Bucky’s eyes opened wide. He looked at Tee Ray with admiration. “You got a chance to get Cottoncrest? How?”
“Anyone can see, Doc,” Tee Ray said savagely, “that all that fat has gone to your brain. You’re as crazy as Little Miss. It’s clear that the Jew did it. He killed them. He cut Rebecca. He killed the Colonel Judge. He planned it all. Jews are like that. Scheming. Sneaky. Full of mysterious ways and secret languages. Well, he ain’t gonna get away with it. Me and the others are going find him and bring him back so justice can be served.”
Tee Ray turned to Raifer. “That’s right, ain’t it Raifer. When I bring him in, you got to hold him, and he’s got to be tried. And then hung. Or maybe the hanging just ought to come first.”
Upstairs, behind the curtain, Jenny heard it all. She thought she had solved all of their immediate troubles the other night. But now it was clear that other problems were looming. She had to find Marcus and Sally quickly. There wasn’t much time.
Chapter 29
Marcus trudged down the road cautiously. He had been careful to slip out the back of the big house. Jenny and Sally were right. If anyone saw him, it would be all over.
It had been a good life. Not a great life, but a good life. No money, of course. Slaves didn’t get money before the war, and even now, what was a house servant to expect? They got what they needed, as long as they stayed where they were. Credit at the Cottoncrest sharecropper store; of course, they had to shop there during the permitted time—a half-hour before the store opened for the white sharecroppers and only if they used the back door and didn’t go inside. They also got a small cabin with a tin roof over their heads and a real wooden floor. That was something he and Sally really liked, that wooden floor. Plenty of food; there were always leftovers they could have after Sally had finished serving Little Miss and the Colonel Judge in the early years. And after Miss Rebecca came, she even made sure that Sally took back some of the sweets as well, to share not only with Marcus but also with Cubit and Jordan and their families.
But now all of that was over. After these many years on Cottoncrest, their time here was ending. Jenny was right. They had to get ready now to move. Tonight. The Knights were going to ride, and that meant nothing but trouble. But that wasn’t the worst. No. The worst was that thing with the usufruct and all.
He hadn’t understood it at first, and he made Jenny explain it to him three times before it began to sink in. He hadn’t ever paid any attention before to what the law said about when people die. Didn’t want to. The law never helped him, and he knew all he ever wanted to know about death anyway. He had seen more than enough. Sometimes it still haunted his dreams. That’s why he hated foggy days and smoky fields.
But Jenny knew a lot about what the law said about when people die. She said that whether someone like the Colonel Judge had children or not, the law controlled what happened to what he owned. If you had children, Louisiana forced you to leave at least half, and sometimes more, to them. But if you don’t have any children—if you can’t have children or if you had them and they have disappeared and gone forever— then it goes to your nearest blood relative. If your momma is alive, as the Colonel Judge’s was, then one fourth goes to her and the rest to your brothers or sisters, or if there are none of these, to your brothers’ and sisters’ children, and if there are none of these, to your nearest cousin.
This was all too confusing. Jenny said it all made sense, but it seemed just a waste of time. Who, but a few white people, would ever have enough after they died to worry about leaving anything but debts? But it got even more confusing. Jenny had said that the Colonel Judge really didn’t own all of Cottoncrest anyway. Now, that didn’t seem right. The Colonel Judge had been the General’s only surviving son. He ran the plantation. He made all the decisions.
But Jenny said that the Colonel Judge only owned half. The other half was owned by Little Miss, and even the Colonel Judge’s half was subject to what sounded like something dirty. “Usufruct,” she said. Marcus made her pronounce it again and again before he got it right. Strange word. Meant something about Little Miss not only owning half of Cottoncrest on her own but her also having the right to use and live and get all the profits from the Colonel Judge’s half as long as she was alive.
And now, whoever got the Colonel Judge’s part was getting it subject to Little Miss’s usufruct.
But with the Colonel Judge dead and with Little Miss not in any condition to make decisions about anything, who would take over the plantation? If Jenny wasn’t there to feed and bathe and clothe Little Miss every day, Little Miss would forget to eat and would waste away, not that she wasn’t already as thin and bony as Job’s turkey.
Jenny had overheard young Mr. Bucky say something about Tee Ray having a chance to get Cottoncrest, and that would have been enough to raise the fear of the devil in anyone. But when Jenny heard Tee Ray telling the Sheriff that Tee Ray was going to look for the Jew Peddler man, well, that meant the Knights were going to ride. And if the Knights were going to ride, no one was safe.
That was why Marcus had to get to Little Jerusalem as soon as possible to warn Cooper and Rossy and Nimrod and Esau and the others before the Knights came riding down on them.
Jenny had told Marcus to get out to Little Jerusalem and then not to come back to Cottoncrest. Don’t come back ever, she said. Even Sally had agreed, although there were a lot of tears. They would all meet up—Sally and Jenny and Marcus—at the spot they knew. Cubit and Jordan would get their kin out, and by tomorrow morning there would be no one left in the cabins near the big house.
The fact that Little Miss had to be left alone was terrible. But what they feared if they stayed was worse.
Marcus had walked almost three miles along the road that hugged the bank of the Mississippi River, although he was only a mile or so from Cottoncrest as the crow flies. The river twisted and turned and doubled back on itself in huge curves, some as long as a couple of miles, others longer. As Marcus passed the dirt road that cut west from the river through the cane fields, the road leading to the area where Tee Ray and the other sharecroppers’ homes nestled against the woods, he moved quickly and cautiously. He didn’t want to be caught by Tee Ray and the others. If they saw him out of the big house, there would be questions and trouble and not necessarily in that order.
The smoke from the burning cane fields drifted across the road, blocking Marcus’s view even of his feet and causing him to choke. There were another two miles of fields along the river road still to go, for the Cottoncrest plantation ran for miles and miles along the river. Marcus slowed and felt his way, step by step, down the road. He bent over; the lower he got to the ground, the less dense the smoke was. He walked liked that, hunched over almost in half, for quite a ways.
He hated the smoke. He hated not seeing what was around him. It was like being back at Port Hudson after the Colonel Judge had left that day to lead what was the last charge before the surrender. Up on the bluff early in the morning, before daylight, they could see the outline of the yardarms of Farragut’s steam frigates against the moonlit sky. As dawn began to break, they could make out the crews on the decks getting ready, the ships’ cannons being elevated for shooting. They could see smaller boats being lowered on the far side of the ships, being loaded with men.
The Colonel Judge had sent Marcus down to the part of the Port Hudson bluff known as Fort Desperate, where Marcus was put to work with other slaves on repairing the earthworks. Every six feet they had sunk upright one stout timber. Jammed lengthwise against them, like the wall of a house, were ten tree trunks, one on top of the other. Row after row, one upright timber and then ten tree trunks. Behind the tree trunks they had piled the heavy clay earth of Port Hudson, five feet high and two feet thick. And whenever possible, they would offset one of the logs in the wall a bit so that they could dig a hole—a box twelve inches on a side—clear through the mound of clay.
Once the slaves had finished a section, most of the soldiers would stand be
hind the earthworks and fire down at the blue-bellies in the river. Others would kneel down in the mud, rest their rifles in the holes in the wall, and blast away at those below.
Every day for six weeks the positions were bombarded by the big cannons. You could stand behind the embankment on the bluff and see the billow of smoke from the ship’s guns. The first one was always silent. Just a puff of smoke, and the ship would shutter, and little waves would move away from the boat in increasing circles. But no sound. Then you heard it. A rustle through the air, like a great bird. The rustle became a whistle, and then the boom of the cannon reached you, pounding the air so hard it hurt your ears and you could feel the sound in your stomach. Then the sickening crash of the cannonball and the crushing of timber earthworks and the crunching of bones and the screaming of those who had been hit.
And then blood and body parts and men dying all around you. Men dead and those who were soon to be dead and those in such agony only death would help them. And then you couldn’t see anything, for you were keeping your head low, and the booms of the cannon and the crashing and the crushing was all around you, and then the smoke rose from the Union guns and from the Confederate guns, and all was noise and confusion and panic.
Marcus had hated it. Hated every minute of it. Hated it all the more because he had been there, waiting on the Colonel, serving him his meals in his tent, when Port Hudson had first been attacked. And what made it all the more hateful was that on the first day of what became a six-week siege, the Unionists who had led the attack on Port Hudson had been men like himself. The Corps d’Afrique, it was called. Organized by General Benjamin Butler in New Orleans to fight for their freedom, it was the first troop of slaves who were armed and permitted into battle. They had charged up the bluff on that first day of the siege, and they were beaten back viciously by those under the command of his own Augustine, not yet a colonel. His own master was resourceful and clever, and scores of bodies of black men in blue uniforms were left scattered on the mudflats below the Port Hudson bluffs. Bloated bodies that were a feast for the buzzards that coasted overhead in long, slow patterns. Bloodied bodies that were a warning to the rest of those on the Union boats who thought they could easily take this Confederate stronghold.
That evening the officers came to Augustine’s tent to toast him. Marcus had served them all with a sinking feeling that he should be on the boats with the remainder of the Corps d’Afrique, not on this side of the line.
But there was no way to get there. No way to leave. Not in May or June or July of 1863, during the siege of Port Hudson. Not even though in January of that year Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He had been freed by Lincoln, and yet he was still a slave, serving his master in the Confederate army.
He couldn’t leave Port Hudson when he wanted to then. Now that he was old and didn’t want to leave Cottoncrest, he couldn’t stay.
Marcus kept walking. Soon he’d reach the end of the plantation’s fields, and then the marshy woods would begin. The sky was dark in the direction he was heading, south along the river road. A heavy rain was in progress a few miles ahead. He had to reach Little Jerusalem as soon as possible.
Chapter 30
The rainstorm, as was typical for Louisiana weather, had been both localized and torrential, its power concentrated in a small area. The low black clouds blanketed and darkened Little Jerusalem, but where Cottoncrest sat, there was blue sky smudged by the gray-brown smoke from the burning cane fields.
In Little Jerusalem they could smell the rain coming. The air grew heavy, the odor of the ground more distinct, the humidity palpable in the pleasant, late-October air. Before the storm swept through, the wind had whipped up, and the trees bent over. Then it roared past, lightning flashing and rolls of thunder pounding, the rain coming down hard and driven by the wind at an angle, liquid spears hurling viciously toward their targets.
When it seemed as if the torrent would carry them away, the rain stopped abruptly and the black sky rapidly retreated, heading southwest toward Lamou. In the short while that the storm had lingered, it had dropped several inches on Little Jerusalem. The bayou that ran nearby overflowed, and the road out front turned into a muddy, rutted stream. Yet to the north Cottoncrest remained dry, although gusts of wind could be seen shifting the smoke violently in one direction and then another.
Nimrod sat on a stool under the wide awning made by the tin roof, taking it all in. The shift in the weather caused his bones to ache, and he didn’t like all the commotion and conversation anyway, even if he could have heard all the words. It was enough to watch God’s work. Esau stuck his head out from time to time to check on his father.
Inside the small cabin water dripped down the sides of the walls through cracks in the tin roof and formed puddles on the dirt floor. But Rossy and Cooper paid it no attention, and therefore neither did Jake, nor did the fifteen others who had crowded into the tiny one-room house.
They each had brought a tin cup and a spoon, along with a handful of fall vegetables, and they each placed their backyard garden offerings into the pot of possum stew. It was a celebration. The Peddler Man’s arrival was always a treat. Cooper had taken the possum he had shot the night before and donated it for the stew. To have the Peddler Man stay for a meal in his house was a big honor, and it showed the others in Little Jerusalem how important he was.
Possum wasn’t kosher any more than pork was, but that didn’t stop Jake. He took out his own tin cup and, along with the others in the crowded cabin, waited patiently for Rossy to ladle out the thick brown stew and then ate heartily, even though he was still full from the cochon de lait and the wedding feast earlier that morning. His customer had offered it, and he wasn’t going to offend his customer. Not by words. Not by deeds.
Uncle Avram had made that clear. Never offend. Ever. One day a huge Cossack had walked into Avram’s shop and complained that a coat Avram had made was ill fitting and had torn. He showed Avram the sleeve that had separated. Avram looked at it carefully, examining it closely. He didn’t say what he and Yaakov and the Cossack all knew. The sleeve hadn’t separated at the seam. The fabric itself had been ripped by a branch or a nail or some careless action of the owner. But Avram merely nodded his head at the Cossack who towered over them, apologized abjectly, and offered to buy it back from the Cossack for what it cost, even though the coat was now well-worn and useless. The Cossack took the money and left, happy to have put another one over on another Jew, and when little Yaakov had started to ask his uncle why he had let the Cossack take advantage of him, Uncle Avram had leaned over, his long beard scratching against Yaakov’s cheek, and whispered in his ear, “Abi gezunt—dos leben ken men zich alain nemen.” Be sure to stay healthy—you can kill yourself later.
The trading had gone exceptionally well. Every last item that Jake had left in his cart was now gone. Every scrap of fabric, every thimble, every spool of thread, and the last two knives, all traded away for furs for coats and trim and snakeskins for belts and shoes. Now the only things in the cart, besides his grindstone, were the goods to be sold to his contacts in New York. As soon as he could get back to New Orleans, he’d send a flimsy to New York. He’d set forth both the shipping date on the next steamer headed out into the Gulf of Mexico and up the East Coast and the date of delivery of the goods to Isaac Haber & Co., the brokerage firm he dealt with in New Orleans. That would be followed by a confirming flimsy from Isaac Haber that the goods had been delivered and were as represented. The New York contacts would wire him the money, and the whole process would start anew. Jake would buy new supplies and then begin his rounds again.
Moshe had set up the system upon his return to New York, and Moshe would get a cut of each transaction. That was as it should be. Moshe as an arranger—perfect. But Moshe as a partner—never again.
They had been just north of Natchez, and the crowd had already gathered around them on the boat. They had threatened to throw a rope around Moshe’s neck and hang him from the balcony right then
and there. A quick death was too good for him, others had argued. A lingering death was what he needed, to teach him and others like him a lesson. They wanted to keelhaul him behind the paddle wheeler, letting him drown while being towed downstream in the swirling current of the river.
The steamboat captain had intervened, gun in hand, to hold off the crowd. One of the crew patted down Moshe, looking for weapons, and they found one of the excellent knives Moshe and Jake sold strapped in a leather sheath against Moshe’s calf, under his trouser leg. That almost did it. Even the captain was considering turning him over to the crowd. But they were nearing the turn to Natchez, and when they docked, the sheriff had been summoned, had come aboard, and had dragged Moshe off in handcuffs.
Too sharp, they had said. Too sharp and too quick.
Jake had taken almost all that he and Moshe had saved up to trade in New Orleans and had given it to the sheriff for Moshe’s bail. Then, retaining only enough to get himself to New Orleans, Jake had given the remainder to Moshe to make his way inland up to Vicksburg and catch the next steamer north. All the bail was forfeited. Moshe’s name was still on wanted posters in Mississippi and down into Louisiana and up into Arkansas. Moshe could never come south again.
But for Jake the South was now home. Here he could make a good living. A very good living.
Jake took another large spoonful of the possum stew. As soon as the meal was done, now that the skies had cleared, he would head back to Cottoncrest and check on them.
Chapter 31
Nimrod saw the lanky figure moving from out of the woods, across the road, toward the cabin. Although his eyesight was bad and he couldn’t make out the man’s features, Nimrod recognized the gait. The fact that the man was coming from the woods rather than down the road meant that he hadn’t wanted to be seen coming to Little Jerusalem. And that meant trouble.
The Cottoncrest Curse: A Novel Page 11