The water hyacinths were beautiful… a floating island of fragile lavender blossoms and bright green leaves, their roots dangling invisibly below. How deceptive! It had all started back in 1884 during the International Cotton Exposition of New Orleans. At the Japanese exhibit, visitors were each given a sample of the flowering aquatic plant native to Latin America. What they didn’t realize was the remarkable reproductive abilities it would have, with one single plant producing 65,000 plants in a single season. Throughout Louisiana it had posed a problem ever since: clogging waterways, choking vegetation, cutting off sunlight necessary to aquatic life.
“If I had the time, I’d pull the whole raft of flowers out of the water and build the biggest bonfire this side of hell,” Luc proclaimed fiercely.
“And they’d all come back.” Sylvie smiled. “Remember the time the Army Corps of Engineers tried to dynamite them out of existence, and they came back in more abundance?”
“A sugar planter near us used a flamethrower last summer, and the year before, a machine gun,” Tee-John piped in. “Man, did I learn some good swear words this year when they all came back!”
Luc and Sylvie both shook their heads at the boy’s enthusiasm over cursing.
“I think the water hyacinths are a little bit like women,” Luc teased as they set the pirogue back in the water. “Pretty and dainty on the outside and man-eaters on the inside, ready to suck the blood out of any male who comes within kissing distance.” The whole time he talked, he was watching Sylvie’s heart-shaped behind as she bent over in his nylon jogging shorts to pick up her fallen cap.
“How come you’re always lookin’ at Sylvie’s ass?” Tee-John asked with a mischievous grin.
Sylvie’s body shot ramrod straight, and she sliced Luc with a glare.
He shrugged. “There are some things a man just can’t help.”
“Hah!” she said.
“Hah!” Tee-John said at the same time. “I’d rather look at a bug.”
Everyone laughed at that.
“And you two are always touchin’ each other,” Tee-John complained, and made a youthful gesture of disgust by sticking two fingers in his open mouth to denote vomiting.
“We are not,” Sylvie protested, but she was lying. Luc had to admit on his own behalf that he couldn’t stop himself from laying his hands on her every chance he got, even in the most innocent instances. Fingertips brushing her hair under the cap. Resting a palm on her shoulder when he asked a question. A quick caress of her bare arm when he reached for one of the supplies. And Sylvie had reciprocated likewise, much to his great pleasure.
Sylvie—smart lady—decided to change the subject back to their earlier discussion. “Actually, I disagree with your analogy, Luc. If water hyacinths are like women at all, it’s because we’re the stronger sex,” Sylvie argued over her shoulder. They were back in the pirogue and paddling again. “No matter what men do to cut us down, we pop right back up. Hey, water hyacinths aren’t called the survival flower for nothing.”
“Touché,” Luc said with a smart salute to her back.
“Yep, I am woman. Call me survivor.”
“You know, Sylv, the water hyacinth is also called the pain-in-the-ass flower. So, you could say, ‘I am woman. Call me… P.I.T.A.”
“You’re impossible,” she said huffily.
“Yeah, dontcha just love that about me?”
There was an uncomfortable silence then because he’d inadvertently brought up the dreaded L-word. But the moment passed when Tee-John stood expertly in the boat and used his paddle to push a huge water snake out of their path.
At noon, they stopped for lunch.
To Sylvie, the day seemed magical.
Maybe it was the lunch—an ambrosia of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, washed down with barely cool soda pop and topped off with crisp apples, which Luc had sliced into bite-size pieces.
Maybe it was the glorious pirogue ride through what had to be God’s country… a place of such intense colors and smells and beauty that the mind instinctively associated them with some celestial creation.
Maybe it was spending a day with Lucien LeDeux, a man she was coming to love more and more, with each passing moment. And it wasn’t anything he said or did, either. It was just being with him… looking up to see him staring at her with equal wonder… catching him in an easy exchange of smiles with his brother… remembering all that had passed between them the night before.