“I’ve killed him. Oh Lord Jesus, I’ve killed him,” she whispered. She didn’t know how long she stood there, whispering broken prayers and entreaties, hoping he’d open his eyes and get up. But he didn’t. She started shaking as if she were palsied.
And then the enormity of it hit her. He was a Union officer, and they were under martial law. She’d be tried, and convicted, and even though she was a woman, she would surely be hanged for murder. Panic set in for a moment, but then as clearly as if Someone had spoken audibly to her, she knew what she had to do.
Run.
IT WAS ALMOST TEN o’clock when she reached her home, and climbed in her brother Wesley’s open window. He was asleep, of course, and had been since sunset, for at the Cogbill house they rose at four o’clock and went to bed at dark. He awoke as soon as she touched the windowsill and shot up in bed, his eyes wide. He had only been home a couple of months, and sometimes at night he dreamed he was still lying in some field somewhere, waiting for dawn and the shooting to begin again. “Huh! Oh, Cara—what—”
“Shh,” she said quietly. “I need your help.” Quickly she explained to her brother, the only one in her large family that she was really close to. “I’ve got to leave, Wes. I’ve already got it all planned out, I believe—I think—maybe the Lord has helped me see what to do.” For the first time that night, and for that matter in a long, long time, tears stung her eyes.
“Oh, Cara, poor little sis,” he said helplessly. “What can I do?”
Cara told him, and he went to fetch some things for her. If someone saw Wes wandering around the house, it wouldn’t make any difference, but Cara didn’t want any of her family to see her, or know she’d been there.
She looked around the room for Wesley’s Bible, knowing that he kept some paper in it. She had intended to write a note to her parents, but then she realized that it might get them into trouble. So she knelt by Wes’s bed and prayed. By the time he returned she felt strong and determined, sure in her course.
“I hate this,” he said vehemently. “I should help you, protect you. This is wrong, all wrong.”
“You can’t protect me, or help me, Wes, you know that. No one can now, except the Lord, and He will. Please don’t tell Mama and Papa what I’ve done, it’ll only make it hard on them when the provost marshals come. And they will, Wes. People knew I stayed behind with that awful man, alone, like a stupid fool. When they do, lie. Don’t tell them you’ve seen me. I know that seems very wrong, but somehow, now as I was praying, I felt that the Lord was sort of going to excuse you, or something.”
“Don’t worry, little sis. I won’t tell them filthy bluebellies one thing,” he said fiercely. He hugged her hard, then pushed a coin into her hand. “Here, Mr. Wetherington gimme a dollar for mendin’ his fences last Satiddy. You take it, girl, you’ll need it.”
Cara shook her head. “No, Wes, really, I’ve got fourteen whole dollars saved up from my wages from the Tabbs, in a little wallet in my Bible that you brought me. That’s more than enough. You keep that dollar in your pocket, and when you think of it, you think of me, and then you pray for me. That way we’ll both be rich.”
AT DAWN A DIRTY, slight young boy bought a deck passage ticket on the cheap steamboat packet the Luther Yates. Luther Yates himself was the owner, the captain, the pilot, the purser, and the ticketmaster of the boat. He didn’t give the grubby boy a second look; he’d seen hundreds of ragged little boys, and even some girls, going to New Orleans to try to find work. The boy was short and slight, with a worn floppy hat that seemed two sizes too big for him, half-hiding his face. Only a delicate pointed and very dirty chin showed from underneath it. He wore a ragged, much-patched sack coat over a threadbare homespun shirt, and gray trousers that were too long for him, rolled up at the hem, showing worn brogans that were once tan but were now the color of Louisiana mud. Over his shoulder was slung a canvas bag that seemed large for the boy—Luther Yates was sure he didn’t have that many changes of wardrobe—but instead of wondering about it he grew irritated with the boy, because he was fumbling around in an inside jacket pocket for the fare.
“Boy, if you’d take them stupid gloves off—what are they, yore daddy’s?—and gimme my eighty cent, mebbe we’d git this boat on the river sometimes today,” he growled.
“Sorry, sir,” the boy mumbled in a deep, hoarse voice that sounded very odd, if Luther Yates had really been listening.
A woman behind the boy shoved his shoulder and said in a whiny voice, “Hurry up, it’s boilin’ out here awready, stupid boy!” The boy glanced behind his shoulder to see a crude-looking woman with a greasy tangle of henna-red hair and a grimy red, scandalously low-cut blouse.
The boy struggled and finally managed to pull out a much-wrinkled dollar bill and handed it to him. Yates grabbed it and the boy asked, “My change, sir?”
“Change? Change? Do I look like the Bank of Luther Yates to you, boy? If you got eighty cent, I’ll take ’er. If’n all you got is this here dollar, either you take her and git off my gangplank or I’ll take ’er and you kin git on my boat.”
The boy walked on board.
Deck passage on a steamer simply meant that you reserved enough square footage for your body on the main deck. There were no beds, no chairs, not even assigned spaces for passengers on this, the cargo deck. There was the cargo, which on this trip of the Luther Yates was hundreds of fifty-pound sacks of coal, and the deck passengers found a hole or cranny anywhere they could. Cara reflected grimly that she shouldn’t have taken so much trouble to dirty herself up in her little brother Hiram’s clothing, for the air was filled with choking black dust. She thought that by the time they reached New Orleans, probably all of the passengers were going to be very dirty indeed.
She got up as close as she could to the bow, because at the back of the deck was the boiler room, and such was the heat coming from the room that heat-shimmers showed in front of the doors in the coal-shadowed air. Up at the front was only a little better, except that everyone else had the same idea as Cara, and they all crowded up there, some of them climbing up to spread a pallet on top of the coal sacks. Cara found a small hole she could squeeze into, so she could actually curl up on the deck. But to her dismay, two soldiers heaved some sacks around, widened the narrow space, and sat down right next to her. One of them, sitting so close he was almost brushing against her, turned and said grimly, “Lemme tell you something right now, boy. Don’t you be lighting no pipe up in here. This coal dust, it’ll explode just as good as gunpowder. Me and my buddies are gonna be the ’Baccy Police on this trip. You can chaw all you want. But don’t spit over in my direction, I might take offense.”
“Yes, sir,” Cara muttered. She punched her big bag and then laid down on it, in a fetal position because of the tight space, her back turned to the soldiers.
“Little tyke’s sleepy,” the soldier guffawed to his fellows. “I don’t think that little feller’s going to be lighting up no pipe.”
It was seventy-nine river miles from Donaldsonville to New Orleans, and that meant that the trip was going to be about eight hours long. After about an hour, Cara was stiff and felt like she was smothering in the heat and thick dust-clogged air. The soldiers had gone out to the narrow little outside deck on the bow, so she finally dared to move. With every bone and joint feeling as if they’d been hammered, she sat up. Cautiously looking around, she saw that there were other people still very close to her. The woman who had shoved her on the gangplank was sprawled just above Cara, on top of three sacks of coal. She was sitting up, her back propped against another sack, her legs sprawled out in a crude ungainly manner, and seemed to be asleep. There were more soldiers around, some young tough-looking men, and one young hungry-looking woman with a little girl that cried incessantly and an infant that alternately slept and cried.
Cara was exhausted, and so hungry she felt faint, for she hadn’t eaten any of the Tabb’s mutton supper the previous night. Was it only just last night? Cara felt as if she had kille
d Captain Joseph Nettles a long time ago, and had been running forever.
Digging in her sack, she brought out the little packet that Wes had fixed her, a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese and an apple. Hungrily she broke off some bread and cheese and started eating. Within a moment, however, she was aware of eyes on her, and glanced over to see the young mother staring at her with longing. When Cara glanced at her, she quickly dropped her eyes. Cara broke off about half of the loaf of bread, most of the cheese, then stood up and took the one step across to her. “Here you are, ma’am,” she said in her best imitation boy voice. “The little girl looks hungry.”
“Thank you so much,” the woman said barely audibly, her head bowed.
When Cara turned back around she saw that the woman perched up above her like a moth-eaten buzzard had grabbed the rest of the bread, the cheese, and the apple. Her hard, dark eyes met Cara’s defiantly as she took a huge bite of the apple with her yellowed teeth. With juice running down her chin she said, “I’m a hungry little girl, too. Seein’ as how you’re such a young gent an’ all I figgered you wouldn’t mind.”
Cara started to answer her, and caught herself with horror, realizing that she’d almost blurted out something in her normal voice. And she was staring straight up at the woman; Cara knew very well that if someone fairly shrewd studied her face they were bound to see she was a girl. So she merely shrugged and sat back down.
The rest of the journey was so hot and uncomfortable and nerve-wracking to Cara that she felt she was in a nightmare. The coal dust made her cough, a dry rack that hurt her chest. To make it worse, she was horribly thirsty, but the only provision for water for the deck passengers was a scuttlebutt, a half-barrel of water with one dipper. After watching all the men, most of them chewing tobacco and spitting into the spittoon just by the scuttlebutt, and then taking drinks from the dipper, Cara simply couldn’t face drinking from it. The soldiers came and went, and the awful woman made them lewd offers in such a loud, coarse, and unashamed voice that Cara blushed like fire and wished she were a thousand miles away. The mousy woman across from her looked away and clutched her children closer to her.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity to Cara, she felt the engines slowing, heard the steam powering down, and then three sharp blasts of the steam whistle, like hoarse screams, sounded. They had reached New Orleans.
“Keep your seat, boy,” the soldier said. “It’ll be awhile before we get situated in this port, there’s likely a dozen or so boats lining up to off-load. We ain’t goin’ nowheres ’til we come to a full stop.”
But finally they did come to a full stop, and they heard yelling and calls and the creaks as the landing stages were winched down. A deckhand came in to yell out, “New Orleans! All you folks git up and git goin’ so’s we kin unload!”
People stood up, muttering and gathering up their scant belongings. They gathered in a big knot, with some pushing and shoving, at the bow, at the door to the landing stage. Cara was right in the middle of the crowd, shorter than everyone, and she clutched her bag tightly to her. Just as she reached the door, the redheaded woman brushed up against her so hard that Cara staggered and almost fell. “Sorry, lovey,” the woman leered. “Such a crush, ya see.” Then she disappeared into the crowd.
Cara finally got down the gangplank, still mingled in the crowd, who sort of herded her onto shore and through a wide entrance cut out of the six-foot earth levees. Then, like dropped marbles, the crowd streamed off into a hundred different directions. Cara stopped in her tracks, trying to make some sense of everything around her. Her senses were so assaulted that she could hardly breathe. The noise was terrific, from the roustabouts on the docks behind her to the hundreds of people in front of her, shouting, calling, cursing. She smelled the fetid odor of the river, the stench of unwashed sweaty people, the heavy aroma of café noir, meat roasting, garlic, spices, and horse droppings.
Finally managing to put some order to her confusion, she realized that just in front of her, across an ancient Spanish cobblestone street, was the French Market. The Tabbs had never been to New Orleans, which was a source of constant irritation to Mrs. Tabb, but the Widow Hacker had visited the sprawling city several times when her husband, the longtime mayor of Donaldsonville, had been alive. Mrs. Tabb had allowed Mrs. Hacker to talk about New Orleans in her Saturday night salon, and so Cara had heard quite a bit about the city.
Swaying a little as she stood there, a little forlorn filthy figure, Cara realized that she was weak from hunger and the overwhelming heat. She swallowed hard, her throat raw from thirst and coal dust. All she could think about was her thirst. How could she just simply get a good drink of water? She was sure there must be public pumps, but she thought of the filthy, stinking river behind her and was repulsed even more than she had been by the scuttlebutt. The French Market? She doubted that they sold water, but maybe juices, or even ices? If she hadn’t been so parched, her mouth would have watered.
No one was giving her a second look, so cautiously she reached into her inside jacket pocket for her wallet, so she could go ahead and draw out a single dollar to hold, instead of fumbling openly with her full wallet.
She couldn’t feel her wallet.
Surely it was her bulky gloves. Cara had had no choice about wearing them; no amount of dirt would have made her hands look like a boy’s hands. Stealthily she stuck her right hand under her left arm, quickly drew her hand free from the glove, and reached into her jacket pocket.
The wallet was gone. In front of Cara’s eyes rose the vulgar redheaded woman’s leering face as she had shoved Cara.
Panic, so sudden and dreadful that it almost choked her, made her overheated body go cold. Her head began to pound, and for a few moments the raucous noise sounded near, then far, then near, in an odd RAWR-rawr RAWR-rawr echo. Black spots danced in front of her eyes.
And then, she heard the Voice in her head again. Before, He had only said Run. Now He said, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Cara dropped her head and big, hot tears filled her eyes and dripped down onto the hot cobblestones at her feet. “Thank You, Lord,” she whispered.
After awhile, she was calm, and felt a little odd, in a sort of dreamy way. She scrubbed the traces of tears from her face and looked around, now with searching eyes. And just to her left were the most outrageous sights that Cara had ever seen in her life, and for a moment she wondered if she really was dreaming. Slowly she walked over to the spectacle.
A great crowd of people surrounded it, and Cara thought maybe that’s why she hadn’t noticed the sort of combination caravan-pavilion before. But on Cara’s side, the crowd had thinned, and she walked up to a four-foot-high brazier that held a pile of unlit wood, a sort of barrier that kept the crowd from pressing in among the people—and the animals.
Two big wagons, curlicued and gingerbreaded and painted in kaleidoscopic colors, stood side by side up against the levee. On each side of them and in front of them big canvas cloths, also brightly painted, had been erected, held up by slender iron poles with large circular bases. In front of the wagons were spread a dazzling array of goods—woven baskets, some painted with designs; piles of scarves and shawls; jars of honey glowing golden; bottles of olive oil with herbs; jars of herbs and liquids of different colors; tinware twinkling like silver in the white-hot sun, baskets with dried herbs piled in them; and tinware vases filled with flowers of all different shape and hue.
But it had been the women that had astounded Cara. Two beautiful, foreign-looking dark women, dressed in short-sleeved blouses and rainbow-colored skirts, were attending the goods. They were barefoot, and wore their black hair down, with colored scarves hemmed with coins. She saw a young man, handsome and slightly dangerous-looking in his exotic way, sharpening an enormous butcher knife against a whetstone that itself looked like a dagger. An old woman, dressed like the young women, sat just by Cara, with a loom in front of her, weaving
a scarf of yellow, green, blue, and orange threads.
Cara’s mind was sluggish, and it seemed that she took long moments to comprehend each staggering sight in the scene. Owlishly she looked away from the old woman, across to the other side of their “pavilion,” and saw the mountain lion. She was sitting upright, washing her paw and then her face, just as any household cat would do. With fascination Cara watched her lick her paw, cruel long claws fully extended, then rub her paw over her eye and ear and top of her head, over and over again. Cara began swaying a little again, and roused herself.
One of the women, the most striking one, Cara thought, laughed at someone standing just outside their pavilion, nodded, and reached out her hand. A pretty girl of about ten took her hand and the woman and girl walked over toward Cara. Oh, yes, a bear. How did I miss the bear?
Sitting behind the old woman on a big fat cushion was a black bear. He was wearing a funny green straw hat, with holes cut for his little round ears to stick up through. In front of him was a neatly lettered sign: Feed the bear for a penny. In front of him was a basket filled with muscadines.
Cara was riveted at the sight of the muscadines. They were great globules, looking as if they were going to burst out of their skins, purple, black, and green enormous grapes. The woman and the girl came to the basket, and the little girl picked up one of the purple grapes. Gingerly the girl held out her hand to the bear, who then stuck out his enormous paw, black palm upright. The girl dropped the muscadine in his paw, and the bear gave a polite bobbing little bow, then popped the grape in his mouth.
The River Palace: A Water Wheel Novel #3 Page 15
