"Arlene. How in the world did you find this place," Becky asked. They were speeding down the straight shell road, bright in the noon-day November sunlight. The road was long, narrow and bone-white between thick, green walls of forest. "What did you say the name was?"
"Terrell Plantation," Arlene said. "Remember, I'm from Rouen. I know about these things. Cajun société and nothing else, m'dear."
"God! Not another Red Bourgois Acadian Renaissance Committee snob! I meant that actor fellow."
"Steve Marcelle," Arlene said. "And he's absolutely beautiful. Not handsome, now, beautiful. He's ..." she held her hand palm down above the seat and rotated it like an unstable airplane, "you know, AC-DC?"
"Oh, God!" Becky said. "Why are they all either queer or married!"
Arlene laughed. They laughed at each other's witticisms symbiotically.
"Well, you fantasize, then. God knows I do. It's the perfect thing for the wedding party, I promise you."
"I don't know what all the fuss is all about."
"It'll be beautiful. There's a full moon tonight."
"No, that's not what I meant. I meant it's Jack's third and her fifth … I mean, my God, is she trying to make the rounds of all of them? Seems like we should celebrate any year she doesn't get married."
"Don't be a spoil-sport," Arlene teased. "Hank's your.. .fourth, isn't he?"
"You know perfectly well he's my third," Becky said with a gesture of finality in a little chop of her hand through the air. Ahead they could see the group of buildings crowded into a natural clearing. Becky began patting her hair and checking her makeup. "Maybe I can convert him," she said.
At first, he didn't seem to know what they wanted.
"Tonight," Arlene emphasized. "Arlene Degaterre? I talked to you a couple of weeks ago."
Steve Marcelle held his thumb and forefingers pressed into his temples, his eyes squeezed tight in an affected gesture of concentration and irritation. With as much resolution as comprehension in his mannerism, he let his hand drop to his thigh with a sigh. He was standing on one leg with the other hand on his out-thrust hip, so with the dropping of the hand and the heavy sigh he posed quite a picture.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," he said in a rapid, stuccato hiss. "Degaterre, De-ga-terre, Degaterre. I remember now. I've got it all written down of course, every little bit, but I don't know where that damn date book is right now. My secretary went back to the city ..." his hand flew up to his temples again but did not rest there. It bounced off his head and back to his thigh in what was not intended to be a comic salute. "Everything's in chaos, just utter chaos."
"But you can do it, can't you? Everybody's coming."
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," Marcelle hissed again. They exchanged money and the women left.
"Charming, wasn't he?" Becky said.
"Why didn't you try converting him?"
"Honey, that would take a miracle. Why does he do it? He obviously doesn't like it."
"That's just female chauvinism, insisting that the funny boys, the AC-DC ones don't enjoy it," Arlene said.
"Not that, you goose. The play. The skit, whatever it is," Becky said.
"Well, he does it for money, of course. I suppose you were looking the other way out of delicacy when I handed over my life's savings."
"Oh, go pooh! " Becky said. "You've got scads and gobs and oodles of money. Roger told me when he settled your divorce."
"You're not serious!"
"No, I'm not," Becky said. "But, seriously, this is a waiting gold mine, here. Hasn't the idiot heard of oil? Natural gas? He must be sitting on tons and tons of it."
"Red Bourgeois's got it tied up. Seems there's an old will or some ...."
"The Red Bourgeois? ARC and First Acadian Bank Red Bourgeois?"
"One in the same."
"But he must be ancient. What's he got to ...."
"I remember. It's usufruct."
"That's not another one of those things like AIDS or herpes, is it?"
"Point of law, m'dear," Arlene said. She was aware of the way she affected her speech with Becky. Becky made her self-conscious; she did not know why. Perhaps because Becky was an outsider.
They had reached the outer limits of Terrell Plantation and the change was abrupt. Everywhere sprouted derricks and oilfield Christmas trees, perpetual pumps constantly in slow, plunging motion, mechanical, dispassionate. And fabrication plants screeching with grinders on metal, huge tanks surrounded by little levees of grassless clay. She waited for a space between eighteen-wheelers, then turned onto the highway to Rouen. She touched cruise control and settled back.
"Usufruct is when you give somebody use of something. In this case, Red Bourgeois says what happens and when and what doesn't happen. They can't even cut a tree or dig a ditch unless he says so, and he always says no."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. Just what you saw. It took forever and a battery of lawyers just to get to use it for the little plays and such, just to build a bonfire and talk to groups of people"
"And he doesn't own it?"
"Steve Marcelle owns it, but he can't exploit it. They say Red wants to sell his own oil and gas first. I don't know. Maybe he just wants to save it. It's the last hardwood bottomland in the Attakapas Pace."
"Sounds like a bore to me."
"You won't be bored tonight," Arlene said.
Neither were they bored that afternoon. The wedding was at three. Then there was a small reception at Henry's Acadian Seafood and Steak House, in the private room out back. They left from there for Terrell Plantation in four cars. A thoughtful wedding guest had supplied each car with a gram of good cocaine and a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill. They were also smoking sinsemilla and drinking either Beefeater-and-tonic ready-mixed in a thermos or champagne sparkling from thick green magnums. So they were in a receptive state when they reached the wood line just at dusk.
Night was overtaking them and the forest was changing character. One Mercedes skidded on the twilight-blue shells not to strike a deer. Mockingbirds and whip-poor-wills and doves sang and cried and cooed like embracing lovers in the advent of evening.
They waited outside the building. Most of the guests were reverently hushed, senses heightened by the cocaine and impressed by the quiet power of the forest. The way a country man is overwhelmed by the traffic noises of the city. Some of the drunker ones laughed at corny jokes or their fellows' stumbling. They teased the bride and groom about the requirements of a wedding night.
It was a perfect time. There was just the chill of fall, enough for a fashionable sweater and a good, bright bonfire, but no danger of any real discomfort. The sky was clear. They gathered around a very young man in blue jeans and boots and a flannel shirt, standing on the porch.
"Bonsoir," he said, all part of the act. "I'm Ulysse Fontenot, your guide. That's my real name, yes. Me, I ain't no actor, no. Allons. Let's go, us."
He led them down a narrow path bordered by peeled logs, like they have in National Parks, carrying a small case which Arlene knew from experience contained the materials to start the fire. Again, penetrating the bowels of the forest, most of them were moved to silence. Some hung back in the trail for one more snort or to fire up a number, but most of the wedding party had turned the corner into due east when the moon rose surrealistically huge and blood-red against the deep, starlit blue of the night sky. They all paused in the trail to watch it, paused without signal, as though the moon were the signal. Then the path was clearer before them. They had bunched, but now they elongated again along the trail.
The path ended at another clearing. Bleachers had been erected before a black-scorched spot newly piled with wood. They sat on the benches and continued socializing as Ulysse soaked the dry branches with lighter fluid.
The moon had lost its rosy hue and was well above the clearing's line of trees, bright as a searchlight in the heavens. And still Marcelle had not come. They began to complain of cold but Ulysse refused to light the fire until the show began.
The grumbling continued. Ulysse seemed about to yield to the pressure when, with relief, he saw something in the moon-shadow of a big magnolia with blossoms like silver goblets. He pointed.
"Mais, he there now, him. Viens, Marcelle," he said to the outline of a man standing there, "tell your story, you. These people, they cold, them."
Marcelle stepped from the shadow. It was a new entrance, very impressive. He walked slowly, almost with arrogance. And with great, male power Arlene had not observed before, not even in the performance she had seen before on that very spot. They saw the blade of a knife glint in his hand as he walked.
"Fais le feu," he commanded Ulysse, gesturing easily with the hand that held the knife. Ulysse lit it and the flames spread upward like ferocious, greedy snakes to engulf the pile of kindling and logs. By the light, they saw Marcelle carve a wedge from a thick plug of tobacco. He sheathed the knife, put the plug into his pocket and the wedge into his mouth as he came up to the group.
"Les Américains, ainh?" he asked. It made them chuckle and his own cheeks rounded and reddened in smiling. It was a character who could take a joke. They responded with little trivial jests. He chuckled. "Bon. Then, I talk Américain, me."
"He's gorgeous," Becky whispered because her husband was at her arm. "Such a change. He needs a good, healthy missionary-ette."
It was true. The stage presence was startling, much more so than the other performance Arlene had seen. He even seemed heavier of shoulder, darker, healthier, more self-assured. The heavy, dark moustache would be fake, of course, but he had not bothered with it before. He was a beautiful man, not merely an actor and not beautiful in that feminine sense of the early afternoon.
There was something disturbing in that masculine power, though. Not the disturbing itch of passion. Arlene felt those stirrings, but that was not it. It was like the feeling of the air, the dead quiet and pressure preceding a hurricane. It was in the way the man moved, the way his thighs caught the orange-yellow light as he walked to the bonfire and almost ceremoniously spat a long, brown stream of juice and then the whole plug from his mouth, like the black vomit of the yellow fever she had read about, to sputter and simmer and be consumed by the flames. Again slowly, deliberately, he came back to them.
"Somebody here, they in love," he said. The crowd snickered. "To them I speak. Yes, yes, I speak to them. A story, ainh? Yes, yes. A story of love, l'histoire d'amour."
He paused to let those last words of French, words anyone could understand, sink in.
"But first, me, I am call Etienne Marcelle. Story happen here, long year ago. Before your mama and daddy, they even think of you. Maybe before your mama and daddy, too, yes, they were even born. Was here a man .. .me, moi. Me, a boy at first, like mos' men, ainh?"
They laughed. They were warming to him. They sat forward on the edges of the bleachers.
"She called herself Elisa." His voice softened at the mention of the name. "Elisa Segura. Pardon." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Me, never I could tell you how beautiful she was, mais I could try. But can one tell the beauty of the sun? Ainh? Or … or the kiss of mist on the bayou? Non. Think of your loved one. First love of your innocence.
"In that time when all the passion des jeunes, the … how you say… idealisme of youth, she has not been violate. When the skin, she shine from inside. You know? Like dew on the marsh grass early morning, yes? An' … an' when those things new come to you … and her so strong ... you kiss then weep, ainh? Oh, yes. When you share everything, even tears, yes. It is the world is new. Tout' ensemble, in order as they say. And life, she is warm and soft, l'embrasse de passion. Oui, oui.
"Me, I know her, yes. I know her from the little girl, bebé. Moi aussi, bebé, comme ça." He bent to hold his hand two feet off the ground. "Comprend? Understand? A child like this. My papa, he trap this land for Monsieur Segura, how come I know her so long.
"Monsieur Segura, poor man, he live without no woman, no. His wife, she die when Elisa she born. Pas ordinaire, non? Don' much happen, no? One clock, she stop, another, she start, ainh? He love that girl, yes. My maman, she take me to clean his house for him, make his garden, sew his clothes. She make dress for Elisa. Me, I got no sister, no.
"So I know her, oh yes, long time, me. First, we playmate. Then friend. Les amis. And de fin, sweetheart. Les Américains, they come in 'bout then. For the oil, comprend? Things change, oh yes. They change, them, but not Elisa et moi. Non, non. Not us. What we feel don' change.
"The war, she come, la guerre. I got to fight. She say she wait, but me, I cannot wait. Messieurs, mesdames, I ask for you. Mais, who can wait avec l'amour, when the death, la mort, she stan' inside the shadow of the moon pour toi, for you, ainh? An' when the woods they seem to say wit' ever' bird, ever' breeze, Faitons l'amour … piquons … what you call. We make love, us. She marry me, she say, when I come back.
"I go away. Long time. Yes, yes. Too long. I not write, no. Me, I don' know how, no. Oh, yes, for to sign my name. But what in my heart? Non, non. That paper, pencil, that no good, no."
Marcelle looked up at the high, bright moon, as if searching for the light to find his way.
"Her, she not here, no, when I come back. No, no, she gone. My maman, papá too, I don' know where. Maybe for to trap the marsh. Monsieur Segura, he again alone, him. 'Cept for a little boy. Mon ti garçon, my son.
"The war, she was hard on me, messieurs et mesdames. Yes, yes. I was not well. Monsieur Segura, he say why don' I go 'way? He is not mad. Oh no, not him. Good man, he was, yes. Yes, yes. So good. So good to that boy, just like he was to her. She marry, he tell me, why don' I go away, me.
"I say I go, but I wait. I wait inside the woods, me. She gone away, she marié, but she come back, I know. She come back to Terrell for to see that boy. I wait. I wait in rain and ice and wind. I live, me, like the les animeaux … of the woods, yes. Until she come. I wait to see if she is très content. If she look happy, me I go. If she no look happy, me I stay.
"I see her come. Driver bring her, yes. Driver leave. She play wit' the boy up on the porch. She happy wit' the boy, oh yes. But the eyes..." He touched the corner of his eye. ".. .they speak, too, yes. C'est vrai, oui. It true, yes. So true. They tell me, them, this girl, she not happy, no.
"Me, I come out the woods, me. Yes, yes. I step out in my rags and skins and long hairs. She see me. She stan'. Her han' go to la gorge, the throat. She turn so white. I think she faint. But she sen' the boy inside. Yes, yes, she come to me.
"Why you not write?" she say.
"Parceque-je connais pas to write, I say. I not know how for to write. But, me, I back now, yes. We go, now together, I say. Non, non, she say. Pas possible. Moi, je suis marié."
His language was imperfect, but they waited on each word. The mixture of French and English only served to intensify their concentration. They believed him. Arlene believed him. He seemed so sincere.
"Messieurs, mesdames, pardon," he said. "We make love, us, upon the forest floor, yes, yes. I found her, I love her. I die inside her arms. Die of love, comme ça dit. She hold me, yes, in death as in life. She cannot leave me, non, non. Her heart, ça belle, she break. We lay, us, in death together. Mon Dieu."
Sobs shook the heavy shoulders. They were all touched to silence, it seemed so real. They did not applaud until after he had wiped his face of tears with both broad, thick, calloused hands.
The clapping startled him. He looked up red-faced. He stared at them until the applause ended, dying with random slaps like water dripping. When he spoke again, it was sinister.
"Je veut vous presenter, ainh. You all them would like to meet, no?"
They whispered among themselves. This was an addition to the performance. Lagniappe. Ulysse started to object.
"Steve ..."
"Pas Steve. Je m'apelle, Etienne."
Ulysse faltered.
"Bien," Ulysse began again, "son dix heures et demie..."
"Tais-toi!" he commanded and Ulysse did, in fact, shut up. "Bon. Good. Viens … follow me."
They all left the bleachers and he led them into the forest. They took no prepared path. He walked slowly until the woods closed behind them and then swifter so that they had to walk faster than the briars and branches seemed willing to allow. They sweated profusely even in the cool fall evening as they struggled to keep sight of his shoulders lit with moonlight and dappled with shadows sliding off him like water cascading over stones.
"Steve! Steve! Etienne, then. Wait!" Ulysse called and the others grumbled and shouted after him, too, but that only served to quicken his pace. They were scratched and sweaty and wet up to the knees from the dew on the shrubs and grass. "Stay together! Stay together! These woods are tricky. You'll get lost!"
So they had no choice but to follow him. When he finally stopped, in a tiny glade deep inside the forest, they piled against one another like a gigantic, elongated, panting and cursing accordion. He knelt ceremoniously, like a devout genuflection in the Cathedral. Softly, with one hand stroking, he cleared a patch of brush and leaves and twigs then stood aside.
They crowded in to look at it. With horror, they saw it was a skeletal human foot. One woman fainted dead away. Others turned with revulsion from the sight. Arlene, though, was fascinated. She watched closely as several of the men cleared the brambles and bushes.
There were two skeletons. Only bits of clothing and skin clung to the bones. A moss-like patch of hair on each crusty skull. Eyeless sockets. Sardonic smiles of lipless teeth. The bones entwined, embraced.
"Shit, Steve! You son of a..." Ulysse shouted, all trace of accent gone, now. But the man was not with them. They were alone.
It took them three hours to emerge from the wilderness. And, if the bonfire had not been built back up, they might never have found the way. Steve Marcelle built the fire. Some of the men wanted to roast him on it, but Ulysse was able to hold them off. Marcelle kept insisting he had never made it to the storytelling. Somehow, he said, he had wandered from the path. He thought it had something to do with the moon, which was only just setting when first he told his own story of the evening.
He had become lost, his word was 'enchanted'. He had wandered through the woods for hours. Indeed, his clothes were now tattered to rags and his skin was gouged in long, bloody welts as was their own. It was a story he repeated even more in a panic at the inquest. The heightened concern was for the lawsuits. Several had been filed.
Becky joined Arlene at the inquest in the courthouse at Rouen. The preliminaries were boring. Steve Marcelle had just taken the stand when Red Bourgeois hobbled in on a cane and supported by a beautiful, red-haired woman at one arm and a handsome young man on the other.
"Who is that?" Becky asked, indicating the three of them as they sat on the front row where a deputy had saved space.
"Linda Bourgeois," Arlene whispered in response. "Lovely, isn't she?"
"Not her, silly, him."
"Why, that's Red Bourgeois," Arlene said.
"I know Red Bourgeois," she said. "I meant that young piece with them. The one with the dimpled chin. I'd like to discover all his dimples. Bet he's got some nice ones in some very lovely places."
"That's her son … their son."
"She has a son that old?"
"That's her youngest. She and Red had an older boy killed in a shootout. She looks younger than she is but she's still a child compared to her husband."
"A shootout?"
"Shhh. Tell you later. I want to hear this."
"So Mister Marcelle," one of the attorneys was saying. "Do you contend you were … ah … mesmerized by the moon or something?"
"Now, listen, I'm going to say it just one more time. I was lost," Marcelle replied. The tension aggravated the effeminate mannerism of speaking. "Lost, I tell you."
"But Mister Marcelle, then how do you account for you’re act ...."
"Your honor, I must object," said Marcelle's attorney, a short, dark, balding self-assured lawyer whose own father had once been judge in that court. "Counsel is again going into matters that have nothing to do with these proceedings. This inquest is simply to shed light on the deaths of two unidentified people whom the parish coroner has already testified died possibly before Mister Marcelle was even born. Counsel has been retained as plaintiff attorney by sev..."
"Yes, yes, I think you're quite right," the judge said. "Objection sustained. Mister Thompson, you will kindly confine your questioning to the facts of the inquest."
"You honor, I was just trying to shed a little light on this mystery. Obviously, something highly irregular went ...."
"Your honor."
Red Bourgeois was standing braced on his cane before him. His wife on one side and his son on the other each steadied him by an elbow. He appeared very frail, but the voice was clear and strong. All eyes in the courtroom were on him.
"Sir?"
"I believe if I may take the stand I can shed the light you need."
"Counsel?"
"I have no objection, your honor."
"Nor I, your honor."
"Then Mister Marcelle, you may step down temporarily. Mister Bourgeois, you may take the stand."
There was a tense, dramatic moment as the old man was helped to the stand by his young wife and son. He brought the stick into the booth with him and the gold tiger's head glittered from between his fingers above the railing. He was allowed to sit as the oath was sworn.
"Just tell us what you know, sir."
The old man looked out over the courtroom. His eyes seemed young but staring out from behind the folds of wrinkled flesh like a cat stares from the shadow of a cave.
"His name was Etienne Marcelle. She was Elisa Segura Bourgeois … my first wife."
There was a murmur that swept through the courtroom until silenced by the gavel. Slowly, tortuously, the old man retold the story, from his point of view. When it was over he had only a few words to add.
"There was no violence. You do not have to search for it. They were not violent people. They were lovers caught up in a situation, that's all. Illegitimate children, they were as scandalous as divorce in those days. That was another world."
Now he reached to dry his own tears, pushing the old, yellowed fingers up beneath the rimless glasses. His shoulders quivered. His wife went to him with no objection from anyone. She put her arm around his shoulders. He looked at her and smiled sweetly. She looked at him with sympathy and love. From a pocket inside his seersucker jacket he took a thick legal envelope. He placed it on the bench.
"It's all here, Judge." Now he looked at Steve Marcelle. "I give up the usufruct, son. Their tomb has been violated, the usufruct is no longer of any use.
"You see, we couldn't find them," he said, looking at the judges again. "We searched and searched, but they were not to be found. I couldn't … my God ... we couldn't ...."
Now sobs overtook him mightily, as though shaken by some invisible hand. The judge made a quick perusal of the documents. Linda Bourgeois came to the front of the bench.
"Your honor, my husband ...."
"Yes, yes, Mrs. Bourgeois. I quite understand. These papers tell everything. Thank you, Mister Bourgeois. You may step down."
The entire courtroom stood as they helped him to the door. One hand pressed a handkerchief to his face. But, just before he left the room, the audience broke out in applause. The judge let it linger until the three of them were gone. Then he brought the gavel down.