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
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.
