by Pamela Morsi
He bowed his head.
"Thank you, God," he whispered. "Thank you for my wife and my children. Thank you for all of this life you have given me. And thank you for Madame Landry who made me notice."
It was full dawn when the baby awakened and Jean Baptiste brought her to her mother to nurse.
"Jean Baptiste," she noted with concern, "you did not sleep at all and you were so ill earlier in the evening."
"Don't worry, it was only a passing thing, something I ate. I'm feeling much better," he assured her.
"You're still looking quite pale."
He shrugged and gestured toward the baby clinging greedily to her breast. "You two look very lovely."
Felicite blushed with pride.
The sound of a boat bumping against the dock captured their attention.
"Someone is here," Jean Baptiste said.
"Already? It's hardly morning."
"I'll see who it is and keep them at bay if I think I should," he said from the doorway, turning back to give her a teasing wink.
With all his running outside every few minutes through the night, he'd never bothered to close the door, and the curtains twirled lightly in the morning breeze.
"Poppa! Poppa!" He heard Gaston's voice before he saw him. Sure enough, Jacque Savoy was tying his pirogue at the dock. It was full to bursting with his three children, Madame Landry, and Tante Celeste.
"Monsieur Savoy says he heard the shots and that Mama has had the new baby and it's a girl," Gaston continued shouting.'
"Gaston has Pierre, now I have someone, too," Marie declared. "What's her name, Poppa? What's her name?"
His two oldest children had jumped from the pirogue and were running toward him. Jean Baptiste hurried to meet them. Gaston got there first and he grabbed the boy up and kissed him. He did the same for little Marie, delightedly informing her that yes indeed the new baby was a girl like her and that her name was Jeanette.
"Jeanette!" Marie exclaimed. "That's pretty."
"And so is she," Jean Baptiste answered. "Your mama is feeding her, but if you tiptoe in and are very quiet, she will let you have a look."
The two scrambled toward the house.
Jean Baptiste leaned down to take Pierre from Tante Celeste's arms and helped her and then Madame Landry up onto the cypress planking.
"We could hardly believe the child came so soon," Tante Celeste told him. "We just had to hurry and see."
"Go ahead," he urged her, and the old woman followed the children with the hope of seeing the newborn.
"Mighty bad stroke of luck," Jacque Savoy commented. "Taking Madame Landry upriver on just the night you was going to need her. Did you find some other woman to help you?"
"No," he answered. "My wife and I managed on our own."
The man shook his head and wandered off in the direction of the house.
Jean Baptiste propped young Pierre on his hip and turned unhappily to face Madame Landry. She was grinning broadly.
"You're looking a little pale this morning, Jean Baptiste. Could it be something that you ate?"
"What the devil was in that 'love charm'?" he asked.
She snorted inelegantly. "There is no such thing as a love charm. Folks think that there is, but it's just foolishness."
"You said it was a love charm," he pointed out.
"Oh no, I said that I wanted Armand to tell you that it was a love charm."
"You wanted Armand to lie to me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"So you would eat it," she said.
"You knew it would make me sick," he said.
She nodded. "I knew it would make you sick," she admitted. "Just miserable sick, not sick unto death."
"Why would you want me to be sick?" he asked.
"I knew that your wife would be delivering last night; all the signs were there. Once you ate my little surprise, you'd be too sick to go for help, but not so sick as to be no use at all."
"Let me understand this," he said, getting testy. "You knew my wife was to give birth last night and you purposely went upriver where I couldn't get you and fed me something to make me sick?"
The old woman was thoughtful for a long moment. "Yes," she agreed. "That's about right."
"Why?"
"That's how love charms work."
"You said there is no love charm."
Madame Landry gave him a long look and chuckled. "You're in love with her again, aren't you?"
Jean Baptiste didn't answer.
They had reached the porch and he heard his wife telling Tante Celeste about the night's events.
"It was the easiest labor I ever had," she was saying. "Not more than a couple of hours altogether and the baby just slipped right out. I didn't even tear at all."
He felt his lips pulling into a grin. He glanced toward Orva Landry, who was still gazing speculatively at him.
"Oh yes, Madame," he answered. "I am very much in love with her again."
It took two days to pole back up the Vermilion River to Prairie l'Acadie. Neither Armand nor Aida had cause to regret the time. They were together and it gave him ample opportunity to convince Laron and Helga that Armand's plan would work.
"The point is that he probably is dead," Armand told them. "Madame Landry obviously thinks that he is or she would not have taken to calling Helga the German widow. Madame Landry never does anything without purpose."
Armand's words were confident and certain. Aida felt sure that he had found the answer and that he would make it work out.
She gazed up at him, loving him.
They had tied the pirogue to the back of the skiff. While she and Helga sat in the middle, Armand and Laron on either side used their poles in unison to propel the little craft and its passengers back upstream.
They were going back together, together forever. She and Armand and, she trusted Armand enough to believe, Laron and Helga, too.
"A declaration of death is as legal and indisputable as a corpse in the churchyard," Armand told them. "More so, for the corpse could be misidentified. Once the paper is written up, signed, and filed, Helmut Shotz will be the deadest man in Louisiana."
Clearly the two lovers were trying not to be overly hopeful. They wanted to believe, but were too frightened of the potential for disappointment.
"You wanted to kill him, Laron," Armand said. "You cannot. Even if you were to find him, you are not the type to take another man's life. Well, as your friend, I want to kill him, too. And unlike you, I may kill him with impunity, no knife or bullet required."
Aida felt pride swell up inside her. A man need not be big and forceful and dangerous to protect his family, to help his friends. If a man was smart enough and used his good sense and the knowledge he'd gained in the world, he could be as effective as the most able and valiant fighter.
"As judge appointed to this parish," he explained to them. "I can honor or disallow contracts. I can probate wills. I can rule on disputes of property or violence. And I can certainly declare one missing German dead. I need only to inscribe the appropriate papers and send them by messenger to the office of parish governance in New Orleans."
Laron and Helga glanced at each other, not speaking. It was as if both were holding their breath.
"Once that is done, Helmut Shotz will officially be as dead to us as he truly is."
Laron reached over to take Helga's hand. She looked near tears, but she raised her chin bravely to ask Armand the question.
"What if he is not dead? What if he were to return here?"
Armand's tone was tender, but his words were sure. "Then we shall take him into custody and send him down the river to the German coast to be executed."
"But he would be alive again," Laron pointed out.
"Not long enough to even bother to change the paperwork," Armand assured him.
The men looked at each other, silently assessing. Aida remembered what people had said of the two as boys when they got into trouble. When Laron couldn't bust them out, Arm
and would talk them out.
Slowly, so slowly, Laron began to nod his head.
"Do it, Armand," he said finally.
Aida watched the grin spread across her husband's face. "Once we've declared him dead," Armand continued, "then all of his property becomes yours,
Helga, free and clear. You can remarry and your children can be adopted by your new husband."
"If you want to," Laron pointed out, his mood now teasing. "You can still reject me like any woman anywhere."
The look in her eyes said that she would not.
"Will . . ." Helga hesitated, worried. "Will Laron's family accept this, accept us?"
"My family loves me," Laron told her quickly. "Because I love you and the children, they will also."
"And the entire community will accept you once Father Denis has given you his blessing."
Father Denis. Aida felt a nervous flutter herself. The old man was difficult and a stickler. It would be very hard to convince him to do anything that he thought might be remotely in the wrong.
"The old priest is the rub," Laron said, voicing Aida's own concern and shaking his head. "How will you ever get Father Denis to bless us? To marry us?"
Armand's expression turned sly. "I have a plan," he assured them. "Oh yes, I have a plan."
Chapter Twenty-One
Armand had not been able to talk with Father Denis immediately upon their return. Facing old Jesper Gaudet's wrath at not being present at the wedding of his only daughter and learning that he had a new niece took up most of the first day back.
There were almost as many congratulations for him and Aida as for Jean Baptiste and Felicite.
"You sly devil” his brother said to him. "All these last weeks every time I'd mention that woman's name, you'd talk like you thought she was dumb as a post and bow-legged besides. Now I find out you were secretly stealing her away from Laron."
"There was nothing between us before their engagement was broken," Armand assured him.
Jean Baptiste grinned. "Nothing spoken I am certain. But I've known you too long, my brother. You do nothing on impulse. For you, things are always thought through."
Armand found that he couldn't deny that.
The two were standing together near the barn, surveying what they had on hand of timber and brick, pulleys and building materials. Jesper Gaudet had looked horrified when Aida had suggested that perhaps they live with him. Both she and Armand had thought the old man would be loath to allow his only child to move from home and leave him to fend for himself. To their surprise he indicated with absolute conviction that the newlyweds should have a separate house.
"I only wish for you and Aida," Jean Baptiste told him, "all the happiness that Felicite and I have."
His brother looked at him askance.
"You are happy with your marriage?"
Jean Baptiste looked momentarily chagrined. "I am very happy," he said. "You have worried about me, haven't you?"
Armand had no desire to mention the sleepless nights, the anxious days, and the hours of planning and scheming that he had been through. He simply nodded.
Jean Baptiste lowered his head guiltily. "Armand, the only piece of wisdom I can offer you about marriage is that it is not a line from here to happily ever after or from here to death do us part."
His brother was thoughtful for a moment, and then as if noticing it for the first time he held up the thick piece of braided hemp in his hands.
"Marriage is not a line at all," he said. "It's a series of loops or coils like the ones in this rope. At the top is total bliss, at the bottom abject misery. Sometimes you are high on the loop and sometimes low. Most of your life you are somewhere in between. At times you know how happy you are and believe that it must go on that way forever. At others you may think that you cannot bear the pain any longer and want to throw the coil away completely. What you must remember is that the loops are never ending. When you are low, so low you are agonizing, you must simply have faith that the coils head upward next toward happiness once more."
It seemed to Armand later that the coils he was living through these days were very tightly wound. One moment he was happy and jubilant, the next deep in despair.
That night he had made love to his wife in a real bed for the first time. It was Aida's own girlhood bed, laid with fresh cotton sheets and strewn with sweet herbs, and one candle glowed from the bedside.
They had reached the high desperate peak at the same instant and had thrown themselves together from that precipice. It had been exquisite. Afterward, however, he had lain awake worried.
"Armand," she'd said sleepily beside him. "What is wrong?"
"Nothing," he assured her.
"It is something. Is it about Laron and Helga?"
He turned to her and pulled her into his arms. "No, my love. I was thinking about my brother."
"Jean Baptiste?" Her expression was curious. "He seems very happy about the baby."
"Yes, he is," Armand told her.
He was quiet for a long time, looking into her eyes, wanting, hoping.
"Do you mind very much that you are married to me?" he asked.
She lowered her eyes, afraid to face him. "No, Armand, I am happy about it."
With one finger he raised her chin, not allowing her gaze to evade him.
"Do you love him still?"
Her brow furrowed momentarily. "Laron? No, I told you. I did not love him at all."
"Not Laron, Jean Baptiste."
"Jean Baptiste?"
"Yes, Jean Baptiste."
Her brow furrowed in incredulity. "Your brother, Jean Baptiste?"
"We know no other."
Aida sat up in bed, pulling the sheet up to cover her nakedness, and stared at her husband in disbelief.
"You think that I loved your brother?"
"I know that you loved him," Armand said. "I cannot and will not ask you to change the past. But what I must know is do you love him still?"
Aida continued to stare at him.
"You see, Madame Landry warned me that my careless words to Laron were going to cause him to turn from you. It was only natural that you would fix your choice on another man. Jean Baptiste was there and he was so smitten with you. It would have been hard for you to resist that."
"You thought I would break up your brother's marriage?" Her tone was not pleasant.
"At first that's what I thought," he said. "Before I really knew you. I know now that of course you would never have done that. The two of you would have just been unrequited lovers. In anguish from afar."
Aida maintained her silence.
"But when we ate the love charm, I became really frightened. If you were under the spell of the charm and were to see Jean Baptiste, nothing might stop you from being together. So I ... so I purposely drew you to me and kissed you. I must not have eaten any of the charm. I felt nothing but the . . . the desire that I have always had for you. I maneuvered you into this marriage and I will try to make you happy. But I must know. Do you still love him?"
Aida got up out of the bed. She didn't even bother to drag the sheet with her. Stark naked she stood in the room and gazed around as if looking for something.
"I wondered where this had gotten to," she said as she crossed the floor to pick up the wooden battoir with which she did the wash.
She turned and raised it high over her head. To Armand's total surprise she brought it down in fury, aimed right at the most vulnerable part of him.
"Aida!" he hollered, jumping out of range and then out the other side of the bed.
"You idiot! You fool! You . . . you ... I can't think of anything bad enough to call you!"
She raced to the other side of the bed and swung the battoir at him once more. Thankfully missing again.
"I have always thought you were so smart, so smart," she snarled at him angrily. "But you are the most stupid, stupid man that I have ever met in my life."
She swung at him again. Armand was backed completely in the corner and fr
antically tried to appeal to her reason.
"Aida, please, put down your weapon and we'll talk."
"Talk! I never want to talk to you again, Armand Sonnier. I have always known that I am not as smart as you. But you always treated me as completely without sense at all. And this . . . this just proves that you believe it. I would not, ever, never, not in a million years fall in love with a man who was already married. That is the most stupid idea that any woman ever had and I would not have it. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, yes, my darling. Please put down the bat, my darling."
"And as for you maneuvering me into this marriage, you haven't enough sense," she declared. "I maneuvered you! I wasn't affected by that love charm, either. I knew I wanted you and when you kissed me and caressed me, I knew that if I were compromised you would have to marry me."
She ground the words out through clenched teeth.
"When you managed to restrain yourself, I wasn't disappointed just because I wanted you. I was afraid that you might get away. So I insisted that I was compromised. And I insisted that I must be married."
She threw the battoir from her. It clattered along the floor. Her fury and anger turned to other emotion as her beautiful eyes welled with tears.
"You have never thought me anything but some silly decorative flower. I have value beyond my appearance. I am ... I am a flowering herb. I have beauty, but I have power, too. I loved you and I wanted you. When I broke my engagement to Laron, Armand, it was for you."
"Aida," he whispered and pulled her into his arms. "Aida, I have loved you all my life. Even when you were affianced to my best friend, I loved you. I spoke to you as if you were silly and treated you as if I didn't care for you because I was trying not to. I was trying not to love you as I always have."
"I love you, Armand," she whispered against him. "In all my life, the only man I have ever loved is you."
The next morning as he headed down to the church to speak with Father Denis, Armand recalled his wife's sweet words and they brought a smile of satisfaction to his lips.
She loved him. He loved her. Now all that was to be done was to make things right for Helga and Laron.
"I cannot do it," Father Denis stated flatly.