The black swan (7 page)

In the pink of the evening, when the roof was complete and the bayou came alive with color, shimmering and casting its eerie images, they gathered around Ullah's charcoal fire, smelling the delicious odor of her hot hoecakes. It was an easy, pleasant time at the end of each day before the three boys climbed into Adam's boat and went back down the channels toward their homes.

Tom lay back listening to the soft sounds of the gourd guitar Ullah had made and was teaching Beau to play. Tom still went nightly to New Orleans, but Ullah stayed in the bayou house. He had come to love being in the bayou. There was a sense of contentment and rightness over him these days, one he had never known before.

As he listened to the music, which was tentative at first, then became surer as Beau got the feeling, Tom dreamed of other nights far in the future. Though the only people he knew here were three adolescent boys, it seemed to Tom that one day this house would be alive with the sounds of laughter and music as the New Orleans house had never been.

Ullah, flushed with success in teaching Beau how to make music on the crude guitar, now turned to Ben and Adam. She gave Adam a drum and Ben the bleached ribs of a cow. The music, as it swelled, thrummed with a primitive cadence that beat deep into the marrow. Even Tom felt himself wanting to move and keep time to the beat. It throbbed through him, making his blood race. The three boys played as though their lives depended on it, their eyes shut, their bodies swaying.

Alone in the light of the fire Ullah danced to the ancient ancestral rhythms, small bells in her hands tinkling, her steps at first slow and sensual. She put out her hands for Tom to dance with her. She placed the bells around his ankles. His movement and the sound of the beat brought the bells into eerie harmony with the bones, the drum, and the guitar. They danced until their bodies were wet and glistening in the firelight.

Ullah sank down laughing. "Oh, Lawd! Ah ain't never danced like that!"

"I can't stop," Tom gasped, falling to the ground beside her.

"Ah gwine haf to take you boys to Juneau Nuit.'*

Tom pulled her back to him. "You're not goin' to any voodoo queen."

"Ah sho' is. Juneau Nuit's mah frien'. No harm gwine come to me. Anyways, Adam an' the boys 'tect me. They's gotta go, Tom. Ah never knowed white boys make music like them."

"I said no. I'm not goin' to any voodoo ritual, and that's final."

"Ummm, Ah s'pose not. Somebody got to watch over Angela."

"God's eyes! You're wantin' me to watch after the baby? Ullah!"

"If you doan wanta look after her, Ah'll jes' take her with me."

"Like hell you will."

"Den what we gwine do?" she asked wide-eyed.

"I don't know what you're goin' to do." He smiled, pleased with himself. He got up and dusted himself off. "I'm havin' some lemonade. You goin' to get it for me, or do you want me to do that for you too?"

"You mos' likely drop it afore, you got it to us. Ah 'spects Ah bes' get it," Ullah said sweetly.

After she left, Tom said, "Don't s'pose your mama would ever think of comin' out here, would she, Adam?" He tossed blades of grass one by one into the embers. "No . . . she wouldn't like Ullah and me. ... I mean, ladies wouldn't approve of us. Forget I said it.'*

"She'd most likely come if she was asked," Adam said softly.

"Ahh, it wouldn't be right. I get crazy notions. I was jes' thinkin', I have to go into town next week to close the house. When I get back, those hogs will be set right for killin'. Be awful nice to make a day of it—games and a barbecue, maybe some music in the evening."

"Lemonade. Fresh, sweet lemonade," Ullah sang as she walked down the path, the full tray balanced perfectly on her head. Beau kept his tongue, his look informing Adam they would be talking of this later.

Soon after, Ullah and Tom stood arm in arm as the

boys pushed off in the flatboat. As always, Ullah spent some time teasing with Adam, poking gentle fun at him. Tom looked on with some small envy at the easy camaraderie that had grown between them. With Ullah the boy was relaxed and happy. Frequently Adam considered Ullah's safety far more quickly than Tom himself did. It gave Tom a feeling of warmth and security, but a pang dug at him. Without realizing it, Tom had begun to look on the boy with a fondness that surprised him. There was something in Adam too elusive to name, some quality rare and good.

Yet between himself and Adam there remained an unrelenting wariness that Tom neither liked nor understood, as though Adam were always waiting for Tom to show himself in the wrong.

"Why does he take to you so, and not to me? What did I do?" Tom complained when the little boat was out of sight.

"He doan trus' you."

"Why the hell not!? Ben and Beau trust me. My God, Ullah, I've never had trouble gettin' along with anyone. Everyone always likes me!"

"Well, now, ain't that nice," she teased.

"I'm serious. What's he got against me?"

She shrugged.

By the end of that week Ullah wanted Angela with her. Tom brought the child from New Orleans the following day. It seemed to Ullah it had been a lifetime since she had last held Angela in her arms. "Why, jes' look at her, Tom. Ain't she big an' fat an' purty?" She hugged the little girl to her again. They took Angela into the new house, letting her explore. By this time Angela had grown accustomed to her big soft bed in Tom's house, and she spent the morning wandering from one room to the next, hunting for it.

Tom didn't return to New Orleans that day as he had planned. One day at a time he put off going. He found he didn't want to leave the bayou or see ever again the now alien world he had left. He was far too content tending to his small house and family, watching Ullah and Angela blossom in the amiable surroundings he had provided for them.

Angela took to Adam as quickly as her mother had. Ben

made her a small paddle, and she spent part of each day in Adam's boat. Adam treated Angela with a consideration few girls ever receive from a brother, taking her for rides atop his broad shoulders, teaching her to swim in the shallow waters, holding her on the back of Tom's horse as he walked it around the yard. Angela pestered him, clung to him, begged constantly for more—and usually got her way.

By Friday, Tom decided he would return to New Orleans the following Monday. On Saturday he told Adam to ask his mother to the barbecue. On Sunday night, with Ullah's head resting pleasantly on his shoulder, he said, "We're goin' to have a party when I get back from N'Orleans."

Ullah raised her head in alarm. "A party! We cain't have ao party!"

Tom laughed, and pulled her close to him. "Sure we can, Ullah honey. I got it all figured out. We'll ask the boys and Adam's mama."

"The boys is fine, but not Adam's mama. Ah doan wan' no uppity white woman nosin' 'round heah, givin' me orders in mah own house."

To ease his own misgivings, Tom said heartily, "Adam's mama's likely to have better manners than that."

Ullah sighed. "Mebbe." She lifted troubled eyes to his. "How long you gwine stay in Nawlens, Tom?"

"A week or two. I want to sell the furniture and close down the house. I don't know what to do about the house servants."

"Ain't none of 'em comin' heah," Ullah said flatly.

Tom laughed. "I promise." He turned on his side, facing Ullah. "Haven't we talked enough for a bit?"

Ullah chuckled softly. "You sho' a busy man 'long certain lines, Tom. Nex' thing, there be a arm baby heah, cryin' in the night."

"A lap child and an arm baby. That sounds pretty good to me." His hands, work roughened, gently stroked her. He kissed her shoulders, her full lips, her fingers. In all the tender hollows of her, he tasted the cleanness of her well-shaped body.

Ullah responded with an intensity of passion rare in her, clawing lightly down his arms, nipping his shoulders with her teeth. It was she who pulled him onto her eagerly, breathlessly, open-mouthed with desire. Tom, caught by

her fire, joined his body with hers as their excitement mounted, hung suspended, and spiraled downward, leaving them both elated and pleasured.

After a long time Ullah said, "Gwine be another girl, Tom."

Tom felt himself quicken at the thought. Against her lips he said, "I'd rather have girls anyway. Jes' like you, UUah."

She chuckled. "Hush yo' mouth, you sweet talker."

But that night, instead of dreaming about all the things that crowded her mind in a kaleidoscope of happiness, Ullah dreamed of a mud-clogged pool of water that whirled and spun, pulling her into it. Frightened and shaking, she begged, "Ah doan want you to go to Naw-lens."

"Don't be silly," Tom said easily. "Adam'U be lookin* out for you."

"It ain't me an' Angela Ah'm afeerd for. It you, Tom. Ah had a dream 'bout muddy water. Dat means troubles. It's a warnin'. Ah knows."

"That's only superstition, Ullah honey. Dreams can't hurt you." -^

Tom left in the morning as he had planned. Ullah, still fretting, said, "Stay heah a few mo' days, Tom. Mebbe the trouble go 'way."

"Ullah, I can't put it off any longer. But while I'm gone, promise me somethin'. Promise you'll be thinkin' about the barbecue, not worryin' about some old-time sayin' of your grandmammy's."

Ullah gazed at him, her eyes bleak. "Mah granny knew. But Ah promise, Tom. You watch an' take care o' yo'seff, heah?"

"Don't you worry on my account, Ullah," he said, hugging and kissing her. "Nothin's goin' to happen." He added, grinning, "Didn't you tell me I'm gonna be a new daddy come next summer?"

Her eyes gleamed. "I was mebbe braggin' a li'l, but we gwine try."

She smiled and waved until he rode out of sight. But as she went back to the house, her heart was cold and heavy with foreboding.

Chapter Five

Tom looked with new eyes at New Orleans, on the crescent bend of the Mississippi. It waited for him, an oasis enclosed by dikes, encompassed by the turbid yellow river, the low delta lands, and the lakes. New Orleans: a gem in a mounting of black, oily soil, soaked for eons in the water.

It was a unique city, steeped in sophistication and sin, with untutored violence coexisting beside a hospitable gentility. My city, Tom thought, and felt himself, like it, unique. To be a New Orleanian was to be of a special breed.

Tom entered the Vieux Carre, with its shade-dappled narrow streets that became a bed of dust in summer, a sea of black, slippery mud in rainy season. Now it was dry. And this morning the city, glowing with life and color in the midday sun, reeked of the strangely mingling odors of rot and the perfume of flowers.

In the wooden gutters lay garbage and refuse decaying in the heat. The rough-plumaged black carrion crows with their obscene bald faces pecked about in the filth, not even troubling to fly up or squawk when the carriage passed. The offal would be cleaned up when someone got around to it. Negroes waiting in the calaboose because of some crime or to be collected by their masters after having run away would be brought forth in neck irons, chained together in gangs to sort out the refuse of a metropolis, freeing the gutters of the carrion just as the vultures did. Black carrion crows, both human and animal, ridding the city of the dregs of itself.

From the loud, raucous laughter and yells that emanated from the bordellos on Perdido Street, Tom could turn and look down the serene, palm-shrouded coolness of the most sedate and aristocratic streets in the entire country. Streets lined with houses blending the gracious French and Spanish architecture of ancestral lands, styles brought over the ocean along with the customs and habits of generations past.

Tom had taken the long way to his destination, but he had the time and the desire to look again at this city he had always loved, the most sensually pleasurable in the world. There was no more lovely music to his ears than the chanting of the street hawkers melodically touting their blackberries, strawberries, and bananas in their soft, sweet-sounding voices. The cries of the green sass men with their baskets of okra, snap beans, and garden greens, mingled with the hot-blooded racket emanating from the cock pits, and the bells of the grinder man, the tapping on window and door by the lightwood man. New Orleans lived and breathed to its own peculiar tempo.

He rode past Joseph Bruin's busy slave mart at the corner of Esplanade and Chartres Streets and found he couldn't peer into its courtyard with the same amiable curiosity he'd once felt. The male slaves would be lined up on one side, the females on the other. All standing according to height, waiting for a prospective buyer to take them from the ignominy of being unowned, unknown, and unwanted merchandise. It was out of such a line Edmund Revanche had taken Ullah when she was no more than eleven years old, close as she could reckon.

Tom didn't know what to do with his own slaves. He couldn't free them without drawing vastly unpleasant attention to himself. A man who suddenly freed his slaves without acceptable reason was a fool, or one with abolitionist sympathies.

But Tom couldn't see himself putting Bessie, William, Jewel, and the others at the mercies of the nigger traders. A month ago he would have given it scarcely a thought. Like most Southerners, he had looked on his slaves as property, things to be bought and sold, or at best as childlike creatures given to imitation of their masters and not knowing or feeling as white men did.

Ullah had smashed that delusion by saying that somebody made her granddaddy a nigger. Without meaning to, she had made Tom see himself as a nigger maker too.

It was the worst thing Ullah had ever done to him. She made him doubt the attitudes he'd grown up with, without giving him the insight to answer those doubts. She had made him question the worth of his world without giving him a new one in which he could be at ease. God above, he was no Yankee lover! But what was he? He despised the abolitionists and the Northern bigots more than the

way of life that enslaved Ullah's people. Wrong as he considered that system, its proponents cared about the blacks, and they knew them far better than the fire-breathing Yankees. Yet, he could no longer live under that system either.