The Cottoncrest Curse (27 page)

“
Un front froncé dit pas que la cervelle ap'es travailler; des fois c'est juste un mal de tête
,” Tante Odille commented.

Jake heard the shots. He knew that some fancy shooting had occurred, but he could not understand why Tante Odille had said, “A wrinkled brow does not mean the brain is working; sometimes it's just a bad headache.”

Trosclaire now smiled gently and waved at Jeanne Marie and Étienne. “
Au revoir et adieu. Meiux que ça et les prêtrest seraient jaloux!
”

As Trosclaire said good-bye and farewell, any better than this and the priests would be jealous, Jake felt Jeanne Marie and Étienne climb into the pirogue. Étienne began paddling, and Jeanne Marie kept her rifle trained on the men as the flat-bottomed boat moved out into the bayou.

“Bucky!” Tee Ray was furious. “Don't you see what's happening? The Jew is in that canoe! Look at it. It's too weighed down for just two people. Riding too low in the water. Under that bearskin. That's the Jew!”

Bucky looked around helplessly at the many rifles still pointing at them from all the Lamou windows. “What do you want me to do, Tee Ray?”

Tee Ray, in disgust, started to turn his horse around. They could travel farther south and intercept the pirogue as it neared where the bayou narrowed and kill them all before they could make it into the vast marsh where horses could not go.

But Tee Ray's horse whinnied as a man appeared from behind a wide oak. He grabbed the reins of Tee Ray's horse and pointed a rifle directly at Tee Ray's chest.

“I think,” said Trosclaire amicably, “that Monsieur Bucky, Monsieur Tee Ray, and the others of you should be my guests. For lunch and maybe for dinner also, no? We had a
boucherie
the other day, and we now have some fine andouille and tasso, made special by Tante Odille. That, plus some dirty rice and grilled mirliton. We shall share a feast, yes? Maybe my Aimee, she may even make a
tarte à la bouillie.
”

“
Andouille y tasso!”
Tante Odille exclaimed unhappily, realizing that Trosclaire was going to feed these ridiculous men the carefully prepared results of the
boucherie.
“
Il y a plus d'une manière d'étouffer un chien à part lui donner une saucisse.
” There's more than one way to choke a dog than giving him sausage.

“I don't believe it. You got huckleberried by Cajuns! Walked square into it, didn't you. Didn't think about splitting up the men, trying to flank Lamou, did you?”

Bucky slumped dejectedly in his chair behind his desk, trying to disappear into the corner. Trosclaire had kept them in Lamou all day, serving them food and talking constantly but not letting them leave. The rifles had remained trained on them the entire time. Finally, when twilight came, Trosclaire had allowed them to depart. But that wasn't bad enough. Now, all Dr. Cailleteau was doing was jawin' him.

“See you got a hole in your hat. Lucky they didn't put a hole in your head… although, come to think about it, if they had, it might have let a little sunlight in there. When, during the Port Hudson siege, a miasma would drift through—and that's about the extent of what's going on inside that skull of yours—the only thing to cure it would be a good day's sunlight and a stiff breeze.”

“I don't got no asthma,” Bucky pouted under his breath.

“Not asthma, Bucky. Miasma. Poison vapor from decaying corpses.” Dr. Cailleteau took another puff on his big cigar and drank down the glass of whiskey that Raifer had put in front of him. “Raifer, a phrenologist could take this boy to Charles Darwin, if he were still alive, and Darwin would have to declare him to be a whole new and inferior species.”

Bucky sunk lower into his chair.

“You have to do it now, Raifer. You don't have any choice.”

Raifer got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. It was dark outside. Another day lost. “I know, Doc.”

“Told you that you should have done it after we came back from Cotton crest. Should have done it right then, when you sent the flimsy on to Baton Rouge and New Orleans about arresting Marcus and Sally and Jenny for theft and shipping them back here to Petit Rouge.”

Raifer didn't want to have the rest of this discussion in Bucky's presence. He turned away from Dr. Cailleteau and said to his deputy, with firm direction in his voice, “Go home.”

Bucky just gazed down at his feet, trying to avoid the glare from Raifer's eyes.

“Right now.”

Bucky looped two fingers through the hole in the brim of his hat and pulled it off the desk with a scowl. Dr. Cailleteau was behind this. He had pushed Raifer into it. Dr. Cailleteau had just said that Raifer should have done it after they came back from Cottoncrest. Done what? Done did what Raifer just did, firing him and sending him home. Now, with no job, what would he do? People would laugh at him. They would point him out and say that poor Bucky couldn't even catch a Jew and let himself get tricked by Cajuns, of all people. Ain't hardly nothin' worse than Cajuns 'cept darkies and Jews, and yet Marcus has done gone and slipped through his fingers, and the Jew has disappeared into the swamps, and Cajuns got him pinned down all day, feeding him and Tee Ray and Forrest and the other Knights like pigs getting fattened up for the slaughter. And Tee Ray and Forrest would blame him, and they'd kick him out of the Knights. He might just as well die now.

“Get going, Bucky,” Raifer commanded. “Can't have you sitting 'round here a moment longer than necessary.”

There was no hope. This was it. “Raifer, can't I at least take my stuff from my desk? Just got a few things to clean out. Won't be a minute, then you won't never see me again.”

“What are you talking about? I need you here tomorrow morning at dawn. Pack your bag for a three or four days journey. Pack some go-to-town clothes, the best you've got. Clean ones. Understand?”

Bucky looked up, startled.

“Don't sit there like a gin barrel waiting to be emptied. You were right that the peddler had to be in that pirogue. If they were headed south down the bayou, they were making for the swamp. They have to be trying to get him to New Orleans. It's either that or the Gulf of Mexico, and there's no way they can make it into the Gulf with the pirogue. There's a riverboat coming through at daybreak on its way to New Orleans, and I want you on it. Get moving!”

Bucky rose out of the chair, buoyed by this sudden change of fortune. He wasn't being fired. He not only still had a job, but Raifer was also giving him the ultimate responsibility. Bring back the Jew. And he was going to New Orleans! He was going to ride a riverboat! It had been his dream. For the first time in his life he was going to go outside of the parish. Life could not get better. Bucky loved his job. He almost skipped out of the door into the dark. The sun had set over an hour ago.

With Bucky gone, Raifer could now continue the discussion with Dr. Cailleteau. “I told you why I hadn't wanted to send the telegraph earlier, Doc. Besides, you were dealing with Little Miss.”

“Got her settled in for now, though no one in town here speaks French anymore but me. She'll stay at the boardinghouse for a few days—they reluctantly agreed to take her in until we can bring someone else as her caretaker and get her back to Cottoncrest. But you can't delay on the flimsy anymore. Look, I know you're worried that sending an arrest warrant for the peddler down to New Orleans will only flag for them that he's gotten away. Sure, it may cause you to look bad at first, but you've got to do it. Tonight. And you've got to let Tee Ray go after him. The way it is now, if the peddler is caught and brought back, dead or alive, no one will think the worse of you in the long run, and you'll actually be a hero for setting up the capture. But if he escapes, if he slips through and they find out you could have notified them but didn't…”

Dr. Cailleteau didn't have to complete the thought. Raifer knew he had no other choice. As long as things were quiet, his job was secure. But the governor and his staff had a lot of power. The governor was anti-lottery and anti-colored. That had been his platform. All against the lottery and all for segregation. It would just take a whisper from the governor, and Raifer wouldn't stand a chance. If it became known that Raifer had let blacks leave Cottoncrest and let a Jew escape, the results of the next election would be a foregone conclusion.

“You were right, Doc. I admit it. And you had the right approach. I'll draft it the way you suggested. I'll send a flimsy tonight to New Orleans seeking the additional arrest of Jake Gold. They already should be following up on my previous flimsy seeking reward for the arrest of Sally and Marcus and Jenny for suspected theft of valuables from Cotton-crest Plantation. Jake Gold will simply be another person to be picked up in connection with missing items following the unfortunate deaths of the Colonel Judge and his wife. No need to mention the cause of those deaths right now.”

“That's the way. Once they're caught, it's done, and you're a hero, Raifer. Oh, the four of them are bound to be caught, and if for some strange reason they're not, then it will be Tee Ray's and Bucky's fault, not yours.”

“I'll wire ahead to New Orleans to tell them to check with all the Jewish merchants and their Jewish churches—that's where he's sure to head first. I'll tell them I'm sending my deputy and one other. I've got enough funds in the sheriff's account to front the tickets and expenses for Bucky and Tee Ray.”

Dr. Cailleteau, puffing on his cigar, nodded his approval. “Tee Ray's got to have blood in his eye after what the Cajuns and the Jew did to him and the Knights. With him and Bucky going down to New Orleans, you can be sure that coming back upriver will be a body in a coffin.”

Ganderson had told them to wait. They had followed his instructions, but the sun had risen and set, and they were still in the broken-down cabin with its partial roof and collapsed walls and no real protection from dropping temperatures. They didn't dare light a fire. The sky was clear, the stars were out, and the glow from the fire would be visible through the open walls for miles. Even the smoke could be seen in the moonlight.

The baguette was long gone. They were hungry and thirsty. Sally had fallen asleep, snoring, on Marcus's shoulder. Jenny was not sure whether Marcus was asleep or not. He was the oldest by far of the trio of traveling companions, but he was the most energetic of them all. Marcus had set the pace, his long legs leading them briskly as they left Ganderson's wagon and made their way through the woods to the cabin. Maybe Marcus was just resting, ears alert for the faintest noise.

Jenny had always been a city girl until she came to Cottoncrest. She still couldn't read the sounds of the night out here in the forest. She couldn't tell which creaks were simply the ancient oaks expanding and contracting with the changes in temperature and humidity and which noises signaled the approach of danger.

She lay her head back for a just a minute against the rotting wooden slats, intending to be like Marcus and close her eyes to better concentrate on the noises that seemed to surround them. The chirping of the crickets. The crunch of a small animal scampering across the crisp leaves fallen thick on the ground. The faint rustle of the pine needles as the wind gently moved through them. The soft, lilting melody of Louis's violin as he sat in his office late at night, taking a break and playing a plaintive gospel, the sadness and longing being drawn from the strings and wafting through the closed door to the back room where Jenny slept. She was careful to wash her hands before she went to bed, to remove any ink that might have gotten on her fingers from her scrivener's work during the day. The legal papers that Louis had her copying were long and complex. Some were in En glish, some in French. What he had been working on were writs of certiorari to the Louisiana Supreme Court, pleas to the court to hear the passenger car case. She didn't understand all the legal terminology, but she understood the cause. She understood all too well what this case meant to all the Negroes and Creoles, not only in New Orleans but throughout the South, from Secesh land all the way north to the Mason-Dixon Line and beyond.

Louis had said that if and when the passenger car case made it to the Supreme Court, it would fulfill Lincoln's promise. Lincoln had started a speech over the dead by saying, “Four score and seven years ago….” It would be, Louis said, more than one score and seven years from Lincoln's death to get the case to the Supreme Court, but it would be worth it. That was why every word in the briefs that Jenny was copying was important.

The Fourteenth Amendment was the heart of the case, according to Louis. The amendment declared that all persons born in the United States are citizens and that no state could deny any person the equal protection of the laws. Jenny knew those words well. Louis quoted them over and over in his brief. A state could not “deny any person equal protection.” Any person! That was the key concept. It applied to any person, former slave or not. It covered any person, regardless of the color of that person's skin. Each and every person was equal in the eyes of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Louis, pacing his office while working on the brief, had tried to figure out how to word it for the maximum effect. Layer upon layer of Jim Crow laws had been enacted since the war, but Washington had grown silent, and a doom descended on the South that hung like a shroud over the once-vibrant hopes of those who had struggled out of slavery only to be legislated back into a status little higher than slavery.

That was why this brief was crucial. The Supreme Court, said Louis, had to take the passenger car case. There was so much at stake.

And for Jenny there was so much to copy. Three sets of the petition for writs had to be filed, and duplicates had to be made for opposing counsel and for co-counsel and to mail to those who were helping with advice from the North. Jenny slept fitfully, thinking of all she had to do for Louis in the morning. Each copy had to be perfect, with every word clearly written. For the printer. For the court. For posterity.