Benjamin January - Sold Down The River Part 17

Once the wind rattled the door and everyone-even January-had started with fear. Why fear? he'd wondered, furious with himself.

He had nothing to fear. He wasn't a slave.

But he had, he now realized, been afraid for a week. Everything he did and felt was tinged with it: fear, and defiance, and the sense that he existed outside the law. That anything he did was legitimate because he was in danger.

The day was moist and humid, smelling of more rain to come. A little before noon brought the rice cart to the fields, Nero came running, to let Thierry know that a flatboat had arrived from Gottfreid's wood-yard just south of Baton Rouge with a thousand cords of wood and a note from Michie Robert. Thierry yelled to Herc to make sure the women finished loading up the carts, then got them all down to the landing. The men were lined up, marched back to Thierry's house where he counted all the knives back in, then set to work hauling wood to the makeshift shelters near the mill.

As he handed off logs from the flatboat's deck to Black Austin, standing on the wharf, January glanced over his shoulder at the river. The Boonslick was working upstream over the bar at the foot of Catbird Island, close enough that those on sh.o.r.e could hear the clang of the pilot's bell and the shouting of the leadsman. On the upper promenade deck a fat little man in a black coat was having a furious argument with a tall thin boy; in the coffIe chained at the stern deck, a woman combed her friend's hair. The boat made no effort to approach the Mon Triomphe wharf and January cursed Hannibal, wherever he was. If he spent his ticket money on opium, so help me I will drown him.

"Rain cloud comin; carry on this day, Rain cloud comin; carry on this day, Rabbit in the cane-field, look at the sky and say, Rain cloud comin; lord. "

Hooves at the top of the levee. Esteban ground-reined his lanky black mare and came down to take the note the flatboat's tobacco-chewing captain held out to him. Where there's a will, there's a relative, Hannibal had joked. Esteban was with Agamemnon when the sheds caught fire, January thought. I can see him wanting his father dead, but why would he damage his patrimony?

Why would Marie-Noel?

With his self-pitying smugness and whatever grievance he might nurse for his mother's sake, Robert Fourchet was a tempting candidate, but he had undeniably been out of the country when the trouble started, and as far as January could ascertain he'd had no contact with Marie-Noel since she was a child.

Who did that leave? Jeanette, a voodooienne's daughter? Who might or might not be lying about what her mother had taught her? Then why hadn't she poisoned Thierry?

Reuben's wife Trinette? Why go to Mambo Hera for a gris-gris, if she knew juju herself? Black wax and pins notwithstanding, it was no blind woman who'd drawn the veves on the walls of Thierry's house.

Cornwallis? The identical copying of the gris-gris, without variation, smacked more of a white man, or someone unfamiliar with the marks, than one who truly knew them-something you'd expect of an American and a Protestant, not raised shoulder-to-shoulder with the worship of the loa.

Thierry himself, for reasons that couldn't be fathomed . . . ?

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" screamed a woman's voice. "c.u.n.t f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I hope you die!"

All heads turned. Hair tangled on her shoulders, dress kilted to her thighs and slapping wet on her body, Jeanette stumbled down the levee at a run. Rage and tears transformed her face. Esteban dropped the note he was reading and grabbed her as she threw herself straight at Thierry, dragged her from him wriggling like a cat, clawing and screeching curses. "d.a.m.n you! d.a.m.n you, may you rot! d.a.m.n the mother that bore you, b.a.s.t.a.r.d, b.a.s.t.a.r.d, b.a.s.t.a.r.d...!"

Thierry walked calmly to her, caught her by the throat and struck her, twice, with the flat of his open hand across the face. Jeanette's head snapped sideways with the violence of the blows.

Blood oozed from her split lip, mingling with her tears.

"Best you watch that mouth of yours, little lady," said Thierry in his quiet voice. "Seems to me I'm going to have to give you another lesson in manners. Better to nip these things in the bud," he added, looking over at Esteban. Esteban's mouth pursed with distaste but he nodded, then looked away.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it-" Gosport stepped forward, and Ajax was there, his enormous hand on the older man's scarred arm.

"Best stay out of it," cautioned the driver softly, in field hand gombo so thick les blankittes could not understand.

Other men had moved when Gosport did, the circle of them tightening, springing down from the flatboat's deck toward Thierry and Jeanette. Thierry had stepped half a pace back in response, his hand close to the pistol at his side, those cold pale blue eyes watching. Picking out this man and that man-touching January, as if he guessed, from January's eyes and the way he stood, that here was a potential source of trouble-moving on to others, the brave ones, the angry ones. Figuring out who he'd have to kill.

"You can't G.o.ddam let him-"

"Stay out of it, " repeated Ajax. And there was an echo in his soft voice of the creak of weighted gallows-ropes, and children crying as they were sold. The crash of army rifles fired in volleys, the thunder of cavalry hooves.

Don't start down that road.

We all know what lies at the end.

Jeanette moaned, and tried to pull free, but for all his gammy-handed clumsiness Esteban was strong. Beside her, Thierry relaxed a little, understanding what had taken place; seeing the flame that had sparked among the men die back. Seeing them think again, and leave their words unspoken.

He said, "Dice?" and the third driver looked around. "You help me here?"

Dice's jaw tightened hard but he came forward, taking Jeanette by the wrists. January thought about his own decision to help in beating Quashie, his own nauseated awareness that nothing he could do would alter the situation-would only make matters worse.

None of the men looked at each other as Thierry and Dice led Jeanette back up over the levee and out of sight.

Their eyes were on Esteban, the only man present who could have prevented what would now happen to the girl, and as if he sensed it, the planter's son said gruffly, "Get 'em back to work,"

and strode back up the levee himself.

Ajax's voice was very quiet. "Yes, sir."

The river breeze stirred Robert's letter where it had fallen on the ground, tumbling it like some outsize yellow leaf toward the water's edge. January picked it up, shoved it in his pocket as he stepped back onto the flatboat; if nothing else it would serve him as an excuse to return to the house, should he later need one.

With a sharp kick to his mare, Esteban rode off, Ajax said, "Let's get this s.h.i.t ash.o.r.e and under a roof. Gonna rain tonight."

The men did not sing as they returned to their work.

Thierry was back in half an hour, a bandage on the fleshy part of his hand. He looked pleased with himself, like a man who's once more demonstrated his manhood.

They got the wood in, piling as much of it as they could in the mill itself, along the walls and around the grinding-room, so that the women carrying the cane up to the rollers had to edge past it sideways, slowing everyone down. By dark the rain-smell was so strong that Thierry ordered the wood in the shelters to be brought up and burned first, so the supplies indoors could be saved for when the downpour came. As one of the biggest men in the crew January was on that detail, an ox's job. He hoped to h.e.l.l Hannibal had found out something really d.a.m.ning about Esteban, or Marie-Noel's part in the lawsuit, or about False River Jones. Too much to expect that on hearing the trader's name Shaw would smite his forehead and cry, False River Jones! My G.o.d, the man burned seventeen sugar-mills in Alabama without leaving a track and poisoned fifteen planters!

How COULD we have been so blind?

And he'd be able to get his money and go home. Jeanette joined the women again just after supper. Though she'd washed her face and wore a different dress-a bright green one-she walked stiffly, as if hurt somewhere deep inside, and met no one's eyes. Quashie, who mercifully had been in the mill all day, looked up from stoking the kettles but didn't go to her or speak. A particularly tough knot of cane-roostertailed trash that n.o.body had pulled around straight before loading or unloading-jammed the rollers for the fourth or fifth time that evening. Rodney yelled to stop the mules and hold on to the d.a.m.n things. January had seen him checking the harnesses regularly, every time they changed teams.

Rodney sprang up to the brick edge of the vat and leaned over to pull the matted cane free, sweating in the torchlight, with moths and bugs rattling noisily around the torches and falling into the kettles. The women on the narrowed stair, their arms laden with six-foot bundles of cane, shifted and muttered, and when everything got started again that bright green dress had vanished.

It was a while before January was sure. Since Jeanette was part of the gang carrying cane, and since he himself was in and out of the mill, he couldn't tell exactly at what point she disappeared.

But she was definitely gone. January saw Thierry look around for her once, then twice. Saw the overseer glance sharply at where Quashie still labored stoking the fire, moving stiffly and ashen with fatigue. The overseer spoke to Hope, who shrugged, shook her head, and pointed back into the darkness. January could almost hear her saying. No, she's out fetching cane, I saw her just a little while ago, though he guessed Jeanette had been gone for nearly forty-five minutes by that time. Thierry glared at Quashie again and went to speak to Ajax. The men were close enough to January that he heard the overseer this time: "You keep an eye on that Quashie. And you make sure n.o.body slacks off, and keep those kettles boiling good, you hear? Michie Esteban'll be back from supper any time now and that sugar better not go off its heat."

"No, sir," said Ajax. "Yes, sir." Thierry strode out into the night.

Later on, January figured Quashie just waited until the big la grande had to be struck and skimmed and poured into leflambeau, and while Ajax was busy with that, went quietly out the back door.

Thierry didn't return to the mill. At the time January hoped against hope that this was because a boat had arrived at the landing late, bringing Hannibal and some kind of information from town.

It would be morning, he thought, before he'd find out. Rain started shortly before the main gang finished its work, hard steady drumming on the roof.

Stepping out the door when the night crew arrived, he could see the glimmer of the house windows through the black curtains of water: a night-light in the nursery, where Marthe would be dozing in a chair beside the children's cots with a stick across her lap, lest rats from the cane- fields creep in and disturb them while they slept. Another light shone in Fourchet's office, probably from the candles in his room. A third, dimmer, in the front chamber on the women's side of the house, marked where Marie-Noel slept since her husband's illness, when she slept at all. According to Kiki she spent most of her time sitting at her husband's bedside, only returning to her own room if more medicine was needed, or to fetch her Bible.

All else was stillness. Behind him the men greeted one another by the wall of heat that seemed to stand just within the doors; the women, headed back to half a night's housework, spoke with one another in soft weary voices asking after their children, or who had fixed a little food for whom.

Harness rattled in the roundhouse as the mule teams were taken off. Vast tiredness surged over January and he wondered for the first time whether Hannibal, who had seemed better when he left Mon Triomphe, had in fact suffered a return of his illness and was coughing blood in some wh.o.r.ehouse attic on Perdidio Street, unable to either see Shaw or locate Monsieur Molineaux.

Virgin Mary, care for him, thought January, his anger and his fear for himself abating. It had been days, he realized, since he'd felt able to feel anything but anger and fear.

Virgin Mary, heal him and bless him and send him the h.e.l.l back here so we can finish up this mess and get out. He glanced around to make sure he was un.o.bserved, and set off on his usual circuitous route to the bluff above the landing, to change the bandanna to white before heading back through the rain toward the quarters.

When he thought about it later, he realized that by that time, Thierry was probably already dead.

January woke thinking, Something's wrong.

The hush was broken only by the breathing of sleepers all around him. Smoke touched his face like a knife-blade, and in the gray dimness he saw Gosport standing by the opened slit of the door.

"There's something wrong."

"What's wrong is you got the G.o.ddam door open and it's freezin' in here," said Kadar, sitting up in his blankets. After the fire all the men had moved down to the floor to sleep, letting the boys have the two beds. Yesterday, without a word being said, Quashie had been given one of the beds, and looking over into that dark corner of the room, January saw that the bed was empty.

"There's no bell," said Gosport.

The men looked at each other in the cindery gloom. By the time it was this light they should have been on their way down the quarters street, to the back steps of the cottage where Thierry would be counting out their knives.

Without a word Parson slid from his blankets and got a handful of kindling from its box, blew the banked ash of the fire to life. The boys moaned and huddled closer together in their single cot, like puppies seeking in their sleep the warmth of their dam's side, their exhaustion beyond even the power of the bedbugs to disturb. But January knew that if Thierry had overslept, drunk, it would be no favor to let the boys lie in.

The men went out back and washed, quickly, in the trough, and pulled on their dirty clothes.

January hated the coa.r.s.e texture of the filth in the cloth against his skin, the smell of old sweat and old dirt, the creeping itch of lice and the crusty stickiness of dried cane-juice, but there wasn't time to wash them, these days. No wonder the house-servants despised the cane-hands, and the whites wrinkled their noses when they pa.s.sed. No wonder, after the harvest, men would fall sick as small cuts suppurated and exhaustion long held at bay took its toll.

By gray daylight they hurried along the muddy street toward the mill. They were hungry, but pa.s.sed by the rice cart under the gallery of the carpenter shop. Minta, spoon in hand, followed them to the open ground between the mill, the jail with its whipping-scaffold, and Thierry's dark and silent house, each man recalling no doubt the overseer's temper and his habit of lashing out at whoever inconvenienced him at the time. Ti-Fred was barely able to work even yet, from Thursday's beating, and Gosport moved slowly, still-though he would not speak of it-in obvious pain.

You bell the cat.

Ajax went up to the rear door of the house and knocked, first gently, then more firmly. "Michie Thierry? Michie Thierry, you all right in there? You sick?" He had better manners-or a sufficient sense of self-preservation-than to call out Jeanette's name. Minta was already walking back toward the kitchen, her st.u.r.dy little form silhouetted against the warmth of its lights. There was no sign of Quashie. A moment later January saw Baptiste hurry from the kitchen to the house, disappearing behind the garconniere. Above the house-above the oak trees that stood between it and the river-movement caught January's eye, and in the morning's stillness he heard the cawing of ravens far off.

Early as it was, black birds circled in the air over what had to be Catbird Island.

Thierry lay on his back among the roots, about twenty feet from where the damaged boat had been dragged from its concealment. He had not died well. Blood glistened black on exposed intestines, dragged up out of a slit that opened from pubis to sternum-on clothing soaked and saturated with blood and rainwater, as if the overseer had bathed in red paint.

Ravens cawed angrily as the half-dozen men approached. Buzzards spread witch-cloak wings and hopped a little distance away, annoyed harpies cheated of their prey. A fox who'd hung around in hopes of carrion whipped into the shelter of the snags. Ajax said softly, "Lord G.o.d"; Esteban Fourchet crossed himself.

The smell of the ruptured guts hung thick above the raw stink of the blood. Someone had stuffed a wad of cloth into Thierry's mouth-and what looked like a handful of leaves-to silence him? And then had cut his throat.

January too crossed himself. Though the man had raped and beaten friends of his, had made life literally living h.e.l.l for uncounted hundreds, he made himself whisper, "Dear G.o.d have mercy on his soul," and tried to mean it.

Because Esteban was there n.o.body made the observation that G.o.d had just had mercy on every African soul on Mon Triomphe, but Ajax, Nathan, Harry, and Samson thought it so loud the words were practically audible in the mist-draped hush.

When Esteban went to kneel beside the corpse January stepped behind him as if he would help, to fix in his mind the way it lay: the head bent forward, chin tucked tight; legs spraddled out, arms fallen to the sides. The rain had washed out any tracks or signs. When Esteban drew the corpse forward January saw that the neck and jaw were rigid, though the back and shoulders and limbs were still mostly loose. The fingers were blue, the eyes sunk and flattened in his head. The flesh was cold to January's touch.

The buzzards croaked again, impatient. White-lipped but matter-of-fact, Esteban tugged forth the cloth that had been stuffed in Thierry's mouth. A snowy linen handkerchief, fairly new but unmarked. The blood that clotted its inner end looked gummy, and was stuck full of oak leaves, weeds, dirt. Marie-Noel Fourchet, Madame Helene, and a small knot of house-servants waited on the sh.e.l.l road from the house. Esteban called out, "Better go back into the house, ladies. This isn't good for you to see."

He was probably referring to his stepmother's pregnancy, but Madame Helene let out a shriek and sagged into Baptiste's arms, though Thierry's body was being carried in such a way that it was unlikely she could have seen much besides the dead man's shape. Agamemnon, moving very stiffly and not meeting his master's eyes, stepped forward with a bedcover of striped country- work to drape the body, and the two maids crowded forward in frank curiosity to have a look.

"Now, you girls stand back and let them lay him out decently," Baptiste admonished. "This isn't a show."

Kiki met January's eyes, her own gaze wide with shock.

"Isn't it?" muttered Cornwallis, standing at the rear of the group. But since he spoke in his native English no one but January understood. Thierry's house was locked. Esteban made a distasteful move to find the key in the dead man's pocket but Madame Fourchet said, "I have one," and picked it, with a little hesitation, from the chatelaine on her belt. Her narrow face was calm but the marks of sleepless watching by her husband's bed were printed clear in the corners of her mouth and under her pale eyes.

Esteban glanced warily in the direction of the house, as if he expected his father to come storming out and berate him for letting the overseer die.

By entering the overseer's house in the lead, as close behind Esteban as he could manage, January got an instant's glimpse of the floor of the back room-where the knives were kept-and then the front, before the little cortege tracked mud and water all over the bare boards as they laid Thierry on his stained and crumpled bed.

No water, no mud. Thierry had not returned to his house after leaving the mill in the rain.

"Tell Jacko to saddle one of the cobs and put out a flag on the landing," said Esteban quietly to Ajax. "We need to get Sheriff Duffy here. In the meantime, you and Herc get the men out into the field. We've already lost three hours' work. G.o.d knows what my father's going to say."

The men filed out. January hung back, guessing Fourchet might not give him permission to examine the corpse and hoping to have the two seconds it would take him to extract the keys from the trouser pocket. Unfortunately Harry seemed to have the same idea, and the sight of two large main-gang men maneuvering to be the last one out of Thierry's bedroom was more than even Esteban could miss.

Esteban halted in the doorway, waiting, and there was nothing for January and Harry to do but to leave. "Do you know where M'sieu Robert was going to be staying in Baton Rouge?" asked Madame Fourchet softly, as her stepson locked the doors of the little house. "He must be told as soon as possible."

"Gaufrage's, I should imagine." Esteban named the largest hotel in that town operated by a Frenchman. "If he's gone by that time they'll forward it on. Get back to your work now," he added, turning to discover the house-servants still cl.u.s.tered, avid and fearful, around the cottage steps. "There is nothing to see." His eyes met those of his valet. Agamemnon looked away.

"I want to see," piped up little Jean-Luc, who ran forward and would have tried to climb on the steps and look through the window had Esteban not caught him.

"Ben," added the planter's son, after Jean-Luc had been dragged howling away back to the house by Baptiste. "You share a cabin with Quashie, don't you?" January nodded, knowing what was coming next. "Did he come in last night?"

"No, sir."

Esteban sighed, as if he'd expected this. "That's all, then. Get yourselves some breakfast and get to work." And there was nothing to do but go.

?SIXTEEN.

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, G.o.d had said. Simon Fourchet, and most of the other planters along the river, would have hurried to explain that G.o.d of course didn't understand about la roulaison back then and would certainly have made an exception to the Third Commandment if He'd known. There were some-chiefly Americans-who argued that the slaves shouldn't be permitted to work at all on Sundays, but should be required to attend Christian worship instead.

These generally retreated from that position when it was pointed out to them how much it would cost them to feed their workers entirely from their own stores, or alternatively, how many hours a day would be taken from plantation work each weekday to enable the slaves to cultivate their provision grounds. The slaves themselves were not asked their opinion on the subject.

Mostly, you found G.o.d where you could. A number of the house-servants were Catholics, although some of their beliefs would have startled the Pope. Everyone in the quarters had probably at least been baptized, but when they called on G.o.d they did so by His African names.

After forty years in America, Mohammed still rose before anyone else on the plantation, to kneel and pray toward the Mecca that he would never visit: There is no G.o.d but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet. Sometimes, coming and going at night, January saw him outside the smithy, kneeling on that faded little rug, when everyone but the mill crew was in bed. His hand found the rosary in his pocket and he whispered the words as he circled through the cane-rows toward the house: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Lead us not into temptation and please O G.o.d deliver us from evil. . . .

And as always, the words brought him peace. Cornwallis intercepted him on the gallery. "Michie Fourchet just had his medicine," he said, to January's request. "He's resting now." The dregs of bromide-and-water, not only in the gla.s.s on the tray the valet held but in the empty bottle beside it, amply attested as to Fourchet's reaction to the news of yet another catastrophe to the plantation that was his life.

"I won't take but a moment of his time."

The American valet's tobacco-colored eyes traveled up and down January's tall frame, taking in the field dust thick on his tattered clothing, the sweat that crusted and blackened both the shirts he wore, the vagabond raggedness of the second pair of cutoff trousers worn over the first. The filth that, despite a careful wash in the trough, still streaked his face, his hands, his hair.