18
Why Me?
The tears streamed down my face faster and harder as I continued walking through the darkness. Cars and trucks rushed by me, some honking their horns, but I walked on and on until I came to a gas station. It was closed, but there was a telephone booth beside it. I dialed Beau's number and prayed with all my heart that Beau had talked his family into permitting him to stay in New Orleans. As the phone rang, I wiped the tears from my cheeks and caught my breath. Garton, the Andreas family butler, answered.
"May I speak with Beau, please, Garton?" I said quickly. "I'm sorry, mademoiselle, but Monsieur Beau is not here," he said.
"Do you know where he is or when he will return?" asked with desperation in my voice.
"He's on his way to the airport, mademoiselle." "Tonight? He's going away tonight?"
"Oui, mademoiselle. I am sorry. Is there a message, mademoiselle?"
"No," I said weakly. "No message. Merci beaucoup, Garton."
I cradled the receiver slowly and let my head fall against the phone. Beau was leaving before we had even had a chance to say goodbye. Why didn't he just run away and come to me? I asked myself but then realized how unreasonable and foolish such an act would have been. What good would it have done for him to give up his family and his future?
I sighed deeply and sat back. The dark clouds that had covered the moon slipped off and the pale white light illuminated the road, making it look like a trail of bones that led into yet deeper darkness. I had made a decision back there, I thought. There was nothing to do now but carry it out. I started to walk again.
The sound of a truck horn blaring behind me spun me around just as the driver of a tractor-trailer slowed it down to a stop. He leaned out the passenger-side window and gazed down at me.
"What in all tarnation are you doin' walking along this highway in the dead of night?" he demanded. "Don't you know how dangerous that is?"
"I'm going home," I said.
"And where's that?"
"Houma."
He roared. "You're planning on walking to Houma?"
"Yes sir," I said in a sorrowful voice. The realization of just how many miles I had to go set in when he laughed at me.
"Well, you're in luck. I'm passing through Houma," he said, and swung the door open. "Git yourself up and in here. Come on," he added, when I hesitated, "fore I change my mind."
I stepped up and into the truck and closed the door. "Now how is it a girl your age is walkin' all by herself on this highway?" he asked, without taking his eyes off the road. He looked like a man in his fifties and had some gray hair mixed in with his dark brown.
"I just decided to go home," I said,
He turned and looked at me, then nodded with understanding. "I got a daughter about your age. She run off once. Got about five miles away before she realized people want money for food and lodging, and strangers don't usually give a tinker's damn about you. She high-tailed it back as fast as she could when a skunk of a man made her a nasty offer. Git my meaning?"
"Yes sir."
"Same could have happened to you tonight, walking this lonely road all by yerself. Your parents are probably out of their mind with worry too. Now don't you feel foolish?"
"Yes sir, I do."
"Good. Well, fortunately, no harm come of it, but before you go runnin' off to what you think are greener pastures next time, you better sit yourself down and count the blessings you have," he advised.
I smiled. "I certainly will do that," I said.
"Well, no harm done," he said. "Truth is, when I was about your age . . . no," he added, looking at me again, "I guess younger . . . I done run off myself." He laughed at the memory and then began to tell me his story. I realized that driving a truck for long distances was a lonely life, and this kind man had picked me up for the company as much as to do a good deed.
By the time we'd pulled into Houma, I had learned how he and his family had left Texas, where he had gone to school, why he'd married his childhood sweetheart, how he'd built his own home, and how he'd become a truck driver. He wasn't aware of how much he had been talking until he brought the truck to a stop.
"Tarnation! We're here already and I didn't even ask you your name, did I?"
"It's Ruby," I said. And then, as if to symbolically emphasize my return, I added, "Ruby Landry," for I was a Landry again as far as the people of Houma were concerned. "Thank you," I said.
"All right. You think twice 'fore you go running off to be a big-city girl, hear?"
"I will." I got out of the truck. After I had watched him pull away and disappear around a turn, I started to walk home. As I ambled down the familiar streets, I recalled the many times Grandmère Catherine and I came into town together or went visiting one of her friends together. I recalled the times she took me with her on one of her traiteur missions, and I remembered how much the people loved and respected her. Suddenly the thought of returning to that toothpick-legged shack of ours without her being there seemed terrifying, and then there was the prospect of confronting Grandpère Jack. Paul had told me so many sad stories about him.
I paused at another pay phone and dug some more change out of my purse, this time to call Paul. His sister Jeanne answered.
"Ruby?" she said. "My gosh! It's been so long since I've spoken to you. Are you calling from New Orleans?"
"No," I said.
"Where are you?"
"I'm . . . here," I said.
"Here? Oh, that's wonderful. Paul!" she screamed. "Come to the phone. It's Ruby, and she's here!"
A moment later I heard his warm and loving voice, a voice that I needed so desperately to give me comfort and hope.
"Ruby? You're here?"
"Yes, Paul. I've come home. It's too long a story to tell you on the phone, but I wanted you to know."
"You're returning to the shack?" he asked incredulously. "Yes." I explained where I was and he told me not to take another step.
"I'll be there before you can blink your eyes," he promised. It did seem like only a few minutes later that he pulled up in his car and hopped out excitedly. We embraced each other, me holding onto him as tightly as he held onto me.
"Something terrible has happened, hasn't it? What has Daphne done now? Or is it Gisselle? What could either of them do that would send you back here?" he asked, then noticed I had no luggage. "What did you do, run off?"
"Yes, Paul," I said, bursting into tears. He got me into his car and held me until I could speak. It must have sounded like crazy babble to him, for I burst forth with the whole story, inserting almost everything and anything that had been done to me, including Gisselle's planting a bottle of rum in my dorm room. But when I described my pregnancy and the butcher doctor in the dirty office, Paul's face turned pale white and then flashed red with anger.
"She would do that to you? You were right to run away. I'm glad you've returned."
"I don't know what I'm going to do yet," I said, wiping away my tears and taking a deep breath. "I just want to go back to the shack for now."
"Your Grandpère . . ."
"What about him?"
"He's been on a real tear lately. Yesterday when I drove by, he was digging up the front and shouting into the wind, his arms waving. My father says he's run out of money for rotgut whiskey and he's got the DTs. He thinks it's almost the end for him. Most everyone is surprised he's gone on this long, Ruby. I don't know as I should take you back there."
"I've got to go back there, Paul, It's my only home now," I said, determined.
"I know, but . . . you're going to find it a terrible mess, I'm sure. It'll break your heart. My father says your Grandmère must be spinning in her grave something terrible."
"Take me home, Paul. Please," I begged.
He nodded. "Okay, for now," he said. "But I'm going to look after you, Ruby. I swear I will."
"I know you will, Paul, but I don't want to be a burden to you, to anyone. get back to doing the work Grandmère Catherine and I did, so I can keep my
self."
"Nonsense," he said. He started the engine. "I got way more than I'm ever going to need. I told you, I'm a manager now. I've already approved the plans for my own home. Ruby..."
"Don't talk about the future, Paul. Please. I don't believe in the future anymore."
"All right," he said. "But you're going to be fine as long as I'm around. That's a promise you can take to the bank," he bragged.
I smiled. He did look much older. He had always been more mature and responsible than other boys his age, and his father had not hesitated to give him important work. "Thank you, Paul."
I don't think there was a way I could have prepared myself for what the shack and the grounds around it would look like when I set eyes on it again. I was lucky I was arriving at night when so much of it wasn't visible, but I saw the deep holes dug in the front, and when I set eyes on the galerie and saw the way it leaned, the railings cracked and broken, the floorboards torn up in places, my heart sank. One of the front windows was broken wide open. Grandmère Catherine would have been in tears.
"You sure you want to go in there?" Paul asked when we came to a stop.
"Yes, Paul. I'm sure. No matter what it looks like now. It was once my home and my Grandmère's home."
"Okay. I'll go in with you and see what he's up to. He might not even remember you, the way he is," Paul declared.
"Careful," Paul said when we stepped up to the galerie. The boards complained loudly; the front door squeaked on its rusted hinges and threatened to fall right off when we opened it, and 'the house itself smelled like every swamp creature had made some part of it its home.
There was only a single lantern lit on the old kitchen table. Its tiny flame flickered precariously as the breeze flowed unabated through the shack from the opened rear windows.
"All the bugs in the bayou have come in here, I'm sure," Paul said.
The kitchen was a filthy mess. There were empty whiskey bottles on the floor, under the tables and chairs, and on the counters. The sink was filled with dishes caked with old food and the floor had food drippings decomposing on it, some of it looking like it had been there for weeks, if not months< I took the lantern and walked through the downstairs.
The living room was in no better condition. The table was turned over, as well as the chair in which Grandmère used to sit and fall asleep every night. There were empty bottles in here too. The floor was plastered with mud, grime, and swamp grass. We heard something scurry along the wall,
"Probably rats," Paul said. "Or at least field mice. Maybe even a raccoon."
"Grandpère!" I cried.
We went to the rear and searched and then walked up the stairs. I think the effort it took for Grandpère to climb those steps saved the upper part of the house from the same abuse and deterioration the downstairs suffered. The loom room was not very changed, nor was my old bedroom and Grandmère Catherine's, save everything that could have been opened and searched had been. Grandpère had even pulled off some wallboards.
"Where could he be?" I wondered.
Paul shrugged. "Down at one of the zydeco bars, begging for a drink maybe," he said, but when we descended the stairs again, we heard Grandpère Jack's shrill screams coming from the rear of the house. We hurried around back and saw him, naked but caked with mud, swinging a burlap sack over his head and yelping like a hound dog after game.
"Stay back," Paul advised. "Jack," he called. "Jack Landry!"
Grandpère stopped swinging the sack and stared through the darkness. "Who's there? Robbers, thieves, git on wit' ya!"
"No thieves. It's Paul Tate."
"Tate? You stay away, hear? I ain't giving you nothin' back. Stay away. This is my fortune. I earned it. I found it. I dug and dug until I found it, hear? Back, back or I'll heave a rock at yer. Back!" he screamed again, but he backed up himself.
"Grandpère!" I cried. "It's me, Ruby. I've come home."
"Who? Who's that?"
"It's Ruby," I said, stepping forward.
"Ruby? No. I ain't takin' the blame for that. No. We needed the money. Don't blame me. Don't go blaming me. Catherine, don't you blame me!" he screamed. Then, clutching his burlap sack to his chest, he went running toward the canal.
"Grandpère!"
"Let him go, Ruby. He's gone mad from the rotgut whiskey."
We heard him scream again, and then we heard the splash of water.
"Paul, he'll drown."
Paul thought a moment. "Give me the lantern," he said, then went after Grandpère. I heard more splashing, more screaming.
"Jack!" Paul cried.
"No, it's mine! Mine!" Grandpère replied. There was more splashing, and then it grew quiet.
"Paul?" I waited and then charged, through the darkness, my feet sinking into the soft swamp grass. I ran toward the light and found Paul gazing over the water.
"Where is he?" I asked in a loud whisper.
"I don't know, I . . ." He squinted and then he pointed.
"Grandpère!" I screamed.
Grandpère Jack's body looked like a thick log floating along. It bounced against some rocks and then got caught in the current and continued on until it became entangled in some brush that stuck up out of the water.
"We'd better get some help," Paul suggested. "Come on."
Less than an hour later, the firemen hoisted Grandpère Jack's body out of the water. He was still clutching his burlap sack, only instead of buried treasure, it was filled with rusted old tin cans.
How could I have a more horrible homecoming? Despite the terrible things Grandpère Jack had done and the pathetic creature he had become, I couldn't help but remember him when I was a little girl. He had his soft moments. I would go out to his swamp shack and he would talk about the bayou as if it were his dearest friend. At one time he was a legend. There wasn't a better trapper. He knew how to read the swamp, knew when the waters would be rising and falling, knew when the bream would be running, and knew where the 'gators slept and the snakes curled.
He liked to talk about his ancestors then, about the scoundrels who raised hell on the Mississippi, the famous gamblers and flatboat polers. Grandmère Catherine said he spun most of it out of his own imagination, but it didn't matter to me whether it was wholly true or not. I just liked the way he told his tales, staring out at the Spanish moss and puffing on his corncob pipe as he rattled on and on, pausing only occasionally in those days to take a swig from his jug. He always had an excuse for it. He had to clear his throat of the grime that floats through the air in the swamp or he had to chase a cold away. Sometimes he just had to keep his gizzards warm.
Despite the break between Grandmère Catherine and Grandpère Jack after he had contracted to sell Gisselle to the Dumas family, I sensed that once, a long time ago, they were true sweethearts. Even Grandmère, during one of her calmer moments, would admit that he had been a strikingly handsome, virile young man, dazzling her with his emerald-green eyes and his sun-darkened skin. He was quite a dancer too, who could cut up the floor better than anyone at a fais dodo.
But time has a way of drawing the poisons in us to the surface. The evil that nestled under Grandpère Jack's heart seeped out and changed him—or, as Grandmère was fond of saying, "turned him into what he was: a no-account rogue who belongs with the things that slither and crawl."
Perhaps he had turned to his rotgut whiskey as a way of denying what he was or what he saw reflecting back at him when he leaned over his pirogue and gazed into the water. Whatever it was, the demons inside him got their way, and finally they dragged him down into the waters he had once loved and cherished and even worshiped. The bayou out of which he'd made his life had claimed his life.
I cried for the man he was when Grandmère Catherine first fell in love with him, just as I imagined she had cried for him when he had stopped being that man.
Despite Paul's pleading, I insisted on staying in the shack. If I didn't force myself to do it the first night, I would find reason not to the next and the next after that,
I thought. I made my old bed as comfortable as I could and, after everyone had gone and I had said good night to Paul and promised to be waiting for him in the morning, I went to sleep and passed out quickly from total exhaustion.
It didn't take an hour or so after sunrise for all of Grandmère Catherine's old friends to learn of my return. They thought I had come back intending to look after Grandpère Jack. I rose early and began to clean the shack, working on the kitchen first. There was little to eat, but before an hour had passed, Grandmère's old friends began arriving, each bringing me something. Everyone was shocked at the condition of the shack, of course. None had been inside since Grandmère's death and my departure. Cajun women throw themselves at someone else's chores as if they are all of one family when that person is in need. By the time I turned around, they were all scrubbing down the floors and walls, shaking out the rugs, dusting the furniture, washing windows. It brought tears of joy to my eyes. No one had cross-examined me as to where I had been and what I had been doing. I was back, I needed their help, and that was all that mattered. Finally, I felt I really had come home.
Paul came by with armloads of things his parents had sent over and thing. The knew I would need. He went around the shack with a hammer and nails and tacked down as many loose boards as he could find. Then he took a shovel and began to fill in the dozens and dozens of holes Grandpère had dug, searching for the treasure he imagined Grandmère Catherine had buried. I saw how the women watched him work and whispered to themselves, smiling and glancing my way. If they only knew the truth, I thought, if they only knew. But there were still secrets to be kept locked up in our own hearts; there were still people we loved and had to protect.
Grandpère Jack's funeral was a quick and simple one. Father Rush advised me to have it conducted as soon as possible.
"You don't want to attract Jack Landry's sort to your home, Ruby. You know that kind only looks for an excuse to imbibe and cause a ruckus. Best leave him at peace and pray for him on your own."
"Will you say a mass for him, Father?" I asked.
"That we will. The good Lord has compassion enough to forgive even a man as lowdown as Jack Landry, and it is not for us to judge anyway," he said.
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