“You keep dry?”
Marteel nodded.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Indian Mound
“Grandmère, come look!” called Suzette.
Grandmère stepped out on the gallery.
“Company come!” cried Suzette, pointing. “Remember you hear a rooster crow in front of the house this morning? That a sure sign and here come the company.”
“Ugh!” cried Grandmère. “Me, I don’t like that kind o’ company. Go ’way, you.”
A ten-foot alligator lifted its nose up the front steps and opened its toothy jaws to let out a roar. Then it swung across the yard making deep tracks in the soft mud.
“Too bad Papa Jules, he en’t here,” said Suzette. “Then Mister Alligator wouldn’t be so nosey.”
“Too bad Marteel en’t here,” said Grandmère, smiling, “so she could jump on his back and take a ride.”
They both laughed as they watched the animal waddle awkwardly up and down over the levee and plunge into the bayou waters. After he disappeared, Grandmère and Suzette walked over the yard. The little fig tree in the corner by the fence was dead and so was the rose-bush under the window. They looked at them sadly, but said nothing. Then they went back into the house.
“Mud, mud everywhere,” cried Grandmère, “outside and in. All the house, it not’ing but mud. W’at you poor Maman gonna say when she see it!”
“We clean it up,” said Suzette, practically. “Me, I go back with Ambrose and bring Marteel to help.”
Suzette was well again, but she and Grandmère were still living in the attic bedroom. Day by day the waters had receded and finally, in late June, the bayou had resumed its natural level. Ambrose came daily in the skiff, bringing food cooked by Maman on the Indian mound. The next day Suzette went back with him.
As they moved along, she looked and saw the bayou front sadly changed. Wharves and boat-houses were badly wrecked or washed away. Debris was piled up everywhere—boards, boxes, uprooted trees, trash and dead animals. A heavy coating of slimy, muddy ooze covered everything.
“Tante Céleste’s orange trees they died, even up on top of the shed,” said Ambrose. “Nonc Lodod and Tante Thérèse never went to New Orleans at all. Their house-boat and lugger both got wrecked when an uprooted tree crashed into ’em.”
“Oh!” cried Suzette. “Such a purty house-boat, too. Where they go?”
“They stay by us at the mound,” said Ambrose.
“Tante Thérèse in a palmetto hut?” cried Suzette.
“Yes,” said Ambrose, with a smile, “and she don’t like it much. Some people had to live in trees till boats came and took ’em away to New Orleans or Grand Isle or other places. A man told Papa his leetle boy died and he put him in a wooden box and put it up between the branches of a big tree—till the waters went down, so he could bury him.”
“Oh dear!” said Suzette.
She stepped from the skiff and ran up the steep shell bank, where, on the opposite side of the mound from the graveyard, the palmetto huts stood. Maman, Eulalie and the boys, and all the aunts came running to greet her and tell her how well she looked. Then she hurried over to see Maman’s hut.
Like the others, it stood upon stilt legs, high off the slope. It had two wide bunks built against the back wall, one above the other. The floor was piled high with boxes and baskets of clothing and supplies. In one corner stood Tit-tit’s grave-box, safe and dry.
Suzette sat down on a log in front of the hut to talk to Maman. Joseph and little Noonoo played with some boats which Ambrose had whittled out for them.
“Some days we had only dry bread to eat,” said Maman, “when the water came up to the hut floor. But we kept dry and the Red Cross relief boat brought us rations of grits and salt meat and cane syrup. After the shells dried off, we made our fire on the ground and cooked again.” She pointed to the camp-fire, where bread in a Dutch oven, covered over with hot coals and ashes, was baking. “Good t’ing I remember to bring Grandmère’s yeast!”
The cow put her head round the side of the hut and mooed contentedly. Clucking hens scratched for bugs among the clam shells. The pigs rooted noisily near by.
“No grass here,” said Suzette. “You had enough to feed the cow?”
“Plenty,” said Maman. “The boys, they pull leaves and moss off the oak trees—she like it, yes.”
“And the pigs?” asked Suzette. “W’at you feed ’em when you en’t got no corn or potatoes?” Suzette opened her eyes wide. The pigs, tiny before, were so enormous now, she scarcely recognized them.
“We feed the ole sow plenty alligator meat,” explained Maman. “She give plenty milk and fatten the pigs quick.”
“Alligator meat!” exclaimed Suzette.
“And the chickens!” Maman threw up her hands. “They lay so many eggs, we never eat ’em all, we had to give ’em away.”
“W’y they lay so many eggs in a flood?” asked Suzette.
“Alligator meat!” answered Maman, laughing. “W’at we do without them ole alligator, me, I don’t know. Le bon Dieu, the good God, musta sent ’em to take care of us …”
“Where you get so many alligator?” asked Suzette. “Marteel, she bring ’em from the Injuns?”
“En’t you hear? En’t nobody tole you?” cried Maman. “W’y Papa Jules and Nonc Moumout and Nonc Lodod and the boys, they go ’gator huntin’ eny time day or night and get a skiff load. The flood, it wash all the alligator outa the swamp and bring ’em down ’long the by’a. When the water it high, we see ’em all round the mound, lookin’ at us. Ugh! I not like it, me.”
“W’at they do with so many alligator,” asked Suzette, “after the pigs and chickens is fed?”
“They melt the alligator grease, just like a pig, and Papa, he sell the oil,” explained Maman. “Papa he sell the teethses, he get a dollar and a half a dozen for the big ones to make rings for babies to bite on and bracelet for ladies to wear and frames for people’s spectacles. And then all the hides! The hide-buyer, he give good price for ’em.”
“Where Papa now?” asked Suzette. “Me, I wanna see him.”
“Huntin’,” said Maman. “He happy when he go huntin’ every day. But me, I sick o’ cookin’ on the ground like a savage, I sick o’ skinnin’ alligator. Me, I wanna go back home again.”
“The house, it deep in mud,” said Suzette. “Grandmère and me, we went inside and looked.”
“Mud or no mud, me, I wanna get back home again,” sighed Maman.
Suzette looked around. It did look like an Indian camp. No wonder Maman was not happy.
“Where Marteel?” she asked. “She en’t been to see me for a long time, she en’t.”
“There!” exclaimed Maman, pointing. “All the time off somewhere. This wild way of livin’ just suits her—la petite sauvage!”
Suzette looked down to see Marteel in the pirogue round the bend in the bayou below. Marteel waved and motioned for her to come.
“She callin’ me,” said Suzette. “I go for leetle ride.”
“Mind you not let a ole alligator upset you,” warned Maman.
Soon Suzette was sitting in the bow of the pirogue, which moved leisurely along under the Indian girl’s sure hand. She waved to Maman on shore. It was pleasant to be with Marteel again. The sun shone with the welcome warmth of summer time and it was almost possible to forget there had ever been a flood. Soon they came into the smaller Bayou des Oies.
“They call this the Bayou of the Geese,” said Suzette, “’count of all the ducks and geese that feed on plants and seeds here.”
The girls watched ducks come winging down and settle on the water, their ki-ki-ki sounding louder as they came closer.
“No geese now,” said Suzette. “Only wood ducks and black ducks stay through summer.”
“The wood duck,” said Marteel, pointing, “it the purtiest duck of all—with its red eye and bright-colored crest. The Injuns, they used to take its neck feathers and put ’em on their calumets—pipes of pe
ace.”
The pirogue slid over the quiet waters while Marteel talked softly to the ducks. Several of them had alighted on the branch of an overhanging tree. Now and then they cried a shrill hoo-eek as if in answer to the Indian girl.
“Old Canada goose, he come back in the fall,” said Marteel, softly. “When the north wind begin to blow in late summer, he start off for the southland. He stop here and rest, eat seeds and grow fat again. Then he get up and go—he don’t set down on the ponds no more. He fly far, far across the Gulf before he light down again.”
“When we look up,” said Suzette, “and see so many geese pass, we say ‘plenty cold this winter.’”
“When we look up and see the sky black with geese,” said Marteel, “we glad they go south to keep warm.”
It was very quiet in the narrow willow-lined bayou. Sometimes a blue heron or a snowy egret went flashing by. Sometimes a few coots or mud-hens ran over the surface of the water, before rising on the wing. Idly Suzette leaned over and picked a few water hyacinth blossoms. A mother duck, alarmed at human intrusion, began to squawk and trail one wing through the water, warning her young ones, who scurried off into the tall reeds along the shore.
Then all was quiet again. Once Suzette looked up and saw that the stream ahead was full of logs. She thought to herself that the flood must have uprooted a great many trees, but unheeding, went on gathering the blue hyacinth clusters. Marteel sat still, her eyes closed, her paddle idle. Soon the pirogue drifted closer.
Suddenly through the silence, violence came. A shot exploded, and the ducks splashed up from the water, with loud honking clatter and wing-whirring. One of the logs came to life, moved swiftly toward the pirogue and struck it with terrific force. At the same moment, the girls saw figures moving rapidly along shore, and heard them shouting. Then, as suddenly, a skiff appeared among the logs and in it stood Papa Jules, with a long-handled curved hook in his hand.
“GIT OUT!” he yelled. “W’at you girls doin’ here? Takin’ a nap? That ’gator’s wounded, he’ll turn your boat over! GIT OUT!”
Quickly Marteel took up her paddle and pushed the pirogue through the mass of floating logs which were not logs at all but moving alligators. In a moment it was at a safe distance.
“Marteel!” shouted Papa Jules. “W’y you not help me today? W’y you come and chase away the biggest one when I go after him?”
Marteel did not answer but paddled on.
“W’y you not tell me those logs, they alligator?” demanded Suzette. “W’y you take me on alligator hunt, when you know I not want to go?”
“Still ’fraid of alligator?” asked Marteel, smiling.
“No,” said Suzette. “I gettin’ used to ’em.”
Soon after they reached the mound, the men came back from the hunt. They had three large alligators and one small one in the skiff. Suzette watched the skinning. The skin was loosened by cutting down the backbone, around the feet and down the center of the tail, then it was lifted off with one good pull. Salt was rubbed on the hide before it was rolled up, the heavy scaly part being thrown away. Marteel cleaned up afterwards, called the chickens and fed them some of the refuse.
That evening, she was more helpful than usual. She seemed happy because Suzette was there. Maman was busily occupied, re-packing clothing in the hut, so Marteel offered to cook supper. She built up a good fire, let the blaze die down to hot coals and soon had two large covered skillets sizzling.
“W’at you cookin’?” asked Suzette, in surprise. She could not remember having seen Marteel cook before. “You not know how to cook, you!” Suzette gave her a light kick with her foot. “You look like one ole squaw, bending over the fire. That the way the Injuns do it? W’at you cookin’ anyhow?”
“Fish!” said Marteel, with a grin. “Good feesh. Bes’ kind you ever ate.”
Suzette peered over and looked in when Marteel lifted the covers.
“It look nice and purty,” she said, “and it smell good. W’at kinda fish is it?”
“Me, I tell you after you eat it,” said Marteel, scrambling hastily to get out the plates.
Tante Céleste came over from Nonc Moumout’s hut for supper. The fish was delicious, very sweet and tender. Everybody agreed that Marteel was a good cook. Maman said she was so good she might help a little oftener. As soon as the plates were empty, Suzette demanded, “Now tell us w’at kind o’ fish it was, Marteel.”
With a flash of white teeth in her brown face, Marteel cried out: “Alligator tail!”
Then she got up and ran.
It was well she did, for everyone was furious. The fish did not taste so good now, but the two skillets were empty and there was nothing that could be done about it.
“W’at in the name o’ sense,” cried Maman, “do that Sabine mean … feedin’ us alligator tail!”
Eulalie ran to get water to wash out her mouth. “Me, I eat snake ’fore I eat alligator!” she cried.
Tante Céleste put her hand to her head. “Me, I feel sick!” she wailed. “Me, I feel like I gonna die quick. That awful feesh, I gonna taste it to my dying day!”
Papa Jules laughed and roared. “Marteel, she smarter’n I t’ink. Me, I et alligator once when I was leetle—guess it all right, it never killed me nohow.”
Ambrose was very angry. “If she not a girl, me, I fight her!” he shouted. “Me, I say I won’t never touch it, now she made me, that wicked leetle Sabine …” He looked at Papa Jules and began to laugh too.
Jacques ran after Marteel and waved a big stick at her. Little Noonoo and Joseph danced around, shouting: “We et alligator tail! We et alligator tail!”
Marteel went off in the pirogue. She waited till things had quieted down a little before she came back. Suzette met her at the water’s edge.
“You t’ink we all pigs and chickens, you feed us alligator tail to fatten us up?” she demanded.
Marteel said nothing.
“Was that alligator tail for true?”
“Yes,” answered Marteel, with a grin.
“W’at you feed it to us for?”
“So you say it good!” laughed Marteel.
“It not good!” cried Suzette, stamping her foot, “and you a bad girl, Marteel.”
Suzette stepped into the pirogue to go back to Grandmère, and all the way home, said not a word to the Indian girl. When they reached the house, Grandmère was sitting on a chair on the front gallery, which she had cleaned and scrubbed. Marteel came up and sat hunched on the bottom step while Suzette scolded.
“Marteel, she been takin’ a ride on the ’gator’s back?” asked Grandmère.
But Suzette did not even smile. “We gonna clean up this house,” she said, sternly. “First we shovel out all the dead snakes and eels and fish. Then we shovel out the dirt and scrub it clean. You gonna help. Hear me?”
Marteel nodded, looking very repentant.
“Time you stop your wild ways, stop playin’ all day, and do a leetle work,” added Suzette.
Grandmère looked from one girl to the other, puzzled. “Poor Marteel,” she said. “She done somet’ing bad, yes?”
“Yes,” said Suzette. “She cook supper for us on the camp-fire and she call it feesh and …”
“The fish, it not good?” asked Grandmère.
“Yes … I mean NO!” cried Suzette. “It en’t no feesh at all, it …”
“ALLIGATOR TAIL!” cried Marteel, doubling over with laughter.
Grandmère laughed heartily. “How terrible!” she said.
“She gotta clean up all this mud,” Suzette repeated.
“Me, I will!” said Marteel, meekly.
Then she looked up with a sparkle in her eye. “Me, I like mud,” she said. “Mud, it feel good on my toes!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Good Friends Again
“A little piece of pepper
In the gumbo made with fish,
That a thing that’s good—
That a thing delic’!”
Suzette
sang the foolish little rhyme over and over. She and Marteel were on Papa Jules’ wharf, and Felix, Theo and Jacques were on Nonc Moumout’s. The bayou waters beneath, restless always, lapped gently against the shore.
“Me, I ketch river shrimp,” announced Suzette. “Maman, she make jambalaya for supper.”
She threw a basketful of small mashed crabs overboard for bait. After waiting about ten minutes, she opened her cast-net, threw it in out-spread, and lowered it into the bayou waters. But when she pulled the net up again, it held only a few crabs and mullets.
“No shrimp!” she cried, crossly. “That ole gar-fish, he been here. He got a nest under the grass and lilies round here somewhere. Nonc Moumout, he say the gar-fish break down all his nets, steal his bait and eat all his bunch of fish after he ketch ’em. Nasty ole gar-fish!”
“Me, I gonna ketch that ole gar-fish,” cried Felix, from the next wharf.
“We all ketch gar-fish!” announced Jacques. “We get lines and hooks and bait …”
“If only Papa Jules was here,” sighed Suzette, “or Ambrose. Marteel, you might help me ketch him.” She looked down at the Indian girl who did not move. “Me, I do it myself then.” She folded up her cast-net and taking it with her, ran back to the shed. She brought out a heavy rope line with a large three-pronged hook attached. “You gotta have a strong iron hook, Papa say, ’count of all inside their mouth is bones.”
“Gar-fish got plenty teeths, too,” shouted Felix. “They bite peoples and eat ’em up. That w’y they call ’em alligator-gar. They’re mean like alligators too.”
“Well, this one en’t gonna eat nobody up,” said Suzette, busily fastening her line and baiting her hook.
“En’t you gonna help me, you lazy t’ing?” she demanded angrily. “You gonna let this one ole gar-fish eat up all our crab and all our fish and all our shrimp when Papa Jules and Ambrose they en’t here to do nothin’ ’bout it?”
Marteel said nothing and did not move.