The Tangled Bridge

by Rhodi Hawk

  He paused, his expression grim. “It’s hard times. Real hard.”

  She looked across at the faces, afraid to make eye contact because it felt like she was peeping into their homes somehow, into their private troubles and desperation, just by looking at them. But somewhere among them she might find Mother. And so she looked, searched the faces, scanned deeper into hearts and intentions. No sign of her mother.

  The sun was sinking low in the sky. Not sunset yet, but close.

  Ferrar said, “Now with the strike, some of these folks is hoping to get on as scabs. Workers don’t like it. There’s been fighting.”

  Patrice could guess which were the striking workers by the simple fact that they were muscular and looked like they’d had steady meals, about half the men in the perimeter.

  She swept a quick look over the crowd, and her gaze fell on a familiar face: Hutch.

  He was bigger than most anyone there, and then Patrice realized Simms was with him, too. She’d looked right past him. Were it not for Hutch, she would have missed him altogether. They were both sitting on a blackened log about forty feet away.

  “I know those two,” she said.

  “Simms and Hutch,” Ferrar said.

  “You know them?”

  “Yeah, from way back when I used to run hooch for your mother.”

  Patrice gave him a sharp look. “When we first came to New Orleans looking for you, Simms said he didn’t know you.”

  “I didn’t know Hutch until recently, but I’ve known Simms for about ten years. I think they both workin for your mother now.”

  She didn’t like it. Too much of a coincidence that they were here. But her mother was nowhere to be seen, and maybe she’d sent these two as liaisons.

  The white sunlight was just beginning to turn golden. Finally, Simms looked her way and his posture immediately changed. He clearly recognized her despite the fact they’d only met the one time six years ago. She could tell by his expression that he’d been expecting her.

  “I imagine we’d better talk to them,” Ferrar said.

  Simms and Hutch rose as Patrice and Ferrar walked toward them. She noted how different the two looked in comparison to the others in the camp. They wore the same types of clothes—caps, white cotton shirts, trousers with suspenders—but Simms’ and Hutch’s clothes were new and freshly laundered. Their hands were clean as a banker’s. They lacked the muscle definition of the workers or the hollow cheeks of the hobos.

  Simms called out to Patrice as she and Ferrar stepped within earshot. “My, my, my. You have grown up to be quite a doll. Quite a doll.”

  “What do y’all want,” Ferrar said.

  Simms ignored him and said to Patrice, “I see you finally found the boy with the blood-shined eye. Where your brothers and sister at?”

  Patrice replied slowly and quietly, “Don’t play with me.”

  He went quiet and looked away, obviously trying to affect an air of nonchalance, but Patrice could tell she made him nervous. Hutch wouldn’t even look at her.

  Patrice said, “I need to speak with my mother.”

  “Alright young lady, your mother sent us to talk to you instead. This ain’t no place for a woman like her. Ain’t really even a place for men like us, we gotta try to blend in.”

  “Where are Gilbert and Marie-Rose?”

  “You’ll get to see them. That’s not a problem. Your brother Guy, is he here with you?”

  Patrice took a heavy breath to ward off her fury, and she felt Ferrar touch her elbow. Simms knew good and well what happened to Trigger. She saw the intent inside him, saw the knowledge, even the nerves.

  But her anger seemed to encourage Simms because he said, “Look, honey, you make it out of this alive, you oughtta come work for me. You could make a lot of dough.”

  Ferrar leaned forward. “You better just tell us what you doin here.”

  “Or what? You gettin sore at me? She gonna throw everyone in the water again, drown us all?”

  Hutch finally spoke, “Come on boss, take it easy.”

  Simms and Hutch were scared out of their sense. Patrice might have probed deeper into their intentions but all she wanted to do was sweep them aside and get to her mother.

  Simms said, “Look, I could have helped y’all out all those years ago. Y’all didn’t show me no respect. So I decided to help your mother instead. She and me, we always make money together.”

  Patrice said, “I will discuss this with my mother only.”

  Simms cut his eyes toward the woods and then looked at Patrice again. “You figure you can have your way, don’t you? I figure you’re right. I seen how y’all do. I seen lotta voodoo in my day, but, damn! You people take the absolute cake! You do! You ain’t tryin to take money to tell no fortune, you the real McCoy!”

  Simms chuckled, and Hutch started laughing, too, though he kept his eyes nervous.

  “Get to the point,” Ferrar said.

  Simms stopped laughing and eyed him, then looked at Patrice. “The point is, I heard about what happened yesterday in Bayou Bouillon. I want you to think very carefully before you go throwing people in the water here. Your mother got people right here in this camp—you won’t even know who they are til it’s too late. You might be able to face off against some of them but probably not all. You turn them against one another, well that’ll just look like a good old fashioned rumble out here. People here so sour they take any excuse to lay into one another.”

  Ferrar rubbed his thumb against her skin. “It’s true. One hint of a fight around here and all the strikers and the scabs’ll go at it.”

  Simms looked at him and nodded. “That’s right, Blood-shine.” He regarded Patrice again. “Now maybe you care about that or maybe you don’t, workers and scabs tearing each other apart. Me, I personally don’t see any reason to cause trouble here.”

  Hutch had his hands in his pockets and was staring at his shoes.

  Simms continued but his manner of speech slowed, became more careful. “You might like to know that your mother, Miss Chloe, wanted me to go after y’all out at Bayou Bouillon. I told her that wasn’t a good idea. That old man with the eye patch knows how to hold down the fort. She told me to kill him, and she wanted me to kill one a y’all and bring the other one back. Said it’s the only way you’d listen, know she’s serious. But see, that ain’t me. I’m a businessman. I didn’t do any of that.”

  “Someone did.”

  “Well, Miss Chloe, see, she gets things done one way or another. Found some deadbeat owed her money who knew the signal in Bayou Bouillon. He brought in a boatload of her people to go after y’all.”

  Patrice’s throat was clamped shut. She wanted Simms to hush it, to stop talking about what happened, because her mind kept bringing back that look in Trigger’s eyes. That awful look. But she herself was unable to speak and so she said nothing.

  “Why are you telling us this?” Ferrar said.

  Simms opened his hands wide. “Because. I want you to know, I’m on your side. You can tell if I’m lyin, can’t you, honey? Am I lyin?”

  Patrice could not reply. She just kept swallowing. Ferrar was holding onto her and she was gripping him back. But it was true. Simms was telling her the truth and she didn’t need to seek inside him to know it—if he’d been one of the thugs who’d come after them in Bayou Bouillon he’d be dead by now. She could go deeper, learn more, but that would put her at risk of entering the briar and stirring the river devils. And they would certainly attack Ferrar.

  “So now you understand. I ain’t here to hurt you. I just come to pass along the message from your mama.”

  “Which is?”

  Simms adjusted his posture so that his feet were spread and his hand was gesturing out in front of him, four fingers splayed. “Four LeBlanc children. One is old enough to know. One is dead. Two are in hiding. Your mother says you take a little walk with Hutch and me at sunset, she let the other two go. She say if you don’t, they die. Those’re her words.”

&nb
sp; “So you’re here to take me to her,” Patrice said.

  “Well yes and no. I’m here on good will, little lady, so I’m gonna do you one better. I just gave you the message your mama wants you to hear. Now I’m gonna pass along the message she don’t want you to hear.”

  Ferrar said, “Spit it out!”

  Simms didn’t reply. He looked at Ferrar, then looked at Hutch. And then he nodded at Hutch.

  “No, please, Boss.” Hutch’s face had crumpled to fear.

  “What is this?” Patrice said.

  Simms glanced at her and then took Hutch by the shoulder, gently pushing him down to the black log where earlier they’d been sitting. The evening sun was just turning peach behind the bend. Not full sunset yet.

  Hutch pursed his lips together like he was about to give someone a kiss and then started to cry. Openly—tears streaming, sobbing low in the throat.

  Patrice frowned.

  “I don’t want to,” Hutch mewed.

  “What’s he doing?” Ferrar asked.

  Hutch started coughing, soft little puffs, then he was hacking and finally, gagging. His massive body heaved like he was going to vomit on the grass down between his knees. But he didn’t. Instead he went to salivating, clear ribbons of spit dangling toward the dirt, his lips and tongue working as though there were an invisible hard-boiled egg in his mouth that he wished to eject.

  Patrice took a step closer. If she dared, she would have helped him do this, but she knew she couldn’t. Could only wait and listen.

  Hutch’s tongue was clucking. It sounded like it started at the back of the throat as a g-g-g and clucked its way across the roof of his mouth to his teeth, where it stayed, hitching, then reversed the passage of air so that it made a T sound, over and over again.

  Patrice caught her breath, listened.

  Hutch moaned out a syllable that did not form beyond the throat.

  He gagged, spat a cascade of something that looked like frothed corn oil, and then tried again, leading up to it with the same hitching clucks:

  “T-t-t-t-t-Treese.”

  sixty-three

  BAYOU BOUILLON, NOW

  BRIAR LIGHT FILLED THE room. Madeleine could see rusted chips of tin from where they’d mended the roofing. Sprouts bloomed from the pile of debris, black thorns, curling around and up, stretching beyond the ceiling. Towering black trees hovered above the gap where the roof ought to be.

  Severin was sitting on a bough, hunched over, filthy and naked. “How did you escape me so easily?”

  Madeleine didn’t reply. Her spirit stood and walked through the door, past Gaston, who was looking at the mêlée with watery eyes. Severin jumped down and followed.

  The briar light illuminated things much brighter than the moon had. The water looked like liquid mercury. Madeleine could see Jane, standing with balled fists and tears in her eyes. Another girl was there, too, shrieking and bucking as someone tried to hang on to her. This girl—she looked so much like Jane she could be a twin, except that Jane was a bit older. The girl and the man who was holding her fell over the side of the boardwalk and into the bayou.

  Madeleine went into the water, looking for the boy who’d been stabbed. She sensed he was already deep below. Down, down, all the way down, Madeleine and Severin followed.

  Splashing above. Some of the others must have jumped into the water. But they were near the surface and couldn’t possibly have seen what Madeleine saw in the briar light.

  The wounded boy was below, face turned upward, eyes open. Her heart fluttered at the sight of his face. Something about his eyes. But his mouth was open in a horrific grimace. She thought he might already be dead until she saw his arms were moving, scraping toward the surface.

  She caught up with him and realized why he’d been moving downward so fast. He’d been rolled right into the current. It had dragged him down to the bottom and was now pulling him toward the whirlpool.

  Madeleine gave him the ability to survive without breathing first.

  It seemed to take so agonizingly long. He was bleeding to death. She tried to drag him out of the current but of course she couldn’t. This was not her physical body. He couldn’t see her. Couldn’t know what was happening beyond the fact that he was dying.

  But she felt him go still, and knew that he was either doing without breath or he’d died. She looked into his face and saw blinking, confused eyes.

  And she knew him. Gaston.

  No beard, and his necklace was not a click beetle necklace, but these were his eyes. This was his jawline.

  He was still falling backward toward the whirlpool, too weak from his wounds to swim out of the current. He wasn’t going to drown, at least.

  She wrapped her briar self around him and tended his wounds. Drawing from the fissure, the cool moss, the rainy scent. She could feel him healing beneath her grasp.

  Gaston had been guarding the door up above on that boardwalk, she was certain of it. This boy looked the same age. Same exactly. He had a twin and Jane did, too?

  He kept slipping back. The whirlpool was drawing him back. And then he was caught up in it, kicking, fighting. A good sign, though, that his strength had returned. Madeleine hung on as best she could. But then he was gone.

  “In the hidey hole,” Severin said.

  Madeleine looked, saw a rent in the bayou floor where Gaston must have disappeared. Madeleine went to it and felt it pulling her in. But that was impossible. She was not a physical being.

  “To play for a small time or lifetime,” Severin said.

  And that’s when Madeleine saw the creature. The thing that looked like a man covered in oil, but with those impossibly long limbs. Its arms were open and reaching for her.

  She withdrew. And for the second time, she escaped the briar of her own free will. Against Severin’s will. A simple reach inside for something that was neither body nor mind.

  * * *

  HER PHYSICAL BODY GASPED. The door was open and moonlight was spilling through it. She was once again on the pallet in the boardwalk shack.

  Gaston was kneeling beside her, head in his hands. “Oh, Madeleine. What’ve you done?”

  She pulled herself up and looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “I locked you up. Thought I could change it this time. Oh, you should have just let me die.”

  sixty-four

  HUEY P. LONG BRIDGE, 1933

  FERRAR HAD HIS ARMS around Patrice’s waist and was lifting her up. She was barely aware that she’d slid to the earth when Hutch had said her name like that.

  “Poor girl’s starving,” someone nearby said.

  And she heard Simms say, “Beat it, you. Everyone’s starving.”

  She reached for Hutch. “Trigger? Trigger, honey?”

  “No brawr, no bri-arr,” was all Hutch would say.

  She had him by the jowls and was staring into his face. His skin felt like putty and his cheeks were wet with tears and saliva.

  But Hutch had little to do with it. If Trigger were here, he wouldn’t be inside Hutch. He’d be standing here using Hutch the way a hunter throws his voice into a hollow.

  Patrice closed her eyes and beckoned the inner world.

  “No Briar!” She felt herself being shaken and she opened her eyes. “Not yet, little lady.”

  Simms was shaking her arm and Ferrar was pushing Simms away from her. Simms licked his lips, looking like he was about to square off with Ferrar. Hutch continued quivering and spitting.

  “Just tell us what we need to know,” Ferrar said.

  Simms pointed at Patrice. “She ain’t supposed to do none a that voodoo here. Not now. Said she was gonna want to. Said she had to wait until they’s all safe.”

  “Who said?”

  Simms pointed at Hutch. “Him. It. You ain’t gonna get much more out of him than that.”

  Hutch wiped his chin with his shirtsleeve and looked doe-eyed up at Simms. “You gotta take me back to the hospital.”

  She could tell by the way he
sagged that Trigger had let him go for now. It made her want to recede to the briar something fierce. To think, Trigger wasn’t gone; he was here, right here.

  “Tell us what happened,” Ferrar said.

  Simms waved at Hutch. “Started last night. He’s actin all crazy at the club. Finally took him to the hospital.”

  Hutch said, “Med school at Tu-lane. But they ain’t got no beds there. Kingfish done took’m away on account a Tulane ain’t never give him no law degree way back when.”

  “Kingfish?” Patrice asked.

  “Huey P.,” Hutch said, and when Patrice didn’t react, he added, “Huey Long, girl!”

  Simms shook his head. “Forget it. This ain’t about no hospital bed. He couldn’t stay at Tulane so I took him to Charity Hospital.”

  “He just left me there,” Hutch said.

  “They took good care of him.”

  “Like a sack a laundry.”

  “Dammit, shut up. You weren’t sick that way. Oughtta taken you to a priest instead.”

  Simms turned to Patrice. “Listen, you can sit here and watch him sweat this out, but it’ll take all damn night and to tomorrow.”

  “Ooh!”

  “Or I can just tell you what you s’posed to know.”

  “Heaven’s sake, tell me!”

  Simms paused. “I will tell you. I’m about to do that right now. But I’m gonna need something from you.”

  Patrice put her hands to her temples and realized tears were streaming down her face. The sun was turning a deeper orange. Soon it would blanket the entire delta in its color.

  “What do you want?”

  “First, tell your brother to stay out of my employee. Fact, tell him to stay out of all my employees. Ain’t got the time for this.”

  “He’s here, listening. I don’t need to tell him.”

  “Alright, then. Next is a little bit more complicated. It’s about your mama.”

  “What!”

  “Keep your voice down. Let’s try to be civilized here. All I ask is that you help me out with your connection at Bayou Bouillon. The old man with the eye patch. They say he’s still alive. They say it’s a true blue miracle. All over again.”

  Patrice listened, relieved to hear that Francois was alright. But in that same moment she realized she’d expected this. Even though they’d left him bleeding on the boardwalk, his chest gurgling where he’d been stabbed through the lung.