Pamela Morsi (12 page)

The little fellow seemed startled by the
invitation. Karl usually treated him like an unwelcome pest. Jakob
hesitated, momentarily tempted. The tension at the table was
palpable, undoubtedly even young Jakob could feel it.

"Non," he said finally. "I want to be with
Oncle."

Karl looked daggers at Laron.

Laron looked questioningly at Helga.

Helga looked down.

Laron took his place at the table, still
puzzled and uncertain. Without Karl to help, cutting the rice would
put more work on Helga and Elsa and take all day at least. But Karl
was Helga's son and she raised him as she saw fit. But clearly,
something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

Aida was horrified when the Sonnier family
arrived in their pirogue shortly after dawn. They towed a skiff
piled high with sacked corn.

Aida hastily covered her mouth as a little
exclamation of dismay escaped her throat.

"Bonjour," her father said, greeting them.
"And what a beautiful morning for travel."

He hurried down to the end of the dock to
help them alight. Aida followed and soon found herself holding fat
little Pierre as Madame Sonnier was handed out.

"You look surprised to see us, Jesper," Jean
Baptiste commented.

"It's my fault," Aida hurriedly explained,
turning with embarrassment to her father. "Monsieur Sonnier asked
me at the cattle branding when he should bring his corn for
grinding. I said today would be fine and then I didn't remember it
again until I saw them from the doorway."

Momentarily everyone appeared uncomfortable.
Aida wished bitterly that the earth would open and swallow her up.
Why hadn't she remembered? Once more her foolish feather brain had
failed her and other people were embarrassed as a consequence.

"If this is not a convenient time," Jean
Baptiste said. "We can come back another day."

Jesper waved his words away. "Non, non. It is
a perfect day for grinding corn. Not so damp that it will take on
moisture and later spoil and not so dry that the turning of the
stones will scorch it."

"I am so sorry for forgetting." Aida looked
anxiously at the men.

"No harm done," her father assured all of
them. "With Jean Baptiste and Armand to help me, it won't take any
time at all to hitch up the team."

The men began unloading the skiff. The
children, curious and energetic, began running up and down the dock
in bare feet, their shapeless gowns slapping against their
knees.

Aida still held little Pierre and the fat
happy baby gurgled contently.

"Please come inside and I will fix coffee,"
Aida said.

Felicite accepted gratefully. "I should
rightly feel guilty to rest myself while the men work," she told
Aida. "But in truth, I am such a great cow that just getting from
place to place seems a worthy effort."

The two commiserated as they made their way
up the bank to the house, leaving the men to take up the challenge
of turning a year's worth of corn into meal and flour.

In many ways it was the height of luxury to
have corn mechanically milled. The Gaudets' moulin a gru could
grind a year's worth of cornmeal in the time it took a woman
working with mortar and pestle to pound out a day's ration. A man
could rightly be proud of taking this burden from his womenfolk.
And he could also be certain that if it was not ground to his
satisfaction, he could complain about it hours on end without
incurring his wife's wrath.

"I was just sorting some sweet herbs," Aida
said as they passed through the curtained doorway. "My little
garden has really produced this year."

Felicite followed to the table where she sat
down heavily in one of the leather-seated ladder-back chairs. Aida
handed little Pierre to her and she set the little fellow on the
floor beside her. The baby immediately grasped fistfuls of his
mother's skirts and pulled himself into a standing position.

"He's going to walk soon," Aida said.

Felicite nodded. "I'm hoping he'll wait until
this one is born. I'm in no condition to be chasing him now."

Aida began poking the ashes in the fireplace
and urging new kindling to light.

Madame Sonnier looked around curiously,
surprised.

"You've had no fire yet this morning?" she
asked, clearly puzzled. "And you are sorting herbs before
breakfast?"

"Breakfast?" Aida repeated the word as if she
had never heard it.

Her eyes widened and she glanced down at her
right hand, chagrined to find circles of thin cotton cord neatly
tied on three of her fingers.

"Oh no," she wailed, sitting back on her
heels. "I remembered the string, but then forgot to look at my
hand."

Felicite's brow furrowed, confused.

"Poor Poppa," Aida explained, shaking her
head. "He's out there working on an empty stomach."

Leaning forward, Felicite patted her
shoulder, offering comfort. "Well, we will take him some bread and
coffee," she said. "Men find that welcome any time of day."

"Yes, oh yes. Can we do that?" Aida asked.
"It seems almost like cheating. Like pretending that you remembered
a meal when you didn't."

"I don't imagine anyone will mind," Felicite
assured her. "If you put on the coffee, I'll slice the bread."

"Bread!" Her whispered exclamation was
disheartened and fatalistic. "Yesterday was bread-baking day, but
I forgot all about it. So I thought I would just bake this morning.
But then I got started with the herbs and—"

"We'll make biscuits," Felicite
interrupted.

In less than a half-hour the two women headed
out the back door of the Gaudet house carrying a huge basket of hot
biscuits and a pot of hot coffee.

Jesper Gaudet had fashioned his grist mill,
his moulin a gru with grinding stones bought downriver. It had
taken two weeks and nearly ruined a team of horses to pull them
upstream. But Gaudet told anyone who asked that it was the
smartest move he'd ever made.

Jesper's three mules were hitched to long
poles connected to a center axis. The grist mill was housed in a
well-built shake-roof shed that sat on a raised dais just outside
the horsetrod. Each creaking, groaning circle pulled by the mules
created about one hundred revolutions of the stone wheel.

Inside, the great stones lay one atop the
other. Aida's gaze was immediately drawn to Armand who stood in the
shed, shirtless and straining as he and Jean Baptiste attached the
long bull-hide band that connected the spindle that turned the top
stone to the pulley that transmitted the power that was generated
by the walking of the animals.

It was tough, heavy work and both men were
slick with the grease they liberally smeared upon the stem. Aida
swallowed a strange sense of nervousness inside her as she watched
him. The muscles of his arms and chest were tight and flexed
against the smooth pale flesh so faintly shaded with soft brown
hair. There was no burliness or brawn upon his frame, but Armand
Sonnier appeared sturdy and stalwart and somehow breathtakingly
masculine.

The two had just managed to get the belt
eased in place when he glanced up to catch Aida watching him. She
felt the warmth of color rush to her cheeks. He jumped to the
ground and hastily donned his shirt.

"What have we here?" Jean Baptiste called
out. "The ladies have brought us a reward for our effort."

Aida's father headed toward them with an
eager step. "It's good you caught us before the grinding
began."

To her great relief, he didn't make any joke
about her failure to fix him a breakfast and no one complained
about stopping to accept a bite of refreshment.

Felicite seated herself and the children in
the grass near the mill shed and spread the biscuits of little
Gaston and Marie with jellied mayhaw.

Aida carried the coffeepot and saw that the
men's mugs continued to be full of the thick black brew.

"Mmm, Mademoiselle Gaudet," Jean Baptiste
said dramatically. "These are the best biscuits I ever tasted."

"Madame Sonnier helped me," Aida responded
modestly. "I usually forget either the salt or the baking
powders."

"You didn't forget a thing with these," Jean
Baptiste assured her. "This daughter of yours is amazing, Gaudet.
Not only is she beautiful, but she can cook, too."

Aida couldn't quite disguise the blush of
pride that his words brought to her cheeks. She smiled happily at
Armand as she walked over to fill his cup.

The younger Monsieur Sonnier, however, was
not smiling.

"My brother is quick to offer a compliment,"
Armand noted.

Aida nodded almost shyly. "He is very
kind."

"The biscuits are good," Armand assured
her.

"Merci, monsieur," she replied, gleefully
dropping a little half curtsy.

He had removed his hat to wipe the sweat from
his brow. The morning breeze tousled his hair attractively. Aida
barely managed to resist the impulse to smooth it down. Armand was
smiling at her now, smiling, friendly, but there seemed something
almost troubled about his expression.

"My brother is very charming always," he
said. "But he is not so attractive as some men."

Her eyes raised in question and Aida turned
to glance at the older Sonnier standing with her father at the far
end of the clearing. To her, Jean Baptiste appeared very familiar
and in fact very dear, because he looked like Armand.

Her gaze drifted back to Armand beside her.
In truth, she had never thought whether he was handsome or plain.
He was simply Armand, kind, patient, and oh so intelligent Armand.
Aida loved beauty. She loved beautiful things and that included
people. But she was not so shallow that she could not appreciate a
person for his heart and mind rather than his face. A person could
be even more beautiful inside than out. That is what she thought of
Armand, inside he was beautiful.

Shockingly, a saucy little thought intruded
into her ruminating. Although Armand was decently covered, she
could still see in memory the very masculine chest now hidden
beneath a coarse homespun shirt. From what she had glimpsed
earlier, some of his inside beauty had worked its way to the
surface as well. She felt a treacherous warmth of humor and . . .
and something else. It was that same curious excitement that his
closeness had conjured up under the lilas tree.

"On the contrary, monsieur," she answered
with a teasing lilt to her voice. "I think the Sonniers are very
handsome men."

Armand stilled immediately and with a
narrowed gaze his blue eyes avidly searched her face. Aida knew
that somehow she had said the wrong thing.

She knew from her own experience that beauty
was, in women, associated with foolishness. But she had never
thought men to fear such attractiveness. But perhaps Armand did.
Maybe, because of his sickly childhood, he worried overmuch about
what other men thought of him. Aida had never noticed that to be
so. But there must be some reason why he kept her always at arm's
length. He was the only man on the river that failed to flirt or
tease her.

"A man can be attractive," she continued,
trying to reassure him. "And a woman notices that. But women do
not choose a man by his looks alone."

He continued to look at her, worried. Aida
sought to give him an explanation. Her first thought was of Laron.
He was very handsome, yet his handsomeness was not why she planned
to marry him. His poverty and need for her father's land, figured
much more heavily in her decision. But she couldn't say that. It
was far too private to divulge, even to a friend. A movement at the
corner of her eye caught her attention and she watched Jean
Baptiste hoist baby Pierre in the air, causing the baby to laugh
and gurgle. Aida had her example.

"Take your brother, Jean Baptiste," she said.
"He is very handsome to look at, but it is his hard work and
generous nature that set him apart from other men."

Armand's expression darkened and he threw out
the rest of his coffee with a jerky motion that was almost
angry.

"He is also a good husband and a fine
father." His words, spoken harshly, were a puzzle to Aida.

"Yes, yes he is," she agreed. "I have always
dreamed to someday be as happy as Felicite."

On that same day it was very late in the
afternoon before all the available rice had been cut and stacked.
As Laron piled the grain into the waist-high shocks for drying,
Helga and the children searched along the edges of the coulee and
into the nearby woods for isolated patches that had grown up among
the pickerelweed and swampgrass. One of the balancing features of
providence rice was that, although the farmer expended little
effort cultivating it, he had to get his feet wet trying to find it
once it was grown.

Helga found and cut a small clump that had
been nearly hidden by an overgrowth of mudbabies. She carried her
bundle to the drier strewn piles.

Laron was there, sorting the cut rice and
stacking it into shocks. His thin cottonade shirt clung to his
sweat-soaked back as he bent and lifted the damp cut grain. He
looked up as Helga approached, and he grinned. She smiled back at
him, trying to match his mood. But he wasn't fooled.

Laron straightened and looked down into her
eyes, warmly and with love. The slanted rays of the sun glistened
on his hair and cast a shadow in her direction.

"I think this must be the last of it," he
said as he took the bundle of cut grain from her arms. "Two weeks'
drying in the shock and you'll be able to thresh out enough rice to
keep those children's little bellies full all winter."

Helga nodded. "Yes," she said. "This year
they will not starve. You've taught us how to feed ourselves. It
has been an important lesson."

"It's about the only claim to education most
Acadians would own up to," he admitted.

"We would never have made it without you,"
she admitted quietly. "I don't know what would have become of us if
you hadn't come into our lives when you did."