The Legend of the Rain Deer (Part Two)

When Papère came back to the house from spreading corn under the couteau trees, it was only the middle of the day but it was too dark to tell.  For the rest of the dark day and through the dark night, Papère and Mamère were busy cooking.  Tomas could smell meats cooking, breads and pies baking, and flour and onions frying into a roux, and all that cooking kept the house warm.  Tomas watched Mamère pop a little of the duck corn to sew together with some thread and make a decoration for the Christmas tree.  It all smelled just like the Christmases he remembered. 

But it would not be the same.  If the rains and floods didn’t stop, then his daddy and momma and brothers and sisters could not pack up the pirogues and head back along the tranasse to come home from the camp.  Tomas got a little lonely again, especially because it was Christmas Eve.

During the night, the rain kept falling and the wind kept blowing hard.  From the big window in the living room, he could see that there was no moon and no stars out.  It was all dark.  When Mamère finally stopped sweeping and went to bed, she turned down the last coal oil lamp.  Now, there was no light for Papa Noël to follow.  Lying in the bed, Tomas looked at the black glass eyes of the big whitetail deer head with horns that hung over the fireplace.  If it was not the Devil, then it must be an angel.  For the first time, he was not afraid of it at all, and he even talked to it.  “Please make sure that Papa Noël finds us here.  And please bring my family back.”

Tomas tried to sleep hard but his loneliness kept waking him up.  After one short dream, he rose from bed.  He listened for some sounds that may have made him wake up, but he heard none.  He didn’t even hear the rain and he didn’t even hear the wind.  He walked to the living room to look out the big window.  There was still no moon and no stars for Papa Noël or his family to follow.

Suddenly, there was a soft voice that sacred him.  “The moon and the stars are not the only things you can see at night, tee-boy,” Papère whispered from the corner of the room, as he struck a match to light a coal oil lamp.  “Come see.”

Papère and Tomas walked to the back porch on their tip-toes not to wake Mamère.  And they opened the door slowly so that its rusty creaking would not be loud.  Outside, it was cold and windy and everything was wet.  Papère raised the lamp to shine into the trees at the couteau.  

“See what I see?” Papère asked.  Tomas could tell something was moving in the trees, and the longer he looked the more scared he got.  But after a while his eyes could see more clearly, and he could see a bunch of things quietly moving back and forth in the dim light.

“Those deer sure love some corn!” Papère whispered.  “And when they happy like that, they wave their little white tails.  And when they wave their white tails like that, a good eye can see that from a mile away.  Don’t need no moon and no stars at night with that.”  Tomas now knew why Papère spread corn at the couteau earlier in the day before the storm.  And since Papa Noël always makes his trips at night, year after year after year, he must have a good eye that can see from a mile away.  “Go inside and check under the tree to make sure!” Papère said.

Tomas ran inside on his tip-toes, and Papère slowly followed on own his tip-toes.  When the lamp got closer to the tree, Tomas noticed that the popcorn strung across the tree was gone, and a few popcorns had fallen onto the floor.  Closer to the tree, Tomas could see some big socks that Mamère had knitted, and they were stretched and stuffed with all kinds of round and square and other shapes.  He was careful not to peek too closely, but stuffed into the sock knitted with the letter “T” he thought he saw the shape of a little boat.  Tomas tip-toed back to bed, being careful to feed the big deer head over the fireplace a few more logs of wood.  

As the sun rose on Christmas Day, Tomas woke up slowly from a hard sleep to the sound of Mamère sweeping.  Probably the fallen popcorn, he thought.  He looked up at the big deer head.  Its eyes looked different, more green than black, and it looked like its little white mouth was smiling.  From the kitchen, he could hear the coffee pot dripping, and then he heard something he didn’t expect.  The porch door was creaking open, and then heard his daddy’s voice.  

For the rest of the day, To-mas played with his new toy boat.  There were plenty of new ponds outside to play in, and they would last into January.  Inside the house, he played games with his brothers and sisters, and they all sang songs.  On the dinner table, there were breads and pies and gumbo, and meats like duck and pork and seafood.  And among the meats, there was no deer.