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prejudice a newcomer.
    Once again her nose jerked in a sniff, maybe over the basket of sprouted onions on the floor next to the stove. He probably should have used them by now. And the strings of red peppers hanging from the ceiling. He’d never noticed before that after a few years past drying out, they start to look like talons of dead birds. A spoon stuck straight up out of a container of honey that had gone to sugar. How long had it been there? He didn’t even remember seeing it before. Well, she was either hungry or she wasn’t, and the way she had been watching those fish fry made him think she could put all this mess behind her in a flash.
    â€œAh, Mrs. Barclay,” he said, with all the confidence his fish deserved, “you won’t care where these little darlings were cooked when you taste them.”
    With that he breezed on through the kitchen door to the porch. He could hear the tippy-tap of her shoes trying to keep up with his long strides.
    The music stopped when they entered, the squeeze-box and Fate’s fiddle first, then a few more fiddle strokes before Loyce noticed she was playing alone.
    â€œYoung’uns, this is Mrs. Barclay, who has been stranded by a logjam and will be passing time with us while she waits for her husband to send her passage,” Adam said, with a proprietor’s flourish. “Mrs. Barclay, meet my daughter, Loyce; my nephew, Fate Landry; and Valzine Broussard, first mate of the Golden Era .”
    Val looked up from where he was putting away his squeeze-box. Always interested in what’s happening on the water anywhere, he and Fate took every opportunity to talk about boats.
    â€œThat’d be the logjam over around Plaquemine or Simmesport?” he asked.
    â€œUhhh,” Roseanne hesitated. Adam couldn’t tell if she was stalling for time or was overcome with the good smells rising up from the table. It did appear her corset strained with her trying to breathe them in.
    Finally, she said, “Simmesport,” but her voice lacked confidence, in Adam’s opinion. No wonder, since Simmesport was north of Bayou Chene, opposite from New Orleans, where she had told him she was from.
    â€œYeh, that makes it a trial to get from Natchez this time of year,” Val said.
    Natchez was the city above the Simmesport logjam. Adam saw that Val was too occupied with serving Loyce’s plate to notice the woman’s discomfort over her mistake.
    â€œHow about some of those English peas you spent the morning shelling?” Val went on, holding a spoon over Loyce’s plate. With the other hand he moved fringe from his vest out of the way. Val’s clothes were a little on the colorful side for Adam’s taste, but he appreciated the young man’s good-hearted attentiveness to Loyce.
    â€œSince I did all the work of picking and shelling, give me a double helping, but wait till I put this biscuit down,” Loyce replied.
    Val waited while she split a biscuit and placed it on one side of her plate. Then he covered the biscuit with tiny green peas and the sauce made with butter and pure cream.
    Other dishes passed around the table in the same fashion, with either Val or Fate serving Loyce as needed. Along with the creamed peas and biscuits, their plates were soon heaped with the fried catfish, rutabaga chunks smothered in a brown roux, and leaves of wild spinach wilted with hot bacon grease and splashed with vinegar. The conversation flowed to the rhythm of their congenial dining. Adam noticed that the newcomer ate as heartily as the boys.
    â€œYour Bayou Chene surprises me,” she said to the table in general. “I wasn’t expecting to see so many houses, picket fences, and even a store way out here.”
    â€œOh, cher , there’s nowhere else like it, for true,” Val answered. “I go up and down these rivers, and I know them all. The Chene, she got most everything except roads in and