The black swan (75 page)

Her coarse hair hung down her back like writhing cot-tonmouths. At the center table she sat on the lap of a prosperous-looking seaman. She thrust his head back. The man's mouth hung open. Her deep, sensuous laughter floated across the room as she poured his malt down his throat. Laughter burst out. Ramona, quick and elusive, was on her way to another table before the seaman could grab her.

Glory watched her, wide-eyed. "Oh, Lord, Ben, to think I wanted to be a stripper. My God, she's horrible."

Ramona slithered out of a pale green robe and left it twined around the head of the next nftan she approached. Two tables away from Adam, Ben, and Glory, Ramona was assisted in removing her golden robe by a leering drunk, whose hands and eyes were so busy, he never felt her remove his money pouch, carelessly tucked in his belt. Over his head, Ramona dangled the bulging pouch, encouraging derisive laughter. As the robe floated to the floor and the man's hands reached for the last garment, Ramona dangled the pouch in front of his nose, moving away in quick dancing steps as his expression changed from

lust to anger. She dropped the pouch and watched as he scrambled to retrieve his scattered gold coins.

She sauntered to Adam, only a virginal white robe covering the scanty costume she wore beneath. Her dark eyes snapped with disgust. "Well, gentlemen and lady, is he alive or dead? Shall we find out?"

Deep in his morbidity, head slumped on his chest, Adam was only vaguely aware. Ramona, bumping her hips at Ben, whirled and swiftly straddled Adam, pulling his head against her chest.

Drunkenly, he shook his head, smiling vapidly.

"Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?" Ramona purred. She pulled his head up by his hair, looking deeply into his eyes. "Wanna go see the queen, pussycat?" She laughed, and the others joined her, hooting and stomping.

Adam watched blearily as Ramona wriggled on his lap, pleasing her audience, driving them to frenzy. He grasped her robe at the neckline and ripped it from her as he stood up, thrusting her away. "Slut!"

Ramona lay stunned, then she began to laugh, running her hands through her hair, rolling and moving on the floor as suggestively as she had while dancing on the stage. "Now there's a man!" she shouted. Quickly she went back to the stage, murmured instructions to the musicians, then looked to the back of the room where Adam sat. "This one's for you, pussycat! All for you!"

The drummer rolled a fanfaronade while Ramona Rose gyrated her hips in voluptuous suggestion. Her long, sharp fingernails moved sinuously along her body, caressing her breasts. Then as the drummer hit three hard echoing licks, Ramona swung her pelvis forward, in a movement obscene and explicit. Her eyes never left Adam. "I can do that all night with you, pussycat!" Her audience cheered lustily.

The band played a rocking, bawdy tune. Ramona paced the small stage, her steps calculated to inflame her audience's lust. At intervals the drummer hit a hard note echoed by a soft one, and Ramona flung out one thigh and held the pose, running her hand up to caress the scanty sequined green triangle between her thighs. The gaze from her black-fringed eyes compelled Adam's on her.

A husky seaman cried, "Come on, Ramona! Whirl them tits!"

Ramona moved one shoulder, and her breast lifted and fell, lifted and fell, while she watched herself in apparent

surprise. Then the other breast moved in a partial circle. To the cries of "Take it off!" she flung away the last transparent veiling.

She stood nearly naked, her long black hair in stringy ringlets down her back. A muscular woman past youth, she still had a good body. On each nipple was a long green tassel that glimmered in the smoky light. Her teeth flashed white at Adam. The music began again, and Ramona moved her breasts, rotating first one, then the other, while lowering herself to a half-squatting position.

As she rose effortlessly, the tassels twirled, in wild abandon to the sensuous beat of a single drum. The rotations slowed down and stopped. Ramona stood still, smiling.

"Christ, Ramona, ain't you a-gonna set 'em on fire?"

"I don't see any coins falling all around me," Ramona spat. Gold pieces pelted her, and she smiled again. "That's more like it, you tight-assed bastards!" She looked at the drummer, who wearily accompanied her through a brief series of bumps and grinds and swaying tassels.

Ramona went to the far side of the stage and bent over, giving the gawking men a clear view of her naked buttocks. Ceremoniously she lifted a stemmed glass and dipped her tassels in it, stripping out the extra fluid. The husky seamen sprang to help, quickly lighting each tassel with a match, and grabbing a quick feel for his trouble.

Ramona whirled her tassels, first in one direction, then the other, until the blue flames dimmed and went out. Then, to screaming applause, she danced off the stage, picking up the coins as she went, each motion provocative. The drummer stayed with her to the very last coin, the last sensuous bend, the last glimpse of bare breasts and rounded buttocks. With a final obscene gesture, Ramona Rose vanished behind a door.

Ben stood up. "We're leaving, Adam. I'm done with coaxing, and I'm done with groveling in this hellhole. You coming or not?"

Adam looked up blearily. Ramona was in view again, smiling, teasing him with her eyes, taunting him with her body. He shuddered, and stood unsteadily, knocking the rum bottle over. "I'm coming."

On the way home Adam was quiet, thinking of Ramona and himself. God! she turned his stomach. And yet, how many times had he gone to the Halyard Light these past few nights just to see her?

Claudine, her face anxious, opened the door to the suite. "Ah take keer o' him, Mastah Ben. Doan you worry none, he be jes' fine now."

"My newly appointed keeper," Adam snarled as he sprawled on the sofa.

She bathed his face, her nose twitching at the scent of Ramona. "Who you been with, Mastah Adam?" she asked lightly. She handed him a towel and a steaming cup of coffee, then settled on the floor at his knees. "Why you go to some no-'count woman, when you knows Ah's heah fo' you?"

Adam saw the look of hurt in her eyes. His own were cold. "I was with no one, Claudine, I don't want to be with anyone. Anyone."

"Dat ain't true. Ah knows you, an'—"

"You know me. Then why don't you know I don't want you mooning over me like a sick cow?'*

Claudine stood up, her back straight, her face etched in pain and hurt. "You ain't got no call to say dem things to me. Mebbe Ah ain't no Miss Dulcie, an' mebbe Ah ain't .white, but Ah keered fo' you, an' Ah been lovin' you fo' a long time. Ah ain't done nothin' to make you say dem things to me." Tears streamed down her face. "Ain't no woman gwine love you like Ah done. Ah neveh ast you fo' nothin', jest wan tin' you to keer fo' me now 'n' den. Ah knows you doan love me. Dat was fo* Miss Dulcie, but Ah lovin' you jes' de same. All Ah'm wantin' is to do fo' you when you needs me. Ain't right you go to some white-trash slut when you's hurtin' an' needin' fo' a woman."

Adam did not speak. Claudine began to cry softly. He stared up at the ceiling, finding cracks and discolorations in the smooth plaster. Hearing her sobs, his chest hurt, and his mind racked him. Once, he would have soothed her, comforted her. Once, he would have done so many things. Now, he realized, he was incapable of even the simplest act of kindness. Each breach of his hard fagade by kindness made his thoughts of Dulcie and his responsibility in her loss more intolerable. Sometime it had to end. He had to become a man again.

He went to Claudine where she had curled up sobbing out her love for him. "I'm sorry, Claudine," he said, less kindly than he meant. "It isn't you. I just don't want a woman. Dulcie . . . was all I needed."

Claudine looked up at him. "Dat's jes' why she be wantin'

you to turn to me, Mastah Adam. I love Miss Dulcie 'most as you. We both love her, an' now all we got lef is us. You an' me."

Adam touched her cheek. He shook his head. "I'm taking you back to Mossrose, Claudine. That's where you belong, with Jem and Patricia. They have to be told, and . . . they'll need you, much more than I will."

"Doan do dat to me, Mastah Adam. Doan sen' me away from you. Ah promise Ah nevah say dese things to you again. Let me stay by you, jes' take care o' yo' house. Ah woan nevah say nothin' agin."

Adam sat down heavily. "I wouldn't want you to be here and be afraid to talk to me or worry about angering me. But every time I see you, I think of Dulcie. When I come in this room or sleep in my bed, Dulcie is all around me. I don't want to stay here or see these rooms ever again. Next week when the moon is dark, you and I are going to Savannah. I'll tell her parents that I—that she . . . I'll tell them. And then, Claudine, I'm going to try to forget."

The next morning Adam dressed carefully, wearing the uniform of a ship's master. The clothing felt strange and out of place on him. The well-tailored jacket fit him, but it felt larger than he did. It was as if Adam Tremain had somehow shrunk and the frame of the man had become larger than the man himself. But he walked past the Halyard Light, resisting the temptation for one quick drink.

He bargained for a load of civilian goods guaranteed to bring high profits, something he had never done before. He took on as cargo only the one-third load that Confederate law required of a blockade runner. He would carry the heaviest guns the agent had available: three Whitworth rifles, one long-range cannon, and five Parrott guns.

Adam took the Black Swan on her maiden voyage without benefit of a trial run in November of 1862. Adam knew the odds were turning against the runner. The Federals had closed many more ports. They guarded the sea with more ships and a growing familiarity with the peculiarities of Southern waters. The few slim advantages the blockade runner had were vanishing.

Adam was mildly surprised to find that he didn't care. When the Independence went down and the sea had spewed him up on Andros, he was a different man, a man with different fears, different desires.

He entered Charleston harbor using Maffitt's Channel. Fort Moultrie squatted on his right as the Black Swan steamed past Castle Pinckney for the Cooper River piers. He wasted no time clearing his papers with the Confederate agents, who speedily relieved Adam of his cargo of ammunition and heavy guns. The civilian goods were consigned to an honest warehouseman Adam had met the year before through Melody Cox.

Adam and Claudine left for Savannah in a rented wagon. The hundred-and-thirty-mile trip stretched to a one-hun-dred-and-fifty-mile ordeal as Adam took old trails, avoiding wandering bands of Confederate and Yankee troops who had been separated from their companies or deserted.

Adam saw neglected cotton fields dry and barren, fields that bore the signs of having been burned, fields that had been stripped and left with naked broken cornstalks. The prosperous farming South was taking on the air of a patched, war-ravaged old vagrant. In other places he saw plantations that looked criminally prosperous in contrast to those the war had touched. But no matter where he looked, the evidence of the devastation of the South was irrefutable. Slowly, a battle at a time, a raid at a time, a day at a time, the bounty and resiliency of the South were being destroyed.

By the time they reached the River Road, Adam's mood was contemplative and sad. He was more than just a man born in the South. He loved it. Its spirit was as much a part of him as his bones and muscles. This inexorable wasting of its vitality ate at him, twisting inside of him, paining him with an unassuageable hunger.

Claudine shivered, her eyes darting from one side of the road to the other. Then she drew in her breath. "Oh, Lawd, Mastah Adam—de Chilcotes' house—"

Adam looked over the top of Claudine's head. Ghostly and blackened beyond the row of charred, naked trees, stood the shell of the Chilcotes' plantation house. The west wing was caved in, the east wing standing tall with its broken, darkened windows looking blankly toward River Road. Five of its seven Corinthian pillars stood alone, separated from the fallen roof.

Adam tightened his hands on the reins. He hurried the horses toward Mossrose at a brisk trot. The crape myrtles stood as always, suggesting nothing amiss. Involuntarily,

he released held breath and slowed the horses to a more leisurely pace.

Claudine whispered. "Turn back. Ah doan wanta go on. Mebbe . . ."

Adam stared, waiting for the road to curve and give him sight of the softly hued pink-brick fagade of Moss-rose.

"Ah doan like this, Mastah Adam—doan feel right. Ah doan wanta go on. Please, we doan gotta go heah, does we? Ah doan wanta see it."

Adam said hoarsely, "Stop it, Claudine!"

"Ah cain't! They's daid people heah. Ah feel it in mah bones."

Adam grabbed her roughly, the reins held in one white-knuckled fist. "Damn you, woman, don't say another word!" He shook her violently.

Claudine's eyes were frightened. "Ain't gwine change nothin', you shoutin' at me."

He thrust her away. His mind was playing tricks. With each slight curve he was looking at Mossrose. He could hear the sounds of children playing. He heard the slave bell ringing. There were songs in the air. "Can you hear anything? The slaves . . . children?"

Claudine's mouth set tight. "Dere ain't nothin'. Jes' de hants."

Adam scowled. "If you'd shut up long enough to listen, you'd hear."

They took the last turn, and Mossrose loomed against the sky. Claudine looked away, but Adam stared bleakly, not even surprised by what he saw. An upturned wagon lay in a deeply grooved rut in the front lawn. The windows were broken out. Along the frames were the telltale black, licking scars of an interior fire. He glanced at the folly, his memory of it gleaming white in moonlight strong. But for a flickering of his eye he showed no feeling as he looked at the charred remains of the five columns that had supported its roof.

In the sturdy brick walls of Mossrose were gaping holes where field pieces had bombarded it. One such field piece stood abandoned, mired deep in the path to the slave quarters. Adam shrank from it. Waste. Everything was waste. Broken wagons. Barren fields. Burned-out shell of a house. Everything was gone. There was no noise, no singing in Mossrose, no running feet, no bright red-haired girl to ride