An hour after the noise stopped, there came the slashing sound of a machete and the cracking of downed brush. At last, Phoebe spotted them. “Look there, coming on through. There’s that big man Snake Eye, ahuffin’ and apuffin’, and he’s got Jesse and Thomas with him. Lord have mercy. My son is on their side.”
Louis came out to stand on the porch for the first time in years. This one time, he would not let his woman stand alone. He saw the men. They seemed done in and rattled after their trek through the thicket. When they reached the porch, Snake Eye and Thomas slid down to the steps. Jesse stood apart and peered at the Monets with eyes as cold as a deep creek in the dead of winter.
Thomas read his mother’s mind and took her hand in his. “No one wants to hurt him, Mama. I still think of him as my father, but the time for truth has come. I have seen it in a vision that will not leave me.” Phoebe clung to her son and sobbed.
Emotional people made Snake Eye nervous. He was ready for answers. “Mr. Monet, if you have anything you want to tell me, speak now. The sheriff's men have loaded up a skeleton, and they’ve taken it to the coroner’s office in Morgans Bluff. Save them some trouble by telling us if it is indeed Cyrus McCann. We already know you disposed of his body, and we know Buck Hennessy helped hide you out here. He’s admitted it.”
“Listen to me, ” Phoebe said. “Buck Hennessy’s a man of honor. He’d never help any man he thought had murdered someone.”
Jesse nodded in agreement. “Of that one thing I am sure.”
“Beg your pardon, but I think otherwise. I think Mr. Monet is a murderer,” Higgins said.
Sparks of indignation lit Phoebe’s dark eyes. “We’ve come to this too late. Can’t you see that?”
Snake Eye ignored her and stared directly at Louis. “We found the remains of only one person—an adult male. That makes it real simple. So tell me if the bones we lifted from the bottom of Blue Hole are the remains of Cyrus McCann? I know you remember where you placed the body. No one forgets a thing like that. ”
When he finally spoke, Louis’ words came in a ragged groan. “Mizan Mi! How did you find him? No one dared go in those treacherous waters, in all these years. None could reach the bottom. The body was safe there. I just knew he was safe.”
“Someone did make it to the bottom, Mr. Monet,” Jesse said. “Doesn’t matter who. That person happened to find the remains by chance—that and a shotgun with initials carved into the stock. We retrieved that too.” Jesse paused and let his last words hit their mark.
Higgins, on the other hand, was not one for subtlety. “Look here, Monet. If you were forced to do something you didn’t want to do, no one will fault you...not after all these years. You’ve been in a prison out here of your own making. In a way you’ve already been dealt your punishment. You are saying that it was there that you hid the body? Was it you who took the man's life?”
A single tear slid down Louis’ withered face. “Why do you need the truth now?”
Jesse moved up the steps to face Louis, and his tone was kind. “If for no other reason than to clear your conscience before you leave this earth.” The words had come without thought, and he knew they came from somewhere deep inside where the principles of Mama Kate lived as a part of his being. “You might say it heals not only your soul, but also those who rise for retribution.” Jesse wondered if he truly believed the words he had just uttered.
Louis searched Phoebe’s face, as if the answer lay between them like a broken stone wall held only by the mortar of shared guilt.
Phoebe reached up and squeezed Louis’ hand. “While you can still understand, I need for you to know. Thomas knows the truth about his father. These two good men know the truth of my transgression. You need not risk your soul to protect me any further.”
“There is yet one to protect in all this.”
“Yourself?”
“No, not I. If only I could take the blame of it all, but I am a part of what happened, as surely as if I took the breath from the man’s body.”
“Who yet lives that needs your protection?” Jesse asked.
Louis looked at his wife without replying. He looked at Thomas, the son he wished had been his—the son who spoke the language of his own family, but had not a drop of his blood. Thomas’ father had been murdered when Thomas was a baby. He deserved the truth. Yet Louis had sworn to keep the secret, even at the risk of punishment in the hereafter. So it was that the door to Monet’s soul slammed shut.
“Orevwa!” he said and shuffled back inside.
***
After the return to Morgans Bluff, Jesse and Snake Eye waited, while Sheriff Bridges leaned back in his swivel chair and scanned the forensic report. “Well, gentlemen, the victim had a condition they used to call “white leg”—tuberculosis in his legs and joints. The deformity and deterioration is evident in one of the leg bones. Added to that, those primitive dental fillings are in the exact teeth as Cyrus’ file indicates. Cyrus' dentist was the grandfather of a local dentist today. Lucky for us, he had the old files in his office.”
The sheriff laid down the papers and folded his hands across his chest. “Added to that, only one set of bones was found in Blue Hole, where Monet confirmed the location of the body. We have enough to say, conclusively, that this is the man.”
Jesse held the shotgun in his lap, tracing his finger over the initials on the stock. “Did it ever occur to either of you that this shotgun belonged to someone other than Louis Monet?”
“Come now, it could be none other than he. It has his initials, and he hid it, alongside the body.”
“The initials ‘L.M.’ could belong to one other person.
Both Bridges and Snake Eye looked as if a ton of bricks had landed on them.
19: Restitution
The door to the sheriff’s office opened, and in walked Thomas guiding Louis Monet, whose failing eyes shone with the light of a crusader. He came with measured steps, dressed in outdated but clean and pressed clothing. He came as either a martyr or a hero, and he did not know which. Either way, he came to tell a truth he had hidden for almost six decades. He was old now, and so he had changed his mind. He had decided to square things before he died. The men rose form their seat in respect.
“Bonjou. I've come to talk, and then do with me as you will.”
“We know how difficult this must be,” Jesse said.
“C'est la Vie,” Louis replied.
The sheriff offered him a comfortable chair, and waited patiently.
Louis’ eyes widened, as if he could see that wretched scene unfold. He was back in that hot moonlit night. He had never really left, but this time he faced the past head on, with stoicism. This time he would be the man he had always intended. Slowly, falteringly, he told them everything he could remember about July 20, 1864. In his mind it replayed with starling clarity:
***
Louis was tending to Baby Thomas early evening, while Phoebe finished canning the summer vegetables and placing the jars in the smoke house. There was a knock on the cabin door, and he opened it. Cyrus looked about anxiously before limping inside, favoring his swollen leg. He stood awkwardly, staring at the baby gurgling happily in Louis' arms.
Then he came to the reason for his impromptu visit: “I want my boy, Louis. I want to raise him in my house and give him all the advantages you can not.”
“No sir. As a man you consider an equal, I will say you can't right this wrong. You can't make this boy a member of your society. You would open both yourself and him to ridicule.”
“What have we to do with society—we who live in a world of our own in the middle of nowhere? No one needs to know whose child he is. He can live in my house with me as his guardian. For his sake, not mine, it would have to be that way.”
“But what about Lucinda? “
“I haven't told her as yet.”
“....and when you tell her, will she accept him?”
“She will, I believe, since she can’t have children of her own. This baby
will fill that empty hole in her heart.”
“Mr. McCann, you’re a dreamer. You cannot tell her. She's has no konpasyon. She’ll hate the boy for what he represents, for all the things she could not be for you. This is not about you and your vanity. It is about the child, and Thomas belongs with me and his mama.” He looked down at the floor and shook his head. “You know, I’ve always thought of you as an honorable man until now.”
“I’m a man, not a little tin god. I’m just a man who wants his son...as simple and as complicated as that. You and Phoebe think it over, and I know you’ll see the good of it. For now, let me just hold him.”
It was both a troubling and a tender sight for Louis to see the baby with his natural father. Cyrus cradled his son's head, as an expression of complete serenity came over him. Louis shifted his gaze to the window, upon hearing the rustling sound of a woman's skirts. Out in the darkness, someone moved in the shadows, and he found himself staring into Lucinda’s contorted face. The next moment, she released a high pitched wail and ran back toward the main house. She had followed her husband and had seen and heard all.
Louis reached for Baby Thomas. “Give me the baby, and go tend to your wife!”
A look of dread crossed Cyrus’ face. He looked at his son for what was to be the very last time.
When Phoebe returned from the cellar, twilight had come, bringing a white faced, red eyed Lucinda back to the cabin—without Cyrus.
“Tell me what’s on your mind, Lucinda,” Phoebe said as they both entered the cabin together.
“Stay away from me, Phoebe,” she replied. “I ought to run you off with a bullwhip.”
Lucinda eyes never left the baby in the crib. Her words came hoarse and toneless: “Louis, Cyrus wants you to come to the house. He’s sent me to fetch you. He’s taken sick and needs your help.”
“I won't go into your home, but I’ll go get the doctor for him.”
Phoebe's eyes plead with him to reconsider. “Please. Go see what help he needs, while I stay here with the baby. He asked for you. Maybe he needs your strong arm.”
“As much as he needed your tender embrace?”
Upon seeing his wife's sudden tears, he relented, and it was to be the biggest regret of his entire life. When he and Lucinda entered the house, Cyrus was sprawled on the floor, and a half empty tea glass was on the table next to a half eaten supper.
Louis knelt down and felt for, and found, a weak pulse. “What have you given him? What have you done?”
Lucinda's words came out stilted, as if rehearsed. “We argued about Phoebe and the baby. He asked for a glass of whiskey to calm his nerves, and so I gave him a drink, as a peace offering of sorts.” Then she gave him a sardonic smile. “I suppose my husband just can’t handle his liquor.”
“Cyrus doesn’t drink under any circumstances, especially not with the condition of his white-leg. What have you given him in his glass of tea?”
“Who are you to question me? Take him out to the dogwood tree. Now! Someone will be there waiting for you. You should be glad to even the score yourself, after what he’s done.”
Louis looked up to refuse her order and found himself staring into the end of a shotgun barrel.
“He’s not dead, Lucinda. We can save him.”
“Get up, and load him into the wagon. You have no say here.”
He thought of making an attempt to disarm her, but the barrel was two inches from his face. He did as he was told, for the meantime, without knowing her plan or his own. His heart raced, as he lifted a now semi-conscious Cyrus over his shoulder and took him to the field where he laid him down in the bed of a cotton wagon. With Lucinda riding shotgun, they went to the front of the property, where she directed him.
There beside the dogwood tree, in the twilight, stood Jonathan Bonney. In his hands he held an expertly fashioned noose, with the other end of the rope tied to a large branch. Jonathan said nothing but raised Cyrus to his knees in the wagon and placed the noose around his neck. Just as he tightened the noose, he saw, shining in the moonlight, a gold insignia ring on his victim's finger. Jonathan caught his breath and threw his arms up, releasing Cyrus, allowing him to fall face down in the wagon, with the rope still around the neck. “I can’t do this, Lucinda,” he said.
“I thought you wanted this. You wanted me and this land and that house. Yet when it came right down to it, you can't do it...and you a Night Rider at that. It wouldn’t have been the first deserter’s neck you stretched. What’s the difference?”
“Look on his finger, Lucinda. He wears the Masonic ring. You knew he was a member. Did you not realize I can’t lynch a Freemason, even if he happened to be a deserter. All hell would break loose.”
Standing straight up in the wagon, Lucinda had the look of one who had come to a high cliff and had overcome the fear of falling. She turned and aimed her shotgun, the one Cyrus had given her for protection. She lined it up at the back Cyrus’ head, as he lay there in the wagon. Louis grabbed for the weapon too late. Cyrus was gone in one gut wrenching, shattering moment. A man of good will had made one tragic mistake and had paid a price far steeper than should have been due.
“Bon Dieu!” Louis moaned.
The noose was still around Cyrus' neck, and the blast from the shot skittered the horses. They bolted, charging forward with the wagon, while Louis frantically tried to grab the reins. The man was already dead, but Louis could not allow him to hang for all to see. Cyrus quickly come to the end of his rope, when the wagon dashed forward and the slack ran out. The body broke free from the tailgate to dangle from the tree.
“Let him hang there,” Lucinda said, looking up by the light of the full moon. That ghostly light magnified the misery in her face. “I know what they’ll say...'another hanging by the Night Riders’ they’ll say. ‘He had it coming,’ they’ll say. And to think I did this for you, Jonathan. So let them believe whatever they will.”
Jonathan’s breathing was labored, and his face was bloodless white. “You didn’t do it for me. You did it because you felt worthless and unloved. You did it because Cyrus turned to another woman to give him what you couldn't. Or maybe we can blame it on that old full moon up there. But one thing's certain. You'd kill the child's mother too, if she weren’t helping you fulfill your almighty addiction.”
Lucinda looked at Jonathan as if he had struck her in the face. She stumbled from the wagon and threw herself down at the base of the dogwood, sobbing uncontrollably, while the body of the man who had been her husband swung above her. “What have I done,” she cried.
Louis could bear no more. “For the love of God, Jonathan, I beg you not to leave him hanging there. His spirit won't rest. It won't be able to leave!”
Jonathan was ready to take control of a situation that had spun out of control: “We’re not burying him in the ground. We don’t have time to dig a grave deep enough to keep the coyotes from unearthing him. All the same, we’re not leaving him hanging, so me and my riders take the blame. The Freemasons will come for me, and they have more power than any group in East Texas. It will be my neck. I’ll have to point the finger at you, Monet. I’ll tell them it was you who killed Cyrus as a part of the cotton workers' rebellion...or maybe the two of you argued. You had reason to argue, because of the adultery. It was your woman! I'll go along with whatever folks want to believe.”
“ You know what they’ll do to a man like me.”
“Ah well, everybody knows I’m a hardhearted bastard...except when it comes to that one neurotic woman lying there, crying over a dead man killed by her own hand. How do we explain who and why we love?”
“What is it you want me to do?” Louis asked softly.
“You go get the good cotton wagon, because you’re going on a little trip. Hide the body, along with Lucinda’s shotgun, since its engraved with her initials and has blood in the grain of the stock. Don’t take time to try to clean it. Take it and the body to the deepest, most inaccessible place in this county. Take it to Blue Hole. You know the p
lace. Keep your mouth shut, and nothing will happen to you and your family.”
A frail and failing Louis Monet looked around and realized he was sitting in Sheriff Bridges’ office. He had told the story. He had given up the secret, even though it compromised one whom he had long protected, one whom he had loved purely and from afar. It no longer mattered. He had been redeemed, and redemption was as solitary a step as death.
20: Resolution
The day before the funeral, the Morgans Bluff Gazette ran a front page story on the discovery of the skeleton:
McCann Remains Found at Blue Hole
Based on an admission provided by a former cotton worker named Louis Monet, the intact skeletal remains of one time owner of McCann Plantation, Cyrus McCann, were recovered yesterday at Blue Hole.
Monet maintains that although it was he who hid the body on the day of McCann's murder in 1864, someone else was the perpetrator. Sheriff Bridges says the old, long debated case will be wrapped up shortly, as new information surfaces.
The day they laid Cyrus McCann to rest, the primary emotion was relief. Yet there was one step left to set things right. Jerod Morgan rode into Morgans Bluff from the Renegade Native Village on a jaunty white horse. He came at the request of his daughter, Annie, and his mother Minna, and he came in the capacity of a Shaman. He was prepared to purify the house on Diablo Road. Jesse and Nathan were there waiting when he arrived.
“There can be no interference in the ritual,” Jerod explained. “Believe in the cleansing, and trust in me. Put aside your doubt and negativity, because the essence within the house feeds on it. You may enter with me, if you can control your mind and your emotions.”
“I can promise to be open-minded,” Jesse said. “I'm not a true believer, but there are practical matters involved. This is my chance to get in the attic and find Cyrus' personal effects. Buck told me they were stored in a box of books and was contained in one in particular. Besides, I'd like to know more about the man. That leaves me or Thomas to open the will and whatever else is there. Thomas has declined due to strong feelings.”
House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) Page 13