Child of the Storm
A Novel
R.B. Stewart
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Copyright ©2015 by R. B. Stewart
All rights reserved. Published by the author.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission.
Cover artwork by the author.
ISBN 978-0-9962168-0-7
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For Susan
CONTENTS
Prologue - Celeste
Part I – The Climbing Oak
Touch
Odette
Bears
Smear
Fight
Ghost
Scrape
Scraps
Outside
Watch
Machine
Light
Gift
Touch
Wall
Quilt
Part II – The Spirit Box
Message
Duty
Delivery
Gone
Jonathan
Box
LaSalle
Ruin
Reading
Bind
Part III – The Reaching Web
Flossy
Clay
Audrey
Ditch
Test
Betsy
Cleaning
Boat
Tears
Disposition
Fabric
Ghédé
Camille
Miss
Thinning
Part IV – The Spare Room
Gabrielle
Notions
Georges
Map
Ivan
Twelve
Soup
Katrina
Outside
Virgil
Visitors
Up
Bridge
Epilogue - Wake
Prologue - Celeste
“I was brought by a storm with no name. That’s what I was always told.”
The tiny old woman, swaddled in white, sat up straight in her ladder back chair, wrapped up in a thick blanket in spite of the heat. A candle flame dipped in the breaths of wind puffing through the pores of her house; pores opening and closing as the lap siding flexed under the heavy hand of Katrina. Power had gone out in the Lower Ninth Ward and maybe the whole of New Orleans, snuffed out by the hurricane as she pressed in. So much wind and so much heat, but August was like that. Ninety something years of hot Augusts. A lifetime of watching the Gulf over her shoulder, waiting for it to brew something up. Something big and mean. Something like Katrina. For a time the woman seemed to notice her surroundings, looking at the table, the bright candle and the dark dog lying on the floor before her. She looked at the dog and it looked up at her, waiting for her to speak again.
Like it was story time.
“That was before they started naming storms, but I can’t recall just when that was. Guess Katrina took that memory away.” She looked past the dog, taking in the room that should have looked familiar, but didn’t now. She smiled at two figures seated at the edge of the light. Smiled politely as you should to strangers. She sat quietly as they exchanged whispers among themselves, a private conversation, so she didn’t try to listen in. Just comforting to hear their voices. Maybe they were real and maybe not. Didn’t matter. They were company. But soon they were silent again and she turned her attention back to the dog.
“So much is gone. Home, family, friends—all gone. I’m gone too except my long ago memories.” She gave a little nod to what was outside. “Katrina’s pulled the plug. Taken me back to the lamps and candles of my youth. Taken me back, before taking me off. Maybe only fair since I messed with her as she was coming in. Could be, this is it.”
“Power always goes out when they come onshore.” She paused, reflecting on that as if it had brought something else to mind. “Maybe they take it for themselves—the power. They lose the Gulf’s warmth once they’ve made it to land, so they grab at what they can to keep going. You suppose?” She looked to the dog but it offered no opinion. “Maybe just old lady nonsense. Haven’t been thinking clearly with Katrina knocking.”
The candle dipped rapidly as if urging her to pick up the lagging thread of thought.
“There was no power for that storm to take—the one that brought me, way back when. Way out away from the city in a thin walled house with only two rooms inside. Outside, only a dirt road into a town not as big as my little neighborhood here. That and a garden—for food, not flowers. Overhead the biggest tree. Our Climbing Oak. And further back, the woods where the black bears roamed.” She squinted then, studying the dog’s face. “Not you I guess, but maybe family of yours?”
The candle flickered again, reminding her of the story line.
“No power in lines since there weren’t any lines. Only power was in your hands. No lines for carrying voices far and far away either. Back then, voices carried across the room or across the yard, or farther, on the pages of books we were taught by—but not in school. Voices carried in memories trapped in just about anything I could touch.”
“A lot of power in that little two room house. Just me, my Mama and Papa, and my older brother Augustin. Before he went away. Before the war and the storm tore it all apart. Blown away, but not forgotten. At least not yet.” A faint shake of the head and a purse of the lips. “Feel like a sack with a hole hidden somewhere, draining off the memories while Katrina laps them up.” A slow scan of the room followed.
“Lot of power,” she repeated. She looked to the dog as if it had asked her something.
“Mama and that storm gave me what power I had. That’s what I think, because that’s what she told me. Gave it to me and expected me to use it to do good and useful things. She was a strong and gentle woman. Tall with long lines and good looks I wish I’d gotten. Good looks to turn my papa’s head whenever she walked by. I could see that, even as a little child.”
“But she carried a burden that stole her strength when it settled down hard. The Sadness is what she called it. It would settle in for days at a time and steal her strength like a great storm steals a city’s power, making it lay low and cower until it passes. Such sadness as that lies in the head and not the heart, but it’s all connected up and stitched together so there’s no amount of strength that can cast it off. All she could do once it moved on was pick herself back up and get on with doing whatever had to be done with those two fine strong hands of hers. Big hands.”
“Papa was a big, tall man, but not broad like my brother. Lean as steel because he worked hard before the forge and over the anvil, and that melts off anything that’s not of use. A blacksmith. And he told me they called it that because of how black he was from the smoke and from being around iron day in and day out. Where Mama was brown like oiled wood, he was black like soot and storm.”
“Big hands too. So vast that he could cover over my mother’s hands with his own and scoop almost anything away, or swat a troublesome child’s backside when she’d gone too far. I pitied that poor anvil. I know it caught worse than I ever did.”
“He did most of the talking around the house and not because he had to have his say. Just had to fill up all that silence the rest of us gave off. You’d have thought he would want quiet after a day full of roaring fire and hammering. But it wasn’t so. Not until after she was gone. He was a quieter man after that.”
The house shivered and she closed her eyes. Stilled her eyes so she could better feel what all that shivering might tell her about the storm’s path and strength. Not that there was anything to be done now about either. The time for that was missed and gone. She could only learn what she could and know what to do next, provided there was strength and w
its enough to do it.
She opened her eyes again to find the dog still watching her. Waiting for more while the candle burned true because this was an important part.
“If my father was like iron and mother was like wood, then my brother Augustin was like fire or like moving water. Big and broad like a wave, even young, like he’ll always be in my mind. He could walk like no one else. Powering along when he was on a tear, and it was all I could do to keep up, but I did, because he’d set his pace just fast enough to make me work but not fall behind. That’s until he went away and I guess I slowed down and settled.” She tipped her head toward the ceiling, considering that while the dog watched. “So few years to have a brother, yet he’s filled up the years since in some ways. Same’s true for my mother. Good strong early years. Not everyone gets that. Every child can’t be as fortunate as I was, I suppose.”
“Augustin didn’t have big hands like the rest of us. Funny that even struck me as a child. Normal size hands, but big eyes like me. We shared that, though I guess we saw different things. Different way of dreaming. If his were closed, then he was most likely dreaming, or seeing how his future might be and how he might make it so.”
She chuckled. “He’d laugh at how I would go off in dreaming with my eyes wide open. Daylight dreaming, he called it, though I’d do the same just lying in bed before sleep. Staring into the blackness and seeing whatever. He’d laugh but not in a mean way, because he knew we were doing about the same thing. He looked out ahead where I looked in deep to this or that, or through to somewhere else. Staring at nothing and seeing everything. That’s what my Mama called it.”
“They were all giants to my eyes, and there I was, so tiny you’d think I was left with them by mistake. Hard to get me to laugh as a child. Not always easy to get me to smile. Mama always said I had a sensitive mouth, but she was that way with me. I always thought I looked like I was chewing my bottom lip or on the way to a good cry.” Her eyes narrowed. “Not that I had much cause for that. Not in all these years, since I was the fortunate one.”
“So much power in that one little house, but not enough to change what happened to us all. All those big hands and they couldn’t hold on.”
She sat then for a good long time, considering the dog’s face, lost in its dark eyes as if hiding from the memory of loss and the threat of the storm. Those eyes had found her as a child and found her again when she was lost in a step by step life, needing return. She sighed, relaxing.
“Always liked bears—since I was a little girl and I’d see them passing at the edge of the woods.” Her eyes shifted to the candle flame, looking for some other memories there, but only catching fragments. “Bears are great dreamers. Someone told me that once, but not sure who.”
She looked again to the dog.
“So what sort of dreams do you have? Maybe I was never told that part.”
She looked deep into the other’s fire lit eyes, finding acceptance, but recognition was a tougher thing to judge in the eyes of a bear. Sometimes you just had to ask to be sure. Just push past politeness and find out. She leaned in closer and whispered, since it was a personal question and one she wouldn’t want overheard if the answer wasn’t the one she’d hoped for.
“I’m Celeste. Do you remember me?”
Part I – The Climbing Oak
Touch
The storm that brought Celeste rolled in on Louisiana from the Gulf, September 21, 1909—a genderless, height of season storm that left New Orleans free to breathe easy for another day, passing west of her to cut through poor St. Mary Parish, rushing over Berwick Bay, drowning the land as it waded through the low lying woods, marshes, and farms before giving out. Dying from the moment it touched shore, but with enough steam to make it a lingering death and a violent one. Leaving in its wake a pile of destruction, a few people and even more cattle dead, plenty of heartache, and at least one newborn baby. Marie’s baby girl; born as the storm’s western side pressed hard against the small, thin walled house they’d built with their own hands, on an acre of land that was theirs. Flat ground but dry, inland enough not to see the Gulf, but close enough to know it was there; feeling its breath, accepting what weather it conjured. A quiet place, apart from the background buzz and hum of nature, flying in the sky, crawling in the grasses, prowling the woods. Peaceful and quiet except on that howling day when the nameless hurricane came in, bringing Celeste.
The storm passed and the child was born. Marie’s husband Bernard slipped off to the other room to tell their young son Augustin that it was all right now. The storm outside, and inside too, both were done, and he had a new baby sister—like it or not. Marie could hear their voices for a little while, until sleep made them quiet down again. In time, she’d sleep too. But a new child needs naming and this child was hers to name.
A star shined down from the clearing sky—shined down through the branches of the old Live Oak out back of the house and in through the window where Marie lay holding her little girl whose eyes weren’t even open yet. But maybe her ears were open to strong first words Marie had saved until she could say them right. She let her voice just wash over her daughter.
“Celeste. You were born out of the west side of the storm. That makes you a powerful someone, but gentle too. Gentler than if you’d been born out of the east side.” She turned her new born child just enough to let a bit of night light fall on her closed eyelids. “It’s all yours, Celeste. Everything you can hear and see and touch and smell is yours. Maybe not for the taking, but for the touching.”
Celeste grew, but not as quickly as her big brother Augustin had done. She ate, but not so much as to grow fat. She neither cried nor laughed so much that anyone was bothered. She crawled and then walked, but not so fast or so far as to be of concern. Her great brown eyes sucked in the world, and her brown fingers grasped whatever they could reach. She would notice and feel until her brain would have to rest to digest it all. Then she would sleep. And she would dream—deep down, far and wide.
By age three, she was not much bigger than she was at two, but her world was bigger. She had taken the clouds and sky to be just another somewhere, alongside the land where her house stood, and she played with the rain and wind sent her way as if they were children like her, since there were no other children around.
Marie let her roam free, tethered only by a line of sight, unless there was lightning. Rain would gush out of the unmoving clouds, down through the still air, down through the thick leaves of the great oak tree and onto Celeste’s upturned face. She had to squint to see, and still the water would flood her eyes and turn the green canopy all soft and runny, but she didn’t move. Great drops smacked her between the eyes or on the nose to make her laugh aloud and then sputter when more fell clear down her throat. When the rain in her eyes became too much to blink away, she closed them altogether and just felt the rain come down until she was simply melting into the downpour.
Another time, it would be a big long wind that seemed to go on forever. It ran alone, invisible. But Celeste grabbed for it anyway. Grabbed without catching it, but feeling its texture just the same. The wind ran under the sun, and Celeste stood in its way and felt it pass. She watched it play with whatever it could touch, just as it had touched her.
Once Celeste was old enough to know what they were, she was given appropriate chores. Since her brother had chores to do, and she worshiped him, she accepted the end of leisure with naïve eagerness, and then it was too late—she was on that long road of labor.
Augustin took over most of the gardening by the time he was nine, sewing, picking and guarding the crops—such as they were. The guarding, he delegated to a scarecrow. Marie fashioned its clothes from discards she could not, or would not use; dark material she hated, but suited to the scarecrow. Bernard forged it a backbone that might have lasted forever, and painted two leering faces with mismatched eyes on a stuffed sack of a head that sported a brimmed black hat. One face watched the road and the other watched the woods. The likeness of some
thing out of stories from his youth. Augustin kept the body stuffed and puffed up with menace. Celeste supplied its name.
Neighbor.
He was quiet but articulate, with corn husk and corn silk hands and feet that gestured in the simplest breeze. Decay took its toll and bits of Neighbor slowly rained down on the strawberries below his dangling feet. Augustin refurbished him constantly, assisted by Celeste, who, in doing so developed lasting notions about the nature of existence and renewal.
Weeding was something she took too more slowly. When Augustin explained how the weeds would choke the life out of the garden if left unchallenged, she squirmed and said she couldn’t hurt those poor little weeds. When he allowed them to thrive around her beloved beans, a sterner something sprouted inside her and she pursued the chore with ruthless and cunning fingers, gathering bags full of weeds down to their finest, almost invisible roots, but would dump them with a last minute tenderness on well removed and shaded dirt, as if there was any hope for a new life there.
She lived among giants.
Tended by giants who were her family and washed by the giants of the sky, sent her way by the Gulf. Of the giant, New Orleans, she knew only what her brother told her, and that he knew of second hand from one who lived there, bringing word of it and worlds beyond. She was Odette and a Great Aunt, according to Augustin. The only one of her kind, and Celeste enjoyed her visits in much the same way she enjoyed a fierce thunderstorm.
Odette
Odette was coming all the way from New Orleans by hired carriage. She was coming because she chose to, but she might be grim and uncomfortable when she arrived. Celeste was five years old and knew she’d changed because it was marked on the wall, showing how she’d grown, but never enough to catch up to Augustin.
Since Odette’s last visit, Celeste had taken to drawing after seeing her father sketch out a thought for a shape in iron; a sinuous notion inspired by something he’d read. An image brought to mind from a book left by Odette. An inspiring book, an inspired sketch and Celeste was now an artist—drawing a bird from memory.
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