If Wishes Were Kisses: Six Beloved Americana Romances, a Collection (Small Town Swains)

by Pamela Morsi

  Glancing down at her children, Helga appeared momentarily hesitant to speak. She said something to the oldest in German and he immediately hustled the other two away toward the dock so that she could speak more privately. When the three were beyond hearing distance she turned back to answer the question.

  "It's Laron," she answered. "I'm frightened for Laron."

  A cold chill of fear quivered down Armand's back. "What has happened?" he asked.

  "Nothing I hope," she answered. "But I am afraid that something terrible might."

  "Tell me."

  She gave an uneasy glance toward Father Denis, Madame Landry, and Aida. "Are you aware that I have been allowing Monsieur Boudreau to visit me?" she asked nervously.

  Armand nodded.

  She swallowed, obviously embarrassed. "I have broken it off with him," she said. "I have . . . have no excuse for allowing it to continue as long as I did." She turned her apologetic gaze upon the priest. "But finally . . . finally I broke it off."

  "Laron told me, Madame," Armand answered. "He told me both about the past and that you had broken it off."

  She nodded, grateful. "It was because of the children," she said, her voice rife with self-derision. "It was not that I regained my good sense. I simply could not continue such a . . . such a sinful liaison in front of them. Not if I want to teach them right and goodness."

  "Amen!" Father Denis pronounced.

  "It is hard to teach a lesson one does not live," Madame Landry agreed.

  "It has been so terrible without him," Helga continued. "And I know he must feel the same, missing us, myself and the children."

  "He loves you very much," Armand told her honestly.

  Behind him Armand heard Father Denis tutting with disapproval.

  "Yes, I know. But love does not always make things right. Sometimes it is not enough to do that."

  Her eyes welled with tears, but she visibly stiffened her lip and raised her chin. "We cannot be together. I have made vows. I am still married."

  "God can forgive your sin," the priest proclaimed. "And as He counseled another caught in adultery, you must 'go and sin no more.'"

  "That will not be enough," she explained.

  Helga's expression was rife with misery, and grief choked her words. Aida moved closer and wrapped her arm around the woman's waist, offering what comfort she could.

  "He came by our place last week," she said. "He talked to the children, made them laugh again. I didn't go out to speak to him. I couldn't."

  Aida patted her with understanding.

  "He told Karl to give me a message," she continued. "He said that he was going to make it right. That he was going to make it right for us to be together once and for all."

  Armand's brow furrowed. "What can he mean?"

  She turned to Aida, clasping her hand. "You said that he has gone to the German coast."

  "That is what he told me," Aida answered. "The night we broke our betrothal he said he was going there. He said that he had business there."

  Helga nodded. "It is that business that concerns me."

  She turned to look at Armand, her tearful gaze full of fear. "I told Laron, long long ago, that the last I heard of my husband, he was in St. Charles Parish on the German coast."

  Aida's eyes widened. Madame Landry tutted with worry. Helga continued to look at Armand in anguish.

  "I am afraid," she whispered, as if fearing God Himself might hear. "I am afraid that he has gone there to kill my husband."

  Father Denis gasped and offered up a hasty prayer to the saints.

  Armand moved into action. "I must stop him," he said decisively. "I will follow him to the German coast and somehow I will stop him."

  "We must stop him," Helga corrected. "You cannot go alone. You will be a stranger there. You do not speak the language. You won't be able to ask questions. And even if you find Laron, he is not thinking as himself. It may take both of us to convince him that this is not the way."

  Armand nodded. He didn't like the idea of taking the woman out of the safety of Prairie l'Acadie, but he thought she might well be right. He did not know German words or German ways and he remembered how determined Laron had been, how certain and sure. If Laron had completely lost all sense of rightness it might take Helga herself to convince him murder was no answer.

  "Aida, take her children to my brother's house,"

  Armand ordered. "Tell them that we will return as soon as we can."

  "No," Orva interrupted. "Aida must go with you."

  Armand gave the old woman a puzzled look. Aida's expression was equally surprised.

  "It is not the thing to travel alone with this woman," Madame Landry said. "Aida, as your wife, must be there with you."

  "Wife?" Helga's question was rife with surprise. "I did not know you two had married."

  "We haven't yet," Armand said.

  "Then hurry up, old fat priest," Orva said, directing her words to Father Denis. "There is no time for dallying; they must find Laron before he does something he will regret all his life."

  "These two need not marry today," Father Denis declared. "They can marry when Armand returns," he promised. "Then it will be a fine wedding with a full Mass and flowers and family."

  "What if they do not return?" Orva asked. Her question cut raw at the moment.

  "I want to marry now!" Aida declared.

  Armand found himself unwilling to argue with her.

  "Aida will not slow you down," she continued. "And you may need her. If anyone is hurt or injured, she will be able to help. I would go with you myself, but I have duty here that I must attend."

  Father Denis might have protested, but he had learned from long experience that it was easier to give in to Madame Landry than to argue with her.

  The wedding ceremony on the steps of the church was brief and to the point. Armand promised to love and cherish. Aida promised to honor and obey. Madame Landry and Helga Shotz and her children served as witnesses. It was over before Armand had time to regret the haste.

  He gave her the briefest kiss on the cheek as they were pronounced man and wife and immediately turned to go.

  "We must hurry," he said. "If we push very hard we can make the mouth of the river by dark. Then into the east bayous and to the German coast by late tomorrow."

  "Leave the children here with me," Father Denis said. "I will take them up to your home, Armand. Your sister-in-law will care for them."

  "No," Orva disagreed. "They will stay with the Heberts. Laron's sister will look after them, do not worry."

  "Father Denis can take them to my brother's house," Armand said. "Felicite will be glad to watch them."

  The old woman shook her head. "Not this night," she said. "They will stay with Yvonne. Hurry now, go"

  "We have no boat," Armand said. "We cannot go anywhere before we find a boat."

  "You will take the skiff," Orva told him.

  "That old thing?" Armand's voice was incredulous. "We will be killed with the first wave of rough water."

  "It's neither as swift nor sure as a pirogue, but moves across the water with no great wake. I've learned many things sitting inside it. And on this trip there will be many lessons to learn."

  Laron Boudreau carefully lit the small driftwood fire on the sand-covered stretch of beach on Vermilion Bay. He was sober. As the fire blazed up he added more wood. It wouldn't be a good cooking fire until there were sufficient burning coals at its base. He eased his pot of fresh water near the edge. It would take time to get it boiling. He moved a few feet away and watched the rolling surf and colors of the late afternoon as the sun eased its way toward the sea.

  He'd been to the German coast. He had traveled the length of the river and set out along the coastal passages. In his tiny pirogue he'd faced the mighty waters of the gulf. At Grand Terre he'd headed back north up into the swamps and bayous that had been the province of pirates. Through the marshes called Barataria and the fiefdom of Jean Lafitte. He had found the New Orleans backwa
ters claimed by the Germans. But he had not found Helmut Shotz. And he had not done his deed. He had not killed the man who stood between him and the happiness of the woman and children that he loved.

  The place had been nothing like he'd thought it was going to be. Somehow he'd imagined it like Bayou Blonde. The people would be strange and foreign. The German coast would be dirty, ill-kept, and intrinsically wicked.

  It had not been that at all. It was wet bayou country, not nearly as good for cattle as his own desolate Prairie l'Acadie, but it was cropland. And it had been populated by farmers and fishermen. They dressed different and talked different, but were, in their lives, not so very different from him.

  They had a look about them that he had found oddly comforting. Neat and starched. The men in the familiar garb occasionally sported by Karl and little Jakob. The women in their pale, nearly colorless, staid dresses. Probably all wearing drawers, he thought to himself and smiled.

  It was not until now that he realized that what was so comforting, what was so familiar, was that they reminded him of Helga. Their faces, their hair, their sturdiness. It was their peculiar look. He had thought of it as Helga's look. He realized that it was the look of Germans.

  Only a few spoke a smattering of French, and that nearly indecipherable and liberally laced with English. Though the language barrier had been formidable, the people themselves had been generally open and welcoming. That is, until he'd mentioned the name of Helmut Shotz. Immediately he'd become suspect. It had taken only a short conversation to get the message clear. If he were a friend of Shotz, he was no friend of theirs.

  Helga's husband had come to the coast three years earlier. He had wintered with them, causing more than his share of trouble and grief. He'd taken up courting a wealthy old widow, they said.

  "He was courting a widow?" he'd asked, shocked. "The man is married."

  The farmer had shrugged. "His wife was not with him," he said. "We are Lutherans, you know. And divorce is legal in Louisiana."

  The widow, however, had seen through his fast talking and charming manners and sent him on his way. Shortly thereafter her life savings, safely tucked in her mattress tick, had been confirmed as missing.

  Shotz had been highly suspected, but nothing could be proved. One of the woman's kin asked to search his belongings. When he refused, the man tried anyway. Shotz attacked him, gutting him from throat to belly button in front of witnesses. Then he had fled.

  They found the money in his pack but he was gone.

  By spring there was word that he had been seen in Texas. He was tried in absentia, found guilty, and sentenced to death. There was a price on his head in the state of Louisiana. But no one had seen or heard of him again.

  Laron had asked for and been given directions to a couple of new German settlements where it was likely that Shotz might find refuge. He'd hurried out to the coast, Texas-bound. Now he stood on the gulf shore, staring out at the water to cross. Behind him was the mouth of the Vermilion River. His route back home. He could simply return home.

  Sighing thoughtfully he checked his pot of water. It was just beginning to boil. He was hungry. The thought of fresh boiled crabs had his mouth watering.

  A few feet from the fire was the catch of the day. He'd poled the pirogue into the shore early to avoid the pull of the outgoing tide. He'd been immediately rewarded by the sight of a huge tidal crab scurrying onto the beach intent on burying itself in the safety of the sand. Laron had chased the eager fellow down and tapped upon it lightly with his knuckles. The crab had frozen in fear and been easily plunked from the sand for supper. He'd dug up two others while gathering wood for the fire and the three were now impatiently awaiting their fate in a small bucket.

  Laron squatted in the sand to stare in the bucket, admiring his catch. They were all of similar size and color and for the life of him he couldn't tell the one who'd raced on the beach with him from the others. He noted that they were attempting escape. But success did not seem close within their grasp. One would use the others to climb up the side of the bucket. But when it would just get the barest claw grip on the edge, the second would hang upon it wanting to follow it up. It seemed likely that they would make it, likely that they would see freedom once more. Then the third crab would get a grip on the second and all three would fall back in the bucket and start all over.

  Laron watched this futile effort for several moments, curious. They were trapped. Victims of their fate. It was not that there was no escape, he realized. It was that they could not all escape. If one of them would sacrifice itself, become a ladder for the other two, then those two could get free.

  He watched and watched. But crabs weren't as smart as humans. Or perhaps they simply did not know love. A man who loved would sacrifice himself to free the others.

  Sacrifice. That is what he planned to do. To make a sacrifice of himself. Laron turned his gaze to the lowering sun in the western sky. Texas. He was going to Texas to kill a man. Not that he thought that killing Helmut Shotz was going to set them free, make them all happy. He'd thought that when he'd left Prairie l'Acadie, but he believed it no more. Days alone to ponder and question had made it clear. He could kill the man, but he would still not have what he wanted. Helga and the children could be free, but they could not be his. They could have the safety of the sand, but like the crab, he would remain trapped in the bucket.

  The world was not so lawless that he could commit murder and expect to get away free. Even a worthless man like Helmut Shotz was allowed his life. Taking it would not be permitted. Laron would be hunted down, caught, tried, executed. He could not expect the deed to be forgotten.

  Even if he managed to flee the scene, to get away to avoid the capture, even if he slunk back to the secluded safety of Prairie l'Acadie, he could never hide from such a secret.

  Helga would know. He would know. And eventually the children would have to know, too.

  The children, Karl, Elsa, and Jakob. Laron closed his eyes as he thought of them, yearned for them. Did a man love the children of his own loins more than he loved these? Laron could not imagine it.

  Helga wanted the children to grow up rightly, to learn to do good and to be good. She wanted to teach them the morals that would make their lives better. Teaching was done by words, but more forcefully by example. She and Laron had cast off their love for each other because it could not be shown within the sanctity of marriage. How much more wrong would it be to devalue the sanctity of life by killing a man who stood in their way?

  The children would see only great violence and great wrong in the people that they most loved. Their lives would be forever torn. Divided always in their hearts between the man who was a father to them and a murderer, and the man who fathered them and was murdered.

  Laron continued to gaze at the crabs.

  "Sacrifice." He whispered the word silently to himself.

  He had planned to make himself a sacrifice. Truly he could see no other option. Was it right or wrong? He no longer knew. But he did know that he would forever be alone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Aida Gaudet had never been more than a few miles from her home. This day, the day of her wedding, she was traveling to the very end of the Vermilion River, but this was no wondrous and exciting wedding journey. This was a dangerous and harrowing errand to keep a man from making a horrible mistake. Strangely she felt not the slightest fear. A peace had settled upon her as she'd seated herself on the flat bottom boards in the old worn cypress skiff. It was going to be all right.

  The day had been a long one. As evening approached it was difficult to remember that just this morning they had eaten the blueberry tart. Just this morning she had almost, but not quite lost her innocence. And just this morning, as she had insisted, Armand Sonnier had married her.

  Now she ran headlong and heedless with him and Madame Shotz in a race for Laron's honor and perhaps Monsieur Shotz's life.

  She glanced at Armand, standing at the back of the boat. His poling stick moved
with care and efficiency, being both propulsion and rudder. He was a scholar, she thought. But there was nothing of the sickly, studious fellow now. He was a man on a mission. A

  mission to save his friend. And he was as strong and ready and able as the task required. She felt proud to call him husband.

  The day had been fair and cool and the sun had shone brightly, but hadn't warmed the nip in the air. Armand, however, was drenched in sweat as he poled relentlessly, unwilling to allow the speed of the river alone to pull them downstream. They had made tremendously good time, he'd assured them. And now that they were low in the river, the evening tide was pulling them toward the sea in a very rapid pace.

  They had good cause to be afraid. The tiny, less than seaworthy skiff was all but flying over the top of the water. An immersed log or a jutting rock just below the surface could tip them into the water at any moment. And the nests of gators got thicker and more numerous as they approached the sea.

  But strangely she was not fearful. She was safe with Armand. She was safe with him, and sure. Anywhere that he chose to go, she would follow him there. Anyplace that he took her, she knew that he would give his life to protect her. And if the fates decreed this to be her last day on earth, then she would go to heaven at his side, content.

  It was a strange sensation, this newfound trust, this certainty. Was it merely that she had wed him? Or was it because she loved, truly loved this man? Perhaps it was a foolish, female fancy, but never had confidence and assurance filled her so fully. He had seen her, truly her, not just the outside but her silly thinking and her chipped tooth. He had seen her and he had not turned away. It was a warm, comforting feeling and one for which she was grateful.

  She glanced up at him again. She loved Armand Sonnier. He might not truly have wanted to marry her, but she determined that she would never give him cause to regret it.

  Across from her Helga Shotz anxiously scanned the river and the bank. Aida was fearful for Laron, because Laron was dear to her, but Helga loved Laron as she loved Armand. She tried to imagine what she might feel if it were he who was in such danger. What if it were Armand bent on ruining his life? The idea twisted inside her, churning like nausea. She reached over to take the German woman's hand and squeezed it comfortingly.