Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (12 page)

“Go on with you, Laurie,” Cleo said, and waved a hand at her
in irritation.

Phanor leaned against his wagon, his pants rolled up to his
knees to save them from the mud. When Cleo stepped from the underhouse, he
tossed aside the grass stalk he’d been chewing and watched her walk across the
courtyard to him.

Conscious of being admired, Cleo swung her hips a little
more than she might have and held her chin just so.

“
Bonjour
, Mademoiselle.”

He had that teasing look again. Cleo didn’t know what he was
so stuck up about. She raised her nose a little more.

“
Bonjour
. Phanor.” She drew his name out in as
condescending a manner as she knew how. But she didn’t get his goat -- he
laughed and flashed his white teeth.

“How are you this fine day, Cleo? The sun, he has decided to
show his face, and maybe he will dry up the muck in the road.”

How could you be mad with a boy whose brown eyes were afire
with fun? She smiled up at him through her dark lashes. “But you brought your
wagon through the muck.”

“
Oui
. Old Gus and Toine here,” he said, gesturing to
the mules, “they’ll be tired when we get home.”

The gate of the wagon was open, and Cleo hiked herself onto
the back end. “An empty wagon this time?”

He hitched his hip onto the wagon next to her. “I’ve come to
buy, not to sell. Our hen house, she floated off yesterday, the chickens a
clucking and a squawking till a big ol’ gator, he snatched the whole house,
pulled it down under the blackest water you ever see.”

Cleo’s eyes widened. “You’re flooded out at your house?”

“
Non
, not the house. Just the chicken coop. We’re safe
and dry in the house. You ever see a Cajun house back in the swamp?”

Cleo shook her head no. She noticed he wasn’t shy about
eye-contact. He knew how he affected girls, all right.

“Well, we Cajuns,” he said, “we are ready when the water
rise. My grand-père, he built our house on tall pilings, higher even than your
house here. We keep the skiffs under there when it’s wet, and the wagon when
it’s dry.”

Cleo admired the way Phanor’s hands interpreted his words,
but she couldn’t resist a poke at his self-assurance. She waved her own hands
in the air, artfully mimicking Phanor’s pantomime of snapping gator jaws and
flapping chickens.

Phanor made as if to goose Cleo in the ribs, and after
they’d laughed, they settled into companionable silence. He was a charmer, this
fellow, but Remy already had her heart. She thought about how Josie liked this
light-hearted Cajun. Maybe he could have lifted her mood. If she were here.
“Did you know
l’américains
paint their houses white?” Cleo said.

“Me, I’ve seen them. Our house, I think it must have been
yellow once, like yours. But now it’s kind of gray all over.” He shrugged. “No
one to see it back in the bayou.”

Cleo swung her legs comfortably. Then Phanor touched her
hand.

“I believe I see you with someone,” he said.

Cleo pretended complete innocence. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

He raised his black eyebrows at her. “You sure? Cause I
think I see you with that boy Remy.”

“You know Remy?”

“Sure, I know Remy. He and some of the other fellows hunt
coons, possums out our way. We hear them in the night calling out to the dogs,
and sometimes we go out with them. We have guns for the killing, and they have
the dogs. We bag plenty of game that way.”

Phanor hesitated. “Where’s your mademoiselle?” he said.

Ha, Cleo thought. He knew about Remy, but she’d seen Phanor
and Josie together too. She spoke to him in a sing-song voice -- “So you want
to see Mademoiselle Josephine?” She gave him a sideways look, and he smiled,
only a little sheepish. “She’s visiting
l’américains
downriver this
week.”

He looked up at the house, as if he might see her there
anyway. He looked back at Cleo in mock accusation. “So you have idle hands,
with your mistress gone? You know what they say about idle hands.”

“I still have chores,” Cleo defended herself. “But you are
right. I have time for other things now, like the piano.”

“You play the piano? May be, you’ll play for me? I’ll sit
here in the wagon and listen. Then another day you come down to the river with
me, and I’ll fiddle for you.”

“I’d love to,” Cleo said. She slid down from the wagon. “As
soon as I sell you those chickens.”

The next morning, the mockingbird wakened Cleo as it
celebrated the return of clear skies. She stretched luxuriously and snuggled
into the soft bedding. Josie’s bedding. Bibi had slept elsewhere, Cleo could
guess where, and so she had slipped into Josie’s high bed with the soft white
sheets and the feather pillow.

Louella’s “Here chick, chick, chick” drifted up from the
chicken yard. Cleo pushed the mosquito netting aside. She had coffee beans to
grind and water to fetch before Louella made the biscuits. She splashed some
water on her face and pulled the blue hand-me-down dress over her head.

After breakfast, Cleo hurried through the smoothing of the
mattresses, the making of the beds, the emptying of the chamber pots. She swept
the dining room and cut fresh flowers for the center of the table.

Cleo was to watch for Phanor from the front gallery. No need
for Madame to know he was on the plantation again so soon. She took her mending
to sit where she could see the riverbank, and soon Phanor appeared on the levee
riding bareback on his mule.

Cleo checked that Madame and Mr. Gale were still in
conference, then she slipped on a pair of Josie’s old patens to save her shoes
from the mud and clomped to the levee where Phanor waited.

He eyed the platforms under Cleo’s shoes, then grinned at
her. “Walking in those things, you look like you carrying a pig between your
knees.”

“Oh! You are too mean!” She laughed, though.

They found a felled tree atop the levee down stream a ways,
fairly dry from a day and a half of sunshine, and made that their parlor.
Phanor tied the mule in the shade to graze and muse on mule mysteries.

While Phanor tuned his fiddle, Cleo took off the patens and
the shoes and made herself comfortable on the log. The day before, after
selling the chickens to him, Cleo had played her best pieces for Phanor and
then walked to the gallery rail. Phanor had raised his hands in silent
applause, and she’d forgiven herself for the sin of pride.

Now Phanor stood with the fiddle under his chin. He stared
across the river, and then he began. He played the old favorites first, tunes
to dance to on a Saturday night. Cleo tapped her foot, and yielding to the
moment, jumped up to dance around him, holding her skirts above her ankles.

The sweat stood out on her upper lip when finally Phanor
said, “Now you rest, Cleo, and, me, I will play something sweet for you.”

He began to bow the same minuet that Cleo had played for him
yesterday. It wasn’t exactly the same; a passage here and there was a variant
of Haydn, but he remembered the melody and the mood beautifully.

As the last note faded away, the two sat in silence,
savoring the experience.

“That was very beautiful, Phanor.”

“
Merci
. Do you sing, Cleo?”

“I love to sing. Mostly when I’m in the quarters, though. Do
you know this one?” She began an old French folk song everyone in the quarters
knew.

Au clair de la lune

Mon ami Pierrot

Prete-moi ta plume

Pour ecrire un mot.

Phanor nodded and picked up the tune on his fiddle. Cleo’s
voice was a full-bodied alto, clear and smooth and low. The two of them worked
their way through the old tune twice, with as much depth and purity as any two
musicians in Louisiana.

Cleo wished Remy were with them. He would have loved to play
the fiddle, or a banjo, like Old Jean Pierre who played for the slaves when a
big party was on. But Remy was a field hand, and he’d never had a chance to
learn. He sang like the angels, though.

“You could play for money, Phanor,” Cleo said. “That’s what
I’d like to do. Sing and play the piano, wear a pretty dress, everybody
clapping and saying, ‘Mademoiselle Cleo, encore, encore.’” She laughed at her
own vanity. “Well. But you, Phanor, you could go all the way to New Orleans and
be rich.”

Phanor grinned at her. “You think so? I think I’d rather
play on the levee with a pretty girl.”

Cleo accepted the compliment with a smile, but she knew
enough about boys to know an easy tongue doesn’t always reveal true feelings.
Still, she wished Remy had Phanor’s ease with words. But she knew his heart
without sweet, smooth speeches.

“Does your Josie play as well as you?” Phanor asked.

Cleo considered. “Josie tries too hard. She tries to play by
thinking about the notes.”

“Ah.” Phanor nodded. “Not so well, then. When will she be
back?”

“Saturday.” Josie’s certainly on his mind, Cleo noted.

“You can get away again tomorrow?” Phanor said.

“I think so. I’ll try.” Cleo stood up and brushed her dress
off. “What if,” she said, “what if you came after suppertime? Maybe Remy could
meet us here. He sings better than anyone.”

“All right. Tomorrow at dusk, then.” He motioned toward the
patens. “You want me to help you put those things on?”

Cleo shook her head. She held the muddy shoe guards in one
hand and her boots in the other. “You were right. It’s easier to just wash your
feet.” She picked her way around a boggy puddle and turned to wave. “
Au
revoir
, Phanor.”

The second day the sun reclaimed the sky, Mr. Gale withdrew
all the little boys he’d posted along the levee. The sunshine convinced him the
danger of a breach was over, but Mr. Gale had not lived his entire life along
the Mississippi, and he did not understand the way her waters worked against
the earth.

Emile, as usual, disengaged himself from the details of the
plantation his mother and Mr. Gale contended with. He gathered his dogs for a
morning grouse hunt, and he was a happy man as the hounds jumped and bayed
around him.

Cleo sang through her chores anticipating the evening to
come. Remy would be in the fields until nearly dark, but she would wrap a
supper for him in her kerchief and he could meet her and Phanor on the levee.

In the garden, Cleo inhaled the rich steaming odors. The
fragrance of roses floated above the heavier air scented with black earth and
manure. She cut a bouquet of new red blossoms and imagined herself bedecked
with flowers in her hair and on her bodice. She’d wear a dark blue dress, she
decided, and wear her hair down on one side, pinned up on the other. She’d
rouge her cheeks and redden her mouth, as red as the roses. She’d sing to a
room full of fine ladies and gentlemen, and they would all admire her beauty
and applaud her talent.

Because Cleo was humming as she climbed the stairs to the
back gallery with her roses, she did not at first register the rumble coming
from north of the plantation. She glanced to her left. The distant glint of sun
on water held her. There should be no water there, west of the river. In the
moments it took her to understand, the rumble became a thunderous roar.

Cleo could hardly hear her own voice, there was so little
air behind it. She tried again. “Maman! Maman! Madame Emmeline!”

Bibi came frowning from the dining room. “What you so loud
about, Cleo?” Bibi stopped. “What that noise?”

“The river! Madame Emmeline!” Cleo rushed through the dining
room to Madame’s office. She banged the door open wide.

Emmeline shoved Cleo out of her way as she ran to the upper back
porch to see, her little slave Laurie at her heels.

The torrent found the easiest path, roaring across the
lowest ground west of the big house toward the quarters. Cleo and Madame,
stunned, watched uprooted trees, an outhouse, a cow surge along in the flood.
But Bibi -- Bibi clattered down the stairs.

“Bibi, come back at once,” Madame called.

“Maman!” Cleo cried.

Bibi ignored them both, running toward the pecan grove, the
cabins, and the flood. “Thibault!” she shouted with all the strength in her
lungs.

“Maman!” Cleo moved toward the stairs, but Emmeline seized
her. Cleo twisted free only to have little Laurie grab her knees and bring her
to the floor. “Let go!” Cleo said. She beat at Laurie, who held on tight.
“Maman!” Cleo screamed.

Emmeline threw herself on Cleo. “You can’t save her!” Cleo
writhed, but Emmeline was taller and heavier, and stronger than she looked.

Laurie let go of Cleo’s legs. Mutely, she pointed toward the
pecan grove.

The three of them, dazed by the noise, gaped as the water
roared through the quarters. The pecan trees held fast, but the cabins broke
apart in the furious sweep of the flood. There was no sign of Bibi.

The current surged from the lowest ground up to Louella’s
cook house, and then to the brick piers supporting the gallery where Cleo and
Madame and Laurie huddled together, clutching at each other, unable to look
away from the furious water.

The roar of the torrent drowned out all other sounds. Cleo
could see people flailing in the current, but she could not hear their cries.
She shivered with fear and cold as she watched the brown froth cover the
plantation.

Cleo and Madame Emmeline and Laurie crouched close together,
well back from the porch railing, their backs against the wall. Their eyes
never strayed from the scene below. The cook house held, and they knew Louella
was alive inside it by her frantic singing to the Lord for salvation. There
were two cats on the cookhouse roof, and several chickens.

By noon, the boiling current subsided so that the flow was
still swift but not so violent. Cleo began to hope her people were safe. Remy
might have been in the north field and missed the flood altogether. Grammy
Tulia, Thibault, and Bibi may have been able to ride the stream. She’d heard
tales about survivors being found on roof tops miles from the home ground.