Images of dark dreams flickered across his mind. The truck driver was omnipresent. Pulling helplessly at the handcuffs until her wrists burned with pain and blood trickled down her flesh was a moment of vulnerability that would plague Anna as well. Then there was an odd dream that was so real that he considered whether it was before dismissing the notion. Anna was standing at the side of the lake, the moisture in the air tangible, and there was a big man in the shadows warning her. One of the family, Gabriel thought. Warning Anna to leave before she would be “sucked down into a tomb of sandy soil?”
Shaking his head sadly, he’d much rather forget, much rather she’d forget. But Gabriel knew she wouldn’t for a long time, if ever. But she could move past them. He felt another emotion then, one he didn’t want to attach a name to, but it spiraled up unwelcome and undesired. Pity for Anna. She might have found a family, but she also found something she’d never dreamed about before.
“Dieu,” he swore as he glanced at his watch. Another hour and the men from the Rotary Club would be showing up on his ship, chipper and ready to drink and fish themselves into oblivion. Of course, Gabriel knew what that was like, at least the drinking part.
* * *
Anna got up from the narrow bed feeling better than she had in the past twenty-four hours. Cecily had been correct. She had needed a restorative sleep. And despite her experience with the man named Gautier the previous night, she had returned to the house and crawled into the little bed again, falling asleep without further incident. There had been no return of dreams, although when she woke up, she had a brief muzzy feeling of being thick in the head, and a faint smell of sour alcohol tickled her nostrils, as though she had imbibed too much the evening before.
Camille had left clothing for her on a chair in the small room, saying, “I know you don’t have much. I have plenty, although it’ll hang on you. But it’ll be clean. Let me know if you need anything else.”
Showering brought a sense of pleasure to Anna that let her know she hadn’t been truly clean in weeks. And she had felt less than clean after being in close contact with Dan Cullen. She luxuriated in the hot water and reluctantly exited only when the water started to go cold. Once dressed with her hair towel-dried, she hesitantly appeared in the kitchen apologizing to Camille, “I’m sorry I used the last of the hot water.”
Camille chuckled. She was flipping pancakes with the skill of a short order cook. “I’m surprised there was any left, chère.” She threw a pancake into the air and expertly caught it on the griddle with a whoop. Then she jerked her head to indicate the twin boys sitting at the table.
The two boys had paused with food loaded on forks in midair to stare at Anna. Lanky young men on the brink of adolescence, they had the familiar black hair and golden eyes. It was like staring at minted coins. They both had a dark cowlick that curled over their foreheads but which did not detract from their handsome faces. “The one on the left is Pierrot, and the one on the right is Phillippe. Or red T-shirt is Pierrot. Blue is Phillippe. Never let them wear the same things, or they will play games with you.” She stopped to consider that. “Although sometimes they switch shirts to play with us.”
Anna said, “Pleased to meet you.”
“You took my bed,” announced Phillippe. He reached for the syrup and poured it liberally over what was remaining of his pancakes.
“I’m sorry?”
Camille put the griddle down with a loud rattle. “Phillippe!”
Phillippe’s eyes went large. “Not that I care. I slept in ‘Ro’s bed. He’s so skinny it don’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Camille corrected. “Don’t insult your brother.”
The twins appeared about the same weight to Anna, but perhaps Pierrot was a few pounds lighter than Philippe. “Hey!” said Pierrot, trying his best to finish his stack before his brother finished his. “She’s got gold eyes! Just like us.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full of food. And I told you, she’s a member of the family.” Camille finished what she was cooking and put it on a plate with four other large pancakes. She handed it to Anna with a grin and said, “Dig in. Butter and syrup’s on the table. Orange juice and milk in the fridge. Unless you’d rather have coffee.”
“No coffee. I think milk would be fine.” Anna sat opposite the twins and attempted to ignore them as they stared fascinatedly at her and ate at the same time.
“She’s cute,” said Phillippe. “Wait ‘til I go to school and say a hottie was sleeping in my bed.”
Camille made another sound of indignant protest. She had taken a big bite of her own plate of pancakes and was chewing furiously to clear the way to motherly speech.
Pierrot said knowingly, “She’s taken already.”
“Hardly,” Anna said dryly. “But I wouldn’t advise you to go bragging about something like that unless you were absolutely sure.”
“Sure I’m sure,” answered Pierrot, knowledge gleaming in his gold eyes. “I don’t think you are though.”
“You did sleep in my bed,” added Phillippe. “I didn’t say anything else.”
There was a honk from outside and the rumble of a large diesel engine. “The bus!” cried Pierrot. Both boys abandoned their plates, launched themselves up, and grabbed book bags, disappearing out the kitchen door faster than pickpockets at a policeman’s ball.
With a shrug Camille sat next to Anna. “They’re so young and so old all at the same time.”
Anna wasn’t sure what to say, but Camille had no problems filling in the gaps. She went on about several of her favorite subjects, her husband, her sons, her garden, and how happy she was to have another young woman like Anna around.
When Anna had put away about half of the pancakes, she pushed the dish away and said, “I can’t eat anymore. But it was good.”
“Listen, I’ve got to go,” Camille said. “I need to help Gabriel load up the Belle-Mère for a charter, and then I’m off to my part-time job. Lord, I just remembered the boys have to go to a practice for a Christmas pageant. What a day.”
“I’ll do the dishes,” Anna announced.
Camille looked skeptical. “Le docteur said rest. Not doing of the dishes. And I heard you get up last night, so I know you need rest.”
“I’ll only do the dishes,” Anna sighed. “I’m not an invalid. Just a little…tired. I came back to bed an hour later and slept all the rest of the night.” For some reason Anna wasn’t sure if she wanted to broach the subject of the inexplicable Gautier hanging out at the edge of the woods so near to Camille’s back door.
“Mais oui. It’s just…” the other woman suddenly had a lapse of words. She tried again, “It’s just…”
“Awkward talking about it?” Anna supplied helpfully. She would ask Camille about Gautier later, when things weren’t so ill at ease between them.
“I can’t imagine what you must have gone through,” Camille said. She uncomfortably brushed an errant lock of black hair away from her face. Because we all know most of it, not that it could be helped. Pauve p’tite. “We just want to help.”
Anna nodded and began picking plates up. Camille helped until she noticed the time on the mantle clock over the fireplace. “Oh coo! I have to run. I’ll come back at lunch. Try to rest.”
After Anna finished with the dishes, she picked up the kitchen and discovered that she had no inclination to rest whatsoever. She found a key to the house hanging on a key rack and went back outside, locking the door behind her. She wanted to know more about mysterious Gautier, who had been waiting for her to appear so he could warn her off. She knew her general location and set off toward the central part of the tiny town, figuring that the store they’d passed would be open and that the owner or the customers might know who Gautier was. And perhaps they might know where to find him.
The store wasn’t far, and the temperature had climbed into the low sixties with the sun shining brightly outside. Anna didn’t even need her coat. She let the sunshine pour over her, and it was like
someone from above was stripping away the dirtiness she felt layer by layer.
There were a few cars and trucks that passed her as she walked along a single-lane country road that paralleled the edge of the lake. Some waved to her. Most of them had dark hair. She saw several sets of curious gold eyes and marveled silently.
Perhaps a mile down the road she came to the store. A hundred feet from the shore, it sat next to a large gravel parking lot filled with vans and Camille’s Toyota truck. The store itself was plain and unadorned, making it almost unnoteworthy. There was only a simple sign on the exterior that marked it as such. A few additional signs advertised bait, fishing licenses, and tourist information.
Anna paused as her eyes found two white boats bobbing at the end of a dock. There was a crowd of men loaded with ice chests and fishing gear. They had baseball caps on, and many wore bright orange life vests. She could hear their laughter all the way from the edge of the piney woods. But it was Gabriel’s figure on the bow, directing the men into the two boats that captured her glance.
She knew who it was. Anna had known almost before she recognized him. Her little helper, she realized with some gratification, was seemingly coming back to her. Something about him. Now what is it?
Gabriel stopped as he saw her. Camille was loading trays of food on board the Beau-Père and hesitated in turn. She turned to look, shrugged, in what Anna was recognizing as a purely Bergeron trait, and went back to loading food.
Stupid. Anna berated herself. This place is as strange as I’ve ever seen. Even with close bloodlines, why would all these people have gold eyes? And him. I want to stare at him like a little ninny. She deliberately broke her gaze and saw an older man come out of the general store. He was tall with white hair and looked to be in his fifties or sixties. He went to a blue pick-up truck and climbed inside. A moment later, the truck whined in protest as he tried to start it. It bleated like a lost sheep, and the engine didn’t do a thing. He stopped and tried it again with the same result. A third attempt made it sound as though the battery might be dying from it.
Intentionally looking away from the dock, Anna walked to the man in the truck. He saw her and smiled broadly as if he were genuinely happy to see her. He had white-white hair that might have once been black with those now-familiar gold eyes. She said, “I can take a look at it if you want.”
The truck was an old Ford, ‘70s era, and she could tell right away that there was trash in the carburetor. The fuel jets were blocked in the carburetor’s bowl. It was a common problem with that particular vehicle. And luckily for the man, simple to fix.
The older man didn’t reply but simply pulled the keys from the ignition and leaned down to pull the latch for the hood. The lid popped open a few inches. He got out of the truck as Anna reached under the hood to disengage the secondary latch. A second later she had the hood up, and her head was tucked under it. The man was watching her intently with an amused expression, but she ignored him.
“You got a flathead screwdriver?” she asked politely. “A regular size. Not too big.”
“I got one on my knife,” said the man. He produced a Swiss Army knife out of his jeans pocket and extracted the right tool, carefully handing it to her.
Anna looked at it. She sighed. “It’ll work.” Five minutes later, she had blown the fuel jets free of the garbage that had been blocking them and said to the man, “Trash in the carburetor. What you need to do is put another fuel filter on your truck. Replace the one you have and put another one near the fuel pump. And possibly clean the carburetor out every six months to a year.” She started putting everything back into place.
There wasn’t a reply, and Anna cast a glance over her shoulder. The man was still standing there watching her. So were Aurore, Camille, and two men she didn’t recognize. Both had the revealing gold eyes. She had a passing strange moment as she saw a group of people who all had the exact same color of eyes regarding her with a forceful intensity she found disturbing.
“You a mechanic?” asked the older man. His eyes flickered down to her hand with the knife, and she realized he was looking at the bruises and marks on her wrists. “An automobile mechanic?”
Anna sighed. “Yes,” she answered slowly. “I’ve got ASE certifications on automobiles/light trucks, and I was working on medium and heavy trucks. Lots of work in that area.”
“I’m Sebastien Benoit,” said the older man with the white hair. He glanced at Aurore. “You met my wife yesterday. My sons there, Gaspard and Raoul.” They looked at her oddly, as if she was some kind of sideshow exhibit. Then both of them nodded at her.
Aurore said, “Ah, chère. A wonderful skill to have. We lost an automobile mechanic two years ago. There was a girl in Houma, I believe. It was true love, and well, one can’t ignore that. So off he went. And he doesn’t even write.”
“I’ve got to go to work,” said Gaspard. He gave Anna another peculiar look and disappeared around the side of the store. Raoul sighed and followed at a more leisurely pace, saying, “See you later, Maman. Nice to meet you, little girl.”
Anna focused on the carburetor. She attributed the men’s abruptness to the fact that most men were uncomfortable with a female mechanic. Dismissing the thoughts, she made short work of the repair, and then when it was done, she turned back to Sebastien. He was alone again.
“Try it now,” she said, standing up and stretching her back muscles. The Ford was high enough to tax her back. She needed a footstool to be able to work in the engine compartment without climbing up on the bumper and hanging over the side of the radiator like a sack lying over a fence.
Sebastien smiled when the engine caught after the first time. He let it run and watched her shut the hood. Handing the knife to him, she was silent.
“You say another fuel filter will help to prevent that?” Sebastien asked.
“Replace the one you have and have the carburetor cleaned. It won’t take a decent mechanic long, and it won’t cost much if he’s honest.”
“You’ll do it for me?” Sebastien considered her. “I think you could find other things to do here. There are many engines that need work of some kind or another. Tractors. Trucks…boats?”
Anna couldn’t help the glance that she shot over her shoulder. The two boats were casting off. Camille was on the end of the dock waving cheerfully. Two groups of men on each ship were milling around on the decks, pointing out toward the depths of the lake where the water seemed the most black. Gabriel was nowhere in sight.
“How about an exchange?” she said as she looked back at him. Sebastien’s expression suddenly changed from subtly satisfied to curious.
“Like you fixing my old pick-em-up truck for what?” He said with a broad smile. Yellow teeth showed but didn’t detract from his general good looks. Sebastien was a striking man, and she was thinking that he reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite get what it was.
“I want to know about the lake,” Anna started. She was trying to be clever. Perhaps by starting on something innocuous, she could move to a subject she really desired to know. Like Gautier.
“About your own history perhaps?”
“If this is where I’m from,” she said.
“Oh, chère. We all know that you’re one of us.” Sebastien chuckled and patted the wheel of the Ford. “It was meant to be. We need a mechanic. La, a mechanic arrives.”
“You have some tools I can use?” she said. “I don’t suppose your store stocks fuel filters? It doesn’t have to be the same for both. The extra one is just to protect your carburetor from excess trash that you inevitably get from bad gasoline.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “The gas companies don’t filter out the crap as much as they should. Very bad for the older cars with carburetors. Not even good for vehicles with fuel injection.”
“Oui, I have some. But I think I don’t have the one I need for the truck. No matter. There’s an AutoZone twenty miles from here. We can get what we want from there.” He indicated the seat beside him. ?
??And we can talk on the way. Is this not so?”
Chapter 10
Wednesday, December 17th
If a corpse’s eyes shut themselves, it is a good omen, but if the corpse’s eyes remain open. then he is waiting for the next poor soul to join him in the hereafter.
Anna didn’t get to bring up the subject of Gautier until they were almost back to Unknown. In-between, they had purchased the necessary items at the auto parts store and stopped at a McDonald’s for something to drink. However, throughout the two hours she spent with him, she knew she was in trouble because there were simply areas that Sebastien did not want to address. When she pressed him, he eluded her with the skill of an accomplished politician.
“We are the family, as we call the ones who have lived about this lake for centuries, from the time of Indians, you can still find the pottery shards along the lake, non? There are many of us. No one has counted. There is no box for us to check on the census. There are some who call us Cajuns. We ain’t.” Sebastien kept his eyes on the road in front of him, but he tapped the steering wheel in emphasis. “Shore, some of us speak like a real Louisianan. The language of a bon Francais. But we are La Famille. Do you understand, Anna?”
“You mean you stick together?” Anna’s bemused answer pleased Sebastien.
“Oui! We are cement. We are stone. We are rock.”
“Then you know each other. All of you.” Anna saw an opportunity.
“Mais oui. We are brothers and sisters. The flesh is like steel. We cannot be parted from each other. Even with those who wander to distant places, we always come back. Hence, your blood called to you. It was that which brought you to us.”
Anna had forgotten Dan Cullen for the moment. She wasn’t sure that it was the blood calling that had brought her back but instead, a man with reprehensible purpose. She made a face and ignored the disconcerting thought. “A man was waiting for me last night outside Camille’s house.”