Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  What contents? Moldy bread, some slops, indistinguishable warm grease, and yet, not enough even of these.

  We are starving, David thought. He moved his teeth with his tongue. He had already lost three by last count. If he had some lemons, it might not be too late to save the rest. Or limes. His tongue moved over his gums, feeling the wet, clean sting of lemons. Or limes.

  A man screamed. “Shit! Oh, you darling—”

  “Shut up! Shut up, you crazy bastard!”

  “Oh, you darling!”

  It might be a lucky thing to lose your mind here. You wouldn’t know, then, that you were here. There’d be no past to remember.

  So far David’s mind was sharp. Maybe abnormally keen, unnaturally acute? He worried, giving careful notice to a louse that crawled on the shoulder of the man on his right. That other man, standing up, had a dark patch of sweat on his ragged shirt. The stain made a fish shape; there the fins, and there the tail, curving when the man bent over. Was it normal to notice things like that, or a sign that his mind was going? God knew, an hour from now he might start to rave, to see things that weren’t there.

  That poor fellow in the hospital that time. I remember. The Christian chaplain tried to convert him before he died. Meant well but it didn’t work. If I die, I would like a Jewish chaplain to read services over me There never are enough of them. I had to read for so many Jewish dead myself. I think I am dying. Can’t last much longer like this. So filthy, I disgust myself.

  Over the low drone and murmur of suffering came voices, not loud, but incisive, clear, and close by.

  “Well, but Dr. Joseph Jones of our medical department spoke just last month about conditions here.”

  On the left New Hampshire whispered, “Inspection tour, for what good it will do.”

  With tremendous effort David raised his head a few inches. Two officers in gray and a man in civilian clothes were standing together. The blond civilian wore a suit of fine dark cloth. People still dressed like that and were clean. It was he who inquired how many there were in this place.

  “About thirty thousand,” replied the elder of the officers.

  “Well, I do appreciate your invitation. I was just passing through on business .… Curious to see … Still, quite terrible … Sorry I came.” The voice, borne to and fro by the hot wind, revealed distress.

  “Well. A prison camp is hardly a pleasant place, I agree.”

  And the man in the fine suit repeated himself. “Yes, sorry I came to see it.”

  There was something familiar in the southern voice, something from long ago. An easy grace. Sylvain? No, you killed him. Remember?

  The men were still standing in the aisle.

  “This heat is murderous,” said the man who was not Sylvain.

  “But on the other hand,” the officer answered, “our men freeze in their prisons, in open box cars, in the snow, wearing cotton fit for New Orleans.”

  New Orleans. If not Sylvain, someone else, then? Someone I didn’t like. Why didn’t I like him? I do know. I do know. He was dancing—somewhere—he was dancing—where was it? And Gabriel was there, and my sister. I always thought Gabriel was half in love with her, or more than half. He must be dead by now, and she and all of us must be dead, or will be soon. But this man, who was he? Where was it?

  And raising his arm, he struggled, got up, and lurched, pulling the blanket so that the stick shelter collapsed upon the New Hampshire boy’s wounded leg. And at his cry the men, the officers and the civilian, turned around.

  Look at me, David wanted to say. I’m not crazy, even though I know my mouth is bleeding, I’m only dirty, I’m disgusting, but look at me.

  Instead he heard his own cry: “Raphael, David Raphael!”

  On the bright, blond face of the civilian he saw astonishment. The man took a step, opened his mouth to speak, and was decisively pulled back.

  “Not permitted,” said the officer. “Sorry, but absolutely not permitted.”

  The three men moved quickly away.

  And David sobbed now, crying over and over, “David, David Raphael. You know. Kennst du mich nicht? kennst—” At the same time he knew he was raving.

  29

  Ferdinand had insisted upon going with Miriam.

  “It’s eleven miles to the store,” he had objected. “I doubt they’ll have much, anyway.”

  She answered with firmness.

  “We can use anything that’s there, since we have nothing. Thread. With any luck, some cloth. We don’t even have a scrap for a bandage. And quinine. Poor Fanny is coming down with a fever, I think.”

  “You’ll never get quinine.” Emma was positive. “It’s worth as much as gold these days.”

  Miriam did not say that she still had the few pieces of gold sewn into her dress. She said only, “We’ll try. Come along, then, Papa, if you’re coming.”

  Ruts where successive armies had torn along the road were so deep and crooked that the horse had to zigzag and weave; its hooves sucked up the mud of the autumn rains. In a ditch lay a mule’s carcass being ravaged by buzzards; their naked black wrinkled heads buried themselves voraciously in the dead flesh. Through long stretches of abandoned countryside no other living thing, human or animal, was to be seen. Weeds stood tall in vacant fields. Trampled corn lay rotting. Only here and there was there a house fortunate enough, like Beau Jardín, to have been left standing.

  This ruination silenced father and daughter. The sound, even of low voices, would have been too loud. As the least noise in an empty, dark house is eerie, so it was in this gray, empty land. Miriam glanced at Ferdinand’s pistol, which lay on the seat between them. She had objected to it, but probably he had been right to take it.

  “Can’t be much farther,” he said at last.

  “About a mile more after the hill at the crossroads. He used to keep a good stock, I remember.”

  Her fingers felt the lump of the six coins at her waist. They had the shape and thickness of lozenges, and just as lozenges hold the expectation of flavor and juice, so did these hold a rich expectation.

  “Place looks empty,” Ferdinand said.

  At the foot of the incline stood a small building of unpainted board, surrounded by a yard and a couple of sheds. Now the horse, relieved of effort, quickened into an easy trot downhill and turned into the yard. Here, too, was a heavy stillness, as though a dome had lowered and enclosed the site. There was no one to be seen. The door was wide open.

  Ferdinand forced a hello. “Is anyone here? No one here?”

  Balls of gray dust ran like mice over the floor. Every shelf and counter was bare. Not a box, not a piece of twine or scrap of paper, were left to indicate that there ever had been anything on these shelves and counters.

  “He’s left,” Miriam said disconsolately. “Given up and left or gone to the army.”

  Suddenly from the yard came a screech and squawk. Jolted to the alert, they turned about to see a young hound chasing a scrawny solitary hen, which, flapping and bouncing, managed just in time to obtain a perch above his reach.

  “Has to be somebody here,” said Ferdinand.

  Around the corner of the shed there appeared a thin man, scrawny as the hen, and of no particular age. Removing his cap before Miriam, he spoke with a definite Scottish burr.

  “You wanted something, did you?”

  “Oh,” she replied somewhat ruefully, “we wanted everything! Anything at all, and everything.”

  “They cleaned me out. Not that I had much to start with. Not Union troops, either. Scalawags. Women. I wouldn’t have thought women could be so—begging your pardon, ma’am—women could be so savage. They had guns.”

  The sunken eyes made two dark holes in the grimy, unshaven face. One knew he had not spoken to another human being before now about this woe and disaster, and that he needed to express his anguish; out of compassion, courtesy, and the strength of the man’s need, they heard him out.

  “Said crazy things. That the shortages were my doing! That I had
stuff hidden away waiting for higher prices! Likely you think so, too.”

  “No,” Miriam said, and then on the off chance that this frantic creature might just have something hidden away, she added, “Although we have gold to pay.”

  “There, you see! You think so, too! But I have nothing! Nothing, I tell you! Everybody knows the South never had manufactured goods, everything came from the North, so how am I expected to have cloth or thread or medicines? Where would I get them out here in the middle of nowhere? Lucky they didn’t kill me or burn the roof over my head.”

  Ferdinand said gently, “Of course, of course.”

  “We came from North Carolina. I’m a Scot, but my wife was born there. She had the rheumatism, and the winters got too much for her, so we came here, and she caught the fever instead. Died of it last year. And here I am. Here I am.” The voice cracked and the arms flung themselves up toward the gray, indifferent sky. “Scalawags! Scalawags! Between them and the Jay hawkers, what’s the choice? Attacking me, who never owned a slave in my life! I had all I could do to feed ourselves. Myself.”

  As delicately as they could, they retreated, followed by his voice which floated after them halfway up the hill.

  “Cleaned me out, they did! Cleaned me out!”

  Now, after this, the stillness on the homeward journey seemed more foreboding. The tired horse moved slowly. Ferdinand let the reins dangle from one hand, while his other rested where the pistol gleamed dully on the seat.

  Once he looked over at Miriam, saying with a failed attempt at good humor, “It’s a long time since I held reins in my hands. It reminds me of the old days, only in those days my wagon was full, and I wasn’t afraid of anything.”

  Miriam had no answer. Her eyes, alert and quick, darted and scanned every line of trees; they reached down the road ahead and the road behind as she turned to look back.

  A burnt-out mansion lay wrecked at the end of a long alley of chestnut trees. Its chimneys at this distance were a pair of gaunt giants, a threatening apparition in the wilderness.

  “The Johnson Hicks place,” Ferdinand observed, stating the obvious.

  “They fled by our house that morning. I wonder where they went.”

  “Can’t imagine where.”

  The silence thickened like fog. The horse’s hooves went whispering now, as the track turned sandy. And enveloped again by the silence, they rode on steadily, tensed and without being aware of it, leaning forward with the motion of the horse as if to hasten him home.

  Out of the underbrush a woman thrust herself, with the force of a hurled stone, into the road. The horse’s neigh blared his terror, as though he had seen a snake, but before he could gather himself into a gallop, the woman jerked the reins at his mouth and pulled him to a stop.

  She lowered a rifle toward Ferdinand and Miriam.

  Ferdinand rose in his seat.

  “What the devil do you want?” he cried,

  “What do you think I want? Money.”

  Ferdinand groped for the pistol. He had never fired one in his life, and certainly Miriam had not; they were no match for this attacker. And Miriam slid the pistol out of reach.

  Ferdinand, as though he were not taking the threat seriously, sputtered. “Scalawags! Jayhawkers! Decent citizens can’t even travel the roads—”

  Miriam cried sharp warning. “Papa! No!” She lowered her voice, struggling to keep it even. “We have no money. We’d like to have some, too.”

  The woman came closer. The rifle was an extension of her skinny arm and her ragged sleeve. With them it lifted and trembled.

  Now Miriam’s heart shook under her ribs.

  “I’d be obliged if you’d point that thing away from us. If you kill us, you’ll surely get nothing.”

  “You went to the store. You must have money.”

  “We passed the store. It was empty. As empty as our house.”

  Under the poke bonnet was a young face, sunken and toothless. The blue eyes were mad.

  “I know you,” Miriam said in sudden recognition. “You used to come for food before the war when my husband was alive. We always gave it to you.”

  “Why not? You had more than you needed.”

  “That’s true. But we surely don’t have it now. Between the two armies we’ve had to go without.”

  “Time you knew how, then. You and your niggers that keep good men from getting work. You and your fancy children that never knew hunger.”

  Miriam wondered, looking at this woman probably no older than herself, standing there holding that gun in desperation, how a woman like herself must have appeared in those times of splendid pride, riding behind her coachman, holding not a gun, but a ruffled parasol.

  “Maybe it is time,” she said. “But killing me isn’t going to feed your children.”

  The gun was lowered. Not far away in the swamps those pinch-faced, ragged children must be hiding from the southern draft with their father.

  The suspicious, mad eyes searched the empty carriage.

  “Killing you mightn’t, but burning your house down might smoke out what you’ve got hidden away in it.”

  Jüst don’t let her find these coins, Miriam thought. These I must hold on to. Without them I should be totally helpless in the world.

  “Listen,” she said. “Do you think I want your children to starve? I’m a woman, a mother. If you need some potatoes and meal, come to our place, come in peace, and I’ll give you some.” A surge of courage strengthened her voice and straightened her posture. “But I warn you, if you come to steal or burn, I will report your husband and all his friends to the Confederate authorities. And if you send your men to steal or burn, I’ll have them shot. Do you understand me?”

  “I’ll come this evening. No tricks, now. If I don’t come back safely, my bus—some others will come and make you pay.”

  “You will go back safely. With food. Come tonight.”

  The woman moved back into the underbrush; it closed behind her without a mark. Ferdinand began to whip the horse into a gallop.

  “No, Papa. Slow down to a walk. Don’t show any fear, that’s the worst thing you can do.”

  By the time they reached their lane, Miriam’s momentary courage had passed, and she was shaking from the encounter.

  A semicircle of expectant faces waited for them in the house.

  “We’ve brought nothing. The man in the store had nothing.”

  “Oh, he must have had!” Eulalie’s mouth was bitter with disappointment. “You probably didn’t offer him enough. They always keep their goods hidden, that sort, they always do.”

  Miriam’s nerves were as sore as though they had been scraped. She almost shouted.

  “Who does? What sort do you mean?”

  “We don’t need to go into that,” replied Eulalie, slicing each word carefully as one slices a thin loaf.

  Miriam followed her out of the room, caught up with her in the hall, and grasped her elbow.

  “I think we do need to go into it. Here and now. Of course I know what you meant about the storekeeper. Jews, you meant.”

  “Well, if I did, I’m not the only one who means it.”

  Miriam was almost breathless, tasting blood in her own mouth. “For your information, the storekeeper is a Scotsman. Now, listen, Eulalie, there’s no sense going on like this. We’re both here with no other place to go. I’ve got a son and a daughter, to say nothing of my father and your mother, neither of whom is any use at all” And as Eulalie’s mouth opened in astonishment, Miriam countered: “Well, it’s the truth, isn’t it? I love them, but they’re helpless. Facts are facts, and this surely is a time to face them, if ever there was one. So you see, there’s enough to do around here, and it would be a whole lot easier to do it if we could keep our feelings buried. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me. You despise Jews, and you’re shocked at what you call my sin.”

  “Oh, dear Heaven,” Emma interjected tearfully from the doorway. “This is terrible, everything falling apart! I d
on’t know what you could have said, Eulalie, but it’s all so ugly. Everything is so ugly. I’ve tried, God knows I’ve tried, to bear up under one blow after the other. But is there no end to it? Can’t we at least try to live in peace? I never thought I would live through such times.”

  Poor Emma! It was too late for her. She was too old. Her best years had been lived in a sunny garden.

  “It’s all right, Aunt Emma,” Miriam said. She patted the quivering shoulders. “It’s just talk. We’re all overwrought. I know I am, and no wonder. It’s been a horrible day. But it’s all right. Now I’m going outside for a while to see Simeon at the barn.”

  When she came back Eulalie was in the dining room cutting the rug with a pair of long shears. Pelagie was horrified.

  “An Aubusson! Eugene’s fine Aubusson cut up for blankets! What can you be thinking of?”

  “Eulalie is right,” Miriam said calmly. “The nights are very cold and we have no blankets.”

  She was half out of the room again before Eulalie spoke. She did not look at Miriam.

  “Your maid Fanny. You said she’s sick. I have some blackberry root cordial. It might relieve her trouble.”

  “Why, that’s kind, Eulalie. I thank you.”

  “Eulalie,” Emma cried, “have you remembered to give Miriam her letter?”

  “I forgot. I have it here.” And Eulalie drew an envelope from her pocket.

  “A man on horseback brought it while you were gone this morning,” Emma said. “I hope it’s not bad news.”

  Two crisp sheets rustled in Miriam’s hands. “It’s from André, from Mr. Perrin—” At once she was silenced by the shock of the opening lines.

  Dear Miriam,

  I don’t want to frighten you, but I must get straight to the point. Your brother is in a prison camp in Georgia. In quite the strangest way, among all the thousands there, I caught sight of him.

  “Oh, call Papa! Papa, where are you? Listen! It says David is terribly ill … oh, dear God, desperately ill!”