The Devil in Canaan Parish
Read The Devil in Canaan Parish Online
Authors: Jackie Shemwell
Tags: #Southern gothic mystery suspense thriller romance tragedy
Acknowledgement
This, my first novel, is lovingly dedicated to my husband, D. Wade, my sons Zachary and Joshua, and everyone who has ever encouraged, supported and believed in me.
Most importantly, I thank God, who has kept me in his loving hands and always keeps his amazing promises.
Chapter One
She looked like she had already drowned, the first time I saw her.
It was something about her expression.
Dead. Devoid of emotion, she stared through you like the dead do, her gaze like one’s own reflection in black glassy water at the bottom of a barrel.
I could not see the color of her eyes, eclipsed by her pupils, and the water seemed to pour out of her like from a corpse just pulled from the river.
It fell in giant droplets from her ridiculous straw hat and ran from her long stringy hair, down her pale cheeks, and through the mottled blue fabric of her faded cotton dress. It pooled in the folds of her nylon socks, once white knee-highs, now muddy red and bunched around her ankles. She clutched a small carpetbag in front of her, her shoulders stooped forward, either from its weight, or in an attempt to shield herself from view.
She gazed somewhere behind me, I thought, or perhaps her eyes saw something that was not there.
She stood just inside the doorway, careful to keep herself over the floor mat where the water dripping from her small, shivering frame was forming a large puddle around her.
I did not notice the old man until he began coughing.
He was standing next to her, further inside the store, his clumsy felt hat held between his fingertips in front of his chest as if it were a fragile china plate.
He seemed made of mud, dressed in monochromatic brown from head to toe, the dirt of months without bathing caked in the folds of his skin from his furrowed forehead to his double chin.
He was dressed in what must have been his only suit, perhaps the one he was married in, some thirty years ago from the look of it.
He appeared sixty, but was most likely fifty.
The life of the swamp folk was hard and unrelenting.
The sound of his raspy wheezing cough made me think he would not have to endure it much longer.
His enormous gut shook with the effort of breathing, and in attempt at decorum, he pulled a dripping handkerchief out of his pocket and hacked into it.
I opened my mouth to speak and was startled when the voice that came was not my own.
My father-in-law had appeared in front of me, and I could see the light reflecting off the top of his fat, balding head.
“May I help you folks? We were just about to close with the storm coming and all, but we’d be glad to stay open for a few more minutes if there’s something we can get for you.
Some cough syrup, maybe?”
I could tell how his face would look without even seeing it --
the eyes wide behind his gold-rimmed glasses and a practiced smile curling the edges of his lips.
Salesmanship flowed through his veins. He was the third generation owner of the only drugstore in all of Canaan Parish: Bordelon’s.
“No sir.
We was jest, I mean, pardon me sir, I’m Mouton.
Allain Mouton,” said the man, in a thick Cajun accent, jamming his hat and handkerchief into his left fist and extending the fat stubby fingers of his right hand out to my father-in-law.
“Pleased to meet you, sir.
I’m Charlie Bordelon.
This is my son-in-law.”
Mouton nodded toward me and I returned the gesture.
I was not important enough to have a name.
Bordelon examined Mouton.
I watched as he quietly wiped the man’s moisture from his hands onto his apron, pure white and starched so stiff it hung like armor from his chest down past his knees.
His impeccable shoes glistened like a shiny new coin, and he stood with his heels cemented together.
Sometimes it seemed as though his spinal column were also starched, his posture was so rigid and unyielding.
“How can I help you, Mr. Mouton?”
Mouton glanced over his shoulder at the girl and cleared his throat.
“This here my daughter, Melee.
She a real good cook.
Real good.
She good cleaning in the house, too you know.
She do the laundry, she can even press and starch your shirts.”
“My well, that’s wonderful, Mr. Mouton.
I’m sure you’re very pleased with her,” said Bordelon, the sweet syrup of his voice taking on just a hint of sour, a delicacy lost on the visitor.
Instead he became more relaxed, breaking into a wide smile.
“Oui, bien sur, I am.
But uh, you see I ain’t got no more use for her, you see.”
Bordelon cocked his head to one side.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
“Oh, well I going marry soon.
You see?
Her mother, you know, she been dead a long time, and now I going marry again.
You see?
So I uh, going have a new wife soon.
And you know it no good with two women in one house.”
Bordelon said nothing in return.
I began to enjoy the exchange, although I kept watching the girl.
At the mention of her domestic virtues, she hung her head and began staring instead at the muddy tips of her dilapidated Mary Janes.
“So, you see,” Mouton continued, “I need to find a new place for her, and I come here.”
He ended with a nod and a slight bow, relieved that his long-prepared speech was finally delivered.
“Well, uh, Mr. Mouton,” my father-in-law began, “I appreciate you bringing your daughter, but we really have no openings here in the store. We have all the staff we need at this time.”
“Mais non, mais non!” said Mouton.
“No I mean, not here.
Not for the store.
She don’t know nothing about shops and such.
I mean, I heard you was looking for a hired girl.”
“Me? I’m not sure where you got that from.”
Bordelon was shaking his head, his brow furrowed and lips pursed.
“Perhaps he means me.
That is to say, perhaps he means Sally.” I spoke up.
My wife Sally was Bordelon’s first and favorite daughter of three. We had been married for almost ten years, and had been through twice as many maids.
The most recent one lasted two weeks before she ran out of the house in tears after my wife threw a frying pan across the kitchen, shouting that the girl’s cooking was inedible.
“What?” said Bordelon, turning his head and removing his glasses. He was unused to the spontaneous sound of my voice.
“Sally.
She wants a new girl.
The last one didn’t work out.
I guess she’s been telling the women at Church and the Ladies Auxiliary.
I’m sure word must have gotten around by now.”
Bordelon turned away from the visitors’ view and squinted his eyes at me.
I knew I had said something that displeased him.
“Mr. Mouton, will you excuse me and my son-in-law?
We’ll be right back with you.”
He motioned me toward the back of the store, and I turned and went with him close on my heels down the narrow aisle filled with salves, ointments, bandages, syrups, and gauze. When we got to the lunch counter, I turned and waited for him to speak.
“Palmer, what the hell is going on over in your house?
That was the third girl my wife sent over to you in four months.”
“I know sir.” I said.
“It’s Sally.
She’s just . . real particular.”
“Mmm hmm.” He said, eyeing me up.
I said nothing more, accepting my fate.
No matter what was going on or how badly Sally behaved, it was always going to be my fault.
“Well, I don’t know about this girl,” he said.
“I don’t think my Sally wants any Coon-ass in her kitchen.
Why don’t you get another nice clean colored girl?”
“Sir, I don’t think there are any nice clean colored girls left in Louisiana who haven’t already worked in our home. Maybe a white girl would do better.”
“White trash, more like.” he said.
“But, I guess it’s not my place to decide this.
You should tell her to come round tomorrow and have Sally look her over.”
I swallowed back the desire to laugh.
When had anything not been ‘his place’ to decide?
‘Daddy’ was still Lord and Master to Sally, and I felt his dominion even under my own roof.
But, the social theater of South Louisiana was founded on “knowing one’s place”.
From the wealthy white descendants of plantation owners, to the poor black sons of slaves, creoles from the black islands of the Caribbean, to the Cajun swamp folk who scratched a living from fishing and hunting, those outcasts from Acadia, all of us played a particular role on life’s grand stage and there was no room for extemporization. One missed cue, one slipped line, and the entire production would be cast into chaos.
“That’s probably a good idea,” I said.
“But I’d hate to send her back home this evening.
I mean, they probably walked all day to get here, and that storm is going to be fierce.”
I wasn’t sure why I was contesting him -- perhaps only because I had the slightest chance to do so, which never happened.
He cocked his head to the side again, as if thinking of a retort, another reason why I shouldn’t take her home with me, another reason why he was right and I was wrong, but at that moment a great thunderclap broke overhead, rattling the shelves and causing some of the medicine bottles to clink together.
“Aw hell,” he said waving his hand at me. “I don’t care what you do. If Sally don’t like her I guess that’s your problem.” He turned and walked back to his office to finish up the day’s accounts, slamming the door on our conversation.
A thrill went through me. I was giddy that in some small way I had won.
For the first time in years I wasn’t irritated that my father-in-law did not trust me to do the accounting.
Every morning he counted out the cash drawers and every evening he locked himself in his office to go over the receipts. He would question me over a penny, squinting up sideways at me through those gold-rimmed glasses, perched at the end of his nose.
Tonight, as every night, I was free to go as soon as I’d swept the floor and locked up, and tonight I was actually glad to be going home.
I walked back to the front of the store where Mouton was twirling a display of postcards near the door.
He straightened up when he saw me coming, holding his hat in front of him again, in silent supplication. The girl had not moved, but the puddle around her had grown quite large and the dripping had nearly stopped.
“Mr. Mouton, I’d like to take uh, Melee to my home tonight to meet my wife, Sally.
I think that she’ll be pleased to see her.
We’ve been without a maid for a few weeks now and my wife has been quite anxious about it.” I said, speaking to him, but watching the girl, who was still studying her shoes.
“Well, Melee, you hear dat?
C’est bon, n’est pas?”
Mouton asked his daughter.
She glanced up at him and nodded, then turned her head toward me.
I stifled a gasp when I saw her face, this time tilted up into the light.
Her eyes were the color of Spanish moss, deep-set, with indigo circles under them.
Her nose, like the rest of her slight frame, was thin, which made her high cheekbones even more pronounced.
Her heart-shaped face ended in a tiny, bony chin, but it was her lips that surprised me: deep red and succulent, they reminded me of ripe plums, plump and ready for picking. The lower lip was jutted out in a slight pout.
She raised her dark lashes, still wet from the rain, and peered at me through them. The effect was devastating.
I felt my knees begin to buckle, and I reached into my pocket to grab my handkerchief and wipe the moisture from my upper lip.