Sandra Hill - [Creole] (24 page)

“Stop meddling in my life.”

Etienne was walking again, and she skipped to keep pace with him. The path had widened and veered off to the right, following the natural contours of the stream.

“I only want to help. And I’m qualified to assist in a crisis like this. Are you listening to me, Etienne? This is my life work—counseling dysfunctional families. Today you had a breakthrough, but now the real work begins. Any man can father a child, but it takes a real man to be a father.”

Etienne’s shoulders slumped. “I have no idea in the world how to be a father.”

Harriet brightened. “See, I can help you there.”

Etienne shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he’d actually confided in her.

“First off, you have to be there
physically
for Saralee. That means staying in one place, or taking her with you. No more abandoning her to other people, like Blossom.”

He let out a sigh of exasperation. “I’m leaving in a few days.”

“I know, I know, but there’s got to be a way around that. How about taking Saralee with us?”

“
Us?
No, no, no!
You
are not going anywhere. And I
certainly wouldn’t endanger a child on a mission such as this.”

She tapped her chin thoughtfully with a forefinger. “Well, maybe you could send her to California to stay with her grandparents—your father and stepmother—until…” Her voice trailed off when she saw the rigid set of his jaw and the red fury flushing his cheeks. “Then again, maybe not.”

“Don’t you ever
…ever…
mention my father again. If you do, I swear, I really will strangle you.”

“I just want you to form a plan for dealing with a difficult situation.”

“I don’t like plans,” he grumbled. “Day by day is as much as I can handle right now.”

Harriet wept silent tears at the bleakness of his tone. “Etienne, you were in prison for several years. Incarceration forces a man to change his normal habits in order to survive. You conditioned yourself to live only for the moment, to give up your dreams.”

“What do you know about prison life?” he said with a snarl.

“I’ve read plenty. Oh, don’t get your hackles up. There are some things a person can learn without the actual experience.”

“Please, God, not another lecture.”

“For example, it’s a standard characteristic of prison inmates to hide their feelings and wants because exposure could bring out more cruelty from the guards. In essence, the prisoner deadens a part of himself in order to survive.” She could see that Etienne’s interest was caught, even if he wouldn’t admit it. “I don’t have to have been there to know that you’ve been hiding your emotions for so long you can’t let loose. Now…well, now you have to let down your guard. Give yourself the freedom to map out a future.”

“Harriet, do you have an opinion on everything?” He smiled when he asked the question, which meant he wasn’t totally upset at her advice.

She shrugged. “Probably.”

“And where do you fit into all these plans?” he asked, giving her a measuring assessment.

“Well, I don’t,” she stammered.
Okay, so we’re back to the “I love you, stupid” bit again. He must think I have big plans for him myself. Marriage, and all that. Hah!
“I expect to be around here…in the past, I mean…two months max. But in the meantime, I’m at your disposal.”

He arched a brow.

“Not in that way. Listen, can we just forget what I, uh, said up there earlier?”

“No.”

“No?”

He grinned, obviously aware of her discomfort. “No woman has ever told me ‘I love you,
stupid
.’ I think the words will be emblazoned in my memory forever.”

Great!
“Back to the subject at hand. While I’m here, I can give you and Saralee my undivided
professional
attention. And I won’t charge a cent.” She beamed at him.

“Hah! That’s probably because we’ll end up playing leading roles in one of your upcoming books.”

She blushed guiltily.

Raking the fingers of both hands through his hair, he glared at her. “Putting money into this plantation would be like spitting in the wind.”

“Only if you spit in the wrong direction.”

“You have an answer for everything.”

“You have a roadblock for everything. Oh, Etienne, this isn’t about money and you know it.”

“Yes, it most definitely is. I might as well tell you…one of my reasons for being involved in this assignment for President Grant is that I’ll finally get a large sum in back pay and commissions.
If
I decide to come back to Bayou Noir, I would need all those funds, and more, just to get the sugar operation restarted. Without those funds, it would be impossible.”

“Well, perhaps the separation would be okay as long as
you promise Saralee that you’ll be coming back soon. To stay.”

He scowled at her. “Don’t try to back me into a corner, Harriet. I’m not making any promises to anyone.”

Harriet sighed. Lord, he was a hard nut to crack. And she’d never expected him to make her any promises. That was a misunderstanding she’d have to clear up later. “The most important thing is to show Saralee how much you love her.”

“Love her? I don’t even know her.” He was gritting his teeth and clenching his fists.

“This is good, this is good. Verbalize your feelings. Release the rage. Once you get all your emotions out in the open, we can come up with some solutions. Mirroring sessions, hypnotherapy, Rorschach tests, subliminal conditioning, age regression.” Harriet couldn’t wait to begin.

Etienne gaped at her with horror. “Harriet, I have a powerful headache. I’ve listened to more of your prattling today than any man deserves. Have mercy.” He picked up a dead limb, only an inch or two in diameter and six feet long. Using it to rake an arc in front of him, he plodded into the underbrush.

“Why are you waving that stick around?”

“To ward off snakes.”

Yech!

“Don’t ever go outside the house without wearing shoes,” he warned conversationally, as if they hadn’t just been having a serious discussion, “and I’d suggest you ask Blossom to find you some leather brogues. A cottonmouth could slip its fangs into those slippers of yours quicker’n a blink.”

Great! I needed to know that my feet are snake bait
. “Where are we going? Wouldn’t we be more comfy discussing this back at the house?” She watched where she placed her slippers more carefully now and, as a result, got another branch in her face. Probably poison oak.

“
We
aren’t going anywhere. And
we
aren’t discussing
anything more tonight.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “
I’m
going on a snake hunt. Betcha I catch at least…fifty.”

Harriet stopped in her tracks. “A snake hunt?” she squeaked. “Whatever for?”

Etienne chuckled as he continued strolling on ahead.
The creep!

She scurried to catch up. “That wasn’t very funny.”

“Actually, I’m meeting a friend. And if you keep chattering away, my friend will be frightened off.”

“A friend? Why would a friend be frightened off?” Oh, it must be one of the agents in the Secret Service making a covert contact with him. Or could it be…oh, no…could it be a woman?

Her heart constricted.
I don’t care. I don’t care
.

Hah!

I do care. I do care. Darn it, but I do care
.

“Shhh,” he warned in a hushed voice as he came to a bend in the stream. “There’s my friend.”

“Where?” she whispered, her head swinging back and forth as she scanned the area. The whole time, she kept an eye on her slippers, as well. Now that Etienne had mentioned snakes and her vulnerable feet, she couldn’t stop hearing little slithering noises. “I don’t see anything except that big boulder in the water over—Oh, my God!” The boulder was moving toward them.
Kerplop, kerplop, kerplop…

What she’d thought a green algae-covered rock was actually a hulking monster of a turtle—at least two hundred pounds and three feet across. It was the ugliest animal she’d ever seen.

“Meet Maurice.”

“Maurice?” she squealed, jumping behind Etienne for protection as the lumbering beast poked a parrot-beaked head from its armor-plated shell and stared at them through beady eyes. Black leeches and other slimy critters clung to its exposed body joints. “Your friend?”

He nodded. “An alligator snapping turtle. Isn’t he a beauty?”

Harriet peeked up at Etienne to see if he was kidding, then back at the hissing reptile, which had high ridges and a long tail that were, indeed, similar to an alligator’s. Then Harriet danced around from foot to foot. She’d forgotten to check for snakes in the last second or two.

Etienne smirked at her. “Maurice was born when I was five years old. See that knife blade sticking out of the shell near his neck? I put that there when Maurice was a few months old. We were having a wrestling match over a war-mouth bass I caught.”

Etienne grinned like a young boy, and she could just picture the scamp going one-on-one with a baby turtle. “Who won?”

“Maurice,” Etienne admitted with a grimace, “but he’ll carry my mark for the rest of his life. How you doin’, Maurice? Have a wife yet? No? Me, neither. Too much trouble? I agree. Wenches tease you, then refuse to please you. Is it the same down there on the bottom? Bloodsuckers, you say? Yep!”

Maurice’s only contribution to the one-way conversation was an occasional soughing hiss as he sucked in drafts of air. Then, as quickly as he’d emerged from the water, Maurice sashayed over to the edge of the stream and submerged himself. While he propelled his ponderous body along the bottom, the only evidence of his path was a trail of silt that rose to the surface.

Etienne smiled at her, and she smiled back.

The shared moment was precious, and Harriet wished she could hold it in her hands and never let go.
I love you
, she thought, and for some reason forgot to add
stupid
.

“You reckoned I was meeting a woman, didn’t you?” he drawled, breaking the thread of intimate camaraderie.

“No, I thought you were adding animal sex to your necrophilia.”

He laughed and chucked her under the chin. “You were
jealous when I mentioned a friend,” he gloated with amusement. Then he tensed suddenly, frowning with concern. “Why do you keep fidgeting from foot to foot?” He contemplated her for a moment before a lazy smile spread across his lips. “Do you have some of those pesky red ants on you? Perhaps in your drawers? Maybe I should check.”

Harriet shook her head at him and laughed, despite herself.

“They like to nestle in hot, moist places. Yep, you’d better drop your drawers.”

“Talk about lack of subtlety!” But she could deliver tit for tat any day. “I’m not wearing any underwear.”

“Neither am I,” Etienne came right back, flashing a one-upmanship grin at her.

She chalked an imaginary one in the air for his side. “You certainly recover quickly from your fits of frustration.” His roller-coaster moods were enough to drive a poor girl batty. One minute he scorched her with one of those man-looks, and the next he laughed at her.

He shrugged. “If I don’t laugh, I might cry.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It’s that bad.”

Twang, Twang, Twang!

“What is
that
?” Harriet exclaimed. “Oh, I see. It’s just a frog, but what an ungodly noise it’s making. I thought frogs were supposed to ribet.”

“It’s a toad, not a frog. And that one’s a male spadefoot toad,” Etienne corrected, peering through the bushes at a stout little varmint about three inches long. The toad was sitting on a lily pad near a half-submerged gum tree log.

“We’re in luck. They rarely come out in daylight.”

Harriet squinted to see what was so special about this animal. Its unwarted, smooth skin was brownish black with an olive hue, highlighted by two stripes down the back. Ted the Toad was bellowing out what she presumed must be a mating call, his entire body vibrating with the intensity of his resonation.

The wartless stud was doing something else interesting while beckoning his significant other. With his nostrils and mouth tightly closed, he expelled air from his lungs into a throat sac under his chin, causing it to balloon up into an enormous, almost transparent bubble. The female species in toad-dom probably considered it very sexy, comparable to big pecs or six-pack abs.

Oh, yeah, here came Tootsie Toad, bee-bop-hopping over to Ted’s pad. With almost no foreplay—a six on the MCP scale—Ted jumped on Tootsie’s back and locked his forelegs around hers.

When Harriet’s eyes, as well as Tootsie’s, grew wide at Ted’s endurance, Etienne explained, “The thumb and inner fingers of the male’s front hands have horny growths on them called nuptial pads. That’s so he can hold on to her if she changes her mind.”

“Oh, you!”

“Really, it’s true. Look closer.”

“I am not going to stand here and watch two toads have sex. You really are a pervert.” She laughed and started to walk back toward the house.

“I think God missed a step in the evolutionary process,” Etienne concluded as he followed her. “He forgot to give those horny spurs to men. If he had, women wouldn’t be able to stop in the middle of the act.”

“You are outrageous,” Harriet said, turning and walking backward while she talked. She was still scanning the path warily for snakes. “But you see, God didn’t make a mistake. He gave men something even better, something he didn’t give to the lower animal classes.”

“And that would be?” Etienne made a great show of closing the distance between them with a big toadlike hop.

“A heartbreaker smile and a talent for slick sweet-talk, both geared to wear a woman’s defenses down.”

Etienne favored her with one of his heartbreaker smiles. And the butterflies in her stomach went wild. But then Etienne froze, glancing upward.

What now? Uh-uh!
She wasn’t going to fall for that trick. He was pretending there was some danger, like the snake hunt, hoping she’d leapfrog into his arms, dropping her drawers in the process. She cut him one of her I’m-no-fool scowls.