A Twisted Ladder

by Rhodi Hawk

  Madeleine stole a glance at her father. He was watching the house. She began to feel foolish standing there, getting perforated by insects, spying.

  Zenon dropped his cigarette over the railing to the damp foliage below. He stood and rubbed his head, and walked back around to the rear of the house.

  Madeleine and her father both exhaled, deep and silent. They turned together and stepped through the tangle of sticker bushes, quickly at first, then slowed when full darkness enveloped them.

  “I wonder why he came from the back of the house, not the front where River Road is,” Madeleine whispered. “Is there a road back there too?”

  She saw her father shrug as he moved ahead through the tunnels. “Nothing but swamp back there, far as I know. Must have come in by boat.”

  “I don’t know why we’re hiding from him.”

  “Best to lay low.”

  The maze of thorny tendrils seemed to have grown more dense in the small time they were at the house, but eventually they did emerge onto the road. Madeleine looked back. The old house was no longer visible through the veil of foliage and darkness.

  They walked along the open road in silence, heading back to the truck. Madeleine thought about Zenon in the flower shop, remembered the feel of him against her, and the invasion of his touch. And she remembered how he’d insinuated that she was better off with a man like him, not someone with the reserved, gentle strength of Ethan Manderleigh.

  twenty-six

  HAHNVILLE, 1916

  DEBT SAGGED ON TERREFLEURS like weeds on a fishing line. Before Helen died, Rémi had leveraged much of his farming equipment and the next season’s harvest to assist his in-laws’ start in sugarcane. He’d also expected that the Chapmans would actively pursue a successful crop from the land they had intended to sow. However, one season had passed, and then another, but nary a sprig of sugarcane had graced the soils of Glory.

  True, Rémi knew Jacob had been preoccupied with other things. It had taken a long time for Glory to recover from the flood, considering her landowners knew nothing about farming or Delta life in general. In the meantime, Rémi had been schooling Jacob in the benefits of modern conveniences, such as electricity and plumbing. He had helped him wire his New Orleans row house with a system of electrical knobs and tubes. And at Glory, Rémi had showed Jacob how to run a pipe from the Mississippi River to his house. Farmers could lawfully draw from the river in order to irrigate their crops, and so, too, could a farmer irrigate his home.

  But by far, the most valuable thing Rémi taught Jacob was how to execute the current massive project: erecting a durable levee. Under Rémi’s supervision, Jacob had managed workers in constructing a sturdy wooden skeleton that served as a backbone for the structure. Now, Jacob’s hired steam-powered dredge was trawling out the river, grunting and wheezing like a great steel beast of burden. Even the workers looked as though they were made of metal. Their dark skin shone like plate armor from the sheen of their own sweat, bodies taut and patterned as though forged from stamped metal molds. They were hauling the dredged sediment in wagons, depositing it along the stretch of the Mississippi that bordered Glory, creating a stout berm.

  “This levee, mon frère, it will be higher and stronger than any built by the Army Corps of Engineers,” Rémi told Jacob.

  “You think it’ll hold up if the water rises again?”

  “Not if. The water will rise again, that is to be certain. A matter of time, alors. Whether it holds depends on you. Will you maintain it this time?”

  Jacob shook his head with a laugh as he squinted at the shimmering river that stretched white as the sky it reflected. “Oh, I’ll maintain it all right. I may be hard-headed but I learnt my lesson this time.”

  “We’ll see if you do. But you keep your word and this levee will reward you. Other plantations might fall, but Glory will remain dry. This structure is already strong as any.”

  “Strong as the Terrefleurs levee?”

  Rémi nodded reflexively, and then thought for a moment. “Maybe even stronger. My levee was built a long time ago; it’s held well enough because my family has always maintained it. But your new Crow’s Landing levee is getting attention from both man and modern machine, and it is much bigger.”

  “Glad to hear it. Because if there’s a weak spot along the river, I don’t want it to be at my place next time.”

  Rémi’s gaze narrowed at his brother-in-law.

  Jacob added quickly, “I ain’t wishin bad lack on the Terrefleurs levee, neither. I know yours is strong. Let’s all just try to stay dry.”

  Rémi said, “Hmm. Well maybe your dry land will inspire you to dress her with a few seeds, eh?”

  Jacob laughed, as did Rémi, but Rémi continued to chew on the notion that the Crow’s Landing levee could outperform the one at Terrefleurs. He told himself this was not a competition; that one needn’t gain over the other. And yet what was it that Ulysses had said of Jacob? It seemed ill-advised to heed the ravings of a river fiend, and yet the words echoed from his mind:

  He will take what you have and sleep in your bed.

  twenty-seven

  NEW ORLEANS, 2009

  MADELEINE GAZED AT THE digital display on the cell phone, the picture of Marc with his arm around Emily Hammond. Madeleine wondered about the day that picture had been taken. Probably nothing—an accidental encounter. Wasn’t as if any of the Hammonds had come to the funeral or sent notes of sympathy. How close could Marc and Emily have possibly been? Perhaps he’d bumped into her at Thibby’s, chatted and snapped the picture as a farewell before she left for Nova Scotia. Perhaps. She doubted it. If Marc was seeing Emily before he died, Madeleine wanted to know.

  Madeleine figured out how to navigate to Marc’s contact list on the cell phone. Emily Hammond was listed in there, but the number was a 985 area code, not Nova Scotia, so it was likely for her parents in Houma. Madeleine pressed Send and put the phone to her ear.

  A woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

  “Yes, hello, this is Madeleine LeBlanc.”

  Silence.

  Madeleine cleared her throat. “I used to go to school with Emily, and I wanted to get in touch with her. I don’t suppose she’s there in Houma?”

  Several seconds ticked by. Nothing.

  Madeleine looked at the screen to see if the call had dropped. The timer was still counting. “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” the woman said, and her voice sounded stiff.

  “Is, uh, is this Mrs. Hammond?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “I’m sorry to trouble you. I just wondered—”

  “You stay away from us, you hear?”

  The words froze on Madeleine’s lips. She’d only met Mrs. Hammond a few times in passing, and she’d always seemed congenial.

  “I don’t understand,” Madeleine said.

  Mrs. Hammond spoke, her words coming slowly. “Emily ain’t here. Lives in Canada now. And even if she was home I wouldn’t let any a you people come within a hundred feet of her.”

  “Mrs. Hammond, I don’t—”

  She heard the airy connection go silent as Mrs. Hammond hung up.

  twenty-eight

  HAHNVILLE, 1916

  UPON COMPLETION OF THE new levee, Rémi taught him how to maintain it, pointing out how crawfish made mud chimneys in the structure’s walls. Jacob appointed one of his workers to regularly check for and remove them, and he himself watched for erosion or other signs of weakness. Rémi was glad Jacob was finally taking genuine interest in these matters.

  Still, when it came to plowing the fields, his interest waned. “Late in the season, and anyway what’s the hurry? We’ll maybe plant next year.”

  But to Rémi, money left fallow was money in waste. And although the Chapmans were diligent with payments toward their loans, Rémi was nervous over the extent Terrefleurs was now tied to Glory. Better to have no loans at all. And should there come a year of disease or drought, or infestation of some sort, Rémi’s credit would alre
ady be at full stretch, and he would not be able to secure a loan to wait out a crisis.

  Rémi hefted the broom as he stood with Jacob under the eaves of the carriage barn at Terrefleurs. Nearby, from the limbs of a bay tree, bottles and jars hung like suspended soap bubbles, catching bends of light and casting them in stars to the earth below. Jacob waved the Spanish moss torch under the wasp’s nest until the insects fell, smoke-drunk, and veered off toward the wood.

  Chloe’s voice drifted from among linens snapping on the clothesline. “Patrice!”

  Rémi looked over his shoulder, and saw the tiny Creole girl watching with round eyes.

  He said, “Dangerous here, petite, you might get stung. Go see your maman.”

  Jacob eyed the three-year-old as she turned toward flags of sheets, and then his gaze lifted to Rémi. Rémi was still smiling. His brother-in-law’s face dawned with realization as he looked again between Rémi’s blue eyes and those of the Creole girl. Rémi met Jacob’s stare, daring him to speak.

  Jacob said nothing.

  Rémi looked back at her. She raised the new tupelo doll he’d carved for her and waved it at him. When Patrice had been a newborn babe in arms, he’d put his nose to her tiny head and drunk in the fontanel, recognized the scent like tupelo gum, so much like that of her mother. He vowed that Patrice would have a new doll carved from this wood every year as long as he lived.

  “Allons Patrice,” Chloe called to her daughter.

  Chloe’s face appeared from between two sheets, and little Patrice trotted toward her. Chloe looked up and saw the men watching. Her gaze lingered on Rémi for a long moment before she disappeared behind the washing again, and Rémi saw that Jacob took note of that too.

  So be it.

  Jacob cleared his throat. Rémi could see that he was going to ask him about Chloe and the little one. But Jacob did not express what was on his mind. Instead, he gestured the torch at the trees that stood between the house and the river.

  “What’re all them glasses hanging in the trees?”

  Rémi smiled at his brother-in-law’s avoidance of the subject. “They’re spirit jars. The people believe they capture evil spirits.”

  The laundry snapped in the breeze, and all else seemed quiet from the woodland to the gardens. Nothing out of place. How long this small reprieve might last, he did not know, but he would not question why Ulysses was leaving him alone for the present. Perhaps the spirit jars had caught the river devil after all.

  Jacob chewed his lip. “You’re real indulgent with’m. I heard you took Miss Chloe into New Orleans to visit the grave of Marie Laveau.”

  Rémi’s eyes narrowed. “I see the gossip parlors are in full swing. Do you have a specific question for me, mon frère?”

  Jacob colored. “No. I mean . . .” he cleared his throat again. “Reason I wanted to talk to you, we’re just wondering—my dad and I—whether it even makes sense for us to raise cane on over at Glory.”

  “You don’t want to grow sugar?” Rémi’s attention sharpened.

  Jacob raised the torch again. “We’re just giving it some second thoughts. We’ll probably grow it, I just wanted to get your take.”

  The last of the mud daubers vacated the nest, and Rémi knocked it off, using the end of the broom to smash the cells into a rain of clumped mud.

  “Mon frère, I think you are ill-suited to farming in general, not just of sugarcane. Plantation life is tremendous work.”

  Jacob sniffed and said nothing. Rémi knew he was not a man who cared to dirty his hands. Certainly he counted himself among the rugged, chesty men of the country, but in reality he was more likely to share their song and drink than their physical toil. In this way, Jacob reminded Rémi of his brothers, Henri and Didier, who’d moved to New Orleans in order to lead a more fashionable city life.

  Rémi asked him, “Why would you grow sugarcane to begin with? What do you hope to get out of it? Money?”

  Jacob shrugged. They continued to the next mud dauber’s nest and flooded it with smoke.

  Rémi said, “Ecoutez. In olden days, it was enough for a sugar farmer to produce raw cane and sell it. But now with modern technology, we have refineries all over the Delta. We used to just grow the sugar, but now we must refine it too, either in a Sugar Trust refinery or on the plantation.”

  Rémi gestured with his chin toward the pecan allée. “At Terrefleurs, we used to refine our own sugar, but the process is no longer cost-worthy. This industry is eroding. We have had price wars and political problems.”

  Jacob said, “It don’t sound like the Sugar Trust is doing its job.”

  “The Sugar Trust was formed many years ago to save us, keep monopolies like Spreckels and C&H from squashing us. But now the Trust holds too much power.”

  “Y’all seem to be doing fine,” Jacob said.

  “Right now we are lucky. The beet sugar crops in Europe were destroyed by disease, so there is good demand for the cane sugar this year, but it will not last. Eventually the beet crop will recuperate.”

  “You refine your cane through the Sugar Trust now?”

  “Yes, bien sûr. The refinery here on River Road is owned by the Trust.” Rémi paused, watching the wasps fall and hover, then sidle away from the wooden structure. “They are having some trouble now with the government.”

  “Our Trust refinery?”

  “Yes, well, the Sugar Trust is having trouble. The government investigated them because now they are the monopoly. A politician from Puerto Rico runs it and they play games to get around import tariffs from the islands. Those tariffs were supposed to make things easier for us growing here. But the Trust sneaks around all that and makes their profits bigger.”

  “I guess the government will put a stop to that,” Jacob said with a dip of his chin.

  Rémi gave him a wan smile. “No, I do not think so, mon ami. Yes, the government investigated the Sugar Trust, but now the entire world is at war. And where did the investigation go? They stopped investigating. The government needs the Sugar Trust to keep things stable. Keep the money flowing and the sugar growing.”

  Jacob frowned.

  Rémi continued, “The smaller plantations in Louisiana, we try to hold on against all the price fluctuation. But it is hard to keep up. That is why so many sugar planters stop growing cane. Maybe they grow pecans, maybe they don’t grow at all, like at Glory.” Rémi nodded toward Jacob’s land downriver. “Before you bought it, the former owners stopped growing sugar there for a good reason: losing money. And for what? To grow sugar, because that is what they have always done? That would be stupide.”

  Rémi cast a glance at Jacob over the cypress and Spanish moss torch, and could see lines creasing his brow as he squinted toward the fields.

  “Why do you still grow?” Jacob asked.

  Rémi sighed. “I have all the workers. Where would they go if I shut down? Sometimes I make a good profit, sometimes I lose money. But a plantation is not just a business. It is a living thing. You don’t just stop her. You must kill her. But I know one day it will all end.” He waved a hand toward the Mississippi. “Big companies will own all the sugar. I do not know what is going to happen to the workers when it is all over.”

  Rémi shook his head. “I try to turn the new ones away when they come, but they all need work and they need a place to live. Some get on the train and go north to New York City or Chicago, but most of these people only know how to work the fields.”

  Rémi suspected Jacob’s family had never paid much heed to the private lives of the workers. At Terrefleurs, the workers were weary and poor, but their lives were very much interwoven with those in the main house.

  They heard a child’s laughter, and saw that Patrice and Chloe had moved to the kitchen garden. No longer obscured by the hanging linens, Chloe stood in full view, and also in full view was her belly, swollen in late term pregnancy. Jacob’s jaw went slack.

  Rémi smiled at his scandalized expression, but at the same time, he knew the world would react
in the same way. Even worse. A white man taking a black woman as a mistress was not so uncommon, but that didn’t mean it was accepted.

  Rémi walked inside the carriage barn, clouds forming in the dirt floor behind his footfalls, and rested the broom on a hook. Jacob still refrained from asking about Chloe. Rémi supposed his brother-in-law felt it wasn’t his business, and he was right.

  “Come, mon frère, time for a little cherry bounce on the gallery.”

  “Should we get them other ones?” Jacob said with a nod toward the wasp nests among the trees.

  “Leave them. They will keep the black widows down.”

  Jacob nodded, and then stood in thought for a moment, the torch crackling. “I appreciate your advice, Rémi. About the sugarcane I mean. All the same, just so you know, we’re gonna probably stick to our plans. Everything’s set up for growin cane.” He shrugged. “I know that ain’t what you want to hear—you’re riskin your own hide for us, and we’re much obliged. So, I do promise to talk it over with my father. We might change our minds, but I gotta say, I doubt it. My father thinks since we got everything in order, we might as well plant the damn sugarcane, and quite frankly I agree with him.”

  twenty-nine

  NEW ORLEANS, 2009

  ANOTHER HEADACHE. IT HAD played at Madeleine’s temples when she’d awoken that morning and it lingered on as she and Sam spent the day sorting through Marc’s documents at the Special Collections Division of Tulane’s Howard-Tilton Library. Listening to Sam, Madeleine sat and ran her fingers back and forth across her mémée’s diary.