Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (41 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Take five men and get that channel back into the stream.
The rest of you, have a look around. See what you can figure out, what’s
broken, what’s not.”

“Captain,” Private Scot squeaked, pointing with a shaky hand
at a slithering shape in the water.

Finn eyed the inky black snake. They didn’t have devils like
this back in Boston, but he’d seen one in Mobile. The lad was white-faced,
scared to death of the thing. Finn, to tell it true, felt a thrum of fear in
his own gut.

“A cottonmouth, I believe, private. Don’t play with it.”

Finn turned back to survey the tangle of rotting vegetation,
the wild growth of vines and weeds all around. This swampy country with its
snakes and alligators was as much a threat as a regiment of Rebel soldiers. And
by now, the warm morning air was turning into an infernal, sweltering furnace.
Finn’s unit were Massachusetts and Rhode Island boys, and he feared someone,
maybe himself, was going to fall out from the heat. “Take your jackets off,
men. You two lads, help me with the cistern.”

He got a grip on the fallen tank, two soldiers on the other
side, and together they heaved it back into its framework. Corporal Peach
succeeded in redirecting the errant sluice back into the stream, then dug a
couple of ditches to drain the yard. The task ahead seemed slightly less
impossible with the water receding by the moment.

At the end of the day, sweaty and fly bit but revived by the
fresh breeze off the river, Finn took his unit back to the garrison through the
Vieux Carré. His friend Hursh saw only swamp and pined for Boston’s salt wind
off the Atlantic. Finn respected the ferocity of the sun down here, suffered
from the humidity just like the rest of the New England boys, but there was
something primal about the place, a sort of decadence that tickled at his
proper Boston senses. He could spend a lifetime exploring these narrow alleys,
peeking into the courtyards he glimpsed through ornate iron gates. When people
spoke here, in so many tongues and accents, it was like music, like a symphony.
And the air, rich with spice and nectar.

Rather than an exotic supper of New Orleans cooking, Finn
dined on the mess tent’s boiled beef and rice. As twilight fell, he selected
half a dozen men to accompany him to a tavern he’d spotted on the levee. He’d
ask around, see if some experienced foundry workers could be persuaded to come
back to work.

The tavern had unpainted plank walls up to a man’s waist,
and then was open to mosquitoes and flying roaches, but at least there was a
breeze off the river. A breeze smelling of mud flats, foul ships’ ballasts, and
sewage. Not all of New Orleans charmed him.

Inside, Africans huddled over their beers. Freed men, Finn
supposed. Black men were no doubt what he needed. Surely the hot work at a
foundry called for African laborers who could better withstand the heat.

Finn’s opposition to slavery was abstract and impersonal.
His father’s bookstore carried all the abolitionist papers and hosted orators
espousing their cause, but his life was taken up with the bookstore, a group of
poet friends, and the rowing club. What few black men and women he’d seen in
the streets of Boston had gone about their business, their paths and his seldom
crossing.

Here in New Orleans with a bewildering array of colored
people, some black as coal but free, others with café au lait skin but bound to
a master, he found it easier to recall stereotypes: everyone said Negroes
tolerated the sun and the heat. They were bred to it, after all. If you could
get them to work. That was the other thing he’d always heard. They didn’t want
to work. Didn’t seem to be true, though. Looked to him like all the work done
in New Orleans was done by colored people. And by immigrants, the Irish and
Italians crowding into the poor sections of town cheek by jowl with the
coloreds.

At the tavern, he positioned his soldiers inside and out,
then took a seat at an empty table. The dark eyes of the Africans watched him
with guarded curiosity.

The proprietor ambled over, his soiled apron stretched over
an impressive belly. “Don’t want trouble in here, Yank.”

“Neither do I, sir. Do you have wine?”

“Tafia or beer.”

“A glass of tafia, then.”

Finn had never drunk tafia, but it had to be better than the
over-warm beer they served in the South.

When the man brought his glass, Finn spoke up loud enough
for everyone to hear. “Would you be knowing anyone who worked at the foundry?
Wages are good for men who can get it running again.”

The server shrugged. The conversational buzz reasserted
itself.

Feigning patience, Finn sipped the rummish drink. Not bad,
but rough on the tongue.

Finally a tall, well-built man took the bench across from
him. Finn judged him to be in his prime, perhaps his late thirties. As black as
any human could be, the man placed his hands on the table. Big hands, with
scarred knuckles.

“I help you,” the man said in a heavy French accent. “You
help me.”

Finn stared into eyes black as anthracite and saw a fine
intelligence. In coffee house debates back home, the pro-slavery side always
asserted that Negroes were dull-minded; another assumption disproved. This man
radiated confidence and intellect.

“You worked at the foundry?” Finn asked.

“Not me. I run a cigar store.” The man reached in his pocket
and passed a cigar across the table. “Welcome to New Orleans.”

Finn ran the cigar through his fingers, judging the
freshness and quality of the tobacco. A fine smoke. He held it under his nose
and breathed in the rich fragrance, then sighed theatrically. “I do enjoy a
good cigar.”

“I am André Cailloux.”

Finn gestured with the cigar. “Thank you, Mr. Cailloux.”

“I could help you.”

“A man who runs a cigar store? How?”

“Cigars aren’t all I do, Captain. I can get you men, skilled
men, to run your foundry.”

Finn met his steady gaze. “What would you want in return?”

“I want to talk to General Butler.”

Finn rolled the cigar between his palms. “What do you have
to say to the general?” He heard the condescension in his voice, but with
Butler already casting a dyspeptic eye on him, he wasn’t about to annoy him
with some trivial supplication.

Mr. Cailloux’s hard gaze told him to go to blazes, it was
none of his business.

Finn waited him out. He put the cigar in his mouth and
patted his pockets. Mr. Cailloux produced a match, struck it, and reached the
flame across the table, his large hand dwarfing the match. Finn drew on the
cigar and then blew smoke toward the ceiling.

He would not yield on this. He’d have to know what he was
getting himself into if he escorted this man to headquarters.

Cailloux looked at the table a moment, then raised his head.
“The Louisiana Native Guards. We wish to join the Union Army.”

“I thought the Native Guards were part of the Confederate
Army.”

A muscle flexed in Cailloux’s jaw. “We are men of
Louisiana,” he said. “We join the Guards to defend our homes.”

Finn studied the man’s face. “Something to prove, Mr.
Cailloux?”

“Oh yes, Captain. We have something to prove.” The man’s
eyes smoldered with determination. “The Confederacy used us like mules, digging
ditches and clearing fields. This time, we will be soldiers.”

Finn’s gaze fell again on the man’s big hands, a fighter’s
hands. “Ever do any boxing?”

Cailloux’s mouth slowly curved into a grin. “Yes, I fight.
You?”

Finn held his own slender hands up for Cailloux’s
inspection. They were calloused from rowing, but they were nothing like the
hams on the end of Cailloux’s wrists. “I hit a boy once when I was fourteen,”
Finn said. “He hit me back. I didn’t like it.”

Cailloux grinned at him, a glint of tease in his eye. “You
got piano hands, Captain. Not a fighting man’s hands.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t play the piano either.” He made his
decision. “But I can get you in to see General Butler.”

Cailloux’s face instantly sobered. “I’ll send you eight men.
Experienced. And willing.”

“They know the foundry?”

“They ran the foundry.”

Finn stretched his hand across the table. They shook on it.

Satisfied he’d accomplished something at last, Finn
collected his men and strolled through the mild spring night back toward camp.
Clouds wisped across the Louisiana moon like some lady’s gauzy shawl. Those
huge white flowers, each a little moon itself, stayed open after dark,
perfuming the air. Magnolias, Corporal Peach had told him. Peach was that rare
bird, a Georgia boy in the Union Army.

Reminding himself he and his men were the occupiers of a
resentful city, he re-grouped his unit into a sharper, more military formation
to march back to camp. As they approached another torch-lit tavern, Finn could
make out the words to a raucous ditty. Even though the local wit was at his
army’s expense, Finn grinned at the new words to an old tune.

Old Man Butler come to town

A blue cape on his shoulders

Took a look at New Orleans

Pissed his pants and hollered!

Yankee Doodle pissed his pants

Yankee Doodle Dandy!

“Keep your heads, lads,” Finn told his men. “Stay in
formation on the right side of the street. If they stay where they are, there
won’t be any trouble.”

But tafia and hard rum had made the notoriously rough river
men quarrelsome and bold. As a deep baritone gusted out with something about a
Yankee bull’s private parts and a cutting tool, a whore in the doorway pointed
her finger and cawed, “Look, there’s Yankees right there!”

Damn. A whole platoon’s worth of rugged, unshaven drinkers
poured into the muddy street ahead of them. Jesus, help us, Finn thought. Must
be ten rough drinkers for every one of them. “Steady, boys. Keep going, eyes
forward.”

Torchlight shone in the puddles of the street as Finn and
his men drew nearer. Hard-looking men and a few even harder-looking women
stared at them like they were demons rising from the mud.

Finn took the first clod of dung full in the jaw. Jeers and
insults he thought his men could handle, but dung in the face was harder to
ignore. “It’s just muck, boys. Keep going.”

From the corner of his eye, Finn caught the gleam of
torchlight on steel. Knives then, and no doubt clubs, and only seven green
soldiers against this riled up mob. Running for it was not an option. To his
right, a windowless warehouse wall. Their backs would be covered.

“Halt,” he told his men. “Left face.”

The men took their positions and raised their rifles.

“Hang fire,” Finn said.

With the soldiers staring at them through rifle sights, the
crowd backed off a step, but they could yet attack if a bold fellow showed some
leadership. Finn stood just ahead and to the side of his escort, sword in hand.
“Gentlemen,” he addressed the crowd.

“Go to hell!”

“Damn Yankees!”

Finn gave them their moment before he continued. They would
listen to reason, and in a moment they would disperse.

“Presumably, each of you would like to go home to your beds
tonight.” The shouting picked up again, and Finn raised his voice. “Perhaps you
have a wife or a sweetheart waiting for you. A child who needs you.”

They weren’t listening at all. They were, in fact, growing
more threatening.

“I warn you. These men are the crack rifle unit of our
brigade,” he bellowed, lying at the top of his voice. Aware how ridiculous he
was trying to reason with a mob, Finn straightened under the barrage of hurled
clods.

“Watch it, Captain.” Corporal Peach gestured to the left
with his rifle barrel.

A boy in baggy white canvas britches and a red shirt stepped
forward, his mouth a gaping black hole as he shouted scabrous insults. In his
fist, a ten-inch blade.

“Hold,” Finn told his men, though he raised his sword in
readiness to give the signal.

The boy strode toward them, knife held high, his grimacing
face orange in the flickering torchlight. He couldn’t be more than fourteen.

“Hold!” Finn hissed through his teeth. He’d had no illusions
that he could join a great army in wartime and not have to harm, perhaps kill,
another human being. But the lad was just a boy. Moreover, if he had to take
him down, the crowd would be all over them. His soldiers could shoot a few, and
he could cut down a few more. But he and his six men would likely be ground
into the mud and the whole river bank would rise up in revolt.

The boy came on, the crowd shouting and cheering, egging him
on. Finn held his breath. The roar of the mob threatened to overwhelm him. He
couldn’t think.

The boy took another step, his fist coming up, brandishing
the knife.

Acting on instinct, Finn cut the distance between them in
long strides. He grabbed the youth’s shoulder in one powerful hand and twirled
him round. He seized the back of the boy’s collar and with the flat of his
sword, clanged the knife out of the river rat’s hand.

The crowd stilled, waiting.

The luckless boy, suspended so his toes barely touched the
ground, let out a squeaky yelp. A man with a bushy beard nudged his buddy and
snickered. Laughter rippled through the crowd, growing as the boy squirmed in
Finn’s grip.

Finn recognized his opportunity. A cheerful smile disguising
his fear, he stepped deliberately on the boy’s knife. With a gentle shove, he
sent him back toward his friends and tilted his sword in salute to the crowd.

Smartly, he stepped back to his men. “Step lively, boys, but
do not run,” he told them quietly. “Three of you first, then the rest six paces
behind. Keep your rifles ready.”

Finn hung back while his men moved out. He executed a
friendly wave to an imaginary ally among the rest of the mob and forced another
smile. Knots of men broke up and moved back toward their tankards of rum.