A Separate Country

by Robert Hicks

  On the days the four of us went fishing, Mother insisted that the youngest children stay in her care, for fear of drowning. Then she would take them to the lake and fall asleep in her lounge where I would find her hours later, the children scattered between the water and the kitchen in the big cabin where there were spoons of sugar and knots of fried bread dough. The children might have hitched up the plus-four and ridden it straight into Lake Pontchartrain without Mother knowing, but they didn’t. They were good children, you all were good children.

  In the early afternoon at the fishing hole, you and your brother would curl up between the roots of the oak that shaded us, and your father and I would stare for long stretches at the black pinpricks where our lines entered the water. John always yanked his line out of the water first. I could go all day without ever checking my hook. Not John.

  One day he whipped the line out of the water so hard it hooked the branches in the tree behind him, and he spent five minutes plucking and yanking at the line, trying to get it loose without getting the hook in his face. His wood foot, which he had removed from his boot earlier, now punched holes in the earth.

  “Why do you do that, John?” I had woken with a head that felt pricked by sharp things. Colors were more vivid, people moved slower. I suppose it was Father’s wine of the night before, he had made it himself, and so it had to be finished. Another rule. Now all things seemed strange. Even the children’s faces seemed thinner and sharper. It made me curious.

  “Why do I do what? Try to get the hook out of the tree? Because we don’t have many more, and it’s right there, almost got it. And then I’ll be catching some big fish, I feel it.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant to say. Why do you pull your hook out of the water so quickly? If I were a fish, I’d be offended, surely. You serve up the meal and before they get a chance to pick up their knives and forks, you’re whisking it away. Very poor service, John.” I wanted him to laugh. The sun had begun to burn away the wine fog and I was happy to be sitting by the creek with my man.

  John stopped pulling at his line, which was now hopelessly wrapped and tied in the branches of the oak, and bent his head down toward where I had reclined on the ground with my arms above my head. I hoped he might give up on his hook and take up with his wife. You two were still asleep. John stayed standing over me, nodding his head.

  “I want to know what’s happened with it, I don’t want any fish getting my bait without my knowing it.”

  “Just wait until the fish tugs. That’s the accepted sign, Mr. Hood.”

  “But that’s not how it always works. They get in there and get out and you don’t ever know it. I mean to catch those little bastards, too, unawares.”

  He pulled a knife and slashed at the catgut finally, springing the branch, hook, and gizzard loose. The hook and gizzard flew off into the underbrush. John looked after them and grimaced. He put the knife back in his pocket and sat down next to me. He took up my hand and let it sit limp in his own.

  “If a fish makes off with your gizzard or whatever that is, without you knowing it, does it really matter?” I said.

  “Of course it does.”

  He chuckled at himself. His stinking gizzards nearly always looked as pristine as the moment they’d entered the water. He said he admired my patience and that he wished he had some of it.

  “I’m not just impatient, though.” His voice dropped so low it vibrated in my chest, and I sat up.

  “I can’t stand not knowing.”

  “What, John?”

  “What’s happened down there, and what’s happening.”

  “You want to be a fish?”

  “I don’t want to be fooled by fish. Or anything else.”

  Now he squeezed my hand and I was relieved. And scared.

  “Men died because I was fooled, Anna Marie. Sometimes I was fooled and didn’t ever know it until it was far, far too late. There’s nothing worse than that, Anna Marie, believe me. Because what could I say to the ones in the hospital torn up by ball and artillery? I couldn’t tell them I’d made a mistake, though of course they knew it already. Knew it better than me.”

  I knew nothing about war, but I knew he was waiting for me to say something. His hand began to let loose of mine.

  “We are all fooled sometimes, John. That’s life.”

  “And death. And when you’ve stepped over the pieces of boys, just children some, who died because you were fooled, see if you find any comfort anywhere in the idea.”

  He put my hand down, laying it carefully where he’d found it.

  “Why are we not talking about fishing?” I wanted to cry, and I was angry too. How dare he make fishing into something awful and cruel? “What are you trying to say, John?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t want to be fooled, and I can’t stand not knowing if I’ve been fooled. The fish, your family, the traders, my clients, who knows who’s laughed at me? I understand less and less every day.”

  I stood up, picked up my pole, and yanked it out of the water. A blue-gray fish (bream, John called it) flew out of the water. It gasped and gaped at the world, it flew in a perfect arc over my head. I saw its beautiful white belly, and to this day I can draw the way its color disappeared into that soft white flesh, and also each drop of water that it left in the air like a track. At the end of its soundless flight it landed on John Junior’s face with a wet thump. John Junior screamed and cried and stomped at the fish, which flopped into the underbrush in the same direction as John’s old chicken lizard.

  When John Junior had calmed down, I sent him back to the cabin with you, Lydia. I remember you looking at us, your parents, for a long moment before taking your brother by the hand and telling him there would be no more fish falling on his face, not to worry.

  Late that afternoon, when you children had been dressed and sent off to the dining room, John and I got dressed for supper. We’d spent the rest of the day at the lake, sitting in the shade of the bathing cabin’s porch. Your father read the week-old news-paper that had been brought that morning with the day’s supplies from the market. I traced circles on a piece of paper.

  My family, our family, were not fish out to fool him. But he couldn’t tell the difference, and I was afraid of what that meant.

  John’s blue suit was all he had to wear for supper. He hadn’t known, and I’d forgotten to tell him, that he should order a summer suit or two for dining. The other men had white linen suits with open collars that they wore to table and had cleaned every day by the servants. John looked like a man on his way to a funeral, by contrast. He cleaned that suit himself every day, wiping it down and brushing it carefully at night and then in the morning.

  The last night of our vacation we ate capons trussed up in red ribbon. Father joked that they looked uncomfortable. John untied his before the blessing and then began to try to tie it back up again before I stopped him.

  “What are these?” he whispered, after Gustave had made the blessing, full of thanks for happy things that had yet to come to pass, and also for Henriette.

  “Chickens. Fatter roosters.”

  “Not pheasant?”

  “There are no pheasants here, John.”

  “Of course, but I thought the Creoles could get their hands on anything and put it in a box to be shipped to their summer-house.”

  I kicked him lightly. I thought, I am glad there will be no more fishing. John was not one to let a joke go.

  “There are Creole tomatoes, and Creole eggs, and Creole peppers, and Creole beef, and Creole okra, and Creole traditions, and Creole water, so surely there must be a Creole pheasant somewhere prancing about.”

  “No. Well, yes, but they aren’t birds.” John opened his eyes wide at me, feigned shock at the betrayal of my own people.

  “In any case, that’s what I thought it was, a traditional Creole pheasant. Now it’s a chicken. I’m not nearly so impressed.”

  “Nor is it terribly impressed with you, I’m sure.”

  “Ah,
it will be.” He rested his good hand on the breast of the chicken and pulled off a leg. A piece of yellow fat from around the thigh joint flipped into the air and landed on the tablecloth in front of Henriette. Father smiled, but no one else seemed amused. The rest had their knives and their forks poised in midair like musicians awaiting their conductor. Gustave smiled, nodded at John, and carefully placed his fork and knife on the bird, sawing gently and without sound.

  After that we were quiet until the dessert, which was imported blueberries from upriver and, as Mother unfortunately put it, “Creole cream.” John swallowed a laugh and began to cough.

  “Are you all right, John?” Father asked.

  “Perfectly,” John said, straightening his back and looking fierce. King for a moment.

  I listened to the clink of spoons, the slurps, the deep breaths John took beside me.

  “And everything else?” Father never ate blueberries.

  John had his mouth full, nodded his head. I watched Henriette and Gustave across the table, pulling their berries one at a time to the edge of the bowl and draining them with the spoon, looking up at John. I thought of overturning their bowls, standing on the table, challenging them all. There were only a few times in his life that John ever needed protection.

  “Just fine, Mr. Hennen, we’re squared away now. I have entirely transferred our assets to the insurance company that General Longstreet turned over to me, and we have just finished our first year underwriting river vessels. Mostly barges, though I was also honored to insure the steamship Natchez this year as well.”

  “Has it been good work?” Gustave nearly leered, a great dark jaw and narrow teeth, big brown eyes. He knew something, they all knew something. Or thought they knew something. They always thought they knew more than the américain. John had been right about that. He quietly finished his blueberries and placed his spoon on the table in front of his bowl crosswise. It was a strange place to put it. Gustave looked at it as if it were a pistol. John squared his shoulders, crossed his arms on the table, and leaned toward Gustave, unblinking. It was easy to forget his size, he was always so sad seeming.

  “Very good, thank you for asking, monsieur.”

  Gustave leaned back and feigned to stretch his arms, as far from John as possible. He turned his head and seemed to be speaking to Henriette’s right shoulder.

  “I’ve heard otherwise.”

  Father stood up, but Mother pulled him back down.

  “I’ve heard the same,” she said. “It’s a perfectly acceptable question, we are all family here.”

  “And me, I’ve heard it too.” Henriette, though I have always loved her dearly, didn’t know the first thing about insurance or the riverboats or the trade at the harbor. I’m not sure she’d ever been there. She loved her man, but I loved mine.

  “Pah, you’ve heard no such thing.”

  “I’ve heard that our dearest John, despite his best intentions, has been associating with the wrong people.”

  Henriette was fierce, fiercer than Gustave. She said this looking straight into my eyes, aware of John glaring at her and not caring a bit. She knew I disliked her fop, and so she had to dislike my general.

  “Who did you hear that from? Our dearest Gustave?”

  “Anna Marie.” John put his hand on mine. It was hot and dry and tense.

  “I think,” Father said, “that we should let each other to their own business.”

  The servants picked up the berry bowls quickly, flitting around the table like black moths. They hurried away and through the door to the kitchen, where I knew they would listen intently to the sport at table and argue its nuances. I used to join them before I became too old to be trusted with their secrets.

  Though he had been given the opportunity to end the interrogation, I knew John would not take it. He had to know. I understood him suddenly, and I understood the fish.

  “No, Mr. Hennen, I think that it is a family matter and I am happy to discuss it. My success is my family’s success, which is the success of your daughter and your grandchildren. However—” And here he turned to Gustave, who was caught flicking and rubbing at a tiny blueberry on his linen lapel. He looked up, surprised.

  “However,” John said, “I must know specifics and facts, numbers and the testimony of trustworthy men. I am not interested in gossip.”

  “That seems a proper policy, certainly,” Father said.

  “I do not gossip, sir.” Gustave began to raise his voice. It was a lovely voice, he once sang in the theater near Jackson Square before it burned down, before he decided to marry. He was a land speculator, he said to strangers, but we knew it meant that he sold plots of his family’s ancient property, which had come to him by death.

  “Then speak up, sir, and remember who you are addressing.” The General awoke.

  “Who I am addressing? Oh good Lord. Fine. Who are your partners?”

  “Two men recommended at the St. Louis Hotel by a friend. They are insurance experts. And Creoles, though that means nothing to me, it surely means something to you.”

  “I do not know these men,” Gustave said. “They are not to be trusted.”

  “The second surely does not follow from the first, unless you are the Lord Himself.”

  The rest of us sat back in our chairs. The argument was on, there was nothing to say. To my shame and horror, I nearly nodded my head with Gustave. They are not to be trusted. I knew this in my heart, and had known it from the beginning. Gustave spoke for me, and it made me want to walk into the lake and never turn back. I was a traitor.

  “Mr. Hood, you are being naïve. Not every Creole is, say, of the same moral fiber. They do not all come from the proper families, and thus they have not all had the concepts of honor, and lawfulness, and loyalty, imbued in them as it has been in us, and, certainly it must be said, in you.”

  “Are you accusing my partners of a crime? Of betrayal?” Though he shot back angrily as if to defend them, I believe John sincerely wanted to know. But he was loyal, it was true, loyal to a fault, and he would not act except in their defense.

  “I am accusing them of being unknown, either to the proper businessmen of my acquaintance, or to the families of my circle. And that makes them a foolish gamble for you, sir.”

  “And why?”

  “They have your money, sir! They have Anna Marie’s money, and Lydia’s money, and John Junior’s money! They are strangers.”

  John closed his eyes and sat still, arms still folded on the table in front of him.

  “It is something to consider,” Father said softly from the end of the table.

  And John did consider it. He had considered it. He had told me so. But I was not enough.

  “They came to me with the recommendation of men I trust. Men I trust to tell me truth and to advise me properly, to be loyal to me. I am loyal to them. These men, my partners, have given me no indication that they cannot be trusted. And so, because honor dictates it, I shall give them my trust until they abandon it. And I shall do no other.”

  “They drink!” Gustave hissed.

  “That is their business. And, might I add, do you not drink spirits also? I believe I’ve seen you. For instance, last night.”

  “You are naïve and obstinate, Mr. Hood.”

  “General Hood.”

  “You cannot trust unknown men, even if they speak French and knew the Emperor himself. Oh hell.” Gustave leaned back, all of us now in the shadows of the candlelight, hiding from the man sitting at the table frowning. He was quiet for a long time, but no one moved. Father began to stir, but then Hood spoke up.

  “I must believe in the goodness of men. I must assume their godliness. I am called to this, we are called to this.”

  “Enfant,” Henriette whispered, and I kicked her under the table.

  “I will believe men when they speak to me, and I will believe that they will return my trust and loyalty to me. I will believe this first, and I do not give a damn who gave birth to them, or who baptized them, o
r which of their ancestors consorted with Iberville, or which of them paid to build the cathedral. I am as willing to trust the son of the man who built the cathedral as the son of the man who paid for it. I choose to live this way now, because I have seen what comes of men’s suspicions of each other. It grows to anger, and anger grows to war. I have given my leg and my arm for the right and the privilege to live my life as I choose, and this is how I choose to live it. I do not want to hear your opinion about my partners ever again. If you think that I will not answer you if challenged, you are very mistaken, little Gustave. I have retired from war, but the war has not retired from me.”

  Gustave knocked over his chair when he rose to his feet, but instead of challenging Hood for insulting him, he marched out the doors onto the veranda and then down the path to the cabins. Henriette followed him, but not without hesitating for a moment and looking at John steadily. She nodded her head to him and he nodded back.

  “Good night, General Hood.”

  “Good night, Henriette.”

  Only much later, when Henriette was no longer engaged to Gustave and he had become barely a memory, did I realize she had not bothered to say good night to the rest of us. Only John. I don’t think it is right to say that she ever came to like John, though I dearly wish she had. She approved of him, that’s all.

  We were left at the table, the four of us blinking at the guttering candles. After a minute John stood up to beg exhaustion. “Tomorrow it’s back to the city, and I’ll have to get the troops up early and organized if we’ll ever make it back by sundown,” he said. In his dark suit in that dark room, his face appeared to float above the table on its own.