Child of the Storm

by R. B. Stewart

  “The teacher who died? And that’s the ghost you picked up?”

  “Maybe it was just innocent guilt early on, but she’s stuck with me even after I laid that guilt aside. Rides me, maybe like these mystères of yours.”

  “All these years.”

  “All these years, but some worst than others. Given my mother’s condition I just never felt good about sharing that part with anyone else. Not even with Papa.”

  “You worry you might share here Depression.”

  “Or something kin to it. Mama never spoke of it so we never knew what she really saw or felt. She couldn’t hide it, but that was just the outside. Once I got older I knew it must have been so much worse for her when she was alone with it.”

  “I wish I’d known this sooner, friend.”

  “It’s because you’re my friend that you know at all. But don’t go worrying too much about it now that you know. Just give it a thought now and then and let me know if you have any suggestions. I can’t promise I’ll take my medicine, but I’m always open to suggestions.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And I’ll keep her at arm’s length until you come up with something. I’ve managed her this long. Provided it’s just her with the same old material, I can still manage.”

  “Fine,” Aurore said. “Just let me know if she picks up new tricks or settles in for too long at a time.”

  Gone

  Across the ocean, the World War ground on, and that grinding took a deepening toll on Bernard. He sifted through the newspaper and hung on every word of reports from the radio. Even when the tide turned and Europe was being taken back again, he was gladdened to hear it, but he was draining of health and strength like a rusted out cup. Celeste found a doctor who’d come by to see him, since he wouldn’t agree to leave the house for an office call. When he was done checking Bernard out, he took Celeste aside out on the front porch to tell her what she knew was true but had hoped wasn’t so. Her father was dying. Just wearing out and shutting down. That was about the sum of it. Mostly his heart; worn out and ticking off the days.

  Two days after the doctor’s visit and exhausted though she was, Celeste was up earlier than usual, peddling in to the bakery. She arrived before George and set to work at once; diving into the routine she could do almost without thinking. But a wandering part of her mind dwelled on troublesome thoughts and the ghost was invited in through some dark back door.

  It stood quietly by, waiting until Celeste came to a halt between tasks, her mind refusing to move on to the next as the fatigue caught up with her again. The ghost expected that, and it spoke to Celeste in its sharp and brittle voice. “Here your sad old papa is edging toward his grave, and you can’t stay at his side. I swear to Heavens I’m glad I never had a child for fear it would have been as heartless as you.”

  Celeste staggered against the work table on hearing the hated voice so near.

  “Just so focused on grabbing up all the money you can from this store of his,” the ghost continued as she crept closer to Celeste.

  Celeste wanted to clasp her hands over her ears, but it would have done no good. Her weariness just made the ghost that much stronger and more venomous. This wasn’t to be a lesson. It was meant as a lashing.

  “Just waiting for the day your old Papa will pack it in. That’s what I expect, knowing you like I have all these wretched years. Being the good teacher, I’ve just tried to show you what you really are. Nothing but the truth, so help me God. But some folks don’t learn. Some just insist they know best. Well, I’ve never given up on a pupil yet. Even the ones unsuited to my classroom as you were.”

  The ghost drifted up closer than she’d ever been allowed before and its malice took Celeste’s breath away as it hissed into her ear. “I’ll ride you to your death, missy. I’ll ride you through Death’s Gate and straight through to Evermore.”

  There was a bump from outside and the ghost dissolved. Celeste shook herself free from the spell just as the door opened and George entered, looking apologetic.

  “Sorry Miss Celeste, I lost my hold on the bicycle and it hit the outside wall. Hope I didn’t startle you. The bicycle’s okay. Sounded worse than it was.”

  “It’s okay George. It just startled me a bit, but only because I’m too tired to think straight.”

  “I can cover things here. For as long as you need time away.”

  “We’ll see. Might need you to open the place up for a while.”

  It ran against her nature to leave the opening of Dubois’ to George, and not because she didn’t trust him. Opening up shop was daily habit and she’d become a creature of habit. Too much so now, she thought. Especially since her father’s time was running out and she would be alone. Alone with her habits and the ghost. Stuck up to her chin in the mud.

  Bernard’s sleep was scattered. Some mornings she would find him up by the time she rose. Other times, he would be restless, and would sit out on the porch till all hours or at the table with a book to distract himself from discomfort or worries over things left undone.

  So it was on that night when she found him seated at the table around midnight, pouring over the contents of his little box of memories. Something in the way he sat and the arrangement of the chairs suggested she was being invited to join him. He seemed alert and purposeful, and she assumed the same demeanor for herself, like she would do when visiting Odette

  “You remember this?” He passed an old bit of paper to her. A drawing.

  “Of course I do. Maybe the first one I ever drew and you took it with you to the war.”

  “That’s right.” He took it back and stretched it between his fingers. “You know, there were times during the war when I would look at this little picture to help me remember so many other things that should have come to mind without any help at all. It was bad enough just being separated from home, even though it was the choice I made.”

  “You did what you thought was best at the time, Papa.”

  He set the drawing down and picked up a small square from a quilt, a single square only a hand’s span across, its face formed from four rectangles of different cloth set about a small square at the center. “You remember this don’t you?”

  “I do. Mama made that for you before you went away. Something small enough for you to carry but maybe tough enough to hold up to wear. Something to remember us all together by.” She touched each corner of the little quilt in turn. “Mama and you, Augustin and me.”

  “Only the two of us left now,” he said, placing it down in front of her. Removing his glasses, he drew his hand over his face like a man wiping away blindness. He breathed in deeply and let it go, preparing himself.

  “What do you mean, Papa? What about Augustin? Has something happened?”

  “A long time ago.” He returned to the little box and fished out two metal disks. One of them she recognized. The other, a damaged one was something she had never seen before. “We lost him a long time ago. Your mother never knew and I guess I felt I was keeping a promise to him by not letting you know once I returned.”

  The day tips from side to side at midnight. She’d heard Annie say this once, and it came to her now. To keep herself still, she drew the two little disks over in front of her and studied them while her father watched. He knows how I am and will wait till I’m ready. Always that way with Mama and with me as I’ve gotten older. “Dog tags from the war,” she said. “I remember this one from when I was little, after you came home and I saw you in your uniform. Don’t recall this damaged one.” A simple thing with only numbers and part of a name remaining. Dubois. The first name was gone with the part that was lost. She scrubbed the metal between her fingers. She looked at the other tag. Read the numbers. They didn’t match.

  “It isn’t yours,” she said. “It says Dubois, but it isn’t yours.”

  “Not mine,” he said. “Augustin’s.”

  “But he went to New York.”

  Her father nodded. “He enlisted there. Got in the
Guard and found a way to fight.”

  “They wouldn’t let us fight. That’s what you told me.”

  “Our country wouldn’t, but the French would. Had no problem fighting beside black men. Our army loaned some of us out. Augustin was with them.”

  “You knew he was there?”

  “I got wind of it later, even managed to get closer to the lines. A blacksmith can come in handy near the front—for the horses, trucks and those big tanks. Arranged a letter between us now and then, but he made me swear I wouldn’t tell you or Marie. He said if all went well, he’d come home to tell you all about it. He was just that proud of the chance. I was proud of him, but scared to death, knowing what he was faced with. Never got to fight, but knew enough from men who had. Knew it was real bad.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was wounded once. Not so bad that he could be sent home. It was getting near the end of the war. We could tell it was so, and I just hoped he would be out of the fight until it was full over. But that’s not what he wanted. Got back on his feet and back to his unit in time for the last push.”

  “So he died over there.”

  He nodded. “I was given his tags and a final letter along with them. It was Augustin’s idea—in case something happened to him, I was to know, but not you. Not your mother. Said he’d rather you keep thinking he was living the big city life, in hopes you’d keep your own dreams alive, and not have them run down by old ghosts of disappointment. He didn’t know about your mother. I found out about her passing not so long before I learned of his.”

  There was silence between them for some time as they both struggled.

  “Might have been easier on you had you shared this with me long ago, Papa. That’s a hard thing to bear alone.”

  “You had enough to carry, especially with what I laid on you by going off they way I did. Least I could carry that one thing this far.”

  “Well, that’s all behind us now.”

  He didn’t hear. “Don’t even know where he was laid to rest. I guess it was France. Often thought about going to find out, but time slips away. Things always have to wait and then there’s no time left. And then this war comes along.” He wrestled with a thought before speaking again. “You can’t imagine how torn up the land was by the first war. Earth churned up by a plow from Hell and nothing to sow but the dead. The thought of his rest being violated by that happening again, happening to the very ground he lies in has brought me out of sleep days on end.”

  “The dead rest peacefully in loving memories. Not the earth,” she offered.

  “That’s so. That’s what your mother would have told me. She was always so keen on continuance. She had her own notions about things, your mother. I’d put that down to a lot of reasons, but I couldn’t say where some notions came from. They were just part of her, like her saying you were her child of the storm, meant for something special. I’d ask her what the special something was, and she’d say it wasn’t up to her. Up to Celeste, she’d say. I’d press her to say what her dream for you would be and she’d just smile, shake her head and say ‘On and on.’ That’s all, just on and on. Became a game between us. Where’s Celeste, I’d say. And she would answer, ‘On and on’, then laugh. Always looking at something. Always wandering around, noticing. That’s how you were.”

  “And what about Augustin?” Celeste asked. “What did Mama have to say about him? When he was little.”

  “Always up ahead. We’d walk and he’d be up ahead. Your Mama said he was getting things ready. That’s how she put it. Worried her he’d get lost, pushing on that way. Always pushing. Pushing to go to school, pushing to leave home, pushing to fight. But that was his way.”

  “I hope you don’t think of him as lost,” she said, then wondered why she had said any such thing. The day had tipped and she hadn’t found her balance.

  “I do in some ways. Mainly because I didn’t make it over there to find where he was laid to rest and maybe find some folks who might have known him there—to tell me how he was and what sort of man that place had made him. I have those few letters that I’ll pass to you, but I’d rather not do that until I’m gone.”

  “I need to know your story Papa.” She placed everything back in the box and closed the lid. “Lots of good times and good memories I need for you to share with me. Memories of when you met Mama, and before I came along.”

  He nodded. “I can do that. Where do you want me to start?”

  “It’s your story, Papa. You tell it however you think best.”

  By spring, Celeste was coming home to an empty house.

  She considered the quilt where it lay across her bed. Her mother’s art. A simple and beautiful work like most quilts of that sort, but most beautiful and meaningful to her since she could read its story, even though it wasn’t a story quilt in the strictest sense. There was the square made from material that had once been her great-grandmother’s, the heart and starting point of the quilt, if only because it was the oldest part. Patches of fabric that had once been in a garment that may well have been fashioned from another garment before it, and now, grafted into a whole that was this picturous quilt. It embodied a power, comforting, reassuring, charged with meaning and protection. It was like a soft voice from her mother, her great-grandmother (whom she had never met), her brother, and now her father.

  “Guess this is where my family lives now.” She stroked the edge of the quilt. “And where’s Celeste?” There was no scrap of material that had been hers, but so many of them had stories that touched on hers.

  “On and on.”

  Jonathan

  Annie's signature knock played on the door just before it opened. A formality, as if Celeste might have been up to something and deserved the barest of warnings.

  "Applicant here," Annie said. "For the opening."

  "And?"

  "A white guy."

  "Jeannine's white. One of your favorites."

  "Seems a little old for this position."

  "How old is too old?"

  "Older than me. Younger than you. Want to talk to him?"

  "I do." Celeste slipped out from behind the pinched in desk. "Where is he? Out front?"

  "On the porch. A lot of customers inside." Annie left here, turning on her heel.

  The man stood with hands clasped behind his back as he studied the shop through the window. A precise pose and purposeful, but also relaxed, like someone at a museum, trying to fathom why a painting has drawn them to it. His manner, to her discerning eye, was neither local nor tourist. Tanned, but not like a farmer or fisherman. His clothes, wrinkled but worn thoughtfully, seams aligned and shirt-tail tucked. As she studied him, somehow liking what she saw, he drew out an old pocket watch to check the time. She'd never seen a watch of that sort except in a shop window on Royal Street.

  "Short on time?" she asked.

  He turned to look at her, and there was something in his expression. What was it? A soft surprise, a flicker of recognition, embarrassment?

  "Pardon me?" He said. An accent she took to be English.

  "You're here about the job? Annie seemed to think you were and sent me out. I'm the owner. Celeste Dubois." She offered her hand and he took it. One neat quick step toward her. A nice grip, appropriately firm but not crushing. A sensitive man, she thought.

  "Jonathan Hogue. What sort of job."

  "I thought you knew. Helping in the kitchen. Sort of a start at the ground floor as they say. We usually get younger people to apply."

  "Yes, I see." An awkward pause. Trying to find words. "Actually I wasn't here about a job. I just wandered here from the French Quarter."

  "Which streets from the Quarter?"

  "Chartres, Elysian and Dauphine, I think. I didn't know the names but followed...what looked familiar." He didn't pronounce Chartres like a local.

  "That's the way I come and go from the Quarter. Do you live here, or just visiting?"

  "Visiting. My first time here."

  "But you said the way
looked familiar."

  "Yes. Odd, isn't it?"

  "A bit odd. Not too odd for New Orleans. So you don't need the job?"

  "You wouldn’t want me in your kitchen.”

  “Not a good cook?”

  “English, so no ma’am I’m not.”

  “How long will you be in New Orleans?”

  “Some few weeks or months. I’ve no particular schedule.”

  They were an appropriate if unlikely pair. He looked older than his years and she looked younger, which bridged the eleven years between them. To Celeste, he was Jonathan. To Annie, he was simply Hogue. To George, he was Mr. Hogue. To the youngest of the staff, he was The Watch Man, because of that lovely timepiece he played with as he talked to Celeste.

  He had money enough for shelter and bread, and time enough for her.

  Annie did not approve. It was an association that was at odds with her ever failing attempts to match-make.

  "You don't like Jonathan." Celeste suggested.

  "Not a matter of liking or not liking him. Your father hasn't been gone long at all and you spent all your free time with him, being a good daughter. He suffered with his time spent in the war and the loss of your brother. Now he's gone. You did what you should and need to let go and move on. This should be your time. You've never had that. And now this man comes along that's all quiet, maybe scarred by things he saw or did in the war."

  "Someone like that needs company. Don't you think?"

  "He does, but maybe not so much of yours."

  "Someone more lively? Maybe you or George? Or someone white?"

  Annie bowed up and she did it impressively, as always. "You know that's not where I'm going."

  "I know, and I apologize. But you need to see that we don't all kick up our heels the same way. Or so high and fast. Some of us aren't put together that way. We keep the quiet spots company. Not to say there aren't plenty, cut off from life, who need a friendly outreaching hand or a healthy shove. But that's not me, and it's not Jonathan."