans, blowing whistles and shouting good wishes.

When they rounded the bend to the dock, the
Golden Era
greeted them with three cheery blasts of her whistle. Valzine Broussard, working his way from deckhand back up to first mate, helped the newlyweds aboard. He and Loyce had never mentioned their mutual relief over the turn of events, just like they had never voiced the words between them that could have ruined three lives. Sometimes a long silence was best left undisturbed.

Drifter trotted behind Loyce across the gangplank. Roseanne scooped Jack into her arms to keep him from following. Adam handed up the mailbag.

Only two letters were bearing the Bayou Chene postmark that day—June 21, 1908. One envelope, following its ill-fated predecessor forty-seven years to the day, was seeking Michaud Poussant in a French Pyrénées mountain village. It introduced his smart, ambitious grandson Lafayette Landry to anyone who still lived at that address. The other was to the George Garnier family of Eleonore Street, New Orleans, announcing the upcoming nuptials of Roseanne Garnier Barclay to Adam Snellgrove, Bayou Chene postmaster.

The
Golden Era
whistled farewell. The big paddles dipped and churned the water. Drifter ran in circles and barked as Loyce waved good-bye in the wrong direction. Fate tried to redirect her but got his hands slapped for his trouble.

Facts

The
village of Bayou Chene
existed from ancient times, first as a home for the Chitimacha and other native people. Europeans discovered it in the 1600s, followed by Americans after the Louisiana Purchase. After the 1927 flood, as part of the channelization of the Atchafalaya River, the village was sealed off from the water that gave it life. By the mid-twentieth century most permanent residents had moved to settlements on the levees, taking with them the wealth of that community—their stories—to hand down to future generations.

In 1907 the
Bayou Chene Post Office
was located at the intersection of Jakes Bayou and Bloody Bayou. My great-grandfather Lewis C. B. Ashley was the postmaster at that time. His daughter, Josie, grew up in that hubbub. Josie's mother would not let her travel on the school boat to go to the upper grades, so after third grade Josie continued her education by sorting mail while standing on a packing crate to reach the counter. And of course, she learned to tell stories. Josephine Ashley married George Gilbert Voisin to become my Grandma Josephine Voisin.

Alcide Verret
and
Calvin Voisin
are the only names of real people in the novel. I used Alcide's real name because I wanted to preserve this beloved old man as I knew him in 1970. Even though Alcide would have been just a boy on the Chene in 1907, I've tried to capture his looks, his voice, his gallant flirtatiousness, and his expansive love of life for readers who did not have the pleasure of meeting him.

Calvin Voisin, child of Warren and Mame Voisin, never returned after walking down to bail the boats after a rain. His body was never found. Sudden and unexplained deaths or disappearances were not unusual in swamp communities, where so many dangers lurked. As with other people who died before we were born, young Calvin might slip from history as if he had never lived. I wanted to preserve the fact that he had lived and how he died. Calvin's baby brother, Warren Voisin Jr., honored the little boy by naming his own firstborn Calvin. That Calvin Voisin is my cousin and was my fellow adventurer in the memoir
Atchafalaya Houseboat
.

The confusing practice of
reusing given names
was very common at the Chene. Several generations of one family could have members with the same name. Adding to the confusion were women marrying into the family bringing their own common first names, like Mary Ann Bertram does in the story.

The
returned letter
is based on a real piece of undelivered mail bearing that blue Civil War–era postmark
SOUTHERN LETTER UNPAID.
In 2005 I had already determined that the post office would be the central feature in my novel, almost a character in its own right. I searched the term
Bayou Chene
online to see what research materials would surface. I found that a letter mailed from Bayou Chene was one of five remaining known pieces of mail bearing that blue stamp. A major auction house in New York was selling them as a bundle. The catalog description told the story of the blue stamp created by the Kentucky postmaster. Of the five letters the one mailed from Bayou Chene was pictured in the listing. I tacked a print of that letter over my desk. Every time I looked at it, I pondered what kind of trouble an undelivered letter could cause if it was returned to Bayou Chene forty-plus years after it had been mailed. I started with what I could make out from the faded date—June 21, 1861—and addressee in Hautes-Pyrénées, France. I researched the history of the Pyrénées area and discovered that the economy, based on a dye made from a blue crustacean, lost out to the indigo plantations in the United States. Everything else about the letter, Mame, and Michaud is fiction.

Death by exploding fuel cans
really did happen, at least once. Alcide Verret's first wife and two children died in such an explosion. No one knows for sure if the mistake was hers or that of the boat store that sold it to them.

Beekeeping was a viable occupation
around the Chene, with at least one apiarian, Charles Henry Waterhouse, listed in the 1900 census. Paul Viallon of Bayou Goula was a pharmacist, apiarist, researcher, and writer for bee journals as well as a manufacturer of hive boxes and frames in the early 1900s. It makes sense that a beekeeper at Bayou Chene would have purchased supplies from Paul Viallon.

Fiction

Wambly Cracker'
s name, appearance, and personality came to me in a dream. I woke my husband, Preston, and said: “In case I forget, in the morning remind me of the name Wambly Cracker. He's going to be a character in my novel.” I have no idea where that name came from; as far as I know, I had never heard it before my dream.

While
Adam, C.B., Fate, Loyce, Mary Ann, Roseanne, Sam, and York
came wholly out of my imagination, they represent the ways people came, settled, and eventually left the Chene community. They also represent the diverse socioeconomic and educational backgrounds of those hardy settlers.

Somewhere in Between

Loyce Snellgrove
was inspired by my blind aunt, Lois Voisin, who was born after my family moved from the Chene in the 1920s. She cheerfully lived life as fully as her overprotective family would allow, and she served as the example of higher education in my family because she went all the way to the eighth grade at the Louisiana State School for the Blind in Baton Rouge. I've wondered what her life would have been like had she been born while the family still lived at the Chene, so I explored it for this book. I took the liberty of setting her free to a richer life than a blind woman could have enjoyed at the Chene.

All other first and last names were taken from the 1860–1900 census records around Bayou Chene. The names were chosen because I liked the sound or because they represented one of the ethnic cultures common to the area. The Chene was incredibly diverse, with settlers coming from all over this continent as well as right off the boats from the Old World. Other than the names of Alcide Verret and Calvin Voisin, any combination of first and last names belonging to actual persons was inadvertent.

For my fictional villain,
Pank Neeley
, I deliberately chose a name that didn't show up in census records so as not to embarrass any real families. There is a newspaper account of a Bayou Chener who used the defense that he didn't intend to shoot his girlfriend but, rather, was aiming at a rival beau who was walking with her.

Peter Bunch used to tell of seeing a
corpse with iron cooking pots
tied on each side when he was a boy. It was the first dead person he had ever seen. They never found out the man's identity. Mr. Bunch pointed out to me the burial place near his tar vat.

I heard from Alcide Verret and other people the story of a
woman whose rocking chair dumped her and the baby off the deck of the houseboat
. In some versions the baby survived, just as in my book. In other accounts it did not. Considering the number of houseboats and the fact that so many swampers, particularly women, never learned to swim, it's understandable that this particular tragedy could have befallen more than one family and with different outcomes.

Florence Chauvin told me a story of a Chener who went AWOL from a war and
lived in the woods, spying on his family for years
, lonesome but too afraid to come home. When Florence was a child, in the early 1900s, Indians found the man nearly dead from malnutrition and brought him back home. He lived out the rest of his life in a small houseboat. For little Florence, going to visit him was great entertainment because he was so mysterious.

As a career nonfiction writer I was mystified by authors who could imagine characters and events that never existed. So, it was a cruel joke when Cairo Beauty, Fate, Loyce, and Val started swirling around in the air above my head, and I realized I wouldn't rest until I put them to paper.

One of my first discoveries was that a novel in progress is like a pregnant cat—no one makes eye contact when they see you coming with one. I was blessed with friends and professionals who not only invited me in but asked for a kitten.

Fellow nonfiction writer and connoisseur of fiction Laurie Coch rane asked repeatedly to read the earliest draft I was willing to turn loose. Her gentle nudges kept me working until I had something I thought might not be a complete waste of her time. She discovered potential in characters and plot that I couldn't see for myself, gifting me with a clearer vision for the book.

Greg Guirard gave voice to my half-Cajun character Val. Whenever I read Val, it's Greg's voice I hear. Calvin Voisin, whose own speech defines the vanishing cadence of Bayou Chene, listened to my Chene voices for authenticity. He also checked that I still knew how to describe setting out nets and cleaning catfish.

Shannon Whitfield, Georgia Luckett Champion, and John Mayne read from an outsider's point of view, catching phrases that would bewilder readers from the other forty-nine states.

Editor Margaret Lovecraft did such a thorough job of keeping me in line that now, whenever my husband or I run into fractured fiction, we admonish the page or screen with “Margaret wouldn't let you get away with that!”

Maria Hebert-Leiter, an early critic for the manuscript, was an inspiration. Maria's detailed commentary guided me in plumping my bare-bones manuscript into a more satisfying story. Copyeditor Elizabeth Gratch guided it through the final stage with skill, humor, and a clever eye for detail.