Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball

by Lynn Shurr

  “Rosamond Boylan. Where is she?”

  A disapproving nurse pursed her lips and said snidely, “Probably with Dr. Landry in his tent down by the infirmary. Who wants to know, another one of her boyfriends?”

  “Her husband, her still lawful husband.” Burke turned on his heel and weaved between the tents. In the distance, he could hear the Cajun man he had accosted jabbering in French to the guards. Artie lagged far behind still calling to him to stop. The nurses clustered in the entry to their tent.

  One of the women said, “You shouldn’t have told him, Dorcas. He looks like he wants to kill her.”

  Damn right, he wanted to kill her—and her lover. Catch them together and strangle them both, a crime of passion. No jury would hang him for that. Burke Boylan lumbered toward the doctors’ tent.

  ****

  In the intimacy of the small tent he shared with Doc Spivey, Pierre Landry held Roz close. The tent flap was down, giving them some scant privacy in the crowded camp. Leonard Spivey told Pierre he wouldn’t enter if he closed the flap, giving his fellow doctor a wink like a randy college boy—and he expected the same favor in return. Spivey was most certainly joking, Pierre thought, until he nearly lifted the flap after returning from dinner. Low but unmistakable sounds of mating stopped him from entering.

  “Len, Len, Len, oh, Len,” a woman, husky-voiced, whispered.

  Len, you old dog. Strange to think of his mentor that way. Obviously, Doc Spivey’s heart condition had been greatly exaggerated.

  But this evening, the tent belonged to Roz and Pierre. They shared the long kisses and the deep caresses that brought them both some satisfaction. Roz wanted more. She tore at his clothes, but was calmed at last by her own climax. Frottage. The act sounded so much better given its French name, but he thought he might go insane having to make love in this way for seven more months.

  Surrounded by disaster, unwilling to be apart, they talked in the dark about the life they might build together. He wanted Roz to get nurses’ training in Lafayette, perhaps study for an M.D. They’d open a proper medical office and work together every day. Children would come, and they could raise them in a house built on the bayou. He didn’t care what religion they practiced, but he did want to stay in Chapelle near his kin and the people who needed him

  Roz, pleasantly drowsy, leaned her head against his shoulder. “Fine. I could develop an appetite for alligator sauce piquant. It tasted more like pork than fish, don’t you think?”

  “Best alligator I ever had.” Pierre kissed the top of her head. “I want to give you something.” He released her long enough to find his medical bag. Cool and rubbery, a pair of surgical gloves landed in Roz’s lap. She regarded their long, limp fingers.

  “How lovely. Just what I’ve always wanted.”

  “I know they’re thick and clumsy, but I want you to wear them during deliveries until your hands heal completely. There’s an outbreak of acute gonococcus infections in the camp, mostly among the soldiers and young men, but it’s bound to spread among the women. I broke the news to General Emory this morning. He’s outraged by the moral turpitude of his troops but did agree to distribute prophylatics to the men. The Catholic boys think it’s a sin to use a rubber. Me, my brothers, we always washed down with white mule after we’d been with a woman. No sin in that, but it burned like the devil. Maybe, that’s why it worked so well.”

  “Nurse Strictland told me about the outbreak. She was amazingly mellow about it.” Roz sighed heavily. “We’re supposed to give lectures to the unmarried girls about pick-ups and petting being like the first leaks in a levee that will lead them to an uncontrollable crevasse.”

  “I know that feeling.”

  “Pierre, we could make use of those condoms.”

  “We can wait the seven months until your divorce is final. If we made a mistake and conceived a child during that time, the town’s people and my family would have an even harder time accepting you.”

  “People will talk about me anyhow.” Giving up, Roz straightened. “I could use some extra silver nitrate if you have any. I refuse to allow any of my babies to be blinded because the National Guard boys have nothing better to do with their time. Have you traced the source of the infection?”

  “Straight to Eloise and her pals. I suspected they were plying their trade when I drove past the Barn the other day and noticed the yard wasn’t flooded. They’ve been passing their earnings to one of the men on the work crews. He hands it off to Bubba or Gaston Broussard for a small cut of the take. The girls are being shipped to Lafayette for treatment in the morning. The general posted a guard on their tent for the night. I hope he picked some geezers for the job, but then I know one geezer who can still get it up—which accounts for a mellow Nurse Strictland.”

  “Pierre, really? I can’t believe—”

  People shouted. Heavy footsteps ran their way. A commotion started outside the tent. Probably another brawl as tempers grew short among evacuees impatient to return home. He would have more broken heads to stitch, but hopefully no knife wounds. Pierre stood up and tucked in his shirt. Roz smoothed her wrinkled midwife’s uniform with her hands.

  Someone pushed the tent flap aside letting in the glare of the camp lighting. A bulky form filled the entry. Before Roz could react, a large, all too familiar hand grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her upward. Pierre Landry, caught off guard as he searched in his bag for the silver nitrate, fell to the ground with a blow to the jaw.

  Buster shoved Roz out into the light. He pinched her face between his hands and raised it so that her wide, terrified blue eyes had to look into his. He ran a rough thumb over the scab on her chin.

  “Did you give Landry a hard time, too? Did he have to put you in your place? No matter, I’ll adjust your attitude once we get out of here. We can catch a train in Lafayette and be on our way to Philly before daylight. We can reconsummate our marriage in a sleeper car—if I decide to wait that long, Rosie.”

  Roz struggled, beating on Buster with her fists. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Artie Delamare being chased in their direction by a weedy young guardsman whose face was covered with the acne of adolesence.

  “Let her go, Burke! You’ve had too much to drink. You’ll hurt someone,” Artie panted.

  The soldier came up behind them and assumed a fighting stance behind his rifle and bayonet. “Halt! I say halt! Y’all can’t come in here after curfew. Y’all got to move outta here.”

  “Just visiting my wife, Private. Merely ending a long separation.” Buster lowered his face toward Roz’s lips. He held her in place with a grip that bruised her jaw and bit her upper lip, drawing blood, when she kicked him in the shin.

  “Halt! Don’t look like Miz Roz wants to go with you.” The private looked over his shoulder, hoping his fellow guard would arrive soon to help take on this brute. His buddy, having slipped in the mud and sprained an ankle, was making his way slowly to the fracas using his rifle as a crutch. When the soldier glanced back at Burke, the situation had changed.

  An arm wrapped around Buster’s neck exposing his throat. The big man didn’t move because a slim, shiny blade pressed against the side of his thick neck. Dr. Landry spoke into the man’s red ear. “Do you remember what I told you would happen if you ever hurt Roz again? Now, my brothers, they would use a hunting knife across the jugular and windpipe to kill a brute like you. Me, I’d rather make a deep cut, severing the carotid artery with a scalpel. It’s easy, quick, and relatively painless. You’ll be dead before you notice, Boylan.”

  “Uh, Dr. Landry, sir. I don’t think the commandant would like it if you killed this fella,” the private said, his hands shaking the rifle a little.

  “Then, why don’t you restrain him and escort him out of the camp, soldier? Tell him not to come back.”

  “That what you want, Miz Roz?” the guardsman asked.

  “Yes.” She rubbed the marks on her jaw with her small, white hand.

  A crowd of men, who had nothing better
to do than start fights or watch them since the brothel tent had been closed down, gathered round. One offered a long rawhide string that might have been a bootlace to the soldier. The guardsman couldn’t decide what to do with his rifle and the string at the same time.

  “I’ll tie him up,” Artie offered.

  “Don’t touch me, Artie. I’ll kill you if you touch me,” Burke ground out between his teeth as he tried to keep his jaw muscles from scraping against the scalpel.

  “Hold him steady, Doctor. Buster, I’m going to drive us out of here. I’ll let you go when we’re a few miles out of town.” Artie wound the rawhide lace so tightly around Boylan’s wrists that it cut into the flesh.

  “Sorry, Roz. I’m so sorry—again. Oh, Roxie is worried about you. Try writing her again, would you? She’s a good kid, just a little mixed up about what she wants right now.”

  Artie finished his task. The private poked the subdued Burke in the back with the tip of his bayonet. As they turned, Roz called out. “Artie, you’re bleeding.”

  “Yeah. I sat on some glass.”

  “Let us take care of that before you go.”

  “We’ll see Mr. Boylan gets to his car and stays there if you need a doctor, sir,” the guard offered, his thin chest puffed out a little, as he prodded Buster along.

  “Thanks. It hurts like hell.”

  So did the removal of a two-inch shard of china from his slim white ass, the disinfecting of the wound and the eight stitches needed to close the cut. Artie sang out in his fine tenor voice a few times before the ordeal ended. Roz taped a thick pad of gauze over the injury.

  “There, that should get you back to New Orleans. Take care, Artie.”

  Artemus Delamare looked at Roz and the doctor. He regarded how they stood close together. He figured they itched to put their arms around each other once he left. Thanks to him, Roz had gotten a bum deal with Buster.

  “Yeah. You, too. Take care of each other.”

  He bumped into a courier as he left the tent. “Dr. Landry,” the man said, “We had a call that one of your patients in town may have suffered a stroke. Here’s the address. You’re needed in Chapelle at once.”

  “Coming,” he heard Pierre reply.

  On his way back to the Mercedes, he passed a gaunt country woman, swollen breasts wobbling beneath beneath a loose dress. She had a newborn slung over one shoulder. The baby startled when its mama bellowed, “We need da midwife, tent turty-four.”

  Burke waited in the passenger seat of the Mercedes when Artie returned to the car. The guards had given him a few snorts from one of the jars of liquor. Some spilled down the front of Buster’s shirt, filling the air with the redolence of alcohol.

  “Figured if he passed out he’d be easier to handle, but the guy sure can hold it,” the private remarked, looking longingly at the empty container.

  “He’s an ugly drunk, I can tell you that.” Artie turned over the engine. Burke gave an animal-like growl drowned out when cylinders fired. They rolled down the hill and through the crumpled gates of Camp Roy.

  The waters of Spanish Lake pushed against the narrow road all the way back to the main highway. In the night, the spillover seemed closer, darker, deeper. When Artie took the Mercedes over the small hill and down into the dip that Burke had powered through before, he discovered more was at work than his imagination. The big vehicle refused to brake and fishtailed down the incline into water swollen to a depth of several feet. It flowed over the floorboards and into the car. The huge engine stalled as Burke thrashed his feet in the rising water.

  “Untie me, you idiot, before I drown!”

  “Sure, Burke. Don’t get excited. You’re getting the knots wet. Makes them harder to untie.”

  Both of them wet to the waist now, Artie fumbled with the rawhide lace. Burke jerked his hands free as the thong loosened. He used them to shove Artie from the car.

  “Get the hell out and push, fool.”

  “Buster, we need to leave the machine behind and get out of here.”

  “I just lost my wife for the second time. I won’t lose the Mercedes. I said push!”

  Artie started to wade away toward the slope of the small hill, but Burke sprang from the car and jerked him back.

  “Push, I said, you puny pervert. What did you think—that taking Roz’s side would help you hook up with the baby sister? I saw how you looked at that little girl in her school uniform. If I hadn’t interrupted, you would have had her in the backseat.”

  “Shut up, Buster. You can push your own damned car up the hill. I’m gone.”

  The water was on the move, rising higher, carrying with it branches and old boards that scratched the paint of the white Mercedes and piled up along one side. Burke yanked Artie by his coat collar and turned him toward the car. “Bend over and push, I said!”

  “It’s not moving, Buster. The gears are locked. Be reasonable. We can still get out of here alive.”

  “You’re not trying hard enough, child molester.”

  Burke eyed the debris marring his sleek, white vehicle. Dark as the night was, Buster’s cold, pale eyes glittered. He worked a plank from the pile. The end of it bore a stubble of rusty nails.

  “What you need is more incentive. Artie, the pervert, needs a goose in the ass.”

  Burke smashed the board against Artie’s rear. The nails missed his flesh, but the impact on the wound in his backside wrenched a scream from deep in the wounded man’s gut. Artie stood up, the water now past his waist.

  “Don’t hit me, Buster, and never call me a pervert again! If Roz can fight you, so can I.”

  “Come on, Artie. Let’s see how close you can get.”

  Burke swung the studded board in a wide arc, all his muscle behind it. Artie, remembering the lithe Italian fighter who had taken a toll on Buster at the Holland House, launched himself under the swing and knocked Boylan off his feet. They went down into the water, Artie on top. He stood on the big man’s chest and wrested the board away while Burke gulped muddy water. The body beneath him bucked and fought.

  Artie jumped backwards and raised the board high as Buster came up coughing and choking, Artemus surprised that he could actually see murder in a man’s eyes. Burke’s large hands moved toward his throat. He swung the board against Boylan’s head with all the strength of accumulated anger. One rusty nail pierced a pale, mad eye. It was Buster’s turn to scream.

  Artie tossed the board and scrambled away. The water rose faster now, chest high. He pushed against the current, finally gaining a grip on a sapling by the side of the road. Pulling himself out of the dip, he crawled up the side of the hill. From the top, he watched the blinded Burke struggling, slipping, going down. Boylan emerged again covered in mud and slime, more monster than man now, a Cyclops in the throes of death, defeated by his puny enemy.

  Buster grasped at the spare tire mounted on the side of the Mercedes, tried to pull himself onto the hood, but his strength was drained away by the flood. The waters plucked his thick fingers, one by one, from the wires of the fancy wheel and bore Burke Boylan away. Artie stood, turned his back, and began the long walk to Camp Roy.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Thank heaven, you’re back!”

  Roz had been waiting since dawn at the top of the hill for Pierre Landry’s Ford to make the turn into the camp. As it was, he surprised her by entering through the rear gate. The early light revealed clear evidence that somewhere another levee had broken. Water coursed down the railway cut along the main road, adding volume to Spanish Lake, eating away at the old levee that prevented the lake from spilling into an abandoned canal and flooding the drained farm lands beyond.

  “I’m ashamed to admit I fell asleep at the wheel and almost did for myself last night. Old Mrs. Fruge died of a massive brain hemorrhage before I arrived. At eighty-six, she would have been severely paralyzed had she lived. Her death was a blessing, quick and painless. I sat with the family and filled in the death certificate while waiting for the hearse to come. I did
n’t realize how fatigued I’d become until I jerked awake on the road and saw an oak tree coming up fast.”

  Pierre got down from his Ford and took his black bag from the rear seat. Not caring who saw after yesterday’s scene with Boylan, he put his arm around Roz’s waist. “I pulled over, planning to take a short nap and before I knew it, the sun rose over the cane fields. By that time, the Lizzie was mired in. I had to push her out of the mud. Bon chance that I parked on higher ground because I could see water to the northeast all the way back to Chapelle and St. Martinville. I had to come in through Cade and back the Ford up that last big hill to get into camp.”

  At the tent, Pierre set his bag on the cot and brushed at the mud on his clothes, all the while taking a good look at Roz. Pausing, he raised her chin with his fingertips. “You seem tired yourself,” he said.

  “A young woman lost her first child at six months, not a stillbirth, but the infant lived only a few hours. The mother was frantic to have the child baptized, going on about not wanting her baby’s soul to wander the night as a feu-follet. Reverend Grant offered to do the baptism, but the mother insisted on a priest. By the time Fr. Grainger arrived, the little girl had died. We all pretended otherwise.”

  Roz sank on the cot next to the bag. “After the baptism, the two men of God got into an argument. Fr. Grainger claimed the Baptists and the Methodists are preaching in the camps and trying to lure his people away from the Catholic Church. I thought they’d have to douse them with pails of water to put an end to it, but they finally stomped off in opposite directions. It would have been funny if it weren’t so sad.”

  “I’ve lived with these beliefs all my life, Roz. Do you think you will be able to bear it?”

  “If we are together, Pierre.”

  He would have liked to kiss her, but the camp was coming full awake, and bored, restless people seethed everywhere looking for a diversion. Instead, he laid a gentle, guiding hand on her shoulder. “Lie down here and rest. My place is quieter than the nurses’ tent.”

  “If I lie in your bed, I won’t be thinking of sleeping.” She watched his slow smile spread showing his white teeth, then fade again.