The Devil in Canaan Parish

by Jackie Shemwell

  After that, Mathilde changed. She would sit on my father’s lap and whisper in his ear after supper. She didn’t help me around the house anymore and criticized every little thing I did.

  “My goodness!” she said to my father one time, “I don’t know how you can stand living here. This place is such a dump, and it ain’t like Melee does much to make it any better. What you need around here is a woman’s touch. A REAL woman’s touch.” My father said something lewd about Mathilde touching him, which made her giggle, and then he gave her sloppy wet kisses and the two of them sent me outside to the porch and locked the door. This began to happen almost every night, and I would often fall asleep out there in a rocking chair, bitten up by mosquitoes by the time the sun came up.

  Her annoyance with me soon turned to anger and she would shout at me, and sometimes she would slap me. I didn’t mind. I just wanted her to stay and be my friend and keep my father away from me. One day after supper, I was clearing away the dishes and she was sitting on my father’s lap as usual.

  “You don’t love me, do you?” she pouted.

  “Mais oui,” my father protested, “Of course I do! How can you say that?”

  “SHE’s still here, isn’t she?” she said jerking her head at me.

  “Well, cher, where would she go? She don’t have no place to go.”

  “I don’t care!” Mathilde pouted. “I don’t want her anymore, and if you want me around, then you’d better do something about it!”

  It wasn’t long after that, my father woke me up early in the morning,

  “Get up, Melee,” he said, pushing me with his foot, “get up and pack your things, we’re going to Techeville today.”

  I didn’t argue. I would only get a slap on the face for my trouble, and so I packed the few belongings that I had into a little bag and set off for the long walk to Techeville. My father’s old pick up truck had long since died. It was sitting out in the yard like an ancient ruin, its axles propped up on cinder blocks. The bumpers were orange with rust and falling off. Grass grew up through the engine and a swarm of bees had made a hive in the moldy old seats. My father’s hunting dogs lolled about under the truck’s carcass, sleeping and scratching at fleas. As we left, I turned and took one last look at that ramshackle house and then trudged off into the woods with my father.

  A mile or so later, we found the dirt road that lead north toward Techeville. The sky had turned dark and the wind started to whip.

  “Poo-yie!” my father spat on the ground. “Look like we in for a storm! I’ll try to flag down a car that passes by. Maybe we can get a ride for a little bit.”

  But no cars came by. The road was completely deserted. The wind began to pick up even more. We passed a small farmstead, and heard a screen door banging over and over again, the wind blowing it open and closed, open and closed. After a short time, the first raindrops began to fall on us.

  “Ain’t no going back now, I’m afraid,” said my father. He pulled his hat down around his ears and trudged on, the rain falling harder and faster as we went. It soon turned the dirt road to mud, which made our going even slower and more difficult. My father tried to say something to me from time to time, but I couldn’t hear him above the pounding roar of the storm. Now and again, when lightening would flash in the sky, he would pull me under a tree on the side of the road, and we’d stay there until it seemed to pass.

  The rain washed over me until it felt like I was drowning, just like in my dreams. I could barely see in front of me, and my father had to reach back and pull me along out of the mud. Now and again, one of my shoes would get sucked into the mud and be pulled off, and my father would curse and mutter as I struggled to put it back on.

  I wondered what my father would do with me once we got to Techeville. Would he just leave me there? Would he give me money to get on a bus to Lafayette? I guess it didn’t really matter. I would be grateful to go anywhere out of the rain. By the time we made it to Techeville, however, the town was deserted. Shops were closed and the lights were out. I began to feel a little desperate. It was suppertime and we hadn’t eaten all day.

  “Eh voila,” said my father, pointing across the square, “there’s a light still on in that drugstore. Let’s go over der and see what we can see.”

  We walked across the square and were about to enter when my father stopped me.

  “Now, Melee, I don’t want you to open your mouth, you hear? You just keep quiet and let me talk. I wanna see if maybe someone here know if you can be a maid or something around here.”

  And that was how I came to work for Sally and Bram Palmer. I know that Miss Sally doesn’t want me here, and I’m scared that Mr. Bram does. I can see it in his eyes. I know what he is thinking of me, and yet I can’t keep him from thinking that way. It was the same look my father would give me, as though I was a piece of meat he wanted to devour: “fresh meat.” But, like Petit Poucet, I decided to take my chances. It was better to be here than out in the night, alone.

  Chapter Nine

  I awoke to the irritating sound of heels clicking across the hard wood floor. The alarm clock had not gone off. I rolled over from my stomach to my back, allowing the sun’s brightness to sear through my eyelids for a moment. I heard the whirr of the ceiling fan above me, impotent in its effort to provide anything more than a stirring of the air across my sweating face. Even if I had wanted to sleep longer, the heat of a Louisiana summer morning just would not let me.

  The heel clicking grew louder, more impatient. I could tell Sally wanted me up. It was Sunday morning, and we would be late to church if I didn’t hurry. Ten years of marriage with Sally and we had never missed a single Sunday mass. Mass was a numbing comfort to Sally: a place where we could be seen together as the good couple, kneeling side by side near the front of the church. The pillars of society, the Landry family, stood in the old oak pews like the columns that supported the church’s arched ceiling. From where we always sat, we could just see the shining bald spot of old man Landry’s head.

  I pulled myself out of the damp sheets and fumbled my way to the bathroom. After a quick wash and a shave, I pulled on yet another starched shirt, pleated dress pants and tie. The same uniform I wore every day to work, in varying colors. The same clothes I’d been wearing every day for ten long years. I often envied the delivery men who wheeled dollies of supplies into the store, wiping a sweaty handkerchief across their brows and then tucking it into the pocket of their work overalls while I signed for the new shipment. Their clothes were stained and wrinkled, but comfortable --clothes that they could step out of in the evening and on the weekends to don a pair of jeans. Sundays they would feel good putting on the one dress shirt and nice pair of pants they owned. It was not a chore; it was something they might have enjoyed. There was nothing comforting to me about the suits I wore every day like the false smile that played on Sally’s lips.

  There was no breakfast this morning. There was a pot of coffee made, and I found a piece of the cornbread leftover from yesterday’s lunch. It was sweet and moist, and I dipped a bit of it into my coffee and watched the crumbs bob up and down in my cup.

  “Thanks for making the coffee, Sally,” I mumbled, mouth full of cornbread.

  “I didn’t,” she sighed, flicking through the coupons in the Sunday paper, “I guess that girl made some before she left this morning.”

  “Left?” I gasped. The sudden inhalation brought a suffocating swallow of bread crumbs down my windpipe. I spent an embarrassing few minutes coughing and wheezing.

  “Well of course, Bram, it is Sunday, and I suppose she’s gone to visit family or whatever it is she has to do.” Sally muttered, annoyed with me.

  I realized that it was Melee’s day off, but I was surprised that she had gone. I could not imagine she’d be making the long trip back to her home only two days after she’d got here, but I did not know where else she’d go.

  I continued to think about it as we drove silently to church. I parked the car, walked around to op
en the door for Sally, and then dragged slowly along behind her. She was the debutante again, smiling and greeting everyone as she walked up the steps and into the church.

  By the time I got to our usual spot in the third pew, Sally was already seated, whispering with her mother. I had to cross over her parents to get to my place beside her. Bordelon grumbled to himself as he shifted his feet to make room. Sally was clutching her rosary in her white gloved hand. The smell of her perfume was suddenly dense and thick around my nose, tickling my throat, gagging me slightly. I pulled down the kneeler and took my place, my elbows perched on the back of the pew in front of us, pulling my hands together in prayer and resting my head against my knuckles. I closed my eyes and pretended to pray, the image of Melee’s white thigh glistening in the moonlight suddenly flooding my mind. I could tell that Sally thought I was distracted, because her voice rose slightly above a whisper.

  “As long as you feel alright with it, darlin’” her mother’s tone was reassuring, and concerned. “If you don’t like her, you know your daddy and I can find someone else for you.”

  “I know, Mother,” sighed Sally, “I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.”

  I worked to keep a smile from betraying me. Sally was more disturbed about Melee’s presence in our home than I had anticipated. For once she was not getting exactly her way, and it was bothering her. I found that thought immensely satisfying. Sally’s mother was about to say something else when the peals of the organ rang out, announcing the opening hymn. I rose to my feet and grabbed the hymnal in front of me, slightly ahead of Sally’s fingers. She hesitated for a moment, and then leaned closer to her mother to share her hymnal instead. I found myself singing out louder and clearer than I had in a long time.

  The fact was I didn’t really need a hymnal. While my family never officially belonged to any church, my father sold bibles at nearly every revival in the South from Texas to Georgia. My sister and I would sit in the car, or on the ground outside the church or the tent, and play for hours while the fervent believers inside would sing hymn after hymn. After a while, I could tell by the songs whether it was a Baptist or Pentecostal congregation. Sometimes if we were terribly bored, or if the weather was bad, Gracie and I would sneak in to sit in the back. I often felt compelled to walk down to the front during testimony time. I would kneel in front of the minister who would anoint my head with oil and ask me if I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior.

  I thought about this question a lot as a boy. I wondered if it meant that I could have Jesus as a kind of keepsake, like the statue of St. Christopher that my father had glued to the dashboard of our car. I would always nod and say “yes,” and then close my eyes to hear the “Thank you Jesus’s” and “Praise the Lords” that would bubble up from the people watching me. I could picture their smiling faces and uplifted hands, and I could feel the warmth and acceptance washing over me in that moment.

  After Gracie died, it was this feeling of belonging, leaving the lonely emptiness of myself and entering into the collective mind of the congregation that I think made the experience so much like being born again. Even more satisfying were the times that I was baptized, often immediately after accepting Jesus Christ, depending on the particular revival. I would be dressed in white robes and the minister would hold his hand over my head and bless me, dipping me backward into the warm water, the buzzing sound of grief in my head silenced momentarily by the water filling my ears, and then drowned out completely by the congregation singing Now I Belong to Jesus. Once I emerged, I found that I could breathe again for a while. The heavy sadness that constricted my chest and made it so difficult to fully expand my lungs would be lifted for an afternoon. It was this release that I craved and that drove me to sneak into revival after revival, hoping to wash away the pain and the guilt. Over the years of my childhood, I was born again and baptized more than fifty times.

  At the Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic church of Techeville, where Sally and I had been married and where we attended mass every Sunday, there was no such release for me. God was had retreated behind the marble sculptures of Jesus, the Saints and apostles that adorned the walls and altar. The ancient priest, Father Ryan, recited mass in Latin. The inflection and tone of his voice the same every Sunday, week to week. While I did not understand Latin, I knew when I needed to stand, sit or kneel based solely on the way his voice would rise and fall. The congregation mumbled the responses joylessly, eyes closed, retreating into the individual sanctuary of his or her own mind. I looked around at their faces and could see the peace I could not share. My mind had long ago become a place I avoided. There was no comfort in the memories and thoughts that played behind my closed eyes. Mass, like every other activity of my life, was a robotic fulfillment of expectations.

  When time for the benediction finally came and went, and the priest and altar boys had led the procession out of church, I breathed a long sigh of relief. Rather than linger with Sally to greet friends and neighbors, I excused myself to smoke outside on the church steps. I was on my third cigarette when she finally appeared, linked arm in arm with Peg on one side and Junior on the other. I could see the stress on her face, and my back stiffened. Blanchard leaned over and whispered something in her ear while Peg gathered up her brood and began to shoo them down the steps. Sally glanced up and, catching my eye, shook her head once at Blanchard. He followed the direction of her gaze and, seeing me, gave a gruff nod.

  “We were just talking about driving over to Grandma and Grandpa Landry’s” explained Sally, her voice too shrill. This was of course, no surprise. We spent every Sunday afternoon at the Landry’s.

  “Mmm hmm,” I mumbled, “Did you want to ride with Peg?” I asked.

  “Oh no, that’s alright,” Sally forced a smile.

  She followed me to our car and I opened the door and helped her in. As soon as we were out of sight of her family, her face settled back into its natural state of carved granite.

  The ride out to the Landry’s was pleasant enough with or without Sally. It took us a few miles to the north, beyond the town limits. The homes became fewer and further between, until there was nothing but fields on either side of the road. The Landry’s had sold off much of their land to small-time cotton and sweet-potato farmers. It was clear, however, when you breached the Southern border of the Landry property, because the sugar cane appeared like a wall on the horizon. Deep green and over six feet high at this time of year, the cane rose like a strange forest in this flat and marshy landscape. Planting, harvesting and processing the cane was back-breaking work. One hundred years ago, the Landrys owned more than 100 slaves to do it, as well as tending the vegetable gardens and animals, cooking the food, running the home; all the things that made the plantation a self-sufficient island in an ocean of cane.

  The Landry property at one time stretched for miles -- nearly all of Canaan parish -- covered in thousands of acres of cane. People sometimes called it “Cane parish,” and it was the promised land of sugar, the richest of all cash crops. But it was brutal work for the slaves, and after the civil war and emancipation, the freed people left the cane fields in a mass Exodus, and over two hundred years of miserable, grinding, sixteen-hour days in oppressive heat came to an end. Without the hands to perform the labor, the Landry’s cane fields were sold off and the plantation life became a memory: some sweet and some bitter. The remaining few acres of cane were more or less symbolic now, a souvenir of the plantation’s past life.

  I turned the car up the private lane that led to the main house – the Grande Maison – as it was called. It was more palace than house, and at one time it must have been breathtaking. The driveway leading to it was lined with live oaks, centuries old, their thick branches dipping down to the ground, as if they were respectfully greeting us with a low bow. Rounding the corner, the Grande Maison rose majestically, its enormous Greek columns standing like silent sentinels, watching our approach.

  I never got used to the sheer opulence of the pla
ce. It hinted at a depth of wealth that I could not fathom. The remaining slave shacks that crumbled in a long row behind the house were a reminder of how that wealth was achieved. For Sally, on the other hand, it was simply her grandparents’ house. She did not seem to know or care about the plantation’s history. For her, the tumble-down shacks were her play houses growing up. She and her sisters and cousins would play tag and hide and seek, chasing each other in and out of them, oblivious to the ghosts of families that laughed and loved, toiled and suffered, lived and died here.

  I parked the car in the yard among dozens of others. Sally’s mother Alice was one of seven children, each now having their own children and grandchildren. Family gatherings at the Landry plantation were huge. I was nearly knocked over by a crowd of giggling, running children, all dressed in their Sunday church clothes, racing each other across the freshly cut grass. Sally smiled wistfully at them, and then turned and trotted toward the house, eager, I assumed, to get away from me as quickly as possible and join the protective circle of her own.

  I spent the afternoon as I always did – mechanically greeting those I knew and trying hard to remember everyone’s names and occupations. Had I already asked this one about their new baby? Did that one buy a car last month? The mimosas that flowed like water did not help me. I concentrated on filling my mouth as much as possible with the food served for brunch: poached eggs with hollandaise, hot buttermilk biscuits, crepes, grits, spicy sausage, ham and sometimes oysters. The more I ate, the more likely I was to have a mouthful of food, and the better to shrug and smile and avoid conversations.