Bayou Dreams by Kathleen Y'Barbo

Author:Kathleen Y'Barbo
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Wednesday, November 5

Latagnier, Louisiana

Theophile Breaux sat at the kitchen table with the New Iberia Daily Leader spread across his wife’s flowered tablecloth. The headlines screamed war, declaring the United States would soon be pulled into action. How, the columnist declared, could the greatest country in the world stand idly by when innocent people were losing their freedom and their lives?

“How, indeed?”

Am I not guilty of doing the same thing with my daughter? Amalie has been gone nigh on three months, and I haven’t moved a finger to find her and bring her home. Oh, sure, I raised a ruckus with old Gip Gonsulin when he admitted to driving her into town, and I spread the word I was looking to get her back home, but what did I really do to fetch her back? Maybe it’s time to buy a bus ticket to California.

Maybe I need to do something other than stand idly by.

And then there’s this awful war. What will become of our sons? Ernest, who is too old to go but will most likely enlist all the same, and the young ones—they will go for sure. And Mathilde’s Nicolas and Angie’s Doctor Jeff, what will they do?

“What’s it all coming to?”

“What’s that, Theo? You talking to the newspaper again, sweetheart?”

He looked up to see his wife standing on the other side of the screen door pulling off her gardening gloves. Up to her elbows in weeding with bits of Spanish moss in her hair and splotches of mud splashed across her apron, Clothilde Breaux was still the prettiest thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

Theo rose to tell her so then followed her gaze to the cloud coming up the dirt road. “A car,” he said under his breath. He looked at Cleo, and a single thought passed between them.

Amalie.

As the vehicle drew nearer, Theo made out the familiar shape of the mail truck. “It’s Wednesday, cher,” he said, masking his disappointment with a firm voice. “Maybe there’s something from. . .”

He couldn’t say it. Cleo, God bless her, who made it her business to complete as many sentences as she could for him, remained silent as well.

The postman hollered a greeting, and Theo responded. Three envelopes and a magazine later, the truck roared back the same way it came. Theo strolled back inside and laid the mail atop the paper.

“Anything?” Cleo called. “I kind of hoped she’d be back for Thanksgiving.”

Looking over his shoulder to see his wife standing in the doorway, Theo reached for the topmost envelope. Heedless of the mud on her boots, she tracked a path toward him and the envelope he held.

“Is it from my baby?” Cleo whispered. “Is she coming home?”

He handed it to her without comment. Just like the others, it bore no return address. No doubt there would be a page or two of fancy talk about what movie she was going to try out for next and why she missed out on getting a part in the last one. She wrote one regular as clockwork on the first day of every month.

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