After supper Colette sat in the wheelhouse alone, thinking of Matthew. She ran her hands over the hydraulic steering levers and admired the bright gauges, handles, pull cords. Outside, the night was black and starless. From the stern came the voices of the younger men, who were gathered around the main towing bitts, lounging on coils of rope. The older men, including Paul’s father, who was stopped up with a cold, started a game of bourrée in the galley, a quiet contest in which there was only the snapping of the cards. A gust of wind leaned against the tug and it swung on anchor. She watched LeBlanc come forward on the lower deck, unscrew a four-inch brass pipe cap, and insert a long stick, pulling it out and looking at the fuel mark. He remained on his knees a long time before closing off the pipe. She knew they would go back to Tiger Island at dawn. She also knew that even if they had found no one, the search would have been worth it, because such a group would form for her only one place on earth. She stepped out onto the walk, trying to step out of her feelings, but she thought of Paul’s big soft hands and of the times he had talked her out of her fear or guilt, spending his plain mechanical logic freely until she was whole again.

A laugh rose from the stern. Raymond’s voice was serious and bright with some exciting idea. “We ought to rent Blanchard’s in Pierre Part for the funeral,” he was saying.

Then her own brother began: “Etienne would love it. We could hire a French band and put a black box on sawhorses in the middle of the floor.”

“We could dance around it, man.”

“It’s a stupid, crazy idea,” intoned LeBlanc’s redneck. “But I got to admit, he’d shore like it.”

Colette listened and tried to understand, then went to her bunk, said her prayers, and waited for sleep, hearing the old men break up their game, the young men give up their talk. LeBlanc killed the generator to save fuel. Raymond and Paul’s father came into the forward bunk room, where she lay, and climbed in, and then there was only the thin sound of breeze in the screened portholes and the slow roll of the mean Gulf under them all, no whistles to interpret, nothing but night. She thought of how hard Paul must have tried to stay alive in all this water, and why.

Chapter Twenty-four

Twenty-four

During the first morning of the search, Grand-père Abadie hobbled up the levee, bound for his daughter’s house. His khaki shirt and pants were still warm from his iron, and the dew polished his heavy brown shoes. At the kitchen door he pulled off his cap and called out to Paul’s mother, “Comment ça va?”