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laughed again.
    â€œRose, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but when I first met you, you reminded me of someone who had just gotten a good long whiff of cow manure blowing her way.”
    â€œI did?”
    â€œMmm-hmm. Your nose was so high in the air, if it had rained, I thought you’d surely drown.” She winked, as if to soften her words.
    We arrived in Montegut thirty minutes late. Only two people remained—Luther and Gordie. Luther wore a white shirt rolled up to his elbows and the sun was so bright shining down on him that I noticed the pale hairs on his tanned arms. I tried to erase my big ole grin. Luther was smiling back, though. He had a way of staring at me that made me feel naked. And I knew I shouldn’t be feeling this way. He was a married man with a child.
    â€œHi, Gordie,” I said with a little wave. “Guess what we saw today?”
    Then Gordie did the most peculiar thing. He held his arms out to me and said, “Momma.”
    I reached for him, but Luther held him back, frowning. “That’s not your momma.” He blushed so it looked like a rash covering his face. “I’m sorry. His momma hasn’t been able to hold him in a long time.”
    Gordie began to cry and kick his legs. I stood there helpless, wanting to hold him, knowing I couldn’t. Marlene gave him a grape lollipop. I went to the children’s side and found him a book.
    Luther practically grabbed it from me and quickly picked out another Western. Then they left.
    Five minutes later, we drove off. “It’s the most pitiful thing,” Marlene said. We rode the rest of the way to Pointe-Aux-Chenes in silence. In some ways, I was grateful for what had just happened, because it knocked me back into reality. I didn’t like feeling that way about Luther, that longing for something you can’t have, as if I were jumping off a cliff, hoping to land on a cloud.
    When we approached our spot across from the general store, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Six women stood with Julia, and they all seemed to be waiting for us.
    We parked, and when we got out, Julia told me, “Dat was a good book. You got any others like dat?”
    â€œThe cookbook?” I asked.
    â€œNo,” she said. “Dat story. I cried so much, my man wanted to know what happened.”
    â€œYes,” said a woman with a low, freckled forehead. “I want a book just like dat.”
    Marlene smiled at me, then she turned toward the woman. “Well, you can check that one out, if you’d like.”
    â€œI want one, too,” said another woman. And I could tell right off that was why they were all there.
    I was worried because this morning I’d placed only three books from the children’s side on the adult side of the bookmobile. But Marlene must have added some, too, because she was showing the women several I hadn’t even seen.
    Julia and the women each chose a novel and a cookbook. And when they walked away, Marlene and I stayed there watching until we couldn’t see them anymore.
    Marlene smiled as she pulled down the side doors to cover the books and crawled in beside me. She didn’t say a word all the way back.
    As we rode toward the library my head was filled with the bayou people I’d met in the last month—Antoine, Luther, Gordie, Julia, and all the others. For a while, a pelican flew above us, his shadow becoming our temporary companion on the road. He seemed to be calling, Follow me, follow me.
    I could hardly wait until next week.

Trapped
    (1957)
    B LUE HAD BEEN the last puppy chosen. The last, but the best, thought Merle Henry. He’d gotten Blue for his twelfth birthday. A year later, the half hound, half mutt grew to a nice size and became Merle Henry’s shadow, taking to the woods alongside him every morning before school to check the traps. Merle Henry wanted a mink something fierce, but all he’d trapped over the last year