The Cottoncrest Curse (10 page)

Cooper gave a big grin. “Could be. But since you seen my crop, then I believes you'll be wantin' to trade somethin' for such fine eatin' as this.”

“Cooper, if I ate all that I traded for, I wouldn't have anything left to trade and wouldn't be able to buckle my belt, much less push this cart, except with my stomach.”

Cooper's grin only got larger. He liked the Peddler Man, with his black curly hair cut close and his wiry little build. If the Peddler Man was getting any extra flesh on his bones, it had to be the thinningest flesh ever.

“If you don't eat, how you gonna push that cart of yours?” asked Rossy, coming out of the tiny cabin, holding a baby on her hip. “Cooper, ain't you gonna just
give
the Peddler Man one of your tomatoes?” She gave a sly smile to Cooper. “‘Moist as a woman?' If you keep talkin' like that, you better get all your ‘moist' from that tomato and don't come lookin' to get any from me.”

It was always like this when Jake came to Little Jerusalem. Cooper would try to get him to trade for food, and eventually Cooper and the others would come up with something more substantial, and they would work something out and have a meal, for Cooper and Rossy and all the rest had no money.

It was a miracle the little community of Little Jerusalem was surviving at all. The Colonel Judge had told him all about it. Sixteen families sharing a half-section of land, 320 acres, acres that they had financed during the seventeen days in the mid-1870s when C. C. Antoine was the acting governor of Louisiana—the second black ever to hold that position in Louisiana and only because of the presence of carpetbagger blue-belly troops during Reconstruction. C. C. Antoine did things that the first black governor, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, could not.

P.B.S. Pinchback, the Colonel Judge had told him, had a white father and a black mother, and Pinchback could have passed for white had he wanted to, but he refused. When he was asked which race he more closely identified with and of which he was most proud, Pinch-back said: “It is far more important to be evaluated by the worth of one's friends than measured by one's pedigree, for the former involves self-determination and mutual admiration, while the latter is a mere involuntary attribute. To deny one's pedigree would be as vain a folly as denying the sun to rise tomorrow; however, it should never be the cause to create or circumscribe a man's opportunities.”

The Colonel Judge would quote it word for word because he had thought this was, as he said often, “the height of arrogance for an adulterous bastard of miscegenation.” Of course, that was before… but by then it was hard for the Colonel Judge to change his ways.

Pinchback was one of many blacks, both former slaves and free men of color, who had been elected to the Louisiana legislature during Reconstruction. Pinchback had survived threats, taunts, and attempts on his life when he was elected to the state senate, and he had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court to retain the post as acting governor. But Pinchback, despite the success of his legal case, was kicked out of office in less than eight months.

C. C. Antoine, who, a few years later, served as acting governor, had seen what happened to Pinchback and had no illusions about what would happen to him as the second black to hold the state's highest office. The Colonel Judge was clear about what he thought about C. C. Antoine. Antoine, he used to say, used what little time he had in office to “issue proclamations that didn't do any damn good and did a lot of damn harm.” Miss Rebecca would gently disagree, saying that C. C. Antoine used his time in office to make a difference.

Antoine had sold a portion of state land to some of the former slaves in Petit Rouge Parish. The mortgage was held by Comite River Bank, the only bank that had agreed to give loans to the former slaves because, for a short time, its board and employees were all former slaves. But they were ousted when Reconstruction ended.

Little Jerusalem had been formed along with other communities thanks to C. C. Antoine. Little Jerusalem was one of the last to survive, and it was surviving by the barest. The others had lost their lands because of legal title held by whites who could read and write and who “found” documents that voided the grants or because of the floods or because of the tough times, or a combination of all of these. Comite River Bank had closed, forced out of business by the hard times, and it looked as if it might be only a short while before the Little Jerusalem mortgage was bought for pennies on the dollar by some speculator who would foreclose and kick the families out.

Rossy came over to the cart and peered inside. “What you got there, Peddler Man, that you want to trade?” She handed the child to Jake as she picked through the top few layers. “Surely you don't 'spect us to trade for some old, dingy skins what got so many bullet holes in the deer and trap marks on the muskrat and beavers that ain't nobody gonna use them for nothin' but rags. And besides, if you want skins, why don't you ask Cooper here or Nimrod or Esau? They got squirrel and possum and coon skins so fine them ladies in New Orleans will be wantin' to wear them ev'ry day, and not just for go-to-meetin'.”

The child was squirming in Jake's arms, reaching for her mother, but Jake could see that Rossy was warming up, ready to trade. Jake cooed and patted the baby, who calmed down again and nestled against his shoulder. Thanks to what had happened in Lamou, Jake had only a few trading items left in the bottom of the cart under all the skins. He checked the sky. To the west a dark line of clouds was forming. A thunderstorm could be headed their way. One never knew in Louisiana. It could rain like a waterfall on one side of a road, turning the fields into a muddy slough, while the other side would remain dusty, as if shut off behind an isinglass curtain.

“I'll tell you what,” said Jake to Cooper and Rossy. “What do you say you let me sample one of your tomatoes? But I don't want a whole one, just a small piece.”

“You want to take a bite out of my fine, plump tomato and hand it back to me? Rossy, I think that the Peddler Man is worser than a boll weevil that'll get in that cotton field and ruin it for ev'ryone.”

“Cooper, have you ever known me to ruin anything?” Jake had picked his words carefully, gently adjusting the child on his shoulder. Cooper, isolated here in Little Jerusalem, would never know about what other things Jake had ruined. Jake had ruined many things. Like the girl in New York with the dark-red stain spreading across her blouse. “Now it just so happens that I have a knife here with a blade so sharp it will slice faster than a snapping turtle can snap. It slices so clean and so quick that you'd think it was voodoo.”

Rossy looked uninterested, but Cooper's eye glimmered with anticipation.

“We don't need no fancy knife,” said Rossy, digging down further in the cart. “We can't 'ford no fancy knife.”

“Ah,” said Jake, placing the child on top of a soft muskrat skin and pulling out a wide, thin box from the bottom of the cart, “of course you can't. But I see the quality of your stitching on your shawl there, and these are delicate stitches, each one identical to the next. My uncle was a tailor, and next to your shawl, his stitches looked like they were made by a blind man. Now, if you had a few yards of this new cotton fabric and some new needles and thread and a thimble—I've got them in pewter and porcelain and even black—then you might find you'd be making yourself a new outfit for church, or maybe you'd take just a yard and make a special dress for your beautiful daughter.

The baby, smiling and gurgling, was entranced by the feel of the downy muskrat.

“Come on, Peddler Man, let's go inside, and Cooper here will give you a tomato, and you'll show us this here fancy knife of yours, and maybe we'll show you some real skins so that you don't have to walk around sad because all you got is this stuff that looks like those men in Lamou took advantage of you.”

Uncle Avram always said,
ven es gait gleich, vert men reich.
When things go right, you become rich. Things were going extremely right for Jake. He had lucked into the
cochon de lait,
and now Rossy and Cooper were going to trade for even more skins.

Jake followed them around the back of the cabin, to a rickety lean-to shed, where he placed his cart. Coming toward them was Nimrod, bent over with age, being assisted by his son, Esau. Coming out of the fields, they had seen Jake talking to Cooper and Rossy. Esau's wife and the others would follow shortly. A few more hours here would be all that it would take.

By then the rain might arrive.

And afterward Jake would leave. He had to return to Cottoncrest. He needed to check on the two of them.

Today

“Why your great-great-grandfather came to Louisiana in the first place seems strange. There he was, living with Moshe in New York City, in the midst of the fabulous 1890s, the time some called the Gilded Age, and it seemed as if they left, almost overnight, to come south at the worst possible time.

“Grandpapa Jake used to say he and Moshe had come because of the Cotton Exposition. But that had ended almost ten years earlier, and by the time they were heading toward New Orleans the South was in terrible shape.

“You've heard of the Great Depression? Good. That was started by the 1929 stock market crash and continued on through the 1930s. And why was it called the Great Depression? To distinguish it from ‘the Depression,' which was what people called the calamity of the 1890s, the worst of it being in 1893. You mention the Depression at the time Grandpapa Jake was in Louisiana, and people knew all too well what it meant.

“While the rich in New York were living in the Gilded Age, the rest of the country, which had thought for sure things could not have gotten worse than they were during the Civil War, were finding out they had been wrong. Two decades after the fighting had stopped, the finances had stopped as well.

“The Depression of the early 1890s was a time of poverty and violence. Strikes. Deaths. Riots. Cotton prices fell so far that even the richest planters could barely scrap by.

“Storms hit in some years and droughts in the others. Crops were ruined. Little farms and big plantations were ruined. Lives were ruined.

“What's that? What did this have to do with Grandpapa Jake?

“Well, yes, I do run on, but I keep trying to figure out why Jake and Moshe went down to Louisiana when they did, so quick like. It was the worst possible time.

“And I still don't know why Moshe never stayed in the South but came back up north before they ever got to New Orleans.”

1893

“I don't understand why we just couldn't get them darkies to do this!” Bucky was on his hands and knees, examining every square foot of the vast hallway that ran through the center of Cottoncrest, dividing the house in half.

“Because I told you to do it. That's why.” Raifer was concentrating on the staircase, step by step. He was now halfway up and still had not found any signs of a bullet. They had thrown open both doors and all the windows to let as much light in as possible. They had worked their way around the walls of the hall, looking for a hole in the heavily patterned wallpaper or in the dark frames of the portraits that hung on long wires from the wide crown molding. That had taken them more than half an hour. Now they were doing the floor and stairs.

“I'm doin' it, ain't I?” Bucky responded. “But what's a bullet gonna prove anyway? Dead is dead. He shot himself. He had the gun in his hand.”

“Bucky, you keep flapping your mouth, it's just likely to flap so much that we could use it to mill rice. Think about what you saw when we got here, and tell me exactly and without drama.”

“Okay. She was dead. Face down on the stairs. Head almost cut off. His head was on her back. Gun in his hand. He had shot himself. Blood was everywhere. What could be clearer?”

Raifer had now reached the red-stained stairs. Despite all the wiping and washing that Marcus and Cubit and Jordan had done yesterday, the distinct odor of blood mingled with the smells of the wood and the damp cloying mustiness of mildew from the wallpaper. “Good. Now where had the bullet entered?”

“His temple. You saw that, Raifer. His temple.” Bucky's knees were beginning to hurt, but he inched his way to the next section of floor.

“Think, Bucky. Which temple? Which way was his head lying on her back?”

Bucky paused a moment and sat with his back against the wall, to give his knees a rest. “His head was lyin' with his right ear down on her back, so that means he shot himself in the left temple.”

Raifer looked out over the banister and saw Bucky sitting on the floor. “You can't think and work and talk at the same time?”

Bucky took the hint and started crawling again, pulling up the narrow oriental carpets and running his hands over the wood floor beneath, feeling for any holes. At each knot in the wood he paused, but the knots were shallow, filled with nothing but lint and dust. “He slits her throat, she dies. He drops his knife, and then he shoots himself in the left temple. We've been all over this. This is what I told you and Dr. Cailleteau yesterday. I seen it all and figured it out.”

Raifer was now at the landing on his hands and knees. “Bucky, if you've figured this all out, then tell me how a man who is right-handed shoots himself straight through his head by putting the barrel to his left temple?”

Bucky called up, “Raifer, it's easy. Look.”

Raifer stood up and looked down at his deputy in the hallway below.

Bucky, on his knees, straightened his back and took his right hand, and pointing his index finger like a gun, lifted it slowly to the side of his head. It was so obvious.

“No, Bucky. Remember. He shot himself in the
left
temple.”

Bucky took his right hand and brought it around to the other side of his head. But now he had to twist his arm and wrist painfully to make the index finger point straight through. A puzzled look came over his face. “I don't understand. This don't make no sense.”