I open it. I do not see Old Placide. I see a big man with a belly like a barrel, a big-brimmed hat, and a heavy black mustache. I try to shut the door, but ’Dres Petitpas shoves it back easy, and walks past me like he was at home. Then he sits down at my table with his hat pulled down to his snake-bright eyes and his hands spread on his thighs.
“Hey there, chère,” he says, and smiles real broad. His teeth are yellow and flat.
I stand by the door, thinking whether I will run away or not. Running away is maybe safer, but then ’Dres Petitpas is alone in my cabin, and I don’t want that.
He eyes me like he knows just what I’m thinking. “I go tell you a story. You stand by the door if you want, but I think you be more comfortable sitting down.”
I hate to do anything he say, but I hate worse looking foolish. I close the door and sit by the fire with my hands on my lap. I do not give him coffee.
“Well,” he says, “this is the way it is. I am a good fiddler, me, maybe the best fiddler on the bayous. Maybe the best fiddler in the world. Ain’t nobody in St. Mary’s parish can dance or court or marry or christen a baby without me. But St. Mary’s parish is a small place, eh? I am too big for St. Mary’s. I have an idea to go to New Orleans, fiddle on the radio, make my fortune, buy a white house with columns on the front.”
He lifts his hands, his fingers square at the tips, his nails trimmed short and black with dirt, and he laughs. It is not a good laugh.
“You maybe don’t know, little swamp owl girl, these hands are like gold. I fiddle the devil out of hell once and I fiddle him down again. I will make those cuyons in New Orleans lie down and lick my bare feets.”
He glances at me for a reaction, but I just sit there. Tante Eulalie is right. Close to, ’Dres Petitpas is not funny at all. He wants what he wants, and he don’t care what he has to do to get it. He can’t trick me, because I know what he is. What he go do, I wonder, when he finds that out?
As if he hears my thoughts, ’Dres Petitpas frowns. He looks around the cabin, and his eyes light on Tante Eulalie’s fiddle on the wall. He gets up and goes to it, takes it down from its hook, and runs his thumb over the strings. They twang dully. “Good thing you loosen the strings,” he says. “Keep the neck from warping, eh? Nice little fiddle. You play?”
I don’t remember getting up, but I am standing with my hands twisted in my skirts. “No,” I say as lightly as I can. “Stupid old thing. I don’t know why I don’t throw it into the bayou.”
“You won’t mind if I tune her, then.” He brings the fiddle to the table and starts to tighten the strings. I sit down again. “One day,” he says, picking up the story. “One day, my five sons Clopha and Aristile and ’Tit Paul and Louis and Télémaque come to me. Clopha is in love, him, and he want my blessing to marry Marie Eymard.
“Now, I got nothing against marriage. My wife Octavie and me been married together twenty-two years, still in love like two doves. My sons are good boys, smart boys. Clopha read anything you put in front of him—writing, printing, it don’t matter. And young Louis add up numbers fast as I can play my fiddle. But they got no sense about women. So I tell Clopha that I will choose a wife for him, if he want one. And when the time comes, I’ll choose wives for the other boys, too. Wives are too important a matter to be left to young men.
“‘My foot!’ Clopha say. ‘I go marry Marie without your blessing, then.’
“‘You go do more than that,’ I tell him. ‘You go marry with my curse. Remember, I got the devil on a string. My curse is something to fear. And you see if Marie Eymard go marry together with you when she find out you don’t bring her so much as a stick of furniture or a woven blanket or a chicken to start life with.’
“Well, you think that be the end of it. But my sons are hardheaded boys. They argue this way and that. And then I have an idea, me, how I can shut their mouths for once and all. I offer my sons a bet.”
He stops and holds the fiddle up to his ear and plucks the strings in turn, listening intently. “Better,” he says. He lays the fiddle on the table, pulls a lump of rosin from his pocket, and goes to work on the bow.
“The bet,” he says, “is this. I will fiddle and my sons will dance. If I stop fiddling before they all stop dancing, I go bless their marriages and play at their weddings. If not, Clopha and Louis come to New Orleans with me to read anything that needs to be read, and Aristile, ’Tit Paul, and Télémaque go tend the shrimp boats and help Octavie with the hogs and the chickens and the cotton.”
’Dres Petitpas grins under his moustache. “It is a good bet I make, eh? I cannot lose.
“My sons go off behind the hog pen and talk for a while, and when they come back, they tell me that they will take my bet—on two conditions. One, they will dance one after another, so I must fiddle out five in a row. Two, I will provide a partner for them—one partner, who must dance as long as I fiddle.
“Now I am proud of my five sons, because this show they are smart as well as strong. They know I can play the sun up and down the sky. They know I can play until the cows come home and long after the chickens come to roost. They know nobody human can dance as long as I can play.” He looks away from the bow and straight at me. “They don’t know you.”
I turn my head away. I don’t know how long I can dance. All night, for sure, then paddle home after and dance in the cabin while I do my chores. Maybe the next night, too. I might could do what I guess ’Dres Petitpas wants. But I won’t. I won’t show my face to the people of Pierreville, my white face and pink eyes and white, white hair. I won’t go among the ducks and risk their pecking—not for anybody and for sure not for ’Dres Petitpas.
“I see you at the Doucet fais-do-do,” he says. “I see you dance like a leaf in the wind, like no human girl I ever seen. I go to a man I know, a hairy, sharp-tooth man, and he tell me about a little swamp owl girl dances all night long at the loup-garous’ ball. I think this girl go make a good partner for my boys. What you say, hien? You come dance with my five strong sons?”
My heart is sick inside me, but I can’t be angry at the loup-garou who betrayed me. ’Dres Petitpas is a hard man to say no to. But I do. I say, “No.”
“I don’t ask you to dance for nothing,” ’Dres Petitpas coaxes me. “I go give you land to raise cotton on and a mule to plow it with.”
“No.”
“You greedy girl, you,” he says, like it’s a compliment. “How you like to marry one of my sons, then? Any one you like. Then you be important lady, nobody dare call you swamp owl girl or little white slug.”
I jump up and go for him, so angry the blood burns like ice in my veins. I stop when I see he’s holding Tante Eulalie’s fiddle over his head by the neck.
“Listen, chère. You don’t help me, I take this fiddle and make kindling out of it, and I break that loom and that wheel, and then I burn this cabin to ash. What you say, chère: yes or no? Say ‘yes’ now, and we have a bargain. You help me win my bet and I give you land and a mule and a husband to keep you warm. That is not so bad a bargain, hien?”
It sticks in my throat, but I have no choice. “Yes,” I say.
“That’s good,” Murderes Petitpas says, and he tucks Tante Eulalie’s fiddle under his chin and draws the bow across the strings. It sounds a note, strong and sweet. “The contest is set for Saturday night—three nights from now. We start after supper, end when the boys get tired. Make a real fais-do-do, eh? Put the children down to sleep?” He laughs with the fiddle, a skip of notes. “Might could take two, three days. You understand?”
I understand very well, but I can’t help trying to find a way out. “I do not know if I can dance for three days and nights.”
“I say you can, and I say you will. I got your fiddle, me.”
“I cannot dance in the sun.”
A discord sounds across the strings. “Little white slug don’t like sun, eh? No matter. We make the dance in Doucet’s barn. You know where it at already.” Tante Eulalie’s fiddle mocks me with one of the tu
nes he played that night. Despite myself, my feet begin to move, and he laughs. “You a dancing fool, chère. I win my bet, my sons learn who’s boss, and I go be a rich man on the radio.”
He’s fiddling as he speaks and moving toward the door. I’m dancing because I can’t help it, with tears of rage stinging the back of my nose and blurring my eyes. I don’t let them fall till he’s gone, though. I have that much pride.
The rest of that night is black, black, and the next two days, too. There are knocks at my door, but I do not answer them. I am too busy thinking how I will make Murderes Petitpas sorry he mess with me. I take my piece of blue cloth off the loom and sew a dancing dress for myself, with Tante Eulalie’s lace to the neck and cuffs. Early the third morning, I make a gris-gris with Tante Eulalie’s gold ring. I sleep and wash myself and put on the dress and braid my hair in a tail down my back and hang the gris-gris around my neck. Then I get in my pirogue and paddle through the maze of the swamp to the warm lights of the Doucet’s farm.
It is very strange to tie my pirogue to the wharf and walk up to the barn in the open. Under my feet, the dirt is warm and smooth, and the air smells of flowers and spices and cooking meat. The barn doors are open and the lantern light shines yellow on the long tables set up outside and the good people of Pierreville swarming around with plates and forks, scooping jambalaya and gumbo, dirty rice and fried okra, red beans and grits from the dishes and pots.
At first they don’t see me and then they do, and all the gumbo ya-ya of talk stops dead. I walk toward them through a quiet like the swamp at sunset. My heart beats so hard under my blue dress that I think everybody must see it, but I keep my chin up. The people are afraid, too. I can smell it on them, see it in their flickering eyes that will not meet mine, hear it in their whispers: Haunt. Devil. Look at her eyes—like fireballs. Unnatural.
A woman steps in front of me. She is wiry and faded, with white-streaked hair in stiff curls around her ears and a flowery dress made up of store-bought calico. “I am Octavie Petitpas,” she says, her voice tight with fear. “You come to dance with my sons?”
I see ’Dres Petitpas grinning his yellow-tooth grin over her head. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Your partner’s here, boys,” ’Dres Petitpas shouts. “Time to dance!”
The fiddler turns to five men standing in an uneven line—his five sons. The first must be Clopha the reader, thin as his father is wide, with lines of worry across his forehead. Aristile and ’Tit Paul are big like their father, with trapped, angry eyes. Louis is a little older than me, with a mustache thin as winter grass. Télémaque is still a boy, all knees and elbows.
I walk up to Clopha and hold out my hand. He looks at it, then takes it with a sigh. His hand is cold as deep water.
We all troop into the Doucets’ barn, Clopha and me and ’Dres and every soul from St. Mary’s parish who can find a place to stand. ’Dres climbs up on a trestle table, swings his fiddle to his shoulder, and starts to play “Jolie Blonde.” He’s grinning under his black mustache and stamping with his foot: he’s having a good time, if nobody else is.
Clopha and I start to dance. I know right away that he will not last long. He has already lost the bet in his heart, him, already lost his Marie, who I can see watching us, her hands to her mouth and tears wetting her cheeks like a heavy rain. It is hard work dancing with Clopha. I think his father tricks him so often that he is like Old Boudreaux, who doesn’t know how to win. This makes Clopha heavy and slow. I have to set the pace, change directions, twirl under his lax arm without help or signal. He plods through five, six, seven tunes, and then he stumbles and falls to his knees, shaking his head heavily until Marie Eymard comes and helps him up with a glare that would burn me black, if it could.
Then it is Aristile’s turn.
Aristile is strong, him, and he is on fire to beat me. My head barely reaches his heart, and he crushes me to him as if to smother me. Half the time, I’m dancing on tiptoe. The other, I’m thrown here and there by his powerful arms, my shoulders aching as he puts me through my paces like a mule. It’s wrestling, not dancing, but I dance with wolves, me, and I am stronger than I look. Six songs, seven, eight, nine, and then the tunes all run together under our flying feet. I do not even notice that Aristile has fallen until I find myself dancing alone. Then I blink at the sun pouring in through the barn door while two men carry Aristile to a long bench along the wall. I see a girl in pink kneel beside him with a cup and a cloth for his red face, and then I go up to ’Tit Paul and the music carries us away.
’Tit Paul is even more angry than his brother, and bigger and taller. He cheats. When we spin, he loosens his grip on my waist and wrist, hoping to send me flying into the crowd. I cling to him like a crab, me, pinching his shirt, his cuff, his thick, sweaty wrist. The dance is a war between us, each song a battle, even the waltzes. I win them all, and also the war, when ’Tit Paul trips over his own dragging feet and falls full length in the dust, barrel chest heaving, teeth bared like a mink.
I feel no pity for him. I think some day ’Tit Paul will find a way to shove his father’s curse back into his throat.
The music doesn’t stop, so I don’t either, two-stepping alone as men carry ’Tit Paul to the bench where he, too, is comforted by a dark-haired girl. Through the barn doors, I see that it is dark again outside. I have danced, as ’Dres Petitpas has fiddled, for a night and a day. I am a little tired.
I dance up to Louis and hold out my hand.
Louis, who understands numbers, dances carefully, making me do all the work of turning, twisting, threading the needles he makes with his arms. From time to time, he speeds up suddenly, stumbles in my way so I must skip to keep from falling, throws me off balance whenever he can. After a time, his father sees what he’s up to and shouts at him, and the spirit goes out of Louis like water draining out the hole in a bucket. There is a girl to give him water and soft words when he falls, too, a thin child with her hair in braids. I feel no pity for Louis, either, who is sly enough to beat his father at his own game when he’s older.
It’s light again by now, and I have danced for two nights and a day. I feel that my body is not my own but tied by the ears to Murderes Petitpas’s fiddle bow. As long as he plays, I will dance, though my feet bleed into the barn floor and my eyes sting with the dust. ’Dres launches into “La Two-Step Petitpas,” and I dance up to Télémaque who is still a child, and all I think when I hold out my hand is how glad I am Octavie gave her husband no more sons.
Télémaque, like me, is stronger than he looks. He has watched me dance with his four brothers, and he has learned that I cannot be tripped and I cannot be flung. He gives me a sad, sweet smile and limps as he dances, like he’s a poor cripple boy I’d be ashamed to beat. I think it is a trick lower than any of Louis’s, and I turn my face from him and let myself be lost in the stream of music. The bow of ’Dres Petitpas lifts my feet; his fingers guide my arms; his notes swirl me up and down and around as a paddle swirls the waters of the bayou. Around me, I feel something like a thunderstorm building, clouds piling, uneasy with lightning, the air growing thicker and thicker until I gasp for breath, dancing in the middle of the Doucets’ barn with Télémaque limp at my bleeding feet and Murderes Petitpas triumphant on his table and his neighbors around us, growling and muttering.
“The last one down!” he crows. “What you say now, Octavie?”
Octavie Petitpas steps out from the boiling cloud of people, and if she looked worn before, now she looks gray as death.
“I say you are a fine fiddler, Murderes Petitpas. There ain’t a man in the whole of Louisiana, maybe even the world, could do what you done. Or would want to.”
“I am a fine fiddler,” ’Dres says. “Still, I can’t win my bet without my little owl girl, eh?” He waves his bow arm toward the five brothers sitting on the bench with their gray-faced sweethearts. “There they are, girl. Take your pick, you. Any one you want for your husband, and land and a mule, just like I promised. Murderes Petitpas, he
keep his word, hien?”
I touch Tante Eulalie’s lace at my neck for luck, and the little bulge of the gris-gris hanging between my breasts and I say, “I do not want your land or your mule, ’Dres Petitpas. I do not want to marry any of your five sons. They have sweethearts of their own, them, nice Cajun girls with black eyes and rosy cheeks who will give them nice black-eyed babies.”
An astonished wind of whispers blows through the crowd.
I go on. “I make you a bet now, Murderes Petitpas. I bet I can dance longer than you can. Dance with me, and if I win, you will give your blessing on your sons’ marriages and return what you stole from me.”
His eyes narrow under his broad-brimmed hat, and his fingers grip the neck of his fiddle. “No,” he says. “I make no more bets, me. I have what I want. I will not dance with you.”
“If you do not dance, Murderes Petitpas, everybody will think you are afraid of a little white-skin, pink-eye swamp girl, with her bare feets all bloody. What you afraid of, hien? You, who fiddle the devil out of hell and back down again?”
“I ain’t afraid,” says ’Dres through his flat yellow teeth. “I just ain’t interested. You don’t want to marry together with one of my sons, you go away back to the swamp. We got no further business together.”
Louis gets to his feet and limps up beside me. “I say you do, Pap. If you win, you get my word I don’t go run away first chance I see.”
“And my word I don’t go with him,” says Télémaque, joining him.
Aristile comes up on the other side of me. “And mine.”
“And mine,” says ’Tit Paul.
“And you got my word not to make your life a living hell for taking my sons from me out of pure cussedness,” says Octavie.
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