The Meq

by Steve Cash

  “Tant pis,” she said. “God must have wanted poor Willie to buy another one.”

  “Do you know her?” I repeated. “Do you know Lily Marchand?”

  “Yes,” she said finally. “Yes, I know Lily, or I should say knew her. Haven’t seen her or her pitiful brother, Narciso, for three, maybe four years. Old Creole family, honey. Lost all their money a long time ago.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “I know where she used to.”

  “Where?”

  “Across Pontchartrain, somewhere near Covington on the Bogue Chirito. A run-down plantation called ‘The Vines,’ if I remember right. I told the Chinese man I couldn’t be sure, but ‘The Vines’ sounded right.”

  “Chinese man? What Chinese man?”

  “The one that came lookin’ for Lily last week, same as you. I told him ‘The Vines’ was most likely it. It just sounded right.”

  “Were his eyes like two slits, two razors?”

  She laughed. “Honey, they all look alike to me.”

  It was my turn to say “Come on,” and I waved to Ray, who was standing in the doorway with several of Willie’s “nieces.” I thanked Willie, then Ray and I ran through the rising water on Iberville and across town.

  Luckily, we caught the last ferry crossing Lake Pontchartrain. The storm slowed as it made landfall and the north side of the city had not yet felt its full force. Still, we were pelted with driving rain and Pontchartrain was rough with whitecaps all the way across.

  Just before we docked, Ray said, “Who is Lily Marchand?”

  “She’s the one singing the operas,” I told him. “And the same voice I heard at Emma Johnson’s.”

  He arched an eyebrow and tugged on his bowler.

  “I got a feeling, Ray. I got a feeling this is it. This is where he is. This is where Star is.”

  The rain filled the brim of his bowler and spilled over the sides. He ignored it. “Then, let’s go get her,” he said. “Let’s take her home.”

  Our luck ran out once we were in Mandeville. We were out of transportation. The few people we saw were all seeking shelter. Except for about twenty or thirty lost chickens, we were the only ones still on the street. I had no idea exactly where to go or how to get there, but I knew who would.

  We set out for Captain Woodget’s on foot and arrived at nightfall. Both of us were shivering and as wet as I’d ever been at sea. The captain and Isabelle, who was in one of her lucid periods, met us at the door and rushed us to the fireplace, where Isabelle reminded me more of a worried grandmother than a madwoman, drying our hair with towels and telling the captain to make us tea while she found us clothes. I was sure she had no idea who we were.

  I introduced Ray to Captain Woodget and then explained as much as I could about who and what we had to find. I told him it could be dangerous. The captain said he knew of the old place, but there would be no way to reach it at night and in “this breeze.”

  “This breeze?” I asked.

  “Well, you know what I mean, lad. You and I have seen much worse than this.”

  “That we have, Captain, and that’s why you don’t have to do this. You owe me nothing.”

  He paused for only a moment. “Oh, but I do, Z. I owe you for changing the way I thought about this world, the way I was overlooking the mystery of it, what was beyond what I took for granted, and what was inside as well. I owe you for that, but I am most indebted to you for the life I have now. If I had not met you, I would not have met the biggest damn mystery of all—Isabelle.”

  I tried to assure him I had nothing to do with his love for Isabelle, but he wouldn’t hear it. We were fed, clothed, and given hot tea to drink, which the captain spiked with añejo rum, and thereby ruined both the tea and the rum.

  He offered us each a bedroom for the night and Ray accepted. I asked if I could stay where I was and bed down by the fire. I didn’t know whether it was the hurricane or the anxiety of finding Star, or both, but I was dog-tired with fatigue. I knew we were close. I knew we’d found a flaw in the Fleur-du-Mal’s plan. What I didn’t know or understand was the possible presence of “Razor Eyes.” He was a cold-blooded murderer and his arrival, for whatever reason, put Star in twice as much jeopardy.

  Isabelle brought me a pillow and a pink goose-down blanket. I welcomed both. We all said our good nights and I stretched out by the fire.

  Outside, the hurricane never slept. The wind rose and fell in swells and the rain pounded through the night, constant and hard. I stared at the fire. I waited for sleep . . . I waited.

  I heard a voice. I was being called . . . summoned.

  I was with some others. We were walking toward the opening in a cliff, the mouth of a cave. We were invited. We were the painters, they expected us. They were taller than we were. They led us deep into the cave with tiny lamps held in their palms. They stopped and said we would know where to go from there. We went on, we knew where to go. We set up our scaffolding and brought out our rubbing cloths and ochre. We painted the beasts as they ran through our minds. I went ahead. I saw a light and heard a thundering roar. They told me to stop, but I went ahead and the light became another opening and the roar was a waterfall in front of it, blocking what lay beyond from view. I put my hands in it. I spread the curtain of water and instead of a river below, there was another opening to another cave. I walked through the space in the water and there was a fire inside the cave. It was a small fire that had been burning for days. The ashes were spilling out of the pit. I saw something in among the ashes. I reached in and flicked it out, watching it tumble and roll on the floor of the cave. It was a skull, a child’s skull. It was not Meq.

  “Z!” the voice shouted. “Wake up, lad.”

  It was Captain Woodget standing over me with Ray leaning in at his side.

  Ray said, “You look pretty good in pink, Z.”

  They were both fully dressed. It was still raining and there was little light, but I could tell it was morning. Where I’d been I didn’t know and there was no time to think about it. It was September 20, 1906, and the hurricane raged on. Even the captain said he’d never seen anything like it. “Most of them move on in a few hours,” he said. “But this one’s in love with Louisiana.”

  We discussed our options for getting to “The Vines” and there were none. The roads were completely washed out. Our only chance was by water—up a low backwater river that was already out of its banks, in a hurricane, on a half-sized sailing ship that had never been used. The captain said he could do it.

  At the dock, Ray and I fashioned rain slickers out of scraps of canvas and the captain wrestled with the scaffolding. Eventually, we had to tear it down entirely in order to get the Little Clover righted in the channel and ready to sail. If the scale of the ship had been any larger, we couldn’t have done it. The captain shouted his orders through the rain and Ray learned to sail on the job.

  Amazingly, there was traffic. Mostly fishermen in small craft, making a dash for home or helping the stranded. We saw one barge that had no choice but to go on and try to make it to port and one steam-driven trawler with no lights burning, traveling in the opposite direction at a reckless speed. As it passed, I had a strange sensation, a buzzing in my head, like static on a telephone line. I looked over at the trawler, but the distance and the rain between made it impossible to see any faces.

  We pushed on, tacking often at severe angles. We couldn’t hold a good line for longer than a few minutes, but the captain remained steadfast and the rain never bothered him.

  After three tight, difficult bends in the river, he waved to me, pointing at a dock on the opposite shore and shouting, “The Vines.”

  It took all our efforts and another half hour to turn the ship against the current and secure it to the dock. We walked up to the main house on a wooden walkway with missing boards and broken railings. The cypress trees on both sides had taken a beating and still were. The wind tore at them from every direction and the rain never let up.

 
; The house was dark as we approached, except for a light in one of the back rooms. It was a big house, an old plantation mansion with columns in front and a veranda all around. It looked as if it wouldn’t make it through the storm.

  We watched and listened.

  Suddenly, faintly, somewhere between the rain and wind, I heard music. I turned to Ray and the captain.

  “Do you hear that?”

  They both looked at me and then at each other.

  “Hear what?” Ray asked.

  “Lily Marchand. It’s her, it’s her voice. She’s singing.”

  Neither Ray nor Captain Woodget could hear what I heard. My “ability” had awakened. I concentrated and pinpointed her voice to one of the front rooms, one of the rooms in the dark.

  We walked up a short rise and stepped onto the veranda. I could hear something else behind the singing, a hum or a churning, maybe a small engine. The door was wide open and the rain was blowing in, soaking the floorboards of the entryway.

  We passed into a hallway that was dark except for a light at the end, the one we’d seen from outside. There was no furniture. Ray found some candles against the wall and gave us each one. Captain Woodget had matches and lit the candles. Two rooms appeared off the hall. The one on the left was completely empty, but the one on the right was filled with sofas, chairs, rugs, lamps, and, most of all, phonograph players. There must have been fifty of them, stacked and squeezed into every niche and corner of the room. And one of them was playing Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, with the role of Leila, the priestess, being sung by Lily Marchand.

  They were gone. We’d missed them, I knew it. I looked around and found the phonograph player, the one I wanted, easily. I followed the hum, which was a generator supplying the phonograph player with power until it ran out of gas. I took the needle off the disc and there was silence in the room.

  Captain Woodget said he was going to check out the room in the back, the one with the light. Ray and I stayed and looked around.

  We saw plates and dishes with food still on them, saucers and coffee cups, all recently used. Phonograph discs and pornographic studio portraits were strewn everywhere. Sadomasochistic contraptions and devices, things I’d only seen in places like Emma Johnson’s, were lying about. In the corner of the room, there was a giant cage or playpen. Inside the playpen, on top of two Persian rugs, was a mattress and a small blanket. This was where he kept her. This was where she slept.

  Suddenly there was a loud crash and Captain Woodget was shouting, “Holy Trident and dammit to hell!”

  Ray and I ran down the hall, toward the light. We pushed through the door and Captain Woodget was standing over a wine decanter he’d knocked off a long wooden table, a table similar to Carolina’s.

  He’d stumbled into it when he saw the man and woman sitting at the table, across from each other, their faces flat against the wood, their arms and hands splayed out on either side. Their throats had been slit. The table was covered in blood and pools of it swirled at their feet. The man’s shirt had been ripped open, as had the woman’s blouse, and both their backs were covered with a bloody rose, carved into the skin with the point of a stiletto.

  I knew it was Lily Marchand and most likely her brother, Narciso. I looked up and Ray’s face was frozen with disgust and disbelief. I remembered that neither of us had seen the Fleur-du-Mal’s handiwork and unmistakable signature since Georgia and Mrs. Bennings.

  “We missed him,” I said. “He must have known. He must have known we were coming.”

  “You better come down here, lad,” the captain said. He had regained his balance and was standing at the other end of the table. “There’s another one—a Chinaman.”

  “A Chinaman?” I bolted for the end of the table and looked down to see what the captain had found. I expected to see “Razor Eyes.” I saw Li instead.

  He wasn’t stripped and carved up like the others. He’d been stabbed just below the heart and his throat was partially slit. There was a green ribbon stuffed in his mouth. I had no idea where he’d been or how he had got to where he was. We’d never seen a trace of him the whole time we were in New Orleans.

  Ray reached down and pulled the green ribbon out of his mouth, and as he did Li opened his eyes and saw me. He was alive. I knelt down and he tried to grab my leg and missed. He made a raspy, coughing sound and then he spoke directly to me.

  “She . . . go . . . ma . . . lee”

  It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me and the last. His mouth went slack and his eyes dulled.

  I leaned over to close his eyelids and Ray said, “Who’s Molly?” That triggered something in my memory, something I’d learned about the Fleur-du-Mal from Unai and Usoa.

  “It’s not a who,” I said. “It’s a where. The Fleur-du-Mal is taking Star to Mali—the country.” I looked out of the window at the never-ending rain. The wind rattled the window in its casing. “How?” I said, almost to myself. “How did he know?” Ray was wrapping the green ribbon, first around one finger, then around another. His expression was black and lost, like mine. “We’ll never catch him now,” I whispered.

  Captain Woodget knelt down beside me and ran a fingertip through Li’s blood, which was spreading on the floor. He looked at me. “This blood is fresh, Z,” he said, then he winked at me.

  At first, I didn’t get his meaning. Of course it was fresh, I thought, Li had just died. Then it hit me.

  “Captain,” I said. “Do you recall the trawler we passed in the channel?”

  “Aye, lad, and going at a fair rate of speed, not minding the weather.”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “Can you catch her?”

  “If we can make it to Pontchartrain and she’s not yet all the way across, I know I can. I can play this breeze in open water. The trawler won’t be able to.” He gave me another wink.

  I insisted we take Li with us. “I don’t want to remember him here . . . like this.” Ray and the captain nodded in agreement.

  The three of us carried Li’s body to the Little Clover. The only place we could secure him was on a bench in the stern, in an upright position, tied to the railing. Whatever obsessions had driven him to this end were at rest now. He resembled Buddha at the center of the storm, sleeping and dreaming.

  We set out for Lake Pontchartrain. It was late in the day and we were losing what little light we had. Without paying heed to channels, currents, or traffic, the captain steered us on a course that brought us critically close to one bank, then another. The rain was dense and constant. The trawler was nowhere in sight.

  Then, as we spilled into Lake Pontchartrain, the captain caught the wind and made a good line almost directly for New Orleans. He guessed we were doing twenty to twenty-five knots. The Little Clover was well made, but I could feel and hear the strain on her hull.

  The rain and fading light obscured the horizon by the minute. I couldn’t tell if we were gaining on the trawler. I had Ray tie a rope to me and I climbed up the mizzenmast, hoping to use my “ability” to listen for the trawler. Ray helped the captain hold the wheel and fight to keep the line. The rain felt like tiny knives and the wind whipped my canvas slicker like a handkerchief. I heard a foghorn and turned, but it was too far in the distance, too far west.

  Then slowly, like a pulse or heartbeat, I heard the steady chug-chug of a steam engine, plowing through the wind and water. We were close, closer than I thought. I yelled to the captain, “Port, ten degrees!”

  He managed the slight change in direction and we gained even more speed. Suddenly I could see the trawler. It was a faint black dot, bobbing on the horizon. Smoke poured out of the smokestack. It was no more than a mile ahead of us.

  We closed the gap. A thousand yards . . . five hundred . . . one hundred. Then, just as I thought I saw a figure on board the trawler, I heard a ripping sound. Our foresail was shredding and the ship jolted from side to side. I heard a crack, followed by another crack, louder and longer. The Little Clover was coming apart.

 
; Ray pulled the captain out of the way just before the mainsail fell on them. I tried to slide down to the deck and was thrown overboard as the ship actually snapped in the middle. The waves tore at the opening, and piece by piece, the Little Clover disintegrated.

  The rope tied around me was still attached to a section of the mizzenmast and I used it as a raft while I looked for Ray and Captain Woodget. I could see the trawler steaming away and a single figure on deck, staring back. I could even hear him. He had a white smile and a familiar, bitter laugh.

  I found Ray holding on to Captain Woodget, who was unconscious. He was struggling to reach something with his free hand and barely staying afloat. I helped him with the captain and he finally snatched what he was after—his bowler.

  The last thing I saw of the Little Clover was a section of the stern, a bench with Li still strapped to it. Within minutes, he disappeared into Lake Pontchartrain and it seemed like an appropriate grave. He had paid his mysterious debt to Solomon in full. The rest, the running tab he kept inside himself, was anybody’s guess.

  Three days later, we were on the balcony of the St. Louis Hotel, waiting for the weather to finally break. Captain Woodget was in hospital recovering from a collapsed lung and exposure. We swam four miles to shore that night, through rain and debris, and the experience took its toll on the captain.

  I talked to Owen Bramley several times and told him what I could, but no matter how I worded it, the story had the same conclusion. I asked him to come to New Orleans and check on Captain Woodget and make sure he had the money to rebuild the Little Clover again.

  I informed him that Ray and I had booked passage to Africa. Everything else was unknown.

  The hurricane of 1906 lasted five days and killed three hundred and fifty people in Louisiana and Mississippi. The assistant to the mayor of New Orleans said in a public statement that his city owed a great debt to the unfortunate of the city of Galveston, which had lost so many lives to the hurricane of 1900. “If all those folks hadn’t died,” he said, “we wouldn’t have learned what we learned and then we would have had more people die last week.”