Elysium: The Plantation Series Book IV (23 page)

Fanny no longer kept to
the little bedroom staring out the window. She helped Rachel in the garden and
in the kitchen. She played with Maddie and Dawn and taught them their letters.
And she was grateful Thomas did not sleep at the house every night.

In the final days of the
campaign, he couldn’t make it home when he might be twenty miles away come
dark. But when he did manage to stop in for an hour or two, the hardest moments
were the hello and goodbye. Every peck on the cheek or caress of her shoulder
made her want to wail. Because Thomas did not understand.

It was all very noble and
loving of him to say he’d marry her anyway, but he was too preoccupied with the
campaign to have thought it through.

He had no idea what it
would be like, marrying a woman who’d been despoiled. On their wedding night,
he would not be taking a virgin to bed. She was quite sure Thomas would be kind
and reassuring, but he’d be reminded. Every time he made love to her, he’d be
reminded. How long until he didn’t want to be reminded anymore, until it was
easier just to not touch her. Better to be alone than to wake up one morning
and see him looking at her with a cold glint in his eye.

And what if she never got
over this feeling of being dirty, inside and out? What if she never got over
cringing whenever Thomas touched her? He didn’t deserve a wife like that.

And if there were a child
on the way, well they said God didn’t send you more than you could bear. She
wouldn’t be the first woman to raise a child of rape, all by herself. At least
she wouldn’t have to live with a man who’d thought he was good enough to love
this child and then discovered resentment eroding his good intentions. Another
night of the baby keeping him awake, of paying for a doctor or a new pair of
shoes? Thomas was a good man, and she didn’t want resentment undermining his
goodness.

No, she wouldn’t marry
him.

She’d teach school. She’d
raise this child, if there was one on the way. And that would be her life.
Thomas could marry someone else, someone who wouldn’t embarrass him in his
political life.

She didn’t even cry about
it anymore.

As for justice? She
didn’t expect any. She’d recognized Valmar – she’d seen him when he was caught
at the ice cream raid. She’d described the others, though she’d told the
sheriff the other two had only stood nearby, not helping her but not touching
her either. Sheriff Paget, outraged Valmar had committed another crime the very
same day he’d been acquitted of murder, promised to get them. But it had been
weeks, and he had not yet arrested anyone.

Fanny decided she didn’t
care about sheriffs or courts. If she couldn’t put a bullet in Valmar herself,
then she wouldn’t be satisfied with legal justice anyway. She could spend hours
without thinking about vengeance, then at odd times, the rage would boil up
inside her and she’d want to kill. Instead, she’d chop weeds like they were
Valmar’s face, wring out a dish towel as if it were his neck. He’d taken
everything away from her, and she wouldn’t be appeased by putting the man in
jail. She wanted him dead.

"What are you
scowling about, Fanny Brown?" Miss Lily asked her. They were shelling peas
together on the back porch, Maddie and Dawn playing on the porch steps.

Fanny forced a smile. Miss
Lily had her own troubles with Mr. Palmer. She didn’t need to be dragged into
Fanny’s pit of woe.

"That God ought to
have made it easier to get peas out of the pod," Fanny answered. "Don’t
you think?"

"Absolutely. And why
didn’t he make corn so it doesn’t have all those tassels. I hate corn silk in
my teeth."

"And why’d he make
pigs smell so bad?"

"I know why God
makes pigs smell bad, Miss Fanny," Dawn said.

"Oh? Why’s that?"

"So the foxes won’t
come get the baby pigs. Them old foxes just wrinkle up their noses and go for
the chickens instead."

"But the chicken
house doesn’t smell good, either," Maddie pointed out.

"Well, you know what
Preacher Tyrone says," Dawn told her, her nose in the air as she imitated
the preacher’s superior manner. "The Lord works in mysterious ways."

Sheriff Paget interrupted
their philosophical discussion, riding around the house and dismounting at the
back porch.

Lily reached over and squeezed
her wrist before Fanny stood.

"Afternoon, ladies."

"Good afternoon,
Sheriff. Let me get you some cool water. Come on up and take a chair."

"Thank you, Fanny. I
could use a cup of water."

"No, you sit with
the sheriff," Lily said. "I’ll bring us out some water."

Paget took Lily’s chair. "Hot
as Hades out there, Fanny."

"It might rain this
afternoon. That’ll cool us off."

"How are you little
ladies?" Paget said to the girls. "What’s that you’re playing?"

"We’re practicing
spinning," Maddie said, holding up an acorn. "Peep promised to carve
us a wooden top if we learn to spin an acorn."

Paget sat down on the top
step. "Let’s see if I can still do it."

Dawn handed him her acorn
and the sheriff gave it a go. "Wait. Let me try again." He couldn’t
manage it. "Used to do these when my girls were little ones," he said
to Fanny.

"Here we are."
Lily came out with three glasses and two cups of cool water.

After he’d downed the
water, he looked Fanny in the eye. "I came to tell you, Fanny, I haven’t caught
the bas . . . excuse me, the men who attacked you. I’m on my way from Vacherie.
Deputy down there thought he had Valmar in his lockup, using a different name,
but it wasn’t him."

The Sheriff sighed. "I
don’t know where the hell – excuse me. I don’t know where they’ve got
themselves to. I have every man I know between Baton Rouge and New Orleans on
the lookout for them."

When Fanny didn’t answer
him, Lily gave her foot a nudge with her toe. "Yes, sir. Thank you for
going all that way."

"The man’s done
enough damage in this parish. I’ll look till I find him."

"And the other two
men?" Lily asked.

"I’m pretty sure I
know who one of them is. Don’t want to say, but you probably know, too. The
third one, I expect we’ll find him when we find Valmar. Meanwhile, all three of
them are making themselves scarce. But the one, well he has a wife, children.
He won’t stay away. And likely when he comes back, I’ll get him and he’ll tell
us where the other two are."

 "Yes, sir,"
Fanny said. "I appreciate your going to so much trouble."

Sheriff Paget frowned at
her. "Fanny, I’m trying to tell you. It is not a trouble to me. I’m not
stopping until I hear they’ve run off to China. Understand?"

"Yes, sir. Thank
you."

Again Fanny thought, I
don’t care. Unless I pull the trigger myself, I don’t care.

Thomas met with a group
of wealthy free black men who supported him with money and influence. The
meeting ended with handshakes and assurances on both sides that they would win
on September 27
^th
. Then Thomas headed for the sheriff’s office like
he did every time he was in town.

"Good morning,
Sheriff," he said. "Just checking if you had any information to
share." There, wasn’t that polite? He hadn’t snarled or said
when the
hell you going to catch the bastards.

Paget put his hands on
his hips. "Thomas Bickell," he said impatiently, "I am looking
for the scoundrels. When I find them, I will let you know."

Jaw clamped, Thomas
strode back down the street to where Cabel and Reynard waited with the horses.
Reynard leaned against the rail with his arms crossed. "Thomas."

"What?" he
snapped.

"We got a sheriff
seems to be doing his job best he can. You got your own job. Winning this
election gone decide a lot more than whether one or two bad guys get what’s
coming to them."

"It’s not your woman
got torn up."

"As you might have
said once yourself a while back, maybe that’s why I see this better than you.
We close to Election Day. You got to keep yourself thinking on whether you or
that fat old white man gone be the delegate to the convention."

Thomas ground his teeth
and glared. Reynard met his gaze with cool detachment.

Thomas looked away first.
He nodded. "All right. What’s next on the schedule?"

"This something of a
rest day. To keep from killing you before we even get to the election. Alls we
really got to do the rest of today is keep the appointment with Witherspoon, Major
Bodell, and Percy Randolph about where to set up the polls. But that ain’t till
five o’clock."

Thomas checked the time
on the pocket watch Garvey Bickell had given him. "Can’t have the Shining
Light of your people showing up late," he’d said. "You take it, son.
If I need to know what time to do something, I’ll just ask Rachel. She loves
telling me what to do." He’d winked at Thomas’s mother and clapped him on
the shoulder.

Thomas flipped the lid
open. "One o’clock," he said to Reynard. "We have time to ride
down to the house for a little while and still get back here on time."

"Major Bodell will
not be best pleased if we late getting to him," Cabel said.

"We won’t be late,"
Reynard said. "And I need a piece of Miss Rachel’s pie. Or cake. Whatever
she got, I need it."

"Come on, then,"
Cabel said. "Mount up."

Riding home, Thomas
worried at the knot in his chest. Fanny continued to be glum. And she didn’t
act like she was glad to see him when he managed to get home. The last weeks,
he’d gone from worry, to compassion, to impatience, to compassion, and back to
worry. Today he was feeling downright anxious.

Why didn’t Fanny believe
him that he loved her whether she’d been – he always stumbled over the word,
even talking to himself. Even though she had been raped. As if the word were
writ in red paint, it brought the rage bubbling through his blood.

It was not with a glad
heart that he rode into the back yard and tied his horse to the rail.

He stepped into the
kitchen. "Mama?"

She came to him from the
front of the house. "Thomas!" She opened her arms and hugged him
hard. "You got time to stay the rest of the day? I’ll kill us a chicken
and fry it up."

"No, Mama. We’re
just here for half an hour. We got to get back to Donaldsonville."

Cabel and Reynard came in
from watering the horses. "Afternoon, Miss Rachel."

"Good afternoon,
boys. Why don’t you sit down at the table and let me cut you a piece of cake.
You got time for that."

"Hoping that’s what
you’d say, Miss Rachel. This listening to Thomas jaw at people the live long
day wears a man out."

"Reckon we could
give the speech ourselves by now, don’t you?" Reynard said.

"Ya’ll stuff
something in your mouths. Where is she, Mama?"

"She’s sweeping the
floor upstairs."

"Save me some of
that cake," he called over his shoulder. He took the stairs two at a time
and found her in Garvey’s room with her broom.

"Fanny."

She stabbed the broom
into the corner chasing the last tiny mote of dust. She didn’t even look at
him.

He closed the door behind
him. Fanny continued to concentrate on sweeping out that corner. He gently took
the broom from her.

"Can you stop and
tell me hello like you’re the woman I’m going to marry?"

"I told you. I’m not
going to marry you."

"And now there’s
your six-year-old stubborn face. I bet you used to stick that lip out at your
mama when she scolded you."

He put his hands on her
upper arms. She tensed, so he let go.

All right then. He’d slow
it down. "Fanny, will you please take my hand?"

She looked at him
suspiciously.

"I just want to hold
your hand, Fanny. Is that so hard?"

She gave him her hand. He
led her to the bed to sit down.

"I’m not getting on
a bed with you, Thomas Bickell."

"There’s no place
else to sit, Fanny. Look, we’ll lay the broom between us."

He kept hold of her hand
and settled the broom on the bedspread.

"I’ve been thinking,"
he began.

"I don’t doubt it.
What does Mr. Witherspoon say about setting up the ballot stations?"

"I’ll see him this
afternoon. That’s not what I’ve been thinking about."

Fanny tugged to free her
hand but he wouldn’t let her go.

‘I’ve been thinking that
I need to know what you’re thinking. ‘Not going to marry you, Thomas’ does not
make me understand what’s going on in your mind. Talk to me, Fanny."

"Let go of my hand.
I can’t think with you touching me."

Thomas considered it.
Decided against it. "No, I’m keeping your hand. Talk."

She looked away, her face
turned down. The circles under her eyes were huge and dark and her dress hung
on her. She wasn’t taking care of herself.

"Did I do something
wrong, Fanny? Is that what this is about?"

"You know what this
is about."

"You don’t love me
anymore?"

She looked at him
sharply. "Maybe I don’t."

Thomas laughed. "You’re
a liar."

She jerked her hand out
of his. "Go away, Thomas. I’m not marrying you." Fanny grabbed her
broom and attacked the corner she’d already swept.

Thomas took a deep
breath. The longer this went on . . .

"Let me see if I
understand this. If I were attacked and beaten half to death, then I wouldn’t
love you anymore?"

"Don’t be
ridiculous."

"That’s the logic
you just used. Or maybe what you really mean is that if I were attacked, you
wouldn’t love me anymore."

She bent over and swiped
the broom under the dresser drawers.

Thomas crossed his arms
and stretched his legs out. "Fanny, will you please do me the courtesy of
putting that damned broom down."