The Cottoncrest Curse (20 page)

“See, I told you, Tee Ray. Ain't nothin' here. No food. No candles. Nothin'.” Jimmy Joe kicked at the rough-hewn table. A leg broke off, and the table fell to one side and hit the floor with a hollow thud, loose dirt flying.

“I see it, Tee Ray, I see it,” Bucky called out excitedly. “Jimmy Joe didn't see it, but I do!”

Jimmy Joe glared at Bucky. “What do you see? Empty cabin. Dirt floor.”

“It may be a dirt floor, but look, it ain't all as empty as it seems.” Bucky strode over to the fireplace. He ran his hand over the top of the mantel. “Look at what I see'd. No dust. Someone was livin' here, takin' good care of this place.”

Jimmy Joe spit, the glob landing next to Bucky's boots. “ 'Course they was livin' here at some point, but they was takin' good care of what? Of dirt? What did they eat? Dirt? Not that niggers won't, you know. They'll eat almost anything.”

Bucky bent down and, with his own small knife, cut into a corner of the mattress lying in the dirt. He pulled out some moss and, going over to the fireplace, kicked some of the thick ashes to one side and laid the moss down in the center and started blowing on it. After less than a minute the moss began to smolder. Bucky blew several times more, and the moss burst into flames.

“They was here, Jimmy Joe, see? Hot coals. It ain't been that long since they done left. They must've taken that cart, what ruts Tee Ray done found, and moved it out with all their goods into the woods.” Bucky was proud. He had shown Jimmy Joe how smart he was, and he knew that Tee Ray couldn't help but be impressed.

Tee Ray motioned to the bed frame and the upside-down table. “When even Bucky can figure this out, Jimmy Joe, why don't we leave the heavy thinkin' to him and the heavy bustin' up to you.”

Jimmy Joe nodded, gritting his teeth. He didn't like Tee Ray's tone of voice, but he was good at busting up things, and he felt like doing it now. He lifted up a big foot and brought it crashing down on the bed frame, cracking one of the sides. He lifted up the rough planking that formed the headboard and smashed it against the stout logs that comprised the cabin's walls. Then he broke up the table and tossed it into the fireplace.

Tee Ray, followed by Bucky and Jimmy Joe, emerged from Cooper and Rossy's cabin, the smoldering mattress beginning to die down and the broken table in the fireplace beginning to flame up.

“Don't y'all see?” Tee Ray proclaimed to the horsemen who had gathered outside the cabin. “We rode fast here from the cane fields. Ain't no way that the Jew Peddler Man and that nigger Marcus with him could've beat us. Yet, Little Jerusalem here is empty, and the niggers here can't have left more than an hour ago.”

Tee Ray remounted the gray roan. “Someone must have told them that the Knights were ridin' tonight. Well, let 'em flee. Let 'em be scared of us. They got a right to be scared 'cause the Knights ride for right.”

“
THE KNIGHTS RIDE FOR RIGHT
,” a chorus of voices echoed back loudly. It was their motto. The Knights of the White Camellia rode for right, for what was right was white, and what was white was right. The Ku Klux Klan Act was supposed to have put an end to the Klan and masked riders, but the Knights of the White Camellia didn't need masks. Petit Rouge Parish was so small that everyone knew everyone else's horses anyway. A masked rider could be easily identified by his steed. The Knights of the White Camellia rode unmasked and unop-posed.

“What we're gonna do is to make an example of whoever warned these niggers,” snarled Tee Ray. The horseman yelled their approval.

“When we catch him, we're gonna whip him so hard that even his own mother wouldn't know him to give him shelter in a hurricane.” The horsemen roared again. Forrest pulled out another full bottle from his saddlebag, took a drink, and passed it to Tee Ray.

Tee Ray drank deeply and, deliberately bypassing Jimmy Joe, handed the bottle on to Bucky. Jimmy Joe looked away to hide his disgust. Bucky! Ain't no way that Tee Ray was gonna get his hands on the bottles in Jimmy Joe's saddlebag now.

Bucky carefully took a drink and, smiling broadly as it went down his gullet, took another.

“That's the way, Bucky,” congratulated Tee Ray. “You're drinkin' like a real man. Now, Bucky, I think you're ready. You want to be a Knight?”

A Knight? Tee Ray was inviting him to be a Knight? In front of all the others. Tee Ray had honored him mightily.

“The Knights ride for right,” Bucky replied in as forceful a manner as he could muster, dropping his voice down an octave to try to sound more forceful, like Raifer. “You know, in my official position as an official officer of the law, I'm always for right, Tee Ray.” Then he added, a little too hurriedly, with more gratitude than he intended to show, “I'd be right proud to be a Knight and proud to ride for right.”

“Proud is the right feelin' to have,” said Tee Ray, tapping Bucky on the shoulder with his rifle, “ 'cause I so declare that you are now a Knight of the Camellia of the First Order.”

A Knight of the First Order! Bucky could barely restrain the grin that kept creeping to his lips. First Order. That was appropriate. Bucky should be first among all the others. After all, hadn't he shown, time and time again, that he was invaluable? Hadn't he shown Tee Ray and the others how he could see things that others couldn't, like a moment ago when he had spotted, as Jimmy Joe kicked over the table, a glow in the ashes caused by the draft? He could figure out things others couldn't. He was important.

Tee Ray didn't tell Bucky that the Knights had thirty-two orders and that the First Order was the lowest rung. “Bucky, since you patrol as official Petite Rouge deputy out here in Little Jerusalem, you know who lives where, right?”

“Right,” Bucky said proudly. Already they were depending on him.

“Whose cabin is this?” Tee Ray inquired, pointing his rifle toward the one with the open door and the smoldering mattress.

“That's Cooper's.”

“Where's old Nimrod's place?”

Bucky lifted his arm to show them.

“Then, Bucky, as your first order of business as a Member of the First Order of the Knights of Camellia, you're gonna lead us in making an example of old Nimrod and his takin' his people away so that you, an official officer, can't question them about the Jew Peddler murderer. You're gonna show Nimrod and the rest of those niggers they can't mess with the law and they can't mess with the Knights, right?”

“Right,” Bucky responded promptly. It had to be an important task for Tee Ray to ask him, instead of any of the others, to do it.

“Come on then,” Tee Ray said, urging his roan toward Nimrod's house. “You get to start the fire. Let's burn that nigger Nimrod's cabin to the ground.”

Keith stood, gun in hand, barring the way. He had moved out into the swamp beyond the woods because he and Peggy wanted to be left alone. They wanted to be someplace where they didn't have to talk to anyone but each other. They wanted to be someplace where small children didn't taunt them. About the way that he walked. About the way that he spoke. About the way that Peggy talked.

“
NO!
” he said, raising up his gun.

“You know me,” the old man said, leaning a thick branch that Cooper had found for him to use as a cane. “Nimrod. You recognize me, don't you, Keith?”

Keith peered hard at the old man's face. “Yes.” Keith spoke slowly. Deliberately. He was always that way, as if thinking about what to say and then speaking it was difficult for him. Which it was.

“And you know Esau and Cooper and Rossy and the rest of us, don't you?”

Keith looked slowly from face to face. “… Yes.”

“There are bad times right now, Keith. The Knights are riding, and we've had to leave Little Jerusalem.” Nimrod waited patiently as Keith tried to absorb the old man's words.

After a lengthy silence Nimrod added, “I know you don't like company, but with the Knights out tonight, we need a place to stay for a bit. If we had more warning, we wouldn't have come here… we don't want to bother you and Peggy. It appears that the storm passed, so we'll just stay here outside. And we've brought some food to share, so we won't trouble the two of you.”

This was a lot of information at once, and Keith's forehead knotted up. “Trouble,” he finally said.

“No,” Nimrod responded gently, putting his hand on the young man's arm, “we won't be no trouble.”

“Trouble!” Keith shot back. “Trouble, trouble, trouble.”

Rossy, her baby on her shoulder, walked forward through the crowd to talk to Keith. “Keith, we grew up together. I promise you…”

Keith got a frightened look as he stared at her baby. “Baby. Trouble. Much trouble!” He backed up several steps, limping on his clubfoot.

Rossy was gentle. “What trouble, Keith? How can a baby cause you trouble?”

Keith glanced back anxiously toward his cabin perched on stilts next to the bayou, its windows dark. Even though the sun had set, there was a three-quarters moon rising, visible for now, although shortly it would be obscured by the swift-moving clouds. The wind in the treetops created a low, constant whisper, but as she listened carefully, Rossy could hear, in addition to this, a low moan.

“Is that Peggy? Is she all right?”

A look of anguish overtook Keith's face. “Baby. Trouble. Peggy.”

Rossy grasped her child tightly to her shoulder and ran toward the cabin, pushing the door open. Even the clear moonlight could not penetrate the darkness. All Rossy could see was a dark shape on the floor, moaning with unending grief. “Shwadelivbyanj.” Over and over a woman's voice wailed, “Shwadelivbyanj.”

Above her own anguished voice, Peggy, who was kneeling on the floor, an inert object in the small blanket in front of her, heard the door open and sensed a presence at the threshold. Peggy looked up to see a woman whose features she could not discern standing in the doorway, moonlight streaming behind her. The moon made the woman's outline luminous, and the dust floating through the cabin made the few silvery-blue moonbeams hitting the floor look just like the rays from Mary and Jesus's head on the painting that Peggy used to stare at when she was a little girl in church. Peggy looked up and asked with desperate hope, “Aryuananj?”

“Peggy, it's just me, Rossy.” Rossy came into the cabin and went over to Peggy. Clutching her baby in the darkness, Rossy reached out to put one hand on Peggy's shoulder. Just then Rossy's baby woke up and started to gurgle softly.

“Baby? Baby?” Peggy grasped Rossy's knees and started to cry. “Yuhavbrunmenewbaby?”

Marcus cautiously pushed aside several charred stalks and peered down a trench that ran between the rows of cane. No one was in sight. He listened closely. No noise of horses. Just the crackling of the flames in the field as it swept away behind them and the crinkling of the fire in the uppermost leaves of the trees in the woods ahead of them.

The cane field fire had spread. Although the recent rain had dampened everything, the few crisp dead leaves that had clung on grimly to the high branches were aflame and were drying out the nearby branches, which in turn were smoldering. The top branches of the hardwoods in the distance were a flurry of sparks. The wind stoked the fires and blew flaming leaves from tree to tree, where they ignited others.

“This is not good, not good at all,” Marcus whispered. “Gonna drive out the game. Gonna drive out the birds. Gonna make it all the harder in the spring for those who won't or can't go. On the other hand, it's good for us right now.”

He motioned for Jake to stay where he was and, remarkably fast for an old man, skittered across the break to the woods on the other side. There he waited behind the trunk of a large hickory. The moonlight illuminated the break, and Marcus, from his hiding place, could now see down the entire length of the gap between the woods and the sugar-cane field. Nothing moved in the cleared area, which, for all its width, still had not been wide enough to keep the fire from leaping it.

Marcus signaled for Jake to join him. With the damp, muddy bear-skin in his arms, Jake swiftly left the burned sugarcane behind him and entered the safety of the dark woods.

Jake followed Marcus as the old man sure-footedly threaded his way amid the hickory and bay trees, the wet earth squishing under their boots. Jake followed as they walked deeper and deeper into the forest, past the oaks and the scattered mimosa. The ground grew even softer, and now they were often walking ankle deep in water, which penetrated and then filled their leather boots.

Still Marcus pushed on, through stands of gray and brown cypress, their gnarled trunks firmly planted in the swamp. Cypress knees, off-shoots of the main trunk, stuck up through the mud and water, evidence of the shallow, spreading roots below that held these ancient trees in place in the heavy clay soil.

They made their way through the swamp without speaking. Although there was no visible path, Marcus did not hesitate. He knew these woods and swamps. He knew each gum and hickory and the drier spots that they signaled. He knew the area where lightning had brought down a huge oak, years ago, now lying like a giant soldier frozen at stiff-backed attention and chopped off at the knee. He knew the stands of palmettos, looking like huge green versions of the elaborate Chinese fans that the Colonel Judge had bought at the Cotton Exposition years ago, long before he married Miss Rebecca. Little Miss used to sit on the veranda in the summer and slowly wave one back and forth to create a little breeze in the hot evenings.

Marcus even knew the areas thick with poison ivy and poison sumac, which they warily skirted. But after they passed yet another heavy growth of them, Marcus stopped on what appeared to be a narrow ridge in the midst of the swamp. The ground was firm. The poison oak and poison sumac, thickly curling around the trunks of trees and reaching up twenty feet or more into their branches, formed almost a veil from the rest of the marsh.