Moody was confused. He looked at Joseph for an explanation. Did Joseph not understand these things, almost better than anyone else? But that quickly Joseph had jerked his head away from Moody and Henriette. He was staring at something amorphous that had risen up out of the brush.
There, behind Vivi, loomed the devil’s outline itself, bearing down upon her, with a knife.
XXXVII
WHAT WAS IT that had paralyzed Joseph? For all his experience and instinct, one would have expected something more from him than fear. But at the sight of the assassin engulfing this shadow of the woman he loved, Joseph had found himself unable to move.
Everything he had ever run from was in front of him. Joseph’s bravery all of those years, and what he had endured … the hard floorboards of freight trains, sleepless nights in old barns, and the monotony of crouching silently in tunnels. He had been running from himself—his own shameful place in the world. And today he had been found, in those swamps.
There was Vivi. He saw Vivi. The murderer held her in his grip. He had her head in his hand, the blade of his knife to her throat.
“She yours?” the man said. “Don’t think I don’t know who you are, Fifty Two.”
Joseph could make no reply.
And then Moody stepped up.
“It’s me you want,” Moody shouted. “Me—not her.”
Wilcox glanced from Joseph to Moody.
“I want the nigger too,” he said. “I want to watch you kill your nigger.”
His grip tightened on Vivi’s hair, which now he pulled back to expose more of her throat.
“Have him throw you his gun,” Wilcox said. “I know he’s got it on him.”
Joseph looked at Moody, but Moody had locked eyes with the murderer. Wilcox pressed the knife harder against Vivi’s throat, and the skin beneath the blade began to pucker.
Wilcox remained fixed on Moody.
“Tell him to throw it,” he repeated.
Beside Joseph, Yellow Henry released a slow, heavy breath. He searched for counsel in her eyes, but she too was staring at Vivi and Wilcox.
Then Wilcox twisted his wrist, and the edge of the blade went into Vivi. She remained silent, her eyes gazing out toward the trees, as a tiny dribble of blood emerged beneath the steel at her throat.
“No!” Joseph shouted.
And at last the murderer averted his glance. The horrible black eyes revealed only vacancy—and evil.
Joseph fumbled to release the small pistol from his sleeve.
“That’s a good nigger,” Wilcox said. “Now throw it. I won’t ask you again.”
Joseph tossed the gun to Moody, and Moody caught it between his hands. Moody looked at the pistol, and gripped it, but he would not raise his eyes.
“Now!” Wilcox shouted.
Then Moody looked up at Joseph. Joseph could see a different kind of vacancy in those eyes too.
Joseph nodded.
No words were exchanged between them, but the conversation that sounded was so powerful that one could almost hear it amongst the cacophony of the insects. Moody held the pistol firmly, but his pleading glance at Joseph said that he could never kill this man.
And then there was Joseph, who, in his resignation, was somehow confirming that there was nothing wrong with this ending.
Again, Joseph nodded—the most imperceptible tilt of the head. Vivi was far from him now, yet the eyes of glass were close.
Moody raised his arm, cocked the pistol, and paused.
A stifling cloud of malevolence had suffused with the island’s moisture—a kind of humidity that defied all borders, like fingers creeping closed around a throat. Everything Joseph had fought for, everything he had suffered, would all come to nothing in this wilderness.
Or would it? She was there, before him—Vivi. They had found her, and when he was gone, someone would still be there, to bring her out. Joseph trusted in the righteousness of these things, even though men like Wilcox often won their battles. But there was something else here … a journey that had been too important and too wonderful to simply come to this. When Joseph was gone, a long-sought rectitude would follow him, and his spirit would finally be free.
And then it happened—a mysterious thing. The impossible flew in with the shadows. How, or exactly when it happened, Joseph could not tell. But now, in the awful arms of Wilcox, something else was slumping: instead of Vivi, a life-sized rag doll, without the slightest sign of life in its floppy limbs. The doll’s eyes were black buttons, its mouth a zigzagged line of stitches. This was what Vivi had been.
Yellow Henry let out a “Ha!” and Joseph turned to see Vivi at her side. On the shore, they stood fearless, like soldiers. Yellow Henry held the bucket, for that’s what mattered to her most, while Vivi held out a dusty pile of something in her hand.
Then a sharp burst of air—the bullet of someone’s breath—and a cloud of powder that made its way toward the assassin. The cloud traveled a distance, never lingering in place but always swirling toward its target, like an unmoored galaxy in search of a place to land.
Wilcox stumbled backwards, his face now covered with the fine, pale dust. His eyes were shut, and he was forced to scratch at them.
Vivi’s palm was outstretched … her lips still puckered from the dusty blow.
Then Wilcox thrashed and released a horrible scream, before the brush grabbed him, and returned him to hiding.
Through all of this Edward Moody had watched with the same astonishment as Joseph. But what in the past he might have dismissed with disbelief suddenly made sense to him. She was gone, and yet so much of her was still there. He could not deny that she was everywhere—everywhere around him now. The words came back to him: She is yours. Keep her, guard her. The voice embraced him, soothed him, even as the leaves began to melt, and a familiar lightness blurred his vision.
He touched his lips—they were chalky. Some stray flecks of powder had also reached him.
Vivi—again Vivi! Moss mingled with her hair, like lace. She was standing with Henriette, and hadn’t realized how close he had been. There was only so much the swamp would permit, and the powder …
Perhaps he would die. Perhaps Edward Moody would finally die. Perhaps in saving him, Vivi would kill him.
But no sooner had these thoughts taken hold in Moody’s mind when the water came, and drenched his whole body. Henriette had hinted at it time again: the water would save him after all.
“We are done here, photographer.”
The empty bucket was in Henriette’s hands.
“Time to go—he will be back. A boat will be waiting for you—beyond.”
Vivi was already in the pirogue, making ready for the separation, and Moody climbed in after her. The swamp had calmed into a lullaby for the moment, but there was an uneasiness about the island, and there were those who had not recovered.
“And you—Joseph Winter—” Henriette added. “You must go too. This is no time to fail.”
She fingered one of her bracelets.
“But first … I think this is for you.”
She twisted her fingers around a knot, and unfastened the bracelet. It hung for a moment, like limp grass, between her fingers. Then she took Joseph’s hand and clasped the leather strap upon his wrist. The countless others who stayed behind would never miss this one little piece.
“Do you know who this is?” Henriette said, her fingers still knotting the band.
Joseph felt the coolness and the smoothness of the leather … felt the brush of Henriette’s fingers as she joined this emblem to his wrist. And then, at that moment, Joseph perceived the whole meaning … or who the bracelets represented, as monuments on the old woman’s arms. Henriette had been carrying all of them. For decades, she had carried them all.
“She will go with you,” Henriette said. “You came here looking for her, didn’t you?”
Joseph gazed into Henriette’s eyes. The mud and the cypress trees were her stage. Henriette’s eyes were of so many mothers and daughte
rs. The eyes of wives, and of children … of the dead and the living.
Then the eyes hardened.
“Now go,” she finally said.
Henriette reached into her pocket and pulled out her own pistol. She flashed it in the air with pride. Then her face was distorted by one of her odd, smiling frowns—a kind of mysterious revelation of all the tempered pleasures she had ever felt. She parted her lips, and seemed about to laugh, but no sound came from her mouth. Then swiftly, she moved away from them, toward the torn curtains of the island’s brush after Wilcox, and without another word she was gone.
VIVI PUSHED THE boat away from the island. They were moving again in the direction of Henriette’s cabin, where the little eyes of light had been puncturing the darkness all along.
They had gone out into the water some distance from the island, when Joseph, who had been silent, began to stir.
“No,” he finally said.
Vivi and Moody looked at him.
“No—I must go back.”
There was something on the island still waiting for him, but Moody could never have understood this.
“This is no time for heroics,” Moody said flatly. “There is nothing for you here anymore.”
“But there is—” Joseph said. “And there always will be.”
And with that he quietly escaped over the boat’s edge.
“Joseph!” Moody shouted.
But there was no pulling this man back.
“I will find you,” Joseph said, as he began swimming in the other direction. “You must go ahead, Edward … I will find you. You must take her away.”
“No, Joseph! This—”
Joseph was far off in the water, having already become one with the swamp. Like Vivi, he was a student of its habits and secrets, and there was nothing that Edward Moody could do.
“Joseph! Joseph!” Moody cried one last time.
But he was calling out for something that had already disappeared.
Vivi resumed the journey and Moody sat at the head of the boat. The place, Moody knew, was leaving him. Joseph’s bold move did not alter their course, and in no time they were a good distance from both the island and Yellow Henry’s.
It was quiet.
There were croaks, and strange splashes, but still there was quiet. Until the gunshots split the encroaching night’s peace.
Gunshots—two gunshots. One right after another.
The horrible sounds had come from the darkness—from the crossroads, now far behind them.
XXXVIII
THROUGH THE SWAMP, the pirogue glided—an amphibious arrow that parted the water. The frogs eyed Moody with intrepid suspicion. He had never belonged there, and it was time for him to go.
With Vivi.
Who was she?
There was something in the eye, something in the face, that made Vivi more than who she seemed. Moody wanted to believe nothing more than a fantasy … that Vivi had somehow magically emerged from Isabelle, right at the moment of her mother’s death. Vivi was a vessel that had sprung up to carry a spirit. A nymph made from Isabelle, and water.
But that could not have been so. Moody knew that it was not so. There were things that were true, and things that were not. The things Moody believed, no matter how much he wanted to believe them, would not necessarily be true.
Who was she?
It may have been hours before the pirogue reached a clearing, for the cypresses and their knees remained dense for a very long time. There had been constant darkness in the swamp because of the dense canopy of the trees, but when the boat passed through its last grove, a fading sky revealed the day. How far into the day they were, Moody could not exactly tell, but the sun could not have dipped beyond the horizon more than moments ago. It was gone now—the sun—tucked away somewhere in the distance, happy to give way to the whispers that accompanied the approaching dusk.
In the marshlands, the last cypresses lingered with Moody and Vivi for some time … in groups of twos and threes, but sometimes in straight lines. The trees lined edges of bayous as Vivi steered the boat through the water—the water that would eventually kill these trees, as it mixed with the salt coming in. At last, in an open expanse of rippling water, they passed one old sentinel, still standing—alone and isolated. The salt had done its work upon him long ago, and his leaves had long left him, and his branches had dropped away. All that remained of him was a thick trunk and two arms, with frail wisps of moss held against the trunk by the wind.
From a dark hump near the tree, a bird inspected the travelers. It seemed about to ask them something, when it stretched its wings, and flew away.
The water grew misty as the sky turned pink. There were islands now … or clusters of trees crowding clumps of land. The islands floated like clouds upon the water, limned with gray vapors that obscured where the shores began. There were reflections in the water—the sky, the small islands, the mirror of the mist itself—and in this perfect gateway of pink and black and gray, a silence pronounced the end of time.
They continued, and more land began to appear, though it never became greater than the water. Something like a coastline now and then came into view, before being swallowed up again by the mighty thing that ruled there. At one point they saw movement as they passed a higher strip of land—a lone farmer bleeding a pine tree for turpentine.
Then there was the boat, just as Henriette had said. It was there in the water—ahead.
Vivi guided the pirogue toward the boat—a small craft that held two masts. It was sitting there in front of them, as still as one of the islands, its whiteness almost garish in the serenity of this open space.
“Do you know who is there?” Moody said.
Vivi nodded.
They were close enough now so that Moody could see the men. There was a crew—mostly negroes—and standing in front of them, Father Thomas.
The look on Father Thomas’s face was strained.
“Joseph …” he said, as Vivi brought the pirogue in closer.
But Moody’s hard expression revealed the answer to that unasked question.
Some of the crew helped rope the pirogue to the boat as Moody and Vivi disembarked. Father Thomas embraced both of them, which was an odd thing for Moody, now part of this family.
Moody explained that Joseph had returned to Henriette … after Vivi had saved them from the assassin.
“We must send someone in to look for him,” Father Thomas said.
And he turned, and spoke a muffled order to the crew.
“Henriette’s network is vast within these swamps,” he said. “We will bring him back. God willing, we will bring him back …”
The boat began to move, slowly at first, but then with more speed. They would go as far as Mobile, Father Thomas told them, and from there they could make their escape.
“To Boston,” Moody said.
“Boston?” the priest replied. “You would return there? Is it safe for you to return?”
Moody looked at Vivi. Her eyes were bright as stars.
“Boston,” Moody said, with an almost contemptuous tone, “is indeed the only place where I can keep this child safe.”
XXXIX
IN GARRETT’S MIND, it had all happened years ago now, even though only three weeks had passed. Garrett was losing time—or his sense of it at least. The photograph … the search … his periodic discussions with the police. All of this had been commingling within him.
Then a day came when the commingling reached its pitch. It was not something he could have ever foreseen.
Elizabeth had insisted that he accompany her to Washington Street—on errands. They had not been downtown together since the photograph.
“Why?” he had returned.
Her reasoning had been shrewd.
“People are starting to talk,” she had said to him. “I’m hearing it, and I don’t like what I’m hearing. They need to see that you’re in good health. That we are in good health. The way you’ve been going about town, in a
nd out of coffeehouses … you can’t expect people not to talk.”
She was cold. When had she become so harsh and cold? But then, for one moment, she broke.
“I think they are afraid,” she said.
And then she added:
“I’m afraid.”
It was true … for the past three weeks Garrett had not felt or behaved like himself. Something had been happening to him—something he could not explain. There was a weakness in his heart that was having its effect over his every thought and movement. He didn’t know if he needed to give in to that weakness, or if it was something he should continue to fight.
And he certainly couldn’t ask Elizabeth.
“Very well,” he had said. “I will go.”
The traffic on Washington Street that day was particularly hectic, since the construction of a new hotel on Tremont was redirecting carriages and omnibuses to alternative channels. The people on the street seemed more numerous too, it being a pleasant day—an ideal one for spending.
He would not remember the stores, or the people, or what they said. The vision would be all that he remembered.
They were walking.
Men in bowlers, boys with boxes, and young professionals rushed past. Women with closed parasols casually sauntered by store windows. A horse whinnied, and then grunted—it had had enough of the tugs to its reins.
Elizabeth held his arm and walked closely beside him. They had not been this close since—
He remembered the spark flashing. Or did he ever remember? Perhaps he would never remember anything at all.
The sun had hit the window at the moment of their passing—the window across the street, filled with silver.
The flash blinded him, and he stumbled … not enough to cause alarm. It was more of a pause, which held him and Elizabeth for a moment, locked in their footsteps and staring across the street.
The door opened, and then the two familiar figures emerged on the doorstep. One of them was the scoundrel, and the other stared Garrett in the face.
Isabelle.
Isabelle?
Had that been her name after all? He had forgotten her name at some point during the years—hidden it, suppressed it. Murdered it even.
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