Chapter Four

Miss LeBlanc waited impatiently in her black behemoth while Laura purchased a toothbrush and a few necessities to get through the night. As soon as Laura reseated herself, the driver jerked the hand controls and swung into the road as if she owned the right of way. A red pickup truck squealed to an agonizing stop a foot from their bumper. The driver cursed the old lady fluently in French. Miss LeBlanc drove grandly on, reaching the edge of town in a matter of minutes. Doubting casual conversation with her fellow librarian was possible Laura tried to absorb herself in the scenery. Suddenly, Lilliane LeBlanc began talking and taking her eyes off the road more than Laura liked to make her points.

“At least you’re better than most they’ve sent me. Kids just out of college! The last one left in tears. Couldn’t even get through the interview. And they sent me a colored librarian they thought could run the place. Imagine that! Times change, but they don’t change that fast in Chapelle.”

Laura remained silent and watched the parade of homes, some grand, some shabby, wedged between the road and the bayou. Shaggy pecan trees preparing for winter dropped their yellow, disease-spotted leaves on the trailers and camps, cabins and mansions. Cane made a wall along the horizon on Miss Lilliane’s side of the road.

“You, you at least know what it’s like to lose something you care about. It’s not easy to adjust to loss, to a handicap, to old age.”

“It’s not easy to adjust to being alone. Some people never ­adjust.” Laura turned to look at Miss LeBlanc, but now that woman’s gaze remained fixed straight ahead. Her aged lips moved.

“You’re young. You’ll adjust. And in Chapelle, you’ll never be alone. Everyone knows everyone else’s business and will until Myrtle Hill retires. The police jury here keeps talking about getting a modern phone system, but they won’t do it until Myrtle gives up the exchange, and she’s not much younger than me. Lives with and supports a mother older than the bayou. Those Hills came down here as carpetbaggers, and there is no getting rid of them. Why, they even got the politicians to chase off the Verizon men when they wanted to put up a few communication towers in the parish. Told people they’d get cancer from the invisible rays.” Miss Lilliane snorted.

Laura, relieved the talk had taken a turn away from her, resumed her study of the countryside. The cane land turned to pasture on both sides of the road. Brahman cattle, stalked by flocks of small white egrets, grazed serenely in the fields where neither this type of cow nor that type of bird was native. She’d arrived at a place that took well to immigrants of all species. Maybe she could adjust.

A grove of live oaks standing the midst of the fields marked a home site, but nothing stood among the trees except four stout brick pillars and the central core of a fireplace. “By the size of the trees, that must have been a very old place.” Laura pointed to the ruins in the grove.

Miss Lilliane nodded. “Bon Chance, my family’s home, built in 1798 by August LeBlanc and destroyed by fire nine years ago. Of course, no one occupied it at the time. When the Chateau was completed in 1835, Bon Chance became the overseer’s house. After my nephew insisted on converting the land from cane to cattle, no one lived there. Wasn’t a mansion, only your typical French colonial cottage. Still, a pity to see it burn, especially since we were trying to give the old place to the parish for a museum. Arson, they said it was arson.”

Beyond the ruins of Bon Chance, wide-girthed live oaks hung over the road at regular intervals forming a leafy corridor to another grove. The black Lincoln followed the line of trees off the main thoroughfare and on to a shell road, the heavy car pulverizing the oyster shucks that pinged up against the vehicle in retaliation.

“My home, Chateau Camille.” The old lady’s voice rose with pride as she pulled into the circular drive. The house, white-columned and deep verandahed, ablaze in the sunlight, was everything an antebellum mansion should be.

“You have a right to be proud,” said Laura.

“Who said I was proud? There are bigger homes, fancier ones right in the area. But this one is mine, that’s all.” The elderly librarian leaned on the horn. When no one rushed from the huge double doors of the house to her side, Miss Lilliane rolled down her window and bellowed, “Pearl! Pearl! Angelle! T-Bob!” and laid on the horn again. No response came from the house.

“You’ll have to go around back and get T-Bob. He’s probably in the barn with his damned cows. Who knows where Pearl is hiding!”

“I’m sure I can get you into the house, Miss LeBlanc,” Laura offered.

“T-Bob knows how I like things done. Now go around back and find him.”

Laura accepted the order as a guest must and took a gravel walk to the rear of the house. She threaded through a formal garden among tree-sized camellias and immense azaleas clipped into tight mounds and came out of the maze at a thick hedge of shiny-leafed ligustrum. A whiff of barnyard and the lowing of cattle hinted at the view the ligustrum blocked. Laura passed through a gate and faced a line of thoroughly modern metal and concrete cattle barns. Holding pens and pasture stretched beyond the buildings. Laura picked her way among the cow patties, though the place was as immaculate as a barnyard could be. She settled on the center of the three buildings to try first because the sounds of animal versus man emitted from there.

“Dammit, hold him tighter!” came followed by a thud of hooves against a wall.

Laura entered the barn and in the instant it took for her eyes to adjust to the interior dimness, her white-shod foot sank into a small mound of fresh manure. Shaking what she could from her sole Laura peered into pen after pen and finally came to the source of the noise near the opposite door.

The black-haired man in the soiled khaki work shirt knelt in the straw. He applied a blue antiseptic with sure strokes of his big, tanned hands to a nasty cut on the foreleg of a half-grown Brahman calf whose head was held by a chocolate-colored man dressed in an identical khaki shirt. The lop-eared, saggy-jowled calf had a look about the eyes of a rebellious adolescent. It lunged backwards and struck out again. As much blue fluid stained the man in the straw as it did the calf. Sweat ran down the fellow’s neck and disappeared into the mat of black hair showing at his open shirt collar.

Taking her cue from Miss LeBlanc’s tone of voice, Laura addressed the surly, swearing hired man she recognized from the sandwich shop. “T-Bob, Miss LeBlanc needs some help out front.” She used her best ‘I take no nonsense from students’ voice. The chocolate-colored man grinned broadly as if she had just told a tremendously funny joke.

The other man rose, brushing the straw from his knees, and answered without looking at Laura. “Tell Tante Lil I’ll be there in a minute. Tony, leave him here a few days. Give that cut a chance to heal. He won’t be show material, but someone who wants a good piece of breeding stock will take him. Have the men double check for loose wire.”

Tony answered with a “Yes, Boss,” emphasizing the word Boss and giving Laura another merry grin. Then, T-Bob turned his eyes directly on her.

Bedroom eyes, the words came swiftly to her mind. That’s what one of her earthier college roommates called eyes like those, deep brown eyes with a hint of sorrow, a hint of longing, and an outright promise of passion. The color of the eyes did not matter, really. Laura shifted her own eyes to the calf and refocused her mind on the memory of David. Even so, she resisted the urge to tug down her skirt.

“He gave you a bad time,” she said.

“Not really. He was afraid of the pain. We all are scared when we’re hurt. That’s natural. I’m Robert LeBlanc. Only people over the age of sixty call me T-Bob. It’s been Robert or Bob since my father died.”

“Laura Dickinson.” Wondering where his surliness vanished, she offered her hand, and then noticed it put him at a disadvantage. He wiped his stained hands on a trouser leg and took hers in a warm, hard grip. The horn of the Lincoln sounded again, one long blare reaching all the way to the barns.

“Tante Lil calls.” Appearing more amused than insulted, he led the way into the garden.