A Separate Country

by Robert Hicks

  “You had better explain. Quick now.”

  I told him that Hood had been writing about his life since the war, about him and Anna Marie and their children, their friends, his failures, and finally his happiness in the ruin of that godforsaken house on Third Street. He asked me why Hood would write such a thing, and I said I didn’t know, but Hood assumed that Sebastien would understand, and I guessed that was why I’d been sent to see him.

  “Who else does he write about?”

  “His friends. People he knew.”

  “Which people?”

  “Rintrah, General Early, General Beauregard, his business partners, Mr. Plessy.”

  “Don’t be coy.”

  “You.”

  “Yes.”

  “Father Michel.”

  His face softened and he smiled, petting the revolver gently.

  “How is Father Mike?”

  He asked this question as if he’d known the man, as if he had fond feelings for him. And I suppose he did, since Father Mike had saved him from murder by Hood, but even then he seemed more than just passingly familiar with Father Mike. As if he’d known him before that day in the swamp when the two killers had been separated by the great priest bear, perhaps the only human alive who could have made either of them afraid. Had Hood known this, had he suspected that Sebastien and Father Mike were known to each other? He had not, I had read his pages too many times to doubt it.

  Now there were two deaths I held back from Sebastien, and I reckoned that was two too many at that point.

  “Father Mike is dead.”

  He took this calm and quiet. Then his eyes closed hard, and the blood drained from his temples. He pulled himself in tight, grasped his hands in front of him, in his lap, and bent over as if praying. When he sat back up again and opened his eyes, he looked around him as if he were seeing everything anew.

  “Did they catch the killer? The murderer?”

  “What makes you think he was murdered? I didn’t say nothing about that.”

  He was a very fast man, though he always seemed to have barely moved. He had been sitting across from me, contained, and then he was standing in front of me with his fingers pinned around my neck. I tried to fight him off but I was soon swooning, the swamp began to darken before my eyes, and my arms became dull and heavy. I slumped to the ground, and when he finally released my neck the blood ran hot into my head. I thought my eyes would explode.

  When I looked up he was sitting back on his stump, as if nothing had happened.

  “We are at a crucial moment, Eli Griffin, and so you’re going to have to make some important decisions. Are you going to go it straight and honest, or are you going to play with Sebastien until he tires and feeds you to the alligators? I am trying to be as reasonable as I can. But what you are talking about now is obviously beyond your understanding. You’re either going to answer my questions straight, tell me what you know, cracker boy, or you’re not going to live much longer. Remember my art.”

  I understood.

  “So, did they find his murderer?”

  “No. And I just want to explain, Mr. Lemerle, that I didn’t…”

  “Quiet now.”

  I was quiet.

  “When?”

  “The lottery. At the lottery, the big drawing last fall.”

  He nodded his head, as if murdering the big priest at the lottery had been one of just a few possibilities, as if he, Sebastien, had already worked out those possibilities. I was very scared then, and I became convinced I would die. Soon enough I took comfort from knowing that I would die soon, and from knowing who would do the killing. He was right, I didn’t understand what we were talking about anymore, and I didn’t understand the man in front of me. Had he planned the murder of the priest? I nearly ran for my rifle.

  “Who does Hood think did the killing?”

  “He thought Father Mike ran away. He didn’t know that he’s dead.”

  Sebastien looked at me queerly.

  “Why would you know and not tell Hood? Why would Hood not know?”

  I struggled to answer, but before I could get a word out he crossed his arms and leaned back, frowning at me. The pistol remained in his lap, the fish stew in my bowl had developed a thick skin. I put it aside.

  “I understand why Hood doesn’t know,” he said.

  I watched him.

  “Hood is dead, too, isn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “And you just found out about Father Mike.”

  I nodded again.

  “Hood was not murdered.”

  I got my words back, the flush had gone down out of my face.

  “He died of yellow jack not long ago. Him and his wife and his daughter.”

  “Which daughter?”

  “Lydia.”

  “A beautiful girl. How tragic.”

  He seemed truly saddened by that news, and this made me angry. It gave me life.

  “How would you know about Lydia, or any of the other Hoods anyhow?”

  He leaned forward and I could smell the onion and mullet on his breath.

  “General John Bell Hood has been my special subject of study for many, many years. Of course I know who his children are. I could draw them each for you. I could tell you what they like to eat, and when they go to sleep. I can tell you what time that house used to go dark and what time they fired the cookstove in the morning.”

  “You been studying him since the Indians, I guess.”

  “He writes about the Comanche? Devil! But you’re a smart boy.”

  He looked into my eyes, his were brown flecked with black and gray. Looking to see if I was lying. Again he lowered the weapon, this time sticking it in his pocket. At that moment I heard the children again, playing over on the far side of the clearing. The woods were clear and sweet and deep and full of color. I didn’t need to piss so bad anymore. I slid over to another stump braced by roots and sat down. He crouched on his haunches and poked at the wood in the stove. It was a long time before he spoke, so long I watched a brown spider lower itself from the overhang of his house to the ground and haul itself back up again.

  His woman came out of the house and smiled sweetly at me, though I could see in her eyes the distaste sliding by. She called out in French, and the children came running. Narrow and sharp faces like Lemerle’s. Was the silent and malevolent colored woman his wife?

  He introduced the woman as Danielle. She said nothing, just backed up slowly and took a seat behind me, next to an old live oak. I could hear her clicking her tongue. I became comfortable there. It was nice out in the country, I’d forgotten what it was like. It was not much like the rocky hills of Middle Tennessee, but it was quiet and the sun filtered down through the green, and I was swaddled in the warmth of sweet air. Their house, I could see, rambled on into the woods beyond my vision, one room after another, some smashed together, others piled atop the others. Everything was angled, interrupted, and covered in tin. Vines slithered through windows and behind the tin, framing the house in the green and yellow. Hundreds of goosenecked and deformed gourds hung off the house. The vines looked strong, like I could climb them.

  The first vine came around my neck quick, wrapped twice. She was very strong. The harder I pulled against the vine, the more it choked me. I watched Lemerle come around to assist her, and the two of them pulled me back until I was sitting on a small stool with my back against the old oak tree. I couldn’t speak, I saw black spots everywhere. Soon they had me tied to the tree, harnessed by the neck, legs, and arms. The fissures and depressions in the trunk of the tree cut into my back. Danielle came around to the front and spit in my face, but Lemerle told her to apologize and wipe my face. He told her I was not his enemy. “Though,” he said, turning to me, “you might think you are.” She shrugged and wiped my face with the rough hem of her raw cotton skirt. I could feel each stitch scratching, I smelled sweat and perfume.

  Lemerle sat back down across from me and smiled kindly.

  “Don’t wo
rry, if you’re being straight with me, I won’t hurt you. Just a precaution. Can’t have you rambling around the place while I’m trying to read this book of Hood’s. You could get into all kind of trouble. Now where is it?”

  I tried to talk but the pain in my throat was too great. Danielle loosened the vine just a little.

  “With the horse,” I said.

  He whistled a strange high keening sound, and the two oldest children came running. He spoke to them in English I couldn’t understand, and then I watched them lope over to my horse who, traitorous git, whinnied in delight at their approach. The girl pulled the package of paper from the saddlebag and came running back to her father. The boy pulled the rifle from its holster and began to break it down, tossing the receiver one way, the barrel the other, pieces every which way into the underbrush.

  Lemerle took the pile of paper and thanked the girl. He turned to me.

  “This might take some time, I’m not learned.”

  I shrugged. Where else was I going to go? He laughed.

  “You’ll be well fed, don’t fear.”

  There was something else I had to tell him. I wasn’t sure if I should, but I decided that I ought to just carry out Hood’s order like he’d said.

  “Sebastien.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Hood said you’re to judge whether he’s cast off the demon or not. Based on those pages.”

  He held the pages as if they were glass and might break. I thought he might cry.

  “He remembered that, did he?”

  And so began the strangest day and night of my life. Sebastien did not sleep. First he read by the light of day, and then by the light of the cookstove, and then by the light of the red, blue, yellow, and white candles Danielle placed around him in a circle, some shoved into the crooks of low-lying tree limbs, others ground into the dirt at his feet. And he might have been a god, or the statue of one, unmoving and intent on the thing in front of him. Only his hands moved. In the dark I couldn’t see his eyes, only the flash of light against them. My mind wandered. I thought I saw lights far off in the woods. At times I wished they were the lights of Rintrah’s men, come to find me, and sometimes I prayed they weren’t. But they were just swamp lights, or possibly ghosts.

  When Sebastien ate, I ate. After the stew, it was mostly hard pan bread and nuts, but I appreciated it all the same. I even thought that maybe Danielle had softened toward me. She brought me an extra crust in the middle of the night, and a cup of coffee that she held to my lips. It warmed me. Then she stood up and stared at me, cocking her head like a bird. She looked me up and down. She whispered something, but I couldn’t hear it, I only saw her lips move. What are you? I thought she said. It was a good question to pose to a man trussed up like a Christmas pig in the stinking and gurgling south Louisiana swamp, far from anyone who loved him. A good question.

  In the morning the children took turns riding my horse. They painted him with berry juice and hollered in French while racing up and down the clearing, and then down the hunting paths that ringed the homestead and, I could tell by the honk of their voices, led far into the wild country around. I had slept some, and when the morning came it seemed only moments had passed since Sebastien had first opened the manuscript. But when I was fully awake, I could see that he had finished it. It sat on the woodpile in front of the cookstove, neatly arranged and tied again. Sebastien offered me more coffee, but I had to piss so I said no. He got up, slowly as if in pain, or like an old man, and untied me. He helped me up and massaged my arms. When the feeling came back I nearly cried in pain. He helped me to his seat on the stump, in front of the warm stove, and then he paced, looking at me.

  “Do you think you know who Paschal was?” he said.

  I stretched my legs and began to scratch at them. I’d been feasted on by biting things all night. Whatever was going to happen needed to happen soon, I was too tired. I decided to answer his questions as best I could, no games, no grifting.

  “He was a colored who had been their friend.”

  “That’s true, what else?”

  “Piano teacher.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what else.”

  “Oh, now, that ain’t true.”

  He was right, but I didn’t know how to tell him what I thought I knew. But he already knew it.

  “I’ll help you,” he said. “You came here by yourself. You came here with a rifle that you could have easily used to kill me from out there in the goddamn wood without riding up in here like a damned cavalryman and then poking around in my stew. You didn’t want to kill me right away, you thought you would do it later. You wanted to talk to me first.”

  “Yes. But that was only because Hood had told me to bring you these pages and get your verdict on them, and I’m a man of my word.”

  “Oh shit. If that was true, you’d have walked up nice and polite and delivered the message and the book and been on your way. No, you wanted to talk to me. That had nothing to do with Hood’s request.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “You know more, or think you know more, than Hood did. You found out about Father Mike but Hood didn’t, and you’re wondering what else Hood didn’t know. And I’m ready to bet this plantation and mansion right here, such as it is, that you’re wondering about Paschal. Because this book right here,” he said, tapping at it with his foot, edging it dangerously close to the fire, “describes the man like he was some sort of angel, not part of the dirty and sinful world like the rest of us. And that, if I’m guessing right, doesn’t square with what you know about this life. There ain’t no angels, for men like you and me that’s well settled.”

  “I ain’t like you.”

  “No. But we both seen the worst, mmm? Hood ruined your life like he did mine, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. But I don’t hold it against him no more.”

  “The hell you don’t. You always will. But you might not act on it, mmm? You can learn to love the man you hate, that’s true. That’s what it means to be a man, mon frère, but you don’t just up and change your mind about what you know of men. Men are beasts, they are not angels. Hood wanted that to be true. He wanted to believe there were angels he could protect and heal, who could then clear the books of his debt to God. Everything, everything, in that man’s life was either something he owed or something someone else owed him. Of course you see this in what he writes. Even I see it, and I am not as learned a man as you.”

  “I reckon that is all true.”

  “Ahh, but in the end he knew it was only the Devil who could clear him, mmmm? Me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not an angel. Not Paschal.”

  “Paschal is dead.”

  “Ahh, you’re being a smart mouth.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Paschal was no angel.”

  “I agree.”

  “I think you require evidence.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Okay, then, here it is. This is what you come for, anyway.”

  He shouted out in French toward the house, and after a while the oldest boy came to where we were sitting carrying the youngest, possibly three years old, maybe younger. When the taller boy left, the young one sat down in the dirt and began to chew oak bark and play with ants.

  “This is Paschal.”

  “I don’t believe in voudou. He ain’t come back from the dead.”

  “No, of course not. That is just his name.”

  “Seems a bad joke to me. You killed the man.”

  “This one was born and got his name some time before I saw Paschal at that goddamn ball.”

  “A coincidence.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. He was named for Paschal, the man you knew and have read about. Named by me, for the benefit of Danielle.”

  I only nodded my head. I watched the boy close, looking for some sign. I stared at his fingers. Were they long and delic
ate? Was he beautiful?

  “Does he look like me?”

  “No.”

  “You already knew this.”

  “I guessed. I didn’t know there was a child.”

  “There was, and as far as he knows I am his father. And I will remain his father. I love him like the rest.”

  “Paschal…”

  “I don’t want you to say it. Just look with your eyes. Don’t say it.”

  We sat silently while the boy mumbled to himself, occasionally barking orders to the ants. His voice was pure, like a plucked guitar string.

  “You can imagine, I was angry,” he said. “But I love my wife. My wife. No matter what anyone else says, she is my wife before God.”

  “I understand.”

  “You don’t, but you can imagine understanding, and that’s a good quality. It is a kind quality. I do not have it.”

  He picked up Hood’s pages and sat them in his lap, still too close to the fire for my comfort. He stroked the rough string and considered his next words.

  “I would have left him alone, had he not been there.”

  “At the ball.”

  “Yes. Yes. I would have left him alone. Danielle had made me promise. Danielle, who had loved me when I was only a murdering wraith, a beast, who had given me children who I could love and who loved me also. Hood and I are not so much different, no? Is that not what Anna Marie did for the General? Mmmm? Yes, she did. That’s what this book says.” He thumped it.

  “The difference is that we were always shunned, we had only ourselves and these children and that little house on Marais Street. Long ago I would have killed Danielle, too, and the children. I would not have hesitated. But I had been too long grateful to her, too much in love with those children. But she fell in love with Paschal. I know this is true. She loved me, and she loved him. And why not? I was the worst kind of man, I was shunned by my own people, I was a white man living among negroes, hated by many people. And Paschal was a loved man, a cultured man, a negro who was as white as I was and many times more interesting. Why wouldn’t she fall for such a man, a man like her, one of her own, someone who understood things about being a negro I never would understand? My children would understand these things, and my grandchildren, but I could never understand it. I knew what it was like to be cast out, but it was never a permanent condition. I could change, I could reform, I could remake myself. Is that not what you américains do? Is that not the way? I was not born an outcast, but she was and so was Paschal, and so why wouldn’t she fall in love with him?