Two

Theophile Breaux leaned back against the porch rail and studied the moss-covered trees dotting the horizon. A chill wind blew across the porch and settled in his soul. All the while, birds chirped a rhythm old as the water flowing silently past the eastern edge of the Breaux property. Somewhere beyond the cypress and pines and the Bayou Nouvelle lay that big old world Theo loved so much.

Ever since he could remember, he’d been on a path leading out of town. He’d been knee high to a grasshopper when he first saw how hard his papa worked and how little he got for the hides he took to town. Way back then, Theo had made a promise to himself and the Lord.

Well, actually it was more of a deal.

If Theo obeyed his mama and papa and did all the things the Good Book said, the Lord would give him a life free from toil and trials. So far, so good. He’d all but made good his escape, having been gone from the old home place the better part of three years before Papa slipped and fell on a patch of late-season ice.

Mama’d tracked Theo down through the big network of family spread across Louisiana and Texas. A telegram arrived on the doorstep of his rooming house in Houston just about the time Theo was thinking of saying good-bye to his Texas kin and heading north to Oklahoma or maybe up to Canada.

He smiled. Perhaps someday his travels would lead him to Grand Pre in Nova Scotia, where his kin, the original Acadians, once called home.

Now wouldn’t that be something? This old Cajun sitting pretty in the place where his great-great-great-granddaddy wasn’t welcome.

His smile deepened and turned to a chuckle. Funny how he thought of himself as old. While he was the eldest of the bunch, he still had a few years to go before he would see thirty.

Off in the distance, the younger children played a game of some sort, and across the way, his sisters washed clothes in the bayou’s rolling waters. Bessie beat one of Mama’s white aprons on a rock, while Addie worked a pair of Papa’s trousers across the rub board. Somewhere along the bayou, Alphonse and Pete checked the traps, and in the house, Lucy and Kate helped Mama strip the beds. In the summer kitchen, Alouise and Jeannine would be starting the gumbo that would simmer until suppertime.

Closing his eyes, he could see it all. The faces of his brothers and sisters eventually replaced by their children and their children’s children, just as it had been in the centuries since government orders sent the Acadians spilling down the Mississippi into south Louisiana. Nothing had changed in the bayou, and it never would.

Sa fini pas. It never ends.

“By your age I’d been married to your mama for a coon’s age and was raising a houseful of young ’uns,” Papa had told him over coffee just this morning. “Your time’s a-comin’, son.The Lord’s about to let you meet your match.”

“Must be your broke bone you feel it in,” he’d joked. But standing here with the sounds of the bayou swirling around him, the joke fell flat. If he didn’t get out of here soon, he just might fall into the same trap that bound Papa to the muddy land. Then what?

Theo turned up the collar of his heavy shirt and shifted from the shadows into the warmth of the sunshine. Foolishness, this idea he might get hung up here indefinitely. He and the Lord had a deal. The road had detoured for just a bit, but he’d soon be back on it. Daddy’s broken leg was healing nicely, and Mama said he’d be back to trapping in no time.

The faster the better, to Theo’s way of thinking, because he had plans. He loved his mama and daddy, but nothing set his teeth on edge worse than being stuck in a small place with a big number of relatives.

With one kinfolk shy of a dozen, the old house overflowed.

“Theo, you’ll be back in time for supper?”

He turned to grin at his mother. Careworn yet wearing a smile, she stood in the doorway with a set of bed linens draped over one arm.

“Oui, Mama,” he said. “I aim to see that place the reverend told me about, and then I’ll head on back home. Don’t ’spect it’ll take more’n a few hours unless I get a mind to catch a fish or two.”

She shook her head and clutched the bleached white sheets to her chest. “Fishing, that’s a man’s excuse for sittin’ still. You tell the reverend he’s overdue for a gumbo supper, and I aim to set an extra place this evenin’. If he’s a mind t’join us, he knows he don’t need no engraved invitation.”

“I will.” Mama wouldn’t know an engraved invitation if it slapped her upside the head, but she sure liked to use that term. “Theophile, you know you can come home any time you want. You don’t need no engraved invitation.” He’d asked her once if she had any idea what she was talking about. She’d responded with a comment about how sassy he’d become since he no longer lived under her roof, then stormed off.

He’d hoped to talk her and Papa into visiting him in Houston, but it never happened. There was always something that kept them stuck here. Well, when he got himself a little place up in Canada, he’d send them all train tickets.

Theo watched Mama climb the wooden steps leading from the front porch up into the attic space where the boys slept. Years ago, he’d offered to build an inside staircase. The old tax laws that forced the Acadians to get creative with their living spaces were no longer in force, making the outside stairway unnecessary. Still, Mama and Papa refused the change, preferring instead to go out on the porch in order to reach the upper half of the house.

One more example of how things never seemed to change on the bayou.

He turned east toward the Trahan place. Whatever the reverend had to show him, it ought to be more interesting than what went on around here.

Tromping through the marsh, he fell into his habit of conversing with the Lord. Generally a one-sided conversation with him doing all the talking and God doing all the listening, the prayer this afternoon involved Theo merely asking a single question—when his time in Latagnier would be done—and then waiting in silence for an answer.

This is your home. It will never be done, came the soft reply.

Stopping short, Theo looked up toward the cornflower blue sky and squinted. “Lord, did I hear You right? I’m never leaving Latagnier? Well, I just don’t think I’m gonna believe that.”

He stomped his boots to shake off the remains of yesterday’s walk through the muddy bayou’s edge, then shielded his eyes from the sun. If only he could shield them from the Son, as well. That, Theo knew, was useless. The Lord saw everything; He just acted like He didn’t sometimes.

Like now. Couldn’t God see he wanted to be free of the life that broke his daddy’s spirit and sent him to carrying an old man’s load at a young man’s age?

What if the load was not a burden?

Again the Father’s voice teased his ears and pierced his heart. He’d never considered Papa might actually like the lot he’d been cast.

“What if I mean for you to carry the same load?”

“I won’t do it, I tell You,” he muttered. “I just can’t.”

“That you, Theo?” The Reverend Broussard stood some hundred yards away, waving his arms.

“Oui, c’est moi.” Theo returned the greeting and stomped toward him. Where did a man go for an appeal when the Creator of the universe handed down a verdict he didn’t like? Even the reverend wouldn’t have an answer to that one.

He shook off the thought and plowed forward through the mucky ground until he hit the hard-packed earth. By that time, the reverend stood only a few yards away. “Bonjour, Reverend,” he said as he closed the distance between them. “Comment ça va?”

“Things are going well, son. Thank you for asking.” The reverend adjusted his hat, then shook Theo’s hand. “Pleasure seeing you on a day besides Sunday. I’m glad you’ve chosen to stay here in Latagnier for a while.”

This parson, different from others Theo had come across, had calluses that bore the signs of a workingman’s life. Like the rest of the men in Latagnier, he worked hard for his living, saving souls on Sunday and tilling the land the rest of the week.

“Well, not me,” Theo said softly as he shoved his fists into his pockets and looked away.

“Excuse me?” the reverend asked.

Theo shook his head. “Nothing,” he said as he turned his attention to the ramshackle pile of boards and windows gathering leaves—and most likely snakes—beside the little cabin. Many years ago, the structure had been someone’s home, but now it sat empty and forgotten. “So this is the place you’re thinking of turning into a schoolhouse, eh?”

The preacher nodded. “What do you think?”

His carpenter’s eye told him there was hope in the little structure. His heart, however, said there was much more to life than staying as long as fixing up this place would take.