Under the Cajun Moon

by Mindy Starns Clark

  After that, the crowd went crazy. Jacques tried to stop them, but to no avail. Soon both of the soldiers and the agent were down on the ground, and people were striking them relentlessly with their statuettes. It was as if the poor men were being stoned—all because of a simple miscommunication!

  Jacques had to do something. Pushing his way to Angelique, he told her to leave the area and wait for him at the livery.

  “Come with me,” she said, clutching at his hand, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Angelique, just go! I have to stop this! These two men are going to die for no reason!”

  Reluctantly, he let go of her hand and watched her dart off toward the safety of a side street. Jacques again forced his way to the front of the crowd and tried to shout over all the noise, telling people to stop, please stop, but they didn’t understand. He got the attention of several, but as he started to explain, saying that he was one of the goldsmiths who worked on the statuettes, it was as if all the rage and frenzy of the crowd shifted from the agent and soldier lying on the ground, likely dead now, to Jacques himself. Before he could stop them, Jacques felt a sharp blow to his cheek. The next thing he knew, what felt like a hundred more followed as he was pummeled. Curling into a ball against the earth, trying to protect his head with his arms, Jacques could only pray for mercy, begging God to spare him. At some point, he passed out.

  Eventually, he awoke.

  From the sound of things, the people were gone now. All was silent around him except for the soft weeping of a young woman, the tears of his beloved Angelique. Jacques tried to whisper her name, though all that came out was a low groan.

  Still, that was enough to get her attention. Suddenly he could feel her hands clutching at the clothes on his chest, sobbing and begging him not to give up, not to go away. He opened his eyes, though even when he did it was as if everything was shrouded in a veil of hazy white. Slowly, he managed to form a few words, his voice just a hoarse whisper.

  “I’m sorry, Angelique.”

  “This was not your fault, Jacques. You were only trying to help the poor men!”

  “And I thank you for that, for trying to help,” a deep voice rasped from nearby. “I fear I shall die regardless.”

  Jacques realized that it was the man who had first been stoned, M. Freneau’s representative who had not been able to make the crowd understand about the statuettes. Carefully turning his head to look, Jacques saw that the man was lying on the ground just a few feet away, blood trickling from his mouth, his eyes swollen shut. Between them and all around, though the scene was out of focus, Jacques could tell that the earth was littered with the statuettes, discarded by the angry crowd after their use for them was done.

  “They have thrown the statuettes out as trash!” Jacques cried.

  “Those fools,” the man rasped. “They did not know…what they had in their very hands. And now we have suffered…for their foolishness.”

  “You suffer now, sir,” Angelique cried angrily, “but Jacques and I have suffered for these infernal statuettes since their very creation! Oh, how I wish they had never been made at all!”

  Sobbing, Angelique recounted their entire, sad tale from the beginning. Jacques wanted to reach up and comfort her, to stroke her hair or take her hand, but he found that he was unable to lift his arm.

  “Girl, how many statuettes remain?” the man asked when she was finished with her story.

  “If not all two hundred, then very nearly so,” she replied, her voice sounding bitter. “They are everywhere.”

  “Then do as I say. Right now.”

  “Sir?”

  “Gather the statuettes…all of them. Return them to the trunk that is on… the wagon there. Do it now…I beg of you.”

  Angelique objected, saying she must tend to her injured husband, but he was adamant in his request.

  “Have you knowledge of anatomy or medicine?” he moaned.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then you aren’t doing him any good by…sitting there and crying. Gather the statuettes now. Please…give this dying man his last wish.”

  Reluctantly, she did as he asked. Jacques thought her energies would be far better spent trying to get both men to a doctor or, lacking that, a priest. But he was too tired and in too much pain to make his objections known. Instead, he lay there on the ground, going in and out of consciousness. Every time he opened his eyes he spotted Angelique moving quickly between the statuettes she was picking up and the open trunk. She did not bother with the cloth wrappings but instead threw them into the wooden box with abandon, as fast as she possibly could.

  “Done, sir, I have done as you asked,” she gasped, collapsing on the ground next to Jacques, breathing heavily from the exertion. As she turned her attentions to her husband, he could feel her trembling hands gently wiping the sweat from his brow.

  “Thank you. Now listen to me, girl. Listen carefully,” the man persisted, a gurgling sound coming from his throat.

  “What?” she asked, frustration clearly evident in her voice.

  “These fools did not know what they had…when they had it. They have used the treasure as weapons and then discarded it.” He gurgled again and coughed, and it sounded as if he was drowning in his own blood. “The government was…equally at fault in this, for allowing it to happen in the first place. The Mississippi Bubble was a shameful blot…on the noble face of France, and much harm has come to many because of it.”

  Though he could do nothing for the agent, Jacques was grieved at the sound of the man’s labored breathing and hoped he would soon say what he was trying to say.

  “I cannot ease the sufferings…of all the fools who held the gold in their hands and then gave it up…But I can do this…As an agent of the French crown, I bequeath the remaining statuettes, in total, to you, madam…and to your husband, should he live.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Clamping a hand over my mouth, eyes wide, I looked at my mother, knowing without question that I was going to vomit. She seemed to understand what was going on because she pointed toward a door and said, “That way!”

  I made it down the hall and into the bathroom just in time. Retching into the toilet, the words that kept rolling around in my head were He says you’re the one who shot him.

  Was I destined to be betrayed by every single person in my life?

  I could only hope that my father’s bizarre accusation was merely a symptom of the trauma his body had been through. Surely, he was feeling confused. Perhaps he had even suffered brain damage. I knew a little bit about how blood loss affected the body. If he had lost two or three pints as they said, then there was a good chance the resulting lack of oxygen to his brain could have done some serious damage.

  But of all the crazy things for him to come out with, how could he possibly say I was the one who did that to him? Either he was lying or I had an evil twin out there doing things I was being blamed for.

  Of all the charges piling up against me, I wasn’t worried that this one could stick. It was too easy to prove that there was no way I could have been in two places on the same day at the same time, especially given how far apart Louisiana and Illinois were. I wasn’t worried about the legal ramifications of my father’s claim. I just didn’t understand how or why he could ever have said such a thing.

  Sitting on the side of the bathtub, I remained as still as possible until I was finished being sick. I flushed the toilet and then moved to the sink, washing my hands and then rinsing my mouth over and over with water cupped in shaky hands.

  I had to get out of here.

  Despite the fact that I was in a swamp, despite the fact that there were no roads that led away from this isolated island called Paradise, my chances of surviving this night were surely far greater outside, on my own, than they were in this house with my mother, guarded by masked kidnappers.

  Thanks to the boat ride Travis had given me earlier, at least I understood how Paradise was laid out. There were three docks here, and at the very le
ast if I could get myself close enough to one of them without being seen, there might be some sort of watercraft that I could sneak onto and take off in. Out on the water, I might not know how to weave in and out as Travis had to make my way toward civilization, but having studied the map at his camp earlier looking for coordinates, at least I understood now how this general region was laid out. Paradise was north and west of Morgan City, so as long as I stayed on the main waterways and headed in a southeasterly direction, I should be able to get to civilization eventually.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. Right now, it was more important that I get away from this house and the masked men who lingered outside. First, though I already knew it wouldn’t go through, I pulled out my cell phone and tried to make a call. Sure enough, the phone could not get service. Slipping it back into my pocket, I continued making my plan for escape.

  This bathroom had a window at the far end, one that looked like it would be just large enough for me to climb out of. Quickly, I turned off the light and then crept to the window, pulled back the curtain, and looked outside. I could see trees and vines and brush, but there were no people, not that I could tell.

  Just as I was about to slide open the window and make my escape, there was a banging at the bathroom door.

  “Chloe? It’s Mom. Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

  There wasn’t a maternal, nurturing bone in my mother’s body, but just listening to the sound of her voice I was reminded how she always at least pretended there was. When I was a child, we’d had an unspoken agreement about moments like these. She would offer to help and I would turn her down. That pretense allowed her to feel like a mother while sparing me the disappointment of how inadequate she really was those few times when I had called her bluff and accepted her “help.”

  “I’m all right,” I called toward the doorway now. “But I threw up all over myself. Do you think it would be okay if I took a quick shower?”

  “That’s probably a good idea. I’ll wait for you in the living room.”

  Case in point: A real mother would have offered to dig around for a change of clothes and a towel and whatever else I might need. Not Lola Ledet. She had already done her job by offering; it was up to me to handle things from there.

  Making sure the door was locked, I turned on the shower and let it run as I moved quickly to the window, slid it open, and popped off the screen. The house was elevated, so even though the bathroom was on the first floor I still had a jump of about seven feet. Looking from side to side and seeing nothing but flora and fauna in the shadows, I hoisted myself onto the window sill and out the other side, making the leap and landing with a soft thud, my feet burning with tingles from the jolt.

  I didn’t know how long my mother would wait for me to finish my shower before she would get suspicious and try to figure out what was going on. I hoped that I would have a good ten minutes, maybe fifteen. That should be time enough to get to the closest dock, anyway, and if I had any luck at all there would be an unguarded boat there for me to steal.

  Blinking as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I moved along the back of the house. I didn’t have the luxury of banging a stick on the ground in the way Travis had taught me, so I could only hope that I would have no snake encounters there in the brush.

  Peeking around the side, I saw no people or movement, so again I skirted quietly forward until I reached the front corner. Peeking again, I wasn’t so lucky this time. Not five feet away stood one of my captors in black, a shotgun slung over his shoulder. His back was to me, so quickly I held my breath and retraced my steps, putting as much distance between him and me as possible.

  If there were people in front of the house, my next best bet would have been to head in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, starting just a few yards behind the house, the woods were so dense and thick that there was no way I could have made my way through them. I would have to move sideways.

  Given the general layout of Paradise, I knew that going in one direction would bring me to the river and the other would take me to the bayou. I felt sure that the airboat had come in on the bayou side, so that was my first choice. Of course, the chances were greater that people would be there too, people I really didn’t want to run into.

  There had to be a way to get to the water a little farther down, at a point where I could see the dock and gauge the situation without being seen. That would mean moving through brush and tangles and vines and trees, but at least the undergrowth was not as thick off to the sides as it was heading back.

  Taking a deep breath, I sprinted from the shelter of the house to the nearest big tree in the direction of the bayou. From there, I picked out another tree and prepared to advance again, but as I did a twig snapped under me and my footsteps crunched loudly against debris that littered the forest floor. I froze, hoping no one had heard me. Moving more slowly, trying to be as quiet as humanly possible, I gave up trying to sprint and carefully crept instead. Eventually, I looked back and was pleased to see that I had put a good distance between myself and the house. So far, at least, it didn’t appear as if anyone had spotted me or that my mother had even realized yet that I had snuck out. I kept going, the sounds of the swampy forest reverberating all around me. I was glad that I’d had all evening to get used to the sounds, because already they didn’t scare me as much as they had before.

  Beyond one particularly large tree, the ground grew wet and boggy. Afraid I might be sucked down into quicksand or something, I thought about grabbing a vine and swinging across the wet parts like Tarzan. That wasn’t really an option, however, so I did the next best thing. Taking my chances with the snakes, I climbed up onto a low, fat branch of the massive oak and scooted myself along it like a bridge over water.

  Where the branch tapered off at the far end, I hung down and tested the ground with my feet, and it felt firm enough. Lowering my weight onto the soil, I took another look behind me, but at that point I was so enveloped by the forest that I could no longer tell how far I had gone. All I knew was that I could no longer see the house.

  Unless I had veered off at an angle, I should reach the water soon. Unfortunately, the closer I got to it, the softer the ground grew and the thicker the foliage. I was ready to give up, not sure whether I was more frightened of getting sucked into the muck or being eaten by an alligator. But then I heard the familiar plops and I realized I was nearly there. In front of me, I could even see the moon sparkling on the black water of the bayou. In order to see up the waterway and catch a glimpse of the dock, I briefly considered slipping into that water and swimming out, but that was just too dangerous and terrifying a prospect, so instead I stepped up on a large cypress knee, balanced myself, and then moved forward to another one. After doing that several times, I was finally able to look up the waterway and see the dock. I leaned forward, clinging to the trunk of the tree and squinting in the darkness as I tried to make out the scene there.

  As I had hoped, the airboat was still sitting there, though now it had been joined by a second one. And as I had feared, people were there as well—several people—all of them dressed in black, though it looked as though their ski masks were off for the time being. I wished I had a pair of binoculars so I could get a better look at their faces. From where I was I couldn’t ascertain much more than that they were Caucasian and they had what looked like brown hair. As that described almost everyone around these parts—or at least the Indians and the Cajuns—that knowledge didn’t do me much good.

  My heart sinking in frustration, I realized I would have to retrace my steps, pass behind the house yet again, and move in the opposite direction. I had less hopes of finding some means of escape on the other side of the island, but at this point it was the only real choice I had.

  My movements were faster and more sure on the return. As I scooted myself back along the branch that served as my bridge, I was startled by my first real sign of wildlife: It was some sort of small, furry mammal, and at the sound of my movements it suddenly darted out fr
om under the brush and scampered away into the dark.

  Most terrifying was the moment that I had to pass behind the house. It had been at least ten minutes since I turned on the shower, so there was a good chance that my mother had already investigated and realized I had given her the slip. In a very real sense, though, I was cornered and had no choice. There was no way to get from where I was to where I needed to be without taking that chance.

  Holding my breath, I moved quickly, dashing across the overgrown weeds, skirting the back of the house, and not even bothering to look before continuing on at the other side. There was an expanse of lawn there, and I ran across it as fast as I could in flip-flops. At least I heard no telltale sounds, no yells or gunshots that might tell me they knew that I was gone.

  When I finally reached the cover of some trees, I was relieved to see that there were paths there. Choosing one that seemed to angle in the general direction of the river, I made fast work of it, jumping over fallen logs, splashing through puddles, and ducking under low-hanging vines. It was dark there under the thick canopy of trees that blocked the moonlight, but I did the best I could at staying on the trail and pressing onward as fast as possible.

  More than once, I crashed headfirst through sticky spider webs, but I kept going, running my hands over my face and hair as I did. Trying not to think of the massive spiders that lived in the swamps, I increased my speed, though soon my legs were covered in mud, my arms in mosquito bites, and I swore I could feel a hundred crawling insects along my back, under my shirt.

  I almost made it to the river.

  I could see it there in the distance, the water sparkling at the river’s edge. But then there was a log across the path and so I leapt over it. Had I not landed in mud on the other side, I would have kept going.

  As it was, though, the angle that I hit the mud caused my foot to slide out from under me. The next thing I knew, I was smack on the ground, flat on my back, the wind knocked from my lungs.