Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (22 page)

As quickly as it had begun, Sonny’s weeping ceased. He wiped
his nose and knocked the liquor back, not even spluttering as it went down. He
held out the cup for more, but Yves intercepted it.

“You can have all you want once you tell me what I want to
know.”

Mean now, Sonny snarled, “My head feels like it got a nest
of hornets in it. Gimme the damn whiskey.”

“Have a little mercy, my friend,” Eb argued. “Give the man
another dram. I’m sure he’ll be willing to talk after that. Isn’t that right,
Mr. Birch?”

Sonny drank it down, then lay back against the hard corn,
moaning, his head in his hands again. The orange snake, with its black ringed
red blotches, slithered out from the top of the corn, investigating the ruckus
in its lair. It slid down the pile, angling toward Sonny. Yves watched, equal
parts horrified and fascinated. He’d never been one to bring a snake home in
his pocket as Gabriel used to. He could tolerate one within five or ten feet of
him, but he preferred to keep his distance. And now here was a five-footer
about to crawl on top of Sonny Birch.

The corn snake paused an inch from Sonny’s ear, its tongue
darting in and out of its mouth. Sonny was carrying on and didn’t know it was
there until it crawled over his head, across his hands – Sonny leapt clean off
the corn, his scream sending chills down Yves’ spine.

The man went berserk. He clawed at the snake, stomped his
feet, whirling, screaming. Yves and Eb backed out of his way, out of the corn
crib.

Yves was spooked. He felt all the little hairs on his neck
and his forearms standing up. But not Eb; he laughed so hard he had to bend
over to catch his breath.

Sonny finally flung the snake against the wall and it
slithered back in amongst the corn cobs. Still in a panic, Sonny tried to charge
out of the corn crib like it was afire, the rope tripping him up. Yves grabbed
him by the shirt and spun him around, then shoved him down, trying not to hit
the man if he didn’t have to. It was Eb’s barn, and Eb didn’t want any
violence. Truth was, though, Yves didn’t much want to touch Sonny, the snake so
recently having been on him.

“Funniest damn thing I ever saw,” Eb said.

Sonny hadn’t finished his flight. He scooted backwards
across the barn on his butt until he came to the wall. With wild eyes he stared
at Yves. “What you do that for? You trying to kill me, too?”

“Whether that snake kills you or not is up to you, Birch,” Yves
said. Sonny hadn’t even realized it was just a corn snake, and he wouldn’t tell
him otherwise. Yves closed the door to the corn crib. “Lot of copperheads this
part of the country. You tell me what I want to know, you won’t have to go back
in there.”

Eb held the jug up, tantalizing him. Sonny reached for it,
and Eb poured him another cup. “Reckon all the good of the first cups got
scared right out of you.”

Yves pulled over a nail keg and sat on it. He gave the man a
chance to settle down and finish the whiskey, then he began. “You and Monroe
made a mistake,” he said. “See, one of the men you took down the river was my
brother.”

Sonny’s one good eye narrowed. “Don’t know what you talking
about.”

“Shackles in your saddle bags kind of give you away, Birch.
You grabbed slaves along the Mississippi, took them aboard, and floated on
downstream. But one of them wasn’t a slave. He was a free man. And you
kidnapped him. That’s a hanging offense, Birch.”

“Never picked up nobody but runaway slaves. And that’s
legal.”

Yves shook his head. “My brother’s name is Gabriel Chamard.
He’s a physician. A very high-colored free man, my brother. Soft spoken, but I
bet he put up a good fight when you took him. Where is he now?”

A muscle under Sonny’s eye ticked. He glanced at the
corncrib door and looked away. “I don’t know nothing about any free man. We
just took up runaways. We was a recovery business, that’s what we was.”

“You left New Orleans six days ago on a steamboat. You and
three white men and one black man got off at Natchez.”

Birch shook his head. “Did no such thing.”

“A stevedore said the slave you had with you looked like
he’d been painted, he was so black. And he had a bit in his mouth, shackles on
wrists and ankles, like you were afraid of him.” Yves had to stop and breathe.
A bit in Gabriel’s mouth. He could taste the metal on his own tongue. He could
tear the man apart for that one thing.

Eb put a hand on Yves’ shoulder to calm him down. Yves
unclenched his fists and rubbed his hands on his knees.

“At Natchez, you tried to sell my brother at
Forks-of-the-Road market. The broker wouldn’t have anything to do with you.
Your papers were suspect and your ‘slave’ tried to butt one of you in the back
before he was subdued.” Yves took a deep breath. “That ‘slave’ was my brother.

“You left Natchez with Gabriel. Three days later, you were
seen in Vicksburg. But just the four of you. Where did you leave my brother?”

Sonny kept his eyes on the dirt floor.

Yves stood up. Birch would tell him. Whatever it took. And
if Gabriel were alive, he would find him. That they might have killed him,
simply because he was inconvenient, unsaleable, a liability, was possible. It
might even be likely. But this man would tell him what happened to Gabriel
before Yves was finished with him.

“Fella,” Eb said, “I’d advise you to tell this man what he
wants to know. If you don’t, I’m going to step out of the barn, and then it’s
between him and you and God what goes on in here.”

“You got the wrong man,” Sonny said. Keeping his eyes on
their boots didn’t convince Yves nor Ebenezer.

“Well, I think I’ll go have a cup of coffee.” Eb lifted a
slicker from the nail and went back out into the rain.

Yves grabbed Sonny’s wrists and hauled them over his head,
looped the rope binding his hands to a hook, and Sonny’s upper body was secure.
Then he tossed a heavy saddle over his legs and Birch was fairly immobilized.

He didn’t aim to pummel the man into talking, not yet
anyway. He pulled out a knife from his boot and showed it to Sonny.

“It’s not a very big knife, but it’s sharp.” He leaned over
and drew it ever so gently across the back of Sonny’s hand, and a red seam
surfaced. “You tell me everything, I’ll let you live. Otherwise . . .”

Sonny trembled. “I don’t know nothing about your brother,”
he muttered.

“Yeah, you do. So you headed north to Vicksburg. Did you
take a steamer or follow the Trace?”

Sonny didn’t answer, and Yves pulled off Sonny’s boot and
then his filthy sock. He touched the knife to Sonny’s big toe. “How did you
go?”

Sonny swallowed. “We didn’t take no boat.”

“So you followed the Trace. A few settlements scattered
along the Trace. A farmhouse here, a stop-over there. You find somebody to take
my brother?”

Barely audible, Sonny said, “Don’t know your fucking
brother.”

The knife circled Sonny’s toe, leaving a faint red stream
behind it. “I do this enough times, I figure the toe will come clean off. What
do you think, Birch?”

Sonny tried to lunge, but the ropes hindered him. He
whimpered.

“So you took Gabriel up the Trace. Did you sell him to
somebody?”

Sonny refused to answer, so Yves ran his knife in the same
shallow cut he’d made before. The toe bled freely now, though still it was only
a light wound.

“Did you kill him?”

Yves poised the knife for another cutting, and a foul-smelling
stain spread from Sonny’s crotch down toward his knees.

“I didn’t kill him. Nobody killed him,” Sonny blurted.

Yves took a breath and closed his eyes. “Then you left him
alive on the Trace?” He kicked at Sonny’s other foot. “Is that right?”

“Yeah. We left him. Didn’t sell him. Nobody wanted him. But
he was sick, so we left him.”

“God damn you to hell. You left him on the side of the road
like a sick dog?”

Yves threatened the toe with his blade.

“No!” Sonny tried to pull his foot away, but Yves held his
ankle high. “We left him at a farm. Where they’d find him. They could take care
of him if they wanted to. He was alive when I saw him.”

“What kind of sick?”

“Fever, I don’t know. Just sick.”

“Tell me about this farm.”

With an eye on the knife, Sonny told him how to find the
farm. Off the Trace a mile or two, up a spur. East, they’d left the Trace and
gone east. Had a beat-up dovecote out back of the house. Two days out of
Natchez.

Yves pulled every detail he could get out of Sonny Birch,
and then he was through with him. He shoved the saddle off, grabbed Birch under
the arm and heaved him up. “On your feet.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“In the corncrib.” Yves unhooked the rope between Sonny’s
hands.

“No, don’t put me back in there.” The man disgraced himself,
blubbering. “Just tie me up here. Please.”

“That would be real good of me, wouldn’t it?” Yves said,
dragging Sonny toward the door.

“Wait! I ain’t told you everything.”

Yves whirled on Birch, shoved his arm against his throat and
backed him into the wall. “You got one chance to tell it, Birch.”

“Don’t put me in the corncrib. I’ll tell you, just tie me up
out here in the barn.”

“Tell it.”

“Your brother. He got something wrong with his foot.”

“What’s wrong with his foot?”

“It’s hurt. Hurt bad.” He tried to pull at Yves’ arm. “I
can’t breathe.”

Yves shoved against him again. “What did you do to him?”

“Wadn’t me. It was Wilson. The nigger kept trying to run,
kept causing trouble. Wilson took his rifle and beat the stock of it on his
foot till it was good broke.”

Yves smashed his fist against Birch’s jaw, and the man
slumped to the ground.  He tied Sonny to the post once more, then wiped his
blade in the straw and sheathed it in his boot, picked up the slicker and
reentered the rain.

They didn’t kill him, then Gabe was alive. Had to be. He was too
tough to die. He stopped in the yard and held his face up to the rain. He let
the cool drops wash away the hate and disgust for Sonny Birch that gripped him.
He wanted to concentrate on Gabriel now, on hope.

Yves stepped onto the porch and paused in the doorway.
Marianne sat before the fire with her hair spread out to dry. It hung over the
back of the chair all the way to Marianne’s seat. A vision of her without the
soiled blue dress, without the petticoats, without the chemise came to him.
Just Marianne and that hair cascading down her back.

He pulled his eyes back to her face; she was watching him
look at her. Does she have any idea of the picture in my mind? He smiled at
her, amused, and she blushed. I believe she does!

“You put Birch back in the corncrib?” Eb said, handing him a
towel.

Yves blinked his eyes. “Nah. Let him run if he wants to.”

“Good move. And poor Andy’s had enough excitement.”

“You named your corn snake?”

“Sure. What’d you find out?”

Marianne left the fire to hear his account. If she was
embarrassed to be seen unpinned, wet, and bedraggled, she didn’t show it. Not
many women would have that kind of aplomb, he thought. But not many women would
have been on the trail with three escaped slaves, either.

Yves told them what Birch said, about the house on the
Trace, the fever, the injured foot. Then he tipped his head toward the porch,
and Eb followed him out.

The rain still rolled off the porch roof into a deep drip
line behind the petunias. There wouldn’t be a hint of what went on in that corn
field by now. If Birch wanted to make trouble, unlikely as it was, he’d have
nothing to show the sheriff except his own wounds, and who would believe that
the Rogers, good citizens and Quakers as they were, would have had anything to
do with a ne’er-do-well like Birch?

“I’m going after my brother. You’ll see to our three
runaways?”

Eb nodded. “We’ll hide them long as we can, give the woman’s
foot time to mend.”

“I’d like to send Miss Johnston and her people home. You
know a man around here would take them back for a couple of dollars?”

Eb thought about it. “I reckon Josh Pendergast might welcome
ready cash.”

Across the rain-soaked yard, a horse dashed madly from the
open barn, Sonny Birch on its back, his ropes left behind, not even a hat on
his head.

Yves and Eb leaned against the porch posts. “Good. I didn’t
want to feed the son-of-a-bitch anyway,” Eb said. Then he glanced at the door.
“Eleanor didn’t hear that, did she?” he whispered.

Marianne heard it. She’d gone back to the fire to dry her
hair, but she watched the men on the porch. They were talking about what to do
with her. As if she were a child, or a mule to be disposed of.  She wasn’t
going home. She was going after Gabriel.

Yves came inside and pulled the bench out from under the
plank table. He straddled it, ready to tell the little woman what came next in
her life. Marianne glared at him before he opened his mouth.

“I’ll thank you not to run my life, Mr. Chamard. I’m quite
capable of making my own decisions about when I will return to Magnolias.”

She could hear the snit in her voice, but she didn’t care
how unattractive it sounded. And she quite enjoyed the surprise in Yves’ eyes.
He’d assumed she would meekly do as she was told. Of course he did.

“I intend to accompany you to Natchez,” she said. “And if
you are concerned the wagon will slow you down, I am perfectly capable of
riding a horse.”

Yves looked at Eb. Women, that look said.

She wasn’t having it. “I’m not afraid of a little rain and
mud.”

Yves shook his head. “I’m traveling fast, and I’m traveling
now. And it’ll be dangerous, on the road and maybe when I find Gabe. You’re
staying here.”

“No, I’m not.” She stood up. Pearl and Joseph sat against
the far wall, watching them as they shucked a bucket of corn. “We’ll be ready
in five minutes.”