The Cottoncrest Curse: A Novel

by Michael H. Rubin

  Raifer drew closer and spoke more softly and urgently. “Bucky, I don’t care if Tee Ray busts up some colored’s crops or tears up his garden, but I can’t have Tee Ray and the Knights going around burning down their cabins. If that happens, then I’ll have to act. I won’t want to, but I won’t have any choice. Why do you think Tee Ray got you to torch the cabin? ’Cause he knows that if I caught him doing that, I’d have to jug him. So, he gets you to do it.”

  “But I thought…” Bucky started to say.

  Raifer cut him off. “The problem is, you haven’t been thinking at all. Now listen.” Raifer spoke quietly but firmly, as if instructing a small child. “The coloreds got scared, thinking that the Knights were coming. They ran. They left their houses quickly and their fires unattended. One of them got out of hand. The fire at old Nimrod’s cabin was an accident caused by the coloreds’ own carelessness. Do you understand?”

  A glimmer of awareness finally penetrated. “I understand,” Bucky echoed.

  “And I don’t want to hear you ever again talk about what you did last night.”

  “Yes, Raifer. I ain’t gonna say no more ’bout it, other than we came across a darky’s cabin what done caught on fire by accident.”

  “Good. Now, you go home and change clothes. I want you to ride out to Cottoncrest with Dr. Cailleteau and me. We’ve got to check on Little Miss. I’m concerned, having heard Jimmy Joe say last night that none of the coloreds were around. That’s not right. They should be there, tending to Cottoncrest and looking after Little Miss. Anyway, I want you to ride on south from there and join up with Tee Ray and Forrest before they get to Lamou. I’ve got to agree with Tee Ray; the peddler has to be headed in that direction. I’m sending you out there to arrest that peddler for the murder of the Colonel Judge and Rebecca. I can’t stop Tee Ray and Forrest from going, but I can send you with them, and you’re to bring that peddler back alive and stop Tee Ray and Forrest from doing anything foolish that will cause me to do something I don’t want to do. You’re a deputy. You act like one, you hear?”

  Bucky’s head nodded so vigorously in agreement that water cascaded from his damp hair, which made Dr. Cailleteau think that Bucky looked like a scraggly dog shaking itself coming out of a pond. Except that a dog would look better.

  Bucky gulped down the last of the coffee and, gathering up the blanket around his damp clothes, dashed out of the courthouse in the moonlight toward his home, his boots squishing and water squirting out of the seams. He was running fast because he wanted to please Raifer, who had given him another chance. And because it was so cold.

  Through the window Dr. Cailleteau watched Bucky trot at a good clip across the courthouse lawn. The moon, still in the sky before dawn came, was so bright that he could see Bucky’s shadow on the ground as he loped along. “He’s putting the licks in, Raifer.”

  “Sure, he’s going to run as fast as he can, even if his head is sometimes as dull as a spinster.”

  Bucky sprinted across Main Street in Parteblanc, oblivious to the oncoming horse and high hitch wagon, which almost ran him down.

  The man violently reined in the horse. It whinnied with pain as the bits jerked taut. The wagon shimmied, and several boxes fell out, tumbling to the ground.

  Bucky looked up in surprise. He hadn’t expected to see anyone out at this hour. “Sorry, Mr. Ganderson. It’s just…”

  Ganderson, his worn face and gray mustache peeking out from a wide-brimmed hat, climbed down from the seat, easing his way onto the ground from his high perch. The front wheels of the hitch wagon were almost four feet in diameter, and the rear ones were taller. The wooden bed, riding far off the ground, was piled with a towering stack of boxes resting on a thick bed of hay that splayed out over the sides.

  Ganderson started loading the fallen boxes back onto the wagon. Although in his late fifties, he was still robust, and he handled the heavy boxes with ease.

  Bucky bent down to grab a box to help, and the woolen blanket fell off onto the dirt road. Now he’d have to wash it before bringing it back to Raifer. He slung it back over his cold shoulders and tried to lift the box. It was heavier than Bucky thought, but Ganderson took it from him, holding it as if it were an empty container.

  “I got it, Bucky. No harm done.” Ganderson stacked it back on top of the other boxes in the wagon and reached down for the next one, lying on its side on the ground.

  Chilled by the cold air, Bucky was grateful to be released from any further obligations and trotted on down the road toward his house. No lights were on in any of the homes. The moon was the only illumination. Bucky did not bother to think further about why Ganderson would be traveling with a full wagon before dawn. All Bucky wanted to do was to get home, change into some dry clothes, and get ready to join Raifer and Dr. Cailleteau on the trip to Cottoncrest.

  Ganderson put the last two boxes back onto the bed of hay, climbed back up onto the high wooden bench, and flicked the reins. The horse moved slowly north along the road, traveling away from Parteblanc and toward the ferry that crossed the Mississippi River.

  Jammed tightly inside the false bottom of the hitch wagon, Jenny, Sally, and Marcus sighed softly with relief.

  PART IV

  Today

  Chapter 48

  “So there I was, in New Orleans in 1961, and although it was only May, the heat was already awful. There was no central air-conditioning in those days. In New Orleans you took a bath before you went to bed, just to cool down, but you still went to sleep sweating despite the overhead fan whirling, and all the while hordes of mosquitoes buzzed angrily outside the screened windows. You woke up, and you took a bath, but before you could dry off, you were sweating again. The heat was constant and the humidity pervasive. By the time you had breakfast, the clothes you put on were already damp with your sweat.

  “I had left the other boys at the old hotel we had found in the French Quarter and went out exploring. I had given myself permission to be a tourist for a few days until I had to do what I really came down for, until I had to deliver what was hidden in the lining of my suitcase.

  “In those days all the hotels were segregated. In fact, all downtown was segregated. You walked down Canal Street, and the differences between blacks and whites could not be more stark, but to the New Orleans’ white shoppers, the blacks could just as well have been invisible, for the whites ignored them completely.

  “The blacks couldn’t use the restrooms in the stores on Canal Street. If they wanted to buy a blouse or a dress or a shirt or a suit there, they couldn’t try them on and couldn’t use the dressing rooms and couldn’t return the items if they didn’t fit.

  “But I wasn’t in New Orleans to shop. I had to conserve my money so I would have enough to rent a car. I was in New Orleans only to try to soak up the atmosphere.

  “I walked for hours in the French Quarter. And I tried to find the remnants of Storyville in Faubourg Tremé, but there wasn’t much left, just a few old buildings.

  “You don’t know what Storyville was? Why, it had been the home of jazz, in an area of the city set aside for bars and brothels, in an attempt to stop them from being in every neighborhood. It was the heart where jazz first beat. It was right there, at the edge of the French Quarter, far away from the fancy Canal Street stores.

  “Well, if you had brothels, you also got bars and dives and ‘dance halls.’ And if you had dance halls, you needed musicians.

  “That’s what I went looking for. Jazz and musicians and Storyville. By 1961, however, Storyville was long gone. It had disappeared almost fifty years before I got there, having been closed in World War I by order of the U.S. Navy to keep our sailors ‘safe from sin.’

  “For a time I wondered whether your Grandpapa Jake could have walked those same streets. Of course, he passed through New Orleans on his way down and on his way back, and he had business contacts here, but I don’t think he ever stayed in the city any length of time or had anything to do with Storyville.

  “The more I
thought about it, however, the more I realized he couldn’t have been there. He left the South for the last time in the winter of 1893 and never returned. That was a few years before Storyville was even created.”

  1893

  Chapter 49

  The frost crunched under his boots as Jake made his way through the marshy woods. The sky had cleared as the temperatures had dropped, and now, an hour or so before dawn, the moon cast a bright blue glow. Jake had slept the night only in fits and spurts.

  It wasn’t that he had been cold. The light October freeze was nothing like the hard winters in Russia. He was used to cold, and the un-cured bearskin had kept him pleasantly warm, even if it was muddy, smelly, and itchy.

  It was dreams and concerns that disturbed his slumber, not fear. He could live with fear. There was nothing more fearful than escaping Russia under the skirts of women on the train, trying not to breathe when the Cossacks stalked through the cars or when the Czar’s militia clattered through in their sharply shined shoes, intimidating everyone. He could live with fear now. But the concerns were something else.

  Jake had been on the run so much with Marcus, moving so fast, that he hadn’t really had time to think. But once Marcus had gone and Jake had settled under the tree, hidden in the darkness, the impact of the day’s events finally struck him fully and caused his thoughts to turn again and again to the Colonel Judge and Rebecca.

  He would never see them again.

  He would never have another earnest discussion with the Colonel Judge. They would never talk again of religion. Of man’s ability to hate those he does not wish to understand and inability to love those he should hold the dearest. Of the things that make us most human and those that cause us to do the most inhumane things.

  And Jake would never have Rebecca’s beauty and warmth near him again.

  Two gone and two lost. That was why he had to speak to Jenny. That was why he had to see her again. He had spent the night wondering if Marcus had found Jenny and Sally and, if he had, how the three of them would get to New Orleans with all the commotion that must be going on in Parteblanc.

  And when Jake did drift off, his dreams were disturbing. The girl in New York, with the red spreading across her blouse, had appeared. Before, whenever he had thought of her, it had been with a feeling of yearning. He had contemplated a thousand times her dark eyes and smooth skin, creating a face as perfect as Eve’s must have been in the Garden of Eden or as entrancing as Bathsheba’s must have been to King David. Although Jake had seen her only once at that party, in his mind was a perfect image of her, one he could recall at a moment’s notice— her blouse as white and pure as a Torah cover, her long skirt as blue as a new prayer book in the shul.

  But last night, the red spreading across her white blouse was not the wine he had spilled from her glass when he had accidentally bumped into her. In his dreams the red was blood. Endless streams of blood, staining her white blouse crimson, pouring over her dress and onto the floor, and spreading into thick pools that threatened to fill the room. Barrels of blood poured from her slit throat. And behind her, instead of her mother, there was a golem, a creature of mud and evil, shrieking with glee, “Verem essen toiterhait un deiges lebedikerhait.” Worms eat you up when dead, and worries eat you up alive.

  At Jake’s own elbow at the party was not his brother, Moshe, but another golem, who held a long knife in his wicked, oozing fingers. He thrust the blade into the girl’s breast, screaming with horrific delight, “Tsores tsezegen di hartz.” Troubles cut the heart.

  Again and again, the golem shoved the knife into her bosom as blood spurted in rivers. They were now swimming in blood. They were in a sea of blood, and it threatened to drown them, but the golem’s laughter only increased, echoing insanely over and over.

  Jake had awoken with a start, the cackling of the golem still resounding in his head.

  After that he tried to stay awake, for when he closed his eyes for even a minute, the dream returned, and he would again be treading in blood to the golem’s incessant mirth. It continued that way throughout the night, sleep enveloping him and the nightmare awakening him.

  He couldn’t wait for dawn. The only thing to get it off his mind was to start walking. Keep heading south, Marcus had said, for those in Lamou would find you before you found them.

  Jake looked up at the moon through the canopy of red bark oaks and hickory and hanging moss and gnarled vines that entwined their way ever higher. The North Star was fading as dawn approached.

  It was tough to gauge distances here. He knew how long it took on the road, but now there was no road and no path.

  Lamou couldn’t be that much farther. At least, that was what he hoped.

  Chapter 50

  The children had woken before dawn and silently slipped out the door. They knew their tasks.

  The older ones went to the lean-to shed, retrieved the scythes, sharpened them on the whetstones, and headed out into the fields to start cutting the cane. The younger ones fetched the water and left the buckets outside the back door for their mother. They brought the wood for the stove from the chopped and split pieces on the woodpile. Then they followed their older siblings out to the fields. Their task was to stack the cane that their brothers and sisters sliced down so that it all could be loaded onto wagons and taken to the Cottoncrest mill to be processed.

  All of them worked with the utmost caution while near their house. The oldest wasn’t yet fourteen. They didn’t dare wake their father. They had seen the bruises on their mother’s face, and although she had told them she had just been careless and had slipped and fallen, they knew better. They could see the way she cowered when their father approached. They knew the signs when their mother fell silent whenever their father was in the house. They did not want to anger him and feel his wrath.

  The sky had started to brighten when Tee Ray got out of bed and observed, to his satisfaction, that the children had already left. They were good kids, he thought. This would be last season they would ever have to cut cane. This would be the last season they would have to fetch wood. From now on someone else would do it for them. From now on they would be able to go to school, to dress in fine clothes, to live in a house that wasn’t tiny, like this cabin, but was magnificent in all its splendor. It was what all of them deserved.

  Tee Ray stretched, yawned loudly, and then pulled on his trousers and boots. The anger from the night before was gone. He felt good. He knew exactly what he had to do today.

  Mona had heard the children leave but had not dared move in the bed. She had felt Tee Ray get up and pretended to be asleep. Now that he was moving about the cabin, she still kept her eyes closed and tried to maintain the slow and steady breathing of one still deep in slumber.

  Tee Ray opened the door to walk to the woodpile and was pleased to see the children had already brought the wood and water. He stoked up the stove and started to prepare coffee, dropping two large scoops of inexpensive chicory blend into the black porcelain pot. They couldn’t afford pure coffee now, but soon they would, and he swore to himself they would never drink the chicory blend again.

  The aroma filled the small cabin, and Tee Ray went to the side of the bed and softly shook Mona’s shoulders. She continued to pretend to be sleeping.

  “Wake up, ol’ girl,” Tee Ray said.

  Mona was surprised at the tone in his voice. It was actually gentle.

  “Come on, Mona, the coffee’ll be ready soon, and I’ve got to head down to Lamou to catch the Jew Peddler, but when I do, all our troubles’ll be over. You’ll be able to dress a fine lady. You’ll be able to sleep until noon if you want. But we got to get movin’ now. The children are already out in the fields, and they’ll be comin’ back for breakfast before you know it, hungry as a black bear comin’ out of hibernatin’.

  Mona was amazed. All the anger was gone. He was back to his old self. He was the Tee Ray she had fallen in love with.

  She rolled over and pushed the hair out of her eyes, ignoring the b
ruises and the pain. “You promise?”

  “The young ones hungry? No need to promise. You know it to be true.”

  Mona smiled, “Go on, you. I know that. I mean dressin’ like a fine lady and sleepin’ ’til noon if I want.”

  “No need to promise that either. It’s as good as done. All I gotta do is give that Jew to Raifer, dead of course, and that’ll be it. The Jew killed the Colonel Judge and his wife, and ain’t no nigger gonna get Cotton-crest.”

  “But she didn’t look—” Mona stopped. Tee Ray’s eyes had retreated into narrow slits. He was clenching his teeth. This was not a good sign. She had said the wrong thing.

  “I told you, Mona, how people look ain’t nothin’. It’s what people is— that’s the thing. She was mulatto through and through. An octoroon. One of her great-grandparents was black. She was a nigger no matter how white she looked. Why do you think the Colonel Judge never had her family down? Why do you think they came up with that story about how she was an ‘orphan’? Why do you think some high yellow gal goes and gets some gimpy ol’ gray-haired cuss to marry her? She wants to escape and pass for white. That’s why. And she could smell his money. If he died and had changed his will and left Cottoncrest to her, why then…”

  Mona took his hand and softly stroked it. “It’s all right, Tee Ray. She didn’t get Cottoncrest. I still don’t know how you know these things, but I’m so proud of you.” If she continued to compliment him, his anger might go away.

  “The Knights, Mona, the Knights gotta keep together. As I’ve told you, I’ve known for a year. Heard it from a Knight who was passing through on a riverboat who sought me out, knowin’ I was head of the Knights here. Knowin’ stuff is what gives you power, you see, and I was saving that information for just the right moment.”