Child of the Storm

by R. B. Stewart

  “So ghost. I’ve bound you tight away and don’t mean to see you ever again.”

  The deed was done. The old ghost, maybe boxed up for sure and certain, but there would be no sleep until she had tested it out, because the ghost showed up where it was to its advantage, and that might be anywhere. The old thing had expanded its territory over the years. Even so, there had always been favored hunting grounds.

  This would be a long night for Celeste.

  For starters, she pedaled out across the Canal—parking off to the side under the Colossus to see if the ghost might be there, knowing how fond Celeste was of the bridge. No traffic on St. Claude or on the River. Lights reflected on the water in the lock, but there were no words from the ghost. No sight of it loitering by the railing.

  For the first time in years, she opened the bakery before George, and went first to the little office, switching on no other lights than the little beat up desk lamp. She leaned back in the chair, making it squeak like the door to a crypt, and watched the dark doorway as if waiting for a recent hire to come in for a talking to after he’d been seen dipping into the till. Not how it works here. Not in this shop.

  Need to drop that guard, she told herself. You know how the ghost liked to work. So she lay her arms in her lap, palms up and closed her eyes. Got out of her own way like old Mr. Lin tried to teach her as a girl. Might have dozed off but didn’t, or didn’t for long. The feel of the room stayed true and she opened her eyes. Still no ghost, so maybe she’d bound her up right.

  Maybe.

  Into the backroom. More light and more to do. Her hands itched to be doing, and what they wanted to do was make bread. Water, salt and flour. Just three ingredients to make good bread. Just three things to work those ingredients—yeast, herself and the air. And the air worked by heat and by moisture, and even by the weight of it. Threes upon threes. Her own hands guided by past, present and future. How well had she learned, how hard did she try and how much did she care.

  By the time George and Annie arrived, there was finished product sitting out waiting for them, and they eyed her for signs of trouble.

  “Couldn’t stop myself,” she explained inadequately, but also without any feeling she needed to explain more. “There’s not enough of it to get you off the hook for a morning’s work, but enough to share around with the staff as they show up. Let them taste what good bread a Dubois can whip up. Show them why I’m boss.”

  “You okay?” George asked.

  “Just fine. I just have things to do.” She stuffed some of the bread in one of the delivery bags and left the bakery to George and Annie.

  She set off through the narrow streets of The Bywater, pedaling easy—pedal and coast, noticing the pre-dawn sleepy fronts of houses, until she braked outside of Mr. Allgood’s establishment. The light was on, inside and out, and that one pretty little neon beer sign hummed. Mr. Allgood was a Dubois’ customer like so many inside a respectable radius. She’d never returned the favor since he plied his trade while she was sleeping. She poked her head in, knowing the ghost wouldn’t approve, but there was no ghost unless you counted the hazy blue smoke haunting the ceiling. It boiled as she opened the door, letting in a pulse of living air. Disturbing its peace.

  “Is that you Miss Dubois?” Mr. Allgood was the large man hemmed in by the swabbed down bar. Another man was folded over the counter, face turned away from her. Dead drunk.

  “Saw your light on Mr. Allgood,” she replied, careful not to let the door slam shut behind her. “Didn’t know you carried on till such an hour.”

  “Shouldn’t still be here, but Mr. Lincoln’s in a bad way and I can’t just toss him out.” He indicated the sleeping man. “One trouble on top of the last. Job gone. Wife gone. You know.”

  “Can’t say I know Mr. Lincoln. I hate to hear that about anyone’s fortunes.”

  The smell of the place brought back memories from her younger years, and not all of them bad. Still, such a stinky place and she was inclined to wave a hand in front of her nose, but that would have rearranged things that wanted to be still. The ghost had never approved of bars or drink. Just two on that long list of disapproved of things and people.

  She accepted an offer of a drink from Mr. Allgood; the smallest glass he had, and a bit of red wine that he had to poke around to locate.

  “Anyone you know who could come collect him?” she asked. Either the wine was especially bad, or the tobacco smoke was influencing the taste.

  “Thought of calling a cab, but can’t see that working out. No telling where he’d end up. His own doorstep if he’s lucky. Thought of calling for Tad Newcomb. You know Tad Newcomb? Policeman who patrols around here.”

  “I know him. Know his mother too.”

  “Don’t need any more trouble for Mr. Lincoln. Don’t need it for me either, still being open this late.”

  Celeste gave the wine another chance to prove itself. “If you can get him here, I’ll make sure it all goes okay.”

  It went just fine. The officer collected Mr. Lincoln and made no mention of the hour of Mr. Allgood’s closing. Celeste pedaled behind the patrol car to Mr. Lincoln’s house and did the finesse work of settling him in on the sofa in the front room where he’d clearly been sleeping lately. Thinking of those last days of her father’s life, she was efficient without compromising the care. The officer stood by patiently and without comment.

  She left bread on the table and offered some to the officer, then leaned over Mr. Lincoln to whisper some words of reassurance, but he stirred; brought up a hand to ward something off, his fingers trembling. “Don’t say that,” she thought she heard him say, but his face was almost into the cushions and his voice was low and muffled.

  “I’ll swing by tomorrow evening,” the officer said. “He’ll need till then to sleep it off.”

  The patrolman departed, turning down Burgundy. She stood astride her bicycle and waited outside Mr. Lincoln’s door, sampling the air and feeling invulnerable despite the late hour. She challenged the darkness huddled all around, with a look that might have come from the wine.

  “Any ghost wanting an unkind word with Mr. Lincoln should just move along before I do. Move on ghosts, or get boxed up.” She tapped her heel against the kickstand and set off. She might have turned for home but it didn’t feel right to do that. It didn’t feel right to go pedaling around New Orleans for the balance of the night either. She needed to slow down, to rock back in a chair where she could admire some stars, let the dark air settle around her for an hour or so until the dawn could lift it off again. Someplace safe and still and wrapped up with deep unknowable things.

  Someplace like the porch of a Voodoo Queen, where you might leave a nice gold watch just lying out in plain sight and expect to find it untroubled a day later. Celeste eased into the corner rocking chair, meant for guests, stretched out her legs and crossed her arms over herself—wrapping up like in a cocoon. She watched her mind run off to explore. Watched it like a proud mother would watch her little girl at play. Exploring. Looking for a lost treasure.

  Old John Stone was a porch sitter now. Not this late or this early, she guessed, but who could say. Nighttime can be hard for those past a certain age. Less welcoming. Hiding too much. But not for John Stone, she assured herself. He wouldn’t be one to fear the night or the dark. Not him. Or not the John Stone she knew when she was young and Sandrine was still alive and singing. Maybe the dark was full of good things for him. Good ghosts. Good visions.

  Like for a bear in winter.

  Thoughts of the bear. The last thing before sleep and dreaming, since, if the bear was out there at all, it would be in some special dream.

  This was a dream now, surely. Rocked back on Aurore’s porch. That much was real. But the sky held a star drawn bear, seen through that still remembered pattern of branches from her old Climbing Oak; like it had settled in where Aurore’s house sat with the Voodoo Queen asleep inside, not even knowing she had a great big dream tree sprouting up from her parlor. Or maybe s
he did know, and this was a dream gift.

  The night rolled on and the starry bear rolled with it—down through the branches of the oak, and into the warm light of sunrise.

  Celeste walked to the center of a field of plowed up earth. Red earth like she’d never seen before; a field ready for planting. At the edge of that field, surrounding it, stood trees in full leaf. Leaves more truly yellow than the yellow of new growth or that of leaves before winter and a last plunge. The trunks danced in the shadows, squiggles of black. Above it arched the pure and deep blue sky. One figure stood in the midst of that field; not working it or guarding it, but offering it to Celeste. Neighbor stood their in all his grinning and well stuffed generosity, his arms forever flung wide as if to say, since he was the dark and silent type, that all of this was for Celeste. The red, the yellow, the blue—all of it for her.

  So she accepted it and began to paint, into this garden of shaping, every color she could mix from just those three. Greens and golds in the field, golds and purples in the sky, sharing and connecting tree to earth and earth to sky, all under the changing light of the sun—changing as she chose for it to change, all to show her colors in their best light. The field bloomed with color and the trees burned with it. The sky ran and billowed. The clouds rained down muted tones then cleared again. However Celeste wanted it to be.

  The work of minutes or the work of days; Celeste neither knew nor cared. It was like the old childhood joy she’d find from those long ago drawings at the old home under the Climbing Oak, or at the desk of Odette, waiting for her father to return. Painting his way home. Or painting for the bear. The bear with her mother’s eyes.

  “So you remember me,” said that familiar but too long silent voice at her side.

  Celeste looked down into those eyes and saw them differently now. “I do. But I’ve changed so much. You’ve changed too.”

  “There’s no avoiding that,” said the bear. “Everything that’s connected at all is changed. Only things cut off from connection remain the same and fade away.”

  “As a child, I thought you had my mother’s eyes. Thought you might be my mother, come back to watch over me somehow.”

  “Maybe I thought you were my mother too,” said the bear.

  “How could that be,” Celeste asked.

  “Doesn’t matter now. As you say, we’ve changed. We’ve come far and have other things to do now.”

  “What other things?”

  The bear tipped her nose toward the view of the field and the trees and the sky. “You belong to two worlds. It’s so because your Mama made it so. Your Mama and others too.”

  “Two worlds?”

  “Dream and Waking, Heart and Head, Hand and Word—call it what you like, I don’t guess I know enough to say. But you’ve prepared yourself so well in the one world, it’s time you give this other world its due share of attention too. Set aside distractions and come wandering here to find connection. Connection is what you need. Connection far and connection wide. Out to everything there is; this world and the other. Isn’t that what you wanted so long ago?”

  “I suppose,” Celeste said. “And you’ll be my guide?”

  “Guide or witness. Whatever’s called for.”

  Celeste admired the flow of subtle colors across the sky. Admired them all the more since she had prepared that flow. In the end, she had found the bear so easily—or maybe been found so easily. “Well I’m thirty nine now. Not getting any younger,” she said.

  “I’m not sure that’s so,” said the bear.

  Celeste’s eyes opened to find Aurore waiting for her to wake. She had settled in to the other chair and looked bemused. Celeste was still enjoying her own stillness and the joy the dream had left her. She raised her eyebrows to signal to her friend that it was just fine if she wanted to speak.

  “I never wake someone if the sleep looks beneficial or revelatory,” Aurore said.

  “Thank you for that.”

  “And was it either or both?”

  “I’d have to say both,” Celeste admitted.

  “The ghost is bound away?”

  “That and more.”

  Now it was Aurore’s turn to raise eyebrows in a do tell sort of way.

  Celeste could read that clear enough. She rose slowly, smoothed her dress while catching sight of her bicycle, set against the rail by the sidewalk. Safe and sound. “Another time perhaps. There’s a letter I need to write.”

  Later that week, as Celeste stood off in a quiet corner of the bakery, watching the customers and those who tended to them under her subtle guidance, she spared a thought for John Stone, who was, even then, sitting on the porch of the boarding house where he lived.

  The woman who owned the home came out to him, offering something just in by mail. Something he almost never got since most everyone he knew was gone. “Looks like a letter from New Orleans,” she said. “Had no idea you knew anyone there. Family?”

  John Stone took the letter, studied the envelope and began to open it. “Almost family,” he said. His eyes were not as keen as they used to be, but Celeste’s handwriting could be bold when it needed to be. He read the letter. A short one, but plenty long enough. He carefully folded it back into the envelope, tucked it into his shirt pocket and rose, smiling.

  “Good news, John?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am. Good news, long overdue. Think I’ll wander through town. See what there is to see.” He gave a little backward wave over his shoulder in her direction. “Back by dinner.”

  Every few days, when time allowed and she felt a special need, Celeste would mail out something to Jonathan Hogue. Sometimes just a note, other times a little drawing she thought he might enjoy, drawn in that style she preferred. A single flowing line to suggest a thing, a thought or someone she knew. A single line to describe it all and how it was all connected up. Today it was the likeness of John Stone at his leisure. Drawn from memory. She explained the drawing sparingly so that it could carry the narrative itself. A drawing and a note folded neatly into an envelope, addressed to far away England. And he would send something back her way—a nice note, maybe a clipping of interest and warm thoughts to tend their connection.

  Part III – The Reaching Web

  Flossy

  Celeste marked her forty seventh birthday quietly at home. She didn’t care for parties and no one was much in the mood for one with a hurricane approaching the Gulf coast. Flossy would be a late and unwelcome present. Even though the hurricane would slide by the city on its east side, it managed to slap at her with wind and heave some water over the levees. Not a lot of flooding and nothing so very deep or widespread, but it was on Celeste’s side, so she took note.

  She’d marked the passage of Flossy over at Odette’s house—Odette, her reclusive great aunt who needed a reader since her old eyes were dimming, and Celeste was honored to oblige. But as the winds rose outside, and the rain rattled the windowpanes, Odette wanted to talk, more than she wanted to be read to.

  “It’s been quiet for a long time now,” Odette said. “No hurricanes to trouble us.”

  “That’s so.” Celeste found it difficult to concentrate with so much strong language pulsing in from the storm outside.

  “Do you still have memories of the storm that took your mother?”

  “I remember most things about that day, but some are gone, and maybe that’s best.” Celeste could feel the pressure in the air change again, and the texture of the air change as well. She scrubbed her fingertips together.

  “A hard thing for someone so young.”

  Celeste nodded. Could have been much worse. Could have been much better too. That’s how it goes. The wind shifted and she could sense the faintest tremble roll through the house. “Maybe Mama shouldn’t have fought so hard against coming to New Orleans. Guess it’s safer here inside levees. Lots of people watching out after us here, but all on your own out there.”

  Odette shifted uncomfortably and cleared her throat. Celeste waited for a pronouncement
.

  “Maybe you’re right. Should be that way; people looking after what needs to be looked after, only it’s not always that way. People get lazy or people get greedy. I suppose you’re old enough to know that.”

  “I am.”

  “An old, old story,” Odette continued. “People taking a little something for themselves that’s meant for everyone. Just a bit here and there until they acquire a taste, and then it’s only feeding time for them and the needful things get laid aside—left undone. And someone gets hurt, because something important was left undone or shortchanged.” She folded her arms.

  “So what do we do,” Celeste asked.

  “We do what we can.”

  “Flossy. Just why do you suppose they name these storms after women?” Celeste and Annie worked to clear away the last of the debris from around the bakery. It was nothing major and nothing was blown off the bakery itself, though Celeste paced up and down the street, hands on hips, trying to get a view of every portion of the roof.

  “It’s just customary,” Annie said.

  “Customary,” Celeste repeated. “Well we haven’t had bad storms here in a good long time and I’d like it to stay that way. I don’t want this kind of thing to become a habit. Always liked the wind and rain, but the thought of the Gulf acting up makes me nervous.”

  “Well, Mama Celeste, maybe you need to have a word with the Gulf. Straighten it out.” Annie laughed her high, light laugh and went back inside, leaving Celeste out in the street.

  That night, Celeste dreamed with the bear, but Annie’s words came through with her.

  Years now, wandering in that other world with the bear. Creating it as they wanted it to be, not worried about the particulars of why or how, since it was their world and suited them. But not so disconnected from Celeste’s other world, where bread had to be baked, friends indulged, endured and cared for, paintings of water and pigment created until the walls of her small house were papered with them, and the spirit box sat uneasily on the dresser. Her time in one world fed her time in the other. Just as the bear said it should be.