by Rhodi Hawk
“Mm-hmm.”
What if she’d stopped the car a mile ago? Or a mile beyond?
“Just…? Here…?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Seemed more a cattle path than a road. But Francois was staring forward now, having provided all the information he cared to give, and Trigger had already hopped out and was cranking that wretched, oinking motor back to life. And so, when Trig hopped back in again Patrice turned the Ford down the little shadow path under the trees and prayed the Ford would behave as loyal as Sugar Pie would have if Patrice had been riding her instead.
“Why down here?” Trigger hollered.
“Time to lighten the load,” Francois replied.
Patrice felt a hiccup lodge in her chest and stay there. They were about to dump the stranger in the woods.
The Ford crept over the muddy lane, into the groves and out to a meadow that looked like it wanted to break apart into marsh. In fact the road made no promise that it intended to remain solid. They rumbled along in a cloud of exhaust, the golden-green cordgrass towering higher than the Ford.
The road split in two, and Francois had Patrice keep left. After a while it happened again. Then on the third time he had her turn right, which seemed like a way to circle back to where they’d just come. It all felt very arbitrary and the path they followed showed signs of having been forged by beast, not man. But Francois seemed easy, like he planned it all this way.
Patrice was relieved that he’d come. So relieved. Whatever it was they were doing now, she never would have thought to dispose of the stranger this way.
They turned a sharp bend and found a bull standing in the path.
Patrice mashed the brake pedal, noting that she’d managed to do so without causing the Ford to stall, and they stopped just shy of the bull.
Francois waved his hat. “Get outta yanh!”
The bull turned to look at the Ford, then turned away again, bored stupid. Its bulk filled the path and left no room on either side for the automobile to go around.
“Get rid of that animal,” Francois said to Trigger.
Trig hopped out and slapped the bull on the rump. Patrice held her breath. She and the boys had once been terrorized by one of the bulls in Terrefleurs. It chased them up onto the roof of the feed shed and wouldn’t let them leave. They were stuck up there for what seemed like hours, until one of the field hands came by and rescued them. That was a mean bull, and Patrice was sure he would have tossed each and every one of the children if he’d had the chance.
But this bull was not mean. It simply wouldn’t go.
Francois said, “Never mind. Just kill it.”
“Kill the bull?” Trigger said.
“No, the engine, the damn engine.”
Patrice let it die.
Francois scooted over across where Trigger had sat and got out of the Ford. The bull’s hide twitched to shake off a fly.
Francois grabbed his stick and pointed at the boys. “You and you. Come with me.”
Gil said, “Where we goin?”
Francois didn’t answer, and the boys followed him around the other side of the bull. Suddenly, the girls were alone.
Rosie got up from the rumble seat and stretched toward the sky, throwing her voice into it.
Patrice listened until the sound of footfalls disappeared, then she got out of the Ford and leaned over the hood, lifting her breasts so that the undersides pressed against the hot metal. She’d been sore enough what with the growing stage, but this was unbearable.
“They forgot to take him,” Marie-Rose said.
“Take whom?”
“The stranger. We here to dump him, ain’t we?”
“Aren’t we.”
“Well, we are, right?”
Patrice closed her eyes.
Rosie said, “If they ain’t dumpin him what they doin out there?”
“I don’t know, honey. Hush up and listen.”
Marie-Rose listened. “What?”
“Listen!”
The breeze filled the cordgrass with rustling whispers. After a moment, a bullfrog started with its deep, throaty call, and another more distant one answered back.
“You listenin to that old frog?” Marie-Rose asked.
“I’m listening to what we aren’t hearing anymore—that horrible motor. Doesn’t it make you batty?”
“I like it!”
The bugs were already humming. No bites yet but Patrice didn’t give it long. She kept still in the hopes that lying flat on the hood of this Ford might somehow give her a little extra peace.
Rosie picked her way out of the vehicle and hopped down to the ground, landing in a crouch. “Yuck! It’s muddy.”
She climbed up onto the hood and put her face close to Patrice’s. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Patrice said, and removed her chest from the hood, stretching her back and trying to see past the cordgrass or even the godforsaken bull. Neither cared to budge.
Sweat tickled her collarbone and when she went to wipe it, she realized she was wearing a necklace—the one Eunice had thrown around her neck as she was driving away. Patrice examined it: a simple gold cross on a braided chain.
Marie-Rose got to her feet and walked across the hood.
“Don’t do that, Rosie,” Patrice said, but her sister was already climbing from the hood to the back of the bull.
“Get away from that bull!” Patrice said.
Marie-Rose had already pulled up her dress and was straddling the bull and kicking him like he was a horse. “Get a move on, bull!”
Incredibly, the beast didn’t so much as blink an eye. The mud smelled like bull hockey, which meant he’d probably already been there a while.
Patrice said, “Marie-Rose Etienne LeBlanc, you get away from that bull! You gonna get yourself a case of ringworm right there in the nether region!”
That got her. Rosie scrambled off the bull and back onto the hood of the Ford.
Patrice said, “Listen Rosie. You can’t be a little girl anymore. You don’t have anyone to look after you. It’s just us children now. You understand what I’m saying?”
Rosie seemed to ponder this with a sense of wonder. “I’m to be treated like an adult?”
“Yes ma’am, and you got to act like one. There’s no Maman, no Tatie, no one at all to tell you to behave.”
Marie-Rose seemed to be thinking this over, trying it on for size. She slid off the hood and walked around to the rear of the Ford, circling up to the bull, and then back to the rumble seat again. She stared into it.
“We have to get him out,” Rosie announced as her first adult observation.
Patrice looked at the crisscrossing twine in the rumble seat. Darned if Rosie wasn’t right. It would take some doing to untie all that luggage and free the stranger from his temporary resting place. Might as well get one step ahead while they were stuck here waiting. Patrice stepped back to join her sister and see about loosening that twine.
* * *
PATRICE AND ROSIE HAD managed to drag the stranger out of the rumble seat and onto the mud all by themselves. He lay there with the blankets loose over him from all the tugging and dragging. The bull hadn’t even bothered to watch them as they toiled. Patrice set about securing the luggage back in place in the rumble seat.
“What’s he doin, peein?” Rosie asked.
Patrice looked over at the bull. It was standing there still and silent like a taxidermist’s prized work.
But then Patrice realized that Rosie was talking about the dead stranger. The one blanket covered just his head and chest. His penis was protruding at his waistband.
“Get away from him, Rosie,” Patrice said, and righted the blanket so that it covered him more completely.
How strange that the man should have an erection in death. Patrice knew very little about such things beyond that which a person learns from being around livestock. She’d once seen a bull climb up on a heifer. She remembered laughing with Eunice about how the bull had g
rown a second tail, and then she’d realized that something very particular and important was going on. Both the cow and the bull had been out of breath, the bull foaming at the mouth, that second tail seeking out the cow like a snake chasing a rabbit into a hollow log.
She thought about that day every now and then. She and Eunice had giggled themselves silly. They’d whispered and made all sorts of speculations.
Soon after, Patrice was forbidden to play with Eunice or any of the children at Terrefleurs. Mother had made her to go inside when other children were around. As she grew older, Patrice got the sense that other folks knew more about things like the cow and bull than she did. So many secret jokes. She could guess about those things, and it was enough.
After that, school was the only interaction the LeBlanc children had with others. They would take the boat down the bayou for studies, but you weren’t allowed to talk during lessons and in the schoolyard the other children kept their distance from them. The LeBlancs had had each other, that was all.
The stranger was now wrapped like a loaf of Sunday bread and Patrice had the luggage just about tied. This time she made Rosie help her. When Francois and the boys returned, the girls had everything secured and were pitching foxtail darts at the bull, trying to make its hide twitch.
“Where’d y’all go?” Rosie asked.
Trigger flicked her ear. “Off to find a pirogue.”
He looked hot with his skin all gleaming with sweat, mud on his face and hands and dungarees. But he was grinning like a villain. What was this to a boy like Trig, but an adventure he’d only ever dreamed of? Forging into an unknown wilderness for danger and manhood. Patrice mused how that smart little boy could sometimes be dumb as dirt.
Francois gestured at the bundle of dead man lying in the mud. “Go on now, boys. Pick him on up.”
Gil said, “I need to rest a spell first. That was heavy.”
“What was?” Rosie asked.
Trigger went to flick her on the ear again but she ducked away and managed a kick to his knee.
“Rosie,” Patrice said.
Rosie paused, her expression showing that she remembered she’d just been shown the cut-off road to adulthood. She gave Trigger a look of condescension.
No one had thought to tote along any water. Gil seemed very distressed by this despite all those bullfrogs suggesting they were pretty well surrounded by water. As for Francois, his coloring was no good. Patrice tried to think of a way to let him out of this but came up empty. They were out in the middle of nowhere, had to finish what they’d started.
“Whose bull you think that is?” Rosie asked.
Trigger said, “Francois says it’s probably from Locoul seeing as that’s the nearest plantation.”
That seemed dubious if only because Francois would never have commented about a thing like that. The children looked to him for affirmation. Not even a shrug.
“Come on, let’s get it over with,” Trigger said.
Gil and Trig grabbed hold of the stranger and hauled him around to the other side of the bull after Francois. This time the girls followed, getting the sense that to traverse the bull barrier was to step beyond a secret portal. The stranger was a petrified log. Patrice watched the boys struggle with their load, both too proud to admit their skinny shoulders could hardly bear the weight. No telling which was head or feet by the number of blankets. And then, blankets, Patrice thought, and she nearly insisted they salvage them off the stranger in case they needed them for tonight. Or any night.
After all, once they’d laid the stranger down to his eternal peace, Patrice wasn’t quite sure what to do next. They weren’t so much going somewhere as getting away from somewhere. She was so worn down she’d do whatever Francois told her to do.
Francois kept them moving by making rhythmic steps and singing a slow cadence. His walking stick hit the dirt on the offbeat. They turned a bend and left the bull behind to his statuary ways, and Patrice shamed herself out of taking the dead man’s blankets.
Rosie skipped ahead to walk with Francois. He looked down at her as he sang and never stopped moving, slow though he was. It made Patrice’s chest feel tight—they were running poor Francois into the ground. They’d grown up knowing him as a silent man who kept to himself. But they’d loved him because he’d always been at Papa’s right hand and therefore was a fixture in their lives.
Deep humidity squelched the breath from the air, and sure enough, the grass opened to a snaking channel. There, a raft lay waiting by a set-in. Gil and Trig must have excavated the raft from somewhere in the cordgrass when they’d gone off alone with Francois.
“That ain’t no pirogue!” Rosie said.
It did seem awfully pitiful. Patrice realized that this must be near one of Francois’ many secret fishing holes.
Francois had the boys heave the stranger onto the raft and then set it in at the shallows, then he said to Patrice without even looking at her, “Y’all can move along now. I’ll take it from here.”
“What?”
He and the boys were splashing up to their waists. Patrice looked down and realized she’d stepped into the shallows, too, silt tugging at her shoes.
She couldn’t let him. Couldn’t let Francois fuss with the dead body all by himself what with the sickness ready to take him to Jesus any minute now.
And, now that he’d come along this far, she couldn’t let him abandon them. Without Francois they were really and truly alone.
She hadn’t any plan. She should have been thinking of a plan!
But all she said was, “Francois?”
He took his hat off and shooed the boys away, then waved the hat at Patrice and Rosie. Gil and Trigger turned and splashed back toward shore.
“Where’s he goin?” Marie-Rose asked.
Francois was using his walking stick to pole the raft through the channel. The dead man lay atop the wood in his dark cocoon. Already Francois was far enough that although she could hear him singing, Patrice couldn’t make out the words.
Marie-Rose stared after them. “Is he really leavin us for good?”
“He’s helped us more than he should have,” Patrice said. “Taking care of the stranger like that.”
Trigger said, “Aw, he’d take us the whole distance but he wants to die in peace.”
“Trigger!”
“Well it’s so and I don’t feel bad! Look at him. He ain’t got another day left in him. I felt sad when he first went sick but now he’s ready to lay on down and die. Dyin ain’t nothin to be afraid of. Best thing a man can hope for is a good solid passing.”
“Oh, hush up,” Patrice said.
Trigger liked to shock. But the look on his face said he meant his words. It unnerved Patrice. And she hoped he was wrong about Francois wandering off to die like an old hound.
The boys sat down on the banks and let their muscles sag into the mud. They looked exhausted from hauling the raft and the stranger. The girls sat, too. All four watched Francois turning smaller and darker as he poled the raft further down the bend. Francois didn’t look back at them.
“So quiet,” Gil said.
“You know what’s so curious about that?” Trigger said.
No one indulged, but Trigger answered his own question anyway. “No river devils.”
Patrice tore her gaze from Francois and looked at her brother. It was true. Of the four children, not one of them had any devils hovering about at the present. Not so much as a whisper. She touched the scratch at the back of her neck and wondered.
Gil said, “All of us here on the shore like this, you know what it reminds me of?”
“That day,” Trigger said.
It was all he needed to say. They were all thinking of it: the day they’d banished their mother. It had been several months ago, when Mother had gathered them together to kill the boy with the blood-shined eye. Ferrar was his name. The children were all ready to do it, too. Drunk on their power, on the river magic. All those river devils siding with their mother, looking t
o spill that blood. That lumen blood. Ferrar was the opposite of what they were. Ferrar must have been touched by God. And they, they were touched by …
Patrice blinked. It didn’t matter. God welcomed all souls. All souls.
On that awful day, Mother had seen to it that Ferrar was shot, but the bullet hadn’t come from the children. They’d shaken free of evil at the last moment. Patrice had brought Ferrar back to Terrefleurs and nursed him back to health herself. Before today, it was the last time they’d seen their mother. They’d turned her own magic against her.
Patrice watched as Francois receded further. The dreary cadence he sang came only in drifts of intonation. She could no longer even recognize the tone as the same cadence he’d used to march Gil and Trig down the lane with their dead man load.
Francois disappeared around the bend. One last flash from the stick Trigger had carved for him And then he was gone.
twenty-two
NEW ORLEANS, NOW
ZENON AND JOSH WATCHED through the briar as Esther pulled over to the side of the road. The car she drove was nothing special. An ageing silver Buick Century.
Josh said, “Ole Esther bought that thing a couple of years ago cuz it was the same age as her son Bo—an ’04.”
“Isn’t that cute,” Zenon said.
The car came to a halt at an awkward angle on the shoulder. Esther sat behind the steering wheel and didn’t get out. Her gaze was leveled on the yellow stink hissing up from the hood.
Zenon admired Josh’s handiwork on the Buick. River devils might be weak on pigeonry, but they were masters at throwing down the hard times. The messed-up car was particularly gratifying because that mooncalf Ethan Manderleigh had paid Esther a visit and put a new timing belt on the thing. He’d told her the car still had other problems, too, and that she should take it to a mechanic. And he’d told her all about how she needed to go on ahead and let Madeleine talk to her and help her out. Esther had agreed to think about it. But she hadn’t called on Madeleine. Not yet. Zenon and Josh had been watching. Esther hadn’t called because she’d gotten herself nice and paranoid, and that was good news for none-too-humble briar folk like Zenon. Esther wore her son’s light. But paranoia dimmed it. So did fear.