The Tangled Bridge

by Rhodi Hawk

  Gaston said, “She ain’t know where she been and she don’t even know where her body is now, she doesn’t. The old witch got to her.”

  “Chloe?”

  And then Zenon looked from Madeleine to Gaston and gave a low whistle. “Holy blue moon Jesus. I ain’t seen this many briar folk in one place, ever.”

  And to Gaston, Zenon said, “You look like a hairy skink.”

  He and Gaston were staring at one another. Recognition in both their eyes, though Madeleine could tell it was their first meeting.

  “How do I know you?” Zenon asked.

  Gaston said, “We still lookin to figure that one out.”

  “What do you want, Zenon?” Madeleine said.

  “Got some unfinished business, ain’t we?”

  Madeleine narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean?”

  “You remember. Gotta get rid of the rest of them lumens.”

  Cassel had finished changing Declan and raised her head. Madeleine followed her gaze and saw someone walking up the drive. Cassel’s man, Madeleine thought; but then she realized there was something gawky in the posture. Just a boy. Gaston’s age, maybe.

  He opened the screen door and Madeleine gave a start. That frizzed hair, the narrow eyes. Oyster. Of all the times she saw him he usually wore that silly bandana that covered the paint stains on his nose and mouth. Now, without it, she saw the distinctive pie shape to the chin. Just like Cassel. Just like Declan.

  How stupid Madeleine had been. Of course Cassel wasn’t Del’s mother. She was Oyster’s.

  “Hey mama,” Oyster said in that strange deep voice that indicated he was still huffing.

  “Hey baby.” Cassel handed little Declan over and Oyster took the infant with all the familiarity of a dad, laying him on his shoulder.

  Zenon put a hand on Madeleine’s arm, and she wanted to shake him off. He leaned in as though she’d whispered something he wanted to hear.

  He said, “Check you out, sis. You ain’t in your right mind.”

  “She gone briar to the bone,” Josh said, his teeth clenched on a stick.

  Zenon laughed. “I like that. Briar to the bone. Lord, I can read your intentions right now just as easy as if you were a pigeon. Only reason you come here is so your river devil wouldn’t drag you on over to see our little nephew, is that it? Keep him safe from mean old Chloe?”

  Severin scowled. “We go now!”

  “Aw, keep your panties on. We can make good use out of these fine folks.” Zenon pointed at Oyster. “I used that little punk plenty of times. He’s willing, just ain’t resourceful.”

  Madeleine peeled Zenon’s hand from her shoulder and tried to think. Her mind was in such tumult that if Zenon hadn’t reminded her what she was doing here she would have forgotten. Again.

  Oyster set Declan down on the couch. “You got any money, Ma?”

  “Naw, hell no. You know I ain’t got nothin to give you,” Cassel said.

  Oyster pouted for a moment and it made him look so childlike. Zenon was staring at him, same way he’d been staring at Madeleine earlier. Madeleine recognized what he was doing. Reading Oyster’s intentions. She followed suit. Oyster’s intentions didn’t stretch beyond the next few hours: Get some money. Go to the Sonic for some food. Find his friends and drink and huff the night away. Somewhere in there, he actually had a fleeting notion to take Declan to a cousin’s who had a baby of the same age. Last time he saw her she gave Declan a rattle that looked like plastic keys. His cousin was a nice girl, married to a man who was hardworking but who pretty much hated Oyster. The idea of taking Declan to see her vanished. The idea to go hang out with his friends strengthened. And then something else pushed to the forefront:

  Now where can I get my hands on a gun?

  It startled Madeleine. She’d never before witnessed pigeonry from this point of view—seeing Oyster’s drifting, passing intentions suddenly broken by a hardened idea.

  “Zenon, leave these people alone. Oyster’s just a kid.”

  “He’s a punk. Relax. It’ll keep your river devil happy. That right, Severin?”

  Severin looked smug. She peered at him sideways the way a cat might size someone up.

  Madeleine had no idea why Zenon would implant that thought and she didn’t dare ask.

  Oyster went to the pantry by the refrigerator and took down a box of saltines, one-handed, then set them on the counter.

  Cassel said, “Lord, whatchyoo doin with that?”

  “I’ll bring it back, Mama.”

  “Oh, lord.”

  He reached into the saltine box and pulled out a white plastic Family Dollar bag, something heavy inside. Black metal.

  Severin grinned and slipped her fingers into Madeleine’s palm. “A good idea to come here, so surely.”

  fifty-one

  BAYOU BOUILLON, 1933

  WHEN PATRICE OPENED HER eyes she was occupying her own body. She saw it. Felt it. The sensation had become foreign to her.

  Her body was not reclining as was so often the case—returning from the briar usually meant going to sleep, straight from the world of thorns to the world of dreams. Letting one bleed into the next. But not now. She was standing on bare feet, hands pressed against wood. The walls of a shack.

  She had no memory of before or anticipation of yet to come. The disorientation would pass soon, she knew, and there was nothing to do but relish this weightlessness of spirit.

  She smiled, pressed her finger against a splinter just to feel a sense of pain, and then pulled away before it broke skin. Her finger was alive, her hand and arm alive, her lungs filled and released in waves. She swore she could sense the pulse points mirroring her heartbeat.

  Her lips pressed and released in a voiceless ma ma ma, then ba ba ba.

  Behind her, a whisper: “Look. She’s back.”

  She turned. Confusion was lingering. She must have been in the briar a long time because there was a lady here who must have been watching over her. That meant Patrice had been in long enough for her physical body to need assistance eating, bathing, dressing, and so forth. The lady was talking to Ferrar. But although the lady looked strikingly familiar, Patrice couln’t think of her name.

  Patrice stared. The lady was wearing a necklace: a leather strap looped through a carved sphere with something inside. But then Patrice realized that this lady looked just like her. Exactly so. To the very mole on her neck. And below the mole and the necklace, this lady was wearing the cross Eunice had given Patrice several days ago when she’d left Terrefleurs.

  Patrice looked down. She saw that she was still wearing Eunice’s cross, too. As well as another necklace with a pendant, just like the one the lady wore, only this pendant was a tiny carved oak leaf, not a sphere.

  The lady whispered something to Ferrar and then they both slipped out through the door.

  Patrice said, “Wait!”

  And she heard the door latch from the outside.

  “Wait!” She tried the door and found it locked.

  On the other side of the wall, footsteps were retreating down the boardwalk. Patrice pounded at the door but they were already gone.

  * * *

  PATRICE HAD BEEN WAITING alone in the shack when the door finally opened again. The sun backlit him to a silhouette, but she recognized his posture immediately.

  “Francois!”

  He put his arm over her shoulder and patted. “Bonsoir, honey, bonsoir.”

  And then he took both of her hands in his and said, “If we go outside you must promise not to run off. You have to stay here with me.”

  A strange request, but: “Of course.”

  He turned toward the door, and as she followed him, she said, “I’ve got to get back to New Orleans immediately.”

  “Too dangerous.”

  “But, Gil and Rosie. I’ve got to meet mother under the bridge or she’ll kill them.”

  Francois paused, his back to her. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  She didn’t like it. It pushed things too
close.

  He must have taken off his bandages, but the sunlight pouring in made it difficult to get a good look at him. Something was strange, though. He was bald, and much more healthy-looking than he ought to be. His clothes were not sagging on him.

  On some level she already knew. Remembered. But …

  He gestured to her to follow him out the door. The sunlight blinded her, and she paused with her hand over her eyes.

  “Right here,” Francois was saying.

  He waved her to a crate that rested against the shanty wall. “Have a seat.”

  Someone else was sitting on the next crate. She looked at him as she sat down.

  “Treese?” An adolescent boy slightly older than she was gaping at her.

  “You been sleepin a long time,” Francois began.

  She squinted, her eyes still adjusting, and she saw that the boy sitting next to her was long-legged, peach fuzz on his chin, black-skinned and blue-eyed.

  It dawned on her with a strange, ringing numbness. Trigger: Still a boy. But a much older boy.

  It was coming back to her, how much Gil and Rosie had aged in the rafters beneath that roof.

  Francois said, “Y’all gonna have to make some adjustments.”

  Patrice was weeping now, and Trigger put his arms around her. He held her tight.

  “I just woke up, too,” he mumbled into her hair.

  Francois put his hands in his pockets and turned to the side, clearly unsure what to say.

  “You remember it?” Trigger asked her.

  “Only the last. The part with Maman. I’ll gladly go with her for Gil and Rosie’s sake but what’s to keep her from going after y’all again?”

  “Don’t worry, she ain’t gonna keep none of us.”

  Patrice smiled through her tears and said, “Won’t. Any.”

  Trigger said, “Gosh, you’re so pretty. You look like an honest-to-goodness lady.”

  “I can’t believe how tall you are.”

  She looked up at Francois. He still had his back turned, but from his profile she could now see an eye patch and the healed scarring where a portion of his lip was missing.

  “How long, exactly, were we in the briar?” she asked.

  Francois looked back toward them. He started to speak but then paused.

  He took a breath and let it out before answering; then: “About six years, p’tite.”

  She froze, Trigger still holding onto her. He went still, too. Six years. Six years. That meant she was twenty. Guy and Gilbert were sixteen. Rosie: thirteen. The time in the briar had seemed endless, true enough, but also beginningless.

  “Lotta things happened,” Francois said.

  Patrice nodded though she was still absorbing this. Gil and Rosie, living like that. Up in the rafters of that horrible place where Maman kept them. Six years seemed like an eternity to Patrice at fourteen—actually, twenty—she couldn’t imagine what it meant to them.

  Francois said, “Listen. Lotta pirates around. Some of’ m workin for your mother. They tried to come after y’all lotta times over the years. You stay away from pirates.”

  Patrice nodded again.

  “Another thing, they ghosts around, too. And the thing about’m is, they’re your ghosts.”

  Patrice and Trigger looked at one another. “We’re … dead?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Don’t think so.”

  He looked pained by the conversation. He turned his head to look down the boardwalk, and Patrice thought he was going to walk off right then and there.

  Instead he said, “In a way, y’all come back to this place out of order. Ain’t like regular folks. They just leave and come back. But y’all, you leave today and come back yesterday. Understand?”

  Flatly, no. Patrice had no idea what he was trying to say. “Where’s Ferrar?”

  “Ain’t here.”

  “I just saw him!”

  “No, you saw a … who was he with?”

  Patrice didn’t answer, thinking of the lady who looked exactly like her, and lowered her gaze to the new carved necklace. It occurred to her that Francois was wearing one just like it—including the oak leaf. Trigger, too.

  Francois nodded. “That’s it. Only way you can tell who’s what. You and me and Trigger here got the leaf. That means we’re on straight time. You don’t talk to no one with other necklaces. You got it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘straight time’?”

  “It means you ain’t doubled back yet. And don’t go by your real names. Just use your middle names. If you have to leave and come back, you pick a different name and a different necklace.”

  “Change our names? Why?”

  Francois was looking across the bayou and showed no indication he cared to discuss it further.

  Trigger said only, “Jeez, Francois, we all thought you’s gonna die.”

  Patrice elbowed him for his rudeness. But without taking his gaze from the bayou, Francois nodded as though he’d believed the same thing.

  Finally, he gestured toward Patrice. “You healed me.”

  Patrice gaped at him. She remembered wrapping him in bandages, that was all.

  But then Francois added, “Meanin, you goin to someday.”

  * * *

  WHEN THEY NEEDED TO visit the willow tree the first time, Francois escorted them through the floating village and only allowed them to advance when no one else was around. Then, later, when it was time to go again, he told them to use a bucket in the shack. Trigger had no problem with that (or peeing into the bayou, for that matter), but Patrice decided to wait until Francois was willing to escort her to the tree. Using a bucket like that, it seemed like the kind of thing people had to do long ago. Outhouses and makeshift facilities that smelled horrid and bred diseases. The Terrefleurs outhouse still stood, though the main house was plumbed and there were central facilities for the workers.

  Terrefleurs seemed so far behind her now. A world away. With no LeBlanc to run the place, and no Francois or even Tatie Bernadette, what had happened to it over these lost years? All that cane in the fields, but who’d seen to it that it got sold and made into sugar? Who paid the workers? What had become of sweet Eunice and her mother?

  All the other shacks on this spoke of the boardwalk stood vacant. Patrice spent the afternoon with Trigger, trying to sort out what had occurred over the past six years. They sat on the crates or went inside the shack. Even with so much happening the central concern remained the same: Get Gil and Rosie back. They weren’t precisely sure how they were going to do that though she and Trig were coming up with one plan after another, and immediately discarding each one for too many flaws. One day left to figure it out.

  The sky had gone pink. Sunset today. Everything would change by sunset tomorrow.

  Trigger said, “Francois don’t seem too overjoyed about helping us get to New Orleans.”

  “We’ll have to figure it out on our own.”

  Trigger pointed down the boardwalk. “Hey, look! It’s—”

  But Patrice managed to clamp her hand over her brother’s mouth before he finished the sentence: It’s Ferrar.

  “No names!” Patrice said.

  “He’ll help us out!”

  Ferrar was coming toward them with his head up and a smile visible even from a distance. Patrice sprang to her feet, so delighted she wanted to run down the boardwalk and throw her arms around him. But then she paused.

  Wouldn’t that be childish?

  Little girl, he’d called her the last time they’d spoken. Yesterday for her. Six years ago for him.

  Her hand went to her hair. She had no idea what she looked like. How odd, though she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off of Trigger and his transformation from boy to teenager, it hadn’t occurred to her to find a way to take a look at herself.

  No mirror of course. Her hair had been brushed, her body washed, and she was wearing clean clothes. Someone had done those things for her the way Tatie Bernadette had been caring for Gil and Rosie. Perhaps the gh
ost version of herself? The future version? What a strange thing for her to look forward to.

  Ferrar was now just several feet away, but she turned from him and looked into the bayou, hoping to see her reflection. There. But this bayou liked to boil cold, and the effervescence distorted her face and body in swirls and whorls. The only thing she did notice—from looking down, not looking into the bayou—was that her hips looked different. Less straight. More of an angle between her waist and hip bones.

  Ferrar scooped her up and spun her around.

  It startled her, and she threw back her head and laughed, squeezing him tight. A thrill ran from her belly up her spine. She’d really only met Ferrar twice, and both times she’d nearly gotten him killed. Amazing that he would be as happy to see her as she was him.

  He set her down slowly, smiling at her, and held her there a moment longer than she expected. It made her feel awkward and hot at the neck.

  She felt relieved when he finally turned to Trigger, patting him on the shoulder and shaking his hand. Her legs were wobbly. She sat down on a crate to keep steady and tried to tell herself that the reason why she was dizzy was because she’d just been spun.

  Trigger grinned at Ferrar, now nearly the same height. “You told us there were ghosts in this place but you could have gone into a bit more detail, Old Socks.”

  “I never knew it was so haunted as this! Or that I might wind up a ghost, too.”

  That lovely mixed accent of his—country and French, twangy and soft. He was wearing an oak leaf carving just like the ones Trigger and Patrice wore. That morning, Patrice had seen the other Ferrar wearing a carved sphere.

  She realized he was watching her watching him, and the intensity of his gaze made her grateful she was still sitting down.

  “Have you been here the whole time?” she asked, if only to interrupt the stare.

  Ferrar shook his head. “Off and on. After that first spell, I had to go find work in the city. I came back here once a month to look in on y’all and bring supplies. But it’s gotten so dangerous lately that I’ve had to come back more often.”

  “Dangerous?”

  Ferrar nodded. “Word has gotten out that Bayou Bouillon is enchanted. Bootleggers comin in from all over—no one is so superstitious as a criminal. Except maybe a gambler.”