by Lynn Shurr
He let that punted question sail into the end zone unanswered. “Say, if you want something sweet, now’s the time to get it before the dragon boat races start.”
A kiss would be sweet here behind the veil of Spanish moss. Should she snuggle closer, lean in? No, if she did either and he didn’t respond, the drive home would be awfully long. Tom stood up and, grinning, pulled the quilt out from under her.
“Better hurry or Mawmaw’s bread pudding will be gone.”
“Yes, I wouldn’t want to miss that.” Tom gave her a hand up, and they parted the moss together.
****
In a place where the brown bayou ran straight and narrow past Lorena Ranch, Tom organized his team for the dragon boat races. The smaller children, always in a boat captained by his dad, finished their competition—and lost to Adam Malala’s crew of kids. He strongly suspected Adam’s family hadn’t spent all their time in Samoa lounging on the beach and eating taro. Even his pretty green-eyed daughter and the younger boy—built very much like a childhood version of the cornerback—were formidable paddlers. Adam’s wife, lean as always, had shown some muscle as the drummer. One thing he could say for Adam, the man made sure not to embarrass anyone by holding back his team a little and winning usually by a dragon’s head instead of a full and humiliating boat length.
Tom explained the finer points of rowing to Alix as a newcomer to the sport, like the importance of keeping to the beat of the drum and never trying to out-row anyone, but to work as a team. He’d pared her with his lifeguard sister, Lorena, who resembled Alix in height and build but contrasted nicely with her long, black hair and very Billodeaux brown eyes. He noticed Vince’s gaze crawling all over the striking pair and wanted to deck the guy for whatever prurient fantasies went surging through the personal protector’s brain. Hell, Lorena was barely legal, and Alix didn’t belong to the guy.
Tom turned away to control his temper and when he turned back, both girls had stripped out of their shorts and tops and stood there in bikinis. His first thought was to tell his sister to put her clothes back on and his second that Alix took a great tan for a Swede. He pressed his chin with a finger to make sure his jaw hadn’t dropped open when he looked at his roommate. Good, it had stayed shut, but he needed to swallow the drool pooling in his mouth. Neither bikini was particularly brief, but the duo resembled a two-woman Olympic volleyball team—trim, athletic, and beautifully attractive. Vince whistled. Lori smiled his way, and Alix nodded in acknowledgement. Before Tom could make an utter fool of himself by demanding they both dress again, his dad moved in with two life vests big enough to make Mae West proud and covered the most provocative parts of the female scenery.
“Everyone wears a vest, no exceptions,” he announced. He moved to cover the twins whose bikinis really were too brief though only Jude sported a thong. Joe buckled his daughters in and spoke a word or two in their perfectly dainty, shell-shaped, and now burning ears. Both pulled on their discarded short shorts again.
The boats loaded. Tom helped Teddy into the drummer’s seat and took over the tiller. In the opposing boat, Dean positioned Trinity—smallest of the triplets, big on brains, short on muscle—as his drummer. Tom had signed on the twins since Jude could only be described as fiercely competitive and Annie would keep up with her. He’d taken on Xochi, too, though in his opinion her well-developed breasts got in the way of her being a really good rower, but paired with one of the many lithe Billodeaux second cousins, she’d do okay. He’d gone for light and fast with his crew.
Dean had strong and heavy on his side since he’d signed up all those whom Tom turned down by saying his boat was full. He’d accepted his full-bodied but still slightly uncoordinated teenaged brother, Mack. Vince Barbaro sat side by side with Prince Dobbs in the center, their combined weight making the boat ride low in the water. Ilsa lounged on the grassy bank with Beck sitting on her crossed legs. “Wave to your daddies,” she ordered, and Beck flapped his small hand. Teeth gritted, Dean waved back, and Prince raised a paddle causing the boat to rock. With Dean irked, Tom figured he had the psychological advantage, too. He rarely beat his brother at anything but had the urge to impress Alix going for him.
His dad collected Beck and helped him pull the string on the miniature cannon that started the race. The drummers set the pace. The paddlers dug into the brown water churning up a cappuccino-colored foam. Spectators lining the bank cheered for their favorite team or in some cases, for both teams at once. Tom called on Teddy to increase the pace. His rowers responded to put them a dragon head in the lead. Slightly past Dean at the tiller, he didn’t see the disaster coming when Vince and Prince, the terrible twosome, took over the other boat by rowing deep and out of sync causing the long, inflexible craft to veer left suddenly. He heard a splash and glanced back to see Dean overboard and the red tongue and bulging eyes of the dragon on the prow of his boat heading into their lane. It hit hard amidships with a splintering of fiberglass and capsized his craft. Oars went flying. The overturned boat sailed on at an angle and came to rest between the knotty knees of a giant cypress firmly entrenched in the opposite bank.
Tom’s first thought leaped to Alix. He had no idea how well she swam, but she did have her life jacket on and Lorena by her side. He had to search for Teddy first. His handicapped brother could swim and had developed a strong upper torso from using his crutches and the wheelchair, but his useless legs would be weighed down by his braces. Amidst the school of black Billodeaux heads bobbing in the water, he didn’t spot a single blonde. Unlatching his life jacket, Tom dove under the stern of his boat sticking out into the bayou like a shining spear lodged in the cypress roots. He found Teddy hanging onto the drum as if it were a giant beach ball floating in a pocket of air.
“About time someone noticed I was missing,” Ted said wryly.
“I don’t think I can flip the boat. It’s wedged pretty tightly among the cypress knees. We need to duck under to get out. I’m not too sure how well that will work with a life jacket trying to hold you up, but we can try.”
“Take it off me. I trust you to get me to shore, Tom.”
“Okay, then.” He helped Teddy remove his floatation device one arm at a time, then taking deep breaths, they cleared the overturned boat. Tom grasped his brother under the chin in fine lifeguard form and towed him slowly to shore with the current of the bayou and those leg braces fighting them all the way. A cheer he totally ignored went up as he dragged Teddy over the muddy bank and laid him in the grass where his brother immediately sat up and gave the okay sign. Alix—where was she?
He counted his crew, most of them already ashore. Billodeaux kids grew up swimming in the bayou and were as agile in the water as any catfish or cottonmouth. Speaking of mouths, a soaked Xochi, her clinging white T-shirt clearly outlining a crimson bra, cursed fluently in Spanish, words that Corazon would have washed from of her mouth at a younger age. Jude said about the same in English as she reamed out Vince and Prince for causing the accident. Half their size, she had both men hanging their heads. Annie moved among the bedraggled crew offering her nursing skills to help with any injuries. Only two not accounted for from his boat—Alix and Lorena. And Dean, his brother Dean, from the other.
“Dad!” he shouted. His father, always cool in the pocket, moved among the teams handing out towels and pats on the backs. “Dean, Alix, and Lorena are missing.”
“Dean is okay. He swam out and ran downstream trying to catch up with the girls. Looked like the current got hold of them. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they need to be all right.”
Dean appeared, sprinting around the bend in the bayou just beyond the finish line, and Tom breathed a little easier. Dean always knew what to do in a tight situation. “They’re out of the water, but we need a stretcher.”
Tom knew that rationally he should head for the pool house where the stretcher for Camp Love Letter emergencies was stored, but instead he took off running for that bend in the river dreading what he might find—Alix with one of her magnifice
nt legs shattered or Lorena bent over her blonde head giving CPR. He’d just cleared the angle of the stream that blocked his view when he saw her moving along the footpath with his sister in her arms. Lorena’s long black hair hung over Alix’s arm and her head rested in the crook of the punter’s elbow. She strode along as if the weight meant nothing—an Amazon warrior, her pale wet hair forming a helmet pressed to her cheeks, carrying a fallen comrade from the field of battle.
“Thank God,” he murmured as he caught up with them. “Want me to take her?”
“No, I’m okay. A paddle hit her in the head when the boat went over, but the life jacket held her up. There’s way more current in that puny stream than you’d figure. She floated away, so I went after her.”
“You could have drowned, too.”
“Hey, Tommy the Toe. You’re not the only one who has a lifesaving badge. Besides, no sense in jostling her twice before we put her on the stretcher.”
As if summoned by the word, the stretcher appeared, borne by Vince and Prince who had probably volunteered to carry it simply to get away from Jude’s sharp tongue. Alix laid Tom’s sister in its cradle. By the time their group reached the others, Lorena’s dark eyes fluttered open like black butterflies on her pale face.
Nurse Shammy arrived in her full, old-fashioned, starchy nurse’s regalia right down to her white stockings and shoes, the heat and the formerly festive atmosphere be damned. Usually, she administered to bumps, cuts, and bruises earned in the bouncy house set up for the kids and doled out medicines for Camp Love Letter kids the rest of the summer. In this case, she checked Lorena’s pulse and pupils, uncovered the gash matting the black hair with blood and declared that stitches and a tetanus shot were in order as well as a precautionary X-ray. One should never take a head injury lightly. No one argued with Nurse Shammy.
By the time the stretcher-bearers reached the big house, Knox Polk had let the ambulance in the gates. It carried away Lorena, Nurse Shammy, and Nell Billodeaux. “Keep things going, Joe,” she told her husband. “I hope we’ll all be back for the fireworks.”
Joe delegated dinner to his mother who soon had Krayola and Corazon shredding leftover pork into two tubs to be doused with either Joe’s Hot and Spicy or Connor Riley’s Mild and Sweet Barbecue Sauce. Plenty of fruit, vegetables, and desserts left for after. She negotiated a spat between Calvin Armitage’s big, dewberry dark wife and Miss Krayola over who got the pig heads and feet to make hog’s head cheese by splitting the remains down the middle, one head and four trotters each. Both women swore they’d come back with samples and let her decide who made it better.
The men took care of stowing the dragon boats and fishing the paddles from the bayou. Then a bunch of them drove over to the other side of the river in Joe’s silver truck, its bed filled to the brim with fireworks that they laid out along the cane road edging the fields his daddy once plowed. But, before the feasting and the skyrockets, Adam Malala solemnly crowned the winners of the dragon boat races with circlets of tropical leaves and red feathers he’d had flown in from Samoa along with floral leis for the women.
“By foul and default, I proclaim Tom Billodeaux’s team winner of the last race.” He laid the wreath atop Tom’s curls gone to wild red corkscrews after getting wet. Tom beckoned Alix from his group being bedecked with leis by Adam’s children. He removed his crown and placed it on her fair, straight hair. “For saving my sister.” He followed that up with kisses that warmed both her cool cheeks. The applause beat considerably louder than it had for Ilsa and Prince’s earlier announcement.
She wore the crown for the rest of the evening until the sun finally sank behind the half-grown sugar cane crop across the bayou around nine p.m., and the men went to light the fireworks for the delight of the many children already wound up and running about with sparklers in their hands. Tom returned to Alix smelling of gunpowder from the smoke and cinders in the air.
“It’s a privilege to be allowed to help set off the sky rockets. Notice, they didn’t ask Prince or Vince to help. Dean isn’t allowed to do it since he has to protect his hands. When Dad still played, my uncles took care of the chore. But man, I love blowing those things up.”
“Vince left before they started. He said he’d see me at training camp and sorry about the dunk in the bayou. Kind of embarrassed, I think. Someone told me today if I tasted bayou water I’d want to stay here. To be honest, it has the flavor of mud, but now I’ve gone and done it. Guess I’ll have to live in Louisiana forever.”
“I think that would be great,” Tom said, but his mind thought, Good, no Vince to get in the way. He decided to make a move, just a small one. Giving Alix’s shoulders a tight hug, he repeated, “For saving my sister,” again, but let his arm linger there because that really wasn’t what he wanted to say at all. Alix didn’t shrug him off. She let his arm remain as they walked back to the SUV crammed full of leftovers and siblings ready to leave the ranch.
“I could stay here forever,” she said as he helped her into the car. Not that she needed his hand clasped in hers to manage it.
“You didn’t mind all the typical Billodeaux drama?”
“No. If Lorena hadn’t been injured, even the boat wreck would have been exciting. You know, I really don’t deserve this crown. The life jacket held her face out of the water. Anyone could have towed your sister to shore.” She made an attempt to reseat the circlet of leaves on Tom’s unruly curls.
“No, you keep it, a souvenir of how we celebrate the Fourth at Lorena Ranch.”
“Tom, are you ever going to start the engine?” Jude groused from the backseat.
“I think his engine is already revving,” Teddy chipped in making Annie laugh softly, but not in a mean way.
Tom ignored them and put the SUV in gear. He knew Alix was modest about her kicking skills and her looks. Today, he’d added courage to the list of qualities he loved about Alix Lindstrom.
Chapter Twelve
Digging into the omelet Alix had stuffed with sautéed vegetables from yesterday’s leftovers Tom sat fully dressed at the dining room table. He remembered Krayola’s orangutan comment all too well, took it to heart, and covered his chest hair with a green T-shirt, thinking he might already have turned Alix off by wearing his robe to breakfast. Maybe he should consider waxing like Brian Lightfoot.
After he dropped off his jabbering sisters last night, he’d hoped to sling a casual arm around Alix’s shoulders, but she’d gone to sleep slumped against the window on the far side of the car. Waking her in the parking garage for the walk across the street, he believed she truly was too groggy for any other kind of activity. He’d spent the night dreaming of her in that bikini minus the life jacket, at one point carrying him held close to her chest as she had Lorena, only his head wasn’t lolling on her elbow. He rested his cheek on one warm breast. Maybe embarrassing that he didn’t carry her, but the fantasy still worked for him.
“Try these. They’re an experiment. I washed off most of the spicy barbecue sauce and added green pepper and onion, a little egg and flour to hold them together. I’m calling them pulled pork patties.” Alix slid two disks of pan-browned meat onto his plate beside the half-eaten omelet. She seated herself at the place he’d set for her with coffee and juice waiting alongside a stack of whole wheat toast he’d made as his contribution.
Alex added milk liberally to her coffee and tried one of her patties. “Whoa, your dad’s sauce still packs a wallop.” Alix fanned her mouth.
“Yeah, it gets way down deep in the meat fibers. Using Dad’s hot sauce is a Billodeaux test of manhood. I can handle it. Besides, the sales of his sauces support Camp Love Letter. We can do good and show how tough we are all at the same time.”
Alix gifted him with her wide, wonderful smile and slid her meat patty onto his plate. She’d barely started to eat when Tom’s cell phone rang. He wiggled it from the pocket of his jeans and checked the number before answering. “Home,” he said.
“Is Lorena worse?” Alix asked.
> Tom held up a finger. He nodded a few times in response, though no one but Alix could see him. “Do I need to pick up anyone? Oh, not good. Can I bring Alix? Okay. I’ll be there by noon.” He disconnected. “Team meeting at the ranch.”
“When do we leave?” Alix shoveled up more of her breakfast and took a big swallow of juice. “Does the team usually have meetings at your dad’s place?”
“Not the Sinners. That’s just what my father calls a family conference where serious decisions are made and punishments are meted out. Sorry, I can’t take you along.”
“Sure, I understand. I’m not family. How is Lorena?”
Tom wasn’t entirely certain she did understand considering her crestfallen countenance. She appeared to be taking an unusual interest in the tower of toast as she glanced down.
“Believe me, you don’t want to be there. Lorena is still in the hospital under observation, but they think she’ll be fine. She’s complaining about the headache, having stitches in her hair, and whining over missing the fireworks. More seriously, Teddy is running a fever and checked into the same hospital. He has all these shunts and things in his body because of the spina bifida. An infection contracted by that dunk in the bayou could be serious, so better safe than sorry.”
“I like Teddy and hope he’s better soon. So who is being punished, for what, and how?” Alix inquired, revealing her keen perpetual interest in all things Billodeaux.
“If they were family members, I’d say Vince and Prince, but more likely, they won’t be allowed to participate in the dragon boat races again. When we were kids, the punishments usually consisted of mucking out stalls and clearing brush or having privileges taken away like driving or being allowed to use our laptops after we finished our homework. Whatever we hated most. Boy, did Stacy ever despise shoveling shit, or manure, as my mom would insist. Since Teddy couldn’t do a lot of the manual chores, he’d lose computer time and that hit him right where it hurt. He’s been trying to write fantasy novels since he turned ten.”