Effie let go his hand and unfolded the paper. Mr. A. P. Saulnier, St. James Parish, was all that was written.
“What’s this?”
“I asked my friend at the records office to look into your sale. He couldn’t find a deed for your original sale to that trader on Common Street. But he found the name of the man who bought you afterward, this Mr. Saulnier.”
Effie stared at the letters scrawled on the paper.
“He was a sugar planter,” Samson continued. “And word is, a real breaker. That don’t bode well for your friend Jonesy.”
The paper seemed to burn in her hand. Part of her wanted to wad it up and hurl it across the courtyard. Part of her wanted to cry out with joy. Instead she folded it neatly along the crease and tucked it into her purse alongside the too-light face powder and charcoal-colored putty. “Thank you.”
“St. James isn’t but sixty miles upriver. I already talked to Tom—I hope you don’t mind—he’s got business out that way for the office. Said we could come along. A visit might spark your memory. And someone about those parts is bound to know something.”
Her nausea had returned, faint but unsettling. Did she really want to remember more? If this Mr. Saulnier were a slave breaker, maybe it was better to let that time lie. The dirge was over and the piano silent. A man’s voice sounded from the chapel. Though she couldn’t make out the words, his sorrow and fury rang clear. Mr. Guillot’s brother perhaps. His father. A son. Who would speak of Effie when she joined the dead?
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“I mean, I’m amenable to the idea of traveling with you and Tom to find this Mr. Saulnier.”
Samson’s smile dampened but didn’t break. He glanced down a moment, then back to her eyes. “And my other proposal?”
“I . . . I’ll think on it.”
* * *
Effie attended the funeral the following morning, Samson by her side. They sat toward the rear of the church with Tom and the other Protestants. Mrs. Carrière knelt with her rosary beads in her family’s pew near the front. Little Jonah, spick-and-span in his Sunday suit, squirmed beside her. Mr. Elliott, Benjamin, and several others from the ward club and Republican Office were there, standing along the walls and spilling into the aisles when the pews filled. Men and women continued to press in even as the church bell tolled and the music began—freedmen, Creoles, even a few whites.
More than once, heads turned in Effie’s direction. Gazes lingered. People she didn’t know pointed and whispered. She checked that her hat hadn’t fallen askew and all her buttons were fastened.
Perhaps they were staring at Samson. He was a state representative after all and easily the most handsome man in the chapel. But then an old woman in the pew in front of her turned around and reached her wrinkled hand in Effie’s direction. Effie hesitated, looking about to be sure the woman hadn’t meant to reach for someone else before taking her hand. The woman’s skin was thin and fragile as an insect’s wing. She squeezed Effie’s fingers and gave a solemn nod.
“I told you you’re famous now,” Samson whispered.
“How does everyone know?”
“Word gets round.”
Her stomach tightened. “But Mr. Whitmark, if he finds out I took the embalming fluid without license, the wax and eye caps—”
“No one here gonna say a word to no white man.”
Effie shifted on the hard pew. How could he be sure? She’d already replaced the used jars of fluid, filling each with a splash from the remaining stock until they all looked more or less full. Still, she suddenly itched to go back to the storeroom, to double-check each jar, to make sure she hadn’t left anything in suspicious order.
Samson took hold of her hand. “When I was a slave back on the plantation, a big ol’ buck by the name Gus stole a melon from Massa’s garden. No little one either, but the fattest in the whole patch. He and some other fellas ate every bite, down to the rind. Now we was over a hundred slaves on that plantation and every one of us knew about the melon. But when Massa asked, under threat of the lash, mind you, who’d taken it, not one slave said nothing.”
She glanced at Tom, seated at Samson’s left, for further reassurance. Hitherto he’d seemed engaged in their conversation, listening and nodding, but he’d since turned away. He sat now with great stiffness, his gaze fixed on the distant wall. Was it simple grief, or had something Samson said offended him?
Just before the service began, a handsomely dressed couple squeezed into the third row from the front. A black lace veil obscured the woman’s face, but Effie immediately recognized Adeline’s graceful carriage.
How did she know the deceased? She’d never made mention of anyone from across the river. Perhaps Mr. Chauvet, seated close beside her, had some acquaintanceship with him. It seemed an odd time to introduce her at last to Samson, but when might their worlds overlap again?
When at last the mass concluded the congregation shuffled forward to the open casket. Many touched the body, laying-on their hands or bending down to kiss the cheek or forehead. The attendants had laid out the casket so the more battered side of Mr. Guillot’s face showed away from the crowd. Still, up close they couldn’t help but see, a fact made plain in their tight expressions and skittish eyes.
Again Effie felt she’d failed him. She’d seen his wife in the front pew, two small children, and wished she might have left them a better likeness. They ought to have closed the casket. Mr. Whitmark would have advised so. No need to see. But those passing down the side aisle after viewing nodded at her as the old woman had, solemn but appreciative. They’d wanted to see, to bear witness and say goodbye.
Outside, more than a dozen carriages lined the street to travel in the cortege to the cemetery. A brass band wet their reeds and tuned their instruments. A wagon draped in black crepe bunting awaited the casket, with plumes and flowers overflowing the sides.
“Not even your Mr. Whitmark would hire out his hearse when he learned who it was for,” Samson whispered. “Thought you said he was a Union man. A Republican.”
“He is,” Effie said. At least, he had been.
Building gray clouds wrestled with the midday sun, its light by turns bright, then muted. The air was heavy with last night’s rain, and insects buzzed above lingering puddles on the uneven road.
As always in a crowd, people seemed to gravitate toward Samson, clapping him on the back and shaking his hand.
“Damn near four hundred people turned out, I reckon,” one man said.
Samson turned his gaze to the sea of mourners awaiting the procession. “At least.”
“Heard you managed this,” another said.
“Only helped where I could.” He moved a step closer to Effie and rested his hand on the small of her back. Her lungs floundered a moment before recalling how to expand and contract.
“Others wouldn’t dare it,” the first man said. “And what’s this I hear about a colored undertaker?”
Samson smiled and nodded toward Effie.
“I’ll be. And a woman to boot!” The man grabbed her hand, shaking it with such vigor her entire arm wagged. “Didn’t right believe it when I heard.”
The other man followed suit. And another. Effie tried to smile and not wriggle at the feel of their chapped skin against her own.
Then a white man with a small pad and chewed pencil approached them. “You Representative Greene?”
“I am.”
“Bud Langdon with the Natchez Gazette.”
“They send you all the way down here to cover this here funeral?” one of the men asked him.
“No, actually I was here reporting on yesterday’s races, but I saw the crowd on my way to breakfast and thought I’d take a gander.” He turned back toward Samson. “They say you’re the man to talk to.”
“The crowd you see gathered is here to honor the passing of a great man, Mr. Jacques Guillot,” Samson paused, eyeing the man’s blank pad. “That’s G-U-I-L-L-O-T.”
“Right,”
the reporter said, and started writing.
“A rice merchant by trade, father to two little boys, and a stalwart Republican. Appointed just last year comptroller to the fifteenth ward. It was for that, you see, and the color of his skin that a band of White Leaguers across the river ran him down, beat him dead, and left his body to rot in the swamps.”
The man’s hand flagged. He took off his hat and mopped his brow.
“That make you uncomfortable, Mr. Langdon?”
“No, it’s just”—he glanced at Effie—“perhaps you might leave off some of the unseemlier details.”
Samson’s nostrils flared and his hand slid from her back to about her waist, pulling her closer. “You think just ’cause she’s a woman she’s been spared the horrors done our race? The details are important, Mr. Langdon.”
The other men around nodded.
“How do you know it wasn’t just some accident? Maybe the man—”
“Mr. Guillot.”
“Mr. Guillot just fell off his horse and knocked his head.”
Samson turned to one of the men. “They bring the casket out yet?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Perhaps you’d like to go see for yourself. No fall could crush a man’s skull like that.”
The reporter’s pale, freckled skin turned greenish. “No, that’s not necessary.” He gestured at the crowd. “But why all this . . . pomp.”
“Mr. Guillot was well-liked throughout the city,” the first man who’d shaken Effie’s hand said. “A free man before the War and his pa too. Family’s been in New Orleans for generations.”
“Yes, but this? You expect me to believe they do this for every well-liked nigg—Negro in these parts?”
“The White Leaguers who killed Mr. Guillot forbade his family, under threat of violence, from going out to retrieve the body,” Samson said. “We gather today to honor a great man and to send a message that we will not be intimidated or let murders like this go unnoticed.”
“Speaking of that, I heard rumors a local undertaker helped some with the body.”
Effie’s insides plummeted.
Samson responded without pause, his expression unflapped, his voice steady. “I don’t know anything about that. Likely just as you say, a rumor.”
Mr. Langdon looked at the other men, who, only minutes before, had been wagging Effie’s hand. They shrugged and shook their heads. “You heard tell of that, Benji?” one asked another.
“Not me? You, Pete?”
“Nah, sir.”
Mr. Langdon tucked his pencil behind his ear and started to close his notebook. “What makes you so sure they mean to intimidate you, Mr. Greene? Or that the White League was involved at all? Might just of been a band of renegades.”
“Way I see it, they’re one in the same,” Samson said. “And look”—he pointed to a group of white men loitering with their rifles half a block down across the street—“them Leaguers think they can intimidate us even here.”
Mr. Langdon moved the pencil from his ear to his mouth, chomping absentmindedly as he flipped back open his notebook. “I think I’ll let them speak for themselves,” he said around the pencil before taking it out of his mouth, a string of spittle trailing behind.
“You do that, Mr. Langdon,” Samson said. “Good day to you.”
Others had spied the white men too, it seemed, for tense shuffling and whispering overcame the crowd. Samson went to check the progress of the pallbearers, and Effie wound her way among the restless funeralgoers in search of Adeline. Only a handful of top hats rose above the sea of flannel caps, slouch hats, and derbies, making Mr. Chauvet easy to find. Adeline stood beside him, her hand perched on his elbow, her gaze listless.
Her eyes brightened when she saw Effie. “I thought you might be at this dreary little affair. Si triste, n’est-ce pas?”
She flitted from Mr. Chauvet’s arm to Effie’s, pulling her close. Vetiver clung to the pleats and flounces of her dress. It calmed Effie somehow, crowded here among so many strangers, to smell something so familiar. “What are you doing here?” She felt Adeline’s clasp about her arm slacken and added, “I mean, did you know Mr. Guillot?”
“No, but Monsieur Chauvet knew a cousin”—her eyes cut to Mr. Chauvet, who’d taken up conversation with another well-dressed Creole man, then back to Effie—“a brother . . . some such relation and thought we best come. I’d hoped we might ride out to the lake after mass. It’s so dreadfully swampy today.” She plucked a fan from her reticule and snapped it open. “Mais malheureusement, Monsieur Chauvet says we must stay and ride with the cortege.”
The air stirred by Adeline’s fan swirled across Effie’s skin, a welcome reprieve from the stagnant heat. A wellspring of words bubbled inside her—of that awful night in Algiers, of Samson’s proposal, of their impending trip to St. James—but she kept them stoppered inside, awaiting . . . awaiting what?
The clouds finally won their battle with the sun and a light rain began to fall. An umbrella or two popped open, but most in the crowd didn’t bother. Voices rose to combat the patter.
Mr. Chauvet turned to her and Adeline, his hand lighting on Adeline’s back just above the silk rosette crowning her bustle. She stiffened at his touch. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle Jones. Always a pleasure to see you, even under tragic circumstances such as these.”
He wasn’t an unhandsome man, Mr. Chauvet. His eyes, his lips, his nose were all well-proportioned. His skin, though lined across the brow and about the mouth, radiated health. And she trusted the kindness in his words. Under different circumstances, Effie would favor such an acquaintance. But her heart quickened with the impulse to pull Adeline away and flee with her into the crowd. Not away from him, per se, but away from the dreary life she foresaw for them both.
“I hope you’ve not come alone.” His light brown eyes flickered to the White Leaguers still milling nearby. “Won’t you share our carriage to the cemetery?”
“Actually, I—”
Samson’s voice rose above the din of the crowd. She, Adeline, and Mr. Chauvet all turned toward the sound.
“Thank you, friends, for being here today.” Samson stood on the long step of a wagon. Far taller now than any among the gathering, he made an easy target should the White Leaguers raise their Enfields. Effie cringed. Three days ago such a thought would never have entered her mind.
“I’ve nothing to say that Father Villeré hasn’t already said in his eulogy or weren’t already spoke last night at the vigil,” he continued. “No amount of praise gonna rid you of the sadness you feel like a yoke about your heart. No amount of preaching gonna wash away the rancid taste of injustice heavy upon your tongue. Be we here.”
Raindrops fell more steadily now, but not one among the crowd moved to open her umbrella or cover his head with newsprint. Effie glanced askew at Adeline, but couldn’t parse out her expression. Her bottom lip pulled away from the top, too slack to be either a smile or a frown. A drop of rain struck her temple, just beyond the scalloped hem of her veil. It rolled down her cheek and dripped from her chin as if she hadn’t felt it at all.
“Be we here,” Samson repeated, drawing back Effie’s attention. “And we’re gonna attend this brave soul to his final resting place with the honor and dignity he deserves. Despite the rain. Despite all those who mean to intimidate us. We got to carry on the cause Jacques Guillot died defending.”
Samson stepped down from the wagon. The brass band took up song. If any among the crowd had thought of slipping away before the procession began to flee the rain or avoid the White League’s notice, none did so now.
“There’s quite un homme,” Mr. Chauvet said. When Adeline, whose gaze yet lingered on the wagon where Samson had stood, gave no reply, he tapped the ferrule of his cane on the pavers. “N’est-ce pas, chérie?”
“Hmm?”
“L’homme.”
“Oh.” Adeline shrugged. “A fair orator, je suppose.”
Fair? Had Effie heard her rightly? “You didn’t fi
nd Mr. Greene’s speech stirring?”
“Mr. Greene?” Adeline glanced again at the wagon and then back to Effie. “That’s your Mr. Greene?”
“You know that man, Mademoiselle Jones?”
Adeline answered before Effie could. “Oui. Monsieur Greene is a state representative and a . . . an acquaintance of Effie’s.”
Effie suddenly wished she accepted Samson’s proposal and that she might correct Adeline. Not acquaintance, betrothed. Or, how did they say it in French? Fiancé.
But that was just semantics. Hardly worthy of concern today. And she hadn’t accepted. Not yet. Rain dripped from the brim of her hat and down the nape of her neck. Effie unpinned her hat, even as the sky continued to drizzle, and shook away the water that had beaded on the woven straw and ribbon rosettes.
“S’il vous plaît, let’s to the carriage,” Mr. Chauvet said, gesturing to a handsome coach with dark blue paneling and glass windows. “Perhaps Monsieur Greene would like to ride as well.”
“Thank you, but I believe he means to walk with the others from our club.”
“And you too, je suppose,” Adeline said with a disapproving pout. She handed Effie her ferruled umbrella. “Effie’s quite the political enthusiast.”
“Do you know this undertaker everyone’s whispering about?” Mr. Chauvet asked. “A colleague perhaps?”
“It’s a mystery to me too,” Effie said, giving Adeline’s hand a final squeeze before taking her leave of them.
The pallbearers carried the coffin from the church and settled it in the wagon. People clambered into their carriages or took position behind the band to follow on foot. Effie joined Samson and more than a dozen others from the club gathered near the front of the cortege and opened Adeline’s umbrella. Jonah grabbed Effie’s hand and pulled her in line with him and Mrs. Carrière. He swung between them as they walked, his weight easily borne, his smile a welcome sight amid so many tight-lipped frowns.
She glanced askew at Mrs. Carrière. Her black dress and veil didn’t diminish her upright stature, though Effie imagined they were a heavy reminder of her own grief. How dreadfully she’d behaved to her at the baseball match. Right or wrong, Mrs. Carrière’s concern was well-meant. And how many people in Effie’s life had cared enough for her to muster concern at all?
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