Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (17 page)

Not so confident as he, Josie smiled back, unsure what to
do. Phanor patted the log next to him, and she sat down. Not too close. She’d
probably been invited only because of Cleo.

“Is Remy coming?” Phanor said.

Cleo held a hand against the sun. “He’s still in the field.
He’ll be along once he’s eaten and poured a bucket of water over himself.”

Phanor launched into a country favorite and Cleo pulled
Thibault away from the mule. “Dance with me.” They linked hands and marched in
time to the music, Cleo’s skirt held daintily out with one hand.

Thibault called, “Dance with us, Josie.”

Cleo held out a hand to her, Josie took it, and the three of
them laughed their way through the intricate steps Monsieur Pierre had brought
to Toulouse. God, it’d been a long time since she’d felt so light, so free of
her burdens.

She was still dancing to Phanor’s fiddle when the sun
reached its lowest, orangest point before dipping below the horizon, leaving a
pink and lavender sky. Remy emerged from the shadows.

“Look here what I got,” he called. Then he saw Mademoiselle
Josephine in the dusk. “Scuse me, Mam’zelle,” he said, and began to back away.
“I didn’t know you wuz here. Scuse me.”

Abigail would be appalled if she knew Josie spent the
evening with a Cajun and a field slave. But what of it? Josie decided.

“Remy,” she said, “Cleo says you have the best voice on the
place.” He still hesitated. “I’d like to hear you sing.”

“Come on up here,” Phanor said. Remy began to climb the
levee. “What you bring in that sack?”

“Biled peanuts,” Remy said. “We got ‘em from dat fella over
to de Cummins’ place. Traded him a mess of catfish fo ‘em.”

“Josie and I love boiled peanuts,” Cleo said.

The five of them gathered around the light of Phanor’s small
fire, eating peanuts and talking. Josie discovered Phanor was a story-teller
and a wit – and as she’d known all along – a charming devil. She loved the way
he kept a straight face while he told a joke, but as soon as he delivered the
punch line, he’d allow the slightest hint of amusement to show around his
mouth.

Josie watched discreetly as Cleo and Remy huddled close on a
scrap of canvas spread on the ground. Papa would certainly have wanted more for
Cleo, would have found her a skilled hand, maybe a blacksmith, or even a
freedman, yet she had taken up with a common slave. Here he was with the rough
hands and the ignorant speech of a field hand, and here was Cleo, nearly
humming with love for this boy. Josie’s loneliness deepened at sight of her
leaning against Remy, touching his arm or his hair, always making contact.

Josie collected her peanut shells in a neat pile in her lap
till Thibault showed her how to spit them over her shoulder like everybody
else. In the twilight, her inhibitions, and Remy’s, were easier to lift, and
the party grew merrier as it grew darker. Soon Phanor picked up his fiddle
again.

He played a quick-step Cajun tune, and Josie and Thibault,
Cleo and Remy paired off to dance in the firelight. When the music stopped, Thibault
grabbed Josie around the waist and hugged her tight. “I love you, Josie,” he
said.

Tears sprang to Josie’s eyes. In the light from the fire,
she could see something of her papa in Thibault’s face. She hugged him back. “I
love you, too.”

Over Josie’s shoulder, Thibault said to Remy, “She my
sister.”

“Thibault!” Cleo said. “I told you…”

Josie stood up, embarrassed for all of them. “It’s all
right, Cleo,” she said. “I know it.”

The moment dragged on until Remy began to clap his hands in
a complicated rhythm, then added a stomping foot. Phanor picked up the beat
with his hands and began to move his feet over the ground, faster and faster,
trying to keep up with Remy’s mad syncopation.   

In the light of the half-moon, the five of them passed
another hour of singing and dancing and laughing. Then with a flourish Phanor
pulled a reed flute from his fiddle case. He blew gently into the flute, and
sweet pure notes poured into the night. The others sat still and listened,
their breath and pulses slowing. When he finished, Phanor handed the flute to
Josie.

“Try it,” he said.

“Oh, I can’t play a flute. I’ve never – .”

“Try it,” he said again.

She put it to her mouth and blew, expecting a horrible
croak, but she produced a round clear tone.

“Not bad,” Phanor said. “Use the finger holes.”

Josie blew and ran her fingers up and down. Then she tried a
two-note trill that sounded as sweet as any bird. She experimented as the
others ate the last of the peanuts. She could play this! Before the last shell
hit the ground, she tried a minuet she’d been struggling with, and suddenly it
was music. Not the lead-fingered rendition she generated on the piano, but
flowing and joyful.

“I knew there was music in you,” Phanor said. “You were born
to play this flute.”

She played another tune, with only a few mis-fingerings, and
felt the melody flow from her heart into the flute. Music, without strain or
tension.

Josie laughed. “I didn’t know I could play like that.” She
handed the flute back to Phanor.

“Of course you can,” Phanor said. “And the flute will fit in
your pocket better than the piano.” He placed the flute firmly in her palm
again. “This is yours, Josie.”

“I can’t take your flute, Phanor.”

“It never was my flute. I carved it for you. And it took me
fourteen reeds to get it right. It’s yours.”

“Take it, Josie,” Cleo said, and it was settled.

The moon had moved enough to tell them the evening should
end. Remy began to sing a slow spiritual. Cleo sat on the ground and leaned
against his knees; Thibault drowsed with his head in her lap. The frogs, the
crickets, the cicadas, the very wind stopped while Remy’s sweet tenor filled
the night. Each note a perfect bell tone, a capsulation of longing and love and
hope.

Josie again sat on the log next to Phanor. All through the
evening, she’d been aware of him, the way he held his body, moved his hands
when he talked, showed Thibault a dance step. Now, mindful of the way the
fabric stretched over his thigh in the firelight, his closeness inflamed every
sense. She smelled the smoke in his hair, the sweat in his shirt, and breathed
in deeply for more.

Phanor gazed at her in the dying firelight. “Josie,” he
said.

She leaned toward him. She wanted to kiss him, to touch him.
She looked into his eyes and saw his sweetness and goodness…and heat.

He leaned slightly toward her, too, but he stopped. He
touched her lip with his finger. “Mademoiselle Josephine,” he said softly.

Cleo’s voice brought Josie back. “Wake up, Thibault. I can’t
carry you all that way,” she said. Remy had already slipped into the darkness
to find his way back to the quarters alone.

The next morning, as Josie lingered alone over breakfast and
remembered Phanor’s every move and word, music came to her through the windows.
It’s him, she thought. She hurried to the front gallery and there below her was
Phanor with his fiddle.

He swept his hat off in a grand bow. “What is your pleasure,
Mademoiselle?”

Josie leaned over the rail, her face alight, and commanded,
“Something lively, if you please, sir.”

Phanor launched into a gay Cajun stomping tune. Josie was
about to dance down the stairs to join Phanor in the yard when the steamboat
whistled on the river.

“That’s the New Orleans boat,” Phanor called up to her. “I
have to go.”

“Wait. I’ll come down.”

Phanor put his fiddle in its case. He picked up his valise
and stood tall. No longer, Josie thought, would he spend his days fishing,
hunting, telling tales and listening to the mockingbirds. Today he became a man
of business.

Josie walked with Phanor through the oak alley to the dock.
Her steps matched his perfectly, though he was so tall. She congratulated him
sincerely on this opportunity in New Orleans, but mostly she thought how sorry
she was to see him go.

“Will you wish me luck, Josie?”

“Of course I do. But it’ll be even quieter here. Now.” She
touched his sleeve shyly. “Will you play for me again some day?”

“I will. And you will play your flute for me.”

The captain tooted the whistle for his passenger to hurry
up. Phanor stole a squeeze of Josie’s hand and hopped aboard. He stood on deck
smiling at her as the boat turned into the current.

Josie waved until the trees and the curve of the Mississippi
cut off her view of the boat. She stayed on the dock for a long time, admiring
the blue dragonflies hovering over the lily pads at the river’s edge and
listening to the sleepy croak of a frog hiding in the reeds. Finally she
strolled back to the house humming one of Phanor’s Cajun tunes.

In the days after Phanor’s departure, the last summer days,
hot and humid, followed one another in an indistinguishable monotony. The house
was so quiet without Papa’s comings and goings, without Maman’s friends
dropping by, without Bibi’s quiet singing in the mornings. But the work of the
plantation had resumed and the grieving of her people for lost love ones had
become a quieter burden.

Now Toulouse was well again, Josie thought more and more
about the coming season in the City.

Abigail called on her once or twice, accompanied by her
brother. Albany would talk about business with Grand-mère; the two of them
found the intricacies of the cane market fascinating. The girls would excuse
themselves to Josie’s room so they could look at the fashions in Abigail’s
latest magazine from New York.

Other times Albany Johnston came alone to call on
Grand-mère, ostensibly, and then sat with Josie in the parlor, but Josie’s and
Albany’s ideas of fun differed. He followed Washington politics closely and was
sure the details of Van Buren’s campaign against the Whigs would entertain her
as much as they did him. And did she fully understand the consequences of that
scoundrel Jackson’s dismantling The Bank of the United States? Josie became
adept at stifling sighs.

At last, fresh winds from the Gulf blew away the heavy,
humid air, and Josie enthusiastically planned her winter wardrobe. She wrote to
tell all her many cousins she would be in town for the season, and had they
seen the latest style in sleeves?

Visions of balls and banquets occupied only a part of
Josie’s anticipations. Her daydreaming more often involved Phanor. Just
remembering the moment his knee had accidentally touched hers that night on the
log would send a wave of warmth and longing. But, she told herself, he could
only be a friend. Yes, she enjoyed his company, and they shared this part of
the river. But he was a Cajun. Still, those unkissed lips --.

And what of her cousin, Bertrand Chamard? The sophisticated
Chamard and the rough-hewn Cajun – as different as they were, she was drawn to
both of them. Bertrand no doubt would attend Tante Marguerite’s evenings, might
even know how to do this new dance, the waltz, that Abigail had told her about.
His kisses, the first one and the second – she had relived those moments over
and over. The feelings he’d aroused in her were not cousinly. How had they felt
to him? And how would it feel to kiss Phanor DeBlieux?

 And what did it say about her that she was attracted to two
men at the same time? Surely not the feelings of a chaste lady.

Cleo’s life, too, began to take a new shape.

All those long summer evenings, neither Josie nor Grand-mère
complained that she left the house after supper. Sometimes she visited with
Thibault and Louella in their cabin behind the cook house. But most often Cleo
joined Remy in the quarters being built on new ground.

They’d meet after Remy had finished in the fields. He’d be
hot and sore and tired. Cleo would rub grease on his scratches or pull the
burrs from his pants as he ate his ration of cornbread and fatback. She often
brought him treats from Madame’s table – pickles, or even a left over pork
chop.

“What’s dis, den?” Remy said.

“Marmalade.” Remy sniffed it. “Just taste it,” she said.

Remy rolled his eyes when he put a spoonful in his mouth.
“Dat sweeter dan cane. You spoilin’ me, Cleo.”

Remy slept in the bachelor cabin, so there was no privacy
for them there. They’d walk to the levee to catch the river breeze and light a
smudge pot against the mosquitoes. Later they’d go to their hidden glade and
make love on an old blanket. Afterwards, they’d watch the stars, fingers
entwined.

“You gon’ have a baby, we don’ watch out,” Remy told her.

“I know it. It’s all right.”

“No. It better we wait, Cleo, best we can. When I gets free,
I get you free -- den our babies be born free.”

Even though the nights were cool now, Cleo continued to meet her lover in the glade. After they made love, she snuggled closer to Remy in their leafy bed under the
trees.

“I found a map in Monsieur Emile’s room, Remy.”

“What good dat do me? I cain’t read, Cleo.”

“I bet you could read a map. I’ll show you how.”

“Maybe.”

“How else you going to know how to get to the free states?”

“Well, you bring me dat map, and I try it.”

“It’s cold up there now.”

“Yeh, but nobody miss me I go at Christmas. Madame gone give
us two days off, and dat’s two days Mr. Gale don’ look fo me.”

They held each other close and watched the moon move through
the tree branches. “I’ll miss you,” Cleo whispered.

Remy tightened his arms around her. “I know,
chérie
,
but we got to try. Fo the chilluns we gone have, we got to get free.”

“I have news from the house, Remy.”

“Good news?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Gale has bought a farm in Texas. Madame’s
hired a new man to be overseer.”