by Rhodi Hawk
The following day had passed with Ferrar growing weaker and more ill. Fatima was afraid to try swimming again, exposing her son to the cold water which by then had become foul. Finally, this morning, she’d noticed the bloated carcass of a cow drifting nearby. She’d slipped back into the fetid water to retrieve a bell from around its neck, and had been ringing it ever since.
Her hands were clasped around her son’s, with tears streaming down her face as she spoke. Helen and Chloe patted and cooed, dipping Helen’s handkerchief into the thick waters and trying to cool the boy’s fevered brow. Helen stole furtive glances at Rémi as if to urge him faster with her eyes.
Fatima’s gaze darted past Chloe, and then returned and fixed upon her as if noticing her for the first time. She addressed her in rural French.
I know who you are. You’re from Elderberry Plantation.
Chloe shook her head.
The boy’s ragged breathing grew louder. The four adults ceased conversation and stared at him. His rasping became a gurgle, and he writhed in his mother’s arms. And then he clawed at his throat. Fatima gasped and grabbed his hands, but his small fingernails had already left bleeding tracks on his neck. Rémi pressed forth with all his might at the oars, frantically heaving for Vacherie, still a good distance away. Too far away. Rémi thought the child’s shredded gasps were the most terrible sounds he’d ever heard.
But then the sounds stopped altogether, and the desperate silence that followed was far more horrible.
The child gaped, his tongue protruding to its farthest extent and his eyes wide with panic. Fatima grabbed his shoulders and shouted his name. His eyes rolled with abject fear, but his lungs did not fill.
Fatima screamed. “For God, my baby’s not breathing! Ferrar!”
A burst of red appeared in his left eye. A blood vessel overstrained. He flailed.
Fatima clamped Chloe’s wrist. “Help him!”
Rémi dropped the oar in the boat, seizing the boy and shaking him. Ferrar thrashed but did not catch a breath. Chloe reached past Rémi and thrust her fingers into the boy’s mouth, but he responded with not so much as a gurgle.
Chloe touched Rémi’s arm. “I must to have a reed.”
He looked back at her in confusion.
She repeated herself, switching to French, and pointed to the clump rising out of the river several feet away. “Tout de suite!”
Realization dawned and Rémi started paddling for the reeds. He cursed and tossed aside the paddle and threw himself over the side of the boat. With a glint of his pocket knife, he severed a fistful and splashed back to Chloe.
She grabbed the reeds and also the pocket knife. Rémi climbed back in.
“Hold the head!” she said.
Rémi positioned himself behind Ferrar so that his knees were on either side of the boy’s ears, his hands gently cradling the skull. Ferrar was no longer thrashing.
Chloe made quick cuts on the reed until she had a short, stiff tube, then blew through the center of it. The child’s dark skin had grown ashen. She straddled his limp body and cupped her hands behind his neck, lifting so that his head lolled backward. She grabbed Rémi’s hand and directed him to hold the child firmly so that he maintained this posture.
Chloe probed the V in the center of the child’s collarbone. And then her fingers moved from the V up toward the chin, until she found the sensitive, boneless indentation just below the Adam’s apple. Her knife flashed, slicing into tissue. Fatima cried out.
Chloe pressed her finger inside the boy’s throat as blood began to flow. She sank the reed into the incision and blew a short breath through the tube. The child’s lungs expanded, then lay still. She blew again, paused, then repeated the action. Each time the child’s chest rose, then lay motionless. Blood flowed down the boy’s neck and onto Rémi’s clothing.
Chloe blew again, and then again, and again.
Finally, there came a strangled gurgle from the boy’s throat. He gagged, a silent gesture at the mouth, but audible at the point of incision. His lungs filled and released on their own, each breath causing a hollow whistle through the reed.
Fatima sobbed and pressed her forehead to her son’s hand. Helen, ghost-white and unsteady, trembled as she mopped the child’s blood with her dampened lace handkerchief.
Rémi crawled back into position with the oar, and resumed haste for Vacherie.
fifteen
BAYOU BLACK, 2009
THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS faded to haze in the rearview mirror as they drove south, and Jasmine’s tiny wet nose bounced along the window, leaving wispy patterns on the glass. Ethan sat at the wheel. Madeleine sat in the passenger seat with Jasmine in her lap. And wedged between them, chattering like a squirrel in November, sat Daddy Blank.
“So y’all had a good time at the zoo?” Daddy said.
“Yup,” Madeleine said, and switched on the Cajun music station. Daddy patted his leg in time to the jaunty rhythms, and Madeleine smiled. When his schizophrenia was escalating he had a hard time tolerating things like radio and TV. His enjoying the music was a good sign.
“You went on over to Monkey Hill, did you?” Daddy pressed.
Madeleine said, “Yup.”
“That’s it? That’s all?”
Ethan cocked an eye at him and then returned his gaze to the road.
Daddy said, “Oh, that’s right. Y’all went out to dinner after, didn’t you?”
Madeleine rolled her eyes and gave him a look. Daddy only knew about Monkey Hill because he’d been eavesdropping when they’d made plans. He’d been staying in the Quarter, so he wasn’t aware that not only had they indeed gone to dinner, but they’d gone again the next night. And every few days since.
She stole a glance at Ethan’s forearm, muscular and patterned with downy hairs, and she remembered that sandalwood-and-granite scent of him. An unbidden grin came to her lips, and she turned her face toward the window.
Daddy took another stab. “Crêpe Nanou was it? That where y’all went to eat?”
Ethan cleared his throat. “Sir, just so you know, I’ve been very respectful with your daughter.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, Daddy,” Madeleine said.
“How do ya like that,” Daddy said.
Ethan added, “Anyway, Miss Madeleine here barely gives me the time of day. Pert near had to set an appointment through her secretary just to trick her into goin out.”
“That so?” And before Daddy even turned his head, Ethan had managed to sneak in a look toward Madeleine, which she in turn absorbed with only the slightest flash of the eyes.
Ethan replied, “Yessir. Kinda humbling too, considering her secretary’s also my secretary now.”
“Ethan’s come on board as a liaison to Tulane’s psych department,” Madeleine said.
“So you’re working together,” Daddy said. “Isn’t that nice. Guess it makes sense to have a neuroscientist hangin around a bunch of headshrinkers.”
“Not exactly working together. We’re both in the psych department, but his program is very closed and hush-hush.”
The truck hummed beneath them, and the swampland crept in closer around the highway. Daddy’s interest in the subject seemed to have evaporated. The song on the radio changed to a sleepy, sensual blues hybrid by Buckwheat Zydeco.
Ethan glanced toward Madeleine. “Tell me again what we’re gonna be doing out on that swamp, darlin?”
“Collecting flowers for Sam to use at the flower shop. She wants to do an All Souls Day display on the second, with water hyacinths, or whatever pretty thing we can pull out of the bayou for her.”
“Sounds relaxing.”
Daddy said, “Y’all can sit around and blow bubbles in the lily pads. Me, I’m goin fishin.”
Madeleine smiled at her father, then looked out as they sped through the swamplands and could already see drifts of water irises in bloom. Easy and nice out there on the water. She couldn’t wait.
Out of nowhere Daddy muttered, “Can’t take i
t no more”; he reached over and switched off the radio.
The truck fell to white silence. Madeleine looked at the now-vacant digital display and then eyed her father, wondering if the music had stirred the old confusions in him.
“You all right, Daddy?”
“Just like some peace and quiet every now and then, that’s all. Can’t a man just enjoy a little silence?”
ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF Houma, Bayou Black formed a glittering arrow that shot from the Mississippi feeders out to the Gulf. As if the mighty river had gotten antsy during her run and sent forth a projectile just so she could reach her destination that much sooner. Over time, she and her feeders had taken over forests and cane fields and saw to it that like the water, the landscape never grew stagnant. Otters were almost as common out here as feral cats, and so were coon or skunk or possum. Down the bayou, at the end of the little clamshell road, stood the old LeBlanc cottage, like Charon watching over the River Styx. Neither Madeleine nor her father mentioned to Ethan how they’d pointedly avoided setting foot inside the house.
Another day, thought Madeleine. We’ll tend to Marc’s things later.
Looking at it now, the most basic, raw Creole construction, it seemed both sweet and horrific to her, her childhood home was simple and loyal, unable to protect, and ultimately abandoned. Madeleine looked away from this place where she and her brother had spent their first days in the world, and where he had spent his last.
Jasmine bounded around the rear of it and came shooting back from beneath the structure, cobwebs and a dried elderberry leaf spiked to her hair. Madeleine brushed her off, glad to fuss a little and divert her focus.
As Daddy and Ethan loaded her brother’s skiff into the water, Madeleine took out her cell phone and tried calling Chloe. The image of that girl, Severin, had been haunting her, and Madeleine wanted to make sure she was being tended to properly.
“LeBlanc residence.”
“Hello, Oran? This is Madeleine LeBlanc. Is Miss Chloe there?”
“She’s not at home.”
“I see. Did she get the messages I left for her?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Because I wanted to ask her some questions about Severin.”
“Mm hmm.”
Madeleine sighed. “Will you pass along the message to call me?”
“I . . . Well, yes ma’am.”
“Thanks Oran. Bye-bye.”
The boat was in the water and Ethan pulled forward to park the truck over by the cottage. Jasmine skipped past Ethan down the dock and hopped over the seats to her favorite perch.
“You done making social calls?” Daddy hollered over the motor.
Madeleine tucked the cell phone into her pack and Ethan offered his hand to help her step off the dock. She thanked him, absently, while inwardly resolving that she was going to find out what was going on with the little girl Severin whether Chloe cooperated or not. Shoeless and unwashed; too ragged, too wild, serious neglect was going on, and Madeleine wasn’t about to just let it go.
The boat was suddenly in motion, the old Creole cottage disappearing behind them as they sped forth. The movement freshened her lungs with cool oxygen, and they passed forests of tall pine and oak until the trees became shorter: alder, elderberry, and scrub. Chinese tallow were turning ruby with the change of season, and the purple aster bloomed with wide red eyes in the centers of the flower heads. Bayou Black seemed to have the spirit of Halloween about it, with a bite of ionic charge that relayed echoes from another world.
The bayou broke free from the developed neighborhoods. They passed through the concrete-and-steel saltwater intrusion lock that acted as a valve, blocking the brackish water from mingling with the fresh, and then they entered the wilds. Here, the trees stretched once again higher and even higher toward heaven, grand water cypress with their priestly robes of Spanish moss.
Jasmine darted back and forth along the bottom of the skiff, peering over the side at her reflection as it zoomed across the surface of the water. Finally the bayou and cypress trees fell back, too, and they entered open fields of water hyacinths that spread like a royal carpet laying the way to the Gulf. All of it—the swamp and the marsh, and all the flora and creatures that lived there—was Bayou Black.
Here in the salty marsh, in the field of saline-tolerant flowers, Daddy cut the motor and secured the skiff.
Madeleine shrugged off her button-down shirt, leaving just her bathing suit top and cutoffs, and slipped into the water. Ethan followed in his swimming trunks. Daddy had his fishing hook baited and cast on the opposite side of the boat before they’d even dampened their hair.
“How’s the water?” he called.
Madeleine wiggled her toes as the cool liquid permeated her sneakers. “Feels like heaven.”
“I’ll second that,” Ethan said.
The flower collection baskets, fashioned out of old crab pots, floated on a towline. The water level hit at about chest height so they walked easily as they collected specimens.
“Gators ever come out this far?” Ethan said, looking around.
Madeleine laughed. “No, city slicker. They like the freshwater better, over yonder in the cypress forest. Not so big on the salt marshes. But it’s best to keep an eye out anyway because you never know. Everything that lives out here is just plain tough. Animals, bugs, plants.”
“I guess they’d have to be.”
They bent their bodies so that only their heads were above the surface, and they moved forward in slow-motion giant steps through the water, no sound but the occasional splash and Daddy’s spin cast. Ethan took a breath and disappeared beneath the surface. Madeleine parted a path through the flowers, avoiding an area of stagnant water where brown foam floated in drifts. She wrinkled her nose. Scum like that tended to breed unfriendly organisms, and this particular slick emitted especially vile odors. She moved on to fresher patches.
Ethan surfaced again. “Can’t see a damn thing under there.”
“What were you looking for?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Fish. Critters. Pretty pair of legs.”
She smiled, looking down at the water. She could see about an inch below the surface before everything faded to black.
“Any rules as to which of these flowers we should get?” Ethan said.
Madeleine untangled one of the irises and put it in the basket. “Go for the ones with full buds that haven’t bloomed yet.”
Ethan gave a grunt and rose from the water.
“What’s the matter?” Madeleine said.
They were higher on a sandbar now, and the shimmering, silken plane rested at his rib cage.
Ethan shook his head. “Nothin. Somethin slimy just tickled my leg.”
“You really are a city slicker. Haven’t you ever come out to the bayou?”
“Been to it. Just not in it.”
“Well, you never really know what’s brushing up against your leg down there. Could be fallen branches or fish, or maybe something you’d just as soon not know about.”
“Damn, woman. You’re not putting my mind at ease here.”
She smiled. “When Marc and I were kids we never gave it a second thought. We went swimming in the bayou all the time. And then one day we went free-diving with friends. Looks a whole lot different when you’re using a mask.”
She remembered being surprised at just how forbidding the water had looked beneath the surface, even with the aid of a mask. The bottom had been dense with trees and charcoal swamp litter, and swamp gas had bubbled up in a promenade of sparkling columns. Everything was black, including the water, and visibility stretched only a few feet.
Ethan said, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What did you see down there with the swimming mask?”
“Still hard to see anything, really, even with the mask. Lots of shadows down below. In fact, I was straining so hard to see this one big lump that I got right up to it before I realized I was nose-to-nose with an alligator.”
/>
“What!”
“Oh, he wasn’t gonna hurt anybody. They’re not usually aggressive with people.”
“Usually.”
“Well, yeah. He was just lying on the bottom with these alien-looking eyes encased in these great big waterproof bubbles. I swear he looked like he was smiling.”
She recalled the dim outline of him, the corners of his lips curved up at the ends and sharp triangle teeth in a jack-o’-lantern grin. Ever since then she’d wondered how many times she and Marc had gone swimming, not realizing what they might be swimming with.
“You mean to tell me you were down there pettin a smiley alligator like he was an ole pussy cat?”
“Good lord, no. I hopped out of that water like it’d begun to boil.”
Ethan stared at her for a stark, suspended moment, arms folded across his chest. About twenty yards behind him, the boat rocked as Daddy cast his line back into the water.
Madeleine rose to a full stance. “Don’t worry, whatever slimed your leg just now, it probably wasn’t an alligator.”
Ethan said, “You gonna get that one?”
“What one?”
“That.” He unfolded his arms and stepped toward her. “Perfect one . . .” He reached for her and she straightened in surprise, and then he continued just beyond and grasped a robust iris with fat buds that were barely shy of bloom; all the while his eyes never strayed from hers. “. . . right there.”
She felt his leg brush her knee, and she instinctively smoothed her hand over his arm, leaving a trail of pearl droplets. Skin at once fiery and cool from the sun and water. His head remained bent over hers as he passed the iris to the collection basket.
