I stared into the swamp, fixing my eyes on the inky darkness, and I wished and wished until I thought I saw him . . . the handsome young Cajun ghost. He was floating over the water and beckoning to me, tempting me.

If there really was a handsome young man haunting the swamps, I thought, I could forget the terrible thing that had happened to me. I'd even be willing to fall in love with him the way I had described to Yvette and Evelyn, and exchange my soul with his. I'd rather be a ghost, floating along through eternity, than a violated young woman right now, I thought.

His smile faded in the darkness and became a group of fireflies dancing madly around each other.

All the magic of this day evaporated. The stars seemed to shrink away, and dark clouds slid from behind silvery ones and chased away the moon.

I sighed, got up, and walked back to the house, not full of hope and dreams for tomorrow, as I should be, but weighed down, soaked with terror about the days to come.

Did I have a little of Mama's clairvoyance? I hoped not. I hoped I was just tired.


3

  Hiding from Mama

Summer had begun as timidly as a white-tailed deer the year I graduated high school, but a little more than a week after the ceremony, the heat became more oppressive than I had ever known it to be. Mama said it was the worst she could recall, and Daddy said she had finally gotten her wish: She had brought him hell on earth. Nights were no cooler than the days. At times the air was so heavy with humidity, my hair would become damp and my dress would cling like a second layer of skin to my body.

All of Nature appeared just as depressed. Every animal restricted its travel to bare necessity. The gators dug themselves deeper into the mud; the bream seemed reluctant to come out of the water even to feed on the clouds of bewildered insects. Part of the problem was we didn't have much of a breeze coming up from the Gulf. The air was so still, leaves looked wilted and painted against the sky, and birds looked stuffed and fastened on branches.

What little tourist business there normally was during the summer months dried up. A snake could curl around itself in the shady area of our road and feel safe. We could count on our fingers the vehicles that rumbled by between morning and night. Every day Mama complained about how hard things were getting, but Daddy continued to sweep aside problems as if they were dust on his boots. Mama made some income and bartered food from her traiteur missions, two of which involved bad snakebites, and another three involved insect bites. There were more skin rashes than ever, lots of heat exhaustion, and then finally there was Mrs. Townley, who went into a strange coma that lasted nearly a month.

Even though Daddy had little or no work, when an out-of-town contractor finally came by and offered him and some of the other men work in Baton Rouge, he was reluctant to take it, complaining it meant he would be gone nearly six weeks. Mama told him he was gone nearly that long on and off, drinking and gambling anyway, so what difference did it make? At least now he could send hone some money for us.

Despite the harsh line she took with him, I saw sadness in her eyes when it came time for him to get into his truck and join the others for the journey to Baton Rouge. She made him a thick po'boy sandwich filled with oysters, shrimp, sliced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, and her sauce piquant.

"You ain't made me a sandwich like this for a while, Catherine," he told her.

"You ain't gone off to do decent work for a while, Jack Landry," she replied. He shook his head and shifted his guilty eyes away a moment. They were parting on the galerie. I was just inside behind the screen door. I hated it when they argued, and I hoped if I remained inconspicuous, they might be gentle with each other.

"Sure you're going to be all right without me, woman?" he asked her.

"Should be. I've had plenty of practice," she replied. Mama could be hard as stone when she felt the need to be.

"You don't let up on me," he complained. "I'm going off, won't see you for weeks. Cut me some slack, woman. Give me a chance to gulp some air before you push my head back underwater, hear?"

"I hear," she said, a tiny smile on her lips. Her eyes twinkled. His whining amused her. I don't know why he tried to put on false faces. Mama could read the truth through a mile-high pile of dead Spanish moss, but Daddy, especially, was a windowpane.

"Well," he said, sliding his boot over the galerie floor, "well . . ." He looked at me and then he leaned forward and pecked Mama's cheek like a chicken. "You take care. And you, Gabrielle, you spend more time with your mama than with them animals, hear?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Don't worry about me, Jack. Just don't drop the potato this time," she warned him.

"Aaa, what am I standing around here for? I got to go." He hurried off and got into the truck, waving once as he turned out of our yard and onto the road. I stood at Mama's side and waved after him.

"It seems unfair he has to go so far to find work, Mama."

"He don't find it. He was just lucky it came looking for him. If he was an ambitious man, he'd make his work for himself here, like most others do. But whoever whipped up the gumbo called Jack Landry left that ingredient out," she complained. "Let's go see if we can find a cool spot in the house."

The sun looked like a ball of rust behind the thin veil of a cloud. The cloud wasn't moving. I half expected to discover that the clock had stopped as well, the hands too exhausted with the effort to tell time in this heat.

"That's a good idea, Mama," I said. She stared at me at moment, tilting her head slightly to the right the way she often did when she was a little suspicious about something someone said or did.

"It's been nearly two weeks that you graduated and just about that long that summer came down with a wrath over us, yet you haven't gone off to your swimming hole, Gabrielle. How come?"

"I don't know," I said quickly, too quickly. Mama screwed those scrutinizing eyes more tightly on me. "Something scare you out there, something you're not telling me, Gabrielle? One of your loving animals didn't try to feast on you, did it?"

"No, Mama." I tried to laugh, but my face wouldn't crack a smile.

"I know you, Gabrielle. I know when you've laughed and when you've cried. I know when you're so happy inside, your face becomes a second sun and when you're so sad, the clouds are in your eyes. I nursed and diapered you, fed you and cleaned your bottom. Don't keep no secret locked from me, honey. I got the keys and will find it one day anyway."

"I'm fine, Mama. Please," I bel :ed. I hated not being honest. Mama shook her head.

"It'll be only a matter of time," she predicted, but she relented and I was able to get her to talk about other things while we worked on items to sell at our roadside stand.

We had far more than we needed for our tourist booth, but we worked on hats, baskets, and wove blankets to have for sale as soon as summer ended and the tourists started flocking back to the bayou. Days passed, one day indistinguishable from the other, mostly. Every day after a week, Mama looked for the check from Daddy, but none arrived. She mumbled about it under her breath and went on to do other things, but I knew it was eating away at her like termites in a dead tree. She didn't have to say it, but we were dipping deeply into her stash.

And then one-afternoon, just about ten days after Daddy had left, a late-model automobile appeared in our yard and two tall, stout men, one with a thin scar across his chin and the other with what looked like a piece of his right ear missing, came stomping over our galerie to rap hard on the front door. I was in the living room thumbing through a copy of Life magazine Mrs. Dancer had given Mama when Mama went to treat her stomach cramps. Mama was in the kitchen and walked quickly to the door. I got up and followed.

"Yes?" she asked.

"You Landry?"

"Yes, we are," Mama said. Instinctively she stepped back and pushed me back too. "What do you want?"

"We want to see your husband, Jack. He been here?"

"No. Jack's in Baton Rouge, working on construction."

"He ain't been here?" the man with the chipped ear demanded.

"I said no," Mama replied. "I'm not in the habit of telling lies."

They both laughed in a way that chilled my blood.

"Married to Jack Landry and you don't tell lies?" the man with the scar said. His thin lips curled into a smile of mockery.

"That's right," Mama snapped. The back of her neck stiffened and she moved forward, all retreat out of her eyes. She fixed them on both men. "Now, what is it you want with my husband?"

"We want him to pay his debts," the other man said. "What debts?"

"Gambling debts. Tell him Spike and Longstreet been here and will be back. Make sure he gets the message. Here's our calling card," he added, and took out a switchblade knife to cut a seam in our screen door. I felt the blood drain from my face. I screamed and Mama gasped, putting her arm around me quickly. The way they stood there glaring in at us made ice water drip down my spine.

"Get off my galerie! Get off my land, hear! I'll call the police. Go on."

They laughed and took their time leaving. We watched them get into their car and drive away, both our hearts pounding.

"Now what trouble has that man brought on our heads?" Mama wailed.

"Maybe we should go to town and tell the police, Mama."

"They won't care. They know your father's reputation. I'll fetch a needle and thread and sew up that screen," she said, "before we get a flock of mosquitoes in here."

We both tried to not talk about the two 'men, but every time we heard a car engine, we looked up fearfully, expectantly, and then sighed and released our held breaths when the car went on past our shack. It was hard enough to fall asleep with the heat and humidity, but now with fear loitering at our door, too, we both tossed and turned and opened our eyes and listened hard whenever we heard any unusual sounds at night, and especially whenever we heard automobiles.

The two ugly men didn't return, but four days later, while Mama and I were having a salad for lunch, we heard a horn and looked out to see Daddy's truck bouncing over the front yard. He nearly drove it into the house. He took a swig of a jug he had beside him on the front seat and then heaved the jug out the window. He practically fell out of the truck getting out. He stumbled and made his way to the galerie where we stood, both wide-eyed.

"What' cha both standin' there lookin' like ya seen a ghost?" he demanded, stopping short so quickly, he nearly toppled over. It's only me, Jack Landry, home. Ain'tcha glad to death?" he said, and laughed.

"What are you doing back here, Jack, and tanked up with rotgut whiskey, too?" Mama asked, her hands on her hips.

"Work ended faster than I expected," he replied, unable to stop his swaying. He closed his eyes, a silly smile on his lips.

"In other words, you got canned again, right?" Mama asked, wagging her head with anger.

"Let's just say me and the foreman had a disagreement to a point beyond compromise."

"You came to work drunk as a skunk," Mama concluded. "That," Daddy said, waving his long finger in the air like the conductor -of an orchestra, "is a dirty, low-down lie."

"I bet you ain't got a penny in your pocket, neither,"

Mama continued.

"Well . . ."

"And you never sent home a dollar, Jack."

"You didn't get nothin' in the mail?" he said, his eyes wide.

Mama shook her head. "When you get to hell, the devil's gonna learn a trick or two."

"Catherine, I swear on a stack of—"

"Don't say it. It's blasphemy," she warned. He gulped and nodded.

"Well, I did put some money in an envelope. Them postal workers stole it, for sure. They open the envelopes with a candle, Gabrielle, and then they reseal them with the wax," he said.

"Oh, Daddy," I said, shaking my head.

"Don't you two look like a pair of owls." He started to laugh, but Mama stepped to the side and pointed to the screen door where she had sewn up the slash.

"See that, Jack? Your friends came a-calling and cut up our screen door when they didn't find you here." "Friends?"

"Mr. Spike and Mr. Longstreet."

"Here?" His face turned paper white and he spun around as if they were waiting for him behind a tree. "What'dja tell them?"

"That you were working in Baton Rouge. Of course, I didn't know I was telling a lie."