Pamela Morsi (4 page)

"I had not heard this," Madame Hebert
declared.

"He has just been talking and dreaming about
it with Jean Baptiste," Felicite explained. "When a man starts
thinking of having his own house, you know he must be thinking of
having his own wife."

Tutting with concern, Madame Hebert was
shaking her head. "Does my brother know this? Poor Laron wishes his
own house, I know. On his land it would look more like a bridge
than a home."

Armand laughed. "Your brother knows all about
it," he said.

"He will not need a house," Felicite pointed
out. "Once Laron and Aida are married, they will live with
Jesper."

Madame Hebert nodded. "Still a man always
wants his own house, does he not?"

"Laron can share my house," Armand said. "In
fact he has offered to help me build it. He says I needn't despair
to live in it alone. If no woman will have me we will live as two
old bachelors together."

"Two bachelors in a house!" Madame Hebert
giggled. "Father Denis will worry about every female in the
parish."

"Truth is, that I do hope to wed," Armand
told her. "I just need to find the right woman, as my brother
did."

Felicite laughed again. "Any woman would be
lucky to get you," she said.

"And every man on the river has a bet on who
it will be. Oops!" Madame Hebert covered her mouth with her hand,
horrified at her own words.

"Are they truly betting?" Felicite asked.

Madame Hebert looked chagrined. "You know
these men, everything to them is a horse race, even romance."

Armand laughed, unoffended. "You well may be
right, Madame." He glanced once more at his sister-in-law. "Let me
get you something to eat."

Felicite looked toward the line of people
waiting to be fed. "Oh, it is too much trouble," she told him.

Armand shook his head. "Nonsense, I have
nothing else to do," he insisted, adding with a teasing smile to
Madame Hebert. "The woman of my dreams could be watching me at this
very minute. I do so want to make a good impression."

The two women laughed like young girls.
Armand bowed smartly to them and took his leave. The smile lingered
on his face as he made his way through the crowd. The Marchand
homestead was prosperous enough, with a sturdy double-house on the
levee and several smaller outbuildings around the back. On the
river side a broad cypress dock stretched out into the river,
providing both easy access to water and a wide storage place for
ready-to-ship goods.

Tonight that dock was being used as a dance
floor, and a quartet of couples, some in bare feet, others in
dancing slippers, were moving with lightfooted exuberance through
the movements of the Lancier Acadien.

Armand watched them enviously a moment. He
loved to dance but rarely did. The young ladies, all of whom had
known him since childhood, were always polite and willing, but he
could tell that they were less than charmed to be partnered by a
man whose stature made him most likely eye level with their bosoms.
And of course he felt strange himself. When a fellow pulled a woman
close, she was supposed to look up into his eyes.

The swirling dancers were like the brightest
flower garden in springtime stirred into wild motion. He watched
with longing. To be young and in love and dance away the night.

He pushed away the frivolous thought. He knew
about being in love. He could not recall with accuracy the day that
he knew he loved Aida Gaudet. It was like owning to the day he knew
that he loved the river, his family, his life. He felt he had
always loved her, even when she was a young girl. And from the
first moment in his life that he felt desire, it had been
exclusively for her. Her smile, her laugh had entranced him and he
had dreamed of her, sighed after her ever since. But he could never
have her.

He knew her too well. Aida was sweet and
often kind, but she was also giddy and featherbrained. She loved
beautiful things, clothes, ribbons, flowers. She surrounded herself
with loveliness. It was only natural that the man she would call
her own would be perfect.

Armand was clearly imperfect: short and plain
and ordinary. And she saw him only as another of the legions that
desired her. She no longer flirted with him, of course. He refused
to allow it. He might not be special to her, but she was special to
him and he would not let their friendship be otherwise.

Once he had wished for her, longed for some
magical charm to win her. But it had never occurred. And when Laron
declared his intention for her, Armand had put away his hopes
completely. She was to be his best friend's wife.

Someday there would be a woman for Armand. He
knew that. Someday a shy sweet girl, just as high as his chin,
would look up to him as if he were the tallest man in the world. He
would be a good and faithful husband, devoted and loving. And
perhaps, perhaps eventually, he would forget about Aida Gaudet.

He wished that day would hurry up and arrive.
Armand made his way back toward the food tables and cook fires at
the far side of the house. The whine of Ony Guidry's fiddle
resonated and the voices chatting and visiting were raised loudly
above the sound. All around the area of the house, under each tree
or open space, gatherings of friends and neighbors flourished.

A circle of farmers was standing together
swapping stories amid laughter and guffaws. They could tell jokes
from sunset to sunrise with hardly a break for a cup of coffee.
Many of the jokes were about Creoles, the other French-speaking
people of Louisiana, who were generally disliked and distrusted.
Creole ancestors had been nobles or those aspiring to nobility in
the West Indies. Acadians were descendants of yeoman farmers,
pioneers who sought freedom and egalitarianism. The two groups did
not mix well.

Occasionally jokes were told about Frenchmen,
who were thought to be much like Creoles. But most often the
subject of Acadian humor was the Acadians themselves.

Oscar Benoit called out Armand's name and
waved him over to a small group standing near an overgrowth of
lilas. The man was already laughing as he slapped Armand on the
back.

"Tell them that new joke that's going
around," he said. "You always tell these things better than I
can."

"Which joke?" Armand asked, refusing an offer
of tobacco.

"You know," Benoit insisted. "The one about
the farmer who called his wife by the mule's name."

Armand shook his head. "I don't know it."

"Oh but you must, you always know them."

Armand shook his head once more.

"Oh well, I must tell it myself."

He motioned for the men to gather around him
as

he began. Armand listened eagerly along with
the rest.

"The Madame was to throw her farmer out of
the house," Benoit told them dramatically. "For while they were
loving he called her by another woman's name."

The men gathered made collective sounds of
humored horror.

"She was furious!"

Many nodded. One of the Acadians whistled in
understanding of the seriousness of the mistake. All, along with
Armand, leaned closer, grinning in anticipation as Benoit
continued.

"The farmer swore he was innocent of any
wrongdoing, saying to her that the name was not the name of
another woman but only the name of his mule."

A couple of the men snickered.

"So she said she would forgive him, because
she knew that he talked to that worn-out old mule all day as he
worked. But she told him she thought that it was very strange that
he would make such a blunder at such a time."

The group around Benoit nodded in grinning
agreement.

" 'But dear wife,' the farmer said to her.
'Your face was turned from me. From that direction any man might
have mistaken you for my mule.'"

Hoots exploded from those gathered, but
Benoit was not yet finished.

" 'And,'" he continued. " 'I spend a lot more
of my life staring at hers than staring at yours!'"

The roar of laughter was nearly deafening.
Armand chuckled along with the rest, shaking his head.

"You fellows with your stories of marriage
misery are going to rob me of my dreams," he complained.

"If they are dreams of women," Emile Granger
shot back quickly, "only death can steal them."

Armand laughed along with the others before
continuing on his way.

He noticed a heated quorum gathering. Father
Denis was right in the center of the verbal fray and Armand had the
good sense to immediately put some distance between himself and the
good father. The old priest was bound to try to draw him in and
Armand wanted no unpleasantness to ruin his Saturday night.

Finally he made his way over to an old woman
sitting in front of a big black cauldron. She seemed almost lost in
thought as she stirred the mixture of fish and vegetables in the
dark, rich roué.

"Are you cooking up something good for me,
Nanan?" he asked.

A grown man's use of the childish nickname
for godmother might have made another woman's eyes twinkle and
another woman's lips curl in a smile, but Orva Landry merely looked
up and gazed at him critically.

"You have not been to see me," she said
simply.

Armand bowed his head slightly by way of
apology. "I did not realize that I was neglecting you," he
said.

"I have heard your name," she said, looking
at him intently, her rheumy eyes serious and purposeful. "I have
heard your name on the water."

Armand was momentarily taken aback.

Orva Landry, some said, was older then the
bayou. She was a cold and mostly silent person whom few

thought of as a friend. But she was held in
great respect by the people of Prairie l'Acadie. Orva Landry was
la traiteur, the treater.

Born in the place the English called Nova
Scotia, she had lived through the Grand Derangement, the time of
terror when women had been pulled from their houses, children
captured at play, and men herded from the fields. They were forced
onto English boats that carried them away from the land they had
tended and toiled upon for one hundred and fifty years. All for
their failure to swear allegiance to an English king.

According to local legend, Orva, a frightened
little child, had been separated from her mother and father, her
sisters and brothers, and never saw them again. But as God is often
wont to do, when He taketh away He also giveth. Orva Landry was
given the treater's gift. Where the young girl, now an ancient
crone, had learned the secrets of charms, gris gris, and hoodoo, no
one knew. But she could heal both man and beast, had treatment for
any ailment, and heard the voice of Joan of Arc speaking to her on
the river.

"You have heard my name, Nanan?" Armand
asked, disquieted. Perhaps more than any human on the Vermilion
River, Armand Sonnier knew Orva Landry as a person. Therefore he
feared her less than most. But he never for a moment doubted her
gift.

Armand had been born frail and feeble. He had
come into life feet first and too early, and his mother was too
weak to properly care for the sickly child.

Armand's father had wrapped his baby son in a
blanket, laid him in the floor of the pirogue, and poled down the
river to Madame Landry's tiny house.

The old woman tended the child and was
credited by one and all for keeping him alive. The Sonniers named
her as Armand's godmother and throughout his life he sought her out
when he was ill. Armand knew Orva Landry. And if she said she spoke
to voices on the river, Armand knew that she did.

"Are you sure it was my name that you
heard?"

Madame Landry glared at him impatiently. "A
human does not get so deaf that she can't hear the voices clear,"
she said gruffly.

Armand apologized. "What do they say,
Nanan?"

" 'There is uncertainty on the wind,'" she
quoted. "Swirling around us now on this prairie is change,
unexpected. And you, mon fils, you are at the center of it."

Armand's brow furrowed. Although everyone
knew that Madame Landry spoke with the revenant specter of Joan of
Arc, the saint's name was never mentioned. Superstitious and
fearful, people spoke of her euphemistically only as the voices. To
his knowledge the voices had never before spoken his name. It was
disconcerting even to think that they knew it.

Armand shook his head thoughtfully. He knew
of nothing, no one, with whom he was in conflict. He glanced around
the gathering. His gaze paused momentarily at the little
irritable-looking crowd speaking with Father Denis. Perhaps the
trouble was there.

"Did they mention Father Denis?" he
asked.

"Father Denis!" Orva huffed with disregard.
"The voices care not for rich Frenchmen, even those who wrap
themselves in robes."

The two spiritual leaders of the Prairie
l'Acadie had very little mutual respect.

"Then what can this vision be about?" Armand
asked.

The old woman stared at him for a long,
thoughtful moment, then nodded in the direction of the river.

"It's about her," Madame Landry said
quietly.

Armand turned in the direction she indicated
just in time to see the most beautiful woman on the Vermilion River
alight from her father's pirogue. Her dress swirled around her like
a pool of lilies in a summer breeze and her voice was as cheering
as music on the water. The music had ceased as if by design.
Laughing and lovely, she had every eye upon her.

A twinge of shock stilled Armand's body and
he involuntarily swallowed.

"It's about Aida Gaudet?"

The old woman didn't answer immediately but
continued to study Armand.

He felt the heat rise to his cheeks. She
couldn't know. He was sure of that. Madame Landry couldn't know how
he felt about Aida.

"What about her?" he asked quickly.

Orva tutted in disapproval and continued to
stir her brew. An uncomfortable silence dragged between them.
Armand waited.