The Cottoncrest Curse (6 page)

On the rear right side of the cranium there was a large hole. Bits of brain could be seen through the skin that had partially peeled back, revealing the skull underneath. Blood had congealed in the hole, had hardened, and was turning black.

Dr. Cailleteau shook his head in resignation. All his friends were dying or dead. And now Augustine, ten years his junior, was gone. Augustine had shot himself in precisely the same way as his father had. First the father, now the son. Maybe there really was a curse.

Trosclaire Thibodeaux had built a large fire next to a trench he had dug. They still had an hour or more until it died down enough to start cooking; they needed a good bed of white-hot ashes. In the meantime he had hung the big pot, full of bayou water, over the fire. The dry hickory that Trosclaire had pulled out of the woods would burn hotter than the soft pine.

Aimee was returning home with the children in the late afternoon's light. She was coming up the road carrying two of them. A small baby was cradled in one arm. A larger toddler, his rear cupped in the crook of the other arm, hugged her neck. Five more straggled behind her, none of them older than seven or eight. Some held buckets filled with wild blackberries and mint. Others had long willow branches, tied in bundles on their backs, to be used later to weave baskets for Jeanne Marie.

Jake and Trosclaire were on the porch, Trosclaire in the old rocking chair, Jake leaning up against the front wall of the small two-room cabin. Coming down the bayou in a pirogue were the four oldest children. The shallow-bottomed boat, carved out of the trunk of a tree, barely made a sound as it skimmed along. One quick movement by any of the occupants, one wrong shift, and the pirogue would overturn. But the children had grown up on the bayou. The two boys, ten and eleven years old, were paddling with quiet expertise. The two girls, their thin skirts gathered around them, held large baskets of flopping fish in their laps.

“Tonight, my friend,” Trosclaire said in French to Jake, “we are going to have ourselves some feast. Aimee, she make a pie with those blackberries. Just look at my children bringing a mess of sacolet and brim. If they had caught any more, that pirogue, she would groan like a muskrat in a trap and then break and sink to the bottom of the bayou. And you, you are going to show me that your knife, something that you want to ask me too much for, is worth paying a penny more than I paid for this American one.”

Trosclaire took the heavy blade, the one Jake had again sharpened free for him a few minutes earlier, and threw it expertly at a nearby pine tree. It hit its mark and buried itself two inches deep in the gray, crusty bark.

That was a sign, Jake knew, that he could delay the
boucherie
no longer. The children were unloading the pirogue and bringing the fish up to the house. The feast would begin late at night, and the
cochon de lait
would start soon, and there was still the boiling to do.

Jake and Trosclaire went to the pen on the side of the house. Trosclaire picked up one of the larger suckling pigs, pulling it away from its mother's teat, and handed it to Jake.

Jake put a large bucket under the ledge of the porch and, holding the squiggling pig tightly, walked up on the porch. It must have weighed more than fifty pounds, but Jake handled it easily. He placed the pig between his knees, squeezing it firmly with his legs so that it couldn't move.

Jake pulled a large Freimer knife with a ten-inch blade out of his belt and, reaching down, grabbed the squealing pig's snout and pulled it up, stretching the neck taut. With one practiced stroke he cut the pig's neck, severing the jugular vein and the nerves of the backbone.

It was perfect. One cut. The pig never felt any pain.

Jake tilted the pig's body so that the blood would drain into the bucket below.

Trosclaire was amazed. “That knife, she is as sharp as you say. But you have almost cut off her head! What kind of
boucherie
is this? It is no way to prepare for a
cochon de lait.
”

The sharecroppers were still under the trees when Marcus came out of the house, another bucket of bloody cloths in his hand. Marcus already had used up all the old sheets. His wife, Sally, was doing her best to rinse them out as quickly as possible in the big old tub on the side of the kitchen. She ran them up and down the washboard, the suds from the lye soap turning a bright pink.

Marcus left the bloody sheets on the wooden pallet next to the wash-tub, where the brown soil had taken on a reddish tinge. He took some of the damp sheets that Sally had finished off the clothesline. He put these sheets in a bucket and headed back into the house. At this rate it would take until dark to mop up all the blood that had coated the stairs and dripped down the walls onto the hallway floor below. Tomorrow's daylight coming through the east windows would let them see clearly what remained to be done. But who would give the instructions? Where would he and Sally go? Would they have a place to live?

Marcus had been with the Colonel Judge long before he had that title. The General had bought him for Mr. Augustine when Mr. Augustine was just turning into a man. Marcus had been with Mr. Augustine in the days when a white ocean of cotton blanketed the plantation as far as the eye could see. Marcus had been with him when the cotton bales, stacked as high as four men, were on the shore waiting to be loaded onto the riverboats that used to line up in front of Cottoncrest.

Marcus had been with Mr. Augustine when the General left, before the fighting. Marcus had followed Mr. Augustine into the camps. Marcus had saddled his horse and polished his sword and cleaned his guns and washed and pressed his uniforms. Marcus had been with Mr. Augustine at the siege of Port Hudson, when Mr. Augustine had been made a colonel. And from that point on it was never “Mr. Augustine” anymore. It was “Colonel.”

Marcus had been back at the campground when the Colonel's horse was shot out from under him and the Colonel himself was captured. At that time Marcus had thought his world had ended.

But it had not. Marcus had survived, and the Colonel had survived, although just barely. When after the war, the Colonel had returned to Cottoncrest from the Union prison at Camp Butler in Illinois, he was like a ghost. In fact, to the General, Augustine had long ago become a ghost, which is why the General… but that was the start of the curse, wasn't it.

When the Colonel had finally come back to Cottoncrest, his ribs showed through his thin cotton shirt, his face was gaunt, his chest hollow, and he walked with a limp that never left him, the old bullet still in his left thigh.

Marcus had made it this far. The good Lord had granted him a strong body. He was older than the Colonel Judge and had outlived him. He would do what he always had done. He would live today and let tomorrow take care of itself.

On his way back into the big house, Marcus passed by the sharecroppers. They had been counting. This was his sixth trip. Six buckets of bloody sheets. How much blood had there been? It was obvious the curse had hit again. The Colonel Judge had killed himself. And the curse was getting worse. Miss Rebecca was dead too. Who would run the plantation? Who would honor their crop pledges? Who would market the sugarcane now that the Colonel Judge, who had handled all the financing for them, was gone?

Some of the sharecroppers glanced upward as the sun headed toward the western horizon, the October sky the blue of well-worn Union uniforms, now absent for almost a decade since President Rutherford P. Hayes pulled the troops out and ended Reconstruction.

Some Reconstruction it had turned out to be. Times were now worse than ever. And even if they harvested their crops, the sharecroppers worried that they would not raise enough to pay off the money owed for the goods they had bought during the season at the Cottoncrest plantation store—the salt and flour, the hoes, scythes, and plows, and the seed for their personal gardens of corn and squash and beans.

There was hardly any wind. That was good.

Tomorrow would be a fine day. The entire plantation would be on fire.

Trosclaire admired the way that Jake bled the suckling pig. You had to bleed it before cooking anyway, but why did he cut the throat so deep? All that was needed was a point in the knife in the jugular vein; let the pig squeal as it bled to death, and you'd preserve the head so that it would look right when presented.

Trosclaire tied the pig's hind feet together and then, slipping a stout branch under the rope, he and Jake lifted the pig and placed it into the big pot until it was fully covered, but only for a minute or two. After the skin had softened, they lifted it out and, propping the branch in a wooden rack that hung from the porch beams, they started scraping, Trosclaire with his American blade, retrieved from the pine tree, and Jake with his Freimer knife. They worked quickly, removing the hair and outermost layer of skin from the carcass while the skin was soft and hot.

Trosclaire noted that Jake worked far faster than he did, for the wiry man had no wasted motions. Jake's long, smooth strokes were just the right depth, neither cutting too deep and hitting the meat nor cutting too shallow, leaving hair and skin behind.

Trosclaire threw the bloody contents of the bucket on the ground behind the house. On the porch Jake was using his knife to slit the pig's stomach. The knife cut cleanly into the flesh, exposing the intestines and stomach.

Jake quickly scooped out the innards and then, swiftly but carefully so as not to damage the liver, removed the gall.

Trosclaire and Jake then went to the garden on the side of the cabin and dug up some shallots and picked some peppers and fall tomatoes. Trosclaire got some salt from the barrel he kept inside the front door. Together they filled the eviscerated animal with the seasonings, and Trosclaire bound up the stomach with some wire.

Jake and Trosclaire laid the pig into the trench next to the fire. Then Trosclaire shoveled the white-hot ashes over the pig.

“In a few hours, my friend, we will have ourselves some fine eating. A fitting tribute to my Jeanne Marie, no? She is most beautiful. Until then, what do you say we have ourselves some fine drinking and perhaps a game of bourée?”

“It is too fine a night,” Jake responded, “to do anything other than sit out under the stars and enjoy a drink. Why don't we drink to Jeanne Marie?”

Jake didn't want to play cards anyway. He would let Trosclaire go on and on about Jeanne Marie, and he would pretend to listen attentively.

Beautiful women could be lovely. And beautiful women could be dangerous. His brother, Moshe, had been stupid. He had let himself be led on by a beautiful woman, and that had proven deadly. That's why Moshe could never come south again.

“So, it's clear that the bullet went straight through,” said Raifer, as Dr. Cailleteau set the Colonel Judge's head back down on the board. “But the question is, where is the bullet?”

“Damn it, Raifer, you didn't drag me all the way out here, away from my other patients, to ask me that question, did you?”

“No,” Raifer replied, in his own quiet and determined way, “I asked you to help me dig that bullet out.”

“Out of what? And why do you need that bullet anyway?”

“Well, if Bucky has got it right…”

Bucky, standing over near a stall, swelled with pride. Not only had Dr. Cailleteau asked him what happened, but now Raifer was relying on him too.

“… then that bullet went right through his head and lodged in her back. Take out your scalpel and dig it out for me, if you don't mind.”

Dr. Cailleteau, with a grunt, the vast folds of fat encasing his midsection bulging out under his vest, bent down and picked up his black bag. Placing it on the board next to the Colonel Judge's head, he reached inside and pulled out a scalpel. “Do it yourself. You don't need me for this. And I still don't understand why you need the bullet.”

“No, you do it, Doc. Let me show you something.” Raifer reached into the saddlebag that he had thrown over the top bar of a stall. “What do you make of this? Does this look like something that the Colonel Judge would have owned?”

Dr. Cailleteau took the rusty pistol that Raifer proffered. He gave it a quick glance and handed it back. “Not likely. It's a LeMat.”

“It's a pistol, Doc,” Bucky said. “Anyone can see that. It's not a mat or rug.”

“It's a grapeshot revolver, Bucky,” Dr. Cailleteau sighed with impatience. “A black powder LeMat. General Beauregard had these made up in France and snuck past the blue-belly blockade. Didn't amount to much. They say it was a deal with his son-in-law. I don't know anyone who ever used a LeMat who didn't have trouble with it. Not rugged like a Colt. Not as small as a Derringer. Takes nine bullets in the cylinder rather than six, and it still isn't worth spit.”

Handing the weapon back to Raifer, Dr. Cailleteau pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his hands to get rid of the rust stains that coated his palms. “Raifer, everyone knew that Augustine had been taught by the General, from the time he was a small boy, to care for all his arms. A cheap LeMat is not something Augustine would have owned. Even if this were his, Augustine would never have let a revolver get into such a condition. I mean, look at the second barrel. It's completely jammed with dirt and rust. Where did you find this anyway? Out in the yard? Had he thrown it out the window or something?”

“No, Doc. It was in his hand when we found him. This is the pistol that made that hole. At least I think it is this pistol. That's why I want to see the bullet.”

Dr. Cailleteau picked up the LeMat with his handkerchief. It had a long narrow barrel and under it a shorter, fatter one everyone called the shotgun. The cylinder was oversized to hold nine bullets. But having nine bullets was not an advantage; it only made it heavier and more ungainly to use. The extra-long handle of the revolver made it difficult to aim. Dr. Cailleteau had never liked a LeMat. He had never used one in the war because of the firing problem. If you were too quick in cocking or if the pin in the cylinder got stuck, the pistol wouldn't fire.