T
hey watched the sun come up. The early boat traffic eased back and forth on the Teche. A trail of pirogues, each with someone wielding the oar at one end, took children to school. With the ease of long practice, the kids held their places, single file, in the middle of the narrow wooden craft. High voices carried on air barely warm before the hot day to come.
Annie sat close to Max on a slab of rock. He leaned forward, his forearms braced on his knees, and she looked at his black hair, ruffled by a breeze, and the breadth of his shoulders. Max had become familiar to her but not someone she could take for granted.
“Sooner or later we’re going to have to get more sleep,” he said. “We can’t make it on a couple of hours.”
“You’re right.”
“Making love to you is unbelievable.”
She flushed. “Do I say, ‘thank you,’ or, ‘ditto’?”
He laughed and looked at her over his shoulder, squinting one eye against the heightening sun. “Both,” he said. “Then I’ll say both and we can go around and around.”
“As long as we use every hour in bed the way we did last night, we won’t get more sleep,” Annie pointed out. “But it’s okay with me.” It was so okay. And she was so troubled and afraid that what they’d found together could be stolen away.
“You were the one who wanted to be out here before sunup,” he pointed out.
She said, “Yes, and I’m glad. I’ve got a lot to say to you, Max, and I wanted to be outside where I feel free, not in my apartment. And I think we should go to the rectory to support Reb and Marc when they talk to Cyrus about Lee this morning.”
He deliberately avoided mentioning that he would leave her later in the day to be present at Lee’s autopsy. So far he hadn’t told Annie about the mark he and Reb had found while examining the body. If it meant nothing, why make what was already awful even worse?
“Would you mind if we do that?” she said. “Go to the rectory, I mean?”
“No. I’ll be glad to go.” The only peace he’d found in weeks had been in Annie’s arms. He turned back to the bayou and blew into a fist, attempting to take his mind off southerly parts that wanted Annie in his arms again—for a start.
“I told you what I saw,” Annie said. “Or thought I saw in my nightmares.”
That snapped his moment of bliss. “Yes.”
“I didn’t lie. It was true.”
“I know you aren’t a liar. I’m sorry I blew the way I did when you first told me about it.”
Annie set a hand on his back. “You asked a good question. You wanted to know how I could imagine things that had been real parts of your life. The burnings. The names. I can’t explain the names at all. I’ve thought about it and I think it’s partly coincidence. I had a bad experience with fire. I had horrible dreams afterwards, and I’d wake up still seein’ the same scenes, but they went away in time. Then they started again a month or so ago, but I don’t know why.”
“Put it behind you if you can.” Max wanted to. If he could, he’d never think about any of it ever again.
“One night in St. Cécil’s I thought I saw a man in a hood.”
Max swung to look at her. “What night? What man?”
“Just a night some time back when I couldn’t sleep. I took a walk and ended up at the church. I felt safe there. But I had a nightmare. And I saw a man in a hood. I think I did.”
“Lil saw a man in a hood rushing her car. Are you sure you haven’t muddled that in with your own story?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I expected that. No, I didn’t get anything muddled. I saw the same thing again. The night we argued and you left. I went through to the back of the apartment and looked out the window. I was looking for you. I saw your car drive out of the alley, then, just for a moment, I saw a man wearing a hooded jacket of some kind. He was hunched over and he hurried past the gate. You left the gate open.”
“Because I was too angry to think straight,” Max said, searching his memory for anything he might have seen when he was getting into his car that night. “So this person was in the alley while I was with you. That makes a whole lot of sense.”
“It doesn’t make any, but I’ve wanted to tell you, that’s all.”
“You should. And we should tell Spike,” Max said. “Today, I should think. I like him, y’know. A lot. I’m still not sure where I stand with him. He behaves as if he trusts me but puts me on warning from time to time.”
“Spike’s a good man and I’m sure he knows you are, too. Look what he’s got on his hands? And this is a little place with a small law enforcement department.”
“Yeah,” Max said. “I think he’d be just as happy if all he had to think about was speeding tickets.”
Annie laughed. “He used to be a cop in New Iberia until he fell out with his boss for bein’ too eager and showing everyone else up. That kind of puts a hole in your theory.”
She was right but he only gave her the pleasure of seeing him shrug.
Along the far bank of the bayou, sun rays reached what was left of the night’s fog and turned into faint, gold strokes. Water hyacinth bobbed on the surface and one patch moved faster than the rest where it probably rested on the back of an alligator in transit.
“I’ve had a more checkered life than you know,” Annie said.
Max heard the complete strangeness of her voice and sucked in his belly. “You don’t have to tell me anything that makes you uncomfortable. We were all kids, and we all got into little scrapes.”
“I want to tell you about things that changed me. In a way they were helping me get where I am today. Right here, I mean, with you. And in Toussaint. You need to know.”
“Whatever you say.” But he wished she didn’t sound resigned, as if he would disapprove.
“I think I’d forgotten how to dream,” she began. “Or forgotten how to get started on a dream, maybe. In a way everything started ten years ago, beside this bayou only up near St. Martinville. If I hadn’t kept a date with Martin Samuel, nothing would be the same as it is today—for me—except for the much earlier stuff with Bobby.”
Annie heard children on the water again, and felt herself slip away a little. She could tell Max now, without picking her words, just flat out say it the way it was ten years ago.
He was late. That probably meant he wasn’t coming.
There she went again, being negative. Of course Martin would come for their date.
A fluttering in her belly felt familiar—and it didn’t feel bad. How long was it since she’d last known she didn’t feel bad? If the fluttering wasn’t a dream (now and again she did have a sort of fantasy sensation where she saw colors in her head) it could be something to do with hope. Whatever it was, she’d take it.
The bayou was low and she sat on the bleached knee of a worn-down cypress tree. Scummy pea-green water had retreated enough to leave the stump all but dry at the base and from there she studied the way the water gently heaved. Annie had lived in Louisiana all her life, in St. Martinville, St Martin’s Parish precisely, and her mama said they hadn’t had such a long dry patch since Annie was a skinny little girl.
Didn’t feel natural.
Most things didn’t feel natural.
Sure was hot enough. Her cotton dress stuck to the skin on her back and sweat drizzled down the sides of her face. She jumped at the sound of a splash and watched a fat, white nutria pulling its thick-tailed body out of the water. A time was when she would have tried her hand at catching the tasty rat for dinner. Her mother made the best nutria pie in the parish.
Today she wanted to look decent more than she wanted to see her mother smile, and if that was mean, then so be it. She really wanted to look pretty. Time came when a girl had to look out for her own needs.
Maybe he wouldn’t come after all.
Until three weeks ago, Annie hadn’t had a plain old date since the third year in high school when she got pregnant and had to find a job. She didn’t like to think about all that. Her little girl had been born too early and her lungs hadn’t been properly developed. They couldn’t keep her alive.
That was then, almost five years earlier, and this was now. She wanted to start over. All because of a pair of kind eyes looking at her over beer froth on the top of a glass, and the way a man put the glass down so slowly, never glancing away, Annie thought she might be coming alive again. He was to meet her here today. At first she wouldn’t believe he had actually known her before she’d seen him at Petunia’s Gumbo in town. But he had. Martin Samuel reminded her how they’d exchanged glances at a library in Lafayette six months earlier.
Hoo mama,
how a little thing could change your life. Annie took classes at the junior college, traveled there three evenings a week because she was going to make something of herself. She had her GED, but now she needed real qualifications to work her way up from boxing cakes at a local factory. She wanted to be a cook. People looked up to a good cook and Annie just knew she’d always have a desirable job if she could run a kitchen. Could be one day she’d have her own place—something like Pappy’s Dance Hall down by Toussaint.
Maybe she’d call it Annie’s Dance Hall. Best eats and best music around.
In that library she’d sat across from Martin. Just once. When he mentioned the occasion, she recalled seeing him and thinking he was one of the nicest-looking men she’d ever seen. But they hadn’t met again until three weeks ago. Martin said he’d been looking for her. How he had found her, she couldn’t guess. They’d had four dates and today would be the fifth. Why not ask him how he had been clever enough to search her out?
Clouds slid over the sun and the trees threw darker shadows on the water. Faint nets of shading cast by mossy beards hovered between reflected branches.
“You givin’ up on me, Annie Duhon?”
She smiled and looked at him over her shoulder. “What makes you think you’ve been on my mind at all?” Warmth gave her a little giddy feeling, warmth from being happy.
“Oh, don’t you be coy with me, young lady. What you doin’ here, sittin’ on that stump, if you aren’t waiting for me?” He walked toward her and showed no sign of concern at the damp ground pushing up around his shoes. “Answer me that, girl. And remember, tell the truth and shame the devil.”
Annie laughed. He was one of those tall, rangy Cajun men. Black hair, black eyes, olive skin and too appealing to be healthy—for a woman concentrating on getting to be a real good cook and changing her life.
He drew close, bent over and put his big hands on his knees. “I do believe this is the best view I’ve ever had of you,” he said, not smiling anymore. “You’re a lovely woman, Annie, with the nicest smile I ever did see. Everything else about you is nice, too.”
Annie felt her cheeks get red. She turned her head away from him and remembered her mother’s warning. “Don’t you ever forget how a sweet-talkin’ boy got you pregnant and cost you more than any girl should have to pay. This time it’s a man and the only difference between a boy and a man is a man is bigger, stronger and slicker. Men and boys want the same thing, it’s all in how they go about gettin’ it.”
The heat in her face throbbed. That had been before her last date with Martin. This time Mama didn’t know where Annie was or what she was doing.
“What is it?” Martin touched her arm. “Have I offended you? Come on too strong? If I have, I apologize and I’ll be more careful in future.”
“You were nice,” she told him and jumped from the cypress knee to stand on the soggy dirt. Finding him so close surprised her but she stayed right where she was. “I’ve had some busy years trying to make a life for myself and I’m out of practice with pretty talk.”
He offered her a hand and she held it. Well, they’d met five times now and he’d shown no sign of trying the kind of things Mama feared he would. Why shouldn’t she hold his hand?
“I brought us a picnic,” Martin told her. “After a bit I’ll run back to my car and get it.”
“Lunchtime’s gone,” she told him quietly, smiling up into his face.
“But dinner isn’t,” he said. “I thought we’d wander over to a little spot I know and talk awhile. When the sun goes down a bit more and we’re hungry, why, then we’ll eat.”
They strolled along the edge of the bayou before Martin led Annie up a little rise where a faint path showed, to a rotted-out wooden bench in front of a willow tree. He sat on the bench and indicated for Annie to join him.
Gingerly, she perched on the silvered slats. “It’d be a shame to spoil this bench by falling through it,” she said, and giggled. Gradually she wiggled her way to lean against the back. “Well, I’ll be. Would you look at that? You can still see the water from here. I thought it would be hidden.”