The Cottoncrest Curse (22 page)

“He's gonna blow, Forrest,” warned Tee Ray, reaching up and grabbing the knife from the deputy's hand as the color began to drain from Bucky's face.

Forrest twirled his way to the open door and tossed Bucky onto the rough-planked porch. Bucky hit hard on his back. He groaned and rolled over. Yellow vomit with a bilious smell spewed over his shirt and the porch and dripped through the slats toward the ground below.

Inside, Tee Ray was showing off the knife. He leaped behind the bar, and the bartender rapidly moved away. Tee Ray carved a large x on the surface of the bar, showing the others how deep the gash was and how easily it was made. He borrowed the hat of one of the Knights and sliced a narrow piece off the brim, leaving a cut so clean and straight it looked as if the hatmaker had designed it that way.

Tee Ray was about to demonstrate another wonder of the knife when Raifer walked up and joined him behind the bar that separated the two of them from the rest of the group. In a quiet but firm voice Raifer said, “I'll take that Tee Ray.”

Tee Ray glared with fury. No one interrupted him. No one challenged him in front of the Knights. The others grew silent. The room became still.

Tee Ray, his jaw set, his teeth grinding in anger, took the knife and flicked a button on Raifer's shirt. It was just the slightest touch, but the excellent blade cut the button off, and it fell to the floor. Raifer didn't flinch. With a calm, determined manner he simply repeated, “I'll take that.”

Tee Ray thought a moment, starting to direct the knife to another button. The Knights were all there. They outnumbered Raifer. They could take him.

Then Tee Ray glanced down at Raifer's hand. Raifer, without any show at all, had pulled out his long Colt pistol and had his finger on the trigger. The others couldn't see this because the bar blocked their view, but Tee Ray could. The barrel was pointed at Tee Ray's groin.

“Hell,” said Tee Ray loudly, attempting a smile that turned into a sneer, “if you want to play with this here Jew knife, go right ahead. Go play with it all you want.”

Raifer took the knife and tucked it in his belt.

The Knights remained unusually quiet, not understanding why Tee Ray had allowed the Sheriff to order him around. They stared at Raifer through drunken, bloodshot eyes. Raifer effortlessly held their gaze, his features unruffled and confident. They started to go back to the comfort of their drinks.

Raifer spoke to the entire room without raising his voice. “I think it's time you went home to your families. It's late, and you've got to cut cane tomorrow.” He came from behind the bar and started for the door.

Tee Ray was fuming. “You tellin' us what to do with our own crops?”

Raifer did not slow down his stride but merely called back over his shoulder, “Do as you please. Drink yourself into a stupor so that you can't bring in your cane and it rots in the field. Just drink quietly, or I'll have to come back and run you all in.”

Raifer stepped across the threshold into the cool night air and shut the door behind him. Bucky was still on the porch having the dry heaves. Raifer grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. “You smell worse than an essence peddler.”

Bucky wiped the yellow vomit from the corners of his mouth. “I ain't no skunk,” he said indignantly.

“ 'Course not. Their smell ain't as bad as yours. Come on. You're coming over to the office to sleep it off in one of the cells. Then, in the morning, you're gonna tell me how it is you stole evidence, and I'm gonna tell you about keeping your mouth shut and how I'm going to larrup your sorry frame if you ever do anything like that again.”

“You gonna beat me? I don't deserve to be larrupped.”

Raifer snorted with disgust and kicked Bucky in the rump, propelling him forward down the street.

Bucky, unsure on his feet from all the liquor and weak from throwing up, stumbled in front of Raifer as they made their way toward the Sheriff's office in the courthouse.

Meanwhile, in the bar, Tee Ray had gathered the Knights around him and was speaking in a low voice. “The rest of you take care of the crops, but tomorrow me and Forrest are gonna ride down to Lamou and catch us that Jew.”

“But what,” asked one of the men, “if he ain't in Lamou?”

“He's got to be headin' that way. South. That's the only direction he can go. Can't go north. No way to cross the river up here, and no way to get past Parteblanc. No, he's got to go south. He's got to be out there in that woods somewhere or in the swamp. Well, let him spend a damp night out there. It's gettin' cold. Feel it? Let that Jew spend the night freezin' himself. It'll just soften him up for us when we find him.”

Forrest smiled. Under his thick beard his mouth was barely visible, but when he grinned, the beard parted and his missing teeth, knocked out in a fight long ago, were like broken pickets in a fence that needed repainting. Dark tobacco stains covered the few good teeth he had left. “We gonna have some more fun, ain't we, Tee Ray. Darkies, Jews, and Catholic Papists. Fun for sure.”

The baby had colic. Maylene was walking around the small house, baby on her shoulder, trying to comfort the child. The cries continued.

“Shut that kid up, Maylene,” Jimmy Joe demanded. He sat at the table. His large frame took up almost the entire long wooden bench. His blond hair was askew, his shirt stained with sweat and grime. He took another swig from one of the many bottles he had liberated from Cottoncrest. Some were still in in his saddlebags. The rest were set in a row, two deep, along the mantel over the fireplace.

Maylene didn't respond. She merely patted the baby on the back and jiggled him up and down in her arms.

The baby continued to whine.

Jimmy Joe continued to drink. He looked around the narrow room with disgust. Yesterday he hadn't given the size of his living quarters much thought. He had never considered it an issue. If it was not as large as Tee Ray's house, it was almost as big, and Tee Ray had to have more room 'cause of all them kids. But now, given what Tee Ray was going to have, it bothered him.

Jimmy Joe looked up at the bottles on the mantel. He knew that was all he was ever going to get from Cottoncrest. When those bottles were empty, they'd be tossed away, like Tee Ray had tossed him aside this afternoon.

Before things were different, but now Tee Ray was acting as if he was better. He wasn't that. He wasn't ever gonna be better.

Not better. Only richer. Tee Ray was going to be richer. That was for sure.

Jimmy Joe would show Tee Ray. The Knights all thought Tee Ray was tough. Jimmy Joe would show them. He would be the biggest nigger hater of them all.

The baby's cries got louder.

“I told you, Maylene!” snapped Jimmy Joe. “I ain't gonna warn you again.”

Maylene hugged the baby more tightly and prayed that he would stop making noise. She wished her younger sister were here and not living miles away from Parteblanc. Her sister, with all her kids, would know what to do with a crying baby. She would know what to do for colic.

Maylene was at a loss. This was her first child. It would be her only child.

Maylene looked around for something to comfort the infant. A sack of flour. A sack of rice. Salt. Red beans and sausage left in the pot from the night before. Nothing for a baby.

Then she remembered the large jar of molasses. She opened it and dipped a finger in it.

Jimmy Joe, lost in the bottle, did not notice as the baby slowly quieted down, sucking on Maylene's finger.

Maylene, the infant still in her arms, squeezed onto the bench next to Jimmy Joe. Her petite figure contrasted sharply with Jimmy Joe's broad shoulders and bulging arms. Her long dark hair was pinned up, but wisps of it had come loose and framed her face.

Maylene softly broached a subject that had been on her mind. “Have you thought of a name you like yet, Jimmy Joe?”

Jimmy Joe snorted. There was no name she had suggested that he liked, and he had refused to have the baby named after himself. That baby was not going to be a Junior.

Maylene tried again, even more gently. “We got to have a name for him. Whatever you want, Jimmy Joe, is fine with me.”

Jimmy Joe looked at her with anger in his eyes. “Always at me, ain't you? First you whine about wantin' to have a kid. Now you have one, and all you can do is whine about havin' a name for it.”

It wasn't an “it.” It was a “him.” A wonderful, darling child. A child she had hoped and prayed for. But Maylene knew the signs. She had said too much. She cuddled the baby and stood up, moving out of reach of Jimmy Joe's fists.

The baby stopped sucking on her finger. He pulled away and hic-cupped. Then he started to cry again.

Jimmy Joe jumped up and shoved the bench out of his way, moving across the room. “Maylene! I warned you!”

Maylene retreated to a corner of the room, panicked. In her fear she grasped the baby even more tightly, which only made the infant scream louder. Frantically, Maylene patted the baby, hoping that would help.

Maylene was filled with terror as she looked up at Jimmy Joe towering over her. His hot, liquor breath filled the corner where she and the baby cowered. Anything she said could inflame Jimmy Joe further. She silently said a prayer.

He raised his fist, an anvil of flesh at the end of a muscular arm.

Maylene bent low over the child, hoping to absorb the blows Jimmy Joe would deliver.

Jimmy Joe swung his deadly fist.

Before it even connected with her face, Maylene screamed. Her yell and the child's cries filled the room.

At the last minute Jimmy Joe opened his fist and instead hit her face with his open palm. She fell back into the corner, sobbing, weeping, holding the crying child.

Jimmy Joe was repulsed by it all. By her. By the child. By his house. He turned around, grabbed his coat off the peg on the wall, and stuck the bottle in his pocket. “Ain't nothin' but trouble. That baby's been screaming since he arrived. You ain't had that baby but a day, and all it does is bawl. It's too much. Ain't no baby worth that.”

Jimmy Joe slammed the door behind him.

Maylene, still sobbing, pulled off her shawl, spread it on the floor, and laid the child down on it. He flipped over onto his stomach, stopped crying, and started moving as if he were swimming in the shawl.

Drying her tears, Maylene thought proudly that, in a few weeks, he'd be crawling.

The temperature had dropped precipitously. Sally and Jenny had been walking briskly for hours, but even these exertions were not enough to keep them warm. The cold penetrated through Sally's coat and Jenny's cloak, and the two hurried faster. Their goal was in sight.

Ahead of them, visible in the light of the half-moon, was the tin roof of a home on the edge of Parteblanc. As they neared it, Sally led Jenny off the road. They approached from the back, the tall grass swishing against their ankles.

“Are you sure?” whispered Jenny.

Sally nodded.

Sally came near the back windows and thought a moment. Picking out the window to the left of the door, she softly rapped on the windowpane. Three quick taps, a pause, and then two taps.

There was no response from inside. The house was dark.

Sally waited.

Jenny tugged at her sleeve and put her mouth near Sally's ear. “This is too dangerous. Let's keep walking.”

Sally hesitated. Maybe Jenny was right. After all, it had been so long…

“One more time, then we'll go,” Sally said with more confidence than she felt. She reached up to tap again on the window.

Before her hand touched the pane of glass, the window flew open, and the barrel of a large gun, held by a white man in nightclothes, was thrust in her face.

Sally began to shake, but she held her ground.

A gruff voice demanded, “What do you want?”

“Mr. Ganderson?” Sally's voice was quivery.

“Who wants to know?”

“It's me. Sally. From Cottoncrest. Mr. Ganderson, is the railroad still running?”

It was still dark outside. It was at least an hour before dawn. The gas lamp cast a flickering glow as Raifer put the cup of steaming coffee on the deputy's desk.

Bucky reached for it. It was so hot he could hardly hold the cup, but he brought it to his lips and sipped slowly, letting the chicory flavor roll around his tongue and rinse away the nasty taste left in his mouth from the night before. Bucky groaned, “I don't feel so well.”

“You'll live… unfortunately,” Dr. Cailleteau said with a dismissive waive of his hand. He had settled his vast bulk into one of the two worn wooden chairs he and Raifer had pulled up near the deputy's desk, which was stuck away in a corner. The chair groaned under his weight.

Shooting a conspiratorial glance at Raifer, Dr. Cailleteau signaled Bucky. “Of course, if you think you have a remittent or bilious fever, I could give you some hog's feet oil or lard heated with mustard or maybe some hickory leaves with pepper and sanguinaria. That'll induce nausea—cleanse you out faster than a twelve-pounder out a straight- muzzle Napoleon cannon.”

At the mere thought of these medications, Bucky started to turn green and put his head down on the desk, resting it on his arms.

“Well, maybe you've had too much cleansing nausea already.” Dr. Cailleteau reached into his pocket and pulled out a large cigar, cut off the end, and lit it. As he stoked its tip into a fine red ash, the smoke bounded into the corner behind Bucky's desk and then drifted down onto the hapless deputy.

“Bucky, you got no one to blame but yourself for your condition.” Raifer was blunt and direct. “Drink the rest of that coffee. You've got a job to do this morning, once the sun's up, and I expect you to do it right.”

Bucky didn't respond. He just wanted to be left alone and go back to sleep. He buried his head deeper in his arms atop the hard desk.