The band began “Down by the Riverside.” Many of those around her took up singing. Over the drum and horn and voices, she said to Mrs. Carrière, “Marie, last Sunday at the park, I—”
“Think nothing of it, chère.”
The rain had petered to a dribble by the time they reached the cemetery, and just as the casket was laid in the vault the sun broke through the thinning clouds. Light sparkled off the marble and whitewashed stucco surrounding them. Jonah let go of her hand to chase a lizard scampering along the moss-covered eaves of a nearby tomb. The crowd began to thin and carriages rambled away.
Effie again found Mr. Chauvet’s top hat towering conspicuously above the other heads and hurried over with Adeline’s umbrella. They stood just off the walkway beside a long wall of multi-leveled vaults. Mr. Chauvet talked animatedly with another light-skinned Creole Effie recognized from the petite fête on Esplanade Avenue. Adeline smiled on cue when the men glanced at her, nodded when they nodded, laughed when they laughed, but otherwise kept her gaze lowered, the toe of her polished boot tickling the stem of a fern that had sprouted among the pavers.
Her smile for Effie was far warmer. She plucked the hankie from Mr. Chauvet’s pocket and led Effie to a nearby bench, using the square of silk to dry the seat for them.
“Your Mr. Greene is quite self-assured.”
She followed Adeline’s gaze to where Samson stood at the far end of the row of tombs. “You don’t approve?”
“It’s just a peculiar quality for a freedman.”
“You expect us all to be docile and obsequious?”
“I’d hardly count you among them, chère. You’ve got too much of the North in you.”
“What a pair we must seem to you. A carpetbagger and braggart.” Effie stood to leave, but Adeline captured her arm.
“Ma foi, I didn’t mean to work you into a conniption. I’m sure he’s perfectly genial. I’ve only got you in mind when I say such things. Men like him—” She stopped suddenly and looked away, as if newly captivated by the pools of muddy rainwater at their feet.
“There you are, Effie.”
She turned at Samson’s voice and found herself smiling in the same forced way Adeline had to Mr. Chauvet.
“You about ready to be off? Tom suggested we might stop over at Haverdeens for some . . .” His gaze snagged on Adeline and he doffed his derby. “Mademoiselle.”
She’d never heard him attempt French before and the word rang dissonant in her ear, not just for his imperfect pronunciation, but the throaty way he said it. Adeline stood, her lips pursed, her brown eyes raking over him before settling conspicuously elsewhere. The ensuing silence pained Effie. Not until Samson coughed lightly did she remember herself enough to make introductions.
“Miss Mercier, this is Mr. Greene.”
“A pleasure,” Samson said.
“Likewise.”
Their clipped words hardly made a dent in the silence. What had Mrs. Kinyon said all those years ago before she’d given up schooling Effie in the social graces? Something about smoothing over an awkward introduction with pleasant facts about the respective parties. “Miss Mercier is an excellent seamstress.”
“Oh?”
“I dabble a bit when the mood suits me.” Adeline tossed her head, her lace veil fluttering outward, then settling back around her face. “You know, to pass the time.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I’ve had little time in my life to . . . dabble.”
Adeline rejoined with a shrug.
Effie fought the urge to stomp on Adeline’s shiny boot tips for all the help she was being and fished for something else to say. “Mr. Greene’s a representative at the statehouse.”
“Indeed?”
“Got my eye on the Senate come November.”
Adeline perked at this. “Is that right?”
“Yes, ma’am. Maybe one day the Custom House or Lieutenant Governor should the Party and the Good Lord see fit.”
She smiled, but not in a way that gave Effie any calm. “And pray tell, Mr. Greene, which of those, the Good Lord or the Republican Party, do you hold in greater esteem?”
“The Lord, of course.”
“And yourself?”
He frowned. “Myself?”
“Oui. Where do you rank yourself among those three?”
“I should never conflate myself with either, miss.”
“Really?”
Effie laughed, loud and thin, a sound not unlike the braying of a mule. They both looked at her as if she might be choking or taken with hysteria. Thankfully, Mr. Chauvet stepped over, eager to know Samson and compliment him on his impromptu oration back at St. Augustine.
Effie shuffled beside Adeline and did step on her toes. Not with any great force, but enough to draw her attention and a penitent gaze.
“Please be nice,” she whispered as the men continued to talk. “For me.”
Adeline pursed her lips, stared at Samson, and said nothing.
CHAPTER 24
Effie had just arrived at the shop when she heard the clop of hooves down the carriageway. Mr. Whitmark walked beside their shabby cart mule and began hitching him to the wagon. “Fetch your embalming cabinet and some fluid,” he called to her across the courtyard.
The sky was still streaked red with the dawn, and it surprised her he was up so early. Colm, who usually readied the mule and wagon, hadn’t even arrived yet. But she let her questions lie and did as bidden.
They sat in silence as the wagon lumbered down Canal Street toward the river. The streetcar rumbled past, its squeaking wheels sending a prickle down her spine. Something about Mr. Whitmark was off this morning, more than his early awakening. He sat overly rigid, his hands tight about the reins. He stayed the mule in front of the crumbling stucco building she remembered from her first day in New Orleans: the morgue.
Her breakfast of coffee and biscuits stirred in her stomach. Was this another test of some sort? Mr. Whitmark clambered down and tied the mule to a rusted hitching post. “Come on.”
He heaved open one of the great, vertical board doors leading to the ground level. It swung wide on groaning hinges and slammed against the adjoining wall. Mr. Whitmark straightened his suit coat and entered, leaving Effie to juggle the dressing case, embalming cabinet, and case of fluid on her own. She shimmied the door closed behind her with her foot as the supplies teetered in her arms. After the morning’s brightness, her eyes struggled to adjust to the dim.
The inner doors leading beyond the anteroom in which they waited were closed, but the yellow glow of oil lamps shown beneath. Mr. Whitmark rapped. The same portly coroner she remembered from months before answered. He stood in the jamb, wiping his hands on his trousers, and glanced over his shoulder into the morgue.
“What’s this about, Lafitte?” Mr. Whitmark asked. “Your missive said it was urgent.”
“Ah . . .” Another backward glance. “Désolé, George,” he whispered, and stepped aside, revealing a cluster of men within.
Mr. Whitmark’s raspy breathing faltered. One foot slid backward over the gritty tile floor.
“Colonel Whitmark, at last,” a man said from within. “Won’t you join us? We’ve a case we hoped you might help us with.”
In the shadowy light of the anteroom, Mr. Whitmark’s skin seemed to gray. The corners of his compressed lips twitched. But he squared his shoulders and entered.
The coroner waved her in too, as if in some hurry to shut them in. Her muscles refused the command. She didn’t recognize these men, but they looked little different from the men she’d seen parading in front of the clubhouse or those lingering with their rifles at yesterday’s funeral. Young men, antsy and cocksure.
One of them looked at her. “You too, girlie. Boss man might be needin’ that there equipment.”
Mr. Whitmark turned and nodded at her. She slunk inside, jumping when the coroner closed the door behind her.
The men were clumped shoulder-to-shoulder around an examining table. A pair of fee
t jutted over the table’s edge, stiff with rigor mortis, the pink soles scraped and dirt-stained. As Mr. Whitmark approached, the men parted to reveal the full length of the table and the body upon it.
Effie’s arms went slack, the supplies tumbling from her grasp. One of the jars of embalming fluid shattered, choking the air with chemicals. Others rolled helter-skelter around the room.
“Darkies,” one of the men said, wagging his head. He pinned one of the bottles beneath the mud-encrusted sole of his boot and rolled it back in her direction. The sound of it atop the dusty, blood-splattered tile stripped her nerves raw. She crouched down to collect the mess at her feet—rubber tubing, cotton packing, spools of thread—stuffing it haphazardly into the cases. She did this all by feel, groping along the ground, her gaze ensnared by the grizzly site on the table.
The body of the man laid out before them had been beaten like Mr. Guillot’s, the face bruised and swollen beyond recognition. A red stain darkened the man’s trousers about the loins where Effie guessed they’d hacked away his manhood. Where it wasn’t bruised over, his black skin had turned pallid from blood loss. His limbs twisted at odd angles—broken, then frozen with death.
Her mind, slow to register anything beyond shock, awakened suddenly. Samson? Samson! . . . But no, the body was too thin, muscles wan, bones protruding beneath the skin. This man was likely a vagabond, some poor soul new to the city in search of work. A stab of shame followed on the heels of her relief. It wasn’t Samson, but surely this man was dear to someone too.
A sudden prick of pain drew her attention away from the body to her hand. What started as a faint sting quickly became a fierce burning. She’d sliced the pad of her finger on a shard of broken glass wet with embalming fluid. She wiped her finger on her skirt, heedless of the stain, then milked yet more blood from the wound to flush out the searing chemicals.
“What’s the meaning of all this? Who is this man? Why have you called me here?” Mr. Whitmark’s eyes—skittish of the body—undermined the authority he’d mustered in his voice. His complexion colored from gray to green.
The tallest of the men spoke up. He had the sharp nose and prominent chin of men in newspaper advertisements. “Seeing as you helped out that last Negro across the river, we thought you’d like to fix this one up too.”
“I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about.”
“One of them light-skinned coons workin’ under Kellogg. Comptroller he called himself.”
Mr. Whitmark took a step back, glass crunching beneath his boot heel. “I still don’t know whom you mean. I haven’t been across the river to Algiers in years. They’ve got their own undertakers there.”
“Yep,” another of the men said, using the tip of his pocket knife to clean between his teeth. “We asked them too. Say they don’t know nothin’ neither.”
“Difference is, them’s good men, loyal to the South. God-fearing Democrats, the lot of ’em,” the tall man said. The others nodded as he spoke. “You’s a scalawag.”
Even as she listened, as her finger throbbed and the smell of the morgue settled in her nostrils, Effie’s mind snagged on what Adeline had said about the opera all those weeks—no, months—ago. This man, the tall handsome one, was the primo uomo. Adeline had said her little lesson didn’t apply to men, but the subtle fawning of the others, the deference, the hierarchy all seemed to fit.
Effie finished picking up the scattered supplies and shuffled away from the table until her back hit the wall. The plaster was cold and rough through the thinning weave of her dress. The men took little note of her, their attention trained on Mr. Whitmark, but she knew that could change and fast.
“I don’t see what bearing it has on today. The War was said and done a decade ago when you boys were still in diaper cloths.” He turned to leave, but several of the men broke line and circled around him, blocking the exit.
The tall man, the primo uomo, grabbed the scruff of Mr. Whitmark’s jacket and dragged him back to the table, pinning him cheek-to-cheek with the battered corpse. “Take a good look, Colonel, and tell me how you don’t remember nothin’.”
Mr. Whitmark struggled free of the man’s hold. He staggered back several paces, then yanked a hankie from his pocket and wiped his cheek. “Are you mad?” He turned to the coroner. “Lafitte, go fetch the police.”
But Mr. Lafitte didn’t move.
“We ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” the tall man said. He walked over and looped an arm over Mr. Whitmark’s shoulders. “We’s just askin’ a few questions and havin’ a little fun.”
Mr. Whitmark shrugged him off and gestured toward the body. “You call this butchery fun?”
The other men moved in closer, blocking any further retreat. “See, I knew he was a Negro lover,” the primo uomo said.
They corralled him like a stray cow back to the table.
“I’m curious how you done it. Fixed up that other blacky all perdy like.”
“I told you, I don’t know what or whom you’re talking about.” Mr. Whitmark’s voice had gone thin. Despite the cool air, sweat shined across his skin.
Effie inched along the wall toward the door. Five minutes at a run and she’d be at the French Market and in easy shouting range of any number of police.
“How’s about you show us on this here hawbuck.”
Mr. Whitmark shook his head while the young men shouted their assent. One pulled a half-empty bottle of liquor from his shabby topcoat and took a long swig. He passed the bottle and the rest of the men drank too. They backslapped and hooted as if they’d pulled up a seat at a minstrel show. The man beside Mr. Whitmark offered him the bottle. He eyed the liquor an overlong moment, then batted the bottle away.
Effie watched, counting the steps yet to the door. Eight in her estimation.
Seven.
Six.
“You need a knife?” The tooth-picker offered up his blade to Mr. Whitmark, pointy end first.
“Nah, nah,” another said. “Them embalmers got special tools.”
Effie froze just as the men’s gazes turned on her. The last three steps to the door seemed now like a mile. She daren’t take them. She daren’t even breathe.
“Well,” the tall man said to her. “Bring your boss man his tools.”
She locked eyes with Mr. Whitmark. He looked tired, as if his fear had burnt so hot he had nothing left to feed it. “Bring me my scalpel, Effie.”
In her earlier haste to pick up everything from the floor, she’d mislaid the scalpel, and fished through the cases with the men’s stares heavy upon her. At last, she found it at the very bottom of the dressing case beneath wads of rumpled linen and the granite shaving cup. She handed it to Mr. Whitmark.
Heavy bruising and rope burn about the man’s throat prevented Mr. Whitmark from dissecting the carotid. Was that how they’d finished the man off? Hanging him from a tree or dragging him behind a horse until he suffocated? Effie pulled her shawl higher about her neck, as if the thin fabric might somehow prevent the same from happening to her.
Sooner or later these men would tire of watching Mr. Whitmark. Sooner, judging by the scant liquor remaining in their bottle. Then what? Would they turn their violence on her and Mr. Whitmark too?
Mr. Whitmark inspected both arms before choosing the left axillary. Sweat dripped from his brow onto the body, and his hand wobbled like a loose wagon wheel. He nicked the skin several times before managing a cut, ragged and too shallow so that he had to draw the scalpel through the tissue several more times before revealing the artery.
“Why ain’t there no blood?” one of the men asked.
“It’s stagnant and clotted,” Mr. Whitmark said, laying aside the scalpel. Effie was ready with forceps. He mopped his face with his shirt sleeve before taking them.
With no blood to sate them, the men grew restless, shifting and fidgeting. They finished off the last of the liquor and tossed the bottle to the floor. Mr. Whitmark jumped at the sound. He tried several times to elevate the vessel, but
each time the artery slipped his shaky grasp.
“Stop your dithering and get on with it,” the man with the pocket knife said, jabbing an elbow into Mr. Whitmark’s side. “Elsewise we’ll try it out on you.”
Mr. Whitmark glared at the man, then drew a long, whistling inhale, and tried again. By now his hands were slick with sweat and the pale lymph fluid that had begun to weep from the incision. He grasped the artery, but the forceps slipped from his hand before he could raise it above the skin.
“You’s a right lousy undertaker, seems to me,” one among them said, garnering a host of chuckles. “Don’t nobody call on him when I done knock over.”
More chuckles. Effie gulped down a breath to steady her nerves and said, “He sho is a lousy undertaker.”
The men’s laughter faltered and every gaze—including Mr. Whitmark’s—turned upon her.
She caught the primo uomo’s eye before looking hastily down to her feet, a newly remembered trick from her days in the slave pen. “Well, you’ve seen him. Too much drink. Can’t hold them tools steady but for nothin’.” She peeked up again to be sure the tall man’s attention was still on her. “Not them forceps, not the scalpel, not no needle for sho.”
“What you gettin’ at, girl?” the primo uomo said.
“It just”—she shifted her weight and rasped her boot back and forth across the tile in feigned uncertainty—“just, no way he could’a embalmed that Mr. Guillot. Ain’t got the skill. I been at the funeral and seen the incision.” She gestured to her neck. “Straight as a ruler. And just as neat too. Sewed up real nice like.”
Another glance up revealed a spattering of confusion across the men’s faces. Mr. Whitmark too seemed befuddled, torn between wounded pride and dawning comprehension.
“Hold out your hand, Colonel,” the primo uomo said.
Mr. Whitmark did as instructed. His hand trembled as she knew it would, not with an affected tremor, or even the quake of fear, but with the jerky twitch of an invalid.
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