Cajun Waltz Read Online Free PDF

scream or was it in his head? Walking away, one of the attackers gave Richie a last kick that caught him square in the throat. Meanwhile Walter was drowning in six inches of swamp water at the bottom of the gully, though he never knew it.
    *   *   *
    R ICHIE WOKE TO a woman’s voice somewhere in the air above him. “You in Lake Charles Hospital. Been here three days.” It hurt to open his eyes, the lids leaky and crusty both.
    He couldn’t form words. She bent over him and he smelled the bleach in her uniform. He tried moving his tongue. He pushed air through his lips. “Lake Charles?” came out in a whisper.
    â€œLake Charles, yes. You got people here? Must be worried sick.”
    Lake Charles . The words took meaning slowly. A name came to mind. “Esther Block,” he murmured before falling back into sleep.
    *   *   *
    T HEY WERE MARRIED four months later at Lake Charles City Hall. It seemed a natural next step after he convalesced at Esther and her father’s house and began helping at their store as his health returned. Before long they were as good as husband and wife but for the paperwork and wedding night. Leopold witnessed, paid for the license and dinner for three at the Majestic Hotel. Esther went straight to her room after they got home. Leopold poured cognacs for him and his son-in-law until enough time had passed to assume she’d got herself ready. His goodnight wink about killed Richie with embarrassment.
    Though it was her first time compared to maybe a dozen for him, all with professionals in their establishments or in his motorcar, he was the nervous one. He’d rarely done it without protection. The feel of Esther’s fingers slotting him in place and the yielding clasp when he pushed inside brought him to a fast finish. Propped on his elbows in the dark above her, his mouth fell open and some saliva dropped onto her cheek. She teased him about it afterward, saying she took it as a compliment that he’d lost himself that way. Humiliated, he curled to the wall. She lay on her back with her knees up as instructed in her pregnancy pamphlet.
    Being Esther’s husband turned out okay. Thanks to the store, there was ample food and money around, and scented powder she ordered from New York always aroused him when he undid her nightgown at night. Damage to his throat had left Richie’s voice a sandpaper rasp good for telling funny stories but unable to sing a note. His memory of performing with Walter Dopsie at the fais do-do was like an itch at the end of a severed limb, not terribly hard to put out of mind once he accepted that it always would be there. Feel like you flyin’, Walter had said before they’d climbed on those crates to play. True at the time, but never again.
    The sheriff’s inquiry into Walter’s death had come to a finding of drunken mishap. The details of the attack were lost to Richie. He had a dim recollection of one face at the scene, swollen and shiny with a nervous mean look that makes for the worst kind of bully, but it was no more substantial than a ghost glimpsed in a window. Pinefield teenagers had hauled his vehicle out of the gully and picked it clean of its tires, upholstery, and engine; it was a rusting skeleton by the time Richie got back there weeks afterward. And his concern for Walter’s daughter was too awkward to bring up. Someone said she’d been returned to her mother down on the coast. Her face he pictured clearly.
    *   *   *
    T HE TWINS WERE born the next summer. Justine first, followed moments later by Richard Junior. Richie was absent due to unloading deliveries at Block’s, he said, though being unmissed at the occasion by his wife and father-in-law made their doubt a non-issue. Esther’s pregnancy had been her and Leopold’s show from the start. Richie had assumed he was forever golden in their eyes for having rescued Esther