The Devil in Canaan Parish

by Jackie Shemwell

  The bayou was given its name by the Indians who lived in this area long ago. The legend was that a giant snake wound through the lands and attacked their villages. The warriors finally killed the snake and its carcass rotted where it lay. The depression it left became the bayou, and now the levee systems protected the good townspeople of Techeville from its bite. Further south, there was a bridge and the road to New Orleans. Beyond that, the levees ceased and the bayou continued wild and free, leaving the poor blacks in the Bottoms and the Cajuns in the marsh lands to fend for themselves against it.

  The pounding rain and the constant swish of the windshield wipers lulled me into a kind of trance that was unbroken until I pulled into the long drive next to our home. The drive went around behind the house and ended at the garage. I leapt out of the car and ran to yank the garage door open as the rain pounded my face and hands. Then I returned to the car and pulled it into the garage. The sound of the rain died away as I turned off the ignition, leaving my passenger and myself in relative quiet. For a moment, I heard only the sound of the blood rushing in my ears from my recent exertion, and then I could hear the slow in and out of Melee’s breath. From the corner of my eye I discerned the outline of her nipples beneath her soaked dress. I had not noticed them at the store, but sitting in the car caused the fabric to pull tight across her chest. I found myself turning toward her, watching the up and down pattern of her breasts as her lungs filled and emptied of air. I was surprised by the sudden tug I felt in the crotch of my pants, and I quickly cleared my throat to break the silence.

  “Are you ready to go in?” I asked.

  She turned to me and nodded. The garage was small. Not big enough for me to go around the side and open the door for her. I pulled her bag from the back seat, stepped out, and then reached my hand in.

  “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to slide your way out,” I said.

  She gathered her skirt up and reached for my hand. The delicate fingers were rough and strong, and she held my palm in a firm grip. The touch sent an electric current through me, and I struggled to compose my face muscles after she emerged from the car. I had to reach around her to close the door, and at that moment, my chest brushed against her back, and I could feel her muscles tense. I turned to look at her and she gazed up at me, waiting for my next direction. I froze for a moment, suddenly wishing I had taken a longer way home and engaged in some small talk in the car, but at that moment I heard the screeching of the kitchen screen’s door in the back of the house and knew that my wife was waiting for us inside.

  Chapter Two

  The house that Sally and I lived in was built in the Acadian style. The whole structure was elevated four feet off the ground on brick columns. The high, sloped roof formed two large porches that ran along the front and back of the house. From the front door, one-stepped into a large gallery with a dining room on the right and parlor on the left. These two rooms had French doors opening onto the porch, allowing for ample space to entertain guests who could mill about from dining room to gallery to parlor, out the doors to the porch and back in again.

  The back of the house held the bathroom and master bedroom to the left, and a large, eat-in kitchen to the right. A swinging door connected the dining room to the kitchen. The bedroom had another set of French doors opening to a private, screened-in porch in back. The kitchen’s screen door also opened onto the back porch, but the two areas were separated by a half wall.

  There were no other bedrooms in the house. Upstairs, a long, open attic with windows on either side of the house was where we kept our storage and also a makeshift room for our maids. This was called the garconniere and was reached by a narrow staircase from the kitchen. Ten years ago, my wife and I had planned to partition off this space to make additional rooms for the children. Through the course of our marriage it became evident that this would not be necessary. Sally had been unable to have children.

  As I walked with Melee under the umbrella toward the back steps, I could see my wife sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper and smoking a cigarette. I could tell by her posture that she was trying to appear nonchalant, but I also knew that she had just opened the kitchen door to check why it was taking me so long to come into the house. Her blond hair was neatly coiffed and her long painted nails and lipstick matched the large red strawberries that decorated the white cotton dress she wore. It was hard to tell she was only 33 years old. She had aged so drastically since the day I first saw her at a Catholic college in New Orleans.

  When I met Sally, I was a soldier fresh from the war and not sure what to do with myself. My father had been a traveling salesman of religious artifacts: bibles, crucifixes, rosaries, statues of the Virgin Mary and St. Francis, St. Christopher charms, and the like. I spent my childhood living in greasy run-down motels, boarding houses and the backseat of the family car. We traveled back and forth across the southern coast. Through Galveston, Biloxi, Mobile, Panama City, and Jacksonville my father went door to door or set up camp outside of church revivals. We spent the hurricane season mostly in Savannah, but my father always wanted to be back in New Orleans by Mardi Gras and the Lenten season. New Orleans was a mecca for my father’s wares. From Catholic nuns to Voodoo priestesses, the demand was great, and my father would sometimes set up a stand in Jackson square. These times were always the happiest for me, because we’d have enough money to get a small apartment where my mother could cook us cornbread and red beans, and I could go to a real school.

  On my eighteenth birthday, I enlisted in the army. It was November, and we were in Savannah. That morning I said goodbye to my mother and father and headed straight to the recruitment office. One month later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and by early spring, when I knew my parents would be settling down in New Orleans, I was in the Philippines. There was no way for me to write to them. They had no permanent address, and so I spent the years in Japanese prison camps wondering where they were and if I’d ever see them again. I was discharged in January 1946, and I headed to New Orleans to wait for Mardi Gras and hope that I might find the old man’s stand somewhere in Jackson square. I never did.

  I spent the next six months getting as drunk as I could. When I ran out of money, a prostitute I was frequenting kicked me out of her apartment in the French Quarter. That morning, I took my last nickel and hopped on the streetcar to the garden district, determined to go as far as that nickel would take me. I got off across the street from the college. This seemed like a sign to a naïve 23-year-old, so I walked up to the admissions office and announced I wanted to use my GI Bill money to enroll.

  I decided to study poetry, because I liked some of what I had read during my brief time in high school. I found myself in a class full of women and was surprised to be somewhat of a novelty. Most men my age were either dead, in a hospital, or married to the sweethearts they had left behind before the war. The girls fawned over me and it wasn’t long before I was having all the free sex I wanted. I soon realized, however, that I was not cut out for literature and my grades began failing. A girl who had not slipped me her number, in fact had never really spoken to me, impressed me in class. She kept to herself, but she was often called on by the professor and always had a thoughtful answer. One day I approached her to ask if she could tutor me.

  Her name was Sally Bordelon, and after weeks of begging, I convinced her I wasn’t a predator. We began to meet in the school library where we would spend hours reading Keats, Shelley and Byron. Sally was also quite adept in French and spent time translating Baudelaire for me. She would read passages to me and try to hide her mirth at my preposterous interpretations. I was lured by her genteel expressions. She came from a family with money, and I had never been with anyone of her league. She wasn’t arrogant, just quiet and reserved, and I used to try my best to crack through the careful exterior and make her laugh. It wasn’t often, but when she did laugh it rang through the library like silver bells. She would clap a gloved hand over her mouth and shake her head at me.

  It was
not long before we were steady sweethearts. I would take her to the picture show, and out to dinner and on long walks along the river. Sometimes she would let me kiss her before she ran inside her dorm, and sometimes a little more, but always she was a good Catholic girl, and I think the fact that I couldn’t have her made me want her. She graduated in the spring and went back home to Techeville where I thought she would forget about me. I wrote her a few letters, doing my best imitation of the Romantic poets she so idolized, expecting to never get a reply.

  But the replies came, frequent and fervent. It was as though the passion she could not show me in person was unleashed on the page. She signed her letters “your Madeline”, and would finish them with a line from The Eve of St. Agnes:

  Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,

  Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!

  Oh leave me not in this eternal woe,

  For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go.

  I did my best to match her letters’ ardor in my own, calling her “my heaven” and proclaiming the aching of my soul, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her love for me was complete, and I had only to claim her if I still wanted her. She begged me to spend my Christmas break with her and her family, and having nowhere else to go, I obliged.

  I was dazzled. I did not understand from what kind of money Sally came until I visited her family’s tiny kingdom in Canaan Parish. The parties were sumptuous and elegant and lasted until the early morning hours. The women dressed in opulent silk gowns and the men wore white tie tuxedos. Smartly dressed servants circled the room bearing silver trays and an endless supply of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Sally became an enchanting princess on my arm. She was witty and charming and beautiful. I was astonished to see this side of her, and I relished being the one man in the room who had her full attention. She was again my tutor, this time in the art of sparkling conversation and social etiquette and delighted in providing me entrée into her world of power and prestige, a world I had only ever read about.

  Caught up in the heady pageantry and intoxicating brilliance of Christmas Eve, I asked her father’s permission for her hand in marriage. He squinted his eyes at me and wrinkled up his nose the way he did when he sniffed an ancient bottle of cough syrup at his drugstore to see if it was still good enough to sell.

  “Palmer,” he said. “That ain’t no Jew name, is it?”

  “No sir. Scottish, I think.”

  “Well, I guess I’d better say yes, then,” he said. “Seems like Sally’s got it in her head that you’re the man for her, although damned if I can see why.” He then took a sip of his brandy and nodded to me, to indicate the conversation was over.

  I soon learned that whatever Sally wanted, Sally got, and Sally had sets her sights on me, the noble savage of her dreams. My nomadic existence as a loner and outsider made me the forbidden fruit, the Porphyro come to storm the castle and whisk the sheltered virgin away to a life of excitement and mystery.

  On Christmas day we were having dinner at the Grande Maison on her grandparents’ plantation. The entire Landry family was there – Sally’s mother was one of five siblings – and the majestic old house was filled with laughter, rambunctious children, music, drink and dancing. During a quiet moment, I pulled Sally out to the porch, got down on my knee and offered her the tiny diamond I had in my pocket, a ring I had purchased on credit at the jewelry store in Techeville. Overjoyed, she shrieked, and then grabbed my hand and ran with me into the house. I had intended to make the announcement myself at dinner, but an impulsive Sally made it for me. She ran from room to room, shouting the news and kissing the well-wishers. I followed her, red-faced and smiling, trying to remember the names of everyone I was meeting. I was again surprised to see the passionate side of quiet, demure Sally. It was almost as if there were two of her.

  The following spring we were married. I had agreed to convert to Catholicism -- it seemed as good a religion as any -- so that she could have her lavish wedding at the Catholic church in town. The church was crammed with family and friends – Sally Landry Bordelon’s wedding was the social event of the year. There was no one from my side of the family coming, and so Sally’s family filled that half of the church too. Through the generosity of our wedding guests, we started our marriage with a car and a house filled with the finest china, crystal, cutlery furnishings and linens money could buy. We spent our honeymoon on Grand Isle, and returned to Techeville where Sally wanted to set up housekeeping.

  Faced with the sudden realization that I needed to begin earning a living to support the two of us, I told Sally that I wanted to go back to college to complete my degree, but she wouldn’t have it. The night we discussed it, she burst into tears and took to her bed with a migraine. It was the first of hundreds of migraines she would have in years to come. At the time, I was a newlywed and disturbed by my wife’s sudden incapacitation. I called her parents, who rushed to her bedside. I told them what I thought had caused the attack, and her father ushered me outside. There on the porch over a cigarette, he offered me the position at the drugstore. He told me that if I quit school, he would guarantee Sally and me a comfortable living for the rest of our days. He said that since he had no sons, the drugstore would go to me after his death, and then I could in turn pass it on to our children. Not wanting to turn down such a generous offer, and not having any real prospects of my own, I agreed.

  For a while after that my wife and I were happy. I worked at the drugstore, learning the business, and Sally played housewife. Her cooking was abominable, but I managed to choke through the sawdust she served me. Eighteen months of pent-up frustration made our lovemaking passionate and frequent at first. She was willing and enthusiastic, but also modest and shy. It was time when the two sides of Sally struggled most against each other. The shutters had to be closed, the door had to be locked and the lights had to be out. There was no question of us being intimate anywhere other than in our bedroom, in our marriage bed. Still, she was capable of long hours of insatiable desire, and it was a happy time for us.

  Soon, however, there was a subtle shift in Sally’s demeanor. She became anxious and petulant. It had been nearly a year since our wedding, and she was still not pregnant. The edges of her mouth were more often turned down than up, and I noticed a furrowing of her brow. At work, my father-in-law engaged me in the first of many, many meddling conversations about my marriage.

  “You know, Palmer,” he said one day, “I think Sally may be a little too overworked.”

  I was stocking one of the aisles, putting green bottles of insect bite medicine in a straight line with the labels facing outward. The store was empty and silent, and I was startled by my father-in-law’s sudden statement. Usually the man never spoke to me, except to tell me to ring up a customer or direct me to get another box of inventory.

  “Sorry, sir?” I stammered, not sure if I had heard him.

  “Well, it’s Sally, you know. She’s not used to running a household by herself. You know my wife talks to her quite a bit and she told me that Sally seems overwrought. She’s got too much to do.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant. Our house was small, we had a maid that came to clean once a week, we had a boy to take care of the yard and the garden, all that Sally had really to occupy her time was preparing meals and doing laundry, which wasn’t much with just the two of us.

  “Well, it’s just too much for her,” he continued. “I think it might be best if you get a house girl. Someone permanent, to take care of all the cooking and cleaning and what-not.”

  “Oh,” I said, beginning to understand, “well I don’t think that would be necessary, I mean I think we’re alright, just the two of us.”

  “Palmer, I want to have grandchildren before I’m old, alright?” he said.

  Again, I was confused, not sure what he could mean. I could tell he was getting exasperated with me.

  “Sally can’t concentrate on having babies when she’s wearing herself out around the house. Now it’s a
ll settled. I’m paying for you to have a live-in maid, and my wife is going to send one over for you,” with that, he turned on his heels and marched back to his office.

  I was too shocked to answer. That evening I went home and, sure enough, dinner was being prepared by the first of a long line of domestic help. This one’s name was Ruby. She was in her forties and had worked for both the Landrys and the Bordelons. She was an excellent cook, housekeeper, and laundress, and for a while Sally was happy again. She began to walk around the house singing lullabies. I would come home to find her relaxing on the back porch in our little sitting area, reading a book or working a crossword puzzle. We continued trying for a baby, and spent a joyful summer together. By the beginning of autumn, Sally was pregnant.

  We decided to announce the good news at the annual Landry Christmas party and once again, Sally ran from room to room laughing and kissing everyone. Old man Landry proposed a toast to us over the dinner table, and the whole family applauded. My father-in-law was pleasant to me, patting me on the back and inviting me to join the men in the parlor for some brandy, cigars and poker. I obliged, eager and excited to finally be part of the inner circle.

  The months went by, and Sally and I continued in marital bliss. Mardi Gras, came and we spent the evening watching the parades, celebrating until late into the night, my arm around her shoulders and one resting on her growing belly. Family and friends threw beads from the floats directly at the two of us. I would wrap each one around Sally’s neck and kiss her lips. I had never seen her so happy or so beautiful.