Pamela Morsi (8 page)

It was simply a part of growing up, Laron
reminded himself. Karl was young and confused and testing the
waters. Boys grew up early in the bayous. And a boy with no father
grew up quicker than most.

The youngster did come out to the porch,
still puffing enthusiastically on the hand-hewn pipe. They seated
themselves on slat-back chairs before a low table.

"Where did you get the pipe?" Laron
asked.

"Traded for it," Karl answered.

"Hmmm." Laron nodded with interest.

"The Arceneaux brothers, Jacques and Duclize.
I gave them a couple of fine turtle shells."

"Seems like a fair trade," Laron agreed.

"They know you," Karl said, looking at him
closely.

Laron raised his eyes to look at Karl
directly. "Yes, they are my cousins. They are a little older than
you."

Karl shrugged and puffed heavily on his pipe.
"I'm old enough," he stated.

Laron didn't argue. "Let us play," he
said.

He spread the cards out upon the table and
showed him the four suits and identified the face cards. Neither
could actually read the printed numbers, but both could adequately
count the hearts, diamonds, clubs, or spades printed there.

Laron showed him the trick of shuffling to
make the cards stack randomly. As the boy practiced the new skill,
Laron lit his own pipe and watched.

After several minutes the boy set the cards
in a stack in the middle of the table.

"I'm ready to learn," he said.

Laron nodded. "First the rules," he said.

"All right."

Laron reached across and took Karl by the
wrist. His hold was not bruising or confining, merely firm. The boy
looked up, startled.

"Rule one," Laron said quietly. "A son does
not say things to his mother that make her cry."

Karl's eyes narrowed and his jaw firmed.

The moment lingered, dark brown eyes staring
into blue ones. The intensity growing to unbearability before it
began to wane.

"I am sorry," Karl said finally.

"You should say that to her and not to me,"
Laron pointed out.

After a long hesitation the boy nodded.

"Deal."

He did.

An hour later Karl was yawning into his cards
and Laron called the game to a halt. When they returned to the
interior of the cabin, the boy didn't relight his pipe, but he did
sprawl into a chair.

"Aren't you going to bed?" Helga asked
him.

"No, I'm still wide awake," he proclaimed,
although his eyelids appeared heavy.

Laron and Helga exchanged a disbelieving
glance. She shrugged and began bustling, rather tiredly, around the
kitchen once more. Laron looked longingly at the comfortable
rope-sprung bed in the corner of the room and then turned back with
purpose to the boy yawning before the fire.

"I must tell you the story of how my people
came to this place," he said.

"I've heard it," Karl answered, his tone
sarcastic and bored. "You've spoken of the Grand Derangement many
times."

"But it is a story that must be told many
times, lest anyone forget."

Seating himself, Laron began to talk. His
words were low, almost monotone. Karl, his head propped

up on his elbow, feigned listening as the
older man spoke at great length about the history of the
Acadians.

"As a people we were scattered to the four
winds. Exiles in places where our religion was reviled and our
citizenship unwanted."

They were the stories Laron had heard all his
life, told by parents and elders since the days when he could still
find a comfortable perch on an old frail lap. Deliberately Laron
left out all the tales involving adventure, danger, and excitement.
Those had been his favorites at Karl's age. This night he
concentrated fully on the factual and mundane.

He had just gotten to Theophile Peyroux's
visit to the Spanish ambassador when the first little snore escaped
from Karl's mouth.

Slowly, with big quiet movements, Laron
turned to see Helga sitting with her elbow propped on the table.
She was hardly able to hold up her own head. But when she saw his
face and glanced over at her now sleeping son, she immediately
became alert.

Laron grinned broadly, but put a finger to
his lips, signaling silence, and pointed to the back door. She
nodded and soundlessly the two crept out, keeping a watchful eye on
young Karl until they were down the back steps and into the
yard.

Laron grabbed her hand and they took off
running. They were out of sight of the house when, breathless and
laughing, they stopped to catch their breath at the trunk of a
hardy old tupelo. "I thought he would never sleep!" Laron told her,
chuckling.

Helga was shaking her head. "When you started
reciting which boats headed for which ports, I thought I would be
snoring first."

Laron wrapped his arms around her and pulled
her tight against him. "But I would have awakened you, Madame," he
said.

He bent his head and leaned down to kiss her.
She met his lips with her own. Warm. Eager.

His hands roamed her body.

She pulled at his clothes.

"Love me! Love me!" she begged him.

He did.

The Sonniers' pirogue, crowded with sleeping
children and tired adults, bumped lightly into the dock in front
of their home very late that Saturday night. Armand held the boat
steady with the pole as his brother tied it securely to the cypress
posts.

Jean Baptiste squatted on the dock. "Hand
them out," he said.

Felicite lifted the baby to him first. The
little one was awake and fussing. Jean Baptiste laid him on the
wide cypress planks and then stretched his arms toward his wife
once more. The two older children were passed into their father's
arms. And then, rising to his feet, he assisted Felicite, who was
huge and ungainly.

"I'll take care of this," Armand assured
them, indicating the now empty cook pot, old tablecloths, miniature
sabots, and sack of spare clothing, diapers, and needments
required for traveling with little ones. "You two get the babies to
bed."

His brother and sister-in-law made their way
up the planking toward the house. Jean Baptiste carried Gaston and
Marie, who hung like rag dolls from their father's broad shoulders.
Felicite carried the baby, Pierre, who was squalling now in
earnest. Armand suspected that it was near time for the little
fellow to be put at his mother's breast.

He watched their retreating backs for a
moment and then returned his attention to collecting the cargo of
the pirogue. The evening had been a long one. He could not quite
shake the worry and concern he felt at his godmother's words,
despite talking with many other people through the course of the
evening. At one point Armand had sought the solitude of the big
chinaberry tree and allowed his gaze to wander around the
crowd.

As always his attention settled upon Aida
Gaudet. He watched her from afar as she laughed and giggled and
flirted with every male still breathing.

Madame Landry had said that Armand's words
were destined to change Aida's life. She would not marry his friend
Laron. But then whom would she marry? Clearly she and Laron were
perfectly paired. They were equally matched in grace and good
looks, and he was head and shoulders taller than she. Her dainty
feminine charms enhanced the appeal of his masculine strength.
Anyone looking in their direction would note immediately what a
handsome couple they made. They looked as if they belonged
together.

Were his careless words about to drive them
apart? Was his unsolicited opinion about to cause upheaval to
people he cared about? And, most disturbing of all, was it his own
selfish, unrequited passion that had caused him to speak?

Laron Boudreau was the closest friend he had
in the world. Armand wanted what was best for him.

Armand had been thinking himself wise and
helpful when he'd given his opinion on marriage without love. Wise
and helpful. But now . . . now . . .

Armand shook his head furiously at his own
conceit. He had urged his friend to give up a genuine opportunity
to wed in order to continue an illicit union with a strange foreign
woman of low morals. A woman Laron could never marry because she
was still the legal wife of another man.

And Aida Gaudet would soon be seeking a new
beau.

At first he'd thought this could be a good
thing. When she had found her way to his tree-shaded hiding place,
his heart had taken up a hurried pace. She was beautiful, of
course. But there was more about her, more about Aida, almost a
glow that surrounded her. It was what drew men to her side, Armand
was sure. Many women had fine figures, handsome hair, and shy
beckoning smiles. But Aida Gaudet had some unique indefinable
something that seemed always to cheer the heart and brighten the
day. And Aida was so guileless and uncomplicated, she remained
unaware of the real source of her attraction.

Armand was not unaware. She was like the warm
glow of an autumn fire, hard for any man to resist.

"Someone I'm sure you would never
suspect."

Orva Landry's words, when he'd asked whom
Aida would set upon for a new romance, now had an ominous ring.
Aida Gaudet was a beautiful and desirable woman. But if she were
not safely bound to Boudreau, she would surely seek out another
man. And because she was not very bright, her choice might well be
an unwise one.

It was just as he had told Laron; Aida would
choose a man the same way she chose cloth, for the prettiness of
its aspect rather than the durability of the fabric. Laron was the
best-looking young man on the river, but here in Prairie l'Acadie,
Armand knew what man might well come in second place.

The image of his brother Jean Baptiste
kneeling at her feet helping with her shoes came to his mind.

"It was nothing," Armand muttered to himself.
A still, frightening coldness settled about his heart. "It was
nothing." And indeed it was nothing, helping her with her shoes. A
public gesture with much joking or teasing; no one present took it
seriously. But then no one present had heard Orva Landry's
warning. No one present had heard his brother's dissatisfied
complaints about married life.

And with any luck at all, no one present had
seen the two of them sneaking back from the privacy of the
woods.

With fear distorting his reason, Armand
thought of poor Felicite swelled with child. He thought of Gaston
and Marie. He thought of little Pierre, gurgling happily as was his
nature.

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard against
the fear that filled his throat. "Please God," Armand prayed into
the quiet stillness of the Louisiana night. "Please don't let this
be happening."

Armand hadn't seen them leave. He'd turned
away from the sight of the festivities when Laron had swept her
into the dance. They were such a handsome couple. It hurt him to
look at them. He made his way to a group of men swapping hunting
stories, telling jokes. Hippolyte Arcenaux had warned him that
Father Denis wanted to speak with him and Armand quickly made
himself scarce.

He was near the edge of the woods when he
heard the familiar tinkle of laughter. It had surprised him.
Although, as an engaged couple, Laron and Aida would have
undoubtedly been allowed an occasional private walk in the
moonlight, his friend virtually never took advantage of that
privilege.

A movement from the corner of his eye caught
Armand's attention. In the distance, out on the river, he spied a
man poling his pirogue upstream. He didn't even need to squint to
recognize Laron Boudreau. His friend, as on every Saturday night,
was on his way to visit the German widow.

Immediately Armand's heart began to beat
faster. The man in the trees with Aida Gaudet could not be Laron.
It might well be the new man, the man Orva spoke about. The man
whose arms Armand's careless words had sent Aida flying to.

As footsteps grew nearer Armand thought to
himself, surely it must be Granger. Granger or Marchand, it really
didn't matter. He didn't care if it was young Babin or even old
toothless LeBlanc.

He saw her first. Aida Gaudet, dainty and
dazzling and desirable.

Holding her arm in his own and gazing down at
her, blue eyes wide as a lovesick calf's, was his brother, Jean
Baptiste Sonnier.

"Please God, don't let it be," Armand said to
the silent night.

"Well, it is already Sunday, but don't you
think you ought to save that for church?"

The words came from behind him. Startled,
Armand turned to face his brother.

"I figured you were already abed," Armand
told him.

"Thought I'd sleep up in the garconniere,"
Jean Baptiste said. "If you don't mind me invading your
territory."

"You're not sleeping with your wife?"

Jean Baptiste shook his head. "She's so big
now and restless. She gets up a half-dozen times a night. I'll get
more sleep upstairs in one of the extra beds."

He started up the stairs at the far end of
the porch, but turned back toward Armand. "Are you coming up?"

Armand felt momentarily rooted to the
spot.

"Yes," he said finally. "Yes, yes, I'm
coming."

He hurried up the stair behind his brother.
The so-called garconniere was merely the floored space under the
eaves of the roof. It was generally used only by young men because
it was accessed by the stairs from the porch. The steep pitch of
the roof made standing a thing done only in the middle, but the
space around the edges was well-utilized by lowlying rope sprung
beds.

Normally the room was Armand's alone. Laron
stayed with him frequently, as did other young men, neighbors and
cousins, when they visited. Even little Gaston had spent a night or
two up there. But Armand could not recall his brother spending the
night with him since his marriage.