The Devil in Canaan Parish (12 page)

Melee continued to sing softly, the tone of her voice mixing perfectly with the bullfrogs’ croaking, the drone of the crickets, and the steady groan of the old rocking chair.
 
It lulled me into a deep sleep, and I spent the night dreaming of old broken-down cabins, gentle faces peering out from porch swings, singing soft melodies in words I did not understand, and the moon shining like Melee’s glowing skin on bayou water, as deep and green as her eyes.

Chapter Eight

All the stories they tell children are not happy. Some are about monsters and ghosts and creatures that live deep in the swamps. I remember another story Marraine told me: the story of the Vieux Diable.
 

One day I was crying, and I asked, “Marraine, why doesn’t my family want me?”

“Because they are jealous of you,” she muttered.
 
She was busy sewing a shirt and rocking herself on the front porch.

I was shocked.
 
This was news I had not anticipated.

“Jealous?
 
Why are they jealous?”

“Because you’re the youngest,” she said, pulling a knot through her thread to end a stitch.
 
She looked over at me and could see from my face that I did not understand.

“Tite Melee,” she sighed, “have you ever heard the story of Petit Poucet?”

“No Marraine,” I shook my head. “Who’s Petit Poucet?”

“Well, now, that’s a story!
 
Come here and listen good, my dear.”

She put her sewing aside and I climbed up into her lap, prepared to listen.

“Now, there was a family, and like your family they had many children, and the youngest one, they called Petit Poucet. Petit Poucet was smarter than the others, and he was loved the most by his daddy and momma. Since he was the youngest, they had more time to play with him and love on him than the others, and his brothers and sisters were jealous of him.”

“But Marraine,” I interrupted, “my momma and papa, they don’t love on me.
 
I never even seen them.”

“Melee,” Marraine scolded, “you gonna listen to my story or not?”

I sighed and nodded my head.
 
I was not convinced that this story should apply to me, but Marraine was usually right.

“Alright then,” said Marraine.
 
“Now, one fine day, the children got together and the oldest one said, ‘We should do something about him.
 
What shall we do?’
 

They could not stand their little brother! It seemed he always got the best presents and they thought he was loved more than they were loved.
 
They didn’t like it and decided to do something about it. So, they took the wagon and hooked up the horses and went into the woods.
 
And Petit Poucet, he, he was smart now, like I told you. He guessed what the others were doing. And when he saw them together, he hid himself and spied on them and listened to what they said so he knew when they wanted to go in the wagon that they were going to do something with him. He filled his pockets with some rocks and he sat in the back of the wagon, and every now and then he would drop a rock on the ground. All along the way he dropped rocks.”

“Why did he do that?” I interrupted again.

“You’ll see, child, you’ll see,” Marraine chuckled. “So now, those children took that wagon way back into the woods, and then stopped at a place where Petit Poucet had never been. His brothers and sisters pretended to take a walk then, and when they were a little distance away, they all ran and got back in the wagon.
 
They ran so that Petit Poucet couldn’t catch up with them, and they left their little brother all alone in the woods. He searched and searched for the way back.
 
He searched for those rocks, but couldn’t find them. He was lost!”

I shuddered. Being lost in the woods was something I dreaded.
 
There were too many creatures living out there, and no matter how many times Marraine said I had nothing to worry about,
 
the hair still stood up on the back of my neck whenever I had to go to the outhouse in the middle of the night.

“So then,” continued Marraine, “Petit Poucet saw a house and he said to himself, ‘It’s almost night time. I’m going to take a chance and go to that house. If I sleep out here in the woods, the bugs will eat me up, and I’ll be scared all by myself.’

He went to the house and called.
 
The mistress came out.
 
He told her what the trouble was, how his brothers and sisters had brought him way out into the woods and how he was lost and couldn’t find his way home. ‘I’d like to help you,’ that woman said, ‘but, this here is the house of the Vieux Diable, and the Vieux Diable will gobble you up if he finds you here!’

‘Well,’ said Petit Poucet
,
‘I’m going to take my chances if you don’t mind, that the Vieux Diable won’t eat me.’ He said, ‘Anyway, I’d rather the Vieux Diable eat me than those bugs in the woods and to be alone in the night. I’ll take my chances.’

‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘okay, come on in.’ So he went in.

The woman made supper early that night. She knew that the Vieux Diable would get home later, and she wanted the children to be in bed when he got home so that he wouldn’t notice anything strange.

When supper was finished, she put the children to bed, and put a little bonnet on each of their heads. But Petit Poucet didn’t have one. When the children fell asleep, he took the bonnet from one of them and put it on his own head.

Later that night, when the Vieux Diable got home, he sniffed around and said, ‘Ooooeee! I smell fresh meat!’

‘Oh!’ said his wife, ‘you’re imagining things.’

‘Sniff, sniff! Oh!’ he said, ‘no, I smell fresh meat.’

The wife said, ‘Come and eat,’ she said, ‘supper’s ready. I made some meat, and that’s what you smell.’

So he went and ate his supper. After he went to bed, he wasn’t satisfied. He still smelled fresh meat, and so he went and walked next to his children’s beds and touched them. He saw the one who didn’t have a little bonnet on, and he took that child. He thought that his child was the fresh meat he smelled, and so he killed and ate him.”

At this,
 
I sucked in a little gasp of fear.
 
Marraine saw the fear in my eyes and chuckled a little, “Now child,
 
everything will turn out ok,
 
you’ll see.”
 
I relaxed a little and waited for the rest of the story.

“When Petit Poucet saw the Vieux Diable eat that child, he was very afraid, as you can imagine. He saw where the Vieux Diable took off his boots and put his money. And so, when the Vieux Diable went back to bed, Petit Poucet stole the Vieux Diable’s boots and his money and ran away. He put on the Vieux Diable’s boots – he was very smart, you see, and he stole those boots so that the Vieux Diable couldn’t chase after him -- and when he put those boots on, there must have been some magic in them, because they made him walk very very fast!

And so Petit Poucet walked and walked. Day broke, and he found a couple of the rocks he had thrown out of the wagon. ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘Looks like I’m on the right path.’ So he continued and found his house at last. He had finally come home.

And when he arrived home with the Vieux Diable’s magic boots and all that money, his family was happy to see him, because now he was rich, and they were very poor. The money he brought with him made their lives much easier and so they welcomed him back and were happy with him after that.”

When she finished the story, Marraine laughed and said, “you see, Tite Melee, I saved you from the Vieux Diable,” and she laughed again. I laughed too, though I didn’t yet understand.

After that I was always afraid that I would find the Vieux Diable whenever I went into the woods. The sound of the bullfrogs terrified me.
 
They sounded like the deep voice of the Vieux Diable going, “Sniff, sniff, fresh meat! Sniff, sniff, fresh meat!” Sometimes I did see him, a dark figure, watching me.
 
I never saw his face, even in my dreams, but he was always there watching me, and sometimes I would wake up and see him leaning over my bed, ready to snatch me up and eat me.
 
When I left the safety of my Marraine and my Grandmother’s homes and had to return to the little shack in the swamp, I realized that the Vieux Diable was not a monster in the woods.
 
It was my father.

 
I found that in my father’s house, my thoughts and feelings weren’t to be shared without receiving a slap across the face or a kick in the backside, and so I learned quickly to keep them to myself. My five brothers, all wild and rough and dirty, made fun of my pretty dresses and me. I knew nothing about hunting or fishing and so to them I was worthless.
 
I was the only girl in a house of men.

“Tite Melee,” said my father soon after I had arrived, “you have to work like you’re a woman now. You are the woman of the house.”

And so, I worked, every day.
 
I cooked, cleaned, and chopped wood for the fire. I worked in the garden.
 
I washed our clothes.
 
None of that bothered me.
 
It was the work I had to do at night that I hated.

When I was twelve years old, my father took me into his bed for the first time. My brothers were sleeping above us in the
garconniere
, as usual.
 
My screams did not awaken them. My father put his hand over my mouth.
 
After that, it was every night.
 
When he was finished, I would go back to my little cot and dream again that I was drowning.

Life continued like that for five more years until a preacher who was traveling in the bayous came to the little village near our house. He had a daughter, Mathilde, not very pretty, but sweet. She was twenty years old, and we became friends. She would come to my house often, and help me with my work, always chatting and laughing.

“Tite Melee,” she told me, “you’re so beautiful!” and she kissed me on the cheek.

One day she came to my house with bruises all over her body.
 
She told me her father beat her and that he did it all the time. After that, Mathilde moved in with us. She slept with me in my little bed, and my father no longer took me into his bed.
 

Three months later, we were celebrating my eighteenth birthday together. My father and my brothers were out fishing, and Mathilde brought some wine home for us to drink.
 
We started drinking in the morning and kept drinking until late at night, playing rock and roll records and dancing around the house in our socks. By the time my father got home, we were drunk.
 
He didn’t yell like I expected,
 
instead he poured himself some wine and began drinking with us.
 
He stayed up, laughing and dancing with Mathilde until long after I had crawled off to my cot to sleep.
 
The next morning, I woke up and found her in my father’s bed.
 
It was the best present I had ever received.

After that, Mathilde changed.
 
She would sit on my father’s lap and whisper in his ear after supper. She didn’t help me around the house anymore and criticized every little thing I did.

“My goodness!” she said to my father one time, “I don’t know how you can stand living here.
 
This place is such a dump, and it ain’t like Melee does much to make it any better.
 
What you need around here is a woman’s touch.
 
A REAL woman’s touch.”
 
My father said something lewd about Mathilde touching him, which made her giggle, and then he gave her sloppy wet kisses and the two of them sent me outside to the porch and locked the door. This began to happen almost every night, and I would often fall asleep out there in a rocking chair, bitten up by mosquitoes by the time the sun came up.

 
Her annoyance with me soon turned to anger and she would shout at me, and sometimes she would slap me. I didn’t mind.
 
I just wanted her to stay and be my friend and keep my father away from me. One day after supper, I was clearing away the dishes and she was sitting on my father’s lap as usual.

“You don’t love me, do you?” she pouted.

“Mais oui,” my father protested, “Of course I do!
 
How can you say that?”

“SHE’s still here, isn’t she?” she said jerking her head at me.

“Well, cher, where would she go?
 
She don’t have no place to go.”

“I don’t care!” Mathilde pouted. “I don’t want her anymore, and if you want me around, then you’d better do something about it!”

It wasn’t long after that, my father woke me up early in the morning,

“Get up, Melee,” he said,
 
pushing me with his foot,
 
“get up and pack your things,
 
we’re going to Techeville today.”

I didn’t argue.
 
I would only get a slap on the face for my trouble, and so I packed the few belongings that I had into a little bag and set off for the long walk to Techeville. My father’s old pick up truck had long since died.
 
It was sitting out in the yard like an ancient ruin, its axles propped up on cinder blocks. The bumpers were orange with rust and falling off.
 
Grass grew up through the engine and a swarm of bees had made a hive in the moldy old seats.
 
My father’s hunting dogs lolled about under the truck’s carcass, sleeping and scratching at fleas. As we left, I turned and took one last look at that ramshackle house and then trudged off into the woods with my father.

A mile or so later, we found the dirt road that lead north toward Techeville.
 
The sky had turned dark and the wind started to whip.
 

“Poo-yie!” my father spat on the ground.
 
“Look like we in for a storm!
 
I’ll try to flag down a car that passes by.
 
Maybe we can get a ride for a little bit.”