Jonah raced over to show her the marble he’d won off another boy.
“What d’ya think?” he asked, handing over his prize.
Effie examined the marble—a polished river stone of not quite spherical proportions. Porous and a bit too light for ideal transfer of inertia. She bent down so they were eye level and handed it back. “A fine marble. Take care not to lose it back, now.”
Jonah smiled. His two front teeth were all the way in now and he’d lost another incisor.
Effie stood and watched him sprint away. When she turned around, she nearly collided with a man moving in the opposite direction.
“Pardon—”
“Excuse—”
Her vocal cords faltered. Her blood wicked to her core, leaving her stomach heavy and fingers cold.
“Effie!”
Still she couldn’t speak. She stumbled a few steps back, knocking into the buffet spread. Her hand landed in a bowl of cooked greens as she tried to steady herself. Bits of onion and soggy leaves squished between her splayed fingers.
Samson smiled, and she longed to die. Right then. Death by unrequited love, humiliation, and collard greens.
He handed her his hankie.
“Mr. Greene,” someone called from beside the wooden platform at the center of the lawn, waving him over.
“I . . . er . . . I’ve got go. I’ll find you afterward,” he said, his brown eyes lingering on her a moment before he turned to leave.
Effie peeled her hand from the greens and wiped it with Samson’s hankie. Grease and leaf juice stained the silky cloth. She brought the hankie to her nose and sniffed. Beneath the smell of ham hock, garlic, and greens was that of his shaving soap. Rosemary and bitter orange. She wadded up the hankie and dropped it to the ground.
The man who’d waved Samson over had taken the platform and called out to the crowd. Voices lowered. He welcomed everyone to the barbecue, said the pigs were near done, but first they’d be treated to some of the best speechifying in all Louisiana. The crowd of onlookers—mostly Negroes, but a spattering of whites too—clapped and cheered.
When the man introduced the first speaker, a tall bearded man from the local Democratic club, the cheers dwindled. A few in the crowd booed and hollered.
“Now, now,” the host said. “We’re to have a real debate here.”
The gathering quieted and the Democrat began his address. Few of his words registered amid the melee of Effie’s thoughts. Her sense of normalcy had fled. Her confidence. Her delusions of beauty. Would anyone notice if she wandered away until the speeches were done and barbecue concluded? She charted a path in her mind through the pack of people to a shady spot in the forest where she might hide.
But then, she was tired of hiding. She’d hidden all summer—first in the frantic to-and-fro of her work, then in the tiny confines of Mrs. Carrière’s cottage. How exhilarating to stand now in the sunshine! To be among others after so long alone. Instead of sneaking away, she forced her head up and shimmied closer to the platform, training her attention on the speaker. Samson had taken enough from her. She wouldn’t give him this day too.
“See what your vote for carpetbaggers has done,” the bearded man was saying. “They put heavy liens on ours crops, oblige us to pay taxes, and yet y’all think it strange that we prefer to hire whites, Democrats, to farm our lands. Don’t ya see? When white people have plenty, you have plenty.”
Effie found his logic laughable. For all Samson’s faults, at least he would deliver a sound rebuttal to this man’s sapheaded ideas.
“You don’t trust those of your race for anything. Not those who manage the clubs, and caucus, and run for office. Admit it! If we can get the government into honest hands, we’ll make it a disgrace to plunder the state and swindle her citizens.”
Here Effie did laugh, even as her skin burned. Her eyes wandered from the man to the assemblage of onlookers. A mauve hat with feather trim caught her attention, garish among the cottonade bonnets and flannel headscarves most of the women wore. The black hair beneath was smooth and glossy, pinned in fat curls just below the brim. The woman turned slightly, revealing a delicate nose and well-proportioned lips.
For a moment, Effie felt as if she’d breathed in water instead of air. Adeline wasn’t meant to be here. What of her condition? Effie craned her neck to see the full profile of Adeline’s form. One who knew her less intimately would have missed it—the gentle roundness of her belly hidden beneath the raised waist of her dress.
Effie waited for the rush of envy that had swallowed her that night in Mrs. Carrière’s kitchen when she’d read the letter, prepared for the swell of unending tears. Neither came. Instead came relief, akin to what she’d felt upon spying the Union campfires or when she’d stepped off the steamer that first day in New Orleans. It struck Effie how much she’d missed Adeline. How barren her life had become without her.
But the pain of Adeline’s betrayal was there too, raw yet and aching. Almost reflexively Effie began balling it up and with it her relief and affection. Tighter, smaller, heedless of what got pulled in with it, until it was so crushed and compact she could bury and forget it.
A tap on her shoulder broke her fixation. “Excuse me, miss. You done dropped this by the picnic tables,” a man said, handing her Samson’s stained hankie.
“Thank you,” she muttered. When he turned away, she crumpled it in her fist. This time she’d take it clear out to the swamps and throw it in the muddy water so it couldn’t find its way back to her. But though her hand squeezed tighter, her feet refused to move. Hadn’t she done that with the memory of her mother—wadded it up and buried it? With her years as a slave? Did the emptiness feel any better than the pain?
She shook out the hankie, grease-smeared and green as it was, folded it into a neat square, and tucked it into her pocket. A little soap and vinegar and the stains might well fade.
Tepid applause sounded, and she realized the Democrat had finished his oration. Samson nodded to the man as they passed on the platform steps. The man only smirked.
Effie fell in love with him all over again as he began his speech. His confident posture, his lively gestures, his earnest expression. But most of all his voice, smooth and resonant. A voice one felt as much as heard. Effie looked at those around her. Everyone stood as enrapt as she.
Everyone it seemed, save Adeline. Instead of staring up at her husband in admiration, she wandered her gaze about the lawn, shifting, listless, bored.
A twinge of anger surfaced in Effie. And on its heels, sadness. Pity. She let them all course through her, like preserving fluid pumped into an artery, flowing from her largest vessels all the way to her tiniest capillaries. It didn’t rid her of the emotions. No more than embalming brought life to the dead. But once felt, their hold on her lessened.
For the first time since returning from St. James, Effie could imagine a future for herself beyond the pain and solitude, a future beyond the dead. Perhaps she would be a teacher, as Tom had suggested, or work alongside a physician. One way or another, she’d find a way to survive. She always had. And this time, she needn’t do it alone.
A breeze ruffled the ties of her bonnet, bearing with it the smoky scent of barbecue. She looked again at Adeline, who’d pulled out her fan and used it to swat at the gnats humming overhead. Effie smiled—how ridiculously out of place Adeline was here in the country—and longed to laugh with her about it.
A voice snagged Effie’s attention, a man in the crowd calling to Samson. “Get down! You don’t belong on that stand any more than you belong in the statehouse.”
“Yeah, get down so we can eat,” another yelled from a way off.
Those nearest the hecklers shushed them and Samson continued, easily regaining his stride. But then another man standing only a few feet from Effie called out, “You ain’t got a lick of sense in that monkey head of yours.”
He was a white man, dressed in mismatched coat and pants, a faded slouch hat on his head. When the colored man beside him
told him to hush, he spat at the man’s feet and shoved him. The colored man shoved back. Samson’s voice hummed on in the background. Then the white man reached into his waistband and pulled out a revolver. More weapons were drawn. More pushing.
The roar of a gunshot split Effie’s eardrum. Then another from across the lawn.
Samson’s voice fell silent.
For a few fleeting seconds, she and everyone around her froze. Then someone screamed. High-pitched and wild. More gunshots. People ran helter-skelter. Effie turned back to the platform. Samson lay sprawled across it, mouth open, eyes fixed. Blood dripped from the platform’s edge onto the grass below. Adeline clambered up the stairs and knelt beside him, shrieking.
Effie rushed to them.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” Adeline said, rocking back and forth on her heels. She reached out and lay a hand on his chest, then recoiled, her white glove covered in blood.
Effie felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. She tried again, wishing for once she didn’t know the exact lay of the carotid, the feel of the spongy vessel beneath her fingertips, the telltale stillness of death. Her eyes met Adeline’s.
“Sauve-le! You can save him, non? You must!”
The sound of distant horse hooves drew her attention. Not one set, but many, thundering closer.
“We’ve got to go,” she said. When Adeline didn’t respond, Effie shook her by the shoulders. “We’ve got to leave here. Now.”
She’d heard tell at the club meetings of this sort of ruse. White Leaguers, Ku Kluxers, Bulldozers, Regulators, Redeemers—whatever these hateful men called themselves—would stake out Republican gatherings and stir up a “Negro Riot.” Under the pretense of protecting themselves and the general citizenry, they’d slaughter all the colored in sight.
“Now!” she said again.
Adeline still didn’t rise, but sat weeping beside Samson’s body. Effie looped an arm about her waist and started to stand. She’d carry Adeline away if she had to, but then she remembered Jonah.
“Get to one of the wagons or hide in the woods,” she said to Adeline, before releasing her and jumping down from the platform.
The lawn was like a riled anthill. Parents scooped up their children and dashed for their wagons and carts. Those who’d come on foot scattered into the surrounding fields and swamps. Some slithered into the crawlspace beneath the banker’s house. Then, likely remembering the fire set at Grant Parish, scurried back out, preferring a bullet to being burned alive.
Effie yelled for Jonah until her vocal cords grew swollen. She circled the house. The lawn. Then circled around again before at last finding him huddled between stacks of logs in the woodshed. She gathered him into her arms, both their cheeks wet with tears.
Near the road she found Tom.
“There you are. Thank God!” he said. “Hurry, to the wagon. You can bet more of them buckras on their way.”
Effie glanced up and down the road. Carts and buggies rumbled away as fast as their horses and mules could be made go. But in none of them did she see Adeline. “You go on. I’ll catch up or meet you back in the city.”
“Are you mad?”
She hoisted Jonah into Tom’s arms. “I’ve got to find Adeline.”
“I’ll look for her, you—”
But Effie had already turned back and was hurrying around the house.
The lawn, only minutes before teeming with people, had emptied. Trampled hats and fans and shawls littered the ground. Two other men, both Negroes, lay dead atop the bloodstained grass. Samson’s body remained on the platform, his head lolling over the edge, one arm crossed over his torso, the other stretched out and reaching.
Effie righted his body so he lay atop the platform as if in sleep. She pulled his handkerchief from her pocket and wiped away the thin line of blood trailing from his mouth. The clamor of horse hooves grew. She closed his searching eyes. A final kiss, soft against his cooling lips, and she turned away, leaving him to find Adeline.
No sign of her on the lawn or by the house. Maybe she’d made away on a carriage while Effie was yet searching for Jonah. But then, at the edge of the forest, Effie saw her mauve hat dangling from a low-hanging tree branch.
Just as she reached the tree and plucked free the hat, a posse of mounted white men crested the hill just beyond the house. She hurried deeper into the tangle of trees and brush, squeezing past a thorny greenbrier bush and into the shell of a rotted tree trunk. Her feet sank into the boggy soil. Insects crawled beneath her collar and up her skirts. She crouched. Listened.
Several men dismounted at the edge of the wood. Others galloped off across the field or back to the road. The horse hooves faded and other sounds emerged: boots crunching through the underbrush, dogs barking and sniffing. Just as it had that night in Algiers, the sound injected her with panic. She wrapped her arms around her knees, boring her fingers into her flesh until they met bone. Any shaking and she’d rattle the greenbrier, alerting them to her presence.
The barks and snarls and footfalls drew closer. Then a howl. Her mind drew in on itself, but the dogs were there too. The forest. This one moonlit and swampy. She was no longer crouching but held fast in Jonesy’s arms as he loped beside the other runaways.
They heard the dogs before they saw them, barking and splashing through the swamp behind them. Jonesy set her down and pointed in the direction the other men were fleeing. “I’m gonna lead them away. You git along with the others. I’ll find you. Run till you see the men in blue. Not gray. Blue. You tell ’em you’s lookin’ for de Yankees. Say it, Effie.”
The thinness of his voice frightened her, but she repeated what he said. “I’s lookin’ fo de Yankees.”
“Good, now git.”
Effie didn’t move.
“Go!”
She started to cry. Jonesy glanced over his shoulder, then crouched down in front of her and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “No cryin’ now, you hear? You’s gotta be brave. Just like in the slave yard. Run, now. Run!” He gave her a gentle shove and took off in the opposite direction. A few steps and she turned around, watching him disappear, his bare feet splashing loudly through the swamp, drawing away the dogs.
Effie ran but never found the other runaways. And without Jonesy, she didn’t know how to find the someplace better he’d spoken of either. But dawn came and with it campfire smoke and the men in blue.
Now, even with the bloodhounds sniffing and growling only a few yards away, Effie realized she’d found that someplace better after all. Not with the Union army. Not with Captain and Mrs. Kinyon. But here, with Tom and Mrs. Carrière and Jonah.
Another howl. Effie held her breath. The sounds grew closer.
And Adeline. She was part of that someplace better too. Effie had to find her.
“Hey!” someone called from deeper in the woods. “Found footprints headin’ this way!”
The clop of the men’s boots drifted off in the direction of the voice. The dogs followed. Effie waited through several minutes of silence before standing and peeking about. Her muscles were stiff and her skin bug-bitten. Afternoon sunlight shone in the distance at the edge of the forest. The faint scent of barbecue and gun smoke laced the air.
She picked her way free of the briar bush and trudged into the woods.
Hours passed. The patchwork of sky visible through the canopy drained of color and then began to darken. With dusk coming, she soon ought to turn back. Once it got fully dark, the dogs would have an even greater advantage, and though she hadn’t encountered anyone else, she’d heard plenty of screams and gunshots in the distance.
Blisters rubbed at the back of her heels. Her dress was mud-soaked and torn. Crickets screeched. An owl hooted. Possums skittered in the branches above.
Then she heard what sounded like the cry of a cat. Bobcats lived in these parts, she’d been told. Larger, fiercer cats in other reaches of the South. Could one have wandered here? Effie slowly started to backtrack from the sound, her skin prickling and limbs cold. The cry came ag
ain, followed by a grumble and rustling. Not a cat’s call at all. A woman’s muffled scream.
Effie gathered her courage and tiptoed toward the ruckus. Through the trees she spied Adeline on the ground, her mouth gagged with a dirty rag. A white man loomed above her on his knees. He worked free his belt while Adeline struggled beneath him. She clawed at her gag, loosening it, and screamed again. The man laughed. “Call out all you like. Ain’t no one gonna hear or do two licks about it if they do.”
She yanked off her bloodstained gloves and bared her nails, dragging them down his forearms and slashing at his chest. He turned his belt on her then, lashing her face before she could shield it with her arms. The thwack of leather against skin made Effie’s every muscle bunch and tremble.
He struck Adeline again, this time low, across the stomach. When she moved her arms to protect her belly, he whipped the belt across her neck and chest.
Effie had scant recollection of grabbing the gnarled log or creeping closer toward them, but before he could raise the belt for a fourth lash, she bashed him in the back of the head. He fell forward on top of Adeline, who squirmed from beneath him and out of arm’s reach.
When the man started to push himself up, Effie took aim for his temple and swung again.
This time, the crack of bone rang loud through the trees. He fell onto his side, motionless, blood trickling from his nose and down the side of his head. A mat of his greasy blond hair stuck to the log. Effie dropped it to the ground, her hands rattling.
“We’ve got to go,” she whispered.
Adeline didn’t move. Her eyes were glassy and fixed, her lips mouthing something without the benefit of sound. Effie crouched in front of her and smoothed down her wild hair. A welt had risen across her cheek, and the collar of her dress was torn. “We’ve got to go.”
Adeline looked at Effie with a vacant stare, then down at her hands. Several of her nails had broken off and bled. Dirt caked her skin. She wiped her hands on her skirt, then rubbed them together, frantic and twisting, as if she meant to chafe off her very skin.
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