The Cottoncrest Curse (36 page)

When she was two rows away, Jake called out, softly “
Une alliance.
” An alliance of two. It was also a Cajun term for a wedding ring.

The woman lifted her head, startled at the sound.

Jake could see it was Jenny. “
C'est bon.
”

Jenny ran and gave him a hug. “I knew it was you.”

Leading her gently by the arm, Jake pulled her back down one of the rows where the tall crypts shielded out even the moonlight. She uncinched the blanket with her few belongings from around her waist and joined him on the steps of a crypt shaped like a small church. The miniature steeple rose seven feet above the ground, the stone cross on top a pale icon against the star-dotted sky.

“I've got to leave New Orleans as soon as the sun comes up, Mr. Jake. Do you know that Tee Ray and Bucky are in town?”

Even in the dim light, Jenny could see from Jake's expression that this was not news to him.

“Mr. Jake, both of them came to Louis's earlier today. I'm sure they're coming back tomorrow. I can't stay around. It will only hurt Louis and put him in danger if I do. He's done more than enough already.”

“I'm sure he has. There are many people who will be in danger if either of us stay.” Jake paused. This was the moment. “You've got to tell me. I've got to know.”

Jenny took his hand and said in the softest of voices, “Don't worry, Mr. Jake.”

If there had been anyone in the cemetery at this hour, even a few feet away, they could not have heard Jenny. Although there was no one, Jenny took no chances.

She put her mouth next to Jake's ear and whispered, “The Colonel Judge's and Rebecca's babies are alive. Their twins are safe.”

Today

“Matthews and I sat under that big oak tree, right over there. At the time it was right next to the
IMPEACH EARL WARREN
sign that he had put up on old telephone poles. The top of that sign was almost as high as the third-story roofline of Cottoncrest.

“He had poured some bourbon for both of us, although he was on his third glass while I was still working on my first. I was taking notes as fast as I could.

“‘Tell me, if you don't mind,' I asked, to keep him talking, ‘how it was you acquired Cottoncrest. So many of these old plantation homes have been lost. Some have burned, some have sloughed off into the Mississippi River as it changed course, and others have been lost when the original owners simply abandoned them as being too expensive to keep up. And yet you managed to purchase this place in the midst of the Depression.'

“‘It was a real coup,' he said. ‘Old Widow Brady had let this place run right down into the ground. Boll weevil had got the cotton crop. Sharecroppers had taken off; they couldn't even raise enough to feed themselves. Widow Brady's kids had all left for Baton Rouge and New Orleans to find work, but there wasn't much of it, and what little they could scrape together to send home to her wasn't enough to even pay the taxes on the plantation. She was about to lose everything to the tax sale. So, I just offered her a thousand for the entire thing. Hell, she cried something awful. But I didn't care. Served her right.'

“‘A thousand dollars for all of Cottoncrest? That was a remarkable deal.' I said.

“I ignored what he said about Mrs. Brady crying. He seemed to be proud that she did, and I wasn't about to do anything to antagonize him. All I wanted to do at this point was to encourage him. People like nothing better than to talk about themselves, especially to someone who listens to them with interest. Nothing is more interesting to someone than his own life story.

“‘Ain't nothin' remarkable about it,' he told me, after taking another sip of bourbon. ‘Had to scrape together every dime I could. Had to put a mortgage on my house and my business—couldn't sell my house in those days, what with the Depression and all. The 1930s were a rough time, a very rough time. Sylvia, my wife, thought I was crazy. Here I was, in my midforties, and I was taking on so much debt she thought that we'd lose the little we had built up, and with two young boys and all, not even eight yet—she worried 'bout those twins. But I told her, ‘Sylvia, I've been waiting for this all my life.'

“‘My Daddy had told me time and time again that the only man he hated more than niggers was Widow Brady's husband. Tee Ray.

“‘So, you see, I was doing this for my dead Daddy.' ”

1893

“They're both safe, Mr. Jake. Rebecca and the Colonel Judge's children will grow up separated. The boy and the girl won't know who their real parents were. Won't even know they were one of two. But the twins will be alive, and that's the most important thing.”

“You've accomplished a miracle, Jenny. When Rebecca began to show, she stopped going out. The Colonel Judge didn't want to tell anyone until they were born. He had to be sure they didn't die in childbirth, that they were born alive and could survive and inherit Cotton-crest. And yet, once they were born…”

“I know, Mr. Jake. He never recovered, did he? Just withdrew more and more into himself. I sometimes think he aged more in the six months after the twins were born than he had aged in the last ten years. When I got to Cottoncrest, the Colonel Judge and Rebecca were so happy. He was like a young man again. And after the twins were born, whatever was young in him dropped away, never to return.”

Jenny and Jake sat in the cemetery. Jenny wrapped her cloak around her more tightly. The damp chill from the October night air and the cold from the crypt's stone steps penetrated deep under her skin.

“The problem was, he didn't know, Mr. Jake—not until the twins were born.”

“Did you?”

“ 'Course. From the moment I got there. But I was not going to tell anyone. That was her secret. But once the twins came, he knew. It broke his heart, I think. He wanted to love them, but he couldn't. He wanted to hate her, but he couldn't do that either. He was so torn.”

Jake thought back to all his conversations with the Colonel Judge. On the lower veranda. On the upper gallery. In the library. The Colonel Judge often said he would do anything to keep his nephew from getting Cottoncrest. He would honor the General's wishes.

Maybe that was why, when the Colonel Judge met Rebecca in Philadelphia, he had fallen in love with her so quickly and had married her before leaving Pennsylvania. He was both in love with her and in love with what she represented—a way to save Cottoncrest. But the longer they were married, the more concerned he became. Without children, when Little Miss was gone, what if something happened to both Rebecca and him? Tee Ray would then inherit Cottoncrest, despite the fact that the General had tried to disinherit Tee Ray's mother.

“Mr. Jake, until those children were born, the Colonel Judge, he didn't know she was passing for white. But once they came out, once he saw the boy, white as Rebecca, and the girl, darker than me with kinky black hair, he knew. It destroyed him, didn't it? A colonel of the Confederacy with a mulatto wife and mulatto children. His own flesh and blood.”

Jake didn't say anything. How could he tell Jenny what the Colonel Judge had confided to him that fateful night, more than a year ago? That, because of his war wound, the Colonel Judge would never be able to have any children.

Today

“Since Hank Matthews said he had bought Cottoncrest for his dead daddy, I told him he must have loved his father very much.

“‘Loved him? Don't know if you could call it that. He was a tough man. Big in every way. Big beard. Big arms. Big voice. Big strap of a belt that he'd whip me with. Blacksmith he was, until there weren't any enough need for blacksmiths to make a living. He refused to go back to sharecropping. Said he'd rather die than sharecrop on Widow Brady's plantation.'

“You know, some people get misty-eyed talking about their fathers, but not Matthews. It was almost as if he had distanced himself from both the man and the memory.

“He leaned over to refill my glass, which was less than half-empty. ‘What's the matter, boy? Can't hold your liquor? If you're going to sit here, drink with me, unless you're too proud to do that.'

“What could I do? I picked up the glass and drank deeply. It wasn't time yet to show him what I had brought. Not yet.

“So, I asked him what was it like, growing up in Parteblanc. That was a way to get into the subject.

“‘You know what it's like to be poor—really poor?' he asked me. Then he just leaned back in that chair, staring up at the big oak. ‘I saw at a glance from your clothes and your manner that you have no idea. Being dirt-poor—if you don't know any better—is not that bad. When you're young, you just think that's the way things are. You have nothing to compare it to. Except for the really rich—and you know you'll never be like them—you're surrounded by people in your same condition. What you have, they have, and what you don't have, none of your friends have. But worse than being poor, you see, is getting a whole lot poorer. Then you see the difference. Then you remember what it used to be like. And that's the worst.'

“‘That's what happened to us. Just getting poorer and poorer. And nothing that my Daddy did changed anything. That man seemed to have the worst luck. Wouldn't talk to his old friends because of some grudge he had about something they did to him years before when he was a member of the Knights of the White Camellia. Wouldn't ask for help. Just took it out on me. He'd get angry at the slightest thing, and he'd pull off his belt. Never hit me with all his strength, that I know. If he had, he'd have cut me in half. I've seen him pick up an anvil by himself. You know how heavy that is?

“‘I knew better than to mess with my Daddy. I just took those beatings, even though they were most undeserved.'

“Here he was, an old man, and the scars of his childhood were still with him. I had put down my pen, and I was just listening. I was trying to be empathetic, not saying anything but trying to nod my head in the appropriate places to let him know I was paying close attention.

“He finally fell silent. But I needed him to continue. We had to get further before I pulled out my folder. I needed to steer the topic to his relationship with Ganderson. I just was unsure about how to do it in a subtle enough way.

“I tried a different approach. I asked him whether all these beatings gave him less respect for his father in any way.

“‘Hell no,' he told me. ‘I respected the hell out of him. I mean, after all, he was doing the best he could do, and yet the best was not enough. What I wanted to do more than anything else was to please him. He hated niggers. I would show him that I hated them more, as was only right. He hated Tee Ray Brady's widow and all of that family. I would hate them more and get revenge for whatever Tee Ray had done to him, which I did. He hated ol' man Ganderson, despite, or maybe because of, what Ganderson did for me. So, I grew to hate Ganderson too. Spit on his grave the day he died, I did.'

“Ganderson! He had gone and mentioned the name all on his own! And yet he talked about spitting on his grave in such a self-satisfied way. I hadn't expected that. I had thought he would have loved—no, that's too strong a word—maybe respected, or at least missed, Ganderson. Yet hatred was what poured through Hank Matthews. Pure, mean old hatred. You know what they say.
Siz nit mit vemen tsu geyn tsum tish.

“Okay. Yes, yes. You don't know Yiddish. I forget more and more these days of what happened recently and dwell more and more on the past. It's a Yiddish expression—he wasn't someone you would want to sit down to dinner with. But the morsel I had brought with me was going to give him plenty of food for thought.

“And now that he had mentioned Kenneth Ganderson, I had the opening I had been waiting for.”

1893

“Do you think it will work, Mr. Jake?”

“I don't see why not. Have you ever taken a train?”

“No. Never.”

“But it's true what Antonio told me, isn't it?”

“Sure is, Mr. Jake. That's what Louis has been spending all his time on. He was working on it before I left to go to Cottoncrest, and he's still working on it now. He's trying to get the passenger car case heard in the Supreme Court. I've seen the pleadings he's going to file. Homer's name is right there, right on papers going to the U.S. Supreme Court. Homer Adolph Plessy versus J. H. Ferguson. Of course, Louis can't argue the case. Can't even put his name on the briefs if it is going to have any chance to be heard. Two white lawyers, Al Tourgee and Jim Walker, have their names on the briefs, but it's Louis who's behind it all.”

Jake didn't care about the lawsuit. He didn't care about the legal issues. The important thing was that Jenny had confirmed what Antonio had said.

Jenny began to shiver with the cold, despite her cloak.

Jake opened up his long black coat and held out his arm. Jenny snuggled into the warmth of his coat, into the warmth of his embrace. She rested her head on his shoulder and drifted into sleep.

Jake stayed watchful, his eyes continually scanning the two entrances to the cemetery.

There was no time for any carelessness. There was no time for any mistake. There was no time for any lapse in attentiveness.

Dawn would be here shortly.

Today

“I pretended at first not to know anything about Kenneth Gander-son. I asked Hank Matthews who Ganderson was and why he spit on Ganderson's grave.

“‘A meddler,' he said. ‘My Daddy didn't want any handouts. He didn't want any sympathy. All he wanted was to do a day's work for a day's pay, but although he worked from almost dawn 'til twilight, the pay wasn't there. The century had turned. We passed through ought-six and ought-seven, and the blacksmith business kept dropping off. And yet there was still old man Ganderson coming by once every six months or so. Bringing a basket of food. Paying too much to get his horse shod. Slipping me candy and, as I got older, sometimes slipping me money. He would see me on the street and stick out his arm. Put 'er there, little fella, he'd say, and when I reached out to shake his hand, in his palm would be a quarter.