The River Palace: A Water Wheel Novel #3

by Gilbert, Morris

  “But you aren’t going to go home to see your parents?” Gage asked.

  Denny made a face. “Let’s just say we didn’t part on very good terms. In fact, I joined the army because it irritated my father so much. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he’s a Union man. But he wanted me to stay at home and work in the family business, which is textile manufacturing. I do not want to be a textile manufacturer when I grow up.”

  “So the war didn’t make a grown man out of you, boy? I’ll tell you what, I thought I was going on a great adventure for six months or so. After First Bull Run I figured out just how dumb I was, and I grew up right there and then.”

  “I was at First Bull Run,” Denny said, somewhat abashed. “At least, I heard the battle. I was aide-de-camp to General Theo Runyan, and we were dispatched to protect the army’s rear. As it happened, the rear of the army outran us. In fact, the whole army ran right over us, they were retreating faster than we were. I had more trouble keeping my seat on my horse than I did having to fight any Rebs. That’s kinda the story of my army career. One cushy posting after another. Guess I’m just a companionable fellow, I always ended up arranging dinners or parties for some general.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You did your duty.” Finishing the last dregs of the coffee, Gage rose and said, “You’re looking like you’re about to have the vapors, Billy Yank. You’d better rest some. I’m going hunting, and I’ll wake you up when supper’s ready.”

  Denny nodded tiredly, then laid down on his pallet. Immediately his eyes began fluttering. “Hey, Gage?” he said drowsily. “Don’t kill any deer.” Then he fell fast asleep.

  “YOU’VE GOT TO BE kidding me,” Denny rasped. “I’m not wearing that!”

  Gage stood in front of him holding the clothes he had offered him. The outfit was a blood-crimson shirt that had huge brass buttons with a tiger’s head imprinted on them. The trousers were calf-length, full in the legs, of wide blue and white vertical stripes. The outfit included white leather gaiters and a red stocking cap with a long tassel. “Okay,” Gage shrugged. “You can go in your drawers if you want. Come to think of it, in New Orleans probably no one will give you a second look.” He started folding up the clothes to replace them in his saddlebag.

  “Wait, wait,” Denny said grudgingly. “I’m sorry, it just kinda took me by surprise. I always thought those Louisiana Tiger Zouave outfits looked more like circus costumes than military uniforms. It’s kinda hard to picture you in it, too. I thought you were a Whitworth Sharpshooter, you’ve got a decent uniform!”

  “This was my first uniform,” Gage said. “The sharpshooters weren’t an organized unit, you know. We just got picked out and they attached us to whatever units were going to the front. We found out real quick that wearing Zouave uniforms aren’t very smart for sharpshooters. We looked like giant parrots up in the trees.”

  He handed the clothes to Denny, who resignedly began to put them on.

  Gage said, “And here’s some shoes. I got no time to wait for you to limp all the way to New Orleans in your bare feet.”

  He handed Denny the brogans he’d bought at Cold Spring, and Denny looked them over carefully. “These weren’t your army issue, they’re brand new. You bought them?”

  “Yeah. You owe me three dollars. No, dummy, the gaiters go over the trousers and the boots.” He knelt and arranged the knee-high gaiters correctly, buckled them, then stood back and looked Denny up and down. “Now you look like a real Tiger, the scum of the earth.”

  “I’m not wearing that stupid sock on my head, I’m wearing my own kepi,” Denny said stubbornly.

  “Fine with me, Captain Yank. Okay, now you go ahead and ride Cayenne. You’re better but I don’t want you trying to walk and falling out two miles down the road.”

  In the last five days, with Gabe’s cinched bandaging and the laudanum that helped Denny sleep the night through, he had improved tremendously. Denny complained that the laudanum gave him weird nightmares, and he told Gabe he should have gotten a good, strong brandy instead. Gabe had retorted that he was awfully bossy for a beggar, which abashed Denny. But he did insist on smaller doses of the drug, and still he seemed to sleep soundly.

  Gabe figured that if he let Denny ride and if they took frequent breaks for him to rest, they could still make pretty good time. Gabe could march three or four miles an hour for ten hours at a time. He expected to reach New Orleans in five, maybe six days.

  His plan worked. After two days Denny insisted on walking some, and he had regained so much strength that he could walk fairly briskly for a couple of hours. That third day of their travels they made forty miles. But that night Denny developed a slight cough. Anxiously Gage checked his wounds, but they were healing quickly, and there was no sign of tender red skin around them that would indicate an infection. Denny said, “Forget it, Gage, I’m fine. I usually get sniffles in winter, but maybe I’m inflicted with spring sniffles this year.”

  In northern Louisiana Gage had no trouble finding good camping spots. It was a verdant, rich land with plenty of lakes, rivers, and streams. That night after they finished supper, Denny and Gage talked for a long time, lingering over their coffee. “You said you were a clerk, is that right?” Denny asked, recalling their conversation a couple of days before.

  “Yeah. A sugar clerk.” Gage took a sip of coffee from the tin cup he and Denny shared, and a half-smile played on his lips.

  Denny sighed. Getting this man to talk about himself was like trying to pull a tooth with big pliers. “So tell me about it, Gage. Tell me about you and New Orleans.”

  “Actually I’m a very boring person,” he said with that secret amusement showing on his face. “I was an orphan, and I lived in the New Orleans Orphanage for Poor and Destitute Boys until I was sixteen. You have to leave then, you know, to go to work.”

  “So were you born there, at the orphanage? Did you know about your parents?”

  “No, I was left there, on the front steps, in a cradle. The headmaster told me, when I got older, that it was a nice, well-made cradle, and I was wearing a good-quality gown and was wrapped in a homemade cotton quilt. The only other thing was a piece of paper pinned to the quilt that read ‘Gabriel Kennon.’”

  “So your real name’s Gabriel.”

  “Yeah, but when I was little I guess I couldn’t say it plain, I told the other boys my name was Gaje-ul. Pretty soon everyone started calling me Gage, and in my opinion that wears a little better than Gabriel. Anyway, I never knew anything about my mother or my father. The orphanage had a really good education for the boys besides just the three R’s: history; English, American, and French literature; music; advanced mathematics; chemistry; drafting; even basic engineering. As it turned out, I was pretty good with mathematics, and at sixteen I got a job as a clerk for Urquard Sugar Refinery. By the time I was eighteen I was their head bookkeeper. I was still working there when I joined up.”

  Curiously Denny asked, “But what—how was your life? You said there was a lady—one lady? And, I mean, what did you do for fun, when you weren’t being a Super Sugar Clerk?”

  Gage shrugged. “This lady, I don’t know . . . I guess I just wasn’t exciting, or dashing, or something. I told you I’m a boring fellow. I love hunting, I always have, and I spent most of my spare time north of the city, wandering around the bayous and the canebrakes and the little patches of woods. I’m a Christian, and I go to church, I don’t drink or go to saloons. I like plays and concerts and I’d go to the theater sometimes, but that’s about it.”

  His dark blue eyes lit up and he continued, “One thing I did a lot, and I guess except for wandering around in the woods, I enjoyed most of all. I loved to go to the French Market, just to see all the different people, the bustle, all the different languages, the cultures. I’d go to one of the coffee stands and buy a café au lait—that’s the only time I have coffee with cream—and a beignet, and walk around and look at all the stalls. Then I’d go out to the wharves and walk up and down. I loved seeing the steamers
coming in, from the little tramp freight-haulers to the big luxurious floating palaces. I tried to imagine where they’d been, what the staterooms were like, the engine rooms, how the passengers lived, the places they’d seen. From the time I was sixteen years old, I’d gone to the docks at least once a week and spent hours and hours there.”

  “Really?” Denny said with great interest. “Did you ever get to travel on a steamboat?”

  Gage shook his head. “No, I didn’t want to take a deck passage on the cheap packets, that wouldn’t be any fun. And I couldn’t afford a stateroom on one of the nice ones.”

  Denny started to say something, but he had a coughing spell and said his throat hurt. They settled down to sleep.

  The next day Denny’s cough grew more persistent. It still wasn’t a deep wet or very hoarse cough, but it caused him extreme pain because of his cracked rib. He rode all day, spasmodically grabbing his side when he coughed. His eyes grew red, and his nose started running constantly. At about noon Gage said, “Denny, you’re not looking too good, and I know you’re hurting something fierce when you cough. Why don’t we stop now and let you get some rest?”

  “No,” Denny said stubbornly. “I’m okay, I’m not going to let a little girly sniffle stop us. You said we’d reach Lake Pontchartrain this evening, let’s do it.”

  In the late afternoon they reached the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. To round it and go due south to the city was about another thirty miles. “I know this country well,” Gage told Denny. “I’ve hunted and camped all around here since I was a boy. See that ridge running east-west on the south shore? There’s good forest there. It’s the best camping north of the city, because all the rest of the country around here is either plantation fields or swamp. That ridge is surrounded by swamp, but I know a path that’s above water most of the time. I figure it’s probably dry now, we haven’t had any rain for the last few days. You feel like going on for another three hours or so?”

  Denny said gamely, “Sure I do. I don’t want to camp out in the swamp or in a sugarcane field.”

  Denny had been amazed at the change in climate, scenery, and wildlife as they had traveled further south in Louisiana. Natchez was a typical Deep South city, quick warm springtimes that started in March, hot in July and August, rainy and chill in September, and mildly cold in the short winters.

  Southern Louisiana was like a different continent. It was blazing hot from sunrise to sunset, with humidity so high that one’s clothes and hair always felt slightly damp. The nights were close and wet, with falling dew as thick as rain. Often a dramatic thunderstorm would brew, growling and dark, and torrents of water fell from the skies for an hour or so. Then the fiery sun would charge back out into the azure blue sky to turn the land into steaming greenscapes.

  Gage forged ahead, leading them around the perimeter of the lake. It was sometimes difficult to tell where the lake’s shores were, for Lake Pontchartrain was low-lying and brackish, and surrounding it was a wide swath of mud. They crossed a small still bayou, the green water only knee-deep, and then began a slight upward climb to the ridge Gage had pointed out. It was about a two-mile-long range of low-lying mounds that were covered with water oak, cypress, and tupelo trees. Because they were so tall and lush, they made an almost impenetrable canopy so there was very little wilderness undergrowth. Denny was coughing more now, so at the first likely place they came to Gage said, “Let’s go ahead and make camp here. I’m getting tired.” It was still about two hours until sunset.

  Denny said, “Okay, you have walked the whole day today, Gage. Even though I’ve been riding I feel kinda droopy and achy myself.” Gage unsaddled Cayenne, who immediately began nibbling the kelly-green springy grass. Denny set about making camp underneath an enormous tupelo tree. As soon as he had spread out his pallet on the soft turf, he laid down. “Think I’ll rest for awhile.” He coughed and then blew his nose, using Gage’s only handkerchief.

  Gage made their campfire and put coffee on, using the water from his canteen. He regretted that they hadn’t been able to make camp about a half-mile to the east, because he knew of a freshwater spring there. But it was no good camping by the stream, because it was lined with tupelo trees, and the exposed tangle of roots from the trees spread for yards and yards around the stream. Anyway, he knew that Denny couldn’t make it any farther. No matter what he said, Gage knew that Denny didn’t have a summer cold.

  The sun was riding low in the west, a spectacular sunset that shot dark orange and madder-red beams through the trees. The air was heavy, an odd but not unpleasant mixture of the fishy smell of the lake, rich wet earth, and night-blooming moonflowers that were thick around their campsite.

  Denny was coughing and scratching his head. “You have lice, Johnny Reb?” he asked petulantly. “My head itches like it’s an anthill.”

  “I don’t have lice, Yank,” Gage said shortly. Denny coughed, now a thick wet grunt, and sniffled. Gage sat up alertly. “C’mere, Denny, stand here for a minute.” Gage pointed to a place beneath the tree where the last sunrays were blazing through.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.” With an exaggerated sigh Denny came to stand in front of Gage. In the strong light on his head, Gage parted his hair in several places, staring closely at Denny’s scalp.

  “It is lice, isn’t it,” Denny said grumpily.

  “No, it isn’t lice. It’s measles.”

  “What! I don’t have measles!”

  Patiently Gage asked, “Have you been around anyone with measles lately?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Denny snapped. “I’ve only been around you.”

  “For the last eleven days. How about before that? While you were still in Natchez?”

  “No, I—oh. I forgot. I went to see my friend L. B. in the infirmary that day before I left to go see Marie. Yeah. He had measles.” Denny sighed, which made him cough. “Sorry, Gage. I uh, was hoping by now I’d be more able—I mean—”

  “Never mind, Denny,” Gage said. “You can’t help catching measles if you’ve never had them and you get within a mile of someone who does. In the summer of ’62 my regiment had 242 cases of the measles in three months. At least I know how to nurse ’em.”

  “So you caught them?” Denny asked as he laid back down on his pallet.

  “Not then, I had them when I was a kid. In the orphanage we passed ’em around until every last one of us, and our nurses and the headmaster, all had them.” Gage didn’t want to tell Denny that there had been a certain amount of fatal cases, both at the orphanage and in his regiment. Measles themselves were a fairly mild disease, but in small sickly children and in men who weren’t at a general good level of health, measles often resulted in pneumonia. No one, including the doctors, knew how to prevent that, or to cure it once a patient had it. This worried Gage, for though Denny seemed on the whole to be an energetic and healthy young man, he was definitely still weak from getting shot. That was a great shock to the system, no matter how healthy the man or how light the wound.

  “Wish we had some tea now, instead of coffee,” Gage said, pouring out the strong brew into his tin cup. He added some molasses to it and gave it to Denny. “Here, this tastes kind of odd, but it’ll help your throat.”

  Denny took a sip and said, “Not bad, actually. Smoky taste of coffee, smoky taste of molasses. Thanks, Gage. Hey, I don’t know anything about measles, except the spots. So I know I’m going to be red polka-dotted, but what else?”

  “Oh, you’ve already got a little cough and a runny nose. You’ll probably have a low fever at night. Isn’t it odd how if you get fevered it’s almost always at night, and it goes away in the morning? Anyway, don’t worry about it, Denny, you’ll be fine in a day or two,” Gabe lied. Though the rash only lasted between four days and a week, sometimes the cough, continuous runny nose, muscle aches, and fever could last up to two weeks.

  “Yeah, I never get sick. I’ll kick this quick,” Denny said weakly. “But I am tired, Gage. I’m not very hungry, so I
think I’ll go ahead and go to sleep.”

  “Take some laudanum first,” Gage said, pulling the dark blue bottle from his rucksack. “Maybe then you’ll sleep good, even if you do get a fever.” He could tell that Denny was already feverish; his eyes had that telltale dullness, and his cheeks were flushed. Denny took a swallow of the medicine and immediately closed his eyes.

  A mourning dove sang its bittersweet song, and the perfume of the moonflowers overpowered the other earthy smells. A low lopsided Louisiana moon slowly rose, casting its sterile light over the land. Gage watched it, savoring the haunting sight. In over a thousand nights, he had never seen a moon shine on his home. He was thankful for it all: the dove, the spreading tupelo tree shelter, the giant white sweet moonflowers, the solemn moon. He thanked God, and prayed for Denny.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Baba Simza leaned over the kettle and inhaled deeply. The low light from the campfire made her face appear as a disembodied apparition, for she was dressed all in black and had a black diklo wrapped around her hair. “Ahh,” she breathed with satisfaction. “Av akai, Nadyha, Niçu. This incense will make your heart beat strong, it will steady your nerves.”

  Nadyha, a tall, slim girl also dressed in black, made a face as she leaned over the potion. “Puridaia Simza, your incense stinks, the valerian rides over the balm and the lavender. Besides, we’re not afraid or nervous. We’re going to have pias, baro pias.”

  Her brother Niçu, a slender but wiry young man, obediently bent over the pot and breathed in. “Okay, Puridaia, my heart’s beating and my nerves are steady. I don’t get it, Nadyha, what big fun are you talking about? You’ve already got a forest of weeds out here. Why do we have to go get more weeds?” he complained.

  Mirella, Niçu’s wife, was seated by Baba Simza at the campfire. She said with amusement, “Don’t pretend like you don’t want to do it, Niçu. This is just the kind of prank you love to pull on the gaje.”