“I couldn’t believe it when Daddy told me. It seems so unfair.”
“I did a year. They might have kept me for three.’
“Was it very bad?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I wish I had known. I was enjoying myself, and you were in one of those camps.”
“I’m finished with it now.”
“It makes me feel awful to think of you in there.”
“You’re a good girl.”
“It must have been terrible.”
“It was worse for some of the others,” he said.
“I couldn’t bear thinking about you in a prison.”
They walked across Jackson Square through the park and crossed the street to the Café du Monde. They sat outside at one of the tables. There was a breeze from the river. The waiter in a white jacket brought them coffee and a dish of pastry.
“We never wrote to each other after my first year in college,” she said. “I wanted to write but anything I could say seemed inadequate.”
“I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear from me.”
“You know I did. It all went to nothing over such small things.”
“I passed out on the beach in Biloxi.”
“I wasn’t angry. It just hurt me to see you do it to yourself.”
“I felt like hell when I saw the way you looked the next morning,” he said.
“I didn’t sleep all night. I was so worried over you.”
“You were always a good girl.”
“Stop it.”
“You were always damn good-looking too.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Avery.”
“Did you see those men turn and look at you in the park?”
“You’re being unfair.”
“Why are you so damn good-looking?” he said.
“I want to show you my apartment. Can you come over tomorrow evening for supper?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Can you come?”
“All right.”
“I cook beautifully. My roommate refuses to eat with me.”
“Good. Tell her to leave.”
“What were you drinking tonight?” she said.
“I thought I fooled you.”
“Your face was white. I was afraid to light a cigarette near you.”
“Tell your roommate to leave, anyway.”
“You’re still tight.”
“Dago red leaves me like this for a couple of days.”
“It’s good to be with you again, Avery.”
“Let’s walk home,” he said.
BOOK THREE
WHEN THE SUN BEGINS TO SHINE
TOUSSAINT BOUDREAUX
They were clearing a field of stumps the day he escaped. Toussaint waited with the team of mules while Brother Samuel cut the stump from its roots with a chain saw. The field looked flat and bare with the trees cut down. Pieces of splintered wood were strewn over the ground. The air was loud with the knock of the axes and the whine of the saws. There was a big pile of brush burning on the edge of the field. Samuel put down the saw and chopped the remaining roots loose with an axe. His mud-colored face was slick with heat. He rested on one knee and swung the axe down over his shoulder. Toussaint backed up the mules and fastened the chains around the stump. Easing the mules forward, he let them tighten against their harness, then slapped the reins down on their backs; they strained for a moment and then pulled the stump free. He and Samuel took up their axes and split it in pieces to put in the wheelbarrow.
“You ain’t talking today,” Brother Samuel said.
“Got something on my mind,” Toussaint said.
Most of the gangs were working at the other end of the field. Evans was the only guard close by. He stood off to the side of the burning brush, from where he could see all his men. The fire was very hot. Toussaint rolled the wheelbarrow past Evans and began throwing pieces of the stump into the flames. He looked back across the field. It was almost time for lunch and the other guards were taking their gangs back to the road to wait for the food truck.
The fringe of the woods was just behind the brash pile. Toussaint left a thick piece of tree limb in the bottom of the wheelbarrow. Evans stood about thirty yards away in his khaki uniform and cork sun helmet. He took off his helmet and wiped the inside of it with his handkerchief. Toussaint knew that once he was past Evans he could get across the short span of ground into the safety of the trees before the other guards realized anyone had escaped. He looked back across the field again. None of the other guards was looking this way. He pushed the wheelbarrow along the rutted ground until he was opposite Evans. He let the wheelbarrow drop on its side, and knelt with his back to the guard and wrenched the rubber tire from the wheel.
“What’s the matter?” Evans said.
“The wheel busted.”
“Fix it.”
“The tire split. I got to go back to the line shack for another one.”
“You ain’t going nowhere. Let me see it.”
Toussaint gripped the tree limb tightly. He waited for Evans to get close. He raised up quickly and struck him squarely across the forehead. The limb was rotten and it broke in his hand. Evans fell back heavily and lay still, his cork sun helmet beside him. Then Toussaint was racing across the bare strip of ground beside the brush pile, expecting to hear a guard call out to the others, into the protection of the woods, the branches whipping against his face and tearing his clothes. He tripped across the vines that covered the ground, and the thornbushes broke his skin. He ran through the undergrowth and briar, and then the woods began to thin and he could see the green grass on the riverbank through the trees.
He ran down the slope and dove into the water. Swimming out to the middle, he let the current catch him and carry him downstream. He looked at the high clay banks and the trees hanging over the water. There was a houseboat tied to the shore. He didn’t see anyone on it. He went underwater and stayed down until he believed he was past it. Some sunken tree branches brushed under his legs. He came up for air and swam towards the opposite bank. The river made a curve ahead, and beyond it a logging company was working in the woods. He walked up through the shallows onto the mud flat. The police would be delayed while the dogs had to hunt along the bank for his scent after crossing the river. He entered a pecan orchard and stopped to get his breath and pull off his boots. The leather was wet and would blister his feet, and running was faster barefooted. The orchard opened onto a meadow; to the right there was a narrow bayou that cut back through a thicket. He carried his boots in one hand and followed the bayou, walking in the shallows as much as possible so the dogs wouldn’t be able to track him. He took off his shirt and turned it inside out to hide the stenciled prison letters and put it back on again.
By late afternoon he had reached a crossroads off the main highway. There was a grocery-and-hardware store on the corner and some farmhouses in the distance. A bridled mule was hitched to the porch railing of the store. A Negro came out with a cloth sack of groceries, got on the mule, and rode down the gravel lane. Toussaint knew the police would have the main roads blocked, and the town constables would be watching for him in the small settlements. He needed food, a change of clothes, a gun, and ammunition. He wanted to keep going south until he hit the swamp country around Bayou Lafourche; once there, he could get a pirogue and slip through the canals into Barataria where he could hide indefinitely. He had relatives in Barataría, and people in that part of the country cared little for the law. Later, when the police had stopped looking for him, he could get out of the state.
He hid in a cornfield and waited for nightfall. A police car came down the road and stopped in front of the store. An officer got out and spoke to the men sitting on the porch. He went back to his car and stood with one foot on the running board and talked into the microphone of his radio. Toussaint could see the sunlight glint on the butt of his revolver. He wished he had a gun. He felt helpless without one. There was a chance they could take hi
m back to the work camp if he had no weapon.
The officer got in his car and drove off. Toussaint smelled the clean odor of the earth. He rubbed some dirt between his hands. This was good land. The corn was high and green, and there was a field of strawberries across the road. Around his home most of the men were fishermen, but he liked the land and things growing. It had been a long time since he had been on a farm. There had been his time in prison, and before that the city where he saw nothing except concrete buildings and the faces of people he didn’t understand, nor who understood him. He could have lain in the field without ever getting up. The soil was cool and a thin breeze ruffled through the cornstalks. A cottontail jumped into his row and stopped, its ears pressed down against its back, the nose twitching. We got to keep moving, don’t we, rabbit? Toussaint thought. If we don’t there won’t be no more cornfields or strawberries or going home. There won’t be nothing.
That night he waited until the store closed. He could see two men playing dominoes through the window. The light went off in back and the two men and the owner came out on the porch. They got into a car and drove down the road. Toussaint moved forward to the edge of the field and remained watching to make sure they were not coming back for anything. He could see the lighted farmhouses in the distance. The moon was down, and the road was dark. He could hear the crickets and the frogs in the woods. He crossed the road and went around to the back of the store. He pushed in the screen on the door with his hand until it broke from its fastening. The inside door had a glass pane in it. He tried to force the door by slowly pushing his weight against it. It was bolted. He got a piece of brick and wrapped it in newspaper. He broke out the glass near the corner of the frame and reached in and slid the bolt loose.
He was thirsty. He hadn’t had a drink of water since he swam the river. He took a bottle of pop out of the cooler and drank it. He opened another and drank it while he went along the shelves and took the cans of food he would need. He found a gunnysack behind the counter and put in the cans. There was a rack with used clothing and work clothes by the front door. He took a shirt and a pair of trousers and put them in the sack with the cans and tied a knot in the top. He set the sack on the counter and looked around the store. The guns rested on wooden pegs against the wall. They were all secondhand. He took a Winchester off its pegs and worked the action. He could find only two boxes of shells for it. He loaded the magazine and put the rest of the shells in his pocket. He would need a knife also. He slid back the cover of a glass case and chose a good Queen knife with a yellow bone handle and two long blades. He picked up the gunnysack from the counter and looked out the front window at the road. He went out the back door and circled around the store, crossed the road, and ran through the cornfield into the woods.
He went deep into the trees before he stopped. He took the shirt and trousers from the sack and changed clothes. He rolled his prison denims into a ball and dug a hole in the leaves and soil with his hands and buried them. He traveled south through the meadows and wooded areas, avoiding the roads and farm settlements. He made good time, and by dawn he had found a deserted cabin in a pinewood where he could hide until the next night. One side of the cabin was stored with grain, and there was a damp cool mealy smell inside. There were tracks in the grain where the squirrels had come to feed. The roof of the cabin had a big hole in it, and Toussaint could see the blue light in the east spreading across the sky. He was tired, and after he had eaten he lay back in the grain and slept.
It was noon when he awoke and heard the dogs barking. They had picked up his trail at the crossroads. He grabbed his rifle and ran out of the cabin into the hot light. He hadn’t thought they would catch up with him so soon. He cut through the woods and hoped that he could find a bayou where he could throw the dogs off his scent. The trees were thickly spaced and slowed his running; there was no bayou. The barking of the dogs seemed farther behind him now, but that was because the police had stopped to search the grounds around the cabin; it would not take them long to discover that he had just fled and was less than a mile away. He had left the sack of food behind.
He headed for the marsh. It was the only thing left. If they caught him in the open he would either be killed without a fight, or worse, handcuffed and returned to camp. The marsh was a long way, and he had to travel at a steady pace without halting to rest. The main highway was off to his left and the state troopers were skirting the woods to the right, trying to cut him off. His path was laid out for him like a geometric rectangle; on one extreme was the dead end where he would make his stand, and on both sides were the police, who tightened the rectangle like a vise with each passing hour.
Once they almost got him. He was crossing a dried-out river bottom when the deputies opened fire. The river bottom was flat and reddish brown and baked by the sun, and the clay broke up and sank under his boots. He splashed through the few remaining rivulets of water that flowed through the low places in the bottom. He ran up the opposite bank and crouched behind a log and shot at them until they retreated from the bluff out of sight. The log was a cypress trunk that had washed over the bank in a flood and had been left when the water receded. The trunk was eaten by worms. A bullet splintered against it and filled his face with slivers of wood. A trooper had climbed down into a wash and was shooting at him from his flank. Toussaint fired back and saw a puff of dust jump up behind the trooper. He shot again as the man crawled rapidly back to the bluff and took cover. He sighted his rifle across the log and waited. They weren’t going to try again. They were going farther down the bluff to slip across the river bottom and flank him. He ran up the levee and down the other side into the woods. His face stung and bled slightly from the cypress splinters. He had been lucky. If they had been more careful they would have taken him.
He continued due west, pausing at intervals to fire at the police. He came out of the woods at evening and crossed a railroad embankment. He could see the swamp ahead of him. He saw the oaks with the moss in their limbs, and the cypress with their trunks swollen out at the waterline, and the alligator grass and bamboo and willow trees, and the white cranes that flew above the gray of the treetops.
The troopers had finally closed the rectangle. He broke through the underbrush, holding the Winchester at port arms, and started up the slope in a full run towards the marsh. It was almost dusk, and if he could reach the top of the rise without being hit the troopers would have to wait until morning before they tried to take him again. There was a rifle report behind him and a bullet slammed into the dirt by his feet. He hunched his shoulders and zigzagged from side to side as two more shots rang out. They were getting closer. He knew they were missing their mark by only a couple of inches whenever he heard that hollow throp near his head. He stumbled and fell, landing on his elbows so he wouldn’t drop the rifle. He dug his boots in the ground and lurched to his feet. There were more shots behind him, but they were shooting too fast now to be accurate. He thought his lungs would burst before he reached the top of the slope. He dove headlong over the crest and lay panting in the weeds.
They had stopped shooting. Toussaint raised his head just enough to see a dozen men spread out in an even line behind the undergrowth. The swamp was to his back, and there were two deep clay gullies that flanked each side of the crest. He had been in this part of the country before. The state had used convict labor to sandbag the levee when the river overflowed a year ago. He had deliberately chosen this particular place to make his stand. He could knock them down one at a time if they tried to move up through the gullies. He didn’t think they would come up behind him. The marsh was twelve miles across, and it would take more than a day to get a flatboat through, because there was only one channel and it was shallow and choked with logs and sandbars. They could enter the marsh farther down on this side and try to circle him, but there were many quicksand bogs and deep holes and he doubted if they would risk losing any men in the water.
They would come in the morning. They didn’t have machine guns now, but th
ey would have them in the morning and the sun would be at their backs. They had it all in their favor, but he would make their job hard. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and spread it neatly on the ground. He counted out his cartridges on the handkerchief. Fifteen, plus nine in the magazine. He wouldn’t waste a round. He would wait until they came into full view (and they would have to) before he shot. He put the shells back in his pocket. The bluing of the rifle was worn off. There were specks of rust along the barrel. He rubbed the thin rust off with the palm of his hand. He opened the breech and wiped it and the action clean of grit with his handkerchief.
The afterglow of the sun faded to darkness. He heard a truck grinding in low gear through a field opposite him. They were bringing in more men and guns. He thought about water. He could go without food, but he would have to have something to drink in order to last through the next day. The July sun would beat straight down into his eyes until afternoon. Toussaint crept down the backside of the slope to the edge of the marsh. He would take a deep drink now, and just before daylight he would take off his shirt and soak it in the water so he could suck the moisture from the cloth throughout the morning. The water was thick with lily pads and reeds. He cleared the scum off with his hand. It wasn’t good to drink from the swamp, but he had no choice. He could bear the mosquitoes, the hunger, and the long hours without sleep, and if he didn’t become sick he could make his fight a good one. The water tasted sour in his mouth. He climbed back up to the crest and lay down, cradling the Winchester in the crook of his arm. A fire was burning down the slope. They were making coffee. He could see a man shadowed against the light throwing sticks in the fire. The range was too far for an accurate shot, and Toussaint would not have fired, anyway. He would wait and give them their chance in the morning.
He waited on his stomach in the dark for dawn to come. He weakened during the night and there was a hard cramp in the lower portion of his body. The swamp water had been bad and he was beginning to feel its effect. He felt light-headed, and the campfire in the distance was blurred and out of focus. He pressed his fist in the pit of his stomach to ease the pain. God, don’t let me pass out, he thought. Let me be ready for them in the morning. I got to be at my best tomorrow. This is the end of the line and it’s got to be right. I’d rather turn this gun on myself than have them come up here and find me passed out.
Half of Paradise Page 21
