by Gwen Roland
As for Sam, he missed her merry chatter and flitting movements. These days she slogged as if walking in knee-deep mud. Instead of prattling about people she knew and opinions she had held dear for the past day or so, she kept her thoughts to herself. Even though she had usually talked about things that didn’t matter to him, he longed for the sound of her voice.
What Sam did hear were the rumors. While he didn’t believe them, his slow speech sabotaged any defense he would like to make in public. By the time Sam could put together a sentence, other people in the room or on the dock had moved the conversation along. He knew his halting speech made him seem slowwitted, and there was no ready way to correct the impression. So, under the circumstances it seemed best for him to plod along raising nets and picking up fish from those who wanted to profit from Fate’s growing business.
Sam had always been most content alone out on the water. Even before he left St. Louis, he found comfort at the river’s edge. He loved winter’s soft gray water and leaden sky as much as summer’s racing brown current and blue dome. He relished the smell of fish and driftwood. He could tell whether water lapping against his boat was caused by the wake of passing boats or the wind sweeping upstream.
The docks were a different world from the river itself. They were noisy—crowded with tools, cargo, and people. The other men would banter and trade insults, but Sam couldn’t knit together thoughts and words fast enough to join in, especially now. He could only shut them out and put his back into the work of collecting fish, weighing them, and placing them into the bed of ice. Getting back out to the open water was always uppermost in his mind.
Back at the post office Loyce moved indoors to work on nets that she wouldn’t sell until spring. This time of year she felt especially fortunate to live at the post office because of the customers coming and going. Some households along the outlying bayous wouldn’t see anyone other than immediate family for weeks.
Val’s company was the bright spot in the darkest winter days, but even he wasn’t as merry as usual. She suspected he was suffering from the effects of being housebound. Perhaps now he understood her complaint of being a prisoner in the home she loved.
Fate stayed away, doing who knows what or where. No one in their small circle had heard from him since New Year’s morning. She remembered feigning sleep until the rattle of his engine had faded into the chill, damp air. Why had she done that?
Had he come to her room only to wish her a happy New Year? Remind his little cousin to send word in time for him to play the music for her wedding? Fate had always insisted Val was sweet on her; surely he must know they were a couple, even though no one had said it out loud yet.
A closed door had never stopped Fate. In the old days he would have just barged in and sat on the side of the bed, probably stuffing a pillow over her face before she could defend herself. So, had something more been on his mind? Something to do with how she felt in his embrace? She would never know.
“Ooowwweee! Adam, you need to clean that stovepipe—it’s smoky enough in here that I need Loyce to show me how to find anything!” Mary Ann bustled in the back door and broke into Loyce’s reverie. The sound of the pony cart had been muffled by the rain drumming on the roof.
“Got my ladder ready, Mary Ann, but it won’t stop raining long enough for me to get up there,” Adam replied from where he was sorting mail by holding the letters up to the window light.
Val looked up from the spread of dominoes on top of a wooden barrel between him and Loyce. “If you bring one of your roosters over here and tie a line to him, his flapping wings could go up and down the chimney, clean it out in no time, enh?”
“Now that sounds like a gimmick Fate would’ve come up with, ’specially if we put a likely young pullet on the top side,” Mary Ann chortled in agreement. “Speaking of that sort of thing, either Drifter has been getting more than her share of biscuits, or she’s expecting pups.”
All eyes turned to the little dog lying next to Loyce’s chair.
“Dang if you ain’t right,” Adam said. “Hadn’t noticed how well kept she was looking. Well, I do remember seeing that bird dog belonging to the Larsons hanging ’round for a while. How far along do you reckon she is?”
Mary Ann’s experienced eye ran over the sleek little belly. “Oh, by the looks of her, you got a few weeks to get her a basket fixed behind the woodstove. She’s made herself such a name watching over Loyce, you’ll have people standing in line for those pups.”
“That’ll be something to look forward to until spring comes.” Adam added, “And it can’t get here too soon for me.”
“Looking forward to spring for robbing my bees,” said Val. “Missing those regular paydays, me. Beside, feel good to get out, move around a bit, enh?”
“Well, that ain’t no way to look at the situation, not atall!” Alcide Verret stumped in the front door, slapping water off his hat before jamming it back onto his white curls. “There’s money to be made out there right now, gentlemen. All a fella’s got to do is go out there and get it. Look at it as working for yourself, Val, not waiting for some captain to tell you what you’re worth.”
“What you talking about, Cide?” Val was curious. “What can a man do to make a dollar in this weather?”
“Why, I probably picked enough moss today to stuff four mattresses, six horse collars, and build a mud chimney with the leftovers,” Alcide thundered on. “Wasn’t nothing to it, just a pastime, nothing atall. Penny a pound once it’s cured—that’s good money.”
“How about you take me with you next time?” Val asked. Money or not, the excursion would give him a chance to be outdoors using his muscles. Muscles that were beginning to squirm and twitch from the unaccustomed inactivity. He couldn’t sleep. He was getting fat.
“Sure enough, we’ll do that! How about starting tomorrow? Dot’s been wanting to stay home and get some quilting done, so I could use another partner for a while. I’ll leave home at daylight and stop by here to pick you up.”
By the time Loyce came downstairs the next morning, Val was gone. He was so anxious to escape confinement, he had taken his breakfast to eat on the way. Adam told her he could hear their conversation drifting back through the mist. Val sounded like he was off on a big riverboat adventure instead of just going to pick moss with an old man.
It was three days before she heard Val’s step on the plank walk again. She noticed that he wasn’t whistling or humming, which usually let her know he was coming. She also noticed that his feet were dragging.
“You been gone so long, we was wondering if we needed to come looking for you,” Adam spoke up from inside the kitchen, where he had just put a dried apple cobbler into the oven of the woodstove.
“Wish y’all had, cher!” Val stopped in front of Loyce and put his head down in greeting before he dropped into the nearest chair inside the door and heaved a sigh. She smelled wood smoke, green moss, and a slight whiff of cooking grease in his hair as she touched it in friendly acknowledgment.
“I’m tired to the bone, me, and ain’t had no sleep in three nights,” he said. “I thought I worked when I was on the river, but I never done nothing like that!”
“What’s so different?” Adam asked as he poured a cup of steaming coffee and handed it over.
“Merci bien.” Val took a grateful swallow and settled deeper in the chair, stretching his legs toward the stove.
“First we had to pole Cide’s moss barge, the one with the high scaffold, way, way out in some bayou I don’t even know the name of. If that old man had died on me, I’d never find my way back out. But it look like it was gonna be the other way around—that I was gonna die flat out and leave him to bring in my carcass. The moss was so thick back in there, it looked like curtains, just hanging everywheres. We took turns poling the skiff and picking the moss. Reaching way up with that pole, hooking it into a wad of moss and then twisting and pulling it down. Stomping it into as small a pile as we could and then reaching up for another one. Over and o
ver all day. In no time at all my wrist, she was hurting from the twisting, my back, she was aching from the reaching and bending over. The only way I could keep moving was to think about freezing to death if I stopped.”
“How did Cide manage?” asked Adam.
“Oh, m’sieu! He worked just as hard as I did, but he talked the whole time! Never heard him take a breath that I remember, non. And he’d go after li’l bunches of moss that didn’t seem worth it.”
“Well, it seemed like you’d be plenty tired enough. What happened at night that you didn’t sleep?” Loyce asked.
“The first night wasn’t so bad, if you don’t count the bites. We stayed in a little slab shack Cide has in the woods. Lets anyone use it, but that night we was the only ones sleeping there. It was dry inside, and we made a fire. We threw some of the moss on the floor and just slept right on top. When it started warming up, them ticks and chiggers, they got to squirming, don’t you know. After the cold settled in again before daylight, they stopped, that’s for true, but I don’t know which was worse, having my blood froze in my body or sucked out of it.
“Next day we run into some of them boys over by Canoeville. They started talking about this haunted houseboat where they was staying at. That Sinnet boy, Ursin, he just bought it from some man out on Deadman’s Bayou. Been tied out there for about ten years or more, and he wanted it just for moss picking and running his nets in the spring. Well, Cide, he figured they was fooling with Ursin; you know the Sinnets got Chitimacha kinfolk, so they real superstitious. Cide up and says, ‘Shore, we gonna go over there tonight, and I betcha there’s nothing I can’t figure out.’
“So, after another day of reaching and twisting and pulling down and stomping, I was so tired I figured it didn’t matter if I bunked with the devil hisself. Fact is, the evening started off pretty good. We had shot us a couple a squirrels while drifting down to the houseboat, and Ursin, he had already caught some fish, even in this weather. Injuns can do that, you know. Wasn’t long we had the squirrels cooking down pretty good and was getting ready to fry the fish when all hell done broke loose.
“That woodstove he started clanking and clattering like buckshot was dancing around in a iron skillet. Then the damn thing started shaking till I thought the stovepipe was coming right out the window. I was all set to head outside and get in Cide’s boat when that stopped.
“The next thing we knowed, it sounded like rats—big ones—scampering all over under that floor. Now you know nothing can live under there, but it sounded like all kind of critters was just running this way and that. Poor Ursin, he was ’bout to jump overboard when it stop. Just like that. None of us could make out what it was all about, but it hadn’t hurt nobody, and we was some tired out. So, we all just rolled up and went to sleep where we could find us a spot.
“Since it was Ursin’s houseboat, he got one side of the bed. John Paul, another one of them Chitimacha relatives, got the other side. Rest of us made pallets ’round the floor since we had plenty moss. That’s the best thing I can say about moss picking is you always got your bed with you, if you don’t mind company. My head was so heavy I went to sleep ’most as soon as I hit the floor, me.
“Can’t say how long I been sleeping when the next racket broke out. Seemed Ursin’s shotgun had flew across the room all by itself and hit the back of the bed right above John Paul’s head. Or at least that’s all we could make out, after we lit a lamp to see what had made all that noise. There was the gun, lemme tell you, laying right on top of them two boys. Well, that was enough for me. I wasn’t scared of no ghostses, but I didn’t wanna get shot by no flying gun neither, so I set up against the wall for the rest of the night. Far as I know, there wasn’t no more trouble, but my head hurt so bad the next day from not getting to sleep I couldn’t hardly hold it up.
“We worked all that day, and me, I figured no matter what happen I can sleep tonight. Well, it started before we even lit the lamp! Heard the biggest racket you can imagine—a roaring and a thundering like a stampede of cattle outside in the damn bayou, but there was no place for a stampede even if there was some cattle. I knew there wasn’t nothing ’cept woods and water out there, but I was on my way to open the door and see what it was all about anyway when this rooster—I mean a full-size rooster—flew through this knothole in the wall that was no bigger than a twobit piece. He flew around the room two, maybe three times before he slipped right through the woodstove grate and up the chimney. Or I guess that’s where he ended up. It happen so quick I can’t say for shore if he ever came out on the outside.
“I told Cide, ‘This was your idea; how about you sit up till daylight so’s the rest of us can get some sleep.’”
“What’d he say?” Loyce asked.
“He just laugh, him! Say he already heard about that li’l houseboat for years, that no one owned it for very long ’cause of all the racket. Now that he done seen and heard it hisself, he could understand how come it changed hands so often. He said nobody had ever been hurt or kilt by whatever it was, just inconvenienced.”
“Did he have a notion about why it happens?” asked Adam.
“Most anybody knows, ’cording to Cide, that it was used as a doctor’s office out here during the war. Must have been a lot of soldiers from both sides died in it. Might even be the reason the place where it was tied up for so long is called Dead Man’s Bayou. Cide’s figuring that maybe them ghostses is still fighting the war.”
“So, you saying this might be the end of your moss picking?” Adam queried.
“You bet, cher!” Val exclaimed. “Figure up all the time we already done put in and now we got to spend weeks curing it, watching it weigh less every day? It just don’t seem to pay at a penny a pound, enh?”
24
Val’s restlessness returned as soon as his body recovered from the moss-picking venture. He and Loyce played music to relieve the tedium of the shut-in days, but he had no new tunes to bring her. They were simply banging out the same old melodies that they had played with Fate, except now the fire was gone. That high-flying energy he used to feel when they were all together had vanished. He had felt it only once since moving to the Chene—the night Fate showed up at the New Year’s dance. That was when Val realized the exhilaration had sparked between his two friends; he had only shared in their glow. Now Fate was gone, probably for good.
Val’s misgivings about trying to settle at the Chene mounted alongside a growing dread of telling Loyce. What would her life be like if he left too? What would his life be like if he stayed? The boat whistles were already calling to him. St. Louis. New Orleans. Mexico. Never again would he stand on deck and watch those distant ports chuff into view or shrink in the Golden Era’s wake.
Early March took a welcome turn toward spring, and Val could finally walk about the island checking on how well his bees had overwintered. The sunshine coaxed alligators, snakes, and turtles out to bask on logs and sandbars. Around the homes and houseboats chickens scratched for early grubs and sprouting grasses.
Hive inspections showed Val the bees were finding abundant forage, but it would still be weeks before he needed to add more frames. He fidgeted and paced. One day Alcide suggested that the impatient beekeeper could make some quick money at a timber camp.
“Why, Val! People are coming from all over tarnation to make money in these woods,” Cide thundered. “You don’t need to sit here and let ’em get ahead of you! It’s just a pastime for anyone who can swing an axe. Nothing but a pastime, I tell you. I made plenty of money in the timber camps when I was young, and I’d do it again if I wasn’t a married man.”
Despite lingering misgivings from the moss-picking excursion, Val thought it over and joined the next crew boat that stopped for supplies.
Days passed, a week and then two. Loyce was embarrassed at the relief she felt during Val’s absence. Until New Year’s Eve she had been poised to plan a future with Val. Marrying would give her purpose, a life of her own. He had always cared for her, and she loved
him dearly. She was just waiting for him to say the word, so she could say yes. Her alternative was to grow old on the post office porch.
Then Fate had busted into her life again. That’s what always happened with Fate. The tumult of emotions, the heat charging through her veins during the waltz, shattered her future. She couldn’t be Val’s wife or anyone else’s. She was imprisoned in a no-man’s-land.
When the small steamer returned for more supplies, Val was aboard, gaunt and wizened.
“Ooohhh, mais cher,” he groaned, inhaling deeply of Adam’s chicken and dumplings in brown gravy. “I’m so hungry, me, I could eat the feathers you pulled off them roosters. We ain’t had nothing but salt pork on biscuits for the longest time. They don’t come in for groceries soon enough, and we run out of most everything but coffee, pork, flour, and lard. On Sundays somebody would take their half-day off to shoot a few squirrel, but just drop in that hot lard with no seasoning, they taste like squirrel cracklins.
“One of the worst things besides the food was the smell. All of us slept in one bunkhouse not much bigger than Cide’s moss-picking shack. Built out of green slabs that shrunk all crooked when they dried. Big cracks in them suppose to let the air in and the smoke out, but mostly they just let the mosquitoes in. Wood bunks nailed to the wall with li’l flat moss mattresses covering the slats. We was all stacked in there like firewood. No good way to heat up more than a kettle full of water at a time, so bathing was just a dip in the cold river, where you wash yourself and your clothes all in one lick.