Postmark Bayou Chene

by Gwen Roland

  POSTMARK

  BAYOU CHENE

  POSTMARK

  BAYOU

  CHENE

  A NOVEL

  GWEN ROLAND

  LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  BATON ROUGE

  Published with the assistance of the Borne Fund

  Published by Louisiana State University Press

  Copyright © 2015 by Gwen Roland

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First printing

  Designer: Laura Roubique Gleason

  Typefaces: Whitman, text; Brandon Printed, display

  Printer and binder: Maple Press

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Roland, Gwen, 1948–

  Postmark Bayou Chene : a novel / Gwen Roland.

  pages; cm

  ISBN 978-0-8071-6144-9 (hardcover : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-8071-6145-6 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8071-6146-3 (epub) — ISBN 978-0-8071-6147-0 (mobi) 1. Atchafalaya River Valley (La.) —Social life and customs—Fiction. 2. Atchafalaya River Delta (La.) —Social life and customs—Fiction. 3. Louisiana—Social life and customs—Fiction I. Title.

  PS3618.O5375P67 2016

  813'.6—dc23

  2015006258

  The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

  In memory of Maggie,

  the lab-beagle whose courage and loyalty inspired

  the character Drifter.

  And for the old Bayou Cheners,

  who knew that we never die as long as someone,

  somewhere, is telling our stories.

  Ancient network of bayous around Bayou Chene, based on Abbot map (1863). Inset showing approximate channel of Atchafalaya River today. Illustration by Preston Roland.

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Separating Fact From Fiction

  Acknowledgments

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Bayou Chene (pronounced Shane) means “Oak Bayou” in French. Named for the live oaks that once lined its banks, Bayou Chene is a natural distributary of the Atchafalaya River in South Louisiana. The name also refers to a village site located along the network of bayous in that area and inhabited from ancient times until the mid-twentieth century.

  The people of Bayou Chene didn’t tell stories to transfer information so much as to expand themselves, capture their listeners, take the floor, pass the time of day, give themselves to their audience. They most often found that audience at the Bayou Chene Post Office, which doubled as a general store (or saloon, depending on who’s telling the story), located at different homesteads through the generations.

  While its characters and events are loosely based on anecdotes, rumors, myths, gossip, outright lies, and a few facts handed down through proud descendants of Bayou Chene, this book is a work of fiction meant to celebrate the independent spirit and resourcefulness of what has been called the last frontier community in the United States.

  POSTMARK

  BAYOU CHENE

  1

  April 3, 1907, kicked off a fracas around Bayou Chene. They all agreed on that much. What they never could agree on was what started it all in the first place.

  Fate Landry said:

  It all started with that empty skiff, if you ask me. Oh, I’d a noticed it right off because of the colors, even if it hadn’t come floating around the bend empty. Unless, of course, you counted the dog, which I did. Wasn’t in the skiff so much as floating alongside, towed by the bowline around its neck.

  Wasn’t good daylight yet. April mornings take their time waking up in South Louisiana. You know how it is. Come August, now, it’s a different story. That summer sun rouses up so quick and strong, it’s like it never went to bed at all but just stepped behind the trees and come out on the other side.

  But back to that empty skiff. I was bailing rainwater out of my boat when here it comes looking like an alligator gone blind. It bumped into Ron Theriot’s log dock like it was looking for something and then poked its nose into a mat of willow roots on the bank. That’s when the current caught the stern around, the willows let go of the bow, and that dog’s body swung out just as graceful as a cast net. That’s when I saw it was a skiff not built around here. Blue and black, at that!

  Out here on the Chene our skiffs flare out on the sides so they float high like an acorn cap; it makes them quick to steer with an extra push on one oar or the other. This skiff floated deep and straight like a water trough or a coffin.

  It was big in every way—longer, wider, and higher than anything we use around here. How it didn’t get hung up coming around some of those tight bends, I couldn’t tell. Wouldn’t have made it in low water, that’s for sure. The more I studied that setup, the dog seemed the most normal-looking thing about it.

  It didn’t take nothing for me to snag that blue and black oddity with my paddle as it went past. I always keep a knife handy for the day a line’s gonna wrap around my leg just when I toss a net or anchor overboard. It happens to every fisherman at least once, and I know my time’s coming. Could be what happened to the owner of that skiff.

  That morning I used it to saw through the line towing that dog. Then I lifted her out of the water and laid her on my seat. All four legs still there, a miracle considering the number of gators paddling these waters. That meant the body hadn’t been overboard long, probably just a few hours.

  Black and stocky she was, with a square, broad head. Her muzzle was white and freckled like a bird dog, and there was bayou water puddled in the flap. Sharp white teeth, so she was young. Patch of white fur run across the chest and down her stomach. Sturdy black legs ending in white feet, kind of webbed between the toes. Never saw such before. She would’ve been a strong swimmer, probably kept up with the boat longer than most dogs.

  A wedge of ear flopped down over one eye. Don’t ask me why, but I moved it. That very second her eyelid quivered like the tail of a squirrel trying to decide whether to run or not. I pushed my hand flat against her chest, right under the front leg. It was cold as death and dripping, but way down deep I felt the faintest beat tapping against my hand.

  “Lafayette Landry, what you got down there!”

  It was my cousin Loyce Snellgrove on the porch of the Bayou Chene Post Office and General Store. I could smell coffee and wood smoke drifting down with her voice. She uses my whole name when she’s feeling testy, which is most of the time if you ask me. I was named for my daddy, but he went by Lauf, and they call me Fate.

  “A dog, Loyce, a drowned dog, or just about anyway,” I grunted and kept on rubbing at that dog’s chest. Then I pushed hard right under her rib cage, making water dribble from her mouth.

  “What do you mean just about? Is it
dead or not?”

  “It’s a she and more dead than alive.”

  I pushed harder. More water poured out, and she roused up enough to cough.

  “That sounds more alive than dead to me—bring her on up here,” Loyce bossed, just like always when I’m about to do something anyway. She thinks she’s got to be the one to come up with what I aim to do next just because she’s four months older than me.

  I took my time tying that skiff to the dock, and, sure enough, I heard Loyce slap her leg with her hand. That’s what she does when she gets testy and I’m out of reach. When I picked up the dog, water dripped from both ends of her onto the plank walk for the twenty steps it took me to get to the porch. It still takes Loyce more than thirty, like when we were little.

  “Hey, what you got there, Fate? Baiting with dog now?”

  I swiveled my eyes over and saw Valzine Broussard standing at the edge of the woods path coming from the docks. Val’s part Irish, which might explain all that yellow hair and a leaning toward clothes you don’t see around here much.

  “Not exactly, but dog might work better’n some bait I’ve used,” I said. “She drifted up just now tied to that blue skiff over yonder.”

  Val squinted toward the dock. He’s part Cajun, too, and talks sort of Frenchified sometimes.

  “I seen plenty boats on the river,” he said. “Don’t hardly see no blue and black ’tween here and Morgan City. That’s for true.”

  Like I didn’t know that. Here on the Chene we use red and green. Maybe the old Cheners made a good trade with a steamboat for some red and green paint—I don’t know. If there’s a better reason, no one old enough to remember it ever told me. All me or anyone else knew was that our boats had always been red and green.

  “And high sides like that usually mean a boat come off the Mississippi, not out in the swamps like this,” Val went on.

  He was just showing off for Loyce now, in my opinion. He’s been sweet on her all his life. Seeing as he’s first mate on the Golden Era, Val thinks he knows more than anyone else about what kinds of boats come from where. Just because he’s been on boats since he was so little he had to tie hisself to the deck to keep from blowing overboard. I know all that about him, and more, because we been best friends forever. Like I knew he was gonna right then give that silky red scarf a twirl around his neck. It’s one of the things he does when he’s thinking hard.

  He was right about them high sides, I’ll give him that. It don’t get rough enough for high sides, even out on the ’Chafalaya, unless there’s an uncommon high water or a bad storm. That skiff had to come from up the Mississippi.

  “That’s right, would’ve come down through Lake Mongoulois,” I said, beating him to it. “Some poor upriver person done lost his boat, his dog, and everything else, probably dead to boot.”

  “Well, either keep standing there talking, and we’ll bury her later, or bring her on up here and see if we can save her,” Loyce said.

  She had the door open, so all I had to do was duck through and carry that sad little bundle to the back of the stove, where there’s always a box of rags. It was warm back there and felt good when I crouched down to make a little nest with my free hand. I moved the pup to the crook of my elbow and rubbed her with the towel Loyce had ready. Then I laid her down to see what would happen next. Nothing.

  When I stood up, Loyce was pouring scalded milk halfway up a cup for Val. Two more cups already had milk in them for me and her, like usual. She put the milk pan back on the stove and picked up the coffeepot with her right hand, using her left to steer the spout over the cups. When it was aimed just right over each one, she moved her hand down where she could feel the temperature of the cup change as the hot coffee eased up the side of it. She always clangs the pot when she sets it back down on the warming eye. She likes being in charge of such a loud sound.

  “Let’s give her time to warm up,” she said, handing me and Val our cups.

  We followed Loyce through the doorway and along the dogtrot that divides the post office side from the house side. The porch runs across the whole front of the building, giving a fine view up Jakes Bayou toward Lake Mongoulois and, if you turn the other way, downstream toward Bloody Bayou. I had the habit of sitting out there watching everything wake up since my houseboat faces the wrong way for sunrise.

  It’s always been my favorite time of day, just before everyone else starts stirring in the houses and houseboats along the banks. In an hour or so skiffs and pirogues would be tying up at the dock in front of the post office. People on foot and horseback, most of them kin to me one way or another and some more than once, would start turning onto the dirt road that runs along the bank, scaring late-leaving possums back into the woods for the day.

  Then the steamboats that had laid over for the night would fire up. Loyce could always beat me at identifying their whistles. Some pitched so high they hurt your ears, others so low you felt them in your stomach more than heard them. A few were pure as the calliope on a showboat; others sounded like a boar hog with the croup. No matter how they sounded, they was all saying the same thing—it was time for deck hands to leave whatever pastime they had found and get ready to cut loose for Morgan City to the south or the Mississippi River and parts north. Smaller packet boats would be redding up for trips east through Bayou Plaquemine or west by way of Bayou Teche.

  Railroads suck off a lot of the boat traffic now, but Bayou Chene draws more commerce than you might expect right smack here in the middle of the ’Chafalaya Swamp, and almost all of it ties in some way or another to the post office and general store, which has been run by different branches of my family going way back.

  But for right then it was quiet in that time between the owls and roosters. The air was still night cool. I could tell by looking at Loyce she was waiting for the first rays of sunlight to fork through the tree trunks right at the waterline and play across her face. I’d watched her wait for that signal more mornings than I could count. It was her way of knowing that daylight had come again. She’s been blind since before she could walk, much less remember.

  Loyce tells it this way:

  Oh, I knew something was up when I heard Fate’s bailing change tunes while I was still at the top of the stairs. I’d stopped to hitch up the knot at the end of my braid. I listened awhile before starting down again. I like to slide my hand along the banister just to feel the smoothness. It’s cypress, like the rest of the house built by Great-Grandpa Wash Landry for my Great-Grandma Viney, who was Viney Seneca back then. That was during the westward expansion frenzy of their day, after President Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon. Most everyone back in civilization thought the president had slap lost his mind, but the people out here didn’t care one way or the other.

  Lots of people started coming through the Chene then, some on purpose and some just getting sidetracked on their way somewhere else. Men living in surveying camps or timber camps said a lot of things to Bayou Chene girls in those days, and Wash wasn’t the first one who had taken a shine to Viney. She didn’t pay his court much mind and barely noticed when his camp pulled up stakes and moved on. Then one cold winter night, more than a year later, Wash came knocking on her daddy’s door, telling Viney his surveying stint was over and he was ready to settle down.

  Not one to let romance turn her head so far as to get a crick in her neck, Viney agreed to marry Wash Landry if he built her a proper home. No little ol’ slab and moss shack like some swamp families made do in but a two-story house of planed cypress like the ones rich people all over the country were building from ’Chafalaya cypress. They said termites didn’t eat it and bees didn’t drill it. I don’t know about all that since termites would drown in a hurry out here, and I’ve felt sawdust drifting down from many a buzzing bee on my porch. But I can tell you it smells like fresh cypress needles no matter how old it gets.

  Anyway, from what I gather, Viney wasn’t setting outrageous standards for Wash. Timber made its first big boom around
then so that more big houses were mixing in with the older shacks and houseboats lining the banks. A fair number of sugar plantations were taking hold by then, too, even some sugar mills. So, once Viney was solidly on board, so to speak, Grandpa figured it made good sense to go ahead and build their house big enough to run a store on one side. Being a surveyor, he was good with figures, so when the U.S. Postal Service thought Bayou Chene was big enough to have a post office, he got the contract. Our family has been right here ever since.

  I never got to meet Great-Grandpa Wash or Great-Grandma Viney, but they say she once killed a wildcat under the steps with a broom. If you’re only gonna pass down one thing about a person, that says a lot.

  But that was then, and now was now. Wildcats didn’t lurk under steps around the Chene anymore, and I had to start early on the net I was knitting for Alcide Verret. So, instead of waiting for the fresh milk Papa was probably squeezing out of the Jersey right about then, I just poured a slug from the day before into two cups—then three—when I heard Val’s voice. He can show up most any time.

  I can’t say I miss being able to see since I can’t even remember it. Papa said it started as an ear infection that got worse instead of better, and by the time that got me to a doctor in Morgan City, it was too late to save my eyes, but they did save my brain, which if I would’ve had to make the choice myself is exactly the way I would have gone. Like I say, you don’t miss something you can’t remember, but at times I do squirm under the pure inconvenience of it. I could tell from the rainwater Fate was pouring back into the bayou that our Grandma Mame wouldn’t be watering the geraniums and hollyhocks in front of the porch that day. Then he stopped bailing.

  Without even thinking about it, I was following his movements out of habit and nothing better to do. The bailing can in mid-scoop plinking water onto the bottom of his boat. His paddle grabbing hollow wood. Something sizable being lifted, dripping, from the bayou. The cough. Then his boots coming heavier than usual up the plank walk. Only twenty steps, as he never lets me forget. Sighted people act impressed as all get out at how much I know about what’s going on, but it’s just a matter of paying attention, that’s all. They could do the same if they just took time and paid attention.