Eye for an Eye

by Mark C. Jackson

  I sat up coughing and felt my neck. Though there was blood, it was not mine and nothing seemed to be broken. I still held my knife.

  I lay back and stared past the stunned faces of Sophie’s customers, to the stained-glass window. The moon no longer glowed. It was as if the whole room had dimmed.

  “Zebadiah.”

  I did not answer.

  “Zebadiah, we must go now,” Sophie whispered. “The questions have begun and we must go.”

  The man with the crooked eye leaned over Baumgartner, placed a finger under his nose and waited for a breath. He looked right at me, then Billy and shook his head. “Your brother ain’t gonna be too happy ’bout this. That you was here fer this.” He shook his head again and I thought I caught a smile. “Didn’t figure on anybody killin’ this tough old bastard,” he said, with more whim than regret.

  Billy faced his acquaintance. “The only way my brother’s gonna know I was here is if you tell him you saw me here, Eddy.”

  “What I saw was a goddamn Nigger hand a white feller a knife to kill another white feller.” Eddy frowned and looked down at Baumgartner. “Somebody’s gonna pay, the nigger or the white feller. Maybe both. Now, the nigger’s gone, skeetered out the back like a chicken shit. But the white feller . . .”

  I tried sitting and with Billy’s help, stood on my own.

  I turned to Eddy. “Killed him fair.”

  “Matter of opinion, mister.”

  Billy and I almost touched shoulders. I clutched my knife and he held his hands in his coat pockets. Eddy casually rubbed his right palm on the handle of his knife and began to laugh. “Mr., you all covered in blood like that, wore out from fightin’. Hell, nearly dyin’s what I saw. You gonna take me?” He looked at Billy and scoffed. “You ain’t shit, Billy, you fuckin’ drunk.”

  A click, then another click, as if a pistol had been double-cocked. Billy held the smallest double-barreled gun I had ever seen pointed right at Eddy’s head.

  “Ain’t very large, mate. But I suppose it will blow your bloody face clean off.”

  Eddy turned and looked up at the landing. The crowd of gentlemen was gone, discreetly escorted, I suppose, out some back passage then around to their carriages. The only one left was young Juliette. She held an old flintlock pistol pointed at him.

  Sophie stood at the open front door. “Edward Jacks, it appears to be your move.”

  “Time will come, Billy Frieze. Time will come,” Eddy said, facing us. He took one last look at Baumgartner, snatched his hat from Sophie, and walked out into the rain. She closed the door gently, locked it, and stood facing her marble staircase and parlor, now quiet, with a dead man lying on the floor in a pool of blood. She shook her head in disgust.

  I reached down and gathered in my hand what little hair Baumgartner had. I scalped him, cutting the back of his head and peeling the skin forward. With another cut above the forehead, I pulled his scalp off and tucked it into my belt. I did not care what anyone thought, I deserved my prize and I took it.

  I did not sing him a death song.

  “Who’s your brother?” I asked as I scrubbed blood off my face.

  Billy sat back on the bed, head lowered, with a bottle squeezed between his legs.

  I kicked the mattress. “Who’s your goddamned brother?”

  He looked up. “Figured you might kill him, not scalp him.”

  “It’s my way . . .” There was no mirror in Sophie’s sleeping room. “Is the blood gone?”

  He ignored me. “So every man you killed, you scalped?”

  “Don’t mean nothin’ to them. Means everything to me.” I laid the soaked cloth on the edge of the water bowl. “It’s who I am.”

  Billy nodded. “It’s who you are . . .”

  “Yer brother, Billy?” I kicked the mattress again, harder. Whiskey sloshed out of the bottle onto Billy’s britches. He did not seem to notice.

  “He’s my half-brother.”

  The door clicked behind me. I spun around and pointed my unloaded pistol at Sophie.

  “You must come with me now,” she said with panic in her voice.

  “I’m still covered in the bastard’s blood.”

  “No matter, Monsieur Brody is down the stairs with several men, including Jacks, to gather the dead man’s body and to take him away. And, he’s wanting you . . .” Not able to stand still, she paced back and forth in front of the door.

  With dead calm, I stood staring out the window, to the black, rainy night. Time seemed to mean nothing. My deed was done. With Baumgartner dead, I saw no reason to stay in New Orleans. I pulled out the doctor’s travel case and opened it up on the bed.

  “Zebadiah, there is no time, if they find you, they will kill you.” Sophie pleaded.

  It mattered none to me what she said. In seconds, I stripped off the blood-soaked clothes and pulled on my buckskins. I slipped my moccasins on then placed my knife, Frenchy’s knife, and my brother’s tomahawk in my belt. I loaded the pistol, swearing never to be caught un-armed again.

  “Mate, she’s right, they will kill you.” Billy stood in front of me.

  I looked at him and took a long breath, then to Sophie I said, “Figure I’ll be goin’.” She had stopped pacing and stared at my belt, as if she saw something in the dull shine of the steel.

  “You must leave that here.” She gently pushed me aside, picked up the travel case, and slid it under the bed. “Where did you get that?” she asked calmly, pointing to Frenchy’s knife. Her piercing black eyes showed more than the fear of the evening’s events.

  Juliette appeared at the door. With a frantic look she gave Sophie two or three signs with her hands and fingers then pointed to the dark hallway. I heard footsteps on the stairs below and men’s angry voices echoing up the back passage.

  “We cannot go there,” Sophie whispered. She shut and locked the door. The muffled voices were getting closer.

  “I can meet ’em in the hallway,” I exclaimed.

  Sophie strode to the wall opposite the window and shoved her hip against it. A piece of the wood panel gave way to reveal a secret passage. Juliette ducked through the hole. With only her hand showing, she summoned me to follow. Sophie pushed me toward her. “My Juliette will take you to a safe place.” The men were pounding at the door.

  “You must go!”

  I laid a hand on my pistol. Part of me thought I could stand and fight. The truth, I was wrung out and was not yet ready to die. I entered the low, narrow passage. As Juliette silently closed up the wall, I saw Sophie jump on the bed with Billy. Seconds later, there was a crash, then silence. Through the wood, I heard Sophie say, “Monsieur Brody, you broke my door.”

  I followed Juliette between the walls of the rooms to an enclosed staircase. In total darkness, we spiraled down three stories to the kitchen and out the back door. Staying in the shadows, we walked around the side of the house to Liberty Street. A carriage sat in front with the driver leaning against one of the porch pillars, out of the rain. With my arm around Juliette, we stepped into the muddy street. The man came off the porch blowing a whistle. Juliette grabbed my sleeve and tried to run. I stopped and pulled my pistol, took aim, and shot him.

  We ran the rest of the way to the wharf where a small boat lay moored. Two hooded men stood ready to shove off. I hesitated, watching Brody and Jacks burst out of Sophie’s front door and go to their driver lying in the street. Another man slowly walked to the edge of the porch and stood there. He was not looking at the three men, he was looking toward the wharf at us.

  It was Billy.

  With help from one of the boatmen, I joined them and we were pushed away from land. Soon, the lamps of Sophie’s house disappeared among the black trees of the swamp.

  CHAPTER 24

  I had never before seen a lizard as large as a keelboat. With a rope strung around the massive body, it hung upside down from a tree near the shack. The heavy, spiked tail drooped down well past its bound back feet. The snout took up most of its head with rows and row
s of jagged, pointed teeth that gleamed brighter than the pale light of dawn.

  I stood with my head cocked, staring at the monster. The old Negro man slouched beside me.

  “Na this here gata, he be mean sum bitch. Took me year ta catch him.” He held up his left arm, wrapped in some kind of long grass. “Took hisself a’ ’lil bite ’fore I kilt him.” He shuffled over and stuck a finger into a small slit on its head. “Ya know how ya kill a gata?” The old man placed the crumpled, bloody finger to the middle of his own forehead. “With a knife, right ’tween the eyes.”

  “Like killin’ a bear, ’cept you go for its heart.”

  He turned sideways to face me. “Son, you kilt a bear?”

  “No . . . but my brother has.”

  “Yer brother’s a mighty man,” he stated and walked slowly toward the shack, motioning me to follow. “Hungry?”

  I had not eaten since Juliette served me supper the evening before. I was also bone tired for I had traveled all night through the swamp.

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  The man stopped. “Son, don’t you never call me sir ’gain, hear?” Without glancing back, he walked onto the porch and into the shack.

  I stood alone, surrounded by the skins of skunks, muskrats, and minks. The smell of stale blood and salt filled the air. Gata hides of all sizes lay piled up at the side of the porch, some with their head and teeth still attached and some with tails simply hacked off. Right at the edge of the clearing was a heaping pile of bones, most I did not recognize. Though I did not know who the old Negro was, I felt strangely akin to him and his ways.

  “Come on in, son,” he hollered from the shack.

  I stepped onto the porch and felt it move a little. I was not used to a house built on stilts out over the water. I smelled biscuits and seemed to forget everything except for how hungry I was.

  But for the fire burning in a small stone fireplace, the only light in the shack shone through a smoke hole in the thatched roof. A single beam shone down onto the lower body of another man, dressed in clean, pressed trousers. The rest of him was in shadow. I pulled my knife.

  “You look most natural wearing those buckskins, Mr. Creed.” Olgens Pierre leaned into the sunlight and smiled. “Quite the armament you wear around your waist.”

  I stumbled, catching myself in a fish net hung near the door. Olgens swiftly stood and managed to keep me from falling head first into the fire. After I settled into a low-slung chair, the old man handed me a bowl of what looked like a biscuit covered in white corn mush. “These here is grits,” he said and moved to the shadows near the back of the shack.

  Olgens sat back down and watched me eat. After a while, he asked, “How long have you known Sophie?”

  My eyes adjusted to the sunlight that streaked through cracks in the walls. All around me, different kinds of plants hung from the ceiling. Three dead chickens were strung together and hung by the open window. Flies buzzed all around them. It smelled of smoke, blood, mold, and fish. Olgens sat across from me on the other side of the fireplace. He seemed not to be the same person he was the night before. Still seated in shadow, his eyes reflected the fire.

  “You got outta there quick,” I mumbled with a mouth full of grits.

  “Had to, they would have killed me outright.”

  I nodded. “Suppose so.”

  “How long have you known Sophie?” he asked again.

  “Why’d you help me?”

  “I had no choice, he was killing you.”

  I looked away, glanced back to him, and then looked away again. It was a hard truth to swallow that a man had gotten the best of me, and by his two hands, I was on my way to dying.

  “Two years,” I answered.

  “Have you shared her bed?”

  I remembered her dance and song two nights before, her standing naked, with me in a trance, obliged to do only her bidding. Flashes of wind, rain, flesh, sweat, and heat flooded my mind. There was no love in our acts, only passion and lust.

  “Of course.”

  Olgens shook his head. I could not tell if he wore a smile or a frown.

  The old man took my empty bowl and threw it into a pot of water sitting outside the door, stepped off the porch, and disappeared.

  “What’s it matter, her and I? She’s been with so many men ya couldn’t even count.”

  At this, Olgens did smile and nodded in agreement. “Indeed, maybe thousands.”

  “Let me ask you a question, why’s a Negro like yourself tied in with a woman like her?”

  He hesitated. Then, “She is my sister.”

  I slid back in my chair as he leaned forward into full sunlight. At first, I saw nothing. Then slowly, there came a resemblance, the same high cheekbones and short nose. Though her skin was light and his dark, they both had the same piercing, black eyes. I was reminded of a young girl who had eyes as black. She lived in St. Louis, in a whorehouse with her father.

  “Why the secrecy, then?” I asked.

  “It would not be good for business if folks knew, for her or for me.”

  I had one more question. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you are the one who will help us.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Creed, you.”

  “How?”

  “You will help Sophie keep her place of business out of Benjamin Brody’s hands. And, you will help spirit away our brother’s wife and children, back to Haiti with me.”

  “Why should I do these things?”

  “As I said last night, after handing you your knife, you owe me, sir.”

  I sank deeper into the chair. I had gone to New Orleans to kill one man, two if Brody should get in my way. Though I was certainly grateful to be alive, I had not asked for any of this retribution.

  “An’ if I should walk on outta this shit swamp, an’ leave this mess behind?”

  Olgens shook his head. At the door, the old man began to laugh, a cackling sound, like a rooster deep in the forest. “Son, I get lost in this here swamp an’ I live here most a’ fifty year now,” he said, continuing to laugh.

  “Pawpaw is right; you will not get out alive.” Olgens pointed toward the door, to the lizard, the gata hanging from the tree. “Mr. Creed, there are many more where he came from.” Looking outside, I could see its tail hanging almost to the ground.

  Sunk I am, deep in the mud of this goddamn black water. No way out but through their good graces . . . I stood and stretched, my hands almost touching the ceiling of the shack. Olgens also stood.

  “I’ll do your bidding, seems I have no choice.”

  “Ah, Mr. Creed, there are many choices one may make. It’s choosing the right and honorable path that brings us to triumph.”

  Somewhere inside of myself, I knew he spoke the truth. I felt it time to change the subject of our conversation.

  “Why don’t you have an accent, like your sister?”

  Olgens smiled. “I learned a long time ago, sir, not to give away where I come from.”

  I thought for a second about my failed attempts at disguising who I really was. “Truth is,” I offered, “a man always shows himself, sooner or later.” Jumping into the pit to try to save Brigham came to mind. I absently touched the handle of Frenchy’s knife.

  “Ah, yes, but the prudent man will show himself by his own will, not by circumstance.” He paused to catch my eye. “Are you a man of prudence, Mr. Creed?”

  I was not sure what prudence meant. I merely nodded in agreement. Olgens also nodded, though with a look of disbelief that I knew anything of what he spoke. He leaned his head back and laughed out loud, cackling like the old man. After wiping tears from his eyes he said, “Zebadiah, a hungry, young panther you are, chasing the marsh birds that simply fly away. Prudent is the alligator that rests silent in the water all day, until the bird lands gently on its snout. Then . . .” He clapped his hands together, right at my nose. “Snap!”

  I jumped. The old man and Olgens laughed together, slapping each o
ther on their backs until they both stood facing me, out of breath.

  “How did ya say you killed the gata?”

  “Right ’tween the eyes!” They both shouted, making stabbing motions with their hands.

  I nodded and smiled.

  Through the afternoon and evening, I slept. Olgens and the old man seemed to come and go without much mind to me snoring in a hammock near the rear of the shack. Between fitful sleep and lying awake in the dark, I thought I heard my brother, right outside, cutting, scraping, and stretching hundreds of beaver hides. Early the next morning, as dawn was breaking, I woke to the familiar putrid smell of a tub of fat boiling into tallow. It must have been cut from the alligator, for when I glanced outside, the monster no longer hung from the tree.

  The grits were better than the morning before. Maybe the food and the smells were growing on me, as were Olgens Pierre and his grandfather. After fishing all afternoon along the banks of the bayou, they took me out at twilight, hunting for gatas. We did not see a one.

  That evening, we fried up the catfish and croakers we had caught and ate them along with greens and chopped cattail roots. After the fine supper, Olgens offered up a pipe and a bottle. As we sat around the fire, he told me a story.

  “We came as boys to this swamp, my brother and I, from Haiti around 1800. Not far from here is where we grew up, south toward the gulf ’tween Terre Bonne and Barataria, in a village hidden away from the rest of the world.” He paused to take a puff off his pipe. “Born free we were, and have stayed free. Pa and Pawpaw as well.”

  “Barataria?”

  “Lafitte’s kingdom. Today it is in ruins, but in the day was quite prosperous, for valuable goods and slaves . . . stolen and resold.”

  “Who is Lafitte?”

  Olgens stared at me in disbelief. “You have not heard of the famous buccaneer Jean Lafitte?”

  I thought for a second then said, “Nope, can’t say as I have. Who is he?”

  “The last of the great captains he was. His own man, free from any government in the world, except for the one he built with his own hands and blood, I’m afraid. Made up of seafaring swaggards the likes that Grand Terre or the whole of Louisiana will never see again.” He took a drink. “My brother and I ran goods for his operation, to Haiti and back we would go, selling all kinds. Is how we made our fortune and bought the property we,” he stopped. “I own . . .”