Pamela Morsi (30 page)

"Madame Shotz? What are you doing here?"
Armand asked.

The woman didn't have a moment to answer. Her
youngest came hurrying toward him, eagerly running and talking at
the same time.

"We come all the way from the persimmon grove
to the treater woman's house," little Jakob announced. "And we left
our persimmons there."

"Madame Shotz has come for our help," Orva
told Armand. She stood next to Father Denis and was giving the old
priest a look that was cold enough to freeze mosquitoes on the
trees in July. "She needs our help and it is our Christian duty to
provide it."

"Please, please, you must help me," Helga
pleaded. Her tone was more heavily laden with strong German speech
than Armand remembered. "I did not know where else to come."

She sounded desperate. Armand tousled the
hair of the little boy who stood at his feet.

"Of course we will help you," he answered.
"What is it? What is wrong?"

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 backwaters 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.