Postmark Bayou Chene Read Online Free PDF

bottom—that way she could make one side longer to cover the hump.
    As years went by, she didn’t seem unhappy, just sort of removed. These tuneless Latin-sounding hymns would come floating out from beneath her bonnet. It was a puzzle where she picked up that music, since back then we only had the Methodist church out here. I figured the musical memory must be from her childhood and brought escape from her loss. If you walked by, she’d break off humming and nod her head but mostly didn’t bother to look up to see who spoke to her.
    She stopped cooking and even stopped eating with us. Eating was the last thing on my own mind, but Fate and Loyce didn’t have anyone else, so I started figuring out how to get plates to the table with something on them. As far as I could tell, Mame just passed through the kitchen now and then and picked up a piece of cornbread or a baked sweet potato. I’d see her eating out of hand while squatting on her haunches looking over her work in the yard.
    Everybody handles grief their own way. For me reading and cooking became a comfort, just like pulling weeds seemed to comfort Mame. While she plunged into despair after the drownings, I suppose I just sort of waded in over my head. My own grief got buried under trying to raise a blind daughter alone, keep the store and post office open for the rest of them, and halfway looking after Fate and Mame.
    It seemed like all those details started to cover me up like moss in a grove of oaks. I gave up fishing but still couldn’t get ahead of all there was to do. Deliveries came to the store, and I just stashed them in any vacant spot. Customers got used to searching for things they wanted to buy or had ordered, so I just left out the pry bar and hammer for them to open the crates and barrels. It got to where layers of dust told me how long something had been part of the inventory.
    Sometimes I just let everything go and lost myself in a book. At first it was Little Women , one of Josie’s favorites as a child. A strange choice for a man, you might say, but all that domesticity was a comfort to me. Besides, it was about a parent trying to handle everything alone, like me. Mrs. March seemed a lot better at it than I was, but I noticed that the book didn’t mention who did the washing of all those big skirts and petticoats.
    Later I spent a lot of time in The Innocents Abroad , Mark Twain’s story about traveling all over the world. He went just about everywhere and didn’t back up from saying when he didn’t approve of something. Before Josie drowned, we used to take turns reading that one aloud to the rest of the family. She’d get to laughing so hard, I had to take over from her most nights.
    Come down to it, which book I read didn’t matter. Mostly I just took comfort from handling the pages and breathing deep of the covers she treasured. It brought her close to me again.
    I know some say I’m lazy, especially when they come in and see me sitting on a case of canned goods with my nose in a book, but that’s not the whole story. As a U.S. postmaster, the mail is my sworn duty. Along with sorting what comes in, I help people get their packages and letters ready to go out of this swamp and into the world. Sometimes I write down the most personal kind of information for my customers who can’t do it themselves—applications for war widow pensions, notes to relatives about births, letters telling the inside story of marriages, not to mention the death notices of every man, woman, and child who dies here with relatives off somewhere. I know the secrets of every family on the Chene, a privilege I don’t take lightly.
    And when it comes to the store, why, every baby still gets weighed on my dry goods scale until they pass the twenty-pound limit. That hasn’t changed since the days of Elder Landry. And don’t forget that letting people serve themselves when I’m busy doing something