Darkwater

by V. J. Banis

  By now Jennifer’s experience with Mrs. Hodges in the swamp was sufficiently distant to seem much less horrendous than it had at the time. She could even chide herself for being driven to panic by an old woman whom she ought to have been able to manage. She scoffed at herself for being such a baby.

  As for her other experience in the swamp, with Walter, that seemed even more portentous. She had come so close to kissing him! And she knew that once she had allowed such feelings to be expressed, there would be no turning back from shame and tragedy. How had she come so far, come to feel so much, in so short a time?

  That was not to matter, she promised herself. She would thrust him from her mind, except in his role as her employer and Alicia’s husband. She would not even give love an opportunity to take root and flourish in her heart. It would take an exercise of will and a conscientious watching of her thoughts, but surely that was better than the alternative.

  When she came into the dining room, however, and saw the way his eyes sought hers at once, her resolve threatened to crumble and she felt herself tremble slightly. Never mind, she told herself silently and firmly, and looked away from his handsome face. Never mind.

  She soon found that Walter did not look back upon the business with Mrs. Hodges as lightly as she did. When she had greeted the others and taken her place at the table, he rose and excused himself for a moment, leaving the room. He was back almost at once, with Liza in tow.

  “Miss Jennifer had some difficulty in the swamp,” he said to Liza. “As it has turned out, she was not hurt, but she might very well have been. She could have walked into the sand and been swallowed up forever, she might have met a snake or tripped or fallen and hurt herself. Or Mrs. Hodges might have actually hurt her instead of just scaring her.”

  Liza said nothing. Her eyes were downcast and there was a sullen look on her face that Jennifer had come to recognize from their lessons. It meant that beneath Liza’s seemingly placid exterior she was raging and resisting whatever you were trying to get her to do.

  Yet if you did not look closely, she would seem to be quite chagrined by the whole thing. Jennifer wondered briefly if Walter had come to recognize and understand that look, or was his affection for the child so strong as to blind his otherwise keen perception?

  “There really was no harm done,” Jennifer said, because it was plain to her at least that Liza did not intend to make any reply. “I let myself be frightened rather too easily.”

  It was not only Jennifer’s desire for peace that prompted her. She felt genuinely sorry for the girl, despite her failure to establish a friendship with her. Liza was the object of so much disapproving adult attention, and so often the victim of Alicia’s temper. Nor did the usually loving natures of Bess and Helen respond to the child’s desire for affection, because they both saw Liza as a problem in the house, a cause of Alicia’s “spells” and Walter’s further harassment.

  “The point is not whether you were hurt or not,” Walter said. “You might have been hurt, seriously hurt, and it would have been at least partly Liza’s fault. You did tell Miss Jennifer it would be safe for her to go into the swamp, did you not?”

  “I go there all the time,” Liza said in sudden defiance, looking up at him. Her eyes flashed with youthful anger, but Jennifer detected what was below the surface of that anger—a silent plea for Walter’s understanding.

  Perhaps he saw it too, for when he spoke again he sounded less angry. “But you are used to it. It was careless of you not to remember that Miss Jennifer is a stranger here and unaware of the dangers.”

  He paused and when there was no reply forthcoming, he said, “You will have to apologize.”

  For a long moment the girl struggled with herself. Jennifer saw the quick look she gave Walter, but his face must have told her he was adamant.

  At last Liza raised her face and looked directly at Jennifer. “I am sorry,” she said simply.

  Jennifer was shocked. Although the words were delivered in a colorless monotone, Liza’s face was turned so that only Jennifer saw it directly. What she saw was a look of utter hatred. Liza was furious with her, and in a flash she realized it was because of Liza’s deep attachment to Walter and her feeling that Jennifer was somehow responsible for Walter’s present displeasure with her.

  Jennifer recovered herself quickly, though, and as the others were waiting in silence, she said, “I accept your apology, and I think the less to-do we have over this in the future, the better for all.”

  Despite her efforts to smooth things over, however, Jennifer knew that between her and Liza passed a strange antagonism that she did not fully understand. It was as if in that moment the two of them were locked in combat, with Walter as the prize.

  What fanciful nonsense, Jennifer told herself when the family’s attention was finally returned to their breakfast. As if Walter belonged to either of us, which he does not and cannot. He is married to Alicia, and I have no claim on him, and Liza is only a child with a child’s adulation of someone who has protected her.

  Yet when she again saw Liza that morning, disappearing down the hall, she had once more that strange feeling of a contest between them, try though she might to dismiss the idea.

  Since she had been firmly excused from teaching this morning, she went to look in on Alicia. She found the convalescent sitting up in bed and looking more alert than she had in days.

  “Good morning,” Jennifer greeted her. “It is a very pretty day, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” Alicia asked, narrowing her eyes. “I heard you had some difficulty already this morning.”

  “Nothing of any consequence,” Jennifer said, wondering how on earth Alicia had managed to learn of this morning’s business.

  Alicia was not to be put off that easily, though. With one birdlike hand she seized Jennifer’s wrist so tightly that it hurt.

  “I want to hear all about it,” she said in a fierce whisper.

  Jennifer told her what had happened, minimizing as much as possible the danger, and especially the import of the scene between her and Walter. Alicia, however, for all her possessiveness and her shrewdness, seemed entirely uninterested in Walter’s role in the proceedings. She was concerned with Liza and, to Jennifer’s surprise, with Mrs. Hodges.

  “That’s her,” Alicia said, her head bobbing furiously. “The swamp witch. It’s her mother.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mrs. Hodges. She is Liza’s mother.”

  “No,” Jennifer said, stunned. She thought of the vicious old crone in the swamp. It was impossible to believe that she could be the mother of anyone as young and pretty as Liza.

  Yet, Peter had said the same thing. And Liza had reacted with a violence too strong for ordinary childhood teasing.

  “It’s true,” Alicia said. “She is the swamp witch, that’s how everybody around here knows her. She has lived in a shack in the swamp as long as anyone remembers, since long before the war. She brews all sorts of vile potions and works spells. There’s some as has gone to her for help with their problems, but I call that the devil’s work, not the sort of thing a good Christian would get into.”

  Jennifer stirred herself to try to answer these charges logically. “Surely you don’t mean that literally. You can’t believe she is truly a witch.”

  “But I do. It is her magic that is killing me. Hers and Liza’s, and that’s who Liza learned it from.” For a moment her face looked so ghastly that Jennifer felt a little shiver of alarm travel her spine.

  “I didn’t think anyone in this modern day and age really believed in witches,” Jennifer said with a smile, trying to make light of the subject.

  “That’s because you have not read your Bible fully. Remember Luke, 8:2...‘And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils....’ Now, do you believe what the Bible says?”

  “Yes, but not always literally. Devils, as referred to in the Bible, often meant epilepsy, and y
ou certainly do not believe Liza is an epileptic.”

  “What about the witch of Endor?”

  “She was a medium. And I have not heard that Liza communicates with the dead.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Alicia said with a disgruntled look. “She’s always up to some tricks. Once she pulled an apple out of Walter’s hat when he had just taken it off his head, and he swore there hadn’t been anything in it.”

  “Why, that’s just sleight-of-hand. How wonderful. I for one would like to see her do some of her tricks, and I am sure it will be seen to be only trickery and not magic. But I wonder how she learned them. Is she really Mrs. Hodges’ daughter?”

  “Yes. Walter came in one night, over a year ago, with this ragged bundle in his arms. He said he had found Mrs. Hodges beating her and he had taken the girl away from her, and she was going to stay here until he could find her a home.”

  “Perhaps he has not been able to find anyone to take in an orphan. Since the war, so many people have been left destitute in the South.”

  “But there are people who would take her,” Alicia said bitterly. “The Woodbirds said they would take her to work. They needed a girl, but he won’t send her over there.”

  Jennifer thought she knew why. She had seen plenty of girls in the last few years who, poverty-stricken, had to go into servitude. She knew how cruelly they were often treated, sometimes far worse than the blacks had been treated before the war, and all so they could earn a place to sleep in an attic and a meal a day. No, Walter would not want to commit a child, any child, to that if he could help it.

  “She is a witch,” Alicia went on, speaking in a monotone, as if she had said all this often before. “She has him bewitched. He thinks more of her than he does his own children. Why, he thinks more of her than he does of me.”

  Jennifer smiled to herself at this comment, which she felt sure went to the heart of the matter. Jealousy was a poison, but she did not say this aloud.

  “And I have been sick ever since she came,” Alicia concluded.

  “I think you are sick because you do not eat properly, and you spend all your time in bed. The blood has no opportunity to circulate if you are not moving about a little. That is the latest medical opinion in Memphis, at any rate, and I think you could do with some fresh air and some sunshine. I wish you would let me arrange for you to spend some time outside, on the porch, perhaps. It is quite warm now and I don’t think there could be any danger.”

  Alicia sank back upon her pillow, looking gloomy. “I’m not well enough to go outside.”

  Jennifer shrugged. “Very well, but you cannot continue to blame Liza for an illness you will do nothing to mitigate.”

  Alicia gave her an angry look. “You think I’m crazy. They all think I’m crazy, but wait, you will see. The time will come.”

  Outside in the hall, Jennifer paused to consider what she’d been told. Liza, the daughter of Mrs. Hodges, that vicious creature in the swamp? And she, Mrs. Hodges, was regarded locally as a witch. It was no wonder that Alicia credited Liza with using magic.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Helen had made plans to go into the town of Durieville and she suggested that Jennifer come with her.

  “We’ll both go, in the trap,” Helen said, made gay by the idea of an outing. “I have several things I want to shop for and it will give you an opportunity to look over the town. Not that there’s so much to see, but still....”

  “All right,” Jennifer said, pleased at a chance to take a vacation from Darkwater. Already it seemed as if she had been here a long time, and she thought vaguely that perhaps away from the house, and from Walter, things might seem a little clearer to her.

  It was a fine day for a drive. When Jennifer had made this trip before, the night Walter picked her up at the station, it had been pouring rain and she had seen little but water. Now she could see that it was a lovely drive. The bayous, dark and mysterious, stretched from the side of the road into the distance, with the flash of colors from the many flowers, the calls of exotic birds, and the warm breeze that ruffled her hair.

  Helen was a fine driver, handling the horses with the easy skill of long familiarity. She was good company too, chatting about people in the neighborhood and myriad trivial matters. She barely touched upon any of the problems at Darkwater—Alicia’s illness, Walter’s preoccupation (could she know the cause of it, Jennifer wondered for a brief, awful moment?) or Liza’s unwelcome presence. She kept her conversation instead to less personal matters. By the time they had reached the town of Durieville, Jennifer too had all but forgotten Darkwater’s problems and the unpleasant beginning to her morning.

  Durieville was a plantation town. It was there to serve the needs of the nearby plantation owners, and had really no other reason to exist, but it was a pretty little town, seen in the golden light of this early summer afternoon.

  This bayou part of Louisiana—or Lusianne, as the natives called it—was all marsh and woods and greenery, with spots of open water, lakes and streams, looking like they had been punched out of the green in random pattern. The water lay deep and gleaming, with the greenery pushed right up to its edges. There was some land, most of it flat but with a few gently rolling hills, where the forests had been cut away and only a low brush grew.

  And of course there were the swamps, choked with reeds and cattails and marsh grass, so that you could not say for sure where the land ended and the water began.

  Durieville lay as if some giant hand had held a fistful of buildings and thrown them to the ground in a haphazard pattern. They lay drawn together as they might have done if magnetized, the biggest toward the center in thick clusters and the smaller buildings scattered sparsely outward. There were none of the neat squares and corners to be found in cities planned by men.

  Entering down the road from the bayou, one drifted between green banks for a mile or more before, coming down a gentle incline, one began to see the buildings that lay thin at the edge of town.

  At the foot of this incline the road, straight until now, twisted around the white-painted Baptist Church, which sat directly in its path. Past the church, the road went straight a bit more before turning again, this time around the train station. This was as much as Jennifer had seen her first night here.

  Beyond the station was the town hall, a neo-classic building that looked pretentious for such an unimportant town. It was shaded with magnolia trees and a big oak dripping with moss. The road passed the schoolhouse, where the town’s poorer children had their lessons. It was a ramshackle looking wooden building in need of paint, with no playground but a dirt yard in the back. The Deres, of course, did not send their children to the school and if they had, the children in attendance would have been shocked.

  Past the school lay the town’s “business district,” a short street of storefronts where the local people did what shopping they had to do between trips to Shreveport or New Orleans, where they made their major purchases.

  “What a pretty little town,” Jennifer said when Helen had parked the trap along the main street.

  “Do you think so?” Helen said, faintly surprised. She glanced along the street as if seeing it for the first time. “I suppose it is. One gets used to seeing it. Like the face of someone you know well. It is too familiar to know if it is handsome or not.”

  Jennifer thought, I would always know that Walter was handsome, but she pushed that thought roughly from her mind and looked again along the way they had come. Traveling through the South, on her way here, she had gotten used to seeing towns that had been desolated and were not yet rebuilt. Some of them would never be rebuilt. It seemed there was hardly a town without some buildings in ruins, blackened boards and broken windows testifying to the slow end of the war.

  Here, though, there was no sign of war, nothing to indicate that a nation had been at death grips with itself a few years before. There was only the quaintly twisting main street running under thick lush trees, the coziness and the charm, the rich green and t
he warm, scented breeze from the bayou.

  “I want to look for some material from the Emporium,” Helen said, lifting her skirts above the dust of the street. “And there are some things we need for the kitchen. I’ll get them at the general store. Do you want to walk along with me or do you have some errands of your own?”

  Jennifer hesitated for a moment. Something had occurred to her earlier, although this was the first opportunity she’d had to act upon it.

  “As a matter of fact there is something I want to do,” she said. “I wonder if you could tell me where to find the doctor?”

  “Doctor Goodman? Why, his office is just over there, you can see it from here, with the shingle hanging above the door. But there isn’t anything wrong, is there?” She looked suddenly so concerned that Jennifer hastened to put her mind at rest.

  “No, nothing at all is wrong with me, I’m fine, really I am,” she said, laying a gloved hand on Helen’s arm. “It’s only that, so long as I am acting as a nurse to Alicia, I thought I might talk to him about her condition. Perhaps he can give me some suggestions for caring for her.”

  “I see. Of course.” Helen looked so unconvinced, however, that Jennifer felt constrained to add a further remark.

  “I often consulted with the doctor over my mother’s condition.”

  “There’s no need for you to trouble yourself, really. I’ve talked to Doctor Goodman often about Alicia. But if it will make you feel better, by all means drop in on him. You will find him a bit absentminded in some ways, but quite competent. Ask him if he will join us for dinner tomorrow evening.”

  Helen left her then, after again ascertaining that Jennifer knew which of the stores she would be in. Jennifer made her own way across the street, smiling at a group of children playing in the street, who stared wide-eyed at her as she passed. She guessed that the Deres were objects of awe here in Durieville, and that made her an object of no small curiosity herself.

  She had scarcely banged the knocker on the door of the doctor’s house before the door was yanked open. The inside was so dark in contrast to the harsh glare outside that for a moment Jennifer could not see in.