James Lee Burke - White Doves at Morning

by White Doves At Morning(Lit)

  The judge looked at her a long moment. "I hope the Yankees don't have many more like you on their side," he said.

  "I'm sure their ranks include much better people than I, sir," Abigail said.

  It was quiet in the room. One of the paddy rollers hawked softly and leaned over and spit in his handkerchief. The judge pinched his temples.

  "You want to say anything, Captain Atkins?" he asked.

  "I haven't the gift of elocution that Miss Dowling has, since I wasn't educated in a Northern state where Africans are taught to disrespect white people," he said. "But that man yonder, Willie Burke, attacked an officer of the law. You have my word on that."

  The judge removed his glasses and pulled on his nose.

  "You're a member of the militia?" he said to Willie.

  "Yes, sir, I am!"

  "Will you stop shouting? It's the sentence of this court that you return to your unit at Camp Pratt and be a good soldier. You might stay out of saloons for a while, too," the judge said, and smacked down his gavel.

  After the judge had left the room, Willie walked with his mother and Abigail and Jim toward the door that gave onto the outside stairway.

  "Where's Robert today?" Willie asked, hoping his disappointment didn't show.

  "Mustered into the 8th Lou'sana Vols and sent to Camp Moore. The word is they're going to Virginia," Jim said.

  "What about us?" Willie asked.

  "We're stuck here, Willie."

  "With Atkins?"

  Jim laid his arm across Willie's shoulders and didn't answer. Outside, Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers were gathered under a live oak. The corporal named Clay Hatcher turned and looked at Willie, his smile like a slit in a baked apple.

  IT rained late that afternoon, drumming on Bayou Teche and the live oaks around Abigail Dowling's cottage. Then the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and a strange green light filled the trees. Out in the mist rising off the bayou Abigail could hear the whistle on a paddle-wheeler and the sound of the boat's wake slapping in the cypress trunks at the foot of her property.

  She lighted the lamp on her desk and dipped her pen in a bottle of ink and began the letter she had been formulating in her mind all day.

  She wrote Dearest Robert on a piece of stationery, then crumpled up the page and began again.

  Dear Robert,

  Even though I know you believe deeply in your cause, candor and conscience compel me to confess my great concern for your safety and my fear that this war will bring great sorrow and injury into your life. Please forgive me for expressing my feelings so strongly, but it is brave young men such as yourself who ennoble the human race and I do not feel it is God's will that you sacrifice your life or take life in turn to further an enterprise as base and meretricious as that of slavery.

  She heard the clopping of a horse in the street and glanced up through the window and saw Rufus Atkins dismount from a huge buckskin mare and open her gate. He wore polished boots and a new gray uniform with a gold collar and a double row of brass buttons on the coat and scrolled gold braid on the sleeves.

  She put down her pen, blotted her letter, and met him at the front door. He removed his hat and bowed slightly.

  "Excuse my intrusion, Miss Abigail. I wanted to apologize for any offense I may have given you in the court," he said.

  "I'm hardly cognizant of anything you might say, Mr. Atkins, hence, I can take no offense at it," she replied.

  "May I come in?"

  "No, you may not," she replied.

  He let the insult slide off his face. He watched a child kicking a stuffed football down the street.

  "I have a twenty-dollar gold piece here," he said. He flipped it off his thumb and caught it in his palm. "Years ago a card sharp fired a derringer at me from under a card table. The ball would have gone through my vest pocket into my vitals, except this coin was in its way. See, it's bent right in the center."

  She held his stare, her face expressionless, but her palms felt cold and stiff, her throat filled with needles.

  "I lost this coin at the laundry and had pretty much marked off ever finding it," he said. "Then two days ago the sheriff found a drowned nigger in Vermilion Bay. She had this coin inside a juju bag. She was one of the escaped slaves we'd been looking for. I wonder how she came by my gold piece."

  "I'm sure with time you'll find out, Mr. Atkins. In the meanwhile, there's no need for you to share the nature of your activities with me. Good evening, sir."

  "You see much of Mr. Jamison's wash girl, the one called Flower? The drowned nigger was her aunt."

  "In fact I do know Flower. I'm also under the impression your interest in her is more than a professional one."

  "Northern ladies can have quite a mouth on them, I understand."

  "Please leave my property, Mr. Atkins," she said.

  He bowed again and fitted on his hat, his face suffused with humor he seemed to derive from a private joke.

  She returned to her writing table and tried to finish her letter to Robert Perry. The sky was a darker green now, the oaks dripping loudly in the yard, the shadows filled with the throbbing of tree frogs.

  Oh, Robert, who am I to lecture you on doing injury in the world, she thought.

  She ripped the letter in half and leaned her head down in her hands, her palms pressed tightly against her ears.

  HER journey by carriage to Angola Plantation took two days. It rained almost the entire time, pattering against the canvas flaps that hung from the top of the surrey, glistening on the hands of the black driver who sat hunched on the seat in front of her, a slouch hat on his head, a gum coat pulled over his neck.

  When she and the driver reached the entrance of the plantation late in the afternoon, the western sky was marbled with purple and yellow clouds, the pastures on each side of the road an emerald green. Roses bloomed as brightly as blood along the fences that bordered the road.

  In the distance she saw an enormous white mansion high up on a bluff above the Mississippi River, its geometrical exactness softened by the mist off the river and columns of sunlight that had broken through the clouds.

  The driver took them down a pea-gravel road and stopped the carriage in front of the porch. She had thought a liveried slave would be sent out to meet her, but instead the front door opened and Ira Jamison walked outside. He looked younger than she had expected, his face almost unnaturally devoid of lines, the mouth soft, his brown hair thick and full of lights.

  He wore a short maroon jacket and white shirt with pearl buttons and gray pants, the belt on the outside of the loops. "Miss Dowling?" he said.

  "I apologize for contacting you by telegraph rather than by post. But I consider the situation to be of some urgency," she said.

  "It's very nice to have you here. Please come in," he said.

  "My driver hasn't eaten. Would you be so kind as to give him some food?"

  Jamison waved at a black man emerging from a barn. "Take Miss Dowling's servant to the cookhouse and see he gets his supper," he called.

  "I have no servants. My driver is a free man of color whom I've hired from the livery stable," she said.

  Jamison nodded amiably, his expression seemingly impervious to her remark. "You've had a long journey," he said, stepping aside and extending his hand toward the open door.

  The floors of the house were made of heart pine that had been sanded and buffed until the planks glowed like honey. The windows extended all the way to the ceiling and looked out on low green hills and hardwood forests and the wide, churning breadth of the Mississippi. The drapes on the windows were red velvet, the walls and ceiling a creamy white, the molding put together from ornately carved, dark-stained mahogany.

  But for some reason it was a detail in the brick fireplace that caught her eye, a fissure in the elevated hearth as well as the chimney that rose from it.

  "A little settling in the foundation," Ira Jamison said. "What can I help you with, Miss Dowling?"

  "Is your wife here, sir?" />
  "I'm a widower. Why do you ask?"

  She was sitting on a divan now, her hands folded in her lap, her back not touching the fabric. He continued to stand. She paused for a long moment before she spoke, then let her eyes rest on his until he blinked.

  "I'm disturbed by the conduct of your employee Captain Atkins. I believe he's molesting one of your slaves, a young woman who has done nothing to warrant being treated in such a frankly disgusting fashion," she said.

  Ira Jamison was framed in the light through the window, his expression obscured by his own silhouette. She heard him clear an obstruction from his throat.

  "I see. Well, I'll have a talk with Mr. Atkins. I should see him in the next week or so," he said.

  "Let me be more forthcoming. The young woman's name is Flower. Do you know her, sir?" she said, the anger and accusation starting to rise in her voice.

  He sat down in a chair not far from her. He pressed one knuckle against his lips and seemed to think for a moment.

  "I have the feeling you want to say something to me of a personal nature. If that's the case, I'd rather you simply get to it, madam," he said.

  "I've been told she's your daughter. It's not my intention to offend you, but the resemblance is obvious. You allow an employee to sexually harm your own child? My God, sir, have you no decency?"

  The skin seemed to shrink on his face. A black woman in a gray dress with a white apron appeared at the doorway to the dining room.

  "Supper for you and your guest is on the table, Mr. Jamison," she said.

  "Thank you, Ruby," he said, rising, his face still disconcerted.

  "I don't think I'll be staying. Thank you very much for your hospitality," Abigail said.

  "I insist you have supper with me."

  "You insist?"

  "You cast aspersions on my decency in my own home? Then you seem to glow with vituperative rage, even though I've only known you five minutes. Couldn't you at some point be a little more lenient and less judgmental and allow me to make redress of some kind?"

  "You're the largest slave owner in this state, sir. Will you make 'redress' by setting your slaves free?"

  "I just realized who you are. You're the abolitionist."

  "I think there are more than one of us."

  "You're right. And when they have their way, I'll be destitute and we'll have bedlam in our society."

  "Good," she said, and walked toward the door.

  "You haven't eaten, madam. Stay and rest just a little while."

  "When will you be talking to Captain Atkins?" she asked.

  "I'll send a telegraph message to him this evening."

  "In that case, it's very nice of you to invite me to your table," Abigail said.

  As he held a dining room chair for Abigail to sit down, he smelled the perfume rising off her neck and felt a quickening in his loins, then realized the black woman named Ruby was watching him from the kitchen. He shot her a look that made her face twitch out of shape.

  Chapter Five

  AFTER Willie reported to Camp Pratt and began his first real day of the tedium that constituted life in the army, he knew it was only a matter of time before he would empower Rufus Atkins to do him serious harm. One week later, after an afternoon of scrubbing a barracks floor and draining mosquito-breeding ponds back in the woods, he and Jim Stubbefield were seated in the shade on a bench behind the mess hall, cleaning fish over a tub of water, when Corporal Clay Hatcher approached them. It was cool in the shade, the sunlight dancing on the lake, the Spanish moss waving overhead, and Willie tried to pretend the corporal's mission had nothing to do with him.

  "You threw fish guts under Captain Atkins' window?" Hatcher said.

  "Not us," Willie said.

  "Then how'd they get there?" Hatcher asked. "Be fucked if I know," Jim said.

  "I was talking to Burke. How'd they get there?" Hatcher said. "I haven't the faintest idea, Corporal. Have you inquired of the fish?" Willie said.

  "Come with me," Hatcher said.

  Willie placed his knife on the bench, washed his hands in a bucket of clean water, and began putting on his shirt, smiling at the corporal as he buttoned it.

  "You think this is funny?" Hatcher said.

  "Not in the least. Misplaced fish guts are what this army's about. Lead the way and let's straighten this out," Willie said. He heard Jim laugh behind him. "I can have those stripes, Stubbefield," Hatcher said. "You can have a session with me behind the saloon, too. You're not a bleeder, are you?" Jim said.

  Hatcher pointed a finger at Jim without replying, then fitted one hand under Willie's arm and marched him to the one-room building that Rufus Atkins was now using as his office.

  "I got Private Burke here, sir," Hatcher said through the door. Atkins stepped out into the softness of the late spring afternoon, without a coat or hat, wearing gray pants and a blue shirt with braces notched into his shoulders. He had shaved that morning, using a tin basin and mirror nailed to the back side of the building, flicking the soap off his razor into the shallows, but his jaws already looked grained, dark, an audible rasping sound rising from the back of his hand when he rubbed it against his throat.

  "He says he didn't do it, sir. I think he's lying," Hatcher said. Atkins cut a piece off a plug of tobacco and fed it off the back of his pocketknife into his mouth.

  "Tell me, Private, do you see anyone else around here cleaning fish besides yourself and Corporal Stubbefield?" he said.

  "Absolutely not, sir," Willie replied.

  "Did Corporal Stubbefield throw fish guts under my window?"

  "Not while I was around," Willie said.

  "Then that leaves only you, doesn't it?" Atkins said.

  "There could be another explanation, sir," Willie said.

  "What might that be?" Atkins asked.

  "Perhaps there are no fish guts under your window," Willie said.

  "Excuse me?" Atkins said.

  "Could it be you still have a bit of Carrie LaRose's hot pillow house in your mustache, sir?" Willie said. Atkins' eyes blazed.

  "Buck and gag him. The rag and stick. Five hours' worth of it," he said to the corporal.

  "We're s'pposed to keep it at three, Cap," Hatcher said.

  "Do you have wax in your ears?" Atkins said.

  "Five sounds right as rain," Hatcher replied.

  WILLIE remained in an upright ball by the lake's edge for three hours, his wrists tied to his ankles, a stick inserted between his forearms and the backs of his knees, a rag stuffed in his mouth. A stick protruded from each side of his mouth, the ends looped with leather thongs that were tied tightly behind his head.

  Water ran from his tear ducts and he choked on his own saliva. The small of his back felt like a hot iron had been pressed against his spine. He watched the sun descend on the lake and tried to think of the fish swimming under the water, the wind blowing through the trees, the way the four-o'clocks rippled like a spray of purple and gold confetti in the grass.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rufus Atkins mount his horse and ride out of the camp. The pain spread through Willie's shoulders and wrapped around his thighs, like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

  Jim Stubbefield could not watch it any longer. He pulled aside the flap on the corporal's tent and went inside, closing the flap behind him. Hanging from Jim's belt was a bowie knife with a ten-inch blade that could divide a sheet of paper in half as cleanly as a barber's razor.

  Hatcher was combing his hair in a mirror attached to the tent pole when Jim locked his arm under Hatcher's neck and simultaneously stuck the knife between his buttocks and wedged the blade upward into his genitals.

  "You cut Willie loose and keep your mouth shut about it. If that's not acceptable, I'll be happy to slice off your package and hang it on your tent," Jim said.

  Two minutes later Corporal Hatcher cut the ropes on Willie's wrists and ankles and the thong that held the stick in his mouth. Willie stumbled back to the tent he and Jim shared and fell on his cot. Jim sat
down next to him and gazed into his face.

  "What's on your mind, you ole beanpole?" Willie said.

  "You have to stop sassing them, Willie," Jim said.