Under the Bayou Moon

by Valerie Fraser Luesse

  As the alligator took its position on the fallen tree, drinking in the moon’s muted light, a horror followed the bubbles to the surface of the water. Raphe saw it and remembered, with a familiar sickness, the many bodies he had pulled out of the water after the great storm. And here was another one, facedown in the bayou, a frayed rope tied around one leg. The alligator had freed it from its anchor down below. Now it floated in these waters, a silent accusation demanding justice for a son betrayed by a father’s greed.

  FORTY-NINE

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING IN BATON ROUGE, Lura Poteet put through a call to the senator. As was her custom, she listened in. The boy had been found by a Cajun fisherman who couldn’t remember the way back to whatever backwoods swamp Boone had landed in but had delivered the body—and the strange knife buried in it—to the local deputies. The parish sheriff wished to express his deepest regrets.

  Lura disconnected from the line before the call ended. She knew the senator would summon her soon. And he did.

  “Lura,” he said as she entered his office, “they found Boone.”

  “Was it as you expected, Senator?”

  “It was. I need you to plan the funeral. And make it nice.”

  “Of course. Do you anticipate any . . . repercussions?”

  “No. Been in the water too long for much evidence. For all anybody knows, that knife belongs to the preacher. Luetrell dead, preacher locked up for Boone—that takes care o’ that. And I thank you, Lura, for all your help.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lura quickly removed herself from the senator’s office and prepared to make arrangements for the boy. She was about to dial the funeral home when she saw the senator’s private line light up. Lifting her receiver, she pressed the button and listened.

  “Loyal as she can be . . . Served me well . . . Just unfortunate that she knows too much . . .”

  As always, Lura heard all she needed to know and hung up as soon as the call ended. She sat motionless at her desk, considering her options. Hubris was the great weakness of powerful men. Having paid you to do their bidding, they convinced themselves over time that you served them out of love and devotion, out of admiration for their wisdom and strength, when, in fact, it was their money and the power they shed that made you stay. Ego blinded them to the transactional nature of it all.

  Lura wasn’t blinded by anything. She had the combination to the senator’s safe and the ability to duplicate his signature. With those two in hand, she didn’t need the man himself any more than he now needed her. As she had done so many times before, she would make her exit and close the door behind her.

  FIFTY

  ELLIE CHANGED INTO THE DRESS RAPHE had brought her from home and stripped the bed where they had slept at Doc’s. She looked out the window and saw Raphe and Remy readying the boat.

  Both Doc and Florence, she knew, had been busy coming up with excuses to keep her with them. Raphe and Remy, who normally would be eager to get home, had been surprisingly compliant. Maybe it had something to do with Remy’s secret.

  Whatever their reasons, she hadn’t exactly fought them on it. The truth was, Ellie dreaded returning to the cabin, and that made her sadder than anything. It was her home. Before that, it had been Raphe’s and Remy’s. But instead of picturing the three of them together around the table, she kept seeing Gig Luetrell. Would it be the same with the bayou? Would she see the birds and the turtles in the here and now, or would memory forever carry her back to the eerie sight of an alligator speeding toward the sound of evil thrashing in the water?

  She would find out soon enough. They had been at Doc’s since Saturday night, and now it was Thursday morning. Enough. “Back your ears and get on with it,” Mama Jean would say.

  “How are you, dear?” Florence came into the bedroom and joined her at the window.

  “I don’t have enough merci’s to cover all you and Doc have done for us,” Ellie said.

  “You don’t have to thank us. We’ve been happy to have y’all—brought a little life into this quiet old house.”

  “I’ll take your sheets home and wash them. I’ll get the ones from Remy’s room too, and I can bring them with me to the dance hall Sunday morning if that’s alright. Reckon we’ll be having church there for a while.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. I’ll pitch those sheets in the washing machine when I get good and ready. Nobody needs them anytime soon. Come and sit with me, honey.”

  Ellie sat next to Florence on the edge of the bed.

  “I can’t begin to imagine the trauma you’ve been through, Ellie, but setting that aside, I doubt anybody in Bernadette understands your situation like I do.”

  “My situation?”

  Florence laid her hand over Ellie’s. “You fell in love with a man who not only comes from a different place than you but from a whole different world. You’re separated from your family. You’re living in the middle of a bayou, paddling a boat instead of driving a car, doing without electricity and running water.”

  Ellie smiled. “I see your point. But I love my life with Raphe.”

  “I know you do. I love my life with Doc. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.” Florence lifted Ellie’s hand and turned it over. “I’d be willing to bet you use a lot more hand cream than you used to. Emmett keeps a big supply of it—his wife makes sure of that. A washboard is rough on your hands.”

  “Yes,” Ellie said as Florence gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “It certainly is. But it’s not like I had a houseful of servants in Alabama. We had to work hard there too.”

  “I know. But the bayou is different. You’ve probably built muscles you didn’t even know you had, right?”

  Ellie rubbed her upper arm and nodded.

  “Don’t be afraid to let Raphe know when it’s just too much for you, Ellie. He loves you. He wants to make you as happy as you want to make him. But he can’t read your mind. When you need him to make things easier for you, just say so. I believe he’ll do it.”

  Ellie felt the tears coming. “Thank you, Florence,” she whispered as they hugged each other. “Could you hold on to me for just a minute?”

  “I won’t let go, honey,” Florence said. “I’ll hold on to you as long as you need me to.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  ELLIE TURNED HER FACE TO THE SUN and felt the warm river breeze as Raphe steered the boat toward home. A pat on her arm made her open her eyes to see Remy, a concerned frown on his face, looking up at her. “Are you going to sleep again, M’Ellie?”

  She smiled and put her arms around him. “No, sweetie. I’m just enjoying the sun.”

  They weren’t even a quarter mile from Doc’s when Raphe turned the boat down a channel Ellie had never seen before, one just off the lower Atchafalaya. “Making a stop on the way?” she asked him.

  “It won’t take long,” he said.

  Remy was suddenly grinning ear to ear.

  “What are y’all up to?” Ellie asked.

  Raphe put a finger over his lips. “Dis pas rien, Remy.”

  “Say nothing about what?” Ellie smiled at her husband. “Watch yourself—my French is getting better.”

  Raphe pulled up to a dock in front of the prettiest river cabin Ellie had ever seen. It was made of cypress, with a deep porch and tall, shuttered windows across the front, a steep metal roof, and three gables. It sat on heavy pilings five or six feet tall.

  “Who lives here, Raphe?” Ellie asked him.

  “Go ahead, Remy, before you explode,” Raphe said.

  “We do!” Remy shouted. “C’mon, M’Ellie, let’s go see it! I’m going upstairs!”

  Ellie was too overwhelmed to speak. Remy was already scampering up the dock to the porch as Raphe helped her out of the boat.

  “Raphe, what is this?” They were standing together at the foot of the steps.

  He held her face in his hands and kissed her. “It’s a fresh start, Juliet.”

  He put an arm around her and guided her up the steps to the porch lined with rocking chai
rs. A swing was hanging at one end, the hammock Heywood had given Raphe at the other. Ellie turned and looked out at a beautiful watery view, dotted with cypress trees yet wide and open, making it seem part bayou, part river.

  Raphe opened the front door. “I think I’m supposed to carry you over the threshold,” he said, picking Ellie up and carrying her inside.

  The first floor was open. To the far left was a farm table and chairs, with a large kitchen filling a whole rear quarter of the house. To the right was a real living room with a sofa and two easy chairs clustered around the fireplace. A landing to the right of it led upstairs.

  Raphe guided her down a short corridor that ran between the living room and kitchen and opened a door on the right. Ellie gasped and grabbed his arm. There stood a full bathroom with indoor plumbing. Before she could take it all in, he led her into the kitchen, where she could see a gas stove and hear the hum of an electric icebox. Instead of a pump at the sink, there was a modern faucet.

  “Raphe, it’s—it’s just beautiful,” she managed to say.

  “Hold on,” he said, leading her into a spacious bedroom with a fireplace and tall windows that overlooked a creek running along the back of the house.

  Ellie raised a window and closed her eyes, listening to the swift-flowing creek water and the plop of frogs, the birdsong and crickets.

  Raphe put his arms around her waist. “Don’t get lost in the creek music. I have one more thing to show you.”

  She followed him out to a back porch, where, in all its glory, stood a washing machine.

  Ellie put her arms around the basin of the heavy machine. “Raphe,” she said, “I want to be the mother of your children.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Remy was fishing off the dock while Raphe and Ellie sat in the swing on their new front porch.

  “I still can’t believe this is ours,” Ellie said.

  “You aren’t angry with me for buying it without showing you first?”

  “Of course not. You bought it to give me things I didn’t even know I wanted. But what about you?”

  “It’s the same for me. When Doc showed it to me, I saw so much I didn’t even know I was missing.”

  “What about the distance from Kitty and Footsie?”

  “There’s a shallow cut-through from the creek to a main channel back into the bayou. Remy could handle it fine. And then in the other direction, we’re only a few minutes from Doc and Florence.”

  “Are you sure we can afford it?”

  “We can,” Raphe said, watching Remy cast his line toward a cypress stump. “I haven’t been fair to you, Juliet.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true. I should’ve done this at the beginning. I never should’ve had you scrubbing clothes on a washboard or living in a house with no plumbing or electricity. What was I working all those long days in Morgan City for if not to give you and Remy a good home?”

  “Raphe, it’s not like I lived in a castle in Alabama,” she said with a smile. “We didn’t get electricity till the Army built a plant near our farm, and we didn’t get indoor plumbing till after the war.”

  “I should’ve given you the best I could, and I didn’t,” he insisted. “I didn’t do it because I couldn’t let go.”

  “Of what?”

  “My family.”

  Ellie kissed him on the cheek. “Nobody wants to let go of their family, Raphe. I don’t fault you for that. You grew up in that cabin and—”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I guess I just assumed . . .”

  “No, the place where I grew up got washed away in the storm. So did every other cabin in my family except for the one my oldest brother built when he married. That’s the cabin we’ve been living in. That and my grandfather’s pirogue—those were the only pieces of them, of all of them, I had left. And I guess I just couldn’t let it go. Can you forgive me?”

  Ellie put her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. “Nothing to forgive. But what changed your mind?”

  Raphe ran his fingers through her hair. “Doc. He made me see how hard it would be for you to go back to the cabin after everything that happened there. How hard it might’ve been all along. I guess after the storm—losing everything like that—maybe I just didn’t want to have anything to lose ever again.”

  “You know I’d be happy anywhere with you.” Ellie wanted to make him laugh. “Anywhere with you and that washing machine.”

  He was smiling at last. “Gold digger.”

  “I’m gonna clean out your pockets, mister. Oh, look—Remy got one.”

  They watched as Remy reeled in a big catfish, then sat quietly rocking in the swing.

  “Raphe—do you think it’s possible for a dream to be a vision?”

  “I imagine so. Why?”

  “I had a lot of strange dreams at Doc’s. Some of them were just the medicine. But there was this one I can’t shake.”

  “Did it scare you?”

  “No, just the opposite. It sort of hopped around. One minute I was at the school with Gabby and Bonita, and then I was at Tante Dodo’s and she was teaching me to cook, but then I turned around and all the older girls from school were there too. I saw you and Lawyer playing music in my classroom, and then I saw five boys—two white and three colored—standing in a pirogue, holding accordions and fiddles.”

  “What is it saying to you?”

  “That children can learn in so many ways. That I’m not the only one who can teach them. Lawyer makes his own accordions. So many of you play music. Tante Dodo has the whole history of your people in her heart and in her hands when she cooks. Why not share it? Why not share every bit of it, Raphe—with all the children?”

  “I think you’re about to put the bayou to work,” he said, bending down to kiss her. “And I think it’s a wonderful thing, your vision.”

  They looked out to see Remy smack himself on the head and reel in his line.

  “Guess that one got away,” Ellie said. They listened to the early evening call of cicadas as the sun began to set. “I should start supper.”

  “I’ll cook,” he said. “You rest.” The squeaking of chains as they rocked back and forth added to the lazy river sounds of another day slowly fading into night.

  “Raphe,” she said, “do you think we might do something about Remy—something official? Should we adopt him and make it clear once and for all that he’s ours, that he has a home?”

  “You would do this?”

  “I would do this.”

  “D’accord.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  A LAZY SATURDAY MORNING found Ellie reading in her porch swing when she heard the familiar chug of the Whirlygig. Three weeks had gone by since Ellie and Raphe moved into their new cabin, and they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Heywood. Now here he was. Raphe was coming out of the house to join Ellie when Heywood climbed out of his boat, tucked what looked like a newspaper and a bright yellow envelope under his arm, and offered his hand to Gabby. They made their way to the front porch.

  “It’s about time y’all turned up.” Ellie smiled as she and Raphe greeted them. “Pull up some rocking chairs. Can I get you anything?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Broussard, we dare not tarry,” Heywood said as he pulled up two chairs and held Gabby’s for her before sitting down next to her.

  She grinned and gave him a nudge with her elbow. “He means we can’t stay.”

  “Brought you something.” Heywood handed Raphe the newspaper.

  Raphe sat down with Ellie in the swing as they read the paper together. The whole front page was a tribute to the late Senator Roy Strahan, killed by an unidentified shooter using the senator’s own gun at his fishing camp on the Atchafalaya. The state police had no leads. The senator’s funeral and that of his late son were arranged by his longtime secretary, who was—Ellie read the last part out loud—“now on a leave of absence from the statehouse as she copes with her grief.”

  �
��That’s so strange,” she said. “All of them gone—the senator, Boone, Luetrell, and now this secretary.”

  “Read the tiny little item at the bottom of the second page,” Heywood prompted.

  Ellie turned the page and read the headline: “‘Evangelist Freed, Charges Dropped.’”

  “Brother Lester’s out of jail?” Raphe said.

  Heywood nodded. “Doc and Leo helped get him released. Once Ellie identified the knife that killed Boone, they had no reason to keep the preacher in jail, especially without that senator around to try and pin it on him.”

  “Who do you think killed the senator?” Raphe asked.

  “Bet you my good pair o’ shoes it was that secretary,” Gabby said.

  “And why is that?” Heywood smiled at her.

  “Any woman that’s got to put up with a man’s ‘do this, do that’ all day long’s bound to wanna kill him.”

  “I shall keep that in mind, ma femme, and sleep with one eye open,” Heywood said.

  “Wait—what?” Ellie said.

  Gabby held up her left hand so Ellie could see the ring. “We went and got married in New Orleans last weekend.”

  Ellie squealed as she jumped up and hugged them both.

  “Congratulations, mon ami.” Raphe smiled and shook Heywood’s hand.

  “There’s just one thing that worries me, Heywood.” Ellie winked at Gabby. “How did Claudette take it?”

  “Poor thing was crushed, utterly crushed,” Heywood replied. “Said she was leaving Louisiana, never to return.”

  Ellie shook her head. “Well, I for one won’t miss her. That girl couldn’t carry on a conversation if her life depended on it. But what’s got y’all in such a hurry that you can’t stay? Raphe’s making gumbo.”