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Chapter 9
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34 Chapter 9 Trosclaire Thibodeaux had built a large fire next to a trench he had dug. They still had an hour or more until it died down enough to start cooking; they needed a good bed of white-hot ashes. In the meantime he had hung the big pot, full of bayou water, over the fire. The dry hickory that Trosclaire had pulled out of the woods would burn hotter than the soft pine. Aimee was returning home with the children in the late afternoon’s light. She was coming up the road carrying two of them. A small baby was cradled in one arm. A larger toddler, his rear cupped in the crook of the other arm, hugged her neck. Five more straggled behind her, none of them older than seven or eight. Some held buckets filled with wild blackberries and mint. Others had long willow branches, tied in bundles on their backs, to be used later to weave baskets for Jeanne Marie. Jake and Trosclaire were on the porch, Trosclaire in the old rocking chair, Jake leaning up against the front wall of the small two-room cabin. Coming down the bayou in a pirogue were the four oldest children . The shallow-bottomed boat, carved out of the trunk of a tree, barely made a sound as it skimmed along. One quick movement by any of the occupants, one wrong shift, and the pirogue would overturn. But the children had grown up on the bayou. The two boys, ten and eleven years old, were paddling with quiet expertise. The two girls, their thin skirts gathered around them, held large baskets of flopping fish in their laps. “Tonight, my friend,” Trosclaire said in French to Jake, “we are going to have ourselves some feast. Aimee, she make a pie with those blackberries . Just look at my children bringing a mess of sacolet and brim. If they had caught any more, that pirogue, she would groan like a muskrat 35 in a trap and then break and sink to the bottom of the bayou. And you, you are going to show me that your knife, something that you want to ask me too much for, is worth paying a penny more than I paid for this American one.” Trosclaire took the heavy blade, the one Jake had again sharpened free for him a few minutes earlier, and threw it expertly at a nearby pine tree. It hit its mark and buried itself two inches deep in the gray, crusty bark. That was a sign, Jake knew, that he could delay the boucherie no longer . The children were unloading the pirogue and bringing the fish up to the house. The feast would begin late at night, and the cochon de lait would start soon, and there was still the boiling to do. Jake and Trosclaire went to the pen on the side of the house. Trosclaire picked up one of the larger suckling pigs, pulling it away from its mother’s teat, and handed it to Jake. Jake put a large bucket under the ledge of the porch and, holding the squiggling pig tightly, walked up on the porch. It must have weighed more than fifty pounds, but Jake handled it easily. He placed the pig between his knees, squeezing it firmly with his legs so that it couldn’t move. Jake pulled a large Freimer knife with a ten-inch blade out of his belt and, reaching down, grabbed the squealing pig’s snout and pulled it up, stretching the neck taut. With one practiced stroke he cut the pig’s neck, severing the jugular vein and the nerves of the backbone. It was perfect. One cut. The pig never felt any pain. Jake tilted the pig’s body so that the blood would drain into the bucket below. Trosclaire was amazed. “That knife, she is as sharp as you say. But you have almost cut off her head! What kind of boucherie is this? It is no way to prepare for a cochon de lait.” ...