Chapter 31: Red Day Again

Etienne didn't say a word on the drive home from Lafayette.

Neither did I.

Somewhere around the causeway, I looked over, and his ears were still red.

"She's on painkillers," I said.

"She's not on enough painkillers to make that up."

That was all either of us said about it until August.

Red Day came on Saturday, August seventh.

I woke up at four in the room over Lise's café, under a real roof, and I couldn't get back to sleep.

A year.

A year since I'd stood at a kitchen counter in my rubber boots with my fingers on my lips.

I put on my chambray shirt and my boots and drove to the fields in the dark.

The whole island was gathering at the end of the long rows.

Pickers in straw hats with their buckets.

The bottling crew in blue.

Kids running around in the gray light with flashlights they didn't need anymore.

Lise was handing out boudin from the back of her café van, and this year the line went all the way to the road.

"Morning, boss," she said, and handed me two.

"Don't call me that."

"Morning, Madame CEO."

"Worse."

Mémère was at the end of row one, in a folding chair, with a cane and a walker both and her pearl earrings on.

She'd been home since June.

She'd fired two home nurses.

The third one was from Pointe Rouge and gave as good as she got, so she'd stayed.

The priest stood beside Mémère with his holy water and his sleeves rolled up.

This year there were two baskets at his feet.

One full of red peppers.

One full of green.

He blessed the seed, the soil, the hands that worked it and the family that kept it.

Then he looked up from his book, straight at me, for the first time in a year.

"And the taster," he said.

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