by Rhodi Hawk
Sam was on her feet, leaning against the table. “Madeleine.”
“Mm?” Madeleine blinked at her.
“Did you even hear a single word I said?”
“Yes. You said . . . well, no. I guess my mind was somewhere else.”
Sam pointed at her legal pad on the broad wooden table. “I was saying, I’ve gone back as far as 1846, and Terrefleurs was still listed with LeBlanc ownership. Can’t figure out when the family bought it, exactly, but it definitely pre-dates 1846.”
“Wow, I had no idea.”
Sam said, “Your eyes are bloodshot. You OK?”
Madeleine shrugged.
“Worried about your father?”
Madeleine looked toward the rows of books and didn’t answer. Daddy, yes, for starters, but in truth she couldn’t get Ethan out of her mind. Her gaze slipped to her grandmother’s diary, which she had pushed aside, and the screen saver on her laptop had long since kicked in to a starfield tunnel.
“Well, I found out a lot about my great-grandfather, so that’s good. Sounds like he, too, suffered from cognitive schizophrenia. Kind of blows a hole in my theory about street drugs causing the condition in Daddy. But aside from that, I can’t make much sense of what Mémée wrote.”
She nudged the diary toward Sam. “You’ve made far better progress than I have.”
“Don’t look at me, I don’t speak Creole.”
Madeleine sighed. “I thought I did, but it’s different from what I’m used to.”
“You figured out enough to find out about your great-grandfather’s condition.”
“Yeah. I do get some other stuff too. Mémée mentions Compère Lapin, which is Briar Rabbit. She used to tell us those stories when Marc and I were little, so that I understand. And she writes about her father carving dolls to keep the bad spirits away. But there’s this whole other part. Something about pigeons.”
Sam said, “Well, you mentioned there was a pigeon house at Terrefleurs.”
Madeleine said, “Yeah, but I just don’t get what she was trying to say. Best I can figure out, she was writing about pigeon games. Her mother—Chloe—made her do some kind of exercise, but she and her sister didn’t like it. Something about stacking pigeons. Whatever that means. Probably just my shoddy translation skills.”
Sam thought about this. “Were they cooking?”
“Pigeons?”
Sam shrugged. “You know, squab. I hear pigeons is good eatin. Stack em up and eat em up.”
Madeleine smiled, and then chuckled. And then suddenly she was quaking with laughter to the point that tears were blurring her vision. One of the students at another table frowned.
Sam grinned and whispered, “Was it really that funny?”
Madeleine shook her head. “I guess I just needed to laugh.”
Sam settled into the chair next to her. “Tell me what’s on your mind. Is it your father?”
“He is slipping. Definitely slipping. And I haven’t seen him in a few days. Not since we went to Bayou Black.”
Sam eyed her. “But that’s not it. It’s Ethan, isn’t it?”
Suddenly, Madeleine’s eyes filled again and tears spilled over to her cheeks.
“Hey,” Sam whispered, slipping an arm around her shoulders. “Oh, sweetie. It’s all right.”
Madeleine shook her head and dashed the tears away. “No, ignore me. It’s just tension. I have a headache and it’s getting to me.”
Sam lifted a brow and gave a humorless laugh. “What? Who in God’s green Earth do you think you’re kidding, Maddy? Tension?”
Madeleine looked at her.
Sam said, “You’re in love with him. It’s OK to say it.”
“No I—I can’t be in . . . We’ve taken a step back, just as things were starting to get serious. But I think it’s over.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that you’re in love with him.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Aren’t you?”
The tears came again. Madeleine shook her head, not sure if the gesture was meant to answer Sam’s question, or to deny her own idiotic blubbering.
Sam held her arm in place, rubbing Madeleine’s shoulders. “Tell me again what happened.”
Madeleine took a shaky breath. “We just had a disagreement over a misunderstanding, and his sense of trust was—”
Sam thumped her shoulder. “Yeah, you said all that the first time. Now tell me what really happened.”
Madeleine looked at her friend. Sam’s eyes were glassy as her own, and Madeleine felt touched by her empathy, and so she took a deep breath and told her the deeper truth about what happened. She kept her voice in a low whisper, perpetuating the somber air of the library with her hushed tone. Such a stern partition of space. What Marc must have meant as an illusion of space, Madeleine thought, even as she was telling Sam about what happened with Zenon at the flower shop. She even told her of the incident before that, where she’d felt the same sense of invasion at the gala.
Sam listened carefully. “Tell me again how you stopped it in the flower shop.”
Madeleine shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Didn’t feel like some heroic breakthrough or anything. It was subtle. I quit fighting inside.”
She recalled her rage and then the sudden absence of emotion. “And it’s like I projected myself into the wind, just a last ditch effort to escape, and I thought of him and me in there as though we were mice in a laboratory. I just observed.”
“And then you were all right?”
Madeleine nodded. “Suddenly I was me again, only I’d changed who I was. Or became more of who I’m supposed to be. As if by letting go of control I somehow gained something.”
“You should practice that.”
“Practice what?”
“What you just described. Because what if it happens again?”
Madeleine thought about this. “That’s what bothers me. I’ve been avoiding Zenon, but you’re right. It could happen again. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him toy around with me.”
She looked at Sam. “I tried to explain it to Ethan, but I must have sounded ridiculous. I don’t think he knows what to make of it. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t been there.”
“Did Zenon acknowledge the . . . the what did you call it, implanted suggestion?”
“When I asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘evolving.’ ”
Sam’s expression took on a new depth of gravity. “My God.”
They were silent for a moment, then Sam said, “Your grandmother’s pigeon game.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you say that Zenon and Chloe have some sort of weird connection?”
“Yeah, he said something about having done some work for her. And she keeps trying to fix me up with him.” Madeleine suppressed a shudder.
“You said you’d felt the same sensation when you were around Chloe before.”
Madeleine nodded. “She has a trick of getting her way. In retrospect, it felt similar, though not as strong with her. It happened on that first meeting, when she wanted me to report on what I learned about Marc’s suicide.”
“And it worked.”
“Not really. It seemed artificial, even then. I haven’t told her about this.” She reached into the box from the Houma house and pulled out Marc’s cell phone, navigating to the picture of Marc with Emily Hammond.
Sam looked at it. “Marc had a girlfriend?”
“It would appear that way. Chloe had actually told me as much at the gala and I didn’t believe her. But now that I found this, my gut tells me to keep quiet about it. If she knew I found something I’m sure she’d try to use the trick.”
Sam was frowning. “But why? Is she just that nosy?”
“I have no idea,” Madeleine said, rubbing her eyes.
“Well, if Chloe knows the suggestion trick, maybe Zenon learned it from her.”
Madeleine thought it over, but it seemed doubtful. “Maybe. I guess. But wha
t’s it got to do with pigeons?”
“If you wanted to learn how to control someone’s mind, wouldn’t it be easier to start with a simpler mind?”
Madeleine gazed at Sam, thoughtful; troubled. “Like the mind of a pigeon?”
MADELEINE SWITCHED OFF THE radio. It couldn’t possibly compete with the turmoil inside her head. She and Sam pulled up in front of her house, standing elbow-to-elbow among the other mansions, all with scrolling wrought iron and wood trim piping, all glowing violet in the sleepy Gulf sunset. Madeleine thought about what Ethan had said about wanting to find someone with whom he might share a future, have kids. She looked at her house and wondered if she could truly indulge in it that way. Let it be a home. Fill it with her heart.
Esplanade was bustling with the usual French Quarter activity: tourists, buskers, hustlers, locals. Madeleine pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the door. She heard her father’s voice. He sounded angry.
Sam pulled her door handle, and Madeleine grabbed her wrist. “Hang on. It’s Daddy.”
He stood two doors down, shouting and pointing. Sam and Madeleine watched and listened. Sam’s brow creased in a frown.
Madeleine groped for her cell phone inside her bag. “He’s in a rant.”
“What should we do?”
But before Madeleine could answer, Daddy focused his shouts on a passerby, a teenager wearing a dark blue backpack. Daddy lunged at him.
“Jesus!” Sam gasped.
Books and papers tumbled to the sidewalk.
“Stay in the truck! And call Vinny!” Madeleine threw open the door and ran for her father. Daddy had grabbed the teenager by both arms and was shaking him, eyes wild. The kid thrashed with his fists balled.
“Daddy! Let go!”
At the sound of his daughter’s voice, Daddy released the boy and spun around. The teen turned and gaped at Daddy and Madeleine. His cheeks were flushed and his eyebrows had come together in an angry V. Other passersby had stopped to watch from a safe distance.
“It’s all right,” Madeleine said to the boy as she stepped toward her father, hands open and voice more calm than she felt. “My father’s sick. We’ve called the police. You should go home.”
The kid glanced at the onlookers and then pointed his finger directly in Daddy’s face. “Hey, fuck you, old man.”
Daddy’s eyes were wide, his jaw tense. Mercifully, he ignored the teen and stared at his daughter. The boy stooped to gather his books and papers.
“Daddy, it’s me. Come on, let’s go on inside.”
He took a step toward her and then stopped, pointing toward the house. “There’s poison in the very walls. River devils nesting there.”
“All right—”
But then he shouted, so loud that she took an involuntary step backward. “It’s a vehicle of death!”
She shouldn’t have shrank back like that. Just as bad as aggressing toward him. Madeleine tried to remain calm and steady, but she was too familiar with the violence in her father’s eyes.
“I hear you, Daddy. Let’s just walk a little.”
“The air in that house is poisoned!”
The teenager had stuffed his things back into his backpack. He leaned his face directly in front of Daddy’s. “Asshole! You’re fucking crazy!”
He spat. Daddy darted forward with his lips pulled back to reveal his teeth. The boy jumped back.
Madeleine put her hand to her father’s arm. “Forget it. Come on Dad—”
But he jerked away from her as though he’d been stung by a wasp. “Get away from me! What are you? You brought them here!”
Madeleine kept her voice soothing. “I want them out, too. It’s me, Madeleine.”
“You ain’t no little girl. I know who you are. You brought them here.”
Daddy’s fist whipped out and punched her in the cheek. The boy turned and ran.
Madeleine staggered to her left, struggling to catch her balance. A second blow. The sky funneled away and concrete skinned her palms. She pushed against it, trying to use that plane of sidewalk to get her bearings. She felt as though she were on her back with the pavement looming over her like the lid of a coffin. Crushing her knees. But that couldn’t be right. She must have been face-down, lying prone. . . .
Is he going to kill me?
The seams between each concrete square opened to sprouts of black thorns that spiraled upward in lazy, trembling spurts of growth.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you!”
A kick to her middle. The muscle beneath her rib cage responded with a single spasm followed by paralysis. Her mouth opened. Her lungs did not fill.
He wouldn’t. He won’t. He’ll stop himself before it’s too late.
“I know what you are!”
Hands at her throat. Her lungs couldn’t fill. Above, sweeps of lavender clouds disappeared to bramble. It stretched up and folded over her, hid her inside its tunnels. Laughter in there. A child’s giggles.
Severin?
The little girl was right. The bramble was safe. Predator and prey on equal footing. Madeleine let herself seep into the black hollows. A cocoon of silence and darkness.
thirty
HAHNVILLE, 1916
ON A COOL FALL morning, Jacob and Rémi set out to catch an alligator. Time had passed at Terrefleurs with the usual fluctuation in seasons: hot and less hot, with the occasional surprise of actual cold. Chloe’s waist had returned to its narrow form, and she’d been walking the plantation in the company of infant twin boys. Rémi had noticed the shock on Jacob’s face when he’d realized the black twins had blue eyes. Still, Jacob had said nothing.
Now, as the first glow of sunrise was breaking over rows of sugarcane, Rémi dressed and then greeted Jacob, leading him to the chicken coop. Ulysses could appear at any moment, and this knowledge caused anxiety for Rémi. Though Chloe seemed to have done her best to free him of the demon, Ulysses had been showing his face with increased frequency. Other than Chloe, Rémi had told no one about him.
Jacob seemed far too energetic. Rémi thought it odd that Jacob had never seen an alligator in the wild. After all, he had lived in Louisiana for years now. A milksop who had not properly adjusted to plantation life, as yet regarding it with an adventurous and romantic eye, Jacob still could not seem to foster an interest in the actual work.
“I’m gonna have to get at least three alligators,” Jacob prattled as Rémi selected an aging cock. “If we get a real big one I’m gonna have it stuffed and put in the huntin lodge. The other one I’ll get made into boots, and the last one y’all can cook. I know you Creoles like to eat’m. I never tried it but then again you don’t see many alligators in the Kentucky mountains. I don’t really want to cook it for myself but y’all can cook it up and maybe I’ll try some.”
Rémi severed the cock’s head. Blood snaked across Jacob’s shirt and shocked him into silence. This gave Rémi some satisfaction. He cleaved the fowl into smaller pieces and then stuffed them into a rice sack. Packed with the carcass and a modest amount of provisions for a day on the river, they loaded the rowboat and launched it into the bayou behind Terrefleurs.
Rémi handed Jacob the oar and then settled himself comfortably with a flask of whiskey.
“You row, mon frère. Perhaps you will actually sprout a real callous on your hand.”
Jacob seemed to take this new duty in stride, and let Rémi direct him through the labyrinth of bayou. The sound of winged insects buzzing in the trees filled the air, distracting Rémi from his frustrations and easing his mind. Of course, the whiskey helped, too.
Rémi expected to see the river devil at every turn, but did not. Instead, he heard Ulysses’s whispers in the hissing snakes that wove themselves into Spanish moss, and he smelled his sour breath in the cattle-piss pastures as they warmed in the morning sun. Ulysses was all around the ciprière, but not immediately before him. Finally, they reached a shaded slough.
Rémi tossed Jacob a ball of twine. “Hang a bit of meat from one of
those boughs.”
Jacob reached into the sack and selected a wing, plucking some of the feathers, and suspended it from a branch of water cypress. It dangled alongside robes of Spanish moss, shifting gently with the breeze over the water’s surface. Jacob looked down at his blood-stained shirt.
“You are getting good and dirty today,” Rémi said, his Creole accent thickening with whiskey. “Are you sure this is for you? I can tell Tatie Bernadette to show you how to tat lace instead. That is a much cleaner hobby.”
“Very funny,” Jacob said.
The two men pushed the rowboat onto the shore, then out of the way. They settled amid the tangled brush on a clearing of packed soil along the bank where they could observe the bait. Jacob cocked his shotgun and held it crossed over his chest, pointing away from Rémi.
They waited.
THE MORNING WARMED. RÉMI was dozing in the sultry swamp air. He heard Jacob slapping at mosquitoes who laughed at the pungent oil he had smeared over his skin to keep them at bay. In Rémi’s mind, the cypress and pine stretched taller, slowly, wavering, the way a lone seed from a milkweed parachutes away on a gentle breeze. The bramble too, stretched its thorny branches, coiling and winding until it enveloped Rémi, forming mazes of sunlight and blackness.
A hand at his shoulder. “How long do we have to wait?”
Rémi opened his eyes, then closed them again.
Jacob shook him. “I said how long do we have to wait?”
The trees and bramble receded back to their original dimensions, leaving Rémi feeling exposed and slightly agoraphobic. He snorted and sat upright, glaring at Jacob as he took a healthy pull from his flask.
“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking that?” Jacob asked. “How long do you s’pose before we see an alligator!”
Rémi wiped his face. “How do I know? Sometimes only a little while, sometimes you sit all day and never see one.”
Jacob cursed. Rémi scanned the water, the thicket, and up above. All seemed quiet. He sighed and offered Jacob the flask. Jacob hesitated, then took a swig. He gestured toward the placid water.
