The Devil in Canaan Parish Read Free Page A

sitting in the car caused the fabric to pull tight across her chest.   I found myself turning toward her, watching the up and down pattern of her breasts as her lungs filled and emptied of air. I was surprised by the sudden tug I felt in the crotch of my pants, and I quickly cleared my throat to break the silence.
    “Are you ready to go in?” I asked.
    She turned to me and nodded.   The garage was small.   Not big enough for me to go around the side and open the door for her.   I pulled her bag from the back seat, stepped out, and then reached my hand in.
    “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to slide your way out,” I said.  
    She gathered her skirt up and reached for my hand.   The delicate fingers were rough and strong, and she held my palm in a firm grip.   The touch sent an electric current through me, and I struggled to compose my face muscles after she emerged from the car. I had to reach around her to close the door, and at that moment, my chest brushed against her back, and I could feel her muscles tense.   I turned to look at her and she gazed up at me, waiting for my next direction.   I froze for a moment, suddenly wishing I had taken a longer way home and engaged in some small talk in the car, but at that moment I heard the screeching of the kitchen screen’s door in the back of the house and knew that my wife was waiting for us inside.

Chapter Two
    The house that Sally and I lived in was built in the Acadian style. The whole structure was elevated four feet off the ground on brick columns. The high, sloped roof formed two large porches that ran along the front and back of the house. From the front door, one-stepped into a large gallery with a dining room on the right and parlor on the left.   These two rooms had French doors opening onto the porch, allowing for ample space to entertain guests who could mill about from dining room to gallery to parlor, out the doors to the porch and back in again.  
    The back of the house held the bathroom and master bedroom to the left, and a large, eat-in kitchen to the right.   A swinging door connected the dining room to the kitchen. The bedroom had another set of French doors opening to a private, screened-in porch in back.   The kitchen’s screen door also opened onto the back porch, but the two areas were separated by a half wall.  
    There were no other bedrooms in the house. Upstairs, a long, open attic with windows on either side of the house was where we kept our storage and also a makeshift room for our maids.   This was called the garconniere and was reached by a narrow staircase from the kitchen.   Ten years ago, my wife and I had planned to partition off this space to make additional rooms for the children.   Through the course of our marriage it became evident that this would not be necessary.   Sally had been unable to have children.
    As I walked with Melee under the umbrella toward the back steps, I could see my wife sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper and smoking a cigarette.   I could tell by her posture that she was trying to appear nonchalant, but I also knew that she had just opened the kitchen door to check why it was taking me so long to come into the house.   Her blond hair was neatly coiffed and her long painted nails and lipstick matched the large red strawberries that decorated the white cotton dress she wore.   It was hard to tell she was only 33 years old.   She had aged so drastically since the day I first saw her at a Catholic college in New Orleans.  
    When I met Sally, I was a soldier fresh from the war and not sure what to do with myself.   My father had been a traveling salesman of religious artifacts: bibles, crucifixes, rosaries, statues of the Virgin Mary and St. Francis, St. Christopher charms, and the like. I spent my childhood living in greasy run-down motels, boarding houses and the backseat of the family car. We traveled back and forth across the southern coast. Through Galveston, Biloxi, Mobile,