Crooked Crossroads (Child Lost Series Book 1)

by Trinity Crow

  “When I was a girl,” Mrs. Evers remarked, cutting her pork chop into lady-like pieces, “we ate the biggest meal in the middle of the day.”

  I took a bite of cornbread, the sweet cakey texture rich with melted butter. This shit was seriously good.

  “Why's that?' I asked when my mouth was empty.

  “You know, I couldn't say why exactly, just the way things were done. The men would be hungriest, I suppose, having worked outdoors all morning. By supper, they were quieter, exhausted. The meal would be something light, and more often than not, cold meats and vegetables.”

  “Did you grow up in this house?” I asked, wondering if that was too personal.

  Mrs. Evers shook her head, then sighed. It was a sad little sound and so different from her chipper self that I looked up from my plate.

  “Yes and no.” She looked lost in a far away memory. “I was born over to St. Martinsville. My mother…my mother had health problems. Things they could fix with medication these days. She was…” Mrs. Evers stopped, her lips pressed tightly together. “Well, you see, the family thought it best if she didn't have the worry of us children. I came here to stay with relatives when I was nine years old. So, you might say I grew up here, but my childhood was at Bonne Terre in my father's house.”

  If she was looking for sympathy, I was all out. Nine years might be a short childhood, but it was longer than I had. But I had asked, so I just nodded and applied myself to the food. Maybe it was heartless, but I wasn't getting involved. I was trying to get the life story of Julia and Corky, not Adelina Evers.

  When we were done, I offered to help with the dishes, but she turned me down. Instead, we moved outside to the back porch, Mrs. Evers covering the food carefully with a cloth first. She brought out dessert, pound cake and vanilla ice cream.

  “I used to make my own ice cream,” she said, spooning generous portions over the wedges of cake. “But now, all that cranking is too much trouble.”

  She handed me a bowl, waving me to a rocking chair. The cake was really good, as it should be. It was a Delicata's buttermilk pound cake and I had a sneaky suspicion Mr. D had dropped it off to her yesterday. Mrs. Evers settled into her own chair. She pulled opened the drawer of the wicker table beside her and handed me a square little frame.

  “Mind now,” she cautioned, “that's older than both of us put together.”

  It wasn't a photograph. It was a little painting. There were a couple of adults and three kids, just faces, and shoulders. The colors were really bright for something so old, but the personalities of the people weren't as easy to see. The parents were unremarkable, and of the children, only the younger of the two boys stood out with a tilted head and smirk.

  “Well, this is a miniature of Julia's parents, Albert and Nella Trevautier and their three kids, Alain, the oldest, Tobias, oh, he was a handful and the baby, Lousette. Painted on ivory that is. They had a French master come to stay for a week to do family portraits.”

  I studied the picture. “Julia's not in this one,” I said, disappointed. “or Corky.”

  “No, they come later in the story. I just thought to myself, Adelina, you've got to tell this from the beginning. They's all dead now, chile.” She looked sad. “And who's left to remember them? Should be you. Old Corky chose you in a manner of saying, so you should hear the whole history of this land, this family.”

  “Mmmm.” I gave my customer service no commitment sound. I wasn't trying to be Guardian of the Scrolls, just not get killed or die of fright.

  Mrs. Evers made a happy noise as she sampled her ice cream. “Well, let me see, I guess the Trevautiers moved here way back in the 1700’s. Some say they made their money off the pirates, but they’s no proof to that. Most likely spiteful gossip from jealous neighbors.” She nodded her head as she rocked. “It was true the Trevautiers had money but Albert and Nella worked hard as anybody. Harder than most. The family came over with the help of a friend, Valcour Aime. He owned a place over to Vacherie way. They bought this land and built a little house, bought more land, built a bigger house. Albert was a farmer, not really a plantation owner, like most of the neighbors were. He was very against slavery which made him unpopular. Couldn’t get anyone to work for him, not even crackers.”

  I looked over when she said this, but her face was serene, not hearing the dark history of the term, making what she said next pretty ironic.

  “Ugly words were thrown about and the family wasn’t even welcomed in the church.” She paused, rocking gently, enjoying the evening. The sun was low in the sky this time of year, but it would not be full dark till almost nine o'clock. From the magnolia tree, a mockingbird threw out a challenge, daring another bird to know more songs than him. I stared out at the yard trying to imagine it back then. The bushes and vines trimmed back. The porch boards fresh painted instead of peeling with neglect. Had the family sat on this same porch after supper and a listened to a mockingbird call his songs? I had never felt a connection to anyone or anywhere, but something here pulled at me. It stirred up feelings I didn't like and didn't want to deal with. So, I turned to hurry her on with the story, but she spoke before I could.

  “Today…well, the church would throw out anyone who believed in slavery! It was such different times. People say "Oh, I would never have owned other people." But imagine, chile, if all your life, you had been told this was the way it was supposed to be. Why, they even told the slaves that. Read out to them from the Bible about masters and slaves. People don’t understand why slaves fought for the South in the Civil War. It's a sad but true thing that most slaves had to be taught how to be free. Freedom is scary when you have never known it.” Her voice was low and thoughtful. I could hear the echo of experience in her voice.

  I nodded, half to myself and thought about all my foster homes, all the rules in place when you are owned by the state. True, slavery was a hundred times worse, but I could understand the fear of having to make all your own decisions, of facing life without the heavy hand that imprisoned you, but at the same time guided you along. We sat there a moment, lost in our own thoughts.

  “Well, old Albert caved in and bought some slaves. Maybe he figured if you can't beat them, join them.”

  My head shot up and I stared at her. This was not what I wanted to hear.

  “Chile, your face!” Mrs. Evers' wrinkles crinkled up with her laughter. "Don’t get down on Albert yet! Here was a wealthy man, lots of land, lots of work and crops rotting in the field. He bought strong young men to harvest and build cabins. He knew he couldn't set them free, but he could provide for them.

  “Back in the day, slave cabins were set on the worst bit of land, unusable for anything else really, wet, drafty swamp, full of bugs and mosquitoes. Lots of folks took sick and died. Albert built his cabins on good land, with trees and clean air. He bought up whole families at the auction block and settled them in. Soon, they had over sixty slaves and Nella had to put her foot down because old Albert was a soft touch when it came to the children. Why, at the markets, they sold little children right away from their mothers. Albert couldn't but see a little one on the block without buying the pore chile. He found them a place among the families, here at Ruelliquen.”

  “Ruelliquen?” I asked, not recognizing the word.

  “The old name for the plantation, chile. It's actually Ruelle Liquen, which is French for Lichen Lane after that oak allee out there. She waved her hand in the direction of the drive. "Course, nobody calls it that anymore.”

  Which was weird, since everything in this town had a name and a history, the Fruge house that had been empty since I moved here, the streets were Calle or Rue, left over from French and Spanish colonial times. Even Two Dog pond, where someone had drowned some puppies forever ago, had hung on to it's past.

  Mrs. Evers took a drink of tea. She had offered me some, but I stuck to milk with my cake and ice cream. “We used to have bees,” she remarked, “ and all our tea was sweetened with our own cane sugar and a touch of honey. It's all go
ne now.” She stared out into the yard, seeing the honeybees of yesteryear, I guessed, while I was picturing people worked to death in those sugarcane fields while others sat around sipping iced tea. Mrs. Evers shook herself back to the present.

  “He treated those slaves real well, taught them all to read and write. Now, that was against the law back then. For the slaves' part, they were devoted to the Trevautiers. They were well fed and clothed and never beaten. Why, Albert could no more have beat a slave than his wife. It wasn't in him. He let all his people know, the success of the plantation meant their own happiness. Should the plantation fail, well, what would happen to them? He didn't do it to threaten them, but to make them take pride and ownership in their work. This was their home too, and it was all hands to the plow to keep it going. The bonds of loyalty between the slaves and the Trevautier was something unheard of in those times. Most owners slept with a shotgun, terrified the slaves would rise up and murder them in the night.

  "Some people accused Albert of witchcraft and voodoo. He just laughed. Built his own little chapel and hired a northern minister to preach the love of God to master and slave alike. Then the children were born, and it was no stretch at all to see how they would grow up thinking of black folk as people and not just slaves.”

  Mrs. Evers shook her head, she looked really old all at once. “And that’s where all the trouble came in. Poor Julia.” Mrs. Evers dropped her spoon into her bowl. “Chile, I have wandered all away from what you came for.”

  “No, that's okay,” I said. “It's really interesting.”

  And it was. Those people she was talking about had run around this same yard, rested underneath those same oaks and been in my carriage house. The thought kind of fascinated me and weirded me out at the same time. But there was something off about the way she talked. I knew she had grown up with segregation and all that, but it was still weird to hear her talk about people like things or like children. Maybe Albert was a good slave owner, but he was still a slave owner and one who knew it was wrong. Didn't that make him worse than the brainwashed rest of them?

  I stood up, putting my bowl on the table. Should I go? At this rate, it'd be a month before she got to Julia. I stood there hesitantly.

  “Well, now Julia. She was the bright light in that house after Louisette died.”

  “She died?” I said and sat back down.

  “Yes, chile. Life was hard and dangerous in those days. She was just nine years old, it was right before her tenth birthday, not too long after this was painted."

  I looked again at the picture before me, the blank-faced parents, the boys, one stiff, one saucy, and a little girl in something frilly and white. Her little face smiled up at me. It was crazy to feel sad about something that happened two hundred years ago. Stupid. I mean, I knew she was dead. She had lived in the 1700's, for Pete's sake. But she died right after this picture was done, and that was creepy and awful. And to have drowned in the river not far from this porch. I remembered the glint of water I had caught from the top of the stairs, and hurriedly suppressed the image of a ghost girl wandering the banks.

  “She was the sweetest little girl you ever saw, but she was never quite right after a childhood fever. The things they faced back then, yellow fever, typhoid, malaria. The family was so thankful she had lived through it, they took extra special care. Spoiled her, you might say. On that day, Lousette wanted to go down to the river, wouldn't take no for an answer. It's a mystery how she slipped out the house and wandered away. Lousette drowned down there in the river, about a half mile past where the brush starts. Course, all this was cleared land, back then.”

  A chill swept over me. How had I known that? I mean, I could have guessed the land was cleared back then, but I had known her death was from drowning in the river. I had known that before Mrs. Evers had said it. If I wanted to, I could walk straight back to where the river lay. It was that clear in my mind. I bit my lip and told myself to get a grip. All this ghost malarkey was getting to me. It was just a coincidence or my stupid imagination.

  “Poor Tobias.” Mrs. Evers sighed, a harsh, empty sound. “He found her floating in the water. Near as they could figure, she had tried to cross on the stepping stones, slipped and hit her head. The family went to pieces. Nella wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t sit down, wouldn’t slow down. Albert, well, he near lost his mind, took to the drink, he did. Tobias went the other direction. He quit roaming the woods and went out to work in the fields with the men.” Mrs. Evers paused, her hands were still, the uneaten cake forgotten. She looked out at something she saw only in her mind.

  How bad would that suck? To save someone from illness, to think someone safe from death and then to lose them anyway? I decided there was no use in imagining something I would never let happen to me.

  We sat in silence, sharing the sadness of a family long buried. But on that porch, to the two of us, the grief seemed fresh and real. It seeped into the air and surrounded us, making me uncomfortable. I stared at her wrinkled profile. Was this what it was like to have family? So that some two hundred years later your relatives could speak of you as if they had known you, and sigh as if they missed you still? Was she wondering who's left to remember her?

  The first of the crickets chirped questioningly into the twilight, and the smell of night-blooming jasmine drifted our way, borne on currents from the bayou that circled LaPierre on three sides. Mrs. Evers shook her head, letting go of whatever her dark thoughts were.

  “It was maybe a year after Lousette was laid to rest when Alain found Julia. Could not have been more than 3 months old, a little mite of a thing. Left under a tree in a basket, with a note spelled so bad, took forever for them to make sense of it. "Please take care of my baby," it said.”

  “Julia wasn’t Nella and Albert’s daughter?” I asked, surprised.

  “Well, yes and no.” Mrs. Evers hesitated. She looked over at me, then shook her head, deciding something. “She wasn’t born to them, but she was loved like no daughter had ever been loved. Why, that baby wasn’t just part of the family, she was what held the family together. Of course, the slaves knew. You may wonder how such a secret could be kept.” Mrs. Evers nodded and raised her eyebrows at my imagined surprise. “You have to understand the absolute loyalty of the black folk who lived at Ruelliquen. Slavery was a terrible cruel business, families ripped apart, no rights, forced to do all kinds of awful things. Some slave masters bred them like livestock to produce the biggest, strongest workers. Some slave masters claimed as their right what should only ever be a woman’s privilege to share. People were beaten over trivial offenses, killed over others. It was a desperate, uncertain, terror-filled life. The folks here knew what it was they had. Never were they beaten, never sold, never used like cattle. They had decent houses, were taught to read and encouraged to marry, and every man, woman, and child was treated with respect and dignity.”

  But they were still slaves I thought again. It sounded almost like she was explaining away Albert's decision to make money off the lives of others instead of making do with hired labor. He was rich to start with, wasn't he? But Mrs. Evers was off on a roll of praise.

  “Albert was famous the county over for the way he spoke to his slaves. Most chalked it up to him being an odd duck. He always asked and never told, and never said boy. If he wanted the horse hitched, he would say “Lemuary, would you please hitch up the team?” Nella was just the same and so they raised the children. You never saw a people so loyal.” Her head bobbed approvingly, but I felt something stick in my throat.

  Well, yeah, they were loyal, but what were their choices? They were grateful their owner treated them like people. How shitty was that?

  “Even so, it never started out to be a secret. They loved Julia and accepted her as a daughter. As she grew, it was natural to think of the future and all the advantages she would have as a daughter of a plantation owner, instead of the thrown-away child of Lord knows who.”

  I stiffened, that cut a little too close to the bone. I sat th
ere, keeping my face blank, letting her words roll off of me.

  “Class and status were very big deals back then, chile. Today, well, it’s almost a mark of pride to have made something of yourself from nothing, but back then if you came from nothing, you were nothing. No matter what you made of yourself in life.

  “No one was sure she would live, burning up with fever and covered in chigger bites. They thought to keep her out of Nella’s sight. If the baby died, she wouldn’t know, you see and have that grief all over again. Lord, you could not have a child in that house without Nella knowing. She took that baby right upstairs, named her Julia after her mother, and when the baby’s fever broke the next day, Nella cried for six hours straight. They had to put her to bed with a hot toddy.” Mrs. Evers stood up slowly and gathered together our bowls.

  I looked out at the yard. While we had talked, the evening had slid past dusk, and there were pools of dark shadows between me and the questionable safety of the carriage house.

  “Mrs. Evers?” I said, in a rush, “not to ruin your story, but how did Julia die?”

  “Oh, chile! Don't you get in a tizzy over this, but she was murdered. Right in that haunted room of your carriage house.”

  I stood there, taking in something I would rather not have known. The sound of the crickets grew loud and unpleasant as they shrilled the same note over and over. I tried to make my lips form a question or remark, but Mrs. Evers had moved past the screen door and into the dark rooms beyond. Then her voice floated out from the shadows.

  “Come by again, Chile. You should know the history. You're a part of it now”

  Chapter 8

  As soon as I opened my eyes, the next morning, I regretted it. I was stiff and cranky and now had to go to work on two nights of crappy sleep in a row. There had been no repeat of the angry dead, but I had laid awake half the night with creepy thoughts running through my restless mind, unable to convince myself everything was okay. Feeling like a kid, I had left the lights on and fell asleep with my electric bill climbing and still in my jeans. I also didn't have any answers. What I did have, was a feeling I had been screwed over. Either time was slipping for the old lady or she was a flat out liar. And then there was the whole "centuries old murder/angry killer ghost" thing that hadn't come up in the big "being honest before you rent" speech. The big question was…Was I in danger or not? I had an idea where to get those answers. But I wasn't happy about it.