The Cottoncrest Curse (35 page)

“ 'Course, it's strange to think about it. Back then he seemed to me to be so elderly. Yet he was younger than I am now. I guess I look elderly to you.

“Anyway, while on the floor, I kept talking. You know, I can talk about almost anything. Like to talk.

“Oh, you noticed that, did you? Well, some people are afraid to talk. It's as if they don't think people will care what they have to say, or maybe they think they'll embarrass themselves, or maybe they're just shy. But I don't think you can really live if you don't talk. You can't find out about people if you don't talk to them.

“I told the man I was a student. That was true. I told the man I had come from up north. True also, and I couldn't hide that. Told the man I was working on a research project about the South. That was close enough to the truth.

“Told him that that I had done research on Cottoncrest and that I was trying to complete my research. Definitely true.

“Told him I wanted to meet Hank Matthews, who owned Cotton-crest, and that I wanted to ask him a few questions and show him the results of my research and get his reaction. True. True. True.

“The man didn't take the shotgun away, but he did ask if I was really a student, if I was really doing research, and if all I wanted to do was ask a few questions.

“You know, telling the truth has a remarkable effect on people. When you tell the truth, you connect with them. The man could see I was telling the truth.

“He finally moved the shotgun from my face and helped me to my feet. Told me, in his own sour way, that he was Hank Matthews and that if I wanted to get the real facts about Cottoncrest and the South, I had come to the right place. Said that the rest of the country didn't understand the South, and all he wanted was a fair hearing and fair treatment for the southern way of life that had been so distorted by ‘them damn northern liberals.'

“I thanked him and told him I was pleased to meet him. Which I was. True again. Told him I only wanted to get to the truth, that ‘heaven and earth have sworn that the truth shall be disclosed.' He liked that.

“Of course, I didn't tell him that this phrase was a literal translation of a great Yiddish phrase,
Himmel un erb hoben geshvoren az kain zach zol nit zein farloren
.

“That's what I was there for. To get the truth and to disclose it as well.”

1893

Lafayette Cemetery had many more crypts in it than the last time Jake had been there. It was dark, and Jake could not read the inscriptions, but he could see the newly built ones that were laid out with mathematical precision on the grid of pathways. Line after line of diminutive homes for the deceased. Given the high water table, where buried coffins would rise to the surface in every rainstorm, aboveground crypts were the only solution possible.

Death continued to stalk New Orleans, and the cemeteries were ever expanding. Waves of yellow fever came and went, an army of destruction, leaving behind hundreds of jaundiced victims whose bodies had to be quickly removed from homes. Death by childbirth for women. Death in childbirth for infants. Death by malaria and influenza and pneumonia. Death by cholera in the hovels that lined brackish drainage canals. Death by bilious fevers and pleurisy and catarrhal fevers. Death by French fever—syphilis—and by internal hemorrhages and by mysterious growths in the glands. Death by infections and gunshot wounds and stabbings. And even, occasionally, death by old age.

All of this required an industry of death. Crypt builders. Stone masons. Plasterers. Artisans. Makers of funereal wear and the somber black attire that many wore for years after the loss of a spouse or a child.

Those who survived used the design of the crypts as a strange combination of both competition for permanent social status among the deceased and proof of the wealth of their spouses, siblings, and descendants. A hoped-for eternal monument to those who, a few generations hence, would be beyond the memory of the living except in this place where their names were inscribed in stone or marble or plaster.

Some of the crypts had peaked roofs and spires. Others had embellished designs in the limned plaster that coated thick red bricks. Some had tiny doorways and steps and even stone windows. Some were miniature churches. Some had stone flowers and stone plants. Some had imported marble and others smooth granite. Some even had a statue of the deceased or their likeness carved in bas-relief.

Then there were the unadorned boxy structures, seven feet high or more, that held thirty or more burial slots in high, medium, and low rows in their brick walls. Called “ovens,” these crypts were reusable. The heat and the humidity so quickly decayed the bodies that the next internment in the same narrow slot could occur within seven weeks.

Jake had thought, when he had left word with Marcus for Jenny to meet him here, that Lafayette Cemetery would be the easiest and safest place to convene. Jake had assumed he would be staying with Zig Haber; Zig's house was only a few blocks away from Lafayette Cemetery. Jake had not wanted to meet in the French Quarter—it was too public—or in Faubourg Tremé, for the same reason. The St. Louis Cemeteries were not suitable, for voodoo rites were still going on there secretly late at night.

Lafayette Cemetery, in the still-developing Garden District, with its big homes and large lots, would be away from prying eyes and chance encounters from night wanderers. There should be no one lingering on the streets of the Garden District late at night.

The chill of the evening had descended. Jake was barely out of breath from running. He had lost Bucky more than two miles back, and he had not seen anyone as he slowed to a casual walk while traversing the last few blocks into the cemetery.

Jake sat on the steps of one of the crypts far back from the main cemetery entrance on Washington Street. Here he could see anyone who came in either that way or from the Prytania Street gate. The cemetery occupied an entire block, bounded on the north by Prytania Street and on the east by Washington.

Jake hoped that Jenny would come tonight. It was not safe to go back to the Red Chair or anywhere in Faubourg Tremé. It was not safe to go to Zig's house.

Whether or not Jenny came, Jake would have to leave New Orleans. Jake had been pondering how to do so. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Antonio Micelli, back at the Red Chair, had given him the perfect solution.

Too bad it involved a train. Jake did not like to travel by train. He hadn't liked trains since his escape from Russia. And yet now he might have to use a train to escape from Louisiana.

Escaping Russia, he had become invisible hiding under the hoop-skirts of women. But that was when he was twelve.

Now that he was grown, thanks to what Antonio had said, Jake had figured out how to become invisible on a train traveling north from the Crescent City.

“You sound like an old woman with that yelpin'. Just hold on, and I'll be done in a moment. Don't be such a flicker.”

“Don't call me a flicker, Tee Ray. I ain't no coward. I done proved it to—
OUCH!
—night, didn't I?”

Tee Ray kept on wrapping the long gauze bandage around Bucky's ankle, pulling it tighter. “What you proved tonight is that you're a fool. Snuck out to go to a parlor house. Couldn't wait, could you, until we had caught the Jew? Couldn't wait to go to a place I know where they wouldn't roll you? Went to some Dago's fast house. Spent your money like a fool. Then got almost all the rest of it taken by a whore. You'll be lucky if she didn't give you the French fever.”

Tee Ray finished, cutting off the end of the gauze with his knife and tossing it up on the table next to the few bills that still curled forlornly around the linen scrap.

“You were gonna hold onto the money 'cause you were in charge. You couldn't lead a charge up the banks of a shallow bayou without falling down on your face in the mud and gettin' snakebit to boot!”

Tee Ray sat back in the chair that faced the horsehair sofa where Bucky lay. He had been hauled back to the boarding house by a couple of drunken men, and Tee Ray had given them each a dollar and sent them back to Faubourg Tremé so they could buy some more drinks and keep on being squiffed the rest of the night.

“But I spotted the Jew, Tee Ray. I gave chase. I almost caught him.”

Tee Ray just glared, his eyes cold and heartless. “You gave chase! Did you have a gun to shoot him? No. Did you have a knife on you? No, and you know what he done did at Cottoncrest with his Jew knife. You just ran out without thinkin'. Assumin' you caught him, what was you gonna do? Ask him polite to walk with you to the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office where they have handcuffs and can throw him in a jug? Don't you think he might have a Jew knife on him and could slice you up quicker than Greek fire?”

Bucky's expression showed that he hadn't considered any of these things. “But,” he said quietly, “it ain't a matter no more of wonderin'
if
he is here in New Orleans. We now know that he
is
here.”

Tee Ray shot back, “And he knows that we're here. Do you think he's gonna go back to anywhere near Faubourg Tremé at this point? Not likely. He's gonna make himself scarce as hens' teeth.”

Tee Ray went over to the closet and pulled out a rifle. He checked to make sure it was loaded.

Bucky raised himself up on one elbow, “Where'd you get that?”

Tee Ray was pointing the rifle out the window, checking the sight at the end of the barrel. “Knew you was up to no good when you said you wanted to go get some dinner on your own. What you want wanderin' around lookin' for dinner when we paid good money for room and board here? Now I see your appetite weren't for no food.”

Satisfied that the rifle was ready, Tee Ray rested it on top of the dresser. “Ain't gonna let no nigger lawyer make fun of me. No sir. Ain't gonna let no Jew storekeeper lie to my face. I gone and seen one of the Knights who works for the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office. Tol' him what had happened, and he lent me this here rifle so I could prod compliance. Don't you like that? I was gonna stick this rifle up in the face of the Jew storekeeper and prod him to tell us where the peddler was. I was gonna prod this rifle up the black nostril of that nigger lawyer to answer my questions. But you gone and ruined all that now, Bucky. That Jew is on the run for sure, and wherever that high yellow girl Jenny was, she ain't no more use to us 'til we catch the peddler.”

“I'm sorry I done messed it up, Tee Ray. I thought I was doin' the right thing. I was tryin' my hardest.” Bucky brightened for a moment. “You know, I never done run as fast as I did tonight.”

Tee Ray snarled, “ 'Tweren't half-fast enough.”

Bucky was deflated again. He asked dejectedly, “So, what we gonna do, Tee Ray?”

“We? ‘We' ain't gonna do nothin'. You ain't goin' anywheres on that ankle, even if I wanted you to, which I don't. You gonna stay right here on the sofa in this here roomin' house, and I'm takin' the badge and the rest of the money. You do what I say, and I won't tell Raifer how you lost the parish's money and how you lost the Jew. Don't think you'd have a job anymore if I tol' Raifer these things, do you?”

Bucky was torn between feeling grateful to Tee Ray for helping him keep his job and hating Tee Ray for the way he continually talked to him like he was a child who didn't understand anything. Bucky responded simply, “No.”

“Good. Don't you leave this room, then. I'm goin' out now to find all the Knights on the Sheriff's staff—they're a bunch of 'em—and get their help. You know, they would have found a way to get rid of the Dagos that the court done let loose for murdering Hennessey if the Vigilance Committee hadn't organized a mob to go get them and the other Dagos who had just come in on the boat. They don't want no more Dagos in this city, and they don't want no Jew gettin' away. When I tell the Vigilance Committee that the Jew was at the Dago's Red Chair place in Faubourg Tremé—something I got out of that Betsy when I went back to fetch the rest of your clothes—they're all gonna help. All them Knights gonna watch the river. Ain't no chance of any Jew man gettin' on a boat headin' north or south from this point on without them checkin' each of them out. If he tries to go by river, we'll have him. Gonna get them to watch the road north to Baton Rouge. Ain't no chance of a Jew man goin' up River Road or out toward Lake Pontchartrain or headin' to Chalmette without some Knight with a badge or some member of the Vigilance Committee spottin' him.”

Bucky understood all of this, except one thing. “What's the Vigilance Committee?”

Tee Ray sneered at Bucky's ignorance. “There's time when the Sheriff won't act—or can't act. In that case the Vigilance Committee is there. Most of them are Knights. Can't stand niggers or Jews or Papists or Dagos. 'Specially Papist Dagos.”

“But if the Sheriff and the Vigilance Committee are watchin' the docks and the roads, what are you gonna do?”

For the first time this evening Tee Ray smiled. His lips pulled back, and his crooked teeth made the grin all the more sinister. “There're two trains scheduled to leave tomorrow, one in the mornin' for Chicago and one in the afternoon for New York. I'm gonna be at the station. I feel it in my bones. By tomorrow at this time there's gonna be a coffin goin' back upriver to Parteblanc.”

Jake saw a shadowy figure slip through the Poydras Street gate of the Lafayette Cemetery. Jake looked up at the stars. It was, he judged, almost midnight.

The figure, wrapped in a cloak, moved cautiously through the cemetery. As it got closer, he could tell that it was a woman. She wore a tignon. Even in the dim moonlight, he could see the brightly colored kerchief covering her head. A cloak draped from her shoulders and shielded her from the chilly night air.