"Require them?"
"You are the judge, remember? You can make laws."
It was true. Three years earlier, Father Denis had approached him with a writ from the office of parish governance in New Orleans. According to new laws local citizens could serve the state on the parish level as sheriff, assessor, ward constable, police juror, and justice of the peace.
Armand had not been particularly interested in any job. He felt that as a farmer and cattleman, he had no need for other vocation.
"You are an educated man," Father Denis had told him. "It is your duty to use your knowledge for the good of your people."
He had still been hesitant but had agreed.
Truly it had not been so much to ask. He read and ruled on contracts and wills, negotiated with the state government, and represented his community on matters that concerned them. It was better than letting some Creole sugar planter be appointed to the position.
"You simply file a declaration and compulsory education becomes the law," Father Denis stated proudly. "Then all the boys will be required to attend school."
Shaking his head with alarm, Armand disagreed. "I accepted that post to deal with traders and tax collectors," he said. "I am no judge to tell the people what to do with their own farms or with their own children."
"But you can," the priest told him. "You have the legal authority to do so. And the moral right."
"But—"
"Every boy between eight and twelve years of age will be obliged to attend during the winter months," Father Denis said. "That will be no great hardship upon anyone and within another generation, every man in the parish will be literate."
It was not an evil intent. Still, Armand could not see himself requiring his friends and neighbors to obey.
"Father Denis, I cannot tell a man how to raise his own children," he pointed out. "I have no children. When I do, I will make decisions for them. Until I do, a parish school is none of my concern."
"It most certainly is," Father Denis insisted. "As the most literate person in this parish you have an obligation and a duty to those around you."
"I have heard this argument before, Father. I help whoever and whenever I am needed," he said. "I do not see that I am needed here in this."
Father Denis ignored him. "I have talked to several of the fathers already. And I can tell you that I have been shocked and disturbed at what I've heard. It is as if they have no interest whatsoever in education. And they have shown no inclination to encourage the formation of the school."
"Perhaps it is because they don't see the need for a school."
"How can they not see the need? Do they not want better for their sons than they have for themselves?"
"No, they do not," Armand answered. He shook his head and sighed heavily. "Father Denis, how can you have lived among us so long and still not know us?" he asked. "We want our children to have the same life that we have. It is a good life. We have our families, our traditions, our homes. We want nothing more."
"What about prosperity?"
"Who needs prosperity when there is balance?" Armand asked. "Two bales of cotton is not enough to sustain a household. But four bales is too big a crop for a family to manage. So we plant three bales. We have enough to live without making life too much work."
"It's God's will that men should prosper," the priest said emphatically. "Your people ask too little of themselves." The expression on the face of Father Denis hardened into displeasure. "I am counting on you, Armand Sonnier, to convince these people that this is America and 1825! In the new world reading and writing are not the province only of priests and aristocrats."
"Father, I am certain that we will always have people like myself to read," Armand answered. "My nephew Gaston has already shown such an interest. I teach him myself. As long as some know, not all need to learn."
"One person to read contracts and write letters is not enough," the priest told him. "Can't you see, Armand, that only by educating these boys can we raise the aspirations of the whole community?"
"I have spoken plainly, Father, that I do not believe our aspirations need to be raised."
Father Denis scoffed in disgust. "You are all petits habitants, small farmers, barely scratching out a living. A few cows, a few pigs, and some chickens are all that keep you from scavenging like swampmen."
"We furnish our own needs. No one goes hungry."
"No one goes hungry!" the priest shot back sarcastically. "While all around you the blessings of world are being poured out in excess. There is opportunity here as never before. The world is changing and we must change with it."
"Our world is not in great need of change."
"How can you say that? Look at how you live. Your shacks are built with more moss than brick. Your clothing is made from homespun, your medicines rendered from herbs. And your knowledge is little more than superstition."
"It does not seem so bad to me."
"Last month I read in the New Orleans paper that there are more riches and rich men in Louisiana than in any other state in this nation."
Armand sniffed with disdain. "Creoles and Americaines."
"All up and down the rivers, field after field of cane and cotton. They live in fine houses, wear beautiful clothes, and build magnificent churches," Father Denis said. "And they are able to do that because they have enlightenment."
"Enlightenment?" Armand's tone was dangerous. "Enlightenment! They live in fine houses, wear beautiful clothes and build magnificent churches, Father, not because they have enlightenment, but because they have slaves."
The priest blanched.
Armand's words were low, his eyes flashing with anger. "If enlightenment means the owning of another man, the buying and selling of him like an ox or a mule, profiting from his labor, taking his daughter to bed and seeing the fruit of one's own seed born into a life of chains, if that is enlightenment, then may God curse me forever to darkness."
"Slavery is naturally abhorrent—"
"But the Church does not condemn it," Armand finished for him. "We are poor people, our ways are our own, and we keep to ourselves. But we have our self-respect, and that is what we want most to leave to our children. We have no need for the world beyond and if our descendants never venture outside, so much the better."
Armand turned and walked away. Normally he was a man of even temper, but he was fuming. Twenty years Father Denis had lived here. Twenty years and he still did not understand the first thing about them and their lives. The only thing that mattered, the only thing that lasted, was the ties of family.
The invisible, unbreakable ties of family.
Armand walked back to the cattle herd and retrieved his horse. Most men were dismounted now, standing around the cookstoves, eager for dinner. He spied his brother, laughing and smiling, his talk animated and happy.
His conversant, once again, the lovely Aida Gaudet.
Chapter 6
Laron rolled over and immediately reached for the woman beside him. The bedclothes were chilled. He opened his eyes, surprised. The smell of breakfast was already in the air. It was the middle of the week. He did not often visit her then, but today was a special day and there was much work to be done.
Again last night they had waited and waited for young Karl to go to sleep. When he finally had and they had taken to bed themselves, their lovemaking had been strange and strained. Something was wrong, very wrong. Karl was growing up and being difficult. But there was more, much more. And Laron was loath to face up to it.
As morning light filtered into the room, he heard quick footsteps in the loft overhead. The children would be down shortly. He jumped out of the warm comfortable bed and hurried into his clothes. It was a bit of fiction that they portrayed, he and Helga. They never allowed the children to see him in her bed. And therefore they could pretend that the children would never know that the two slept there together.
He was still shirtless and adjusting the knee ties of his culotte as Karl appeared on the stairs
.
The two looked at each other.
Laron nodded. "I hope you slept well," he said. "There is lots of hard work to be done today."
The boy nodded, rubbing his neck as if it ached.
Laron finished donning his clothing and caught up to Helga at the fireplace. He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek and then grabbed a basket for gathering eggs.
More footsteps sounded on the loft ladder as Elsa and her baby brother hurried into the room.
"Good morning," she said to both of them. "It looks to be another beautiful day. And a good one for rice, I think. Much hard work today will make for full bellies this winter."
The children looked upon the coming day's work eagerly. They knew that they would be working, working very hard. But working together as a family was much preferred over the solitary chores that filled their everyday life.
Buckets and baskets were taken up all around as the man and the children hurried to tend the hens and hogs and the milking before breakfast. Young Elsa rushed to the outhouse alone. The three males stopped in the weeds near the edge of the yard to relieve themselves before beginning their chores.
The morning was a fair one. The chinaberry tree at the north end of the house was already bright yellow, foretelling a coming frost. The distant sky was bright with pink clouds, pretty and predictable.
"It is going to rain tomorrow," Laron told the boys.
He gestured toward the eastern horizon and the boys noted the color.
"A bad storm? A hurricane?" Young Jakob sounded almost excited.
They had reached the bank and as Laron bent to fill his buckets he chuckled and shook his head.
"Just a rainstorm," he assured Jakob. "That will be good to have now before cold weather sets in."
"Why?"
"If the grass is too dry when it gets a heavy frost and then is thawed by warm rains it will rot," Laron explained carefully and with respect. Karl and Jakob might be only boys, but even boys, Laron thought, should expect to be spoken to without condescension. "The pasture needs to be wet when it freezes."
"But the cattle aren't even here," Karl pointed out, his voice questioning and surly.
"They are around somewhere," Laron answered, unconcerned. "And as long as there is grass they will not stray far. Jakob, take this water to your mother. Karl and I will tend to the chores."
The little fellow hurried back toward the house, spilling nearly as much water as he managed to carry. An inordinate amount of smoke was now drifting up from the chimney as Helga started the fire.
She would warm the water for him to shave, she would present clean clothes for him to wear, and she would fill his belly with good hot food. She was like a wife. But she was not his wife. She was his . . . his . . . even in thought he was troubled by the word. She was his whore. The term stung him. She was more to him, so much more.
He hadn't intended the relationship they had. He was not raised to consider such unseemly conduct.
"A man's seed is not to be sown illicitly," his father had declared one long-ago afternoon as the two, along with his brother three years his senior, set lines from their pirogue.
"The marriage act outside of marriage is a grievous sin and brings shame and ruination upon the man that consummates it."
Laron had had very little understanding of the marriage act or even how to consummate it. He was in fact a little young for the talk being given, very near the age that Karl was now. But his father, who was perhaps more rigid in his beliefs than most, did not relish the necessary father/son discourse required upon approaching manhood. On this occasion with his youngest sons, he thought to let one talk do for the two.
"There may be temptations set before you," he had told them. "But you must resist so that you would bring yourself as clean and whole to your marriage bed as you would expect of your bride."
"But if the women keep themselves pure, where would these temptations come from?"
It was his brother who had asked the question. Laron had had a similar thought, but was far too embarrassed to voice the question.
"There are women, even among us, who can be led into sin," his father answered. "A man intent upon a path of evil can always find the way. You must resist the unsanctioned desires of your body. Your reward will be much pleasure in marriage without the guilt of sin."
Pleasure without guilt. That was a thing to be sought after, Laron now knew.
Perhaps if his father had warned him about German widows, but no. No warning could have prepared him for his Helga.
The first time he'd seen up a woman's dress, it had been hers. Of course, she'd been giving birth to little Jakob at the time and truly there had been nothing sexual or seductive about the sight.
Her screaming had literally terrified him. He well understood the fear the little boy had shown when he'd coming running toward him on the bank of the river. He hadn't understood the boy's frightened words, but he'd recognized panic when he saw it.
He'd followed Karl back to the cabin and discovered the woman about to give birth. He had known about the German who had lived there. He had seen the man a few times and knew that he had a family. But it was said that the man had left for points downriver. It had never occurred to Laron that he might have left his wife and children behind.
He had been beside her while she gave birth. He couldn't say that he'd helped her. He'd mostly just wiped the perspiration from her brow and whispered coaxing endearments to calm her screaming. When the child had arrived in his arms, it was a miracle he could not believe. Perhaps he had begun to love her right then.
He hoped that it was his concern for his fellow human being and the hungry mouths of two innocent children that had kept him coming back to that cabin. He hoped that that was what it had been and not the occasional glimpse of pale female flesh when Helga took the baby to nurse.
He had never allowed himself to touch her, not even to brush against her accidentally. He just wanted to be near her. And he believed that she needed him. He could hardly stay away. Several days a week he headed up her bayou bearing stores and game and meat.
He remembered the evening he'd brought her the first of her guinea hens. He'd traded one of his brothers a half-cured deer hide for the pair of them. If his brother had wondered about his need for guineas he hadn't asked. Laron had loaded the two in separate sacks as if they were fighting roosters and carried them on the pirogue.
She had been delighted. Oooing and giggling over them as if they were satin shoes or hair ribbons.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she'd said to him. It was the first French she had ever spoken, obviously taught to her by her children.
He had been pleased to hear the sounds made uneasily by her pretty lips.
She'd fixed him a wonderful meal. That was one of the first things he had learned about her, that she was a marvelous cook. He could bring her anything, woodcock, squirrel, even possum and she could turn the meal into a dinner more luscious than wild turkey and sweet potatoes. That night she'd fixed a soup of fish with very strange but tasty bread. He'd never had such a thing to eat, but he decided that he liked it. He liked it a lot.
He had brought her coffee, but she knew very little about it and made it more like a tea. He brewed it for her as she got Karl and Elsa up to bed. The baby slept peacefully in the basket she'd woven for him from salt-soaked reeds.
Later as they'd savored the dark rich coffee, she suddenly seemed distracted and ill at ease.
Why should she not be? he had thought. The little ones were all asleep. It was if they were completely alone in the cabin. And it was not at all the thing for a woman to be alone with a man who was not her husband.
He should go, he decided. But he lingered one more minute. It was one minute too long.
"Thank you, thank you," she said again.
He shrugged as if it were nothing.
She couldn't sit still and got up to pace before him momentarily, wringing her hands.
Her distress was evident. It was
clear that he should go.
"Madame Shotz—" he began.
She dropped to her knees in front of him. He was startled. Was she going to pray? Was this some kind of homage, kneeling to him to express her gratitude. It was not necessary. He wanted to tell her that. He did tell her that. But of course, she couldn't understand his French.
She moved closer to him, her teeth biting down on her upper lip as if steeling herself for something painful. With no warning she reached into his lap.
"Madame!" he'd said, rising to his feet in shock.
Her hands were on him then, on the front of his pants. Touching him there, there where he was already growing to fit her hand.
And afterward they knelt together on the cabin floor, his arms around her, laughing together.
And then he kissed her. She tasted of him and herself and of the sin they had committed. It was a better taste than even her cooking.
Laron smiled to himself as the tender memory washed over him. He held the curtain aside and allowed Karl to precede him into the cabin. They carried eggs and milk and were hungry as bears.
Elsa and Jakob were helping their mother. Or at least Elsa was; Jakob seemed to be more employed in laughing and scampering about the room.
He and Karl emptied their buckets and poured the milk through a straining cloth. Laron leaned more closely to dip himself water from the big black pot that hung on the firehook. Then using the punch on the end of the poker, he eased the hook over the flames.
Helga was setting breakfast on the table. She had already washed with last night's water, her hair carefully braided and once more atop her head. She looked tidy and neat, and Laron wanted to walk across the room and kiss her. But it was full daylight and the children were there, so he did not.
"Beignets!" Jakob called out as if it were a battle cry.
Helga had learned to fry the sweet Acadian treat to please Laron, but her children enjoyed the hot, sugary cakes as well.
"And eggs, too," his mother answered. "The guinea hens have laid four this morning. That seems much abundance for this family to share."
The word family caught momentarily in her throat and Laron could not help but notice it. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
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