The Cottoncrest Curse (13 page)

Tee Ray then went over to Rebecca and lifted up the sheet. This was curious. Her body was face down on the wooden slab, or it would have been face down had she still had a face. Her dress had been cut open, revealing the soft curves of her pale, white back. The bloody, sliced fabric had stiffened, like the body.

They were all equal now. The Colonel Judge and his wife were no better than Tee Ray's mother. No better than Tee Ray's father. No better than Tee Ray.

Bucky gasped. Tee Ray looked up and dropped the sheet, whispering. “What is it?”

Bucky, as quietly as he could, approached the bodies. “It's one of them darkies. He's got a length of rope in his hands. And he's comin' our way.”

“Perfect! We're gonna catch a nigger who's up to no good. Come on, Bucky. Up here.”

Tee Ray scampered up the ladder to the hayloft, followed by Bucky. They moved to the back, under the low eaves, and waited.

The sound of footsteps scuffling along could be heard coming closer and closer. The front barn door opened, its hinges creaking, and fresh air cascaded in. They heard boots treading closer, stopping under the ladder next to the bodies. They heard the rustling of sheets being moved and of a man's heavy breathing. The man coughed; it was a deep raspy sound, like a dangerous creature far back in a hollow cave. He cleared his throat and continued moving the sheets.

Bucky cautiously dug into the hay, trying to get down to the loft's floor boards, trying to look through the knotholes and cracks. He could see the man's huge hands and what he was doing but not the man's face. All he caught were glimpses of a back of a muscular coal-dark black neck, thick and powerful, and a dusty hat. It was enough, however, for Bucky to know who he was.

“Cubit!” he whispered to Tee Ray. “He's using a knotted rope to measure the bodies!”

“Shhh!” Tee Ray said under his breath, pulling Bucky back and shoving him to one side. That boy sometimes didn't have the sense of a bedbug. At least bedbugs knew how to keep quiet and just do what had to be done.

As Bucky fell backward, his head hit something hard in the hay, but although it smarted, he bit his tongue.

“Six for him. Five-and-a-bit for her. Six for him. Five-and-a-bit for her.” The sound of chanting drifted up to them from below. Cubit was working up a singsong method of remembering his measurements.

They heard the sheets being replaced and the heavy boots scuffling toward the door.

Six for him. Tall and thin.

Five-and-a-bit for her. That's the way she were.

Six for him. Tall and thin.

Five-and-a-bit for her. That's the way she were.

The barn door opened, and Cubit continued on, not shutting it. Anyone could see into the barn now.

When the chanting receded into the distance, Bucky reached back into the hay to see what he had hit. It couldn't have been a beam. Rubbing the back of his head with one hand and moving the hay aside with the other, Bucky said, in a hurt tone, “You didn't have to shove me so hard, Tee Ray.”

“If you had known to keep your mouth shut and your eyes open, I wouldn't have had to do anything. If you're gonna be a law man, you gotta learn how to watch and wait until just the right time. You either got to make a spoon or spoil a horn, as they say.”

“Oh, Tee Ray, I know enough to do lots of things right. Without me, you wouldn't be here at all. Besides, Cubit didn't hear us none. And yet you go and shove me into…”

Bucky stopped. His hand, digging in the hay for what his head had hit, had found something.

Bucky brushed away more hay. It was large and heavy.

Tee Ray came and joined him. Bending low under the eaves of the barn, they hoisted it up out of the coarse dried grass, bull thistle, dog fennel, jimsonweed, and Johnson grass.

It was a large wooden chest. It had handles on either end and two iron clasps on the front, each held firm with a heavy lock.

“This damn thing, Tee Ray, is as big as a tierce. Could probably hold more than a barrel, less than a hogshead. Looks like an overgrown hardtack box. But who the hell would want to drag this thing around, and why was it hidden up here?”

Tee Ray pointed to name etched into the side of the box. It read, “Prop. of J. Gold.”

“Jenny, you were in the house all night. Marcus and Sally have their own place out in the back, but you were in Little Miss's bedroom the whole time. So, you must have heard or seen something.”

“No, Mr. Raifer. All the doors were closed. The door to the back hallway on the first floor leading to Little Miss's boudoir as well as Little Miss's door itself. All closed. I was just watching out for Little Miss. I saw nothing, and nothing is what I heard.”

“Can't believe that, Jenny, with the commotion on the stairs and the gun going off.”

“Honest, Mr. Raifer, if I'd had heard something or seen something, I'd have told you, just like Marcus told you about the Peddler Man.”

Dr. Cailleteau rocked in the sturdy wooden chair that barely accommodated his ample girth, enjoying his cigar. The three of them were on the veranda, Jenny having served them lunch and helped Little Miss back to bed for her afternoon nap. Raifer was still sitting at the table, the few remnants of a meat pie that he had left turning brown and soggy from the gravy. Jenny was standing to one side, tray in hand, waiting on them.

“Marcus told us that Jake Gold, the Peddler Man, spoke French to Little Miss and the Colonel Judge.”

“Yes sir. To them and to Miss Rebecca. They all spoke French most of the time, especially when Little Miss was around.”

“You came from New Orleans, right?”

“Yes sir, the Colonel Judge hired me—it must be three years now— to watch over Little Miss. Sally couldn't do it any more once Little Miss stopped speaking En glish. And of course, Marcus couldn't take care of her, even though he speaks French, but then you know that.”

François Cailleteau often marveled that even after all these years, everyone still referred to Thérèse-Claire as “Little Miss.” François had been there after the war, when Augustine had made his way home and surprised his widowed mother, having been released from the prison at Camp Douglas near Chicago a month earlier. At that time, in 1865, she was already fifty-two years old, but the only name she had ever been called at Cottoncrest was Little Miss.

When the big house at Cottoncrest had been built by the General and Thérèse-Claire back in the 1830s, the General's mother, Catherine Chastaine, was still alive. It was a slave tradition to call the mistress of the house Old Miss, so even though Catherine was not the owner, she became Old Miss and Thérèse-Claire Little Miss. That name stuck, and Miss Catherine's death didn't change it, nor did Thérèse-Claire's advancing age, nor did the arrival of Rebecca a few years ago. No one had called her Thérèse-Claire again. Not her old friends and not the many visitors whom Augustine, as a long-confirmed bachelor after the war, used to bring to the plantation for extended visits. To everyone she was Little Miss.

It was strange, François thought. Perhaps her name, Little Miss, pre-destined her fate—a retreat of an old lady into the past.

“And you were here,” Raifer continued in his questioning of Jenny, “serving, when the Peddler Man and Little Miss and the Colonel Judge and Miss Rebecca had their long conversations in French?”

“No sir. I was not needed. Marcus and Sally served, and I was able to get a few minutes' rest.”

Raifer looked up at her sharply.

“I mean, sir, Little Miss needs lots of care all the time. So, the Colonel Judge let me have some time for myself when the Peddler Man was here. They would talk for hours, and though Little Miss might not be able to follow the conversation or might forget from one moment to the next what they had been talking about, she just loved to sit there and let the French language surround her. She loved anything that reminded her of the past, before all those bad times started happening. She was a first-generation Creole, you know, having come directly from Paris with her parents when she was very young, and she was once a great beauty, or so they say. I do know that when she looks at herself in the mirror, she often tells me, ‘
Créoles n'en meurent pas, ils sèchent.' ”

Dr. Cailleteau took his cigar out of his mouth and flicked away the extended ash. “It's an old saying, Raifer, ‘Creoles don't die, they just dry up.' ” Dr. Cailleteau thought that Little Miss's saying this was probably a combination of her fear of her own mortality and her way of forcing herself not to remember, assuming that she had any memory left at all, of the terrible deaths that had torn asunder her family.

“It's a good thing in some ways, I think,” Dr. Cailleteau said to Raifer, shifting his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, “that her mind is lost somewhere in the distant past. That way, the Colonel Judge's death can't hurt her.”

Jenny didn't say anything. She stood quietly, and no one looking at her would have thought she was doing anything but awaiting the next question from Raifer. But that was not the case at all. She knew that the Colonel Judge's death had changed everything. And sooner than she would like, the effects of the Colonel Judge's death would hurt Little Miss. But that couldn't be helped. Not now.

“And where did you leave your horse?”

“'Bout a mile and a half back, in the woods beyond the cane fields, Raifer.”

Raifer was furious. Bucky and Tee Ray were standing below them on the ground under the oak trees, a shallow trench scraped through the brown winter grass right down into the dirt marking the path they made dragging the big trunk from the barn. Raifer was standing, hands on his hips, on the edge of the veranda. Dr. Cailleteau took the cup of coffee that Jenny was offering and waved her away, a signal for her to go inside.

“What's the matter with you, Bucky? You been drinking sack posset, putting wine in your milk? Has Tee Ray here been serving you cali-bogus, getting you full of rum and spruce beer? Didn't I tell you to get to Parteblanc and send that flimsy? Bucky, I don't think you have the sense God gave to a large rock, a small pebble, or even a tiny dornick.”

“Now, don't be mad at him, Raifer. You got to give Bucky here credit. He done solved all your problems.”

Raifer looked questioningly at Tee Ray. He didn't need any help, certainly not from Tee Ray.

“I mean, Bucky has gotten it all right, from the very first. He's been tellin' us all there was a curse, and now we know
what
the curse was, and we know
who
the curse was.”

“And how, Tee Ray, do
we
know?”

“It's right here, Raifer,” Bucky chirped up, “right here in this chest.”

Raifer walked down the broad wooden steps and approached Bucky and Tee Ray. Bucky took one step backward, but Tee Ray simply reached down and pulled open the lid. “Raifer. Look at all this. This was hidden in the hayloft, just as Bucky said. We had to break the locks off with a sledgehammer, and it kind of ruined the front, but you can see all this stuff inside. It answers all the questions.”

Dr. Cailleteau roused himself from the rocking chair on the veranda and, placing the coffee cup on the table, slowly moved down the stairs. Although they were made of stout cypress, they groaned under his weight.

“You see, Raifer,” Bucky said, as Tee Ray started taking the contents out, layer by layer. “It says ‘Prop. of J. Gold' on the side. That's the Jew Peddler what's been spending so much time here. Why would he go and hide this big chest way up in the hayloft? Had to hoist it up with ropes, I guess, to get it up there. And why here? Why hidden? Lookee. Just look.”

Raifer could see clearly the treasures inside. Layer upon layer of fine skins. Months' worth of work for trappers and hunters. These would fetch a lot in New Orleans. They'd bring a small fortune if the trader had contacts up the river. They'd be even more valuable if someone could get them all the long way to New York by train. All those fancy women wanting to wear those fancy furs.

“That ain't all, though, Raifer. If that was all there was, it would be strange enough, but I done solved it, I did!”

Tee Ray let Bucky enjoy himself. Let Bucky take the credit. No one would believe that Bucky had solved anything, but as long as what had to be done got done, it didn't matter.

Bucky came around to the front of the chest and pulled off the bottom layer of skins, revealing a small roll of canvas tied tightly with a narrow strip of leather. “Open it up, Raifer. Go ahead. See what's inside!”

Raifer picked up the bundle and placed it on the ground. Kneeling next to it, he untied the leather binding and unrolled the canvas.

“See! What did I tell you! You were lookin' for a bullet, Raifer, and the more I thought about it, the more I figured there had to be a reason. And in talkin' to Tee-Ray…”

Raifer looked up at Tee Ray, whose mouth was bent into a grin. Raifer did not return the smile but maintained his steely demeanor. There was nothing that Bucky could have figured out on his own.

“You see, how could the Colonel Judge have done all that to Miss Rebecca and then shot himself in his left temple with his hand all twisted? No, someone else must have done it, and the Colonel Judge came upon them and got himself shot. That's why there was no bullet in Miss Rebecca's back, where his head was. Someone must have put him on top of her. Which means that the bullet is probably still somewhere in the house. But who could have done this, 'specially with the Colonel Judge and Miss Rebecca all holed up in their house for almost a year, with not no one come to visit? No one, that is, 'cept the Jew. And look, this here's the proof!”

Bucky bent down and picked up one of the six gleaming knives that were now lined up on the unwrapped canvas. Two had four-inch blades, three had six-inch blades, and one had a ten-inch blade. Bucky picked up the biggest one. “See here, Raifer! Sharp as can be. Ain't nothin' it can't cut through, quick as you like, with nary any trouble at all.” Bucky lightly drew the tip of the blade across the thick canvas, which parted easily, as if it always had consisted of two pieces.