The Cottoncrest Curse

by Michael H. Rubin

  “But this was something I had to do. Now that my father was dead and now that Grandpapa Jake had died, I was the only one who knew.

  “Of course, Grandpapa Jake had never told me about him, and I’m sure my father and his mother never knew either. I had found it out by going through Grandpapa’s papers. It was only right that this be done now, now that all of them—Grandmama Roz and my father and Great Uncle Moshe—were all dead and there was no one left to hurt. Grand-papa Jake would have wanted it this way, I was sure.

  “I stopped in Des Allemands at a gas station and bought a Rebel flag, which I propped up on the dashboard. I bought a couple of bags of cracklins. Although I had stopped keeping kosher when I went away to college, I couldn’t bring myself to taste fried pork skin, but I hadn’t bought the cracklins to eat. I dumped part of the contents down the toilet at the gas station and put the half-empty bags on the seat. I bought a bottle opener, a couple of bottles of Jax beer, and a few Dixie beers and left them on the back seat as well.

  “I also bought two MoonPies and an RC Cola. Now, those I did consume, leaving the empty bottle and the MoonPie bags on the floor of the front seat. If anyone stopped me, if anyone looked in my car wherever I might park it, I wanted it to look ordinary. Messy. Southern. I wanted it to fit in.

  “ ’Course, while I could try to make my rented Oldsmobile look like it was being driven by a good ol’ boy, with its Louisiana plates and the flag and the other stuff, I couldn’t make myself look like I belonged here. I stuck out like a geisha at a bar mitzvah, like someone dropped in from another world. Which I was.

  “It was almost an hour-drive from Des Allemands up the west bank River Road to Parteblanc. I knew I was there when I saw the signs at the city limits. There were trees set off the road where someone had tacked up a hand-lettered placard: PARTEBLANC FEED STORE. YES, WE HAVE CRICKETS, WORMS, SHINERS, RAT POISON, AND ROACH SPRAY. There was a big wooden railway tie set upright in concrete with the emblems of Kiwanis and the Rotary International and the Elks Club and Woodmen of the World stacked one on top of each other, like a totem pole for white men’s clubs. There was a rusted steel shaft with a sign covered with mildew, reading, PARTEBLANC, PARISH SEAT OF PETIT ROUGE PARISH.

  “But towering over the Parteblanc sign and above the railway tie with the club emblems, there was a huge billboard on a cleared field behind a fence. It read: ‘IMPEACH EARL WARREN. Join the Citizens’ Council and stand up for your rights.’ ”

  1893

  Chapter 68

  Inside, facing the entrance to the Red Chair, was a wide bar behind which stood a giant of a man with olive-colored skin and jet-black hair. He was at least seven feet tall. A scar ran from his left ear across his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. Where his left eye should be, there was nothing but a mass of scar tissue, evidence of some terrible battle. His nose was flattened, further proof of a history of rough fights. His hairy arms and barrel chest were barely contained by the washed-out red shirt that he wore.

  To the right of the bar there was an upright piano where a black man played at a furious pace, accompanied by a lighter-colored black man on guitar and a short man of middle age and indiscriminate race on the saxophone. Next to them a young black boy sat, coronet in hand, and every so often the piano player would signal to the boy, who would raise the coronet to his lips and blow out a string of dizzying notes that somehow meshed with what the others were playing.

  The floor of the bar was filled with a half-dozen couples. Women clung to men as they drifted around, some in time with the music, others completely ignoring it.

  Two of the women wore loose-fitting dresses. Three were clad only in their slips. And one had on only a beaded necklace. The men and women kissed and rubbed each other.

  As Jake stood in the doorway, one of the women in a slip led her man by the hand up the staircase, passing Lulu coming down with a naked drunk stumbling behind her. Lulu called to the bartender. Her voice had a sharp and angry edge. “Coso, he woke up. He ain’t got nothin’ left, and he wants some more.”

  Coming from behind the bar, Coso grabbed the naked drunken man by the arm, pulling him over the banister. “You want more and no pay? Out!”

  Coso pointed to the door. The naked man lay on the floor where he had fallen when Coso had pulled him off the stairs. He appeared dazed. He didn’t move.

  Reaching down, Coso grabbed the man’s left ankle. Although the man was not small, Coso’s hand was so large that it completely enveloped the man’s limb. Coso dragged him easily to the door, the man yelling as splinters from the wooden floor dug into his back. Jake moved out of the way.

  Coso kicked the man out onto the street, where he lay in chilly October air without anything on.

  Jake could see someone toss down, from an upper floor, a pile of clothes that landed near the man. He rolled over with a groan, sorted them out, and started to get dressed.

  As Coso started back toward the bar, working his way through the dancers, Jake followed him.

  Coso spun around. He was at least a foot and a half taller than Jake and twice as wide. “What you want?” he growled.

  Jake smiled, his teeth white against his dark stubble of a beard. “What do I want? A good question in such a friendly place. A drink would be good for a start.”

  Coso nodded and went behind the bar. He put a tumbler on the counter and poured two inches of whiskey into it. “You pay.”

  Jake smiled again. Smiling, said Uncle Avram, was always the way to begin a conversation where you wanted something from the other side. “Gladly.” He laid a two dollar bill next to the tumbler.

  Coso looked at the bill and examined more closely this strange man with the long black coat and black hat with its broad felt brim. Without taking his eyes off of Jake, Coso called out, “New one.”

  The listless woman on the dance floor did not pay any attention. Jake heard a rustle from the staircase. He looked up and saw the skinny fourteen-year-old white girl he had seen on the balcony sashaying down the stairs. She came over to the bar and put her arms around him. “I tol’ you, sugar, ask for Betsy, and I’ll show you a good time.”

  Jake uncurled her arm from around his waist. “No thank you.”

  “What’s the matter, sugar? A little shy maybe?” Betsy rubbed his crotch with her hand, and Jake jumped back with a start.

  “You no like?” Coso grinned. “You want something else? We have lots. Lulu maybe?”

  Lulu, her chocolate-brown skin glowing in the gas lamp’s illumination, insinuated herself between Betsy and Jake. Gone was the anger in her voice about the naked man who wanted more and wouldn’t pay. Now she just purred, “You want some sugar, maybe, from a woman with more on the upper shelves than this one?” Lulu pointed to Betsy, pulling the shift off the young girl’s shoulders while at the same time dropping the straps of her own dress. Where Betsy had tiny breasts like miniature pink-tipped funnels, Lulu’s were large rounded mounds of toffee topped with coffee nipples.

  “I think you misunderstand. I want only a drink and one other thing.”

  “Two dollar. That get you drink and girl. You no like girl?” Coso asked, his eyes narrowing in curiosity at a man who would pay the proper price and then refuse what he had bought.

  “Here,” Jake said, pushing the tumbler back toward Coso. “You can have this too. I just need some information on where I can find Antonio. Two dollars should buy me that, no?”

  The olive complexion of Coso’s broad face turned red with anger as Coso reached under the bar and then emerged from behind it carrying a large wooden club. His scarred-over left eye was the only part above his neck that was not crimson.

  Betsy and Lulu, the tops of their bodies still exposed, moved away from Jake and retreated to the far corner of the bar.

  Coso’s face was a scowl. “You come in and no want drink? You come and no want girl? You come in and want Antonio? Who be you?”

  Coso put his big hand on Jake’s shoulder, where it rested like a slab of olive-colored
beef. “You be law? Maybe you be friend of Hennessy? But I no see you before. You no be friend of Mr. Micelli, I think.”

  Coso’s fingers started to tighten on Jake’s shoulder.

  Jake forced himself to smile again. “Two dollars is not enough? I can maybe go to three. That’s a lot of money. All I want to do is see Antonio.”

  The band members saw Coso’s expression and knew that a fight was about to begin. They played louder and faster. It would be over in a minute.

  “You no see anything no more,” Coso snarled, raising his club and starting to swing it toward Jake.

  That was it for Jake. He couldn’t reason with this giant of a man.

  Jake had been chased by Cossacks. He had hidden and escaped. Jake had been chased by Tee Ray and the Knights. He had run and escaped. It seemed to Jake that he had been running for his life for half his life. But now there were the lives of others at stake, and he was through running. Zig had refused to give him shelter and had sent him to ask for Antonio. Zig had said that Tee Ray and Bucky were here in town looking for him. Until Jake found Jenny, until he found out what he needed to know, where else could he go but to Antonio? Zig said the Red Chair was the place to find Antonio. This was the Red Chair. Jake had to make a stand.

  As the club started to descend, Jake twisted out of Coso’s grasp and darted for the bar.

  Coso moved toward him, swinging the club back and forth like a scythe. It made an angry sound as it sliced through the air.

  Coso was between Jake and the door. There was no way to get past.

  Coso approached, taking large steps, his club coming closer and closer.

  Jake dropped to the floor.

  “You fall? I squash you like bug!” Coso took a wide stance and, raising the club above his head, prepared to pound it down on Jake’s head.

  But Jake was too fast. Jake scooted between Coso’s legs and then, whirling around, his black coat flaring out, leaped up on Coso’s back while at the same time pulling the Freimer knife from his belt.

  Jake wrapped his legs around Coso’s wide waist, crocked an elbow around Coso’s broad neck, and put the point of the blade directly under Coso’s right eye.

  Coso could feel the cool metal pressed against his flesh, threatening to plunge into his eye socket, depriving him completely of his sight. He had lost the left eye years ago. If he lost the right eye, what good would he be to anyone? He stood very still, the club in his hands but now held motionless in midair.

  The band stopped playing. No one had ever challenged Coso before.

  Most of the dancers halted, although some, oblivious to the music, continued to sway back and forth.

  “Now,” said Jake, calmly and softly, “should I remove your eye? If I do, should I also take an ear? The slightest twitch of this blade will be enough. It is so sharp you won’t even feel the pain. At first.”

  Coso tried not to move any part of his body. He relaxed, breathing slowly, waiting for the man on his back to make the slightest mistake, to loosen his grip even the smallest amount. Then Coso would act.

  “Even if I took your eye and ear as souvenirs,” Jake whispered, his mouth so close that Coso could feel on his ear the stubble on Jake’s chin, “you wouldn’t look so bad. The scars I leave behind with this sharp blade will be tiny in contrast to the scars you already have. I shall gladly let you keep your sight and this misshapen ear, however, if I can only get the information I seek. So, you see, I think you should listen carefully to my questions. I’ve come a long way. A very long way. I’ve been told to ask for Antonio. I have paid more than enough for this information. I have asked politely once, and I will now ask politely again.”

  Jake, still clinging to Coso’s back, raised his head from Coso’s ear and, tightening his grip and holding the blade more firmly, ready to plunge it deep into Coso’s eye, spoke loudly enough for all to hear. “So, why don’t you tell me where I can find Antonio.”

  From a dark corner of the room a swarthy man in his thirties stepped out of the shadows. He wore a red vest over a blue-and-white striped shirt with a high starched collar and carried a double-barreled shotgun. His black hair was pomaded down into a glowing shine. A part as straight as a surveyor’s line ran through the center of it. Beneath the careful coiffure he had a baby face, but his eyes were as black and cold as a snake’s.

  The musicians retreated to behind the piano. The few women who had still been dancing stopped and led their men to the sides of the room. Lulu and Betsy crouched down on the other side of the bar.

  While outside the Red Chair, music could be heard filtering through from other establishments and while the noise of the street crowd continued its drone, inside it was deadly silent.

  The man with the red vest pointed. Extending his index finger, he gestured first to the side of the room and then to the point directly in front of Coso.

  Jake drew the blade with the slightest degree of pressure across the bottom of the eye socket. A thin line of blood appeared and started to drip down Coso’s cheek. Coso didn’t dare move.

  Red Vest pointed again, and his dark eyes sent an angry gaze toward the naked dancer who had huddled at the foot of the staircase. Quivering with fear, the woman pulled a table to the center of the room and then ran back to the wall.

  Red Vest held up his index finger again, this time tapping his nose as if thinking. He put the shotgun down on the table and reached under his coat, behind his back.

  Jake moved the blade to Coso’s neck, ready to cut his jugular vein if necessary.

  “Coso,” said the man with the red vest. “I think…”

  Coso got ready.

  Jake, feeling the giant tense up, held the knife firmly to Coso’s neck.

  Jake knew he could kill Coso with a single swift stroke across the neck. If he did, Jake knew that Red Vest would reach down for the shotgun, pump it, and fire. If Coso fell forward, dead, Jake thought he might have time to leap off his back in time to make it up the stairs or out the side door. If Coso fell backward, however, there might be no chance to escape the shotgun blast.

  Jake and Red Vest locked eyes, Jake from his perch on Coso’s back, Red Vest from behind the table on which rested the shotgun.

  Why had Red Vest put the shotgun on the table? Jake couldn’t figure it out.

  Red Vest moved slowly and deliberately, all the while seeming to drill into Jake with his dark eyes. Red Vest reached under his vest and withdrew an item from his waistband.

  “I think, Coso…,” said Red Vest, holding an eight-inch Freimer blade in his hand and then putting it on the table next to the shotgun. “I think this is a friend of Zig’s. No?”

  PART VIII

  Today

  Chapter 69

  “Off to my right, behind the big IMPEACH EARL WARREN sign, was Cottoncrest.

  “What? You don’t know who Earl Warren was? He was the chief justice of the Supreme Court when Brown versus the Board of Education was decided. He had taken a divided court and had fashioned a unanimous decision reversing Plessy versus Ferguson, the old separate-but-equal case.

  “And what credit did he get for all that? For changing the course of race relations in the United States? For uniting the Supreme Court in a way that it has seldom been united before or since on a critical issue of national importance? For fashioning a decision that was as revolutionary in its effect as it was reactionary in harking back to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment when it was enacted in the heady days after the Civil War? What credit did he get? In the South, none. He was hated. It was an intense, personal hatred. On our Freedom Ride we had seen IMPEACH EARL WARREN signs alongside of the roads from Virginia southwards.

  “You know, to get the unanimous decision, Chief Justice Warren had to agree to the infamous language of having integration ‘with all deliberate speed.’ What was that? How can speed be deliberate? If the decision was a watershed, the language was a dam against change. Brown came out in 1954, and here it was 1961, and the schools still weren’t integrat
ed, and the transportation system still was segregated.

  “That’s why I had gone on the Freedom Ride. I believed it was the dawn of a new time in the country. We had a new young president, and JFK had inspired all of us in college. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ We believed him. I had done something for my country with the Freedom Ride, and now I was doing something for grandfather. And for myself.

  “So, I steered that big Oldsmobile to the right and headed down the dirt road for Cottoncrest. You could see it in the distance across the fields. It was a narrow dirt road in those days, not the fine paved one the tourist buses travel now.

  “Cottoncrest back then wasn’t anything like you see it today. Now it’s all pristine and nice, restored with bright white paint. Now the vegetable garden is filled with tomatoes and eggplant and onions and squash and okra and mirliton that they serve you at the Cottoncrest restaurant for the plate lunches and fancy candlelight dinners. Now it’s got the rose garden with its neat paths and the masses of azaleas and hedges of ligustrum and honeysuckle twined around the picket fence from the parking lot to the gift shop.

  “But back in ’61, when I first saw it, Cottoncrest was in a state of advanced decay. Those wide columns, which run up three stories, were mildewed and worn. Some portions had just rotted away. The veranda was sagging, and parts of the galleries on the upper levels had gaps so large that they looked unsafe to walk on. Thick vines had climbed up the sides of the house and had spread across most of the roof so that the house looked as if it was being slowly covered with a ratty green carpet.

  “It was a house that had more pride than prestige. Like its owner.”

  1893

  Chapter 70

  “The minute I saw the Freimer blade, I knew that Zig must have sent you here. No one in New Orleans—that is, no one who’s not working for me—has such a blade. I know that Zig only wholesales them to one other person. The Jew Peddler who told him about the Freimers in the first place.”