Chapter Twenty-Four

Robert took control of Laura’s car. They bucketed along the back roads, part of an entourage of well-dressed and drunken revelers. “I sent Tante Lil and Angelle home in the Lincoln. I thought tonight you might just give me a lift,” he said.

Laura didn’t answer. Perhaps, the time had come to put a new man in the driver’s seat, but she wasn’t about to say so. Excessive indulgence in champagne had a way of making decisions much too easy.

They came to a crossroad where an old country store stood, its flaking metal sign reading “Broussard Grocery.” Enough vehicles crammed the field next to the store it might have been mistaken for a used car lot. The sports cars and sedans of the Mardi Gras set joined the pickup trucks and motorcycles. Robert carried Laura across the muddy lot and up the creaking cypress steps, stumbling a little, and not nearly as agile as he had been during the pageant. Setting her down on the porch, he said, “Just practicing for later when I carry you off to have my way with you.”

“Do it,” Laura challenged.

“Not now! Later. I promise. Come on.”

They entered through the store, a real country store with a grated window that served as a post office and had a small sign reading “Justice of the Peace” to the left of that, plus a jumbled array of canned goods, some with labels faded with age, to the right. The only sales taking place seemed to be for cold drinks and occasional jars of white liquid served from under the counter by a fat man in a soiled T-shirt with stained yellow armpits.

Robert led her straight ahead down an aisle and into a huge metal building attached to the store. Here a mass of people danced spasmodically to the beat of an all black band playing an exotic blend of rock, Cajun, and country music. The crowd was mostly white, except for a few colored women in very short crocheted dresses with little on beneath, who passed in and out of two large open doors in the rear of the place. Laura could see the dim form of an old motel behind the building.

Before she could take it all in, Robert’s friend with the wine bottle beckoned them to a table. He generously shared his bottle with the group. Laura took a big swallow. Not wine. The fire spread from her throat to her toes. She coughed and the friend snickered. “I had Broussard fill it with some of his white lightning.”

A tall, brown-skinned woman, large in the breasts and barely covered by orange crochet that matched her hair, leaned over Robert. “How’s it hanging, Bob? You alone on Mardi Gras Eve? Need a date?”

“Not tonight, Sugar. Miss Sugar LeDoux, I’d like you to meet our parish librarian, Laura Dickinson. I guess you don’t get to the library too often.”

“No, sir. I use the one at the university.” The hooker winked. “Anything I can do for the rest of you gentlemen?”

“How about me, Sugar? I’m lonely.” The wine bottle wielder ran his hand under her short dress and snapped the elastic on her bikini pants. His petite blonde date, his wife actually, glared.

“Well, maybe on my poker night.”

Working the room, Sugar passed along to another table.

“Hey, you know her real name is Beulah. I’d change that one, too. She took the LeDoux from the sheriff’s name. They’re not really related like everyone says. Good joke, huh, Sugar LeDoux, Sugar the Sweet.” The drunk laughed, and his wife speared him with another look he was too numb to feel.

“That’s Pearl’s…” Laura said slowly because her lips felt ­clumsy and her mind slow. In a moment of insanity, she’d taken another sip from the bottle.

“Just an old friend of mine,” Robert interrupted. “Let’s dance.”

They danced now to a primitive rhythm as unlike the sedate music of the ball as possible. The band made the most out of a strange assortment of instruments: fiddles, two electric guitars, drums, a triangle and an accordion. One musician became an instrument himself, strumming a corrugated metal sheet worn over his shirt.

“They call this music Zydeco, meaning string beans. I can’t even guess why,” Robert shouted over the beat.

“The Broussards used to have a real barn out back, used as a speakeasy in the Twenties, but the place burned down in the in the Fifties when the family ran a little short on money. They got enough from the insurance company to pay off some debts to a group of pretty shady characters. Later, they put up this metal building. Everyone still calls it Broussard’s Barn.”

Making it easier for Laura to dance in her long gown the band swung into an electrified two-step. Sweat trickled between her breasts and her skirts stuck to the back of her legs. Robert caught a trickle of perspiration on her neck with his tongue. She said, “I wish I could take off this dress.”

“Oh, you can. But not until after the wedding. Didn’t your mama ever tell you that?”

“I want to do it right now!” Laura insisted, reeling with white lightning.

“I accept your proposal.” Robert held up his arm signaling the band. “A wedding march, please!”

The band, also available for receptions as their advertising said, actually did know the wedding march. Robert led Laura grandly into the store to the electronically distorted chords of Handel. The word passed from table to table, “A wedding, a wedding.” It reached the front counter where Broussard put on a black coat hanging on a nail behind him and shoved an already knotted tie over his head and around the fat creases of his neck. Ceremoniously, he moved from behind the bar to behind the bars of the post office window. “Will the happy couple please step forward?” he intoned. The crowd gathering behind them pushed Laura and Robert to stand before the justice of the peace.

“Just fill in your name when I get to the blanks,” Broussard instructed and began reading. When he got to the part about anybody knowing why these two should not be wed, he paused and scanned the mob for sober friends, but found none. Broussard shrugged. It made no never mind to him.

The small blonde woman, whose very intoxicated husband seemed to be acting as best man, took Laura’s left hand and said, “If you are sure you want to go through with this, I’ll witness for you, honey.”

Laura nodded. “I do, I do.”

“No, no! You say that at the end,” Robert joked.

When the moment came for a ring, she presented her left hand unsteadily to her groom. Surprisingly, he had a ring—even if the box did catch in his jacket lining twice before appearing. Broussard put back the box of cheap bands he kept under the counter next to the stamps for such occasions. The ring in the box matched the necklace the bride wore. Taking note of the expensive jewelry, Broussard grew uneasy. Few came so prepared to marry at the barn. His eyes shifted around the crowd, always wild on Mardi Gras night, as if he searched for plain clothes cops who might be lurking, trying to catch him with stolen goods or ready to shut off sales for his home brew.

“Okay, you married. Sign here. One hundred dollars.” He charged twice his usual fee, and the guy in the tux paid willingly, drawing out an accordion folded hundred dollar bill and declaring blearily, “My lucky hundred, never go anywhere without it.”

Old Broussard blessed them with a wave of his fat hands toward the door. “Now go on home. Happy honeymoon!” Father Ardoin would not like to hear it, but Broussard’s makeshift marriages lasted almost as long these days as the ones performed in the church.

The best man tucked the shakily signed marriage certificate and a pre-dated license to marry into Robert’s pocket. Two of Broussard’s bouncers helped the happy couple to their car. They returned to Chateau Camille by the shortest route the groom could remember. Laura dozed. Robert rolled down the windows and let in the breeze, then drove on speedily until the shell drive of Chateau Camille crunched beneath their wheels. The wedding party entourage streamed by as the couple’s car turned in the driveway, sounding their horns in celebration.

The bride said not a word. Robert had the insane idea she’d overdosed on alcohol, and he had lost her again. He shook his new wife, asking if she was all right, and when Laura laughed, teasing him by pretending to be asleep, he put his cold hands on her warm breasts. She fought him off, still laughing, while he carried her across the threshold.

“See, I did need the practice,” he said as he headed toward her room. Laura’s wide skirt caught on every outcropping in the hall and draped inconveniently over his hand when he reached for the doorknob of the bedroom. He cursed.

“Quiet, quiet, shhhh,” cautioned Laura, still giggling.

Robert bumped the door to the bedroom closed with his hip. Putting her down, he took the marriage certificate and license, propping them on the dresser where Angelle had burned her candles hoping for what had now come to pass. He turned to Laura, the laughter gone, that serious dark look in his eyes she always shied away from, avoiding the passion and the longing of his gaze. He did not appear drunk anymore or joking.

As for herself, she still felt giddy and lightheaded. When she did not drop her eyes from that black stare, he came to her, put his arms around her and slowly slid the zipper on the back of her dress down until the bodice could be pushed aside. He gathered her breasts in both hands, licking her nipples, massaging their mass until she felt the tingle under her skirts overcome the numbness caused by the alcohol consumed.

He ran his tongue down to her waist, levered the zipper again and knelt in the pool of her silver skirts as the dress slid from her body. He clasped her buttocks and buried his face in the scrap of black lace panties he had bought for her at Miss Helen’s boutique. His hands slid the lace downward. His lips kissed the spot where she throbbed. His tongue laved her until her legs grew weak from the heat spreading through her body. He caught her and carried her, wearing only the garnet necklace and her wedding ring, to the big four-poster bed where his LeBlanc ancestors conceived their children.

Laura cried out for Robert to fill the void of nine long months of widowhood. Her nails pressed into his back, and her legs wrapped around his waist. She drew him closer, guiding him inside a body starved for his presence with hands that found the zipper in the tuxedo pants and all the good things ready and waiting inside. When he stopped for a moment to rid himself of the impediments of formal wear, she continued to move beneath him, urging him on. On he went and on, until she cried out so loudly he had to cover her mouth with his and let her absorb his own shout of completion. They did not separate that evening, but slept still twined together until sometime in the night when Laura turned and fit herself into the curve of his body.