her, especially on a church day. When she finally appeared, she looked pale and very old, as old as Rip van Winkle after his extended sleep. She cringed a bit when she walked and held her hand against her side.
'I don't know what's come over me,' she declared. 'I haven't overslept like this for years.'
'Maybe you can't cure yourself, Grandmere. Maybe your herbs and potions don't work on you and you should see a town doctor,' I suggested.
'Nonsense. I just haven't found the right formula yet, but I'm on the right track. be back to myself in a day or two,' she swore, but two days went by and she didn't improve an iota. One minute she would be talking to me and the next, she would be fast asleep in her chair, her mouth wide open, her chest heaving as if it were a struggle to breathe.
Only two events got her up and about with the old energy she used to exhibit. The first was when Grandpere Jack came to the house and actually asked us for money. I was sitting with Grandmere on the galerie after our dinner, grateful for the little coolness the twilight brought to the bayou. Her head grew heavier and heavier on her shoulders until her chin'-rested on her chest, but the moment Grandpere Jack's footsteps could be heard, her head snapped up. She narrowed her eyes into slits of suspicion.
'What's he coming here for?' she demanded, staring into the darkness out of which he emerged like some ghostly apparition from the swamp: his long hair bouncing on the back of his neck, his face sallow with his grimy gray beard thicker than usual, and his clothes so creased and dirty, he looked like he had been rolling around in them for days. His boots were so thick with mud, it looked caked around his feet and ankles.
'Don't you come any closer,' Grandmere snapped. 'We just had our dinner and the stink will turn our stomachs.'
'Aw, woman,' he said, but he stopped about a half-dozen yards from the galerie. He took off his hat and held it in his hands. Fishhooks dangled from the brim. 'I come here on a mission of mercy,' he said.
'Mercy? Mercy for who?' Grandmere demanded.
'For me,' he replied. That nearly set her laughing. She rocked a bit and shook her head.
'You come here to beg forgiveness?' she asked.
'I came here to borrow some money,' he said.
'What?' She stopped rocking, stunned.
'My dingy's motor is shot to hell and Charlie McDermott won't advance me any more credit to buy a new used one from him. I gotta have a motor or I can't earn any money guiding hunters, harvesting oysters, whatnot,' he said. 'I know you got something put away and I swear—'
'What good is your oath, Jack Landry? You're a cursed man, a doomed man whose soul already has a prime reservation in hell,' she told him with more vehemence and energy than I had seen her exert in days. For a moment Grandpere didn't reply.
'If I can earn something, I can pay you back and then some right quickly,' he said. Grandmere snorted.
'If I gave you the last pile of pennies we had, you'd turn from here and run as fast as you could to get a bottle of rum and drink yourself into another stupor,' she told him. 'Besides,' she said, 'we haven't got anything. You know how times get in the bayou in the summer for us. Not that you showed you cared any,' she added.
'I do what I can,' he protested.
'For yourself and your damnable thirst,' she fired back.
I shifted my gaze from Grandmere to Grandpere. He really did look desperate and repentant. Grandmere Catherine knew I had my painting money put away. I could loan it to him if he was really in a fix, I thought, but I was afraid to say.
'You'd let a man die out here in the swamp, starve to death and become food for the buzzards,' he moaned.
She stood up slowly, rising to her full five feet four inches of height as if she were really six feet tall, her head up, her shoulders back, and then she lifted her left arm to point her forefinger at him. I saw his eyes bulge with shock and fear as he took a step back.
'You are already dead, Jack Landry,' she declared with the authority of a bishop, 'and already food for buzzards. Go back to your cemetery and leave us be,' she commanded.
'Some Christian you are,' he cried, but continued to back up. 'Some show of mercy. You're no better than me, Catherine. You're no better,' he called, and turned to get swallowed up in the darkness from where he had come as quickly as he had appeared. Grandmere stared after him a few moments even after he was gone and then sat down.
'We could have given him my painting money, Grandmere,' I said. She shook her head vehemently.
'That money is not to be touched by him,' she said firmly. 'You're going to need it someday, Ruby, and besides,' she added, 'he'd only do what I said, turn it into cheap whiskey.
'The nerve of him,' she continued, more to herself than to me, 'coming around here and asking me to loan him money. The nerve of him . . .'
I watched her wind herself down until she was slumped in her chair again, and I thought how terrible it was that two people who had once kissed and held each other, who had loved and wanted to be with each other were now like two alley cats, hissing and scratching at each other in the night.
The confrontation with my Grandpere drained Grandmere. She was so exhausted, I had to help her to bed. I sat beside her for a while and watched her sleep, her cheeks still red, her forehead beaded with perspiration. Her bosom rose and fell with such effort, I thought her heart would simply burst under the pressure.
That night I went to sleep with great trepidation, afraid that when I woke up, I would find Grandmere Catherine hadn't. But thankfully, her sleep revived her and what woke me the next morning was the sound of her footsteps as she made her way to the kitchen to start breakfast and begin another day of work in the loom room.
Despite the lack of customers, we continued our weaving and handicrafts whenever we could during the summer months, building a stock of goods to put out when the tourist season got back into high swing. Grandmere
