by Rhodi Hawk
A dollar bill lay between that page and the next. And when she managed to turn that one, another dollar bill came free.
She pointed it out to Francois. “Look, your Bible!”
He shook his head. “Was never mine. I’d been savin it all those years for her.”
Meaning his wife, Patrice thought. But she’d run off to Chicago.
“Well, here.”
“Ain’t mine. Your’n now.”
She might have argued but she knew better. Francois wasn’t going to take that Bible back, nor its money. As her fingers gingerly released the pages one by one, each revealed another dollar bill—and sometimes even a fiver. It occurred to her then that the glue had not been an accident of damp and dry.
She recalled the day they left Terrefleurs. How the original plan had been to save a hundred dollars. If only they’d known they had the money all along.
But really, it probably wouldn’t have made a whit of difference.
But it did now. They had this resource now. She looked down at the mildewed book in her hands. Freed another page and yet another bill.
How many pages are in a Bible? she wondered.
* * *
DAYS PASSED, AND THOUGH both Gil and Rosie seemed to mostly recover from the poison, Rosie still couldn’t walk and Gil could only do so with assistance.
Francois said of it, “Don’t worry. They gon be fine.”
Patrice believed it to be true because he himself was fine, even though he’d only recently been stabbed through the lung and left to die. They were in Bayou Bouillon now. The ghosts were around. One of them, another version of Patrice, was bound to heal Rosie and Gil.
Patrice touched the cross that Eunice had given her the day she drove out of Terrefleurs. Along with the cross, Patrice was now also wearing a new carved necklace, different from what she’d worn before. This one was made of short switches cut from willow and tangled together in a clean braid. Chaos organized into pattern. The green switches had been let to dry out—by whom, Patrice didn’t know—so that the green had gone woody. Gil and Rosie and Ferrar each wore similar ones.
The four of them had had to borrow names, too, for this visit. It was part of the rules. They all went by their middle names.
They were scraping the wood down on one of the shanties and getting it ready for whitewashing. The act of doing something mundane felt good: the tension in Patrice’s back, even the blisters forming on her hands and the splinters in her feet, muscles that hadn’t been used in six years. She and Ferrar scraped the north wall while Gil and Rosie painted the east—the bottom half, anyway. As much as they could reach from seated positions on the boardwalk or atop crates. They spoke of what they remembered from being inside.
“It all kinda runs together,” Gil said.
Rosie nodded. “Same for me. I mostly remember the sylphs.”
“Yeah, a funny thing. You get to lookin at the sylphs and you forget what’s goin on around you. Like the entire reason they’re there is so that you don’t pay attention to anything else.”
Patrice listened. She herself had had the same experience, though not as much as Rosie and Gil had.
They heard a motor revving somewhere in the bayou and fell silent, listening. Another motor started up. As they continued working on the shanty, boats began moving out of the village and across to the channel.
“Tide must’ve healed over,” Ferrar said.
And the water was indeed higher. When they’d arrived on the shrimp boat, the tide was dangerously low, and over the next several days the water hadn’t restored enough to let boats in or out of the channel. Hutch and Simms were forced to stay over in Bayou Bouillon a few days. Hutch never left his shanty. He was terrified Trigger was going to possess him again. But so far as Patrice could tell, Trig had let him be.
The shrimp boat came into view among the vessels that were filing toward the channel. It rode high in the water, which meant Simms and Hutch were able to sell the barrels they’d had onboard. Even from this vantage point, Patrice could make out Simms’ short tight silhouette and Hutch’s tall round one beneath the overhang.
“Maman was going to kill those two,” Marie-Rose said, gesturing toward the boat.
Patrice looked at her from around the side of the shanty. “Why?”
“They wanted to work with her, but she wanted them to work for her. Her man, Jacob Chapman, was supposed to give it to them when they walked you down the lane for your scratch.”
“How do you know, she tell you?”
“No! Lord, no. We never spoke, never. Just the briar knowing. She wanted us to help with the pigeoning, but we never quite got it right. I think all the poisons made it too confusing to follow proper.”
It gave Patrice a chill to think of it, her brother and sister suffering for so long. But now that Maman had Trigger, he wouldn’t be subjected to the same poisons because she didn’t have his body. His body was gone, lost in a whorl like the one that first took her to Bayou Bouillon.
Last night Patrice had slipped out and swam in the effervescent bayou by herself, letting the bubbles caress her, and she’d receded into the briar as she swam. Just enough. An underwater current wanted to pull her down, and somehow she knew that if she followed it she would never come back.
“Trig,” she’d called out in the briar.
“Treese!” he’d called back.
“Where are you?” she’d called, and then, “Can you find a way out?” and, “Is there a tar devil?”
But he hadn’t replied.
There had been so much to say to him. Much that they needed to figure out, because Patrice was not going to let Maman keep him forever. Patrice would put an end to it if she had to die trying or her mother would have to die, one or the other.
But oh, that briar and its way. How easy it was to forget even the most important things. Sylphs went dancing down the current in the water and it was all Patrice could do to keep from chasing them. But she didn’t. She just watched. And though she didn’t know where Trigger’s physical body was, or even his spirit, for now she had to let it be enough that she’d heard his voice a little.
And so she sang. Sang dumb old country songs she knew from Terrefleurs, like “Bluetail Fly.” By the third song she heard Trigger singing with her. Wherever he was, tar devil be damned, he was singing. She sang every song she could think of with him, and she awoke this morning soaking wet on a pallet in the floating shanty. Ferrar was there with her, sleeping. Had her physical body climbed out of the bayou on its own or had Ferrar come and gotten her? She didn’t ask. But later, she’d found his other shirt and dungarees rolled up in a damp wad in the corner.
The breeze pulled an oystery scent up from the bayou. Ferrar looked out at the boats and then gave Patrice a private nod. They’d be heading back soon now that the tide was allowing. Back to Terrefleurs, or what was left of it. Soon as Gil and Rosie were on their feet they’d take Tatie Bernadette back to the old plantation and see if anyone was still there. Patrice wondered what had happened to Eunice after all these years.
Also, Ferrar had been hinting about how they would have to figure out how to make a proper life together. That was something she hadn’t thought on directly. The idea of mapping out her life with Ferrar seemed an indulgence beyond any realistic possibility. How could a child of the briar join together with a lumen? This was a thought she would set aside for another day. They’d find a way to get Trigger back and then they could figure out the rest.
For now, all they could really do was scrape down a rusting old shanty on the bayou. And now was fine. She looked at Gil and Rosie, and then back at Ferrar again. Now was fine. Now still had some blessing in it.
seventy-four
LOUISIANA, NOW
MADELEINE HAD BEEN THE only one who’d sustained injury. While she was in the briar Zenon had sent the animals on attack, and the bobcat had gotten into the cabin and torn open her leg. The others had minor cuts from birds and rodents. Apparently the bedlam had transpired only
for about a minute before it stopped again. But in that time the cottage had gone to tatters: feathers, and shreds of fabric and paper, tufts of filling from the sleeping bags. Afterward, Ethan had watched while the gash in Madeleine’s leg mended itself even as he was looking for a way to suture it up.
The cottage had felt like a hot mushroom den when Madeleine surfaced back to her physical body. Amazing how cool it had felt over the briar river when, in the physical world, she’d been sweating it out with three other bodies in an airless cabin.
When she’d come around, Ethan had been waiting.
She’d thrown her arms around him and was loath to let go despite the heat. “We’re safe for now. It’s OK. No more hiding.”
He’d hugged her so hard it lifted her off her toes. The boys and Jasmine had simply looked on, waiting, clicking, listening, quiet and uncertain.
When they’d taken their first steps down from the porch onto solid ground, they’d found, to their relief, that none of the beasts took any notice. Some of the creatures had already wandered off. The hogs were gone. Rodents disappeared to the cracks and crevices. But some had lingered. Beasts not usually prone to daylight activity had pretty much remained where they were like spilled marbles. Most of the alligators had stayed put—more for having fallen asleep than for any other reason—though they’d wandered off one by one as they day had worn on. The birds had reduced their number by about half, too.
Ethan was not much of a hunter, but the bobcat had become his quarry when it had attacked Madeleine. He’d shot it clean and had been trying to figure out whether to take it to a taxidermist.
Now, with early evening upon them, the sound of crickets and frogs and night birds expanding with the breeze, there remained no evidence of the morning’s hordes.
Madeleine sighed and rubbed the small of her back where her muscles had gone stiff. She’d been bending and lifting, loading Ethan’s car. It had taken a few hours to disassemble the encampment Ethan had established for himself and the boys while they searched for Madeleine. Really, the overgrown, rotting plantation grounds had become something of a citadel the way Ethan had reinforced it. He’d finagled the toilet in the main house to become operational, though it required drawing water from a bucket and filling the tank for each flush. He’d cleared enough of the sticker bushes to allow for drive-in and boat set-in, but not so much that a person could approach the grounds unnoticed. The only real way in was from the drive or from the bayou itself, and he’d situated motion-activated cameras so that he could watch both at once while the boys were in the cabin.
Now, Ethan was standing near the tattered white main house with his cell phone in one ear and his finger pinched over the other so that he could hear. They’d loaded up pretty much all there was to load and were waiting for the transport vehicle to come collect the Four Winns from the water.
Madeleine turned slowly in a circle, taking in the sight of Terrefleurs. The buildings and trees looked like kudzu topiaries. She wondered just how far gone a place like this had to get before it was considered too far gone. Right now it seemed old Mother Nature wanted her plantation back.
The boys were exploring with Jasmine about thirty feet away by the allée of pecans. They’d devised a method wherein Bo was using a rake to gather up fallen pecans, along with sticks and other debris, and dumping the lot in a pail. Ray then held the pail in his lap and sorted the healthy nuts from the bric-a-brac. They’d already amassed heaps of good pecans.
Anxious as she was to return to civilization, Madeleine felt reluctant about taking those two boys back to New Orleans. Both Bo and Ray had very uncertain futures—Bo would return to his mother’s care as soon as she was released from the hospital next week, though Esther had already received notice that they were being evicted from the trailer. Ray would most likely go to a juvenile care facility or a foster home that could accommodate his special needs. Esther wanted to take him in with her but under the circumstances, as a single mother with no job and no home of her own, her chances were slim.
Madeleine leaned against a makeshift table Ethan had put together from lumber lying around the grounds.
“I’d be careful with that,” he called.
She turned and saw him walking toward her. “Can’t say I’m the best carpenter in the world. That table’s a good place to eat some potted meat and crackers but I wouldn’t sit on it.”
She smiled and rose.
He squeezed her and kissed the top of her head. “Every time I put my arms around you it gets harder to pull them apart.”
She laced her arm around him as they walked toward the main house.
“Is the truck on the way?” she asked.
“Yeah. Went too far and had to double back, but the driver couldn’t find a place to turn around. Should be here in fifteen minutes. It’ll take a bit longer to get the boat loaded up. We’ll be headed back to New Orleans before nightfall. But…”
“What?”
“I called to check on old Chloe.”
She nodded. “And?”
“She’s gone missing.”
Madeleine slowed, her mouth going dry. “That fast.”
She’d expected to see changes in Chloe’s condition after Gaston’s age reversal, but she’d assumed it would take time.
“They’ve reported it to the police and left messages on your voice mail. I kept after them until someone connected me to the nurse who’d been on duty when Chloe vanished. She said it looked like someone had shaved Chloe’s head—there was a pile of hair on her pillow. And in the bed linen there were sheets of detritus.”
“What, like dead skin?”
“Yeah. No one saw her leave, either. Security cameras showed a young black woman leaving the hospital room, but no sign of Chloe herself.”
Madeleine fell silent, taking it in.
Ethan said, “And the, uh, mysterious young black woman, she was bald.”
A breeze rose from the Mississippi ahead and washed back to the bayou, and with it the trees grew restless. Madeleine tried to digest what Ethan had told her. She tried to picture Chloe as a young woman. How the body might shed old cells and replace them with young ones. Even in cloning, the clone animal begins life with cells that are already at the same age as the host was at clone time.
Madeleine said, “Incredible. You really think that was Chloe on the security video?”
“I can’t fathom it.”
“What about Oran?”
“Far as I know, he’s still in custody in association with your kidnapping. You want me to call and check?”
“No. But I need to borrow your phone. I have to reach Emily Hammond.”
He handed it to her. “The reception’s best if you stand over there by the ladder at the back of the house.”
seventy-five
LOUISIANA, NOW
A GIGANTIC TRUCK WAS LUMBERING up the hardscrabble avenue that Ethan had cleared, and on the back was the Four Winns. Madeleine and Ethan and the boys followed in the Lexus as the big truck lumbered from side to side, picking its way back to the main road with the borrowed boat. Madeleine hadn’t been sure how they were going to get the great vessel out of the water but the big truck had hauled it right out with its boom and placed it on the huge metal trailer, lickety-split.
The boys and Jasmine were in the back of Ethan’s Lexus, chattering to each other and signing, and the trunk was packed full, the wheelchair strapped on with bungees. They followed the taillights of the big truck out toward the main road. The going was slow and bumpy, and the allée of pecan trees seemed to have gathered in tighter to see them off.
“So I was thinking,” Ethan said, clearing his throat.
“Mm?” she said.
“You know how we were talking about moving in together before you disappeared?”
She tensed, thinking of trying to fit herself and Jasmine into Ethan’s apartment without feeling like a marauder. “Yes…?”
“Well, I know you’re worried because my building doesn’t allow pets.
And you say your place is no good because of the noise.”
“Right.”
“I was thinkin we could give this ole shack a try.”
She frowned. “What old shack?”
He pointed his thumb toward the back. “Here. Your family’s property. Terrefleurs.”
“Here?” She turned to look over her shoulder, but all she could see now were pecan trees and winks of buildings.
She turned back around in her seat. “That’s an idea, but I was hoping for a place that had, you know, running water.”
“I’m serious—here! Think about it. It would take a few months. Maybe a year even. We could fix up one or two of those cabins first—that wouldn’t take nothin. A month, maybe. And then we can worry about the main house some other time.”
“One, or two, cabins?”
He shrugged. “In case you want to rent it out or loan it out. You know.”
She gave him a quizzical look, and he cut his gaze to the rearview mirror where the boys were signing into each other’s hands. Madeleine realized what he was getting at. Bo and Esther were losing their trailer.
She said, “I’m not sure we could do that. It would cost money. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Could harvest those pecan trees. That’d help offset the cost. I could still commute. It’s only about a forty-five-minute drive to Tulane from here.”
“Is that all?”
“Just seems we’re in a different world, is all. But it ain’t that far.”
“But all that construction!”
“We could do a little of it ourselves.”
She thought of all his industriousness, carrying on with the makeshift table and other things around the property, and grimaced. “You said yourself you weren’t much of a carpenter.”
