Cane River

by Lalita Tademy

  * * *

  Soon after He [ Narcisse ] and others incourged Joe Billis to Marrie awhite Woman, they wasn’t as happy as they all thought they would be.

  --Cousin Gurtie Fredieu, written family history, 1975

  * * *

  Two weeks later T.O. was pulled back to Billes Landing, the cycle unbroken. From his position behind the chicken house he had a partial view when Joseph appeared at the front door of the main house midmorning, walking his old-man shuffle. He made for the barn, saddled his horse, and rode off in the direction of the sawmill. Only minutes later, as if they were waiting, Antoine Morat rode onto the property with another man T.O. didn’t recognize. The unknown man had a professional air about him. When he took off his hat, a great shock of black hair curled around his face, thick as a horse’s mane, setting off little gold-framed glasses that perched at the bridge of his thin nose. He had on a dark jacket and matching trousers, a suit that looked as if it couldn’t carry the weight of an honest day’s work, and thin-soled shoes. With a confident gesture the man pulled a sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket and tapped them against Antoine’s sleeve before Lola let them inside.

  Something was seriously wrong. Wrong enough that he needed to tell someone what he had seen. T.O. was sure these men were up to no good.

  40

  E mily was the last awake, the last one up for the night, in a slow, restless prowl around the house when she heard the disturbance from the front gallery. It was no doubt Joseph, his high-strung disposition stretched to breaking. He drank too much of late, she thought, the liquor making him absent and vague, but it took him beyond the sting his life had become. He often didn’t come into the house, just sitting out on her gallery into the night, and she usually let him be; his behavior was so erratic that even she couldn’t calm him some of the time.

  The screen door creaked in protest as she went outside. Joseph was sprawled in the rocking chair, his hand tightened around a piece of paper. He slept heavily, the sleep of the willfully numbed, or he had passed out. She would find out soon enough. Emily assumed he had suffered another disappointing trip to the lawyer.

  She gently shimmied the creased page from his grip, a note written in his own cramped hand. The moonlight was too dim, so she left Joseph where he was and went back inside to light the kerosene lamp, letting the wick up high to make out the script on the page. The writing was alternately pinched and sprawling.

  January 29, 1907

  Billes Landing

  If I kill myself it will be for the trouble that my wife has given me for 10 years. Bury me in my garden near the asparagus plants. I am tired of hearing her quarrels and abuses of me. I have worked hard and deprived myself to gain what I have, and today see that it has all become misfortune. I cannot understand for what reason she does not want my children to be around me, or come to see me. I have no more life nor hope, so I might as well die or take my life. Without the children, I have nothing left in this world—not relatives nor friends. Those who I thought were friends have turned against me. Those who I thought would help me for my children’s sake have banded together to refuse my wishes.

  My wife has been lost to me for several years. She has treated me lower than a Negro, which has caused my trouble until today, all because my children were colored, but I hope that the law will give them justice notwithstanding their color. I have not been able so far to guarantee their future as I had hoped. My wife knew that I had these children before I married her. She does not eat with me at the table, and does not show any affection or understanding. She always has some excuse to give, and it is for this reason that I give up the fight, to end this life. It is better to have it end.

  Joseph Billes

  Emily exhaled softly. Once more, to this.

  She went to the kitchen and set a pot of strong coffee to drip, and while waiting for the coffee to brew, she checked to make sure everyone else in the house was asleep, looking into their rooms as if they were still her little children to watch over. Mary, the youngest at seventeen, shared the bed with Josephine, twenty-two, like two parts of a whole, even in sleep. T.O. and Joe had both spent a full day at the sawmill and slept the deep sleep of exhaustion at the back of the house, on the closed-in porch that served as their room. Her mother and grandmother shared the back bedroom, both snoring, one a soft whistle, the other a train straining uphill. Her family. The aroma of the coffee pulled her back to the kitchen. Emily tasted the hot, bitter brew, satisfied it was strong enough.

  Joseph Billes’s suicide note, entered into evidence, Louisiana Supreme Court records.

  She poured the coffee in two oversize mugs, sweetened them heavily with sugar, and took them out to the gallery. She set down the mugs, brought another chair from the house, and pushed at Joseph until he crossed to wakefulness. She stroked his grayed hair where it was thinnest. He leaned in to her touch, as grateful as one of her cats. Finally he opened his eyes, and they sat and drank the strong brew in silence for a time.

  “I saw the letter,” Emily said gently.

  “It’s just my first copy,” Joseph said, swirling the coffee slowly in the mug. “I’m really going to do it this time, ’Tite, but I couldn’t without telling you first. I brought you more money.” He pulled a thick packet wrapped in canvas from inside his jacket and handed it to her. His skin gave off a combination of stale tobacco, coffee, and liquor.

  “This is from my account in New Orleans,” he continued. “No one here has any idea of how much I keep down there. I opened it separate from the business. I don’t trust the Colfax bank. They’ve shown they’re against me. And you.”

  Emily took the package, setting the bundle in her lap as Joseph leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes against the dark. “Joseph, what possible good comes from the things you talk about in this letter?”

  “They can make me marry, but they can’t make me live,” Joseph said, eyes still closed. “It all turns to dust anyway.”

  “Your children still need you here.”

  “The children are grown, there’s nothing more I can do for them. They won’t let me.”

  “No one ever let you do anything, Joseph. Why grow faint now?”

  Joseph was quiet for a moment. “You remember Frank Rigsby, scratching out a living on his farm?”

  Emily felt a knot grow hard and cold deep in her stomach. “Of course. He took up with Sarah.”

  “They burned his house to the ground last night, and now he’s disappeared. That wasn’t an accident.”

  “Is Sarah all right?” Emily was more frightened than she wanted to show. She knew there would be trouble the moment Rigsby moved Sarah in with him, a penniless white farmer and a Negro woman without standing. “You said it yourself, Rigsby was poor, without connection. He didn’t have anything to fight back with, not like you.”

  “Sarah is safe for now, back with her people, but you can’t afford to put a good face on this, ’Tite. You have more to lose than anybody. How many times did they come to me to say leave that colored woman alone? Rigsby was a fool for not listening, and Sarah is lucky she didn’t go down in the fire. It could have gone much worse. It’s impossible to fight them all, ’Tite. It’s not just one or two. They drove Rigsby out, and nobody knows whether he’s dead or alive, except that he’s gone. That could have been us, ten years ago.”

  The two of them sat, nursing their cold coffee.

  “I went to the lawyer again today,” Joseph said. “He said I don’t have much of a chance, that I have to give it up.”

  “Give what up?” Emily asked.

  “Trying to pass my land to the children. He says it can’t be done inside the law. That even if it was legal, the town wouldn’t stand for it. He says only so much can be given because they’re illegitimate, but it’s really because of color. He won’t help.”

  “We couldn’t marry, and now they say the children are illegitimate.” Emily shook her head wearily. “Joseph, my mother would say, ‘That’s the way of it, now what do we do about it?
’ Threatening to kill yourself again isn’t any answer. This is all the more reason for you to stay around and take care of them. You left me a long time ago for that woman. Packed me up and carted me out of my own house. That is for you and me to carry between us. But who will be the children’s father if you do this?”

  “I’m tired, ’Tite. It’s too hard.”

  Emily sat upright in her chair, her back no longer touching the supports. Her voice was even, but her coffee spilled as she set the mug down too hard on the small table between the two chairs.

  “You’re tired? You’re the one who’s tired?” She brought her face up close to Joseph’s. “You don’t have the right. You’re the one in the big house on the Landing, stealing down here when you have a need. The girls wait for you to come around as if you’re a beau instead of their father. They’re of the age when they should be finding men of their own, but they’re too good for the Negroes and not up to the standards of the whites. T.O. and Joe Jr. come home at night with ‘Papa did this, Papa did that,’ full of dreams. They need you to clear a way for them through the banks and the railroads, the sawmill and the courts. You have a duty to your children.”

  Joseph ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Listen ’Tite, there’s no more to be done. I tried. You have this land and the house. No one can take that away. I’ve made out a will leaving everything to my nephew. He’ll make sure you all are taken care of. Lola won’t get anything, and my brothers won’t, either.”

  “Do you think I care who won’t get something? All I care about is giving your own flesh and blood a better chance. We need you here. You’re quick to trust Antoine’s son, when Antoine has been so set against us all along. I know you love the children, Joseph, and you have to help them now, even if that makes it harder for you.”

  “They’ve been to see me, the Night Riders.” Joseph gave a helpless shrug. “You’ll be safer if I’m not here.”

  “Are you thinking of me now?” Emily’s eyes flashed hot, and the money bag slipped from her lap. Stacks of paper money spilled out on the cypress boards of the gallery. She left it there. “You write a fool note saying you’re going to kill yourself, and I’m not even in it. All you talk about is your precious white wife, and how she treats you. Was I just a servant to you all those years? Bearing your children, running the store, making a home? You loved me once. When did that play out?”

  Joseph placed his hand on Emily’s, but she batted it away and used it to gather the money back into the canvas bag.

  “That’s one thing that will never change,” Joseph said. “You know that, ’Tite. I was stronger once, but they’ve threatened all of you unless I let the will go.”

  “Think, really think about your children. In my family, we don’t share all of our stories, but it’s easy enough to fill in the gaps, full of white men who left and the colored women who took over the children. Left for France, left for marriage. Angelite was the last to act it out.” Emily set the canvas bag on the gallery planks and took one of Joseph’s hands in hers. “After Jacques left, Angelite turned it inside out and married colored. The first in our family to have a marriage and a baby both, one before the other. Maybe that’s enough of an example to shape a change for the rest, but I don’t think so. You left to marry someone else, Joseph, but you never left your children behind. Don’t leave them now.”

  She poured more coffee from the pot for both of them, the dark liquid barely warm now. “I’m worried about T.O.,” she said, shifting her tone. “There’s something you should know. You told me that you broke with Antoine, but your wife still meets him at the house. Antoine and somebody else T.O. didn’t recognize.”

  “How could T.O. know that?”

  “That’s why I’m worried,” Emily said. “He’s been hanging around that house without you knowing for years. You need to help the boy get on with his own life.”

  “He’s hardly a boy,” Joseph said. “He’s twenty-six years old, and you tell me he spies on me? How long have you known this?”

  “I didn’t until he told me today, but I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. Your leaving hit him harder than any of the others. He worshiped you.”

  “I know.” Joseph held his head in his hands. “Lola never said a word about seeing Antoine. He has no business at the house anymore.”

  “I thought it might be important.” Emily pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Joseph, about the will. If you made one, you can make another. Go see some other lawyer outside the parish, but don’t tell anyone here you’re still trying to leave the land to the children. I know how fond you are of Antoine’s son, but I don’t trust that family.”

  “I should be able to do as I please with my own money,” Joseph said.

  “That’s not the world we live in.”

  “Bring me some paper, ’Tite,” he said finally.

  Emily went into the house and returned with the lamp, a page of Billes Lumber Company stationery, and a pen.

  “You can take back anything you said before and put this one in its place,” she said as she handed the paper and pen to Joseph. She looked over his shoulder as he drafted a new document.

  February 22, 1907

  Billes Landing

  Today I make my testament in my own hand, and I leave all that I have to my children and Antoine Morat, my nephew, in equal parts. My children are all recognized in the records of the courthouse that they were my children, and I gave to them 74 acres of land that day at the same time. I give them my money that they will find in the bank and elsewhere, and the property to be divided in equal parts.

  Joseph Billes

  This will is in French. It reads textually as follows:

  February 22th, 1907

  Billis Landing

  Aujourd’hui je fait mon testament de ma propre main, que je laisse tour ce que j’ai à mais enfants et à Antoine Morat mon neveu, à part egale, Mais enfants sont tous reconnue dans le recorde de court house que c’était mais enfants et je leurs ai donné 74 acres of land en même temps, Je leur donne mon argent qui trouveront en Banque et ailleur, et les propriétés à partage egalle.

  Signed.

  Joseph Billes

  Joseph Billes’s will, entered into evidence with Louisiana Supreme Court.

  They both read the note over, and Emily nodded. “Go on home now, Joseph. Sleep in your own bed. No use making things any worse than they already are. If you start to lose your nerve, remember the ones you’ll leave behind. T.O., Joseph, Josephine, Mary. You can find another lawyer tomorrow when you feel stronger and have him hold the note for safekeeping.”

  “You have to believe me, ’Tite,” Joseph said, squeezing her hand so tightly that it began to hurt. “I’m willing to lose the last drop of blood I have for my children.”

  41

  A cold, steady rain fell, and from the look of the dark clouds across the night sky and the smell of the woods, it could keep up until morning. T.O. pulled his jacket tighter across his slender shoulders. The grayness of February had pressed in from early morning, and the night added its own oppressive dimension. Although the route was familiar through the dripping piney woods to his father’s house, a tightness deep in his chest convinced T.O. something terrible was in the making.

  Even after the shameful confession to his mother, after his promise that he would stop the visits, here he was again, after only one day. But he was the eyes and ears for his family, and trouble was closing in from every direction.

  Joseph Billes was the center of a storm brewing. His threats to find a way to leave his money to his children had caused the resistance to him to grow more forceful, whispers and grumblings yielding to open discussions about moral depravity infecting the community. White people were angry, speaking openly to protest, and it didn’t seem possible things could go on at the same pitch much longer.

  The changes in tone started back when the evenings were still warm and the collected heat of the day turned sun-baked houses into ovens. Folks kept to their g
alleries late, sitting, talking, occupying themselves the best they could. The warm night air easily lifted their words and carried them to T.O. Now, in the cold, damp fogs of an extended winter, he had to prowl ever closer.

  T.O. circled around the back of the house on Billes Landing, and as he approached, angry, insistent voices pressed past the drizzle and hung on the windless air. Since last summer, through fall, and into winter’s cool grip, Lola and Joseph argued all of the time, without caution or reserve. Every word they exchanged was charged, and between them there seemed to be only silence or explosive irritation. Whatever truce they had fashioned over the years had unraveled, beyond repair.

  T.O. crept even closer, crouching on the sodden ground just under the window at the side of the house, his boots caked with sticky, rust-colored mud.

  Lola’s voice was raised, wounded but crystal clear. “I may have been deceived in the beginning by your assurances of reform, but you are utterly incapable and indisposed to make a change in the manner of life you led before. It is only in the presence of your mulatto children and their shameless mother that you are civil, or so I hear. Is that where you were last night?”

  “You never tried to understand me, making only the most feeble of attempts to live with me as a wife.” Joseph’s voice was distracted, almost offhand, as if this were an old dance and he was duty-bound to perform the obligatory steps. T.O. heard the drink behind the words.

  “The only reason you married me,” Lola said, control gone from her voice, “was to protect yourself from the townspeople. You courted me, and married me just to better your position in a community that had rejected you for your wickedness.”

  “It was my money you were after,” Joseph said. “No other man would have you.”