The Cottoncrest Curse (38 page)

The passengers remained frozen in place, puzzled by what was now clearly a bearded man in a woman's outfit and terrified by what the white lawman might do.

Tee Ray held the rifle firmly in his grasp, its barrel now pointed at Jenny's head, and tightened his finger around the trigger. Without taking his eyes off Jenny, Tee Ray spoke in a loud voice to the man behind him. “I don't know what kind of jackass nigger you are, but if you don't back off right now, I'm gonna kill this one first and then you.”

Jenny stood motionless, holding the door open, the wind blowing in her face. The passengers tried not to make a sound. The slightest noise or movement could set the white man with the rifle off and be fatal to the woman at the door and to others in the car.

Tee Ray felt the pointed object withdraw from his lower back. The stupid man behind him had listened. Now it was time to teach them all a lesson.

Tee Ray jerked the rifle backward as he whirled around, aiming to hit the man behind him in the stomach with the butt of the rifle. As he did, he inadvertently pulled the trigger and the rifle fired. The bullet whizzed by Jenny's ear and shattered the window of the passenger car door she was holding open. It plowed through the cheap wooden panel and lodged in the metal structure of the car.

As Tee Ray spun around, he was surprised that, despite his quick and vicious thrust with the rifle, it did not connect with anything. He felt a throbbing behind his right thigh, and before he had turned halfway around, he found himself falling. He caught, out of the corner of his eye, a figure of a woman bent down low and moving toward the door.

Tee Ray tried to maintain his balance, but he could not stand up. A warmth emanated from his leg. First warmth, then pain. Horrible pain. Tee Ray dropped the rifle and reached out to the nearby seat for support.

Jake, knees bent and moving close to the ground, squeezed by Tee Ray as he fell. Ignoring the blood pouring from Tee Ray's thigh, blood that was turning Tee Ray's right trouser leg a dark crimson, Jake pushed Jenny out the door onto the narrow metal platform at the end of the car.

Jake then grabbed Tee Ray, who was leaning on the edge of a seat, around the waist. Kicking the rifle away, Jake hauled Tee Ray out the back door of the carriage and onto the metal platform.

Today

“‘So,' I said, ‘you got Cottoncrest. And yet your father was not around to see it happen. What about Ganderson? Did he live to see you get this place?'

“Hank Matthews just sat in his chair and stared at me with the most unusual expression. Couldn't figure out what it was. I was too young to know then what I know now. When you get to a certain age, your past is sometimes more real than your present. When you think back on what happened to you long ago, your memory is like a sieve, constantly sifting through events. You relive them as you think you remember them. You relive them as you wished they had been. You relive them as you ponder what you might have done differently. And you wonder how strange it is that things that seemed inconsequential or even accidental had such a big effect on you that you remember them so well that they are always with you, a theme with endless variations.

“Before you know it, minutes have flown by. You were somewhere far in the past, and then you snap back, and you're here in the present.

“That's kind of what happened. I didn't say anything, and after a few minutes, maybe five, he just looked at me as if he were waiting for me to speak. ‘Mr. Ganderson,' I reminded him, ‘did he ever know you got Cottoncrest? Did you get a chance to show him that you made a success of yourself without his money?'

“Now Matthews was his old gruff self. ‘Hell no,' he said. ‘Gander-son was long dead. They all were dead. Ganderson. My Momma. My Daddy. All gone. Don't make no difference, though, because I know what I am, and I know what I got. And I got Cottoncrest. They can talk all they want to about curses and things on this place, but it ain't cursed. It's blessed.'

“He looked up at that big Rebel flag hanging from the long pole nailed to the frieze above the second floor. ‘The South shall rise again,' he said, ‘and this will be the place it rises. Ain't no one gonna take Cottoncrest away from me, 'cause it's my blessing, just as no one ain't gonna take the South from the white man. My Daddy was right about that. No one has ever done it, and no court can do it now. No Earl Warren, sitting in his black robes—and ain't that a kick, a white man in black robes—sitting in his black robes up in Washington, D.C., is gonna tell us who we have to associate with or go to school with or eat with. Hell, boy, if this thing don't come to a halt, no telling where it's gonna end. Might as well have blacks marrying whites before it's all over, with their little mixed-race pickaninnies running 'round everywhere. Well, it's not gonna happen. No sir. Not here. Not ever. Cotton is white, and that's why Cottoncrest is painted white, and that's why Cottoncrest is gonna stay white.'

“How he got from Ganderson off onto something about the South rising again didn't make any sense to me, but before he got away from Ganderson completely, I had to finish what I had come for. Ganderson was the key to the truth about his past. He just didn't know it yet.”

1893

The trees whipped by, and the soot from the engine's smoke, seven cars ahead, swirled in their faces.

“You cut me!” Tee Ray screamed, swinging his fist into Jake's face and breaking his nose. As soon as Jake released his grip, Tee Ray fell to the metal platform, unable to stand. His right leg was useless now.

Even though Jake's knife had sliced clean through the thigh muscles to the bone, severing all feeling in Tee Ray's right leg, Tee Ray retained a remarkable amount of strength. The blow caused Jake to stagger backward, and blood from his nostrils dripped down onto his stubble of a mustache and beard.

“Now you die, Jew!” Lying on his left side on the metal platform, blood now pouring out of his wounded thigh, Tee Ray reached inside his coat and started to pull out the small Derringer stuck in his belt. It was an over-and-under model with two barrels. He had two shots, but he needed only one.

The knuckle joint holding the first boxcar to the last passenger car gave off metallic groans as the train swayed on the tracks. Jenny, holding onto the railing, saw the small pistol emerge and stomped on Tee Ray's bloody right thigh as hard as she could.

Tee Ray roared with pain and reached out to grab Jenny's leg. Although still lying on the metal platform, he held Jenny's ankle in an iron grip. Jenny could feel her hands slipping off the railing as the train went into a curve.

Jake's vision was blurred. His head was ringing, and his entire face was afire with pain from Tee Ray's blow.

Tee Ray, not letting his left hand loosen its grip on Jenny's leg, raised the Derringer in his right hand.

Jenny let go of the railing and, with her free foot, kicked Tee Ray once again in the spot where Jake had cut up his thigh.

Tee Ray swung the Derringer from Jake to Jenny.

Jake leaped on top of Tee Ray's right arm. Using his knee, he pinned Tee Ray's arm to the platform, but he couldn't wrest the Derringer from Tee Ray's grasp.

Taking the Freimer blade, Jake made a long slice across Tee Ray's right hand. He cut through the muscles and nerves. With a sawing motion, he pushed the blade deeper. He could feel beneath his blade the joints of two fingers separating. The Derringer dropped to the platform. Jake tossed it into the marsh through which the train hurled.

Tee Ray yowled and bared his teeth, but still he held onto Jenny's leg with his left hand. Jake took the Freimer blade and sliced through Tee Ray's left bicep. The muscle separated. The grip on Jenny's leg loosened.

With all of his strength Jake pushed Tee Ray off the platform.

The last that Jenny and Jake saw of Tee Ray was his face, contorted with a yell, screaming at them as he fell off the train and tumbled into the marshy water.

Long after the train had rumbled out of sight, Tee Ray dragged himself, with great effort, out of the now blood-filled marsh and onto the raised mound of earth the railroad had built for the tracks.

Tee Ray was in pain, but he was alive. He was losing blood, but he didn't feel despair. He was confident. He would live. Even if the peddler escaped now, there was proof that the peddler was guilty of the murders of the Colonel Judge and Rebecca, for who else but a guilty Jew would attack a man with a badge and cut him up and throw him off a train?

Tee Ray had planned it so carefully. Bucky had already proclaimed to the whole parish that it was the Curse and that the Colonel Judge had shot himself after killing Rebecca, which was exactly what Tee Ray had hoped everyone would think. That was supposed to be the end of it. With Rebecca dead and the Colonel Judge gone, and with it just being a matter of time before Little Miss passed, Cottoncrest would fall to the Colonel Judge and Little Miss's lawful heirs.

Tee Ray was in too much pain to smile, but he was satisfied to be the sole lawful heir. How his Momma would have loved to see this day when her son regained Cottoncrest, when her son took over the plantation. Momma could pray all she wanted to for God to forgive her father, the General, for kicking her out and disinheriting her for running off and marrying a Baptist. Momma could bow to what she believed to be God's will that she was poor while her mother and brother were rich. Momma could worship at the little Baptist church every Sunday— never praying for vengeance—while her mother and brother went to the big, fancy Catholic church and returned to their big, fancy home, never speaking to her or acknowledging her presence.

It was so perfect. The Cottoncrest curse had overtaken the Colonel Judge. It was the hand of a vengeful God come to reap justice.

But Raifer started causing problems, raising questions about how the Colonel Judge could have shot himself. There was still an option, however. Tee Ray had figured it out in a flash. The Jew. Jews could always be blamed, and no one would give a Jew any benefit of the doubt.

With the two usable fingers of his right hand, Tee Ray ripped the shredded trousers and formed a makeshift tourniquet for both his left arm and injured leg. He then wrapped the remainder around the stumps of the two fingers on his right hand that the Jew had cut off. This would stem the flow of blood.

Tee Ray knew he was safe here, on the mounded earth and limestone that rose a few feet above the marsh, forming the railroad bed. He was out of the water. He could spot any alligators or snakes from up here. He was alive.

A train would pass by later today. The engineer would spot him.

The train would halt.

He would be rescued, and then the Jew would be caught.

But what if the train was late? What if, before it arrived, he passed out from the constant pain and loss of blood? He had to make sure that those who found him knew the truth. He had to leave written evidence.

What could he write on?

Tee Ray pulled himself up on top of the tracks, each movement now agony. He lay there, stretched across the railings, writing, “The Jew did it,” with his own blood on the crosstie.

Tee Ray hadn't realized how exhausted he was. He closed his eyes for just a minute. He would rest a minute, and then he would crawl off the tracks onto the limestone siding and wait.

Tee Ray was still there, unconscious, when the cattle guard of the four o'clock train from New Orleans hit him, unable to stop. The impact cut Tee Ray's body in half, spewing blood everywhere and tossing his now-lifeless torso into the marsh.

The railroad sent a crew out to retrieve it, and if it hadn't had been for the crumpled Petit Rouge deputy's badge pinned to the mangled corpse, they never would have been able to identify him.

“I don't know where he is. When I woke up, he was gone. I assumed he was at the train station.” Bucky sat in the chair, his wrapped foot propped up on a big pillow.

“He wasn't at the train station. And he didn't come back to check with us,” the man said. He hadn't given Bucky his name. He had just said he was from the Vigilance Committee.

“Tee Ray must be onto somethin', like a thousand of brick. It's just a matter of time. He's gonna find that Jew if it's the last thing he does. He and I are gonna go home to Parteblanc a-glory. Ol' Cottoncrest ain't never gonna be the same after he and I get back.”

The passengers in the Jim Crow car said nothing when Jenny and Jake came through the door.

It was not that they lacked anything to talk about. Jenny's cloak was missing, and the woman's clothing that Jake had worn was now gone. Jake's nose was a bloody mess, his face was beginning to swell, and dark circles were beginning to form under his eyes. But the passengers averted their eyes. The white lawman was no longer around. Whatever had happened, they had seen nothing and knew nothing. Ignorance was the safest path.