"You come here to beg forgiveness?" she asked.
"I came here to borrow some money," he said.
"What?" She stopped rocking, stunned.
"My dingy's motor is shot to hell and Charlie McDermott won't advance me any more credit to buy a new used one from him. I gotta have a motor or I can't earn any money guiding hunters, harvesting oysters, whatnot," he said. "I know you got something put away and I swear—"
"What good is your oath, Jack Landry? You're a cursed man, a doomed man whose soul already has a prime reservation in hell," she told him with more vehemence and energy than I had seen her exert in days. For a moment Grandpère didn't reply.
"If I can earn something, I can pay you back and then some right quickly," he said. Grandmère snorted.
"If I gave you the last pile of pennies we had, you'd turn from here and run as fast as you could to get a bottle of rum and drink yourself into another stupor," she told him. "Besides," she said, "we haven't got anything. You know how times get in the bayou in the summer for us. Not that you showed you cared any," she added.
"I do what I can," he protested.
"For yourself and your damnable thirst," she fired back.
I shifted my gaze from Grandmère to Grandpère. He really did look desperate and repentant. Grandmère Catherine knew I had my painting money put away. I could loan it to him if he was really in a fix, I thought, but I was afraid to say.
"You'd let a man die out here in the swamp, starve to death and become food for the buzzards," he moaned.
She stood up slowly, rising to her full five feet four inches of height as if she were really six feet tall, her head up, her shoulders back, and then she lifted her left arm to point her forefinger at him. I saw his eyes bulge with shock and fear as he took a step back.
"You are already dead, Jack Landry," she declared with the authority of a bishop, "and already food for buzzards. Go back to your cemetery and leave us be," she commanded.
"Some Christian you are," he cried, but continued to back up. "Some show of mercy. You're no better than me, Catherine. You're no better," he called, and turned to get swallowed up in the darkness from where he had come as quickly as he had appeared. Grandmère stared after him a few moments even after he was gone and then sat down.
"We could have given him my painting money, Grandmère," I said. She shook her head vehemently.
"That money is not to be touched by him," she said firmly. "You're going to need it someday, Ruby, and besides," she added, "he'd only do what I said, turn it into cheap whiskey.
"The nerve of him," she continued, more to herself than to me, "coming around here and asking me to loan him money. The nerve of him . . ."
I watched her wind herself down until she was slumped in her chair again, and I thought how terrible it was that two people who had once kissed and held each other, who had loved and wanted to be with each other were now like two alley cats, hissing and scratching at each other in the night.
The confrontation with my Grandpère drained Grandmère. She was so exhausted, I had to help her to bed. I sat beside her for a while and watched her sleep, her cheeks still red, her forehead beaded with perspiration. Her bosom rose and fell with such effort, I thought her heart would simply burst under the pressure.
That night I went to sleep with great trepidation, afraid that when I woke up, I would find Grandmère Catherine hadn't. But thankfully, her sleep revived her and what woke me the next morning was the sound of her footsteps as she made her way to the kitchen to start breakfast and begin another day of work in the loom room.
Despite the lack of customers, we continued our weaving and handicrafts whenever we could during the summer months, building a stock of goods to put out when the tourist season got back into high swing. Grandmère bartered with cotton growers and farmers who harvested the palmetto leaves with which we made the hats and fans. She traded some of her gumbo for split oak so we could make the baskets. Whenever it appeared we were bone-dry and had nothing to offer in return for craft materials, Grandmère reached deeper into her sacred chest and came up with something of value she had either been given as payment for a traiteur mission years before, or something she had been saving just for such a time.
Just at one of these hard periods, the second thing occurred to put vim and vigor into her steps and words. The postman delivered a fancy light blue envelope with a lace design on its edges addressed to me. It came from New Orleans, the return address simply Dominique's.
"Grandmère, I've got a letter from the gallery in New Orleans," I shouted running into the house. She nodded, holding her breath, her eyes bright with excitement.
"Go on, open it," she said, slipping into a chair. I sat at the kitchen table while I tore it open and plucked out a cashier's check for two hundred and fifty dollars. There was a note with it.
Congratulations on the sale of one of your pictures. I have some interest in the others and will be contacting you in the near future to see what else you have done since my visit.
Sincerely, Dominique
Grandmère Catherine and I just looked at each other for a moment and then her face lit up with the brightest, broadest smile I had seen her wear for months. She closed her eyes and offered a quick prayer of thanks. I continued to stare incredulously at the cashier's check.
"Grandmère, can this be true? Two hundred and fifty dollars! For one of my paintings!"
"I told you it would happen. I told you," she said. "I wonder who bought it. He doesn't say?"
I looked again and shook my head.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Many people will see it now and other well-to-do Creoles will come to Dominique's to look for your work and he will tell them who you are; he will tell them the artist is Ruby Landry," she added, nodding.
"Now you listen to me, Grandmère," I said firmly, "we are going to use this money to live on and not bury in your chest for some future thing for me."
"Maybe just some of it," she accepted, "but most of it has to be put away for you. Some day you will need nicer clothing and shoes and other things, and you will need traveling money, too," she said with certainty.
"Where am I going, Grandmère?" I asked.
"Away from here. Away from here," she muttered. "But for now, let us celebrate. Let's make a shrimp gumbo and a special dessert. I know," she said, "we'll make a Kings Cake." It was one of my favorites: a yeast cake ring with colorful sugar glazes. "I'll invite Mrs. Thibodeau and Mrs. Livaudis for dinner so I can brag about my granddaughter until they burst with envy. But first we'll go to the bank and cash your check," she said.
Grandmère's excitement and happiness filled me with joy I hadn't felt in months. I wished that I had someone special with whom to celebrate and thought about Paul. I had seen him only one other time beside church the whole summer and that was when I was in town shopping for some groceries. When I came out of the store, I caught sight of him sitting in his father's car, waiting for him to come out of the bank. He looked my way and I thought he smiled, but at that moment his father appeared and he snapped his head around to face front. Disappointed, I watched him drive off, not looking back once.
Grandmère and I walked to town to cash my check. On the way we stopped at Mrs. Thibodeau's and Mrs. Livaudis's homes to invite them to our dinner of celebration. Then Grandniece began to cook and bake like she hadn't done for months. I helped her prepare and then set the table. She decided to stack the crisp twenty dollar bills at the center of the table with a rubber band around them just to impress her old friends. When they set eyes on it and heard how I had received it, they were astonished. Some people in the bayou worked a whole month for this much money.
"Well, I'm not surprised," Grandmère said. "I always knew she would become a famous artist someday."
"Oh, Grandmère," I said, embarrassed with all the attention, "I'm far from a famous artist."