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  “That’s right, that letter set me free. It told me why a big load of fish didn’t make my heart sing like it does the rest of you knuckleheads. A big load meant twice as much work as a little load, and none of it brought in the kind of money I wanted to make. Wambly was the only person who understood. His ideas didn’t always work, but they gave me some directions to think on.”

  “Didn’t always work?” Loyce spluttered. “You name me one that has worked, and that’ll be one more than I ever heard about.”

  “What about putting a motor in a boat and hauling fish in ice?” Fate shot back. “Seems to me that worked out pretty good for someone you thought wouldn’t amount to much.”

  “I never said you wouldn’t amount—” she started but was drowned out by hoots and laughter from around the room.

  “This is my story,” he said. “You’re done with telling for now. But you’re in it. In fact, you’re smack in the middle of it. That’s right. When Mame was setting us straight about that letter, I looked across the room and saw you standing in that dress—the one colored like a great blue heron just like your eyes. Of course you can’t see it for yourself, so you’ll have to take my word for it, even though that goes against your nature.”

  Loyce swatted in his direction, but he dodged and clasped her hand in both of his, kissing her wrist before taking up his tale again. His voice dropped from teasing to tender.

  “Anyway, I was already thinking how wrong it was for you to be standing on the edge again. I wished I could make things different for you.”

  “You weren’t!” Her voice rose up the scale to suspicion.

  “I was too!” he protested. “You never believe I really want to help—you just blame me for anything you have a mind to. Always have. I’m used to it.”

  He broke into a full laugh now and pulled her close to his chest. It wasn’t a new embrace, no different from what they’d seen him do through the years. But now everyone in the room recognized a tenderness they hadn’t noticed before, and for the first time ever Loyce didn’t slap at him. Instead, she relaxed into his arms. The crowd jostled to hear what turn his story would take next.

  “I was still looking at you while Mame read her letter to us. It started sinking in on me that I came by my differences honestly—not better or worse than anyone who wants to fish and mend nets and pick moss, just different.

  “Like a flash of lightning, it hit me—I was free! I was free to follow my sights. I came from stock that looked across the world and took a chance in a new business. All I had to my credit was a butter churn and some other things that just missed their mark—not by much, though, and that was encouraging.”

  “Encouraging for what?” Loyce’s voice was still skeptical. “All I remember is you disappeared without a by-your-leave!”

  “Well, can’t you give a man time to get used to a new direction?” Fate sounded out. “The whole world had just opened to me. What was I going to make of it? Oh, I thought about trying to find out if Grandpa Michaud was still alive and what he did when our war interrupted his plans. Maybe I didn’t want to know if he went broke, so as not to start off my new life discouraged. Or maybe it just seemed like it would slow me down too much. So much has happened since then, I can’t rightly remember.

  “What I did know was no new ideas would be coming to me on their own. I headed up to Atchafalaya Station, where other folks were looking outward for their future. The air was fairly buzzing around there with everybody making plans and building stuff to be ready for that railroad crossing. There was already a general store and a bakery making money from the railroad workers. Then there was an icehouse, moss gin, a sawmill. Oh, just every kind of thing you might want to ship out of the swamp. Mr. Bernard already had more than five hundred beehives! He’s aiming to put honey from Atchafalaya bees on tables all over the country.

  “I talked to everyone, not just Wambly. Before you know it, I had that icehouse owner believing we really could ship fresh fish. I got Wambly to working on finding me an old engine that I could mount in Sam’s skiff.”

  “That’s when you came down here to show it off,” Loyce broke in. “Why didn’t you tell me I had some part in all these plans, if it’s the truth?”

  “I meant to—that was as much the reason I came as to talk to Sam and Uncle Adam.” Fate’s voice took on the old defensive tone. “But you was too het up to listen! All you wanted to do was tell me how it wasn’t going to work, so I just kept it to myself until I could prove you wrong. Good thing Sam doesn’t suffer from the suspicions like you do, or I wouldn’t have had a partner.

  “Sure, there was some trials and some blind bayous and more trials to follow. I know you heard about some of them. But you ain’t heard what it felt like when I saw that first load of Atchafalaya buffalo head out for New York City! Knowing that I was the one who pulled all that together. Let me tell you right now, I never felt so proud pulling a net load of those same buffalo out of the water. Now, I admit I like to wore out the plank walk in front of that telegraph office waiting to hear if my fish showed up still fresh or sitting in warm slime and smelling up the depot.”

  “Your notions do have a way of ending in a powerful stink,” Loyce offered.

  “Well, not this time,” Fate went on. “They still had a bed of ice and were all sold the next day in New York. Problem was, the ice cost me so much I didn’t make any money. The icehouse owner shipped his ice in from Lafayette—all he did was store it. It was clear and clean like water you drink. I didn’t see any future in shipping fish that cost me more in ice than they brought in, so I stopped everything until I could figure it out. That’s when I found out that people get mad if you take away something they got used to real quick even though it wasn’t so long ago they didn’t even know they wanted it.

  “Those fish sellers in New York was wanting to pay me money. I was wanting to pass that money on along to Sam and the others, but that blame ice was going to ruin us all. Then I thought, why can’t we make our own ice from river water? No one’s gonna drink it. We just need to bed down the fish. It’s the same water they spent their whole life swimming in.

  “The icehouse man was willing to try it, but we had to find someone to put up the money for the equipment. Wambly knew some men in Baton Rouge willing to do that. Ooooh! Not men I want to spend a lot of time with, but they saw the promise in that idea. Once we took their money, though, I knew we couldn’t miss the payback date or bad things was bound to happen.”

  “That must be the men I saw you talking with at the dock café in Baton Rouge,” Val broke in. “I wouldn’t want to run into them on a dark night, no.”

  “And that’s just what would have happened if I didn’t make that payback date,” Fate said. “They woulda just knocked me in the head on a dark night and slipped me off a dock when no one was around to see the splash! For the next few months I was hopping. Trains left the station twice a day. If we missed one of those, it was a twelve-hour wait for the next one. Not a problem if you shipping moss, but fish and ice is different. If something broke at the ice plant, there was no putting off getting it fixed. I found out the fish dealers ordered more and paid sooner if I visited New York now and then to see what their end of it was like. I tell you, on some weeks it seemed like I needed to be three places at once.

  “When I was getting so distracted that Dieu Cavalier nearly shot my head off because I forgot to pick up his ducks, I knew I had to make changes. First thing I did was turn my boat over to Sam to pick up and deliver the fish. That way I could stay around the ice plant to help keep it running smooth and catch a ride with the fish up to New York when I had to. That helped, but then I couldn’t keep up with my post office box in Atchafalaya. Bills came in; money had to go out. Money came in and had to be accounted for.

  “Just before I got wore to a frazzle, Wambly told me I ought to hire me some help—a bookkeeper. He said some classes at LSU was teaching people to do just that—keep accounts for business. That’s how I found Rona, Rona Castill
e. I had my post office box changed to Baton Rouge so she could pick up my mail. She keeps my books in a corner of her husband’s office. Once a month I take the train to Baton Rouge, and we go over what came in and what went out. It all makes sense when you see it laid out like that.”

  “I heard you were seeing someone named Rona, but we all just thought she was a new sweetheart!” Adam broke in. “What do you know about that!”

  Loyce, trying to remember if she had ever said anything aloud about Rona Castille, didn’t say a word. She took for granted that her own expression didn’t give away emotions that sighted people could read, but she wasn’t sure. In no time at all the talk took off again, but she heard less and less as the events of the past two days caught up with her and she nodded off to sleep, still anchored by Fate and Drifter.

  33

  Once again, the Golden Era’s whistle drifted into the post office on a soft breeze, accompanied by the familiar smells of fish, tar, and cypress trees. So like that day more than a year ago when a misplaced letter and a near-dead dog showed up. Loyce breathed it all in, storing it up in her memory just the way she stored away her wedding dress in the traveling trunk at her feet. She knew how it was when someone left the Chene. Despite the best intentions, they usually never made it back.

  Of course, it sounded like she and Fate would be traveling more than most. His new job with the Lockwood-Ash Motor Company would take them initially to Michigan. Then they would travel to river towns all over the country, where Fate would demonstrate the advantages of a gasoline boat to fishermen. He also would set up retail branches for Lockwood-Ash, probably in existing machine shops, where mechanics could service the engines for customers.

  Fate had already helped Mary Ann’s father set up his shop to sell replacement parts and provide repairs right there in Plaquemine. York was now looking into starting a branch of the family business on the Chene, what with all the fishermen setting their sights on gasoline boats. Leave it to York to seize on an opportunity when it was in plain sight, Loyce thought.

  It took someone with vision—someone like Fate—to get something new and exciting started. She had to admit this notion of his had worked out better than the others. And now wherever his work or his fancy took them, she would listen to music in every theater or concert hall along the way. Who could tell? She might even find ways to join in making that music.

  “Do you have everything now?” Roseanne broke into her thoughts and began fussing over the new traveling trunk and a tapestry duffel bag. “What am I saying?” Roseanne stopped to laugh at herself. “You’ll have so much more to choose from out there than you could ever get here!”

  Out there. To Loyce the place that once stood for loss and longing now held shining promise. Wherever they lived out there she would have running water, an indoor bathroom, gas heat, sidewalks. Out there held solutions to the things that made life dangerous and confining for a blind woman at the Chene.

  “Heck, now that Fate’s showing off motors, you’ll be shopping in cities up and down the rivers,” said Adam. “It’ll be like carrying that mail-order catalog wherever you go.”

  “But wherever she goes, she won’t find anything prettier than this!” C.B. announced as she twirled through the back door in a new chartreuse skirt and bosom-hugging top. Her hair once again glowed with her favorite yellow dye. “Mrs. Barclay, you can accuse me of anything, anytime, if the apologies always include a new frock.”

  “C.B., you are the only person who could ever get me to order something that color.” Roseanne shook her head in mock sorrow. “Take that as a compliment if you like.”

  “Well, maybe you should be thanking poor old Pank for that frock,” chimed in Alcide. “He’s the one who set the record straight for both of you. There’s no telling what all he knew about the doings up and down the river, not just around here. The way he’d been spying for all those years—eight? ten maybe? But we’ll never know because he took ’em to his grave.”

  Loyce shivered at the memory of the blast in her ears. She tried to put it out of her mind along with the unsavory stories Pank had related during his last night on earth. For Roseanne’s benefit Loyce was glad she had paid attention to the story of Charles Barclay’s murder. And even though most people at the Chene had already moved beyond the rumors about C.B., Loyce was happy to be the one who cleared her friend’s name beyond any doubt. As for Pank, his remains now rested in the graveyard where he had once spied on the yellow-haired object of his dreams.

  “All of it might still be a secret if Drifter hadn’t been watching out for me,” Loyce added. “And I could have ended up as one more story about a mysterious disappearance.”

  At the sound of her name the little dog thumped her tail on the floor. The movement disturbed Jack, her remaining pup. He hiccupped and rolled over on his back, four white paws paddling the air. Adam and Roseanne had quickly claimed Jack because he looked most like Drifter. Sam, Alcide, and Mary Ann had snatched up the other three before anyone else had a chance to see them.

  Fate looked up from where he was snapping the locks on his own bag and ruffled Drifter’s ears. “The day she showed up, I told you she could be a help, Loyce; now you gotta admit I was right!” Before Loyce could counter a reply, he added, “Here comes Mary Ann, now. Everyone ready?”

  They all trooped out to the pony cart, which Mary Ann had draped with ribbon and flowers for the sendoff. Fate hoisted Loyce up to the seat beside Mary Ann and then climbed into the back of the cart with their luggage. Adam and Roseanne linked arms to follow along the woods path to the dock. Mame and Alcide fell in step together. Sam, carrying Sam Junior, walked beside C.B. Drifter trotted in and out of the party with Jack running to keep up. Neighbors lined the path to join in the merriment, beating on pots and pans, blowing whistles and shouting good wishes.

  When they rounded the bend to the dock, the Golden Era greeted them with three cheery blasts of her whistle. Valzine Broussard, working his way from deckhand back up to first mate, helped the newlyweds aboard. He and Loyce had never mentioned their mutual relief over the turn of events, just like they had never voiced the words between them that could have ruined three lives. Sometimes a long silence was best left undisturbed.

  Drifter trotted behind Loyce across the gangplank. Roseanne scooped Jack into her arms to keep him from following. Adam handed up the mailbag.

  Only two letters were bearing the Bayou Chene postmark that day—June 21, 1908. One envelope, following its ill-fated predecessor forty-seven years to the day, was seeking Michaud Poussant in a French Pyrénées mountain village. It introduced his smart, ambitious grandson Lafayette Landry to anyone who still lived at that address. The other was to the George Garnier family of Eleonore Street, New Orleans, announcing the upcoming nuptials of Roseanne Garnier Barclay to Adam Snellgrove, Bayou Chene postmaster.

  The Golden Era whistled farewell. The big paddles dipped and churned the water. Drifter ran in circles and barked as Loyce waved good-bye in the wrong direction. Fate tried to redirect her but got his hands slapped for his trouble.

  SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION

  Facts

  The village of Bayou Chene existed from ancient times, first as a home for the Chitimacha and other native people. Europeans discovered it in the 1600s, followed by Americans after the Louisiana Purchase. After the 1927 flood, as part of the channelization of the Atchafalaya River, the village was sealed off from the water that gave it life. By the mid-twentieth century most permanent residents had moved to settlements on the levees, taking with them the wealth of that community—their stories—to hand down to future generations.

  In 1907 the Bayou Chene Post Office was located at the intersection of Jakes Bayou and Bloody Bayou. My great-grandfather Lewis C. B. Ashley was the postmaster at that time. His daughter, Josie, grew up in that hubbub. Josie’s mother would not let her travel on the school boat to go to the upper grades, so after third grade Josie continued her education by sorting mail while standing on a packing crate
to reach the counter. And of course, she learned to tell stories. Josephine Ashley married George Gilbert Voisin to become my Grandma Josephine Voisin.

  Alcide Verret and Calvin Voisin are the only names of real people in the novel. I used Alcide’s real name because I wanted to preserve this beloved old man as I knew him in 1970. Even though Alcide would have been just a boy on the Chene in 1907, I’ve tried to capture his looks, his voice, his gallant flirtatiousness, and his expansive love of life for readers who did not have the pleasure of meeting him.

  Calvin Voisin, child of Warren and Mame Voisin, never returned after walking down to bail the boats after a rain. His body was never found. Sudden and unexplained deaths or disappearances were not unusual in swamp communities, where so many dangers lurked. As with other people who died before we were born, young Calvin might slip from history as if he had never lived. I wanted to preserve the fact that he had lived and how he died. Calvin’s baby brother, Warren Voisin Jr., honored the little boy by naming his own firstborn Calvin. That Calvin Voisin is my cousin and was my fellow adventurer in the memoir Atchafalaya Houseboat.

  The confusing practice of reusing given names was very common at the Chene. Several generations of one family could have members with the same name. Adding to the confusion were women marrying into the family bringing their own common first names, like Mary Ann Bertram does in the story.

  The returned letter is based on a real piece of undelivered mail bearing that blue Civil War–era postmark SOUTHERN LETTER UNPAID. In 2005 I had already determined that the post office would be the central feature in my novel, almost a character in its own right. I searched the term Bayou Chene online to see what research materials would surface. I found that a letter mailed from Bayou Chene was one of five remaining known pieces of mail bearing that blue stamp. A major auction house in New York was selling them as a bundle. The catalog description told the story of the blue stamp created by the Kentucky postmaster. Of the five letters the one mailed from Bayou Chene was pictured in the listing. I tacked a print of that letter over my desk. Every time I looked at it, I pondered what kind of trouble an undelivered letter could cause if it was returned to Bayou Chene forty-plus years after it had been mailed. I started with what I could make out from the faded date—June 21, 1861—and addressee in Hautes-Pyrénées, France. I researched the history of the Pyrénées area and discovered that the economy, based on a dye made from a blue crustacean, lost out to the indigo plantations in the United States. Everything else about the letter, Mame, and Michaud is fiction.