Crave - Teresa Mummert Page 0,42

off the radio.

“Hey!” I pouted and reached for the dial, but he batted my hand away playfully.

“Tell me what’s on your mind first.”

“Fine,” I sighed in mock surrender. “I was just wondering where you came from, how you became…you know…” I answered, not knowing how to ask all of the things running through my mind.

“Oh…” he replied, sucking in a deep breath. “Where should I start?” he asked himself.

Chapter seventeen

Viviana Happened

We sat in silence for a moment while Elijah thought over his life. I began to regret asking such personal questions when melancholy washed over me.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I blurted out, letting my voice trail off.

“I’m just trying to remember two hundred years ago,” He reassured me with a smile. I rolled that information around in my head. Two hundred years. “I was born in Dublin in 1809.” He began, lost in his memories as he stared at the road. “My parents Emma and Collin Malakai moved to Louisiana when I was two, the year of the slave rebellion,” he continued, flashing me a lingering smile, but never swerving on the road.

“My father taught me to live off of the land. We would hunt for everything we ate. Any clothes we needed my mother would sew for us. Back then, there wasn’t anywhere for us to buy those things. We would hunt for alligators by day and shrimp at night. We sold whatever we couldn’t eat ourselves in town. We made a decent living. He taught me everything he knew.” He glanced between me and the road.

I slid off my sandals and propped my bare feet on the dashboard as I listened to him reminisce.

“When I was fourteen, my father fell ill and I had to provide for my family alone. It was hard work and I couldn’t manage the alligators that he and I would catch together. I tipped the pirogue several times trying to haul them on board,” He said with a deep laugh as if the memory was still sharp in his mind. “It’s difficult to remember what it was like to be so… weak. I wouldn’t come home until I was bone dry. My mother would never have let me on the bayou again if she knew how close I had come to being the alligator’s dinner,” he continued, his smile slowly fading.

“We never wanted for anything. Whatever money we made in town my father stashed away until we had enough saved to buy a plot of land to farm on. He leased the land to cotton growers so we always had a steady income. I still lived on the bayou until I turned twenty-two.”

“What happened at twenty-two?” I asked curiously.

“Viviana happened,” he whispered. “I met her in town. I was selling off mudbugs and some dresses my mother had sewn. Viviana was shopping with her father. He had stopped at my stand to haggle prices for the seafood as Viviana sifted through the pile of garments. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.”

***

January 1833

Viviana held up a gown against her body and swayed causing the skirt to catch the breeze. Elijah was lost in her beauty. Her dark hair hung in ringlets around her porcelain face. “What do you think, father?” She asked.

“Viviana Morcant, you have more dresses than we can fit in the carriage to take home,” he scolded her mockingly.

“Morcant? Is that Welsh?” Elijah asked, trying to strike up a conversation with her father.

He eyed him suspiciously before replying, unable to resist boasting about his family. “It is indeed a Welsh name. We’re from the Severn Valley.”

“How about you pay full price and I’ll throw in the dress for free. It would be a crime to be worn by less a beauty,” Elijah said boldly to the banker, never taking his gaze off Viviana. Her eyes lit up and she bit her lip and blushed at the brazen compliment.

“Do you know who you’re talking to, Boy?” the banker asked through clenched teeth.

“You must be God in the flesh to create such a magnificent creature as her,” Elijah replied with a smile. Viviana could not stop herself from giggling.

“Do you find it humorous to spout such blasphemy in front of a proper lady?” the banker asked in shock.

“Father, it was but a compliment. Do you not find me to be so attractive?” Viviana asked him, feigning insult.

“Of course I do, Viviana. You are the spitting image of your angelic mother,” the banker explained, trying not to upset his daughter. Elijah