The Cottoncrest Curse: A Novel

by Michael H. Rubin

  Tee Ray paused one more moment to look closely at the old lady. No, he was sure. The older one was not Sally. And no sign of Marcus. Sally would not travel without Marcus.

  The younger one, though, looked familiar.

  The door closed.

  The train started to pull out.

  Tee Ray realized it was Jenny, her long hair hidden beneath the tignon.

  As the train moved slowly down the tracks, gathering up speed as it left the station, Tee Ray ran, clasping the rifle tightly. He hoped that the small Derringer he had stuck in his belt, the one the Orleans Parish Sheriff had lent him, the one he had not told Bucky about, wouldn’t slip out.

  As the train cleared the station, Tee Ray was holding onto a handle, pounding on a door with his rifle as the tracks rushed by below his feet.

  The conductor, spotting the badge on this wild man’s coat, opened it.

  Tee Ray entered the train.

  Chapter 86

  Outside the train’s windows to their left, the marsh that curved around the northwestern edge of New Orleans stretched out to the horizon, and to their right was a vast expanse of water. The tracks, atop miles upon miles of wooden pilings, skirted along the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. Then the rails bore north, nestling the narrow spit of land that ran through woody swamps.

  The engine pulled six passenger cars followed by more than a dozen boxcars, several flatbeds, and a caboose. The conductor was working his way down the train, collecting tickets, starting with the first-class cars.

  Back in the two Jim Crow cars, right before the boxcars, a number of passengers had unpacked their breakfasts. They had spread on their laps the old newspapers in which they had wrapped a biscuit or a scrap of ham or a piece of French bread and ate slowly, savoring the taste. They had to make the food last the entire trip. It was all they could do to afford the ticket. There was almost no money left to purchase the expensive items at the stations at the numerous stops along the way to Chicago.

  Near the back row of the last Jim Crow car, Jake, dressed in Jenny’s spare blouse and skirt, sat demurely next to the window. “Is it still straight?”

  Jenny fiddled with the silver hairpins that held the broad felt brim of Jake’s hat in a curled, decorative edge on one side and the thick, drooping greenery that hid the edges of the folded brim on the other. With the strange shape and the wilted leaves, it was unsightly, but, pulled down enough, it helped to hide Jake’s face and stubbly beard.

  It was the beard, not the color of Jake’s skin, that was the problem. If passengers, no matter how white they looked, boarded the Jim Crow cars, no one looked twice. They were simply mulattoes who, unlike Homer Plessy, knew their place.

  The front door of the car opened. The conductor entered, asking for tickets. He folded each into three parts and punched a hole through the thick paper. One part he put in the pocket of his coat, one part he gave back to the passenger, and one part he put into the metal holder that stuck up on the back of each seat.

  Jake pulled the folded blanket that he hoped others would mistake for a poor woman’s shawl more tightly around his neck and raised its frayed edges high on his cheeks.

  Jenny glanced over. Jake’s stubble of a mustache was clearly visible.

  The conductor was still taking tickets at the front of the car. Before he could look up and observe them, Jenny pulled out a kerchief and pretended to wipe Jake’s nose, helping an old lady suffering from an October cold. Jake took the kerchief and, bending forward in his seat and leaning on the stout branch he had picked up outside the cemetery to use as a lame old lady’s cane, continued to wipe his face.

  The conductor finally came to their seat. Jenny, as obsequious as she could be, handed over the tickets they had bought with Zig’s money. The conductor, without giving these two women any thought at all, punched the tickets. There was no point in spending any energy on coloreds or spending any more time than necessary in the Jim Crow cars.

  Finishing with his task, the conductor headed back toward the front of the train.

  Jenny sighed with relief.

  Jake put down the kerchief, but he kept his face to the window. Jake did not want to take any chances, even though Jenny had assured him that no one in this Jim Crow car would say anything, no matter how strange a bearded lady might appear to them. They were not about to complain to—or seek help from—a white conductor.

  It was curious, he thought. All his life, when he had sought protection, he had found it, and women always seemed to be involved. He had found safety by hiding beneath the skirts of women leaving Russia. Jeanne Marie had helped him escape from Lamou. Now he was seeking to safely leave Louisiana by hiding, with the help of a woman, in the skirt of a woman.

  Jenny leaned over and said, just loud enough so that Jake could hear her over the rumble of the wheels, the creaking of the wooden passenger car, and the metallic groans of the couplings of the train. “Taking a final look at Louisiana? I think it will be the last time either of us see this state.”

  In the front of the car the door opened. A murmur rose from the passengers.

  Mothers hugged their children and shushed for them to be quiet. Old men, former slaves all, quickly cast their eyes down to the floor; they didn’t want to be mistaken for being uppity. Strong young men turned and looked out the windows, trying to avoid the glare of the angry white man who had just entered, a lawman’s badge prominently pinned on his coat.

  Jake kept his face turned against the window, the back of his head facing into the car. He wondered whether he had conquered all his fears pertaining to trains. The fear of the Cossacks discovering him on the train in Russia. The fear as he hid beneath the women’s skirts, hearing the tread of boots passing by, separated from him only by an opaque veil of petticoats and linen.

  But that was then. This was now. But the fear was still there. He didn’t turn.

  The intruder was looking for him, no doubt, and the dress wouldn’t hide his stubbly beard and mustache, and he couldn’t pull the blanket up at this point without being noticed.

  Looking at the man’s reflection in the window, Jake hoped that the intruder was scanning faces and bodies, not windows.

  If Jake could see the man, the man could see him. Floating over the images of the moss-laden cypress trees and palmetto-filled marsh that rushed by the window outside hovered the ghostly, transparent figure of Tee Ray holding a rifle.

  Jake immediately pressed his face as close as he could to the window so that his hat would hide his features and his own reflection would not be seen.

  Tee Ray spotted Jenny and strode forward, pointing a rifle at her. “Nigger, you ain’t leavin’ Louisiana. You’re under arrest. I know you gotta know something about the Jew. You don’t do as I say, I’m gonna shoot you dead right here.”

  Chapter 87

  “Get up, nigger!” Tee Ray commanded Jenny, approaching her, rifle held level at his waist, its barrel pointing directly at her chest. Tee Ray ignored the woman in the seat next to Jenny, obviously so terrified of him that she wouldn’t turn around. That was as it should be. Let them all keep to themselves.

  Jake remained motionless, his face frozen against the window. He forced himself to be still. There was nothing he could do at this moment. He had to wait, as difficult as that was.

  “The rest of you,” Tee Ray called out as he moved through the car, “stay seated.”

  The passengers did as they were told. The white man had a badge and a gun. He was angry and upset. None of them moved. They awaited his instructions.

  Tee Ray prodded Jenny with the barrel of his rifle. “You heard me, nigger. Up!”

  Jenny slowly rose to her feet.

  Jake still did not remove his face from the cold window. He could not turn around without endangering both Jenny and himself.

  Tee Ray pointed to the rear door of the carriage. Jenny walked ahead of him, his rifle in her back. There was only one more row of seats between the rear door and the spot where Jenny had been seated.

/>   “Now,” Tee Ray called out loudly so everyone could hear him, “this is law business. You ain’t seen nothin’, and you ain’t gonna say nothin’.”

  Jake heard the rustle of Jenny’s dress and the scuffling of Tee Ray’s boots as they moved toward the back of the car. Now it was time to put an end to his fears. Now was the time to act, while Tee Ray’s back was to him.

  Jenny reached the rear door.

  “Open it!” Tee Ray commanded.

  At the same moment that Jenny complied, pulling the door open and filling the compartment with the loud rush of wind and the roaring clatter of the wheels on the track as the train speeded through the woody marsh, Tee Ray felt a sharp object in his lower back and heard a man’s voice say firmly, “Drop the rifle, or I’ll slice your spinal cord in half. You’ll be crippled for life.”

  The passengers remained frozen in place, puzzled by what was now clearly a bearded man in a woman’s outfit and terrified by what the white lawman might do.

  Tee Ray held the rifle firmly in his grasp, its barrel now pointed at Jenny’s head, and tightened his finger around the trigger. Without taking his eyes off Jenny, Tee Ray spoke in a loud voice to the man behind him. “I don’t know what kind of jackass nigger you are, but if you don’t back off right now, I’m gonna kill this one first and then you.”

  Jenny stood motionless, holding the door open, the wind blowing in her face. The passengers tried not to make a sound. The slightest noise or movement could set the white man with the rifle off and be fatal to the woman at the door and to others in the car.

  Tee Ray felt the pointed object withdraw from his lower back. The stupid man behind him had listened. Now it was time to teach them all a lesson.

  Tee Ray jerked the rifle backward as he whirled around, aiming to hit the man behind him in the stomach with the butt of the rifle. As he did, he inadvertently pulled the trigger and the rifle fired. The bullet whizzed by Jenny’s ear and shattered the window of the passenger car door she was holding open. It plowed through the cheap wooden panel and lodged in the metal structure of the car.

  As Tee Ray spun around, he was surprised that, despite his quick and vicious thrust with the rifle, it did not connect with anything. He felt a throbbing behind his right thigh, and before he had turned halfway around, he found himself falling. He caught, out of the corner of his eye, a figure of a woman bent down low and moving toward the door.

  Tee Ray tried to maintain his balance, but he could not stand up. A warmth emanated from his leg. First warmth, then pain. Horrible pain. Tee Ray dropped the rifle and reached out to the nearby seat for support.

  Jake, knees bent and moving close to the ground, squeezed by Tee Ray as he fell. Ignoring the blood pouring from Tee Ray’s thigh, blood that was turning Tee Ray’s right trouser leg a dark crimson, Jake pushed Jenny out the door onto the narrow metal platform at the end of the car.

  Jake then grabbed Tee Ray, who was leaning on the edge of a seat, around the waist. Kicking the rifle away, Jake hauled Tee Ray out the back door of the carriage and onto the metal platform.

  PART XIII

  Today

  Chapter 88

  “‘So,’ I said, ‘you got Cottoncrest. And yet your father was not around to see it happen. What about Ganderson? Did he live to see you get this place?’

  “Hank Matthews just sat in his chair and stared at me with the most unusual expression. Couldn’t figure out what it was. I was too young to know then what I know now. When you get to a certain age, your past is sometimes more real than your present. When you think back on what happened to you long ago, your memory is like a sieve, constantly sifting through events. You relive them as you think you remember them. You relive them as you wished they had been. You relive them as you ponder what you might have done differently. And you wonder how strange it is that things that seemed inconsequential or even accidental had such a big effect on you that you remember them so well that they are always with you, a theme with endless variations.

  “Before you know it, minutes have flown by. You were somewhere far in the past, and then you snap back, and you’re here in the present.

  “That’s kind of what happened. I didn’t say anything, and after a few minutes, maybe five, he just looked at me as if he were waiting for me to speak. ‘Mr. Ganderson,’ I reminded him, ‘did he ever know you got Cottoncrest? Did you get a chance to show him that you made a success of yourself without his money?’

  “Now Matthews was his old gruff self. ‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘Gander-son was long dead. They all were dead. Ganderson. My Momma. My Daddy. All gone. Don’t make no difference, though, because I know what I am, and I know what I got. And I got Cottoncrest. They can talk all they want to about curses and things on this place, but it ain’t cursed. It’s blessed.’

  “He looked up at that big Rebel flag hanging from the long pole nailed to the frieze above the second floor. ‘The South shall rise again,’ he said, ‘and this will be the place it rises. Ain’t no one gonna take Cottoncrest away from me, ’cause it’s my blessing, just as no one ain’t gonna take the South from the white man. My Daddy was right about that. No one has ever done it, and no court can do it now. No Earl Warren, sitting in his black robes—and ain’t that a kick, a white man in black robes—sitting in his black robes up in Washington, D.C., is gonna tell us who we have to associate with or go to school with or eat with. Hell, boy, if this thing don’t come to a halt, no telling where it’s gonna end. Might as well have blacks marrying whites before it’s all over, with their little mixed-race pickaninnies running ’round everywhere. Well, it’s not gonna happen. No sir. Not here. Not ever. Cotton is white, and that’s why Cottoncrest is painted white, and that’s why Cottoncrest is gonna stay white.’

  “How he got from Ganderson off onto something about the South rising again didn’t make any sense to me, but before he got away from Ganderson completely, I had to finish what I had come for. Ganderson was the key to the truth about his past. He just didn’t know it yet.”

  1893

  Chapter 89

  The trees whipped by, and the soot from the engine’s smoke, seven cars ahead, swirled in their faces.

  “You cut me!” Tee Ray screamed, swinging his fist into Jake’s face and breaking his nose. As soon as Jake released his grip, Tee Ray fell to the metal platform, unable to stand. His right leg was useless now.

  Even though Jake’s knife had sliced clean through the thigh muscles to the bone, severing all feeling in Tee Ray’s right leg, Tee Ray retained a remarkable amount of strength. The blow caused Jake to stagger backward, and blood from his nostrils dripped down onto his stubble of a mustache and beard.

  “Now you die, Jew!” Lying on his left side on the metal platform, blood now pouring out of his wounded thigh, Tee Ray reached inside his coat and started to pull out the small Derringer stuck in his belt. It was an over-and-under model with two barrels. He had two shots, but he needed only one.

  The knuckle joint holding the first boxcar to the last passenger car gave off metallic groans as the train swayed on the tracks. Jenny, holding onto the railing, saw the small pistol emerge and stomped on Tee Ray’s bloody right thigh as hard as she could.

  Tee Ray roared with pain and reached out to grab Jenny’s leg. Although still lying on the metal platform, he held Jenny’s ankle in an iron grip. Jenny could feel her hands slipping off the railing as the train went into a curve.

  Jake’s vision was blurred. His head was ringing, and his entire face was afire with pain from Tee Ray’s blow.

  Tee Ray, not letting his left hand loosen its grip on Jenny’s leg, raised the Derringer in his right hand.

  Jenny let go of the railing and, with her free foot, kicked Tee Ray once again in the spot where Jake had cut up his thigh.

  Tee Ray swung the Derringer from Jake to Jenny.

  Jake leaped on top of Tee Ray’s right arm. Using his knee, he pinned Tee Ray’s arm to the platform, but he couldn’t wrest the Derringer from Tee Ray’s grasp.

/>   Taking the Freimer blade, Jake made a long slice across Tee Ray’s right hand. He cut through the muscles and nerves. With a sawing motion, he pushed the blade deeper. He could feel beneath his blade the joints of two fingers separating. The Derringer dropped to the platform. Jake tossed it into the marsh through which the train hurled.

  Tee Ray yowled and bared his teeth, but still he held onto Jenny’s leg with his left hand. Jake took the Freimer blade and sliced through Tee Ray’s left bicep. The muscle separated. The grip on Jenny’s leg loosened.

  With all of his strength Jake pushed Tee Ray off the platform.

  The last that Jenny and Jake saw of Tee Ray was his face, contorted with a yell, screaming at them as he fell off the train and tumbled into the marshy water.

  Chapter 90

  Long after the train had rumbled out of sight, Tee Ray dragged himself, with great effort, out of the now blood-filled marsh and onto the raised mound of earth the railroad had built for the tracks.

  Tee Ray was in pain, but he was alive. He was losing blood, but he didn’t feel despair. He was confident. He would live. Even if the peddler escaped now, there was proof that the peddler was guilty of the murders of the Colonel Judge and Rebecca, for who else but a guilty Jew would attack a man with a badge and cut him up and throw him off a train?

  Tee Ray had planned it so carefully. Bucky had already proclaimed to the whole parish that it was the Curse and that the Colonel Judge had shot himself after killing Rebecca, which was exactly what Tee Ray had hoped everyone would think. That was supposed to be the end of it. With Rebecca dead and the Colonel Judge gone, and with it just being a matter of time before Little Miss passed, Cottoncrest would fall to the Colonel Judge and Little Miss’s lawful heirs.