by Rhodi Hawk
It was crowing a second time as Patrice reached over to the bedside table and lit the kerosene lamp. The room glowed to wakefulness. A tiny speck of brown on Patrice’s pillow, brown like blood, and her hand went to the back of her neck. A broken welt there. Probably a bug bite that she’d scratched in her sleep.
She looked to the mantel clock and caught her breath: 5:30! An hour and a half later than it ought to be.
Patrice threw aside the quilt and scrambled to her feet.
Tatie Bernadette was staying with a sister and was to meet them at the church, which meant that Patrice was to help make breakfast this morning. She now only had an hour to bathe, dress, and make breakfast for all the workers.
“Marie-Rose,” Patrice started to say …
But her sister’s bed was empty. The quilt lay balled in the middle of the bed. Straps dangled to the floor. Rosie hadn’t been strapped in last night. There hadn’t seemed any need.
Patrice pulled a wrap over her shoulders and opened the door, heading for the pantry, and saw Gilbert.
He said, “I know, Treese, it’s late. The second I heard that other rooster I knew you’d be in a fit.”
“Where’s Marie-Rose? You see her?”
“Naw. What happened?”
Patrice just shook her head and adjusted her wrap.
He said, “You go ahead and start getting ready. I’ll look for her.”
“What about Trigger?”
“I woke him up.”
“Got him up?”
Gil shrugged but did not reply. Which meant Trig was probably still sleeping. Gil opened the pantry door, stepping out to look for Rosie. Drizzle out there. Not rain. Not full rain. Patrice hadn’t even heard a pitter-patter the whole time she’d been lying awake.
She hurried to the men’s parlor and flung open the door. “Trigger!”
He was sprawled facedown on his bed, looking like he’d lost a brawl with the linens. He groaned but did not move.
Patrice grabbed a tail of sheet and yanked. Trig thumped to the floor with no protest and no resistance. He did manage a whimper.
She said, “Starch up. It’s late.”
“Honey, why you got to be so hard?”
She left him to it and rushed off to get ready.
* * *
WHERE HAD ROSIE GOTTEN off to?
The girl might have gotten a start with chores, or maybe she’d just gone to get something to eat. Gilbert would find out.
Patrice washed and dressed and tried not to think too much about it as she made it to the kitchen house and started breakfast. No biscuits this morning. They’d get eggs and coffee and porridge from last night’s leftover cornbread. Milk, too. If someone had done the milking.
The door swung open and closed with plantation workers filing in, the lanterns casting a honeyed glow against the whitewashed walls. Terrefleurs did have electricity but its use had fallen off after Papa died, when the flood took away power and illness left the overseer, Francois, unable to keep up with the knobs and tubes. An outlet in the parlor of the main house still worked, and the children used it to listen to the radio.
Patrice worked as fast as she could but she was slow. This was not her usual chore.
The workers kept shuffling in. Their hair and clothes were studded with droplets of mist.
Finally, Patrice was nudged aside by a woman and her daughter, Eunice, who was Patrice’s age. Patrice used to play hide-and-go-seek with Eunice and a small pack of farm brats before Patrice’s mother forbade interaction with plantation children. After that, Eunice grew into something of a stranger even though she lived right here on Terrefleurs. Already she was working half days in the fields.
“Go on ahead now, Miss Patrice. We’ll take it from here,” Eunice said.
“But I wanted to make the breakfast today.”
“You don’t have to be cookin no breakfast. You the mistress these days.”
“It’s the ways of Jesus Christ, who taught that a master must humble himself in service, even to those who are his servants.”
Eunice’s mother laughed. “Well you tell Mr. Christ that all the servants gonna starve to death if they have to wait on the master to cook these eggs.”
Always it seemed that serving God in one way meant denying Him in another.
Patrice returned to the main house without having taken anything to eat, and went straight to the men’s parlour to see if Gil had found Rosie. But Gil wasn’t there. Trigger, however, was. Still tangled in those wretched linens on the floor where she’d left him.
“Guy!”
His body snapped. She folded her hands and looked away as he struggled to his feet and donned his trousers. When she looked back he was squinting at the clock.
“I’m sorry, honey. Is it as late as that? I was just…”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We won’t be attending service this morning. Marie-Rose has gone missing.”
His expression drew up. “That so?”
And from behind her, she heard Gil’s voice: “Yeah, it’s so.”
He was soaked through, standing in the doorway, and he pulled off his shirt as Trigger was shrugging into his suspenders. Backward reflections of one another, those boys. Stick-framed, blue eyes, and catlike faces, but with light black skin and hair. Just like their sisters.
“On the wander,” Gil said.
“You certain?”
“No sign of her anywhere. Nobody’s seen her.”
Trigger flung himself into the chair with a laugh and pulled on his boots. “Aw, come on you two! She’s alright. Y’all worry like ninnies.”
Patrice looked at him.
His preadolescent voice cracked somewhere between a boy’s laugh and one that sounded like a girl’s. “Oh, for God, Treese, you gotta know she ain’t wandered far.”
“Hasn’t.”
“She hasn’t wandered far. Couldn’t have. Come on, now. How much distance is one little girl gonna cover on a bramble stroll in the dark?”
Patrice said, “She’ll be in her nightclothes. And it’s drizzling out there.”
“I know, I know. Which is why I’m gonna run get her and bring her back. While y’all load up and head on over to church.”
Patrice shook her head. “Not today.”
“Yes, today. How many times does Rosie go on the wander?”
Patrice lifted her gaze to the steamed window. The answer was: often. Often enough to keep straps on her bed.
Trigger said, “It ain’t never…”
“Hasn’t.”
“Hasn’t never…”
“Hasn’t ever.”
“Woman! It hasn’t ever taken more than an hour to find her. And if I check through the briar I’ll have her in just a few minutes. Y’all’re talkin about missin church for nothin.”
Patrice thought about it and found his words to be truthful. Trigger was a far better tracker than Gil, and if he’d been the one to have gone after Rosie first thing she’d probably be home by now. Trigger had river water flowing through his veins. He was more at home out in the woods than he ever was here in the house.
Gil was standing bare-chested with suspenders dangling loose at his legs and a fresh shirt in his hands, more bones than boy. “He’s right, Treese. Let me take you on over to church this morning and let Trigger handle all this.”
Trigger put a hand to Patrice’s shoulder and was leading her to the door. “Go on get ready now.”
She said nothing, letting him steer her. He had the good grace to hide a patronizing expression but she knew he thought her nervous. She took the doorknob in her own hand so that she might be the one to close it.
But then she paused, looking back at Gil. “Did you look in on the four o’clock?”
Gil shook his head. “That ole rooster’s gone.”
“Dead?”
“Probably. Fox must have carried him off.”
Patrice looked at him, dark skin gleaming with water in lamplight. She felt a trickle at the back of her neck and touched blood
where that scratch was. Must have opened the wound.
Trigger took gentle hold of the door and closed it on her.
five
NEW ORLEANS, NOW
SEVERIN LED MADELEINE DOWN to the banks of the Mississippi. Madeleine steeled herself, thinking the river devil was going to take her back to the murder site, but instead Severin walked straight into the water: step by step, eyes forward, like a parishioner about to be cleansed anew. Her hair trailed behind her on the water’s surface. Madeleine looked back. The trees had already stretched so tall, and the thorns had spread so that there was no visible rise of levee, no hobo camps. The sun had gone, too—disappeared behind the mist of the river devil’s world.
“You’re going to show me exactly what happened?” Madeleine asked.
“So, to see!” Severin turned to her with bright eyes, a child excited to go for a swim in the river.
The water felt cool on Madeleine’s skin even though it wasn’t real. Her body was still sitting in the pickup while the rest of her was descending into the water with Severin. The silty river bottom squished beneath her as she first walked, then swam toward the center.
Severin was treading water, facing her. She reached out and took Madeleine’s hand.
“Ready?”
Madeleine nodded. Severin dove down, and Madeleine took a breath and dove after her. The water was clear and gray like the briar mist above the surface. Easy to forget that what she saw was part illusion. Were this actually the Mississippi, it would be the colors of a toad. They went straight down, and then Severin paused, floating like a marionette on strings, and Madeleine paused with her. And then Severin plunged down even further.
It seemed pointless. Diving down to the bottom of the river. How did that answer any questions? Madeleine was tired and growing irritated, and she wouldn’t even be here were it not for the urgency of the situation. She didn’t like bending the rules of the bargain with Severin. A bad precedent.
But instead of reaching the river bottom, when she dove down she broke the surface again. Suddenly down was up. And everything had changed.
This world was still a briar world. But it was rooted in a place that was not the least bit familiar. The sounds out here were not those of the Mississippi River, not even Louisiana. The shoreline was not muddy banks—there were rocks, and grassy estuaries cut with broad red channels for a rise and fall of tide.
“What is this?” Madeleine asked.
“Wolfville.”
Madeleine frowned. There were seabirds, and also briar creatures that hovered in her periphery before disappearing when Madeleine looked directly at them. Exhausting, trying to distinguish briar world from a more familiar kind of reality.
They were swimming toward shore. Sandpipers scattered as a merlin swooped into their midst. The birds did not avoid Madeleine, though. She might as well be a breeze passing among them. She saw them up close in a way she’d never before experienced. Every detail, from the color patterns on their feathers to the nostrils and small black eyes. She reached out and touched a beak. Could feel the rigidity of it but couldn’t move it. The sandpiper did not react to her touch.
When they reached dry sand, things changed. It was in the way she and Severin moved. Each step was as though they crossed a mile, their surroundings blurring past though their bodies moved slowly and carefully. Madeleine kept her gaze on Severin so as not to go dizzy. They stopped in front of a white two-story house, an old salt box, with hummingbirds buzzing mounds of red dianthus in the front yard. A sign read SWEET WILLIAM INN.
“What’s this got to do with last night’s murder?” Madeleine asked.
Severin didn’t reply but instead led her up to the house, walking through the front door as though they were ghosts, and up a flight of stairs. A bed and breakfast, it seemed. Severin turned at the landing and led her through a very small door which concealed a second set of stairs, this one dark and very steep. Dangerously steep. They were heading into the house’s attic. At the top of the stairs, a baby gate. They passed through it.
Madeleine could hear a woman’s voice as she spoke on a cell phone. “No Mama, we’re fine. I don’t pay rent. Nuh-uh. I clean the rooms and me and Coop stay for free.”
Sun poured through the window in a trapezoid pattern where a playpen stood. Madeleine could see a little boy sitting amid foam blocks with letters and numbers stitched on them, playing with a stuffed green dinosaur.
Madeleine stared at the child, unable to move, because though she’d never seen him before she knew at once who he was. This was her nephew.
* * *
MADELEINE GRABBED SEVERIN’S ARM. “What’re you trying to pull?”
“Only what you asked to know!”
“I asked about the murder!”
“And so you see.”
“You trying to tell me that baby has something to do with last night?”
Severin made a face and pulled free from Madeleine’s grasp. She alit on the beveled board siding and climbed like an anole. Up, up along the wall, which angled to a ceiling that matched the peak of the roof. A person could stand upright only beneath the peak; everywhere else the ceiling slanted too low.
Severin darted up and over to where the baby’s mother was curled up on a battered couch with a cell phone pressed to her ear. Emily Hammond. The one who had fallen pregnant by Madeleine’s brother Marc, just before he killed himself. Emily had fled all the way to Nova Scotia to escape the darkness surrounding Madeleine’s family.
“Yeah, Mama, Cooper’s playin with the dinosaur you got him,” Emily was saying.
Madeleine looked at the little boy, who was knocking the dinosaur against the blocks.
“Cooper,” Madeleine murmured, and she knelt down to hook her fingers in the fabric of the playpen.
The little boy looked up and cooed, smiling, and Madeleine could swear he was looking directly at her. He tossed his head with an inhaled laugh. He was clearly a LeBlanc: blue eyes and African skin. Points at the brows. So much like his father. Like Madeleine, even.
Madeleine felt her eyes go hot. She would have liked to know this little guy. But it was too dangerous. This, here and now, just being here was unthinkably dangerous.
She had to turn away. “Severin, I mean it, we have to leave these people alone.”
“It is a glimpse, yes, a whisper at most.” The river devil crept back along the seam of roof joists to peer into the playpen.
The beveled wood that lined the walls looked original, and the house had to be around a hundred years old. The attic itself was crudely finished out for a living space. No insulation. Probably hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
Emily had her head tilted and was laughing into the receiver. Madeleine had gone to school with her. The sun pouring through the window reflected off the playpen and filled Emily’s face with gold, her blond hair falling in loose, short waves.
Emily looked across at her son and sat up, saying into the receiver, “Yeah, the landlady’s real nice. Watches Coop while I’m in class. We got everything we need.”
And then Emily’s expression changed. She rose to her feet.
“Hey, Mama, let me call you back.”
Emily was staring at her son as she closed the flip phone. Madeleine followed Emily’s gaze. Severin was curled behind the little boy, whispering into his ear.
Madeleine pushed her back. “You get away from him!”
Severin sprang out of the playpen and retreated up along the ceiling, her face both angry and satisfied. “They do not listen so easy. These you must whisper when they are young.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Nothing of a matter. It is a practice only, that over time he might listen.”
Emily Hammond put a hand to her mouth. Madeleine looked back at Cooper. He’d arranged his foam blocks into the letters A-U-N-T-I-E.
Emily snatched her son out of his playpen. “Who’s here? Who is it?”
Her eyes were wet. Cooper looked dazed but did not cr
y.
“Get us out of here!” Madeleine said.
Severin crept forward. “He is the last child of the briar. It is a thing that leads to another, and what you asked to know.”
“But what’s that got to do with that murder on the levee?”
“The training. Only the training for a far tomorrow.”
Severin scrabbled across the ceiling and over to the stairs, down to the third step. Madeleine looked over the railing. Blood was seeping from beneath Severin’s toes. Her lips pulled back in a smile, and then she scaled the wall again, pausing in the corner at the ceiling.
Emily was turning in a circle, her eyes searching. “Madeleine! Madeleine LeBlanc!”
Madeleine looked at her.
“I know it’s you, Madeleine. You’re his only aunt. I remember when we were in school. You were just like any other kid. You wouldn’t have hurt anyone in those days.”
Madeleine wished she could tell her, I’m not here to hurt you. But that would be a lie. This was hurting her. This was hurting little Cooper. Just by knowing where he was, it opened him up to the briar where knowledge flowed in the collective.
“Leave us alone, Madeleine!” Emily cried. “All you people, you leave us alone!”
And then she rushed for the stairs, knocking the baby gate aside.
Madeleine stepped toward the railing. “Don’t!”
But Emily was descending much too fast for the steep, narrow stairway, and with little Cooper clutched in her arms.
Emily’s feet slid out from under her and her head knocked back against the third step, the one where Severin had left droplets of blood.
Emily made a guttural sound, her arms protecting Cooper’s head. But she rose and pulled open the door at the base of the stairs. Blood on her hair and shirt. Madeleine listened as her footfalls descended the second set of stairs and out the front door.
Severin was still smiling.
six
NEW ORLEANS, NOW
ZENON LAY WITH HIS hospital gown gaping enough at the neck to expose a few clusters of chest hair and a sharp collarbone. He’d lost weight, Madeleine thought. His face looked slack except for the eyes—they seemed to be smiling … almost. An oddity of the human brain that certain facial muscles created recognizable patterns, such as joy, even when the lips or cheeks couldn’t form a smile. In Zenon’s case, not only was a true smile impossible, he wasn’t even able to blink for a yes or no response. That meant he was either oblivious to his surroundings or unable to communicate. Or both.
