by Mike Blakely
“I have some money in the bank in New Orleans, but it’s not enough. I’ll need a couple of thousand more. I didn’t know if you had any plans for your pearl money yet, so I thought I’d tell you first. I thought you might want to invest some of it.”
She didn’t want to appear overanxious. She wasn’t going to throw herself or her money at Billy. She didn’t think he’d respect that. He wanted a woman who could behave with a measure of self-restraint. He would admire her more if she thought it over for a while. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for telling me before anybody else. I’ll have to think about it, though. How soon do you need to know?”
“As soon as possible. I don’t want somebody else getting the idea and beating me to it.”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” she said. “I’m very interested.”
Billy smiled. “Good.” He got up. “Well, good night.”
“Wait, Billy,” she said before he could open the door. “I want to show you something.”
She went to her old tobacco tin on the shelf above her bed. She put one knee on the bed to reach it. “I took the pearl you gave me to Marshall and found a jeweler there who could mount it,” she said, opening the tin. She removed a gossamer chain of gold, adorned with a tiny pendant—a delicate crown of gold embracing the white orb. She draped it across her fingers so he could see.
Billy touched her hand as he examined the piece. “Nice job,” he said. “Will you put it on?”
She shook her hair over her shoulders and reached behind her neck to fasten the chain. She had worn it only a few times, and only in her room. She started to get embarrassed when she couldn’t hook the clasp.
“Let me help you,” Billy said.
When she turned, he found the chain in her hands under her veil of shining black hair. She pulled her hair to one side so he could see the clasp.
“There,” he said, turning her by the shoulders. He admired her for a moment. “It looks beautiful on you. I hope you’ll wear it.”
“I will,” she said.
He studied her for a long moment. Then he smiled, turned away, and stepped toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Think about my proposition.”
“I will.” She stood at the door to watch him walk down the stairs, along the back of the building, and into the dark. There was nothing to think about. Of course she would invest in his business ventures. Anything to root him to Port Caddo. The money meant nothing to her. There was nothing at all to think about.
But she did think, and by morning, Carol Anne was glad she had waited. She had come up with a wonderful idea. It was bold, but ingenious. She was going to tell Billy that she wanted to do more than just invest. She wanted an equal partnership.
When Carol Anne told Billy of her decision that afternoon, he accepted immediately. He would invest everything he had, and she would match it. They would split all profits down the middle. She would run the store and the inn, he would man the kitchen and drive the wagon to the pearl camps between meals.
Billy told Widow Humphry that afternoon that she would have to find another cook. Carol Anne broke the news to old man Snyder. She was afraid he would be angry, but he was delighted. She was like a granddaughter to him, and it elated him that Billy had taken an interest in her, even if it meant competition for his store.
The new partners spent the afternoon walking around town together, causing a stir. They looked at several likely sites for their business. A few buildings and lots were for sale, but they were located poorly, off the main street. There were a couple of lots available just above the wharf, but they were on low ground, only a few feet above the level of the bayou.
Billy asked around. Nobody in town could remember the water getting that high. He went to Goose Prairie Cove to ask Esau.
“I’ve lived on the lake for forty years,” the old Choctaw said, “and I seen the water go that high just once, back in thirty-eight. That was a freak storm that year. I never hope to see the likes of it again. Big Cypress Bayou ran like a river for two days.”
“But you don’t think it will happen again?”
“It happened once. I guess it could happen again. There would be a risk building there. But if your place flooded there, so would my saloon. I’m no higher here than you would be there.”
“It’s a good location otherwise,” Billy said. “Right next to the wharf.”
“And just across the street from the jailhouse,” Esau said. “You could visit your friend, Captain Brigginshaw. He almost landed there last night.”
“Did Trev cause trouble?”
“Some, but me and the constable got him settled down. He’s one of those mean drunks, Billy.”
“I know.”
Billy and Carol Anne agreed that afternoon to risk high water and construct a new building for their store and inn on the low ground just above the wharf. Theirs would be the first business the steamboat passengers saw when they disembarked.
They dined together that evening at Rose Turner’s eatery. Billy had ham steaks and potatoes. Carol Anne ate broiled chicken and greens. She wore her pearl pendant. Rayford Hayes, the local constable, and his wife, Hattie, stopped by their table to congratulate them on their partnership. The news was all over town.
“I threatened to put your friend, Captain Brigginshaw, in the jailhouse last night,” Rayford said. “He was picking fights out at Esau’s place.”
“I heard. Did he hurt anybody?” Billy asked.
“No, Esau got him settled down. He likes that old Indian for some reason. Did you know Brigginshaw carries a gun?”
“He’s licensed to carry it. He provides his own security for the pearls he buys and the money he carries. He didn’t pull a gun on anybody last night, did he?”
“No, but he pulled his jacket back where I could see it.”
“He likes to fight a little when he gets drunk, but he won’t draw a weapon unless somebody pulls one on him first, or goes for his satchel.”
“He ought to leave that satchel locked up somewhere instead of carrying it around all the time,” Rayford said. “Anyway, he apologized to me this morning and said he’d try to behave himself.”
“I hope he does,” Carol Anne said. She knew Constable Hayes as an old Confederate hero and the surest man in town with a handgun.
“That’s a lovely necklace,” Hattie suddenly said. “Is that a local pearl?”
Carol Anne was stunned to have one of the prominent local wives speaking to her in public. Hattie had always been civil to her in the store, but this was quite different. She figured she owed the honor to the fact that she was dining with the famous Billy Treat. “Yes, ma’am,” she explained. “Billy found it at Goose Prairie Cove and gave it to me as a gift.”
Hattie gasped joyfully and made all sorts of eyes at Billy. “So this is the famous Treat Pearl that started the pearl boom. It certainly is a beautiful one.”
“Thank you,” Carol Anne replied.
When Rayford and Hattie left, Billy asked, “What was all that about?”
Carol Anne rolled the pearl between her fingers. “Oh, she probably got the wrong idea. Used to be, around here, that when a fellow found a pearl, he would give it to the girl he wanted to marry. I guess I should have straightened her out.”
Billy shrugged. “Let them think what they want to think. I gave you a gift. You shouldn’t have to explain it to anybody.”
The next day, the gossip hounds spread the word that Carol Anne was wearing the Treat Pearl. People stopped her on the street to look at it. She was amazed at the warmth they extended to her. It was as if she had never owned another pearl.
Billy bought lumber, paint, hardware, shingles. He hired carpenters and worked beside them. The happy cadence of hammers rang from sunup to sundown. The frame building was plain, but there would be time to add gingerbread later. The Treat Inn opened a month after the partnership was formed. The partners were seen together regularly around town.
Their inn offered three levels of accommo
dations. A large back porch enclosed in mosquito netting provided twenty cots where low-budget pearl-hunters could sleep for two bits a night and eat common fare for another two bits a day.
The first floor of the inn consisted of small rooms patterned after riverboat staterooms, six-by-six, with double berths. Common washrooms, one for men and one for women, stood at the end of the hall.
Upstairs, half a dozen suites had brass bedsteads, private wash-, stands, mirrors, and armoires. Trevor Brigginshaw left Widow Humphry’s place and took a suite in the Treat Inn. The good widow was actually a little relieved. The captain came home drunk once or twice a week, sang loudly in the middle of the night, and generally disturbed her other guests.
Billy’s room adjoined the kitchen, behind the store. Carol Anne’s room was above his. They were in debt by the time they opened, but immediately began catching up. The pearl rush was still building. Farmers, woodchoppers, and roustabouts rented cots. Clerks and professional men filled the staterooms. A few big planters and rich businessmen peopled the suites upstairs. Pearl-hunting appealed to all classes.
Carol Anne ordered stock for the store with pearl-hunters in mind. She sold knives suited to opening mussels, and all kinds of camp gear. She couldn’t keep mosquito bars in stock.
“Keep some sandalwood oil on hand, if you can,” Billy suggested. “It keeps the pearls from drying out and improves their luster.”
Between cooking meals at the inn, Billy drove a well-stocked supply wagon to the South Shore pearling camps, which now extended from Annie Glade Bluff, past Taylor Island, to old Esau’s place on Goose Prairie Cove. He sold almost everything in the wagon on each trip and took orders for more goods.
He often crossed paths with the open-topped coach from Joe Peavy’s livery barn. It made a constant circuit through the camps and past the mussel beds, shuttling pearl-hunters to and from town. Passengers commonly paid their fees in seed pearls.
Peavy had also established a twice-weekly stagecoach service that ran south to Marshall, where he would pick up pearl-hunters who had ridden the rails in from Louisiana. The stagecoach stopped right in front of the Treat Inn, and turned around at the wharf, swinging past the jailhouse.
In his kitchen at night, Billy made projections based on the gross profits the inn and the store had made so far. He estimated that he and Carol Anne would be out of debt by the time the lake level rose and the riverboats came back. Then they would start recouping their investments.
Pearling wound drop off severely when the water got too cool to make wading comfortable. Some pearlers would try to use George Blank’s mussel rakes through the winter, but Billy knew few of them would stick with it. That kind of pearl-hunting was hard work, compared to the pleasures of summer wading. The pearl rush would lie virtually dormant until next spring, but the riverboats would be running, and that would sustain some measure of prosperity until the waters warmed.
He was being conservative when he judged that he and his partner would turn their first profit about July, next summer. Then he would ask her to marry him. They would have known each other over a year by then. He would have gotten around to kissing her by then, too, probably around Christmastime. Maybe under some mistletoe. He would marry her, and then it wouldn’t matter if the Caddo Lake pearl industry went belly-up like a dead fish, or if the railroads forced riverboats into obsolescence, or if Port Caddo died and sank into the bayou. He would have Carol Anne for life. They could go somewhere else and start over.
For the first time in years, he was planning his future. He had once been an inordinate planner, but he was going to try to control that now that he was finally through grieving over his catastrophe in the South Pacific. Maybe what had happened there was his fault, and maybe it wasn’t, but he couldn’t punish himself forever.
Don’t try to plan the lives of everyone in town, he thought. Just mind your own business, and give your advice when asked. That way, if something goes wrong, you won’t have to blame yourself. You don’t have to save this town for these people. Let them do it themselves.
It was strange that he had found the pearl here. He of all people. There was more to it than just chance. It was as if the weeping angels and the gods who rode the rainbows were trying to tell him something. He had suffered enough. It was time to live again. He was in love with Carol Anne.
11
TREVOR BRIGGINSHAW HELD A GLASS OF WHISKEY IN ONE HAND, A CIGAR in the other. His satchel full of pearls and money rested between his feet. He was on a Saturday-night tear at Esau’s pearl camp and saloon. Someone had started him talking about pearling in the South Sea islands.
“I had my own vessel then. A sloop I called the Wicked Whistler. Just forty feet she was, but full-rigged and quick as a hungry shark.” The more he drank, the thicker his Aussie brogue became.
Esau’s saloon was just a shack with some tables and chairs scattered around inside and out. At night, the men liked to come inside and smoke the place up with cigars and pipes to keep the mosquitoes out. There was no bar to lean against, but there was whiskey—some of it store-bought and labeled, some of it cooked in Esau’s moonshine still that was hidden in the swamps.
“I had a four-pounder swivel gun mounted on the foredeck to discourage pirates,” Trevor continued, “and my pearl-handled pistol.” He pulled back his white cotton jacket to reveal his weapon.
“Pirates?” Judd Kelso spouted. He had been matching the pearl-buyer drink for drink for about two hours. His bankroll had been shrinking all summer. He had lost most of it in card games with pearl-hunters. Now he was down to a few thin bills and was watching them go quickly into Esau’s till. “I don’t believe in no damn pirates!”
“Then you’re either ignorant or a fool. There are thieves on the high seas as sure as you have them on land. What’s the name of that outlaw gang about here, Esau?”
“Christmas Nelson’s gang?” the old Indian said.
“Right! Bloody idiotic name, isn’t it!”
“They say he was born on Christmas Day,” Esau said.
Kelso shifted in a creaking chair. “Christmas Nelson’s just a good ol’ rebel Southern boy who don’t know the war’s over yet. He ain’t no damn pirate.”
“Of course he’s not a pirate!” Trevor shouted. “He doesn’t even have a boat! But there are pirates in the Southern Seas as sure as life. Common criminals is all. Ask Billy Treat. He narrowly escaped from them, he did.”
“What about that Billy Treat?” a backwoods farmer drawled. “He ’pears to know a hell of a lot about pearls. Where’d he come from to know so much?”
“I found him in New York City. Looked me up, he did. Said he wanted to go pearling. He had found a freshwater pearl in a stream in New Jersey and all he talked about was pearls. The Romans, the Greeks, what all the ancient civilizations thought about them. He was a strapping Yankee lad, so I took him where he might find some pearls.”
“You mean damn Yankee, don’t you?” Kelso said.
The Australian’s angry glare sliced toward the gator-eyed man.
“Where was it you took Billy to find pearls?” Esau asked, before Trevor’s ire could reach its boiling point..
“Where? Bloody where did I not take him, mate! I was an independent buyer then. I fetched the best pearling waters of the Pacific every year, then sold my pearls in New York and London. Billy went ’round the Horn with me—this was sixty-one, I recall, because the war had started here—and he made a fair sailor. He had a look at Venezuela, Panama, Mexico. Didn’t like what he saw until we got into the Pearl Islands of the South Seas. That’s where he became king of Mangareva, in the Gambier Islands.”
“Where?” Judd Kelso said, laughing disparagingly as if the place didn’t exist.
Trevor set the cigar between his teeth. “Mangareva, I say, man! In the Gambiers. Volcanic islands they are, and Mangareva’s the best pearl island among them. Bloody beautiful tropical spot that is, gentlemen. Green mountains rising from the sea. The water there is so clear you can see pea
rl oysters on the reef five fathoms deep. And the women! Dark-skinned as Esau here, fair as angels, and bare as babes above the hips, every one!”
“You mean naked?” a pearl-hunter asked.
“And willing! That’s where Billy Treat jumped the Wicked Whistler. He made Mangareva the richest pearl island in the South Seas. Wasn’t easy, either. The natives don’t like work there. They like to catch fish, chop coconuts, lay about under the palm trees, swim a bit, and make little natives, but they don’t like work.”
“How did Billy get them to work?” Esau asked, reaching for his flask.
“Not by my methods. I suggested he trade them rum for pearls. They like rum, they do. But he’s against drink. You all know that. He wouldn’t hear of it. So here’s what he did. He became one of them! He bloody well did! He lived in a hut thatched with palm leaves, just like they did. He fished with them, chopped coconuts, learned everything they knew till he had their confidence.
“I left him there, and sailed to Sydney. When I came back to Mangareva several months later, he had the men, women, and children diving two hours a day, every one. And the pearls he had to trade looked like billiard balls compared to your little mussel pearls here.
“They loved Billy Treat on Mangareva. He had his pick from the whole lot of naked girls there, he did. I think he liked it there. Wouldn’t you?”
“Damn right!” an old married pearl-hunter said, and laughter filled the smoky saloon.
“But wait!” Trevor said, after draining his glass and signaling Esau for more. “The most peculiar thing about Billy in Mangareva was that he would dive with them every day. Maybe that’s the way he got them to do it in the first place—by example. He could hold his breath almost three minutes, he could. I clocked him one day. He would dive four fathoms and come up with oysters broad as my hat!” He flourished his panama at his listeners.
“By God, that’s how he done it!” Junior Martin said. “I’ve heard how he saved seven drownin’ men when the Glory of Caddo Lake went down. They say he stayed under three or four minutes getting John Crowell’s boy out.”