Child of the Storm

by R. B. Stewart

  “She will come here. I don’t know how,” said John Stone. “We will wait for her to come.”

  “And she’ll take me and Mama to New Orleans.” It was not a question. Celeste knew that much. They both nodded.

  She slept some that night but not through all of it. If any dreams found her, she couldn’t recall them except for one where she saw the ghost of Miss Bolton picking through what was left of her house, enjoying herself. Celeste wanted to shoo her away but was all bound up and couldn’t move her arms. Her tongue seemed bound up too.

  When she woke from that dream, she found that Sandrine had made a place for herself to sleep in the corner on the floor, while John Stone sat watch over Celeste’s sleep from his chair. When he saw she was awake he leaned closer.

  “Bad dreams?” he asked in a whisper.

  She nodded but wouldn’t say a word about Miss Bolton, in case she had been someone he had known and liked.

  “I thought it had been a bad dream today when I saw my house all knocked down with Mama inside. I’d been up in the tree with a bear cub when the storm came up and tried to blow us out of the tree. I was so scared and the cub was scared too. I could tell. But I stayed there with it, keeping the worst wind off the cub. That’s why I was so cut up and bruised. I couldn’t leave it alone up there. Then after it was all over and the mama bear came and called it down, I saw my house with Mama inside and I couldn’t believe it was real. Thought it was a bad dream and wanted it to go away. That’s when I saw the bear again, back up the tree, only the tree had all its branches. We climbed way up, the bear and me did, only it wasn’t the cub. It was a mama bear with eyes like my Mama’s. It took me to the top of the tree and showed me…things. Colors and light and good things. Lots of good things. And it spoke to me and said it was all there for me, even if I couldn’t keep it just for me. Spoke to me like Mama would. So that’s why I asked about angels looking like bears. I thought maybe that bear was my mama, come back as a bear to watch over me. Like Sandrine said angels do.”

  John Stone nodded, so she knew he’d say what had been on his mind before. That thought he’d had but wouldn’t say in front of Sandrine. “When I was a little boy, my grandfather told me about a man he had known when he was only a boy himself. He was a shaman. A wise man and a healer. Before he was a shaman, he had been an ordinary man, I think. An ordinary man who became very ill. Very ill. So ill, no one thought he would get better. But when everyone gave up hope for his return, he surprised them all. He told how he had traveled to another place—a place of the spirit, and that one of these spirits had guided him back and would be his guide between the place of his home and the place of spirits. He learned many things from the spirit that was in the form of a bird. A hawk, or an eagle. I can’t recall now. It was long ago when I was told the story and I would sometime wonder if it was true, as my grandfather believed it was true. Maybe it was. You may be a special one who has touched another place. Maybe you have traveled there and returned with a spirit guide. Maybe your mother’s spirit, in the form of a bear.”

  “I think I have,” Celeste said. Like a wave, sleep took her. Covered her in warmth and darkness like a great big quilt, and she drifted off to wander somewhere else, as John Stone sat close by and thought again about old tales and his grandfather.

  Machine

  She slept hard through the night, not needing a guide or any dream she could recall to see her safe through to midmorning; waking only a while before Odette would arrive after a before-dawn departure from New Orleans. Celeste sat up in the bed they’d made for her and ate a biscuit without noticing if it was still warm, or tasted good, or was anything like a biscuit that her mother would have made for her. She didn’t notice John Stone and Sandrine sitting quietly by and waiting just as she was waiting, since what little needed to be done had already been done. She chewed on the biscuit, her brain still numb from so much shock and sleep, and watched each door in turn, as if they were having a slow conversation with each other and she was just there to listen in. The door where Odette would soon come walking in, and the other door through which her mother would never walk.

  Her eyes were on the front door when she heard the brisk clopping of horse hooves approach and then be still outside. Soon, the door opened and the shape of Aunt Odette stood rimmed in morning and made straight for the bed where Celeste lay, as if nothing else mattered or even existed in all the world. That was a good thing, even though Celeste had never felt at ease around this bold and older woman who was always bringing lessons of one sort or another. Not the sort of lessons her mama or papa had sometimes promised when she’d messed up and crossed some line without knowing it till it was too late—all caught up in a tantrum over something huge only to be brought up hard and short, maybe with a sharp smack to the backside. Aunt Odette brought the long and drawn out sort of lessons that could bring a sigh out of Mama.

  A sigh, or even a sharp smack from Mama would be welcome now.

  Odette stopped before she got to the bed, cast a nod of thanks to Sandrine where she sat nearby and spared a glance toward the door of the other room. John Stone closed the front door and stood with his back to it.

  Eyes on Celeste again, Odette took a slow, deep breath before speaking. “This is a hard thing, child. Maybe the hardest thing of all. But we’ll get though this together. I promise you that.” She waited, maybe to see if Celeste would speak or maybe to choose her next words with the care she always managed. “Your mother’s passed, but she’ll never be lost to you. You’ll have all her love and her kindness and every good and true thing she ever taught you as long as you live. You know that’s true, don’t you Celeste?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Celeste might have said more. Might have told Odette that she knew she’d have her mother with her from now on, because her mama had found her again already. Her mama had become a spirit guide, just like John Stone said, and was like a bear, because she knew Celeste loved bears so. She might have told Odette all that, but Odette didn’t care for such notions and might not have understood. But John Stone understood and he looked worried standing over there by the door—maybe worried Celeste would share their secret when she shouldn’t. So she didn’t.

  Odette sat on the edge of the bed and gathered Celeste up in her arms. She spoke so quietly that Celeste thought she might just be talking for her own ears and for no one else to hear, but Celeste heard. “To have lost them both,” she whispered. “Thank heavens I didn’t lose you as well.”

  But there would be little time for such lingering reunions and gentle comforts. With Aunt Odette there, everything would have to speed up, because there were important things to resolve.

  While she had arrived by horse and wagon, within the hour a machine arrived; a truck driven by a man who never spoke but took his direction from Odette. With John Stone’s help, he brought in a long box and they took it into the room where her mama was. Then Odette took Celeste out back of the house to explain what would happen next while the box was filled and taken back out to the truck again. Celeste understood but was polite enough not to let on to her aunt.

  “We must leave at once, Celeste,” Odette said. “If there is anything you need to take, you must collect it now.”

  Celeste tried to think of what might be lost inside her old house, but could only bring Neighbor to mind, and he had been taken by the storm. The storm had taken everything. She shook her head. “Can’t think of anything,” she said.

  “Anything you need, we can get in New Orleans. We must make it to the station in time for the train. I’m sorry it must be so quickly, but there is no other way. It will be for the best.”

  Celeste nodded.

  The back end of the truck was like any old wagon’s, but most of it had been tented over by a large tarp. At the front, where the horse should have been, there was an odd sort of metal box—big and black with spots of rust and road dirt on it. That was where the truck kept its belly full of noise and smoke. Celeste touched the wheels of the truck as she passed, no
ting how different that feel was from wood or iron. Not cold like iron in the shade, or warm like well used wood, but tough. Tough like callus on a bare foot. She was handed up to sit next to Odette, and eyed the driver, thinking how his neck looked like a turtle’s.

  The truck rumbled and smoked, and Celeste left her old world behind.

  They came to another town after some long time bumping along the road. She had a good sense for time just by the change in the light and height of the sun. A chunk of the morning was spent in watching the roadside slip by faster that her legs could make it go. But this was just a town much like the one near her home. All the same sort of buildings, just arranged in a different way and with more of them. Just more of the same thing, until they unloaded at the train station. It was nothing special either. She was handed down to the ground by Odette, who motioned her to move along with a press against her back, as she motioned two men to attend to unloading the truck with a sharp wave of the other hand. Odette made people and things move. “We’ve little time,” she told Celeste. “That’s the train approaching now.”

  The floor trembled and there was a sound like far off thunder or a deep wind. Something was coming. Something so much bigger than the truck. Odette opened the door onto a platform like a long porch that either belonged to the station or to the long train that had just arrived. Here was a dragon fresh from a story, if not exactly as she might have pictured it from the telling. A thing so full of fire, it could have eaten ten trucks like the one that brought them into town and still wanted something more. Oh, she knew about trains from Augustin. Anything that could take you far away was something he liked. A train had a belly like a furnace; as hot as the furnace her papa worked, only this fire made the train’s blood boil, and filled it up with more GO than it could know what to do with. Even now, there was a puffing plume, a throb, and now and then, a hiss, like something sent through clinched teeth.

  Odette helped her onto the train and steered her toward their seat, placing Celeste by the window where she could look out onto the platform. It was empty now and she craned her neck to see if they had brought her mama along or left her behind. Odette eased her back down into her seat. “Everything is taken care of,” she said, and Celeste understood. They waited there for a while longer, not speaking but listening to the rumblings of the engine until, with a lurch, the train began to move away.

  Soon, the truck seemed a plodding thing as Celeste sat with her cheek pressed against the window of the train car, her stomach just a little churned, and the scenery racing by—water, marsh, farms and trees, there and gone again. It had never occurred to her to notice the name of the town where they stepped on board, and didn’t seem to matter now. The train wanted to get to New Orleans and so did she. That’s where Augustin had gone before he went farther still. Aunt Odette said that her papa would come home that way, so if she was already there, it would be that much closer for him. That much sooner.

  The thought of New Orleans scared her nearly to death, but that was okay. She’d been scared nearly to death before and come out just fine. Her old home would just be a memory. The ones dearest to her were with her now, or waiting to guide her again next time she visited that other place, or coming to join her at the new home. Odette lived in New Orleans, and Odette had powers over all manner of things. They’d be safe with her looking out after them. She told herself that.

  At the Mississippi River, the train was loaded onto the ferry for the crossing, since a bridge was still years away. The ferry was not much more than a big flat something—like a platform to build a house on, only this one floated. It was hard to see just what all was going on as the train loaded itself on to that flat boat, but once the cars were arranged in rows across the width, Celeste was glad her window still faced out where she could see the river.

  She compared this to the little bayous she knew back home that ran clear enough to see to the bottom, when they weren’t dried up during a long stretch between rains, or ran brown with traveling mud right after a downpour. This Mississippi River looked like it ran brown all the time. It was so wide, she thought maybe they’d traveled too far and reached that ocean her papa had sailed across to fight the war.

  A boat, like a train of the river, shouldered alongside the ferry, shepherding it across. Celeste could see it just outside her window and see the man standing at its wheel in the windowed room set in front of the fuming stack. She’d never seen a boat so big, or one that wasn’t rowed. Machines pushing machines. That was how you got to New Orleans. If you didn’t have a bridge, then the machines would make you one.

  On the other side, the train had its own rails again and plunged on toward the city, passing through places Celeste thought might be New Orleans at last, but Odette told her it wasn’t so. These were towns out from the city; children of New Orleans. They rolled on under the sun, west to east, slower than they had before the river. No running inside the house.

  Celeste watched a town of neat, white houses slide by them. She pointed out the window, looking back at Odette with a question.

  “That’s a cemetery,” her aunt explained. “You know what that is?”

  Celeste nodded. Would they put her mama there? She didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know such a thing just yet.

  The train trimmed off more speed and crawled down the line to where Celeste knew it had to stop soon or get too pinched in by the buildings crowding up around it. This had to be New Orleans, she told herself, but wouldn’t ask Odette. Another porch waited for the train to slip up alongside it, and they stopped with a soft jolt.

  Other passengers climbed off before Odette would let Celeste leave her seat. Their train was not the only one at the station, and even as they came to the end of their journey, another train started its own, heading off slowly back the way they had come. As they walked the long porch to the station, Celeste sniffed at the different air. There was a weight to it, laid on by the sweat and breathe of the trains. Then, through some doors, they passed into a room so large, Celeste simply stopped. The store where Augustin had worked was a nice big place, and the dreaded schoolhouse was large as well, but not so large that the teacher’s hate couldn’t fill it up to the high ceiling. But you could have dropped that whole schoolhouse and all its old ghosts inside this grand space and it would have been shamed off into just one corner. People of all types and dress swept past her as she stared up at the ceiling and across the polished stone floors, washed in the bright afternoon glow from a window that brought the Climbing Oak to mind. Its top was high and rounded like a tree’s canopy and at its feet the people came and went. That window shone the brightest, but there was one to right and left as well. She stood in the middle of this grove of windows and something Sandrine told her once came to mind. Something about grand and pearly gates leading into heaven.

  She heard her name called and saw that Odette was waving for her to catch up. They passed under that blazing window and for a moment Celeste’s eyes were too dazzled to see. A young messenger boy walked past them and looked squarely at Celeste before striding away. He wore a sort of uniform with a flat cap, and she wondered if everyone had to wear a uniform in New Orleans. Her eyes adjusted, and she saw a broad street stretching from right to left, and another broad space lay out ahead of them, all lined with tall buildings.

  Odette stood beside her, giving orders that something was to be brought along, and quickly. She spoke in hushed but urgent words to three men, impressing them with her authority and demanding nods that they understood. People, wagons, automobiles like she’d never seen before moved with a brisk purpose. Celeste’s heart raced.

  Odette sent the men away to do as they were bidden and turned back to Celeste. She swept her arm from right to left, gesturing to the street that ran across their path, its far side like a distant shore. “Canal Street,” she said, then pointed across the way, toward that other street that plowed right into the first. “Basin Street.”

  Celeste knew she’d need to sort it all out later. Maybe sort it in
her dreams. She looked up at Odette, reached up to tug her sleeve. “Is this heaven?” A church question, but maybe safe enough to ask now.

  Odette looked at her and considered before answering. Sensible pride won out. “I like to think so.”

  Celeste turned aside all the troubling and complicated notions this answer suggested. Set them aside for another day when she was less tired and less hungry. “I’m hungry,” she said.

  “We’re going home,” Odette said. A nice carriage pulled up before them.

  “Where’s home?”

  “My home,” Odette said as she set Celeste in the carriage without straining. “Your home too. At least for now.”

  “Till Papa comes home. When will he be home?”

  “When he can. When it’s over and he’s free to come home. I’ve sent word to him.” The carriage set off and its wheels made a different sound rolling on these streets than the wagons back home made on the softer roads there.

  “I can’t say when, child. The war is a big thing and holds tight to men. We matter little to such big things as war. Such things as storms.”

  Light

  The sun hid behind the tall, upright buildings, and the streets swam with deep shade that would marry up before long with the evening. Lights were already burning in windows. Electric lights, even and strong. Some gas flames danced inside street lamps like captured spirits. People strode home or lingered in doorways. She could see and smell it all, riding in a nice carriage pulled by a grey horse.

  She picked out good food smells from among the other kind, and heard music; followed the sound to an old man sitting under a gallery, picking out a tune on his banjo while a friend sat beside him nodding in time. He held a brassy instrument, but this was a conversation and he was just listening until it was his turn to play.

  It wasn’t enough for these city buildings to have a porch. Plenty of them had to have a second porch stacked above the one below, and these high porches were railed around with intricate shaped iron like her father learned to do before the war. She pointed these out to her aunt.