Mambo touches my arm to stop me, so I say nothing else.
‘Ain’t gonna be no burden. Nobody got much, but ya gonna need more than that scholarship and I’m gonna make sure ya has it girl,’ he says. ‘Ya just tell Quince what ya needin’. Y’hear?’
Well, I don’t know why, but that lifts me right up and has me feeling like I’m part of the family. Mambo winks.
I’m taking the King of England to college and life sure is fine. I got it planned.
Then, one Saturday afternoon, Errol pops his head round the parlour door. That’s when everything takes a different turn altogether.
‘May I come in, Arletta?’
‘Sure. Errol, what’s happened? You all right?’
In all the years I’ve been with Mrs Archer-Laing, I’ve never seen Errol shake and his face looking grey like it does today. I missed him out of the kitchen when I got breakfast this morning; he’s usually about someplace.
He wrings his hands and wipes his brow with his cloth.
‘It’s just, well, Arletta, it’s just a heap of trouble. I don’t know. I just don’t know …’ His eyes are tearful. He wipes them. ‘It’s a child, a little girl I know, a friend of mine, his daughter, she’s in a heap of trouble.’
And I know exactly what’s coming next.
‘She’s hurt bad, Arletta, real bad. She’s in the hospital now.’
She’s just eleven years old and I don’t think I can bear to hear about it. I can’t speak for a while. Errol sits by the dining table and sniffles into his rag. Her folks are friends of his, he’s known them a long time, and her since the day she was born. She’s hurt bad. Real serious, and been in the hospital since they found her bleeding at the side of the road outside Marksville a few days back.
‘What do they say? In the hospital?’
‘It ain’t good. Her folks are Cajun, living down between here and Mansura, and her pa’s with the police. He sure is all cut up about his li’l girl. Ain’t able to figure how anybody can get a hold of a child and hurt her so bad, never mind his own child. It’s terrible, Arletta. The hospital ain’t sure she was gonna pull through at first but she’s started comin’ to a bit now. Her folks are real good folks, I knows them all from church. We got close way back, and they started coming to us, been coming to our church a while now, so maybe you seen them sometimes too. Truth is, he don’t go much himself ’cause he got duty times, being with the law, and four kids and all. He got his hands full enough.’
I wish with all my heart that I was not hearing this at all. That it never happened, that I could block the whole world out. That’s how hearing about that little girl got me feeling, like this whole world was too much for me to bear living in.
‘Arletta, will ya go talk to her pa? Tell him what happened to ya?’
‘Oh no, Errol, I’d be scared he ever found out …’
‘Him being the law and all. Go tell him about it.’
‘No, Errol. You know what I did. Please don’t ask.’
‘It’s something she said, something she tell her pa.’
‘What?’
‘Was a white man done it, she says somebody else was there too and call his name, kept telling him to stop, that he was goin’ crazy and gonna be killing her. They’s called him Seymour.’
The room spins just before I feel myself falling. Everything is black and the world is gone.
Next thing I know Errol is returning from the kitchen with a glass of water.
‘Ya pass right out Arletta. Drink this lemonade. Sugar is good for ya when ya get a shock.’
All I can think of is that Mr Seymour is still alive. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even stop him and now a little girl has been left at the side of the road, heaven knows what he did to her.
‘I figure on telling ya ’cause I think ya oughta know that anyways, he ain’t dead. And maybe ya’s able to help with somethin’, ’cause they gonna go after him big time now. I figure ya might wanna help them out. What he looks like, stuff like that. Y’all seen him good. I ain’t tell them nothing about ya, though, I figure I gonna come talk with ya about it first. Ask ya to go speak to them. Ask if ya gonna wan’ do that.’
‘I can’t, Errol, you know that.’
‘Well, I reckon ya ain’t ever know what to do about them kinda folks and this just might be ya chance. He ain’t dead, so ain’t no murder hanging on ya at all.’
‘But I slashed him good …’
‘Arletta, that’s called self-defence, and this sure might be the time to be doing somethin’ about it, like ya wanted, to help all them other li’l girls, ’cause one thing we know for sure now – he been at them.’
‘But I don’t want folks to know …’
‘Ain’t how it’s done, ain’t nobody gonna know but me and her folks. Ya wanna do something, ain’t nobody ever do nothing, and I been thinking about Safi too.’
When I start thinking about Safi walking I reckon I start to change my mind right there. The room is real quiet; Errol stops talking. My world is turned upside down thinking about Safi and that little girl in the hospital.
‘Errol, can you tell them about it, about me? I don’t know if I could manage it.’
‘I’ll tell them, Arletta. If ya say so, then I’m gonna get on over to see Albert and tell him, and I’ll say ya coming. That okay? We gonna get him, we gonna stop him, Arletta and that’s what ya want, ain’t it?’
Albert Gaudet is a big man to see weeping. He lives in one of the new cottages going up, all lined in a row with not much land between them, and right up close on the sidewalk. Soon as we climb the front steps I smell home cooking and new wood. A woman opens the door. Her face is purple with crying and she doesn’t manage a smile at all.
‘Errol, thank you for coming.’ Her voice is trembling.
‘How y’all doin’ Bette? This here is Arletta. I tell Albert maybe somebody gonna help, and she’s come. Wasn’t easy for her, but she come.’
The hallway leads straight onto a room where three kids squeeze up on a sofa together, faces all glum. They’re younger than their eleven-year-old sister. I guess two of them are twins. These poor little frightened faces sure are hard to look at.
Albert Gaudet is wearing his police uniform. He gets up and comes towards me. He’s one big size of a man and that uniform makes him look even bigger. The big man says nothing. He’s fighting back his tears and I can’t find any words to say either. Then he gathers me right up and holds me tight to his chest. Great sobs wrack through that man, like his heart broke clean in two for his little girl.
‘Merci. Thank you for coming. Sit down, Arletta,’ he whispers; his voice is rough with choking back emotion. ‘Can we get you something, ma cherie? Something to drink? Eat? Anything?’
‘I’ll bring some lemonade, sit down Arletta. I’m Bette, Eveline’s aunt. Her mama is my sister, she’s staying overnight with her in the hospital since it happened. Come children, let’s leave Papa talking to the lady.’
There’s a knock on the door.
‘I’ll get it. That gonna be Jackson,’ says Errol.
Jackson Ortega is a broad southerner with a drawl about as thick as Albert’s Cajun accent. He’s just a little smaller, and I figure they’re the sort of men who get respect from folks just for being themselves. I’m not sure why, if it’s the uniform or just the way some white folks come. I know if I was guilty of something, there’s no way I’d want to be coming up against the pair of them. Can’t say if that makes me feel any good about not being guilty of killing Seymour or not.
Jackson takes his cap off.
‘It’s good of you to come, Arletta,’ he says in a voice full of hurt, so I guess he’s a family friend as much as somebody Albert goes to work with.
Errol sits down next to me. Albert and Jackson pull two chairs up and sit right in front of us.
I’m scared. I’m scared that folks are going to know what happened to me, that they’re going to know what I did to Seymour, and I’m scared that I don’t know what
’s going to happen next.
‘My little girl is not doing too good. They say she’ll survive it, and that’s the important thing to us right now, but she’ll never bear any children after it …’ I see he’s struggling with that. ‘She was brutally attacked. The doctors never saw anything like it before. It’s internal … pauvre t’ bête.’
He breaks down, unable to carry on. He sucks air in through his teeth like that’s going to keep him steady. He’s finding it hard keeping a grip on himself and it’s breaking my heart to see.
‘Tell us about the man you know as Seymour,’ says Jackson.
I thought he was called Mr Seymour, but I called everybody ‘mister’ back then. That’s his first name or his last, I never knew, never thought about it.
‘He … he was brought out to where I lived. I was just a kid, about nine years old when he started, though Mr McIntyre started long before him.’
‘When did Mr McIntyre start?’
‘When I was eight, right after Pappy, my grandpa, passed away.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Albert squeezes his eyes shut, nips the bridge of his nose with his huge fingers and shakes his head.
‘Arletta,’ Jackson says, ‘We know who Mr McIntyre is. Errol told us about him and we’ve traced him.’
My back shoots straight up.
‘He transferred to Baton Rouge a few years ago.’
‘He’s a married man …’
I knew that.
‘With children of his own.’
I didn’t know that at all.
‘One son, he’s twelve, and a younger daughter, not quite ten years old.’
‘Ya okay, Arletta?’ asks Errol.
‘I hope you’re watching Mr McIntyre? I mean, he doesn’t look like a beast, but I’m telling you, that girl is not safe. Not at all.’
They promise me Mr McIntyre is being watched. I know he’s raping his girl, daughter or not, and I sure do doubt if they’re able to be watching that.
‘So you know who Mr Seymour is too?’ I ask. I feel right weak with it all.
They haven’t been able to trace him, that’s where they need my help. They’re sure about the name: Eveline heard the name Seymour, she’s sure about it. I’m wondering why they don’t just pick up Mr McIntyre right now and find out who Mr Seymour is that way. The smell of warm food wafts through the house.
‘Now, Arletta, we gotta get this right,’ says Jackson. ‘The law states quite clear what you can do and what you can’t do. Right now we got no evidence other than a whispered name corresponding to the one you gave Errol. They seem to match up. That’s all we got.’
‘When we get these men we need to put them away for good,’ says Albert. ‘Arletta, that’s my daughter inside that hospital. If it was left to me, I’d set about killing them both with my bare hands, put a bullet through their heads. I’d happily go to jail for the rest of my life for it, but what I really want is these men put away for a very long time and me left right here bringing up the family that needs me. Let prison deal with them. Prison is no good place for their sort. Believe me on that.’
‘I just don’t understand why you don’t get Mr McIntyre right now. At least one of them is taken away and his girl made safe.’
I sound, and feel, like I’m losing my mind, but I know they need as much evidence as they can find to have a watertight case. They want them put away for good as much as I do.
‘If we don’t get it right, they walk, Arletta. They walk away and nothing happens to them at all.’
‘But if we can put the two of them away, it sends a message out to the rest,’ says Jackson. ‘There’s more than these two vermin at that nasty game. We need your evidence, Arletta. We need you to tell us everything you know.’
‘We need to find other victims, get as many of them to come forward as we can. Do you know of anyone else they’ve done this to?’ asks Albert.
I look at Errol.
I tell them about Safi.
‘I can’t know for sure, she never said, but she died. She ended up pregnant and she died giving birth to the baby. She never told me she was … a … a victim. It was after she died that I suspected, because she never said a word about getting pregnant, who the father was, who she …’
Albert reaches out and pats my hand.
I got my strength and I need to be remembering it.
‘You’ve waited a long time, young lady. Have a little more patience and do this our way. I know that’s hard, but it’s how we’ll get them, put them away for good.’
I’ve never seen a man so full of sadness. Pappy looked sad sometimes, especially when Mambo started up, but he never looked like Albert Gaudet. I guess if Pappy was alive right now and he was hearing about me, he sure would look just like him. I don’t know how I can help, but I’m going to do all I can. Now they know all about me.
‘Can you give us a description of Seymour?’ asks Jackson. He opens his notepad.
‘He was younger than Mr McIntyre, but more portly, he wasn’t small like Mr McIntyre. He was a full head and shoulders bigger than him. Blond hair, dirty, always sort of tangled, never used a brush or comb, I would say. He never went much on hygiene, and he drank all the time. Always full of liquor already, and still drinking. I guess he was what you’d call a heavy drinker. I remember how he talked too, it was different. It’s a long time ago now. but I never heard anybody speak like that. It was different.’
‘And you hurt him. Arletta.’
I remind myself that I’m sitting with friends. They need my help and I’m glad to be giving it.
‘I wanted it to stop. I never planned it or anything like that, it’s just when he turned up that day I was feeling like I wasn’t able to be taking any more of it. I got about as desperate as anybody was ever gonna get.’
I don’t look up at them. My life feels like it could be sliding into an empty shell and I start wondering if things are going to be different now folks know about me. I go through how I heard him coming and hid out back, then I saw the fish knife.
‘I just knew it was going to hurt him, enough to make sure I wasn’t going to have to do it with him right there and then. I never thought past that. They’d got me so I couldn’t think straight at all. I thought I’d killed him – I mean, I thought he was going to bleed to death. I never saw him or Mr McIntyre after that, but I didn’t know if that’s because Mr Seymour was still alive and told him, or if he was found dead out our way and Mr McIntyre put two and two together. I just didn’t ever know.’
‘It was a very brave thing for a little girl to do,’ says Albert. ‘Why did you never tell your parents?’
‘I don’t know who my father is and when I tried telling my ma about it, she never believed me. Well, she never heard much about it because of Mr McIntyre being a white man, and working in a bank, and black folks likely to get lynched just for accusing someone like him.’
The room is very quiet, it seems for a long time.
‘That’s the way it was for us folks.’ I whisper.
I reckon everyone is glad the silence was broken.
‘Thank you, Arletta. That wasn’t easy.’ Albert takes my hand again. ‘Arletta, would you go see Eveline sometime? See if she says the same thing about him?’
‘I guess so. We’ve both been through the same thing. I want to be sure about Mr Seymour too, if you think that’s okay. I want to be sure it’s him. When she’s well enough, and ready, yes, I guess I’ll go see her. I’ll help.’
Jackson plays with his hat, saying nothing. Errol pats my shoulder and Bette brings lemonade. The kids are silent someplace. Albert brings a cart to take me and Errol home.
I’m grateful to be back in Mrs Archer-Laing’s new kitchen and sitting on one of her uncomfortable ‘fad’ stools. I play around with Errol’s catfish and fennel and never manage to put as much as a spoonful into my mouth. He watches it get cold, then takes it away. I climb the polished staircase up to my room and sit at the window all night. Long after dark Errol knocks on the door and
brings me hot milk before he turns in. He doesn’t say a word. I stare down Main Street all night and not a living soul is to be seen out on the street. It was the longest night I ever had.
A couple of days later Albert and Jackson pull the bell-chain at Mrs Archer-Laing’s front gate and set the dogs off. That’s a couple of days when I can say Errol never managed to get a morsel of food past my mouth.
On the road over to see his daughter in the hospital, I sit up front with Albert. Jackson and Errol sit behind us.
‘She’d just finished school on Thursday and gone round the corner to see Grand-mère in the old house.’
I close my eyes and listen. I’m finding this world hard to bear and that’s the truth.
‘We lived there till last year, in the old house. We’ve only been where we are in the new place for eight months. She’s always popping back to see her grand-mère and grand-père, it gives her time to get spoilt. She’s good with the rest of the kids, being the oldest by a long chalk, and she’s a great help to Brigitte and me, so we’re happy for her to be the favourite back at Grand-mère and Grand-père’s. She got, she got … grabbed on the way home.’
His cheeks are running wet. He runs his hand under his nose and sniffles.
Then they realised she was missing. Only took them half an hour or so because her ma popped round to their grandparents’ house with the rest of the kids. Nobody saw or heard a thing. The force was out, all over town, the sheriff’s office had empty warehouses checked, back of the shops, into the fields. No one in the neighbourhood slept a wink, and then she was found at the side of the road by a couple of guys on their way to the cotton early next morning. She was hurt real bad.
‘They operated, did what they could,’ his voice is cracking, ‘so we’re hoping for the best. What else can we do?’
The hospital is a long, single-storey building on the edge of town with the smell of disinfectant hanging in the air. A long snake-like corridor, painted two shades of green, dark on the bottom, light on the top, has wards leading off on both sides. Inside the wards rows of tidy beds and flowery curtains line up on each side. Nurses walk about wearing stiff white uniforms and soft white shoes that squeak on the rubber flooring. Apart from the squeaking, it’s quiet and it strikes me if I’d thought about carrying Safi here myself she would likely still be alive. Trouble is, the only black face I see is my own.
What the River Washed Away Page 21