CHAPTER 60
Mr. DeRouen’s delivery schedule took them to three towns near New Iberia. At each stop, Mirielle sought out the local boatwright. The first man she met was far too old to be Jean’s father. The second too young. The third too dark of complexion. By day’s end, her rear was sore from so long and bumpy a drive. Her confidence was similarly battered. She’d have better luck getting French champagne from a backwoods bootlegger than finding Jean’s father among so many bayou towns. But she readily accepted Mr. DeRouen’s offer to travel with him again tomorrow.
When he dropped her off at the hotel, Mirielle stopped at the telephone before heading up to her room. Her thoughts had strayed often to Helen during the day. Had her fever broken? Was she still in the hospital? Did she remember Mirielle enough anymore to register her absence?
The telephone sat tucked away in a small nook beyond the lobby, offering only an illusion of privacy. Mirielle held the mouthpiece close as she spoke. The butler answered again. No, Mr. West wasn’t at home. No news about Helen either. Mirielle hung up the receiver and waited for her eyes to dry before turning around. No need to appear more suspicious than she already did. She’d wanted to leave a number for Charlie to return her call, but the butler, like the rest of the staff and anyone in Los Angeles who read the gossip rags, thought she was locked away in an asylum. Giving him the hotel’s telephone number was too risky.
As she climbed the stairs to her room, she told herself Charlie was at the hospital, not out cavorting with Miss Thorne or some other new starlet. Whatever his shortcomings, he’d always been a good father. But that didn’t stop her imagination from taking flight with the idea nor her dreams when at last she fell asleep.
The next morning she woke and dressed just in time to meet Mr. DeRouen as he pulled up to the hotel. When Mirielle saw the name JEANERETTE painted in blue lettering on the welcome sign of the first town they visited, her hopes buoyed. It would make sense that a six-year-old girl dropped at the gates of the leper home would choose a name similar to the town where she’d been born. Or maybe she’d been named after the town and hadn’t taken an alias at all.
Mr. DeRouen stopped at a small grocer along the main drag of the town. Mirielle hopped out of the truck before the engine stilled.
“Is there a boatwright in town?” she asked the grocer, a lean man with a large mole on the side of his nose.
“Pardon?” he said.
“A boatwright.”
Mr. DeRouen, carrying a crate of soda bottles into the store, stopped and made introductions. When he added she was from California, the grocer nodded slowly, as if that explained her brusqueness.
“You might be talkin’ about ol’ Don Hirsch.”
“Does he have a shop nearby? I’d like to meet him.”
“Can’t.”
“I can’t?”
“Don died about three years back.”
“Did he have a family?”
“He did.”
“I’ll speak with his widow then.”
“Can’t do that either.”
Mirielle felt her patience slipping. A hurricane could have been swirling above them, and this man would have stood there just as lackadaisically, doling out one sentence of information at a time. “No?”
“I’m afeard not. They moved on outta these parts.”
“Do you know where?”
He scratched his nose alongside the mole and watched Mr. DeRouen lug another crate of soda into the store. Mirielle cleared her throat, and his gaze wandered back to her. “No, ma’am. Can’t say I do.”
When they got back in the truck, Mr. DeRouen uncapped two sodas and handed one to her. “Sure do mean a lot to ya, this boat maker.”
She traced the curve of the glass before taking a sip. Coca-Cola and other big companies charged the canteen extra for bottled soda since they wouldn’t take back the bottles for reuse. After all, who would want to drink from the same soda bottle as a leper?
“We both care about the same little girl, is all. And I’m hoping he can tell me she’s okay.”
The road they followed wound alongside the bayou. A few crumbling mansions roosted alongside the fields of sugarcane that stretched out around them. There was always Lafayette, she reminded herself, and its assemblage of small, nearby towns to investigate. Her money would soon run out, but Charlie could wire her more. He would, wouldn’t he?
Mr. DeRouen said something, but it was lost behind the rumble of the engine and rattle of bottles.
“What?”
He pointed at the bayou. Beyond the shaggy trees that lined the bank, sunlight glinted off the water. “Mighty high this year,” he hollered over the din. “Best you find this boat builder and get gone before it floods.”
The next town they came to was far smaller than Jeanerette or New Iberia. A post office, meat market, and general store clustered around Main Street, along with two churches and a brand-new theater. But no shipyard or boat works shop. Mirielle’s heart sank. She’d been to filming lots in Hollywood bigger than this town.
A spattering of houses lined the rutted side streets. Beyond that, the swollen bayou.
“Is this the entire town?” she asked when they stopped in front of the general store.
“Yep.”
“How come there are two churches? Isn’t everyone around here Catholic?”
Mr. DeRouen nodded toward the smaller church built of wood instead of stone. “That one there’s for the Negroes.”
She’d seen segregation at work since leaving Carville. The sloppy, hand-painted sign above the filling station outhouse that read, WHITES ONLY. The rough-hewn tables behind cafés where blacks were forced to eat. The separate waiting areas at the train station. It wasn’t so different in Los Angeles, though certainly less overt. But she’d not appreciated the injustice of it until now.
She climbed down from the cab of the truck more to stretch her legs than for any real hope in finding Jean’s father in this penny-sized town. Two older men sat on a bench outside the store, sucking on tobacco. Mirielle decided she might as well ask them about a local boatwright, and, to her surprise, they directed her to a home a mile or so yonder toward the lake. One of them stretched out a tobacco-stained finger to show her the way.
“You’ll know it by da big yella barn,” he said. “Dat’s where he builds dem pirogues.”
Boats, Mr. DeRouen clarified, and offered to drive her over once he finished unloading his delivery. But Mirielle told him she’d be glad for the walk, and he agreed to wait for her at the store. Her calfskin shoes were better suited for marble foyers than dirt roads, and the gathering clouds on the horizon threatened rain, but if this boatwright were Jean’s father, better to approach him alone.
“Watch out for da gators,” one of the men called after her. Mirielle didn’t turn around, preferring not to know whether he was serious.
She passed several cottages along her way. Cambric shirts and cottonade dresses fluttered on clotheslines. Women hunched over garden beds or shelled peas on the front porch steps. Children played with popguns and rusty wagons in the yards. One girl, about Helen’s age, crawled after a mangy house cat while her siblings shot marbles nearby. Dirt darkened her tiny hands and chubby knees. Her diaper sagged. But she seemed entirely happy, reaching out for the cat’s tail just as it bounded away. She giggled and struggled to her feet. After a few shaky steps in the cat’s direction, she fell and took up crawling again.
Mirielle slowed and watched the girl until she disappeared around the house, still in pursuit of the cat. Was Helen fond of animals? It pained Mirielle that she didn’t know. Pained her all the more when she realized Helen wasn’t that girl’s age at all. She’d wobbled to her feet and taken her first hesitant step the week before Mirielle left. Or so the nanny had proudly reported as Mirielle poured herself another gin cocktail. How Helen must have changed in the fifteen intervening months. She was walking now. Talking. Eating with a folk and spoon. Would Mirielle even recognize her daughter when she fin
ally made it home?
Of course she would, Mirielle assured herself, and resumed her hurried pace. But Helen had to survive the fever first. If she didn’t . . . Mirielle shook the thought from her head. Fate wouldn’t be that cruel.
She arrived at the yellow barn just as the building clouds overtook the sun. A small house with a rusted tin roof stood alongside it. Mirielle climbed the creaky porch steps and knocked on the screen door. A woman answered, balancing a thumb-sucking toddler on her hip. Two other small children played jacks on the rug behind her. Were these Jean’s half-siblings? They had the same dark brown hair and deep-set eyes that slanted downward at the end. Perhaps Jean’s father had remarried.
“Can I help ya?” the woman asked, eyeing Mirielle warily.
“I’m looking for . . .” The men at the general store hadn’t given Mirielle a name. “Does your husband build boats?”
The woman nodded.
“Is he here?”
“Out in the barn.”
Mirielle thanked her and headed for the barn. She heard the screen door close behind her but suspected the woman was still watching her from the window. A raindrop landed on her shoulder as she navigated the knee-high weeds between the house and barn. Another plinked against the tin roof behind her. The barn door stood partially open. She slipped inside out of the rain.
Four small windows high up in the walls let in the barn’s only light, and it took Mirielle’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness. A long, flat-bottomed boat rested on two trestles. The air smelled of wood shavings and sap and sweat. A man in dusty overalls stood sanding the boat. His cheeks were sun-chapped. Sawdust sprinkled his hair. He glanced up from his work and frowned, his eyes—the same muddy blue as Jean’s—narrowing with distrust.
“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want none.”
“No, I—”
“Not interested in your Methodist God neither.”
Mirielle hadn’t expected such a greeting and floundered for a response. “I’m not . . . I don’t care what God you believe in. I’m looking for a young girl. Jean, she’s called. I thought you—”
“Ain’t seen her.” He turned his attention back to the boat, rasping the sandpaper over the wood in short, rough strokes.
“I haven’t even described her yet.” Mirielle stepped closer. He was older than the woman in the house by at least a decade, with shallow lines just beginning to show on his face. “Are you her father?”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“She ran away from . . .” Mirielle paused. If she spoke the word Carville was she implicating herself? By now, Dr. Ross must have realized she escaped and alerted the authorities. She’d heard stories about absconders being brought back to Carville at gunpoint or in chains. What if this man wasn’t Jean’s father and turned her in to the local sheriff? “From the—er—hospital over a week ago.”
“Don’t know no girl from no hospital.”
“Carville.” Mirielle swallowed. “The leper home.”
The man stopped sanding. His chin dropped to his chest and sighed. “Merde. You from the health department?”
Mirielle remembered what Frank had said back at the juice joint in New Orleans. A good lie is always easier to stomach than the truth. “Yes.” She took another step closer. Outside, the rain had picked up and plinked steadily against the ground. “Have you seen her?”
“She ain’t here.”
“Are you sure? I just want to know that she’s all right.”
The man’s face pinched up in anger. No, not anger. His chest spasmed, and he began to sob. “I sent her away.” He hid his face in his hands so Mirielle could scarcely make out what he said. “My wife, she don’t know. And I got the other little ones to think about.”
“You sent her away? Where?”
“I don’t know where she went. I told her to go back.”
“She’s a child. It’s a miracle she made it this far, and you just turned her out with nothing?”
He wiped his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “What was I supposed to do? Times already hard. If word got out that I had a leper for a daughter, no one from here to Biloxi would buy my boats.”
“That’s no excuse!” Mirielle’s voice trembled with rage. “You’re her father. You’re supposed to love and protect her. Not abandon her.”
He turned away and muttered, “You couldn’t understand.”
“You’re darn right I—” Mirielle stopped. She knew all too well about hard choices. She was here, after all, in the middle of Nowhere, Louisiana, while her daughter lay sick, maybe dying, a thousand miles away. And Felix. She knew guilt and regret too. “I’m sorry. I’m not . . . blaming you. I just want to know where she is. When did you see her?”
He scuffed his foot over the dirt and wood chip–strewn floor. “ ’Bout five days ago.”
Five days? Jean could be anywhere by now.
“I gave her a few dollars and said she could sleep overnight here in the barn.”
“Do you have any idea where she could be?”
Jean’s father swiped the tears from his cheeks and shook his head.
Mirielle’s hopes withered like a cut flower in the sun. Jean hadn’t taken her father’s advice and gone back to Carville. Mirielle was sure of it. But she had no idea where else Jean might have gone. With only a few dollars to her name, how would Jean survive?
“I’m sorry,” Mirielle said. “I have children too, and I . . .” Her throat grew tight.
“You’ll find her, won’t ya? And bring her back to the hospital?”
Mirielle nodded, though she had no idea now where to look. She remembered the sickening dread that had spread through her when she heard the commotion and glanced at the pool. Surely that was someone else’s boy floating facedown. Not hers. Not her Felix. She felt an echo of that dread now. Did Jean’s father feel it too? “What about your wife and other kids, could they know anything about where she might have gone?”
“I didn’t want her to infect them others.” He started crying again. Mirielle itched to lecture him on the low communicability of the disease, but instead she fished through her purse and handed him her hankie.
“Ain’t her mama nohow and them’s just her half-kin.”
“And they don’t know about her?”
He blew his nose into her hankie and shook his head.
Mirielle couldn’t help but imagine Jean, her braids frayed and stomach grumbling, peeking in through the house window while her father and his new family sat down to supper. The father who didn’t want her. The family that would never be her own. Mirielle’s heart ached to think of it. Of Irene and Hector and all the others at Carville who’d been similarly erased from their families’ lives.
She turned and walked toward the barn door. Now more than ever, she had to find Jean. Had to show her that someone in the world cared. At the door, she stopped and turned around. “Jean said she had an uncle who was a shrimp fisherman. Might he have seen her?”
“He don’t live around these parts and don’t shrimp no more neither.”
“Oh.” She stepped out into the rain. It bled through her dress and trickled down her skin.
Jean’s father said something she couldn’t make out over the rain. She glanced over her shoulder and shouted, “What?”
“Cote Blanche Bay. That’s where her uncle used to shrimp. If she was lookin’ for him, she mighta gone there.”
Water dripped from the brim of Mirielle’s hat into her eyes. Jean’s father looked as if he wanted to say more. Tell Jean I love her, perhaps. He ran his hand along the side of the boat. Dust sprinkled down onto the ground. “I’d be obliged if ya don’t come back, now. If something’s happened . . . I don’t wanna know.”
CHAPTER 61
Mirielle hardly felt the rain as she walked back to the general store. But when she arrived and climbed into the cab of the delivery truck, she was shivering so badly she could hear her teeth chattering above the rumbling engine.
Part of her hated Jean’s father for what he’d done. Part of her understood. She’d made her share of errors as a mother. Grave errors. She rolled onto her side and stared out the window at the moonlit treetops. At least she was trying to make up for them. She hoped it wasn’t too late.
The next morning she packed her valise. The hotel clerk pulled out a worn, creased map and showed her Cote Blanche Bay. It wasn’t a town, as Mirielle had foolishly thought, but a great body of water that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Along the bay stretched over fifty miles of shoreline with numerous river inlets, canals, and swamps. Jean might be anywhere among this expanse. Or somewhere else entirely.
A train left later that morning for Franklin, the parish seat nearest the bay. Mirielle decided it was as good a place as any to continue her search. She drank a cup of coffee in the hotel dining room and tried not to let the near impossibility of her task daunt her. Music played from the radio in the corner, and she focused on that instead, remembering happier days when she and Charlie danced to songs like these in chandelier-lit ballrooms.
A local news program aired next. The announcer spoke of high waters all along the Mississippi, of upcoming horse races, and some political scandal in Baton Rouge. Next came advertisements for Colgate dental cream and Camel cigarettes. Mirielle was only half listening when the news program resumed.
“Word has come of the escape of another leper from the colony at Carville. The leper is described as a woman in her early thirties of fair complexion and average stature. She is not known to be violent but should be considered highly contagious. Local police have a dragnet out for the woman. If you have any information to help in their efforts, contact . . .”
The Second Life of Mirielle West Page 33