Read Online Cajun Waltz by Robert H. Patton - Free Book Online

her a cottage with a trellis and carport not far from the Block’s on Texas Street. She was electric in his arms from their first time together, giggly and coarse and just a natural to do things to. She gave weepy cries during lovemaking that hardened him whenever he replayed them in his head. She liked to drink and even when she was pregnant would dance naked for him to the wireless. She laughed at jokes that made him blush and dared him, though he refused in appalled disbelief, to let her give him an orgasm with her hand while they waited for her doctor to arrive in a taxicab to deliver the baby. Afterward, Richie wanted to name the boy Walter, but Angel insisted on Seth.
    â€œSeth? Where you get that?”
    â€œIt come to me.”
    â€œNow goddamn, Angel, if it some ol’ boyfriend—”
    â€œStop. I like the name.”
    â€œI’d kill the guy, you know that.”
    â€œBig talk.”
    He smiled, mostly. “Thought you’d want him called for your daddy.”
    â€œI hardly knew the man. Took me travelin’ a couple times when my mama tired o’ fightin’ me.”
    Propped on feather pillows in bed, she shifted the baby to her other breast. Richie glanced down warily but found it not so bad. “Lookit that sonofabitch work! And still you want every time I see him I got to wonder who he named for?”
    â€œIf you so worried, don’t see him.”
    â€œYou know I will, whatever he called.”
    â€œIn the Bible, Richie! Seth is Adam and Eve’s number three child. Sent by the Lord after Cain killed Abel.”
    â€œWell, if it out the Bible, okay.”
    â€œLittle gift from me to you. No matter what else. ’Cause you been good to me and I love you.”
    In that moment Richie loved her back a hundredfold. He beheld the vision of her and their child with cosmic wonder that men like him often aren’t built to acknowledge. But he knew it the instant he felt it, and he knew that it was rare and he would never let it go. In the shaded glow of her bedside lamp Angel’s caramel shoulders and the slope of her breasts were something out of a classic painting he’d never seen. His baby’s pink head made him want to cry for its preciousness. In fact he did cry a little, Angel too, and when he bent low to give her a kiss their lips made a beautiful fit.
    *   *   *
    T HE COMPANY’S GROWTH slowed only a little during the war years, with Block’s stores opening in Houston and Jackson. Esther, from her father’s rocking chair relocated to a headquarters office near the Lake Charles city hall, oversaw the selection of sites and distribution centers and the standardization of products and services throughout the chain. Richie was her eyes and ears, making the rounds from place to place in a performance mixing the strut of a corporate boss with the skitter of a traveling salesman. It was an efficient partnership in which they spent little time together, and it came to an end just after New Year’s in 1946, when Esther choked on a mouthful of crawfish pie and died at age fifty-four.
    Abe Percy had prepared the dish as a pick-me-up for his friend, who was nursing a cold at home. He was sitting beside her while she ate in bed when something caught in her throat and caused a spasm that took her life right there in a blue-faced thrashing silence. He would never get over it. He would never forgive himself. Richie made a special trip to his office a week after the funeral to let Abe know that he wouldn’t forgive him either. “I loved the woman,” Richie said. “Now you gone and orphaned her children.”
    â€œThey’re not orphans. They have their father.”
    â€œListen to you, talkin’ legal at such a time.”
    Abe clasped his hands in front of his face to keep them from shaking. “What do you want from me? I can’t feel worse than I already do.”
    Richie had specific wants