city men who came to the bayou to hunt ducks or white-tail deer.
Jed was Daddy's favorite sort of boss. He drank a great deal of homemade whiskey himself, smoked, and cursed every fourth word. He lived alone in the rear of his gun, tackle, and boat shop, which was a wooden building so rotted, it looked like it would collapse the moment the vermin and insects that had made it their home decided to leave.
Despite his drinking, gambling, and fighting, Daddy had developed a good reputation as a swamp guide. It seemed he fit the bill because he looked and talked the way rich Creoles from New Orleans expected a Cajun swamp guide would look and talk. For an extra dollar, he would pose for their pictures: his hair wild, his beard straggly, his skin tan and leathery.
The truth was, Daddy always found them ducks or got them to get off some good shots at deer. Daddy knew his swamp; he was as much a part of it as a nutria or gator, but I hated the work he was doing because the men he guided were men who killed for sport and not for food or clothing. Some of them left the animal carcasses where they shot them because they weren't big enough or impressive enough trophies.
But between what Daddy made, or what he would bring to Mama before he gambled or drank away, and what Mama and I would make weaving baskets and blankets and selling jams and gumbo, we were doing better than ever. Daddy got himself a later-model truck, and Mama bought a new set of dishes from the Tin Man who came by in his van. On my nineteenth birthday, Mama had Daddy buy me a watch. It was silver with Roman numerals. It had a thin, black band. Daddy thought it was a waste of money.
'She can tell the time better than any watch just by looking at the sun,' he explained. 'No one reads the signs in Nature better than Gabrielle.'
'A young woman nowadays should have a nice watch,' Mama insisted.
'I wouldn't mind it if she went places where some young man could consider her for to be his wife,' Daddy said. 'Actually,' he added after mulling it over a moment and chewing on his lip, 'I'm glad she has a watch. She can hear time tickin'. 'Fore you know it, she'll be twenty and unmarried. Then who'll come for her? Huh, Catherine? Not one of your well-to-do respectable town boys, no. And if one comes along and learns she ain't a virgin . . . she'll be lucky she gets one of my swamp rats.'
'You stop that talk, hear, Jack Landry?' Mama said, snapping her forefinger at him, the way someone would snap a whip. 'I'll put a curse on any man who talks poorly about Gabrielle, hear? Any man,' she emphasized, her eyes blazing.
'Well, she don't go to no dances; she don't talk to anyone at church, she don't go anywhere 'less you go, and all she does is follow you around on your
' 'Can ya daughter really talk to gators, Jack? Does she really sleep on a bed of water snakes?' ' he mimicked, wagging his head. 'And what you doin' to get her lookin' presentable for a suitor, Catherine? Huh? Lettin' her walk around here barefoot with vines and wildflowers in her hair? Keepin' baby turtles, nutria, frogs, every varmint in the swamp, as a pet.'
'She's a fine-looking young lady, Jack Landry. I don't have to do anything to get her suitable., Any man who doesn't see that doesn't deserve her,' Mama told him.
'Ah, you're just as highfalutin as she is. Any man who doesn't see that . . Ya got to know the garden's ready for some plantin' before you come around to put your seeds in,' he said, pumping the air with his long arms. 'That's what my daddy used to say.'
'Swamp wisdom,' Mama threw back at him. 'And don't you go bringing any of those swamp rats around here to court her, neither, Jack. I want her to have a good husband, one who'll take good care of her, hear?'
'I hear, I hear. Trouble is, you don't hear. You don't hear the clock tickin'. Put your ear to her watch, too.'
Lately, maybe because I was closing in on twenty, Daddy was complaining more and more about my failure to find a suitable husband. He threatened to write BRIDE AVAILABLE, ASK INSIDE on a sign and post it on our front lawn if I didn't find my own man soon. Of course, Mama told him she would rip it right out and smash it over his head if he tried to put such a sign on our lawn.
But the truth was, my mind wasn't on young men and marriage. Daddy was right. All I could think about was baby Paul and how I would get to see him again. Romance and love, marriage and husbands, seemed the stuff of movies and books, far-off like a thunderhead in the distance, bursting over someone else and not over me.
One afternoon because, my heart was so empty it had put a twilight gloom in my very soul, I poled my pirogue east on the canal and docked near the Tates' mansion. I found a deserted path to the road under a canopy of cypress trees and then crossed the highway and slipped through the forest to come around behind the house where I knew they had put up swings and a sliding pond. The Tates' nanny would bring little Paul out to play. I found a shaded spot under a large willow tree nearby and crouched down behind some branches and leaves of the vines that were woven through the fence to watch him laugh and giggle, stumble about and make discoveries, or just sit in his sandbox and push his toy cars.
Paul's nanny was a girl the Tates had imported from New Orleans. She had honey-colored hair, but a plump face and a pear-shaped figure. She waddled lazily behind the baby, her face revealing her annoyance with any extra effort Paul demanded of her. She didn't look all that much older than I was, and every time I saw her with the baby, she always looked bored. Whenever he played in the sandbox, she would sit with an emery board and work on her fingernails for hours, as if she were carving out some great marble statue, or she would be reading one of her movie magazines and chewing gum like a milk cow chewing on a blade of grass. Sometimes she would let him cry for nearly ten minutes before she looked to see what was bothering him or what he wanted. It took all my strength to keep my lips sealed or keep myself from jumping up and running over to him. It was probably more painful to do what I was doing than not to be there at all.
But sitting undetected in the woods by the house, I could imagine myself there, beside him, maybe reading him a story or caring for his needs. Usually he played so well and so quietly by himself. I could see he was going to be a bright young man; everything attracted his curiosity. I was disappointed when his nanny realized the time and scooped him up to bring him into the house.
However, I returned the next day and the day after that, sometimes waiting for hours before she would bring him out. And when it rained, I was terribly frustrated, for I knew he wouldn't be out at all. Then one day while I was sitting in my spot watching him play, crawl, and toss the sand in his box while his nanny sat reading a magazine with her back to him, I spotted what I was positive was a cottonmouth snake slither over the grass and curl just beside the sandbox. It raised its triangular head ominously. Paul caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He studied it a moment and then laughed and started toward the snake. The nanny continued to be absorbed in her magazine.
