Pandora wanted to scold Nettie firmly. One of these days the crafty old woman wouldn’t be so lucky. She would wind up in jail! But Nettie’s smile chased all thoughts of a rebuke from Pandora’s mind.
“Can I give you a lift home, Nettie?” Pandora asked.
Nettie, already headed toward her friend’s waiting buggy, cackled again and slung her croaker sack of trashcan-treasures up to the seat.
“Bless you, Missy! It ain’t far, I know. But I think I cut my foot on one of them goddamn shells.”
Pandora shook her head as she climbed in beside the woman. “Nettie, you really must get some shoes. The weather will be turning cold soon. You’ll catch pneumonia going barefoot. Perhaps I can find some to fit you.”
Nettie scratched her chin and laughed again. “Honey, I got more damn shoes than you could shake a stick at. It ain’t I don’t got ’em. It’s just I don’t wear ’em! Take after my mama, I reckon. I seen her wear them fancy slippers of satin to go to balls, but when she was home with only me and pappy and the servants, why she’d as soon take a lickin’ as put on her blasted shoes.”
Pandora smiled indulgently, making no comment. Nettie had more tales than the law allowed. The old woman claimed to have come to Galveston back in the days when Jean Laffite brought his men from Louisiana to establish new pirating headquarters at what he thought was Campeachy, Mexico. The pirate missed his mark and settled instead on Galveston Island—a wide sandbar back then, inhabited only by snakes, alligators, and a tribe of Karankawa Indians.
Only four years later, the U.S. Navy forced the band of a thousand smugglers and privateers to leave Galveston after they’d fired on an American ship. Nettie claimed her father left her to live with a couple who remained on the island. She’d grown up while Galveston grew, living through the years when the town was wide open. Back then it had been known by the drifters who settled the village in the 1840s as Saccarap, after Saccarappa, Maine. Some of the settlers came, bringing Maine timber with them to build their houses.
Pandora thought for a moment, fixing dates in her mind. Laffite’s lawless band had come to Galveston way back in 1817. Why, that would make Nettie nearly eighty, even if she arrived as an infant!
“Nettie, how old are you?” Pandora asked.
With a chortle and a grin, she replied, “Ain’t how old you are, honey. It’s how old you feel!” She paused, sighing deeply. “I feel like I’m nigh on to a hundred and twelve-teen today.”
“Why? What’s wrong, Nettie?”
“It’s my boy Dan’l. He’s got the miseries. I was hoping to come by some cash money today so I could buy him a bottle of horse liniment for his damn, old creaky joints.” She sighed again. “Guess he’ll just have to suffer on through without it. I ain’t no good at stealin’. Never was!”
Pandora reined in her horses outside Drummond’s Drug Store. “Wait here, Nettie. I won’t be a moment.”
As good as her word, Pandora was back in a flash, carrying a bottle of violet-blue liniment. She held it up for Nettie to inspect. “Is this what Daniel needs?”
The old woman beamed. “Why, if you ain’t just a pure angel, honey! That’ll set ole Dan’l right in no time. And it makes me feel better already. I been so worried about that boy!”
That boy, Pandora knew, was older than Nettie, if the woman’s tales held any truth at all. Daniel had been a slave, “snatched from the very jaws of death by my mama, back before I was born, when he was just a tad,” claimed Nettie. After this rescue, he was considered to be “Madame’s boy” by the family’s other servants. So now, Nettie referred to him as her boy. But the bond of loyalty and trust between the pair went much deeper than the relationship of mistress and servant. The two of them had each other and precious little else.
Pandora turned her buggy into Water Street, spying Nettie’s two-room shack—the town eye-sore. It was constructed of bits and scraps of wood, tarpaper, tin, and a door with peeling paint that Nettie had found washed up on the beach after the hurricane that killed Pandora’s parents. The outside was decorated with handbills, bright splashes of paint, and bits of broken mirror—“To keep the haints away,” Nettie had told her.
“Hope he ain’t up and died on me while I was gone,” Nettie grumbled. “That’d be like him. Always so damn ornery and wantin’ to do things his way.”
Pandora felt a moment’s panic. Then her mind eased. People didn’t die of rheumatism, after all. She hurried toward the sagging door.
Nettie touched shoulder. “Best let me go in first,” she said. “Could be he ain’t up to company just now.”
The old woman—liniment in hand—hurried inside alone. When Pandora heard two voices, she felt relieved. Daniel was still with them. Very much with them, as he and Nettie launched into a heated argument. Pandora couldn’t tell what they were saying, but their anger was perfectly clear.
Moments later, Nettie hobbled out and slammed the door so hard after her that it almost fell off its rusty hinges.
“Goddamn-old-son-of-a-diseased-nigger-whore!” Nettie swore.
Pandora tried not to look shocked, but Nettie did have a colorful way with words at times.
“You know what he just done?” Nettie shrilled. “He laid into me for stealing. When all I was trying to do was get him some medicine. Damned old black bastard. I shoulda just let him suffer. Serve him right. He don’t care nothing about me. Ain’t no reason I should give a good goddamn what happens to him!”
Only then did Pandora realize that Nettie was crying. Daniel’s scolding wounded her deeply. She felt for the woman. She put her arm around Nettie’s quaking shoulders and whispered, “He didn’t mean it. Don’t cry!”
Nettie jerked away from her and swiped a dirty sleeve across her face. “I ain’t cryin’! You think I’d waste a tear on that old shiftless, ornery bag of bones? Hell no! Come on. Let him stew a while in there. Me and you’ll go over to the big house and set a spell.”
Pandora knew that by the “big house” Nettie referred to the ruins of Laffite’s mansion, Maison Rouge. Now, only the stone steps and a pile of rubble remained. According to legend, the house was a magnificent showplace in its day, the only real house on the island during that time. All of Laffite’s men lived in shacks, rough lean-tos not much different from Nettie’s jerry-built house. For no reason anyone knew, Laffite’s house had been painted bright red. Some said the Devil himself did it to get even with Jean Laffite.
“You see the Boss made a bargain with Old Nick hisself,” Nettie had told her long ago. “He said he’d build him the most wonderful house. But in payment, he demanded the soul of the first living being he saw after it was finished. Next morning ole sneaky Laffite, he threw out a mangy dog to the Devil. Satan got him back though, painted that house bright red like a target. Them Navy ships way out in the Gulf could spot that place, plain as could be.”
Whatever the truth about Maison Rouge, the ruins fascinated Pandora. She had been drawn to the site from the time she first came to Galveston. Somehow its mystery lived for her as a tangible force in her life.
As the two women drew near the house and walked over to the old ballast stone steps, Pandora felt a rush of sensations. Voices came alive in her head. A man and a woman were arguing. A baby was crying.
“I won’t leave here!” the woman sobbed. “You can’t make me! I know where I belong. My place is here with you!”
Covering her ears with both hands, Pandora sank to the mossy steps. She closed her eyes, willing the voices away. They faded, but in their place she heard cannon fire, then the roar of a storm—the howling wind and crashing waves, followed by screams and hysterical sobs. Pandora felt the cold rain slashing her face, tearing the clothes from her body. In her arms, the baby was howling, terrified by the mother’s fear.
When she began to come out of it, Nettie was shaking her. “You all right?”
Pandora opened her eyes. The sun was shining brightly. The air was calm, still, warm. Ships rode safely at
anchor in the harbor before them. There was no storm… no baby! Only the worn stone steps, a lizard lounging in the sun nearby, and Nettie sitting beside her, holding her hand.
“Lord, Lord, them was some times, back then.” Without preamble, Nettie launched into another of her tales. “Why, back in 1818, they was a tropical cyclone come through this place like you wouldn’t believe. Lasted two whole damn days, it did, with winds so fierce it like to blew us clean to hell. When it hit the island, it sounded just like cannons shooting off from out in the Gulf.” Nettie paused and shook her head. “By God, I can still hear it!”
So can I! thought Pandora, wondering if the old woman were a mind reader who could sense her thoughts.
“When it was all over, there wasn’t but half a dozen houses left standing. Maison Rouge rode it out, but most wasn’t so lucky. The Gulf waters got so high.” She raised her hand to indicate the level. “Come right over the men’s damn boot tops. Three ships was lost with all hands. A fourth got blowed clear up onto dry land over to Virginia Point. She was some goddamn monster storm, she was!”
“Nettie, you must have been very young at the time,” Pandora said. “How can you remember it all so vividly?”
For a long time, the old woman searched Pandora’s face, her own unsmiling. Pandora became almost mesmerized by Nettie’s wide, blue-black eyes.
When Nettie finally answered, her voice was no more than a whisper. “Don’t know how I can remember so much. Ain’t sure how you can either. But you do, don’t you?”
Pandora sat there, stunned, for several moments. Her heart was racing and perspiration beaded her brow. Finally, Nettie looked away, releasing Pandora from the strange paralysis.
“I’d better be getting home, Nettie. I have a lot of packing to do.” Pandora rose quickly. “I hope Daniel gets better.”
“Don’t worry none about Dan’l. He ain’t gonna die, less he just uglies away one of these days. Besides, that boy claims he got something yet left to do ’fore he lies down for good.” Nettie leaned close to Pandora and whispered, “He swears he was told all about this years ago, but he won’t say what it is. Not even to me. He’s stubborn enough, though, so I reckon he’ll wait around a while yet.”
“Nettie, I’ll be gone several months. Is there anything you need before I leave?” The old woman refused her help, as she always did.
On her way home, Pandora wondered why she felt so responsible for Nettie and Daniel. She had from the moment she met them one long, hot day in her eleventh summer when she’d been exploring Maison Rouge. She could still remember how she’d felt as she crept down the narrow cellar stairs, pretending she was one of Jean Laffite’s spies, just home from a mission. Imagine her shock when she saw a dim light flickering in the low-ceilinged cellar. After her initial scare, she moved on down to find two figures hunched over a hole they were diggin in the dirt floor.
“Belay that!” she’d ordered, slipping back into her role as one of Laffite’s henchmen once she saw that the two figures were flesh and blood instead of pirates’ ghosts. “What do you think you’re doing in the Boss’s house? He’ll have you both keel-hauled for trying to steal his treasure.”
Nettie had turned and gasped at the sight of her, then gripped Daniel’s arm. Pandora still wasn’t sure what Nettie had said to the man, but it had sounded like, “She’s come back.”
Pandora had been certain at the time that she’d misunderstood. She had never visited the cellar before, so how on earth could she “come back”?
“You better answer me or else!” Pandora had warned, warming to her role as keeper of Maison Rouge.
“I lost something my mama give me a long time ago,” Nettie’d answered. “I thought it might of got buried down here. That’s all.”
Fired by the lure of a treasure hunt, Pandora joined the excavation. They’d unearthed nothing, but had spent a most enjoyable afternoon together, swapping tales and lies.
It was Cassie who found Pandora that day. She’d come marching down the stairs, looking like the admiral of an invading Navy.
“Miss Pan, what am I going to do with you? Just look, that new dress is ruint! Your uncle sent me to find you and find you I have. How am I going to keep you for getting a switching this time? Mercy, child, I just don’t know!”
Nettie had thrown herself protectively in front of Pandora, shrieking, “Ain’t no one gonna lay a hand to this girl, less it’s over my dead body!”
Ignoring Cassie’s protests, Nettie hauled Pandora off to her shack, cleaned her up and mended her torn skirt.
“There,” Nettie told her, beaming with motherly pride. “Now you’re good as new, honey!”
Pandora had been horrified to see the way her two new friends lived. There was not a morsel of food in the shack.
“Why don’t you and Daniel come home with me to supper?” Pandora invited.
Nettie had cackled at the thought. “I don’t think your aunt and uncle would take too damn kindly to that, Missy.”
After a moment’s thought, Pandora had been forced to agree. Later that evening, after the Sherwood family finished dinner, Pandora slipped out of the mansion on Broadway, bearing a veritable feast to the shack on the waterfront. She had set the tray beside their door, knocked, then run away.
Later, Nettie told Pandora all about their feast and how much she and Daniel had enjoyed the roast beef, potatoes, carrots, and fresh bread.
“Ain’t et like that since I was a little biddy thing!”
Then Nettie had pressed a gift into Pandora’s palm. A shining shell, all rainbow colors, with a delicate rose painted on its smooth surface.
Pandora stepped from her carriage and climbed the steps of her uncle’s beautiful home.
Just as she walked in the front door, Jacob telephoned. She could tell by the grim tone of his voice that all was not well.
“We have to talk, Pandora.”
“Of course, Jacob. What is it?”
“I don’t want to discuss it over the phone. May I come to the house? Now?”
“Certainly, Jacob, but I don’t understand. I thought you had patients to see this afternoon.”
“I do. However, this is far more important. I’ll be there shortly.”
He started to hang up, but Pandora stopped him. “Jacob, can’t you give me a hint about what’s on your mind?”
“Ward Gabriel!” he answered curtly, then abruptly rang off.
Pandora felt her blood turn cold. Guilt washed over her in waves. She tried to fight it. After all, she had no reason to feel guilty. There was absolutely nothing between her and Ward. She was determined to believe that nothing other than an innocent kiss had passed between them the night at his cottage. But the tone of Jacob’s voice when he spoke Ward’s name filled her with dread.
True to his word, Jacob arrived in barely fifteen minutes. Pandora was watching for him and met him at the front door. Taking her hand, he led her out onto the front veranda.
“Let’s talk in the garden where we won’t be overheard.”
Pandora nodded and followed quickly along. “Whatever you say, Jacob.”
She glanced about. The garden was such a lovely spot this afternoon, with pink oleanders scenting the air and begonias ringing the bubbling fountain like green and white lace at the edge of a full, blue skirt. It seemed a shame to waste all this peace and calm on a lovers’ quarrel.
She sat down in a white wrought-iron lawn seat and patted the place beside her. “Please sit here, Jacob. And try to calm down. Whatever’s the problem, I’m sure we can work it out.”
He sat, but he looked far from calm. “I told you the problem, Pandora. It’s Ward Gabriel! How could you possibly agree to allow him to squire you around New York? You know the man’s reputation as well as I do. He has more lady friends than the law allows.… Why, I heard just the other day that—”
“Stop it, Jacob!” Pandora cut in. “You’re making no sense at all. Surely you know better than to think
that it was my idea to see Mr. Gabriel.”
Jacob expelled a long breath. “Well, I’ll admit, it didn’t sound like something you’d arrange, but what was I to think? I ran into Ward earlier today. He seemed to assume I knew all about this, so I didn’t let on that it came as a total shock. He said it was all settled—that he would take care of you while you were in New York, so I shouldn’t worry. Not worry? Ha! That’s really a laugh! I’d as soon entrust you to some pirate—Bluebeard or Jean Laffite himself!”
Suddenly, it all became very clear in Pandora’s mind. “Uncle Horace!”
“What does your uncle have to do with any of this? I don’t understand.”
Pandora turned toward Jacob, a sense of outrage coursing through her. “Well, I do! He set it all up.”
She went on to tell Jacob about her chance meeting with Ward at the Emporium earlier in the day. “Uncle Horace told us both that he had your full approval. So, you see, he set us all up—you, me, and Ward. Ward may be a ladies’ man, but I don’t think he’s the type who would stoop to trifling with an engaged woman. At least, not unless he had her fiancé’s permission, which Uncle Horace assured him he had.”
“Oh, Pandora!” Jacob pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, almost desperately. “I have to confess, I’m a very jealous man. Can you forgive me, my dear?”
Suddenly, the sun became warmer, the oleander perfume sweeter, the bubbling of the fountain turned to the tinkle of crystal chimes. Jacob was not a demonstrative person. Often, Pandora found herself longing to be held just as he was holding her now. Surely, once they were married, he would shed his cool reserve. She longed so to be truly loved, but she dared not voice her desires to her fiancé. Right now, she wished with all her might that their wedding were this very day. How she would live through the next months alone, she couldn’t begin to imagine.
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