by Rhodi Hawk
Like putting stars to sleep, only backward.
She closed her eyes, allowing it to come forth. She imagined that a layer was peeling away. And it did. Inside her mind, the veneer lifted. Much more easily than she would have guessed.
Something scratched her foot. She opened her eyes.
BRAMBLE. IT CURLED ACROSS the floor. Coiling, wrapping, unfolding; moving easily, even gently. A thorn had scratched her ankle. It had come from the closet.
On the floor of the closet, with her hand on the rat, was Severin. She was naked and squatting. Her long, matted hair tumbling down the length of her spine, her body streaked with filth. She was looking at Madeleine. Her lips were pulled back, but it looked more like she was baring her teeth than smiling.
“Come play a little some with me.” Severin’s voice was childish and soft.
Madeleine screamed. It came from a strangle in her throat. She stumbled backward but her feet caught in the bramble. She turned, deliberately turned her back to Severin.
My God, I truly am losing my mind. Just like Daddy.
“I said, come play with me.” Severin’s voice, though still soft and childlike, grew harsh.
Madeleine turned a loathing glance toward her, her body shaking with fear and revulsion. The child lifted the rat by its tail. It stared with dead, glassy eyes and wooden-looking teeth. This time, when it fell, its teeth released the wire.
“You can play a little some with this beast. It listened to the whispers. I’ll get another.”
“No,” Madeleine whispered. “Not real. Not real.”
She stumbled across the bramble to the door, reeling, unable to endure the toxic air inside the house, and found her way to the porch. She was gulping for oxygen as the breeze washed over her.
I must be sensible. I need to act with presence of mind.
She walked, shaky at first, around the side of the house to the electrical panel and tried to pull the breaker. She had to shut off the electricity and disable that faulty wire. Her hand shook, and she had to pull twice, but she managed it.
I’ll turn the other off too. I’ll put the layer back. Hide the bramble.
She stepped back to the porch. She’d dropped her keys and purse inside. But as she put her hand on the door knob, she faltered.
From within the house, the floorboards creaked.
“Oh my God,” Madeleine whispered. She had to think.
I am hallucinating.
No other explanation. Her mind tumbled with wild psychoanalysis. Schizophrenia. Just like my father.
She opened the door.
Severin was standing there, and her matted hair stretched to her bony legs. Her nude body was shadowed and gray despite the brilliant rays streaming through the cloud break. Madeleine stepped back, knowing that what she saw wasn’t real, and yet that knowledge didn’t help. She folded her arms and turned away. The bayou spread before her. The place where she and Marc used to escape.
She should get to a hospital. She was having an extreme episode, and needed treatment.
“I told you to come play.” Severin moved toward Madeleine, her tiny feet shuffling.
Madeleine backed into the porch swing, sitting abruptly. Trying desperately to ignore this image of Severin.
It isn’t real. It’s just a figment of my imagination. It isn’t real.
“It isn’t real!” Madeleine said aloud, willing the hallucination away. “It isn’t real!”
She realized then that she was sobbing, burying her face in her hands.
“Don’t make tears,” Severin said. “Here, I’ll push you.”
The porch swing began to rock gently back and forth, and Madeleine’s body shook. Suddenly she could not bear to have the girl at her back anymore, and she leapt to her feet. She clutched at the porch rail, her legs threatening to give way. She had to get away from her. She had to think.
She stumbled down from the porch and made for her truck on unsteady feet.
“Where are you going?”
Madeleine stopped. The keys were still in the house. A cold wind stirred from the bayou and lifted a thick dirty tendril of hair into the child’s face. She was staring at her from the porch, blocking the front door. Madeleine couldn’t bring herself to brush past her to get inside. Inside, where the briar was still curling and unfolding. She looked out toward the water. The boat was rocking at the dock.
Severin stepped down from the porch and moved toward her.
“Oh God. Please just go away.”
But Severin drew nearer, and Madeleine succumbed to the urge to escape, though she knew it was futile. Ridiculous to think she could outrun a hallucination.
She scrambled toward the dock. It was useless trying to be practical. She was driven by instinct now. And her instinct was to run.
forty-six
BAYOU BLACK, 2009
ANITA TWISTED SHARPLY TO her left, jerking, but he brought her down on her side. Sun-bleached driftwood snapped beneath her. She screamed and flailed. She saw a glint of metal in his hand, and she rolled over on her stomach and tried to claw away from him. A sudden pressure in her back, and she saw the knife streaked with blood. She kicked in desperation while the blade flashed over her. Her hand curled around a sharp stick and she plunged it into his shoulder.
Zenon went rigid. Anita scrabbled out from under him and tore into the woods. The foliage was so thick she had to hack at it with her arms, unable to run through the crush. The litter of rotten wood on the ground shifted under her feet. Had she killed him? Trees were twisting in the heavy breeze. She heard the sound of thrashing behind her, but she couldn’t tell whether it came from the approaching storm, or him. She pushed forward with all her strength.
Where am I?
She racked her brain. She could not tell how long they’d been in the car, though she guessed it had to have been several hours. Anita scrabbled over a fallen tree trunk that stood higher than she did.
She realized her strength was failing. Her hands and feet were going numb, and her legs threatened to buckle. He had wounded her. How could she not have known that the knife pierced her body?
Her steps were increasingly ragged. Her hands and clothing were soaked in blood. She could hear him somewhere behind her, and she cursed the sounds her own body made in the woods, giving her away. She realized:
I am going to die.
I am going to die.
And then she felt the strange inclination:
Come back. It’s over.
Yes. She should turn back and go to Zenon. She felt the tug with absolute clarity. That is precisely what she should do.
Anita retraced her steps to find him. He was in there somewhere. She no longer had the strength to climb over the log, but she saw a thinner area of brush and stepped into it. It formed a rough path back to the place where she’d left him.
Come back.
She held her arms out, stepping calmly. Where was he? The pathway twisted, and now she wasn’t certain whether it led back to him or in another direction.
The notion left her. Disconnected. She stopped moving, confused. Couldn’t remember why she’d thought it logical and right to return to Zenon. In fact, the thought that she’d almost done that very thing sent her into a fresh panic. She turned again, though she had no idea which direction led toward or away from him. She ploughed through the brush. Ran.
The trees parted and she found herself at the edge of an expanse of black water. She backed away and whirled around. A tunnel ran through the brush, a much clearer trail that turned back into the woods. But the trail would leave her much more exposed. With her injured foot and her body becoming sluggish, he would eventually catch her.
She stretched her arms out before her and stepped into the water, opaque like a mirror. Like oil. She swam as quickly and silently as she could. Stinging in her back as the bayou stole her blood. The splashing water filled her ears when she raised her head, and when she sank beneath the surface to propel herself forward, the sound was deeper than silence. Th
ick and rushing like blood flow.
At the far bank, she stole a look around, but did not see him. She swam further to where the water T’ed off into a smaller passage hidden by a thick stand of trees. A little rest. Just for a moment. So difficult to move now. She hung suspended in the water, and the water pulled the heat from her so that she would match its temperature. She felt as though she was becoming part of it. The bayou wrapped around her, shielding her, claiming her.
She thought, “I would rather die than let Zenon catch me.”
One more effort to lurch forward, and she reached the grove of water cypress. Her limbs would no longer stretch. Her body was curling into itself like a petrified spider. Something inside her was loosening, trying to escape that husk. An inner wobble like an egg yolk that wanted to break through the shell. She felt strangely elated, but yet she still fought.
She could only move in sluggish pulses now. Tried to disappear among the tangled root system. A refuge opened to her, a place where the giant cypress knees rose high and formed a cove large enough for her to slip inside. She huddled in, her colorless, shaking hands grasping at floating plants and waterlogged sticks, creating a nest among those roots. She braved another look across the water.
He was there, pacing along the bank, little more than a dark shadow. He turned to the trail behind him, then disappeared into it.
Anita let out her breath in a rush, even as her vision was blurring. She felt suddenly weightless, euphoric. A cool, brilliant nirvana. She should rest. She should . . . Her body detached. That inner wobble was so strong. A helium balloon contained by a cobweb. She broke through it.
forty-seven
HAHNVILLE, 1920
CHLOE SUPERVISED ROUNDING UP the cattle herself. The herd was small, and so with the exception of two milking cows and a bull, Terrefleurs would need every single one.
In the previous days, every man, woman, and child on the plantation had helped revive the old refinery that lay at the far end of the cane fields. The structure had gone to waste and was overgrown with brush and vines. The field workers had hacked away at the tangles until they unearthed the rotted building beneath. Inside, light poured through holes in the wall and ceiling, illuminating the rusted equipment that lay in dust.
Refining raw sugar had been a part of Terrefleurs’ cycles before the days of the Sugar Trust. Now, with Chloe unable to sell the cane through the Trust, she decided Terrefleurs would once again refine its own sugar.
She was taking a considerable gamble, because decades had passed since they had done it, and only a few surviving old-timers had any vague memory of the process. Francois told Chloe the three basic steps: separating the crystals through a centrifuge, vacuum pan evaporation, and charcoal filtering. They would be relying on spotty knowledge and archaic, rusted equipment. If the attempt failed, they would ruin the crop in the process, and the plantation was in no position to lose an entire season’s yield.
The workers had scrubbed the rust from the centrifuge and vacuum pan. They would use the pan to boil molasses, and it was imperative that it contain as few impurities as possible. Even the centrifuge, which separated the raw sugar juices from the cane, had to be sparkling clean so as not to introduce bitter flavors.
Francois had replaced corroded and missing parts as best he could through the makeshift machine shop that he’d used to repair farm equipment in the past. Chloe saw to it that the workers patched the refinery’s roof to prevent rain from seeping in, but other than that, she did not spare them to completely repair the structure. Terrefleurs could afford to refine its own sugar once or maybe twice, and even then Chloe could only hope to break even in the process.
When the refinery was ready, it was time to focus on acquiring the charcoal that would filter impurities from the raw sugar. Traditionally, the process called for animal charcoal.
Chloe strode down the rear steps, intending to go to the corral where the cattle had been assembled, but she heard Patrice’s voice shouting from somewhere nearby. It sounded like she was counting rapidly. Chloe looked to the pigeonnier. The twins were in the garden with Tatie Bernadette. She looked to the workers’ allée and saw children running from the kitchen house in a pack while Patrice finished her count. The children hid themselves among the cottages. And then, down the center of the allée, Patrice came running. Her cheeks were plump and flushed, her legs long and gangly. She searched, the children melting into their hiding places as she approached and peeking around the sides of the buildings when she wasn’t looking. Patrice found a little boy crouching behind the rain barrel. Both of them shrieked and Patrice tagged him.
“Patrice!” Chloe shouted.
Patrice jumped to a stance and faced her mother with her hands behind her back.
“Ici!” Chloe said.
Patrice ran to her and presented herself in the same stance. Her hair was pulled tight from her smooth dark face, and it fanned out behind her in a pony tail of spun sugar.
“Did I not tell you to stay away from the children?”
“Yes’m.”
“Why do you disobey me?”
Patrice turned and looked toward the others. The children had retreated out of sight in the allée.
She looked back at her mother with her chin down and her blue eyes wide. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know! You think I have time for your bad behavior? You think I have nothing better to do?”
“Maman, why are the cows in the corral?”
Chloe put her hands to her hips. “They are in the corral because it is time for slaughter.”
“Each and every?”
“Listen to me, eh? This place is dying. We will butcher the cattle to feed the people, and make charcoal from the bones. After that there will be no more food.”
Chloe pointed down the allée. “And no more children. You see? Their parents will leave here. Good as dead. And their children go with them, good as dead. This is what happens when a plantation dies.”
Patrice listened, eyes filling with tears.
Chloe leaned over, a hand to her belly. “Here now I have you and your brothers. And soon there will be another baby. What will we do on a dead plantation? We will have to leave too, and try not to starve. Your papa is lost in the spirit world. He can do nothing.”
Patrice’s eyes spilled over and her lip was trembling.
Chloe said, “I told you to work your pigeon cycles. That is the only power you have. You do not listen to me, you are as good as dead too.”
Patrice covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
“You idle around and play with dolls.” Chloe leaned in close. “I should throw those dolls into the well. You have too many. Six dolls!”
“Non Maman!” Patrice sagged to the ground, weeping. “Papa made those dolls for me.”
Chloe took her arm and pulled her up to her feet, then shook her. “You practice your pigeon cycles with your brothers, or I will throw your dolls in the well. Go in the house now! You tell Bernadette to give you a thrashing!”
ONE AFTER ANOTHER, THEY had cut each beast’s throat. The plantationers had been nervous. Though butchering cattle and other animals was not uncommon at Terrefleurs, such widespread slaughter was shocking even to the most seasoned hunters. To calm the workers, Chloe had called for ceremonial drums, and bade the women dance at the bonfire. The ceremony had lasted all day long and into the early winter night. The people of Terrefleurs had given thanks to the beasts for laying down their lives, and had implored the spirits to accept their sacrifice and look upon them with favor. Chloe had noticed that not all the plantationers were willing to set their Christian faith aside to honor the river spirits.
The workers had butchered and processed the meat, making as much use as possible of each carcass. Some of the beef they had roasted for the feast, some they sold, and the rest they had smoked in a newly erected smokehouse, the old one being too small to accommodate the glut. The workers had crushed hoof and horn, boiling them along with the hide to make g
lue and waterproof oils.
And finally, the bones. First they had boiled them to remove the gelatin, to be used later for cooking. Next, they’d placed them in a large fire pit to burn. No one could remember how long it would take to burn the bones into animal charcoal, but they’d soon determined the heat had to be extremely high, and the burning process had taken over a week. The skies over Terrefleurs had blackened with smoke of the charcoal fires, and the cold humid air had been choked with vile odors of decomposing carcass and animal glue. Folks had gone about their work with handkerchiefs tied at the backs of their heads, covering their noses and mouths, and Terrefleurs looked like a plantation of bandits.
When they’d accomplished their task and the fires had cooled, all that was left of the bones had been brittle black lumps of charcoal. Chloe then ordered the processing of the sugar.
The odors produced by the slaughter and burning of the cattle had paled in comparison to the stench of the sugar refining process. For days, the overworked plantationers had endured the piquant sulfur-caramel smell of burning cane. Similar to the smells emitted by the nearby refineries on days when the wind carried the air pollutants south to Terrefleurs, only on their own land, there had been no escape.
The stench had been nearly unbearable, and the thick black smoke had crouched in a suffocating fog over the plantation. The workers had kept the handkerchiefs over their air passages, and in the mornings they’d coughed black spew. Chloe had tended those that were particularly frail, reminding them of the plantation workers of olden times, unpaid slaves who had to endure the foul air on a regular basis.
Everyone had been exhausted and demoralized, but the refining process had continued, and the juice did indeed separate from the cane. And in the pans, it had evaporated to hot molasses. The workers had purified it with the charcoal made from the bones of Terrefleurs’ own cattle. The fires and the stench had finally subsided, and the bundles of cane in the millhouse had been replaced by mounds of near-white refined sugar. Chloe had ordered the workers to add molasses back into some of the granules to make a supply of brown sugar as well.