by Kathi Appelt
An ocelot is not a company keeper. Like most of her kind, she stays to herself, unconcerned about companions. But here in this small container, her aloneness digs into her spotted fur. Not even when she slept in the arms of the jacaranda tree, on those nights when the moon disappeared and the thicket turned as black as a grackle’s wing, had she felt so solitary. Still, other creatures are trapped here with her. She hears their snuffles, their whines, their scratchings against the wooden floors and sides of their cages, cages on either side of hers. She knows they are there, but she doesn’t know their smells, doesn’t understand their cries.
Her cage fills up with other sounds too, sounds that aren’t animal. Had she grown up in a city and not in the dense thicket of the Rio Grande along the Texas-Mexico border, she might have recognized them for what they were: the passing of cars on asphalt and cement, the wailing sirens of ambulances and fire trucks, the rocking roll of the freight trains, and the constant hum of wires carrying electricity from one tower to another. All these noises are new to her. Not at all like the busy cooing of doves and the hissing chirr of rattlesnakes. Nothing like her Laguna Atascosa, her ancient territory.
The only familiar noise is the sound of a nearby river. But unlike her river, which tumbled and swished on its way to the sea, this one sounds deeper, slower. Maybe, she thinks, it’s not even a river at all.
Her stomach rumbles. It’s been days since the human, the one she thinks of as the Caretaker, has fed her. She can tell when he is near because he emits a thin, high-pitched sound, something like a bobwhite, but not at all the same. Ever since the rain began, he disappeared. She doesn’t miss him, or his whistle. But she does miss the smelly food that he puts inside the metal bowl.
The food reeks like carrion. Something dead. Some animal she doesn’t recognize, something that’s been ground and mashed and stripped of fur or feathers and bones. For the first few days after she arrived, she refused to eat it, but then she grew so hungry that she finally couldn’t help herself. She lapped it up, her sides heaving as it slid down her throat. It hardly had any taste, but it filled her stomach.
And the next thing she knew, it began to rain. Day became night became day and still the Caretaker never came. The snuffles and scratches and whines from the adjoining cages grow more urgent.
Something else—the river. She can tell by its sound that it’s gaining speed. Moreover, it seems to be closer, rising. She stands for a moment and shakes her soaking coat. The only thing the rancid metal bowl holds now is water.
She nudges it with her nose. There, just underneath the scraping sound of metal against wood, she thinks she hears her name.
Zorra. A whisper.
Zorra. From the water, she hears it.
Zorra. So soft it hurts to listen.
Buffalo Bayou
HOUSTON
She’s not really a river. She’s a bayou, and long ago, after the sea pulled itself back and back and back, oh, fifty miles or so to the south, she started gathering water upstream in a salt-grass prairie, where the rain ran off and pooled underground, then bubbled back up and rambled her way to the Gulf of Mexico.
She’s been called many names. Mother River. Buffalo River. Buffalo Bayou. And surely there are more besides, names not written down in books or maps. But the bayou, she remembers all her names, every one, in every language.
Akokisa. Bidai. Atakapa. Patiri. Karankawa. Caddo. Gullah. Creole. Spanish. French. Hebrew. German.
She never forgets. That’s the God’s honest truth. Other names too, not only her own, she holds in her brackish currents.
Like Achsah.
Pronounce it like this: Axa.
The bayou remembers Achsah.
Achsah
HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
JUNE 1845
The morning the rooster crowed, just after midnight, and the Captain finally died, was the morning that Achsah was set free. It said so in the Captain’s will, right there in his own hand on clean white vellum, and testified to by the lawyers. Free.
Achsah rolled the word around in her mouth, not quite willing to say it out loud. Then the rooster crowed again and she shook the Captain’s body to make sure he was well and truly dead.
Free. Achsah was free. And the Captain was free too, free from the yellow jack, from the rattling cough and the screaming fever that had lit up his old body like a nest of charcoal. Achsah had tried to cool him down with water from the river. The doctor had told her to keep him cool, and the water from the river was the coolest water there was. No such thing as cold water in Houston.
But no amount of river water could stop the fever’s rampage or the coughing that ate away at him. Achsah knew that. The doctor knew that. The Captain knew that. Which was why he made sure that his will was written and signed, the will that set Achsah free.
Not too many freed Negro women, not in Texas. Not in the year of our Lord 1845. Not a Negro woman of childbearing age, the most valuable kind. The trouble was, the Captain had tricked her.
He set her free, all right. But not her little girls. Her Mary Ann. Her Juba. He didn’t set them free.
Achsah left the side of the Captain’s bed, but before she did, she stared at him hard, to make sure that he was gone. She waited several long minutes, hardly daring to breathe herself, and walked to the window. It would be hours before the sun rose, hours before anyone else would know about the passing. If she was lucky, it would be a full day, or days.
How long had she waited for this moment? Her whole life. Her whole life. But especially these last six years. That was how long the Captain had owned her. She realized right then that the old wet air should have felt different now that she was free. Should have felt like new air. Such a word, wasn’t it? Free?
She knew she only had this small moment to think about it. Down the hall, her daughter-girls slept, their arms and legs knitted together atop their cot, their little-girl chests rising and falling in the quiet country of Sleep. She turned back to the window.
All these years, almost a third of her life, the Captain had promised to set Achsah free upon his death, and he did, ignoring the remonstrations of his friends, all of whom had fought against Mexico so they could keep their slaves. The Captain himself had served in the Texian Army, right next to the general, Sam Houston. Moreover, the Captain had lent the army his ship to use for moving troops along the coast, in and out of Galveston, the same ship Achsah had sailed on when he bought her at the Forks of the Road Slave Market.
The market sat at a crossroads near Natchez, the old Spanish town on the banks of the Mississippi. The Captain bought her when she was barely twelve years old. “Big for her age” was what the slave dealer said, with a wink toward the Captain.
Six years ago, and that was the last time she saw Natchez or the Mississippi or the thin boy who had been chained to her as they walked up the old Indian path from Alexandria, Louisiana, away from her mama, away to the Forks of the Road, tethered to a boy whose name she never knew, didn’t want to know because then she knew she’d miss him. That’s what a name does: makes this empty place where missing goes and stays.
This she knew because she missed her mama, whose name was Happiness. Achsah had missed Happiness over and over and over since she left Alexandria and walked, chained to a thin boy whose name she didn’t know, to the Forks of the Road. And it was the last time she sailed on that ship, too, sailed in the Captain’s own cabin, locked there where he treasured her, night after night, relieving herself in a copper jug, heaving into it too, her arms shaking, blood running down her legs. Barely twelve. Big for her age.
Achsah. The bayou remembers you.
Mother River Church of God’s Blessings
HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
1845
First there was only a brush arbor, set a ways back from the homesteads and up the road from Kleinfeldt’s Sawmill. It was close enough to the Mother River for the occasional baptism, when the Reverend Phillips called his parishioners to follow him down the wo
oden steps of the banks and into the cool waters, tilt their heads backward toward the sky, and pray for salvation while the water closed over their faces. And they also prayed that the water snakes and alligators might let them be, at least for those few moments that they were submerged.
So this was the Mother River Church of God’s Blessings. A fine name for such a godly gathering. And the Reverend Phillips, who came to Houston all the way from Georgia with his wife, Celia, couldn’t have loved them any more.
The Phillipses were an attractive crew, the reverend with his auburn hair and his broad face, a light-skinned face that burned easily and that bore a smattering of freckles across his nose. Mrs. Phillips stood barely five feet tall and was what folks’d call “sturdy” in polite company. As for Major Bay, he stood a foot taller than the reverend, and his skin was as dark as Phillips’s was light. Both men wore broad-brimmed hats to keep the ever-present Houston sun out of their eyes.
The brush arbor was fine for a time, but Houston grew, and so did the number of churches. There was a large Catholic church that rose up right in the center of town, and just across from it was the Lutheran congregation, complete with a bell tower. Soon enough, the members of Mother River Church of God’s Blessings decided to build a chapel, not so fancy as the Catholic and Lutheran churches. Rather, a small whitewashed clapboard building situated a ways from the docks and tucked behind a grove of burr oaks and hackberry trees. Inside were several rows of pews, which were set toward the front, near the altar. These were for the white folks, and even though their Negroes were welcome, they had to stand in the back, in a large space behind the pews, including the reverend’s own slave, Major Bay, whose towering height was a fact they were both aware of.
No matter what, there was always Miss Celia at the piano. Every Sunday the chapel filled up with praise music. And anyone visiting might be amazed at the sound of that piano. It was said that you could hear it all the way to the Brazos River to the west, and the small village of Harrisburg to the south, the notes slipping through the walls and bouncing on out atop the currents of Mother River. One visitor even said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the seagulls could hear that piano all the way to Galveston.” It was almost as if the piano itself was filled with so much spirit that its very keys created a heavenly chorus.
And while Miss Celia played, the reverend exhorted, “Sing out, brothers and sisters, for the Lord is listening. Sing out!”
And they did, each and every one, including Major Bay, whose deep baritone voice filled the bottom register and made the windows vibrate.
“Sing out,” called the reverend again, so the brothers and sisters, white and black, young and old, of Mother River Church of God’s Blessings did. And at least a few of them, let’s say two or three, sang as if their very souls depended upon it.
Soleil Broussard
HOUSTON
THE HURRICANE
It’s surprising, if you want to know, how many versions of honey bear jars you can find. They come in both glass and plastic. They can be clear or opaque. Big or small, holding their thick golden contents, robbed from the bees, added to tea and oatmeal and Greek yogurt.
When the hurricane had dumped a record-setting fifty inches of rain on parts of Houston, thousands of people were forced out of their homes. Lucky for Soleil and her family, their house had stayed dry. But lots of others weren’t so fortunate.
The Church on the Bayou had opened its doors for people to shelter there. Row after row of cots filled the hallways and the classrooms. Some in the back of the sanctuary, too, and probably a dozen people, at least, slept on the hard wooden pews. No one complained. People even stayed in the basement despite some water that seeped in through the old brick walls.
Soleil volunteered to help. “Tantos bebés,” said Sra. Zapatero, the lady who ran the nursery. And it was so many babies. For days, everyone did their best, but there weren’t enough laps to sit on, not enough arms for holding, no bathtubs for soaking, so many dirty diapers and runny noses and hungry tummies.
Then there was the chain-reaction crying. One baby cried and set off another and another and on and on. Especially Tyler. Eighteen-month-old Tyler Byrd, who could not quit crying, not even for a moment. He cried in his sleep, when he was awake—nonstop. Soleil held him in her arms until they ached. Rocked him for hours until she felt dizzy. She offered him cookies and milk and jelly beans. She took his hand and walked him all over the church. Up and down the stairs. Through the hallways, the kitchen, the playroom. She even took him to the covered porch to watch the rain. He cried.
His father, having been rescued himself, left during the day to help with rescue operations. His exhausted mother tried to calm Tyler down, but she was so weary from rain and wind and loss, Soleil could see that she needed to rest. Thus Soleil kept Tyler close. And Tyler cried.
Soleil sang to him. She danced with him. She held on to him.
And somehow, amid all the donations that arrived, along with scores of hot meals and new socks and travel toothpastes, someone dropped off a couple hundred jars of honey.
Whoever it was lined them up along the altar rail in the sanctuary, a small battalion of honey bears, so that when Soleil, carrying Tyler in her arms—Tyler who couldn’t be consoled at all—walked into the sanctuary, she found the little army of honey bear jars caught in a rare beam of sunshine that slipped through the high windows above the balcony. Tyler reached out with his tiny hands and picked one up, held it in front of his round little face, set it back down, picked up another identical honey bear jar, set it down, too, until finally, he picked up the one, the one that said Tyler among all the others. Soleil set him on the floor, and he hugged the honey bear jar close to his chest, sucked in an enormous sniffle, curled up on the carpet next to the altar, and fell into a deep, deep sleep.
Soleil waited, watched, then lifted him up and carried him to his mother, asleep on an air mattress in the hallway. There she tucked him in next to her. After that, Tyler rarely set the honey bear jar down.
Even when he waved to her from the altar that Sunday, it was in his hands, still full because it wasn’t the honey he wanted. Soleil knew that Tyler’s honey bear was a trophy, won for being best crier ever.
Thus the tattoo, a reminder that miracles sometimes look like the right honey bear jar for a small boy.
Cade Curtis
HOUSTON, TEXAS
SUNDAY, OCTOBER
Walker’s Art and Antiques is old. It’s been in the same location on Washington Avenue for more than a century. It’s constantly in need. A new windowpane. An updated computer. A part for the air conditioner.
Paul and Cade and Mrs. Walker also have needs. Groceries. Clothes. Dental work.
The sales from the shop are brisk, but not brisk enough. Cade knows this. Mrs. Walker calls the extra funds that the angels bring in a comfort. “As angels are wont to provide,” she says. “Besides, I have it on great authority that they’re going to very fine homes where all their needs will be met.”
This one is valuable. Carved out of Texas granite, sunset red.
But as they take her out of the truck and carry her into the shop, as they unwrap her from the soaking-wet blanket, Cade notices a thin crack. It runs from the corner of her eye, down her cheek, past her chin, and into the collar of her robe, as if a tear traced a path along the side of her carved face.
Beloved Wife, Mother, Daughter.
It’s almost as if she didn’t want to leave.
Paul Curtis
HOUSTON, TEXAS
A LITTLE BACKSTORY
“We all write our own histories, don’t we?” Paul has told that to Cade so many times. In the collective history of Cade and Paul Curtis, they didn’t set out to be angel hunters. Paul never set out to become a father at the ripe old age of sixteen. It’d be pressing it pretty hard to say that any sixteen-year-old boy sets out to become a father. But that was the case with Paul. Cade’s mother, Evie Nelson, was just as young, sixteen.
The day came, and
Evie handed their baby, only a few days old, to Paul while he stood on her doorstep and begged her not to close the door.
Evie, his Evie. Don’t close the door. Every ounce of him shook, as if his bones might rattle his entire being to pieces. Then she handed him the birth certificate, the space for the baby’s name still blank because she couldn’t bear to fill it in, wouldn’t fill it in. The baby in his arms. His baby. In his arms.
His Evie. No other Evie.
“Don’t come back here again,” she said, her words so thin, like strands of a spiderweb woven between them, a web he couldn’t pierce. And there were more words. “You promised. You promised,” she said.
The web grew thinner.
He’d made a promise.
Then she closed the door and left him there, his tiny baby in his arms, a piece of paper in his hand, a blank for a name.
Paul knew what was up; he knew that her parents would never tolerate this baby, especially her father. After all, he’d never tolerated Paul. Never tolerated Evie, either, for that matter.
Paul would never forget her father’s hand on the back of his neck, squeezing him as he shoved Paul down into the grass of their front yard. “You worthless piece of shit!” he swore, smashing Paul’s face into the dirt, pressing his knee into his back, until Paul was sure his spine would crack. And all the while, Evie stood so still, the horror skittering across her face. That was four months into her pregnancy, just as she began to show. He didn’t see her again until that moment that she handed him their baby, the sound of the door closing an echo in his ear.
And then it was Paul’s parents’ turn. “If you’re old enough to be a father, you’re old enough to make your own way in the world,” and they too turned their backs with a silence that blasted through him, made him hold his baby tighter. His baby.