Cane River

by Lalita Tademy

  “Well, the river is calm enough now to take you across. Won’t charge you extra for the baggage, neither,” the boatman said, motioning to the moonlight chair.

  Clement stepped forward onto the platform boat, and the boatman pulled him across to the other side of the river by the hand winch and thick rope tied to the sturdiest post on the far shore. As the boatman strained, Clement began to worry about Tessier’s reaction to his loss of the boat and Narcisse Fredieu’s reaction to the lost bearskins.

  It was dawning on Clement that perhaps he had made the wrong choice, between the bearskins and the chair.

  * * *

  Once Clement got to the other bank of the river, he didn’t even stop to dry out. He still had a distance to go, and the rain was showing scant signs of letting up. It seemed reckless to him somehow to accept any delay, and it was inevitable that he would get soaked again in a few minutes. Better to keep walking. He walked on along roads and through woods to get to Narcisse Fredieu’s farm.

  When he reached the familiar markings of the Fredieu plantation, he waited at the back of the house while someone went to fetch Narcisse. He was so tired and so cold that he could hardly tell the difference when the rain stopped its pounding and worked its way into a steady drizzle. Red clay from the river clotted in his hair and, despite the rain, had embedded itself deep into the pores of his skin and his clothes. He was bleeding from cuts he didn’t remember, and he concentrated most on swallowing the torment of the random spasms that seized up his right leg, carrying him from numbness to pain and back again. He was shaking uncontrollably as he held the rocking chair to his chest and waited for the white man to come out of the house.

  Narcisse came out of the back door, standing dry under the shelter of the eaves overhanging the gallery, dressed carefully in his normal style. “You look a fright. Where are my bearskins?” he said, looking Clement up and down.

  “M’sieu Narcisse, something has happened, not my fault,” Clement began. “The storm came up so quick and the water had already been rising and M’sieu Tessier’s boat was lost. I couldn’t save it. I was to deliver the bearskins to you, but they went down the same as the boat. It wasn’t my fault. A suckhole tried to drag me down. M’sieu Tessier told me not to let anything happen to the boat or me either, but the river was too strong.” Clement waited. There was nothing to do now but wait.

  “What are you holding on to there, Clement?”

  Clement was bewildered for a moment. The chair was more of a thought to him than a physical presence, and he was almost surprised to look down and see it. He saw his mistake at once, as soon as Narcisse called attention to the chair, but it was too late. He was right in coming to Narcisse Fredieu first, but he should have left the chair in the woods and come back for it later.

  “This is a chair I was bringing to my wife on M’sieu Ferrier’s farm.”

  “How is it that you ended up with that chair, and with the same breath you tell me that my skins and Tessier’s boat are at the bottom of the river?”

  Clement had spent his life tuned to the changing moods of white folks, and the man before him was ready to lash out. Any interchange with him now was like being forced to play with a cottonmouth snake. The outcome was predictable.

  “When the boat pulled toward the suckhole, everything spilled out, M’sieu. The chair must have been thrown free of the pull. I just grabbed at whatever I saw when I was swimming away.” Clement made his voice contrite. “I could have gone down, too.”

  “You were afraid for your life, but you just happened to grab for the chair?” Narcisse sneered. “Why not just happen to grab for my skins?”

  “It was all so fast, M’sieu. I lost my good clothes and my shoes, too.” Clement looked down at the ground as he talked.

  “What do I care about your worthless shoes? I needed those skins. I needed them today.”

  “I’m sorry, M’sieu Narcisse. I was just trying to follow M’sieu Tessier’s orders and save myself.” Clement didn’t dare look up into Narcisse’s face. “I wanted to get here as soon as I could to tell you what happened, so you wouldn’t be waiting on me. I should head on back and account to M’sieu Tessier now. He’s going to be powerful upset.”

  Narcisse paused, a long pause full of thought. Clement kept his eyes on Narcisse’s boots, but as sure as he was that Narcisse kept his stern, disapproving face, he recognized something different in his voice as soon as he started to speak. Narcisse’s voice was peppered with some personal pleasure he could not disguise. It was like the shifting of the river that morning, first sucking him in and then throwing him toward the safety of the shore.

  “If it was up to me, you’d pay for the loss in more ways than one. But, unfortunately, you’re another man’s property, not mine. You make your way on over to Ferrier’s farm now, and stay the night, like you always do. Get someone there to dress your cuts. You can’t go back to Tessier’s looking like that. Go on now.”

  Clement backed away from the house, slowly at first, not understanding the nature of his good fortune. Narcisse Fredieu was unpredictable, sometimes generous and sometimes harsh; he knew that from quarter’s talk. He had expected to bear the brunt of Narcisse’s anger, and instead Narcisse had let him go untouched.

  He limped on toward Philomene, his moonlight chair cradled in his arms.

  14

  P hilomene knew the driving rains and the lightning that lit up the inky darkness of the sky would not stop Clement from coming to see her for their permission days. Despite the storm and the warnings from her mother inside their cabin, she went out to check both paths each hour that passed, battling the rain and the winds. The landing was swollen with water. She hoped Clement came on foot.

  “You worry those floorboards to death, Philomene,” Suzette said. “All you can do is have a warm fire waiting and something ready for him to eat. You cannot get him here faster. Be useful, sit down and work this quilt with me. We will pray for him.”

  Midmorning the sky had opened of a sudden and poured a dizzying amount of rain. The water came fast and hard, partnering with the wind in first one direction and then another, delivering more than the waiting earth could drink. Exploding light followed by deep thundering booms did not interrupt the flow and the intensity of the rain, and the sky became a mockery of both day and night. Fleeting light produced silhouettes and transient shapes instead of three-dimensional objects with texture and detail. At last the sounds became ordinary, and the rain changed to a steady flow.

  In the middle of the afternoon Philomene finally made out Clement’s figure coming from out of the woods, hunched and hatless. He moved toward the cabin like a wounded animal, with a slow and dogged determination. He was covered head to toe with red mud, favoring one leg over the other, awkwardly clutching a chair in front of him. Philomene rushed out into the rain to lead him into the cabin, but when she tried to pry the chair from him, he would not let go.

  “For you,” he kept repeating through chattering teeth.

  Clement made puddles on the floor where he half sat, half collapsed, next to the fireplace. Suzette wiped at his face with a washrag while Philomene began to remove his drenched-through clothes. He wouldn’t release his hold on the chair.

  They toweled him as dry as they could and wrapped him in both of their sleeping blankets before he stopped shaking enough to talk again.

  “I had to choose,” he said, still clutching the chair.

  Slowly he began to tell them what had happened to him. He started with the early-morning warnings from Tessier about taking care of his boat and kept on all the way through to the anger that turned itself into a reprieve from Narcisse Fredieu, with his instruction to come to Ferrier’s farm.

  “I have to get back to M’sieu Tessier, let him know how it happened,” Clement said, and tried to stand. His legs were weak, and he had to sit back down on the pallet.

  “Not until the storm passes through,” said Suzette. “You are unwell.”

  “No,” Philomene said.
“Clement is right. Something is false, M’sieu Narcisse sending Clement here too easy. We cannot leave this to chance.” She paced the floor. “We must take the matter to M’sieu Ferrier without further delay. Clement has to convince M’sieu Tessier he did everything he could to save the boat and the bearskins.”

  Philomene took Clement’s cold, clammy hands into her own. “If M’sieu Ferrier takes you back in the wagon today, and renews his offer to buy, you might escape punishment. There is advantage to M’sieu Tessier seeing you as you are now.” She held his gaze. “Clement, are you able enough? Two white men bargaining is stronger than any appeal from us.”

  “I can make it,” Clement said.

  Philomene turned to Suzette. “Maman, you must persuade Madame Oreline to stand up for Clement. Strong enough for her to convince her husband. Do you think you can?”

  Suzette looked from Clement, shivering, into Philomene’s pinched face. “We will see,” she said.

  Clement leaned unevenly on Philomene in the slow walk to the farmhouse, while Suzette ran ahead. By the time they reached the back door of the kitchen, Suzette had brought Oreline to the large back room.

  “Come in, sit him down,” Oreline said.

  Clement shook off help and sat heavily on the bench in the kitchen.

  “Madame, if you might listen, and report to your husband,” Suzette began, and poured out the story.

  Within the half hour after Oreline first saw Clement, with his battered face and sickness already coursing through his body, Ferrier had hitched up the wagon.

  They watched with both hope and fear as Ferrier urged the horse forward out into the final throes of the storm, taking Clement back to Tessier’s plantation.

  15

  A s soon as Narcisse saw Clement head back to the woods toward Ferrier’s farm, still clutching the chair, he called for his horse to be saddled. The boy would make a beeline to Philomene and stay until Sunday dusk before heading back to Tessier’s plantation. By the time he gave his account of what happened on the river that morning, Narcisse would have already done what he needed to do.

  Narcisse would have preferred to be in front of the warmth of a steady fire with a touch of bourbon, and not out on horseback in this kind of weather, but it was time to pay Jacques Tessier a long overdue visit. If he managed it well, Clement could be visiting Philomene for the last time.

  * * *

  Narcisse rode through the bower of cedars marking the entrance to Tessier’s home site, and a young honey brown man in flapping shoes came running out to take care of his horse. Narcisse took a quick look around as he approached the house. Tessier had done well for himself. His plantation was twice the size of Narcisse’s own.

  Tessier himself appeared at the front door as Narcisse shook out his dripping coat and knocked the water off his slouch hat under the eaves of the wide gallery.

  “Narcisse Fredieu,” Tessier greeted him warmly. “This is a pleasant surprise. Come in, get warm. What brings you out in weather like this? I certainly didn’t expect any visitors today.”

  “Too foul a day to be out, that is the truth,” Narcisse said as they passed into the front room with the comfort of its blazing fire. “I thought I should get over here as soon as I could about that fool Clement of yours and the damage he’s done.”

  “I sent him out this morning to settle us square on the bearskin business. I’ve been regretting it since the storm blew in. What’s happened?”

  “He dragged himself over to my place with some story about losing your boat and not knowing what happened to my skins. You’re out a pretty piece of change behind the two of those. But the whole while, he’s hugging some chair he claims is his that he managed to save when everything else is lost. The chair looked as good as new. What do you make of that?”

  “You say my boat was lost?” Tessier did not look happy. “Is Clement whole?”

  “The boy didn’t look any the worse for what he claimed he went through. He looked fine to me, just in a hurry to go running off to see Ferrier’s girl. He didn’t seem to care about your boat or my skins. Just kept talking about how he lost his good clothes and his shoes. Instead of heading back here, he went on to Ferrier’s.”

  “But he did come to you first, to let you know what happened?” Tessier asked.

  “Probably just because it was on the way to Ferrier’s.”

  “Why didn’t you fetch him back with you?”

  “I offered, but he begged off. He had something else on his mind, that was clear to see, on Ferrier’s place. I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t sitting in front of a big fire right now, laughing about the whole thing.”

  Tessier looked doubtful. “That doesn’t sound like Clement. If he’s hurt, I’d better send someone to bring him back. It’s nasty out there. It won’t do me much good to have a sick boy on my hands.”

  “Valuable skins and a boat lost because of Clement’s carelessness, and all he thinks about is his own ragged clothes and shoes gone. He’s safe over to Ferrier’s. When the weekend has passed, he’ll come swaggering back at his regular time with some cock-and-bull story of what happened. You shut your eyes to the boy’s faults. Tessier, I’m afraid I need to press my claim for those skins. Maybe we can work out some labor arrangement. Clement could come to work the price of the skins off with me. I might even be willing to buy him, minus the price of the skins, of course.”

  “If you’re so down on the boy, why would you want him on your place?”

  “I’m just thinking about you and me making the best out of the mess this boy caused today.”

  Tessier poured more brandy, first for Narcisse and then for himself. “Ferrier has proposed to buy him as well, but I’ve been sitting the fence because I’m fond of Clement, and he shows promise as a blacksmith. Ferrier wants to expand his farm, and then neither of us has to worry about all this going back and forth so much between our plantations. The truth is, our full-time blacksmith can handle the work fine most of the time by himself, and I could spare the boy. I never much liked these marriages across plantations.”

  “It seems to me with the bearskins to be worked off, I have the stronger claim.”

  “The stronger claim rests with how much Clement can bring. I’d want to talk to Ferrier before I finalized an arrangement.”

  Narcisse kept his face impassive. He decided to let the subject rest for the time being and pursue his advantage later.

  The squall ebbed and flowed outside as Narcisse and Tessier talked crops, weather, and the horse race they had both attended the weekend before at Monette’s Ferry. The afternoon slipped past effortlessly, the storm beating at the windowpanes and the wind screeching loudly through the trees. It was pleasant to pass the time in front of Tessier’s hearth, dry and spared from the excesses of the storm, and they were both surprised to hear a wagon approach around four o’clock as the last of the storm blew itself out.

  Both Tessier and Narcisse went to the door to see who would be out in weather like this, as Tessier’s mulatto went out in the rain to assist. There were two visitors in the dripping wagon, both with oilskin protective coverings thrown over them.

  Ferrier dropped the reins and jumped down as soon as the horse stopped, without the aid of the manservant. The other rider struggled to step down from the high bed of the wagon, moving slowly with clumsy movements, obscured by the oilskin that had been pulled around him.

  Slowly the realization came that the man was Clement, clearly battered and moving in halting steps, as if in pain. Narcisse looked at Clement, and ripe bubbles of rage swelled. This good-for-nothing boy had lost his skins and, worse, had captured Philomene. The sniveling brown boy wasn’t worth much by what he could see.

  Ferrier shook out his oilskin under the eaves of the gallery. As the manservant took the horse and wagon to the protection of the barn, Clement limped to the edge of the gallery, rain streaming from his oilskin onto the cypress planks.

  Clement bowed his head and waited.

  “What do you
have to say for yourself, Clement?” Tessier asked.

  “I’m sorry, M’sieu Tessier,” Clement said. “I lost the boat and the bearskins to the river. I almost didn’t get out myself. I tried to save them. I’m sorry, M’sieu.”

  Clement’s face bore a resemblance to a burlap bag overstuffed with large rocks, lumpy and puffed out in irregular places. One eye was swollen almost shut, and a cut at his temple had reopened during the ride, unleashing a small but stubborn rivulet of blood that crept down his face.

  “I have some light to shed on this, Tessier,” Ferrier said. “Why don’t you send the boy to get dry?”

  Tessier’s mouth was set. “Go on, Clement. See after yourself. We’ll talk about this later.”

  The three planters walked back toward the warmth of the fire and prepared to sort the situation out.

  * * *

  “I’ve come to renew my offer for Clement.” Ferrier’s craggy face looked strained. “His wife and children are on my place. It makes sense.”

  “Where did that boy get himself off to? We need more glasses.” Tessier’s annoyance was clear until Ferrier waved away the offer of brandy. “Seems Clement is in high demand. Narcisse just made an offer for him as well, in lieu of lost bearskins.”

  Ferrier did not try to hide his surprise. “It appears Monsieur Fredieu has a great interest in certain aspects of other people’s plantations.”

  Before Narcisse could respond, Tessier’s mulatto entered the room with a show of urgency. “Sorry, M’sieu Tessier, but there’s three white boys from downriver come to return your boat. They say it washed up on the bank, and they knew it to be yours by the initials carved on the seat.”

  “A day not fit for man or beast, and more surprise visitors than I’ve had in a month of Sundays. Excuse me, gentlemen.”