A Twisted Ladder

by Rhodi Hawk

  “You catch a lot of gators round here?”

  Rémi nodded. “Some. Easiest way is to shine them. You hunt them at night, and bring a lantern. You see the eyes shine in the dark, then you shoot them.”

  He withdrew a rolled cigarette from his pocket and lit it, blowing fragrant smoke toward the water. “But it is better sport in the daytime. I used to catch them with my bare hands!” He spread out his fingers.

  Jacob looked impressed. “Really? How’d you do that?”

  Rémi reached over and retrieved the flask. “Well, first you find an alligator.”

  Jacob chuckled.

  “You find an alligator, and you walk up to him very slowly. If he is near the water, and you move suddenly, he will swim away. You should leave him alone while he is in the water because there he will always win. But if he is on the bank, and you move slowly, you can walk up to him and grab him behind his head.”

  Jacob’s eyes swelled. “You ain’t serious.” He took the flask again from Rémi and helped himself. “You really do that?”

  Rémi nodded with pursed lips. “You can’t be gentle, like a . . .” he groped for the English word. “Like a sissy.”

  He tilted his head at Jacob with a sidelong smirk. Jacob straightened with mild indignation, but let the comment pass.

  “You must be strong,” Rémi added. “Once you have him, he will fight and thrash. But if you have him behind the head, you hold on tight, and he cannot hurt you. Then you may do with him what you like.”

  Jacob snorted and waved. “Aw, you just funnin.”

  Rémi narrowed his eyes. He pulled up his shirt and moved a suspender to the side, revealing a long scar running from just above his navel to the outline of his rib cage.

  “This is not funning.”

  Jacob was awestruck. “How did that happen?”

  “I did not have such a good hold on him. I held him and he thrashed.” Rémi moved his shoulders. “He knocked me off him. Used his teeth. Then he ran away to the water.”

  “I guess you were lucky. He could have killed you.”

  Rémi shrugged. “The alligator, he is not so anxious to get you. He would rather be left alone. Get away. But this was bad enough. I nearly died from infection.”

  Jacob spat into the brush. He sighed and shifted in the tall grass, and seemed to be struggling for words.

  “Look here, Rémi. I want to thank you. You’ve been real good to my family, even though my parents haven’t really been able to show their appreciation.” He chewed his lip. “Fact is, they don’t understand your ways out here. Maybe it was a mistake for us to come out to Louisiana like this. Anyway, you’ve been real decent. I know things didn’t work out the way you’d planned. . . .”

  At this, Jacob’s voice trailed off, and Rémi felt a burning in his throat. Jacob reached into his satchel and pulled out a long thick wand of linen rags.

  “Well, I brought you this.” He thrust the parcel into Rémi’s hands.

  Rémi unwound the rags. As they fell away, they revealed an embossed leather sheath cradling the blade of a bowie knife. Rémi pulled it out, holding it so that it gleamed in the sun. From handle to blade, it ran the length of his entire forearm. He gave a long, low whistle.

  “This is beautiful, my friend. Almost too beautiful to use. In the swamplands, things do not stay beautiful long.”

  Helen’s face flickered in Rémi’s mind.

  Jacob laughed. “It ain’t meant to sit around makin pretty. Go on ahead, beat the hell out of it. That’s what it’s for. Besides, I have another gift for you. Something I think you’ll like even better.”

  Rémi lifted his brows. “Oh?”

  “Yep. My gift is this. We’re not getting into the sugarcane business. I’m gonna go ahead and get into banking with my father. We’ve closed out with the co-op, so your name’s no longer on anything we have.”

  “No sugarcane?” Rémi said. “What will you do with Glory? All that land?”

  Jacob shrugged. “We’re looking at cotton, maybe. I got cousins in cotton. But even if we do that we’ll lease it out. Truth is, I’m no farmer!”

  Jacob gave a hearty laugh. Rémi laughed too, a release of surprise and pleasure. It occurred to him how much he truly liked his brother-in-law. All entanglements and politics aside, Jacob was an affable fellow. And generous, too; the bowie knife was a magnificent thing. Perhaps Jacob was a little lazy, yes, and not terribly manly, but at least he chose to be a banker, a profession where those qualities did not matter.

  “You are a good man, Jacob. Thank you for the knife, and for the news. I admit that I am relieved to hear it.”

  Jacob laughed and slapped Rémi’s shoulder, raising the whiskey. But then he frowned, shaking the flask.

  “Aw hell, it’s empty!”

  Rémi stood. “Do not fear. As your guide, I have come prepared.”

  He reached into a moldering blanket under a seat in the rowboat, and extracted a full demijohn. Jacob laughed. Rémi heaved it over his forearm, hooking the loop with his thumb, and took a swig that leaked down his chin. He passed it to Jacob and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “Jacob, mon frère. You might be a good fellow after all. I always thought you were just a fancy pants.”

  “What? Who you calling fency pents?” Jacob said, mocking Rémi’s accent.

  Rémi put his other hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “. . . but I misjudged you. You are like my brother, even though you are an American.”

  They roared and slapped each other on the back.

  “Well, ‘mawn frair,’ ” Jacob returned. “You’re my brother too, even though you are a Frenchy frog-eating Creole savage.” He belched. “From the backwater.”

  The two bugled their laughter out over the water, and Rémi felt as though his mind tilted with the ricocheting sound; up through the treetops into the wildest reaches of the swamp. The demijohn traveled back and forth.

  Morning wore toward noon. Jacob taught Rémi the words to his favorite mountain song, “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy.”

  Well I’s walking down the street

  Stoled a ham of meat

  Keep my skillet good and greasy

  All the time, time, time,

  Keep my skillet good and greasy all the time

  Jacob spoke the words and Rémi repeated them, and together they sang only slightly off-key in the simple melody.

  I’s a-goin to the hills

  For to buy me a jug of brandy

  Goin give it all to Mandy

  Keep her good and drunk and woozy

  All the time, time, time

  Keep her good and drunk and woozy all the time.

  The boom of the duo’s voices echoed through the swamp, melting with the call of the herons and sawing insect wings. The demijohn’s contents dwindled, and they continued to sing with gusto as they lay on their backs across the packed soil, singing at the sky, singing with their eyes closed. And then once again, the trees and the bramble were stretching, encroaching, protecting, concealing. Rémi sang into the bramble, then laughed. His voice no longer echoed. Swallowed up in the thorns. He heard birds and Ulysses whispering to the snakes. Rémi nestled deeper into the sun-dappled passages, away from the sound of the river devil’s voice. But he fretted that Ulysses must be high in the boughs, looking down and seeing all, so Rémi turned down one of the black tunnels. He heard faint splashing sounds amid the chirping of birds. He sensed someone stirring nearby. Jacob.

  “Hey the chicken’s gone,” Jacob said.

  And for a second time, the bramble withdrew, and Rémi was no longer hidden. The return to a wakeful state dragged on him as though his blood had filled with lead. His head and stomach were on fire, and his lips felt pasted with hoof glue. He wondered if Jacob felt the same, because he heard his footsteps fade to splashes, as if his brother-in-law were drinking soupy water from the bayou.

  “Damn it, Rémi, I said the chicken’s gone.”

  Splashing again. Then Rémi felt Jacob’s boot nudge h
is leg. He rolled over with a groan, shirt plastered with sweat in the stifling air.

  He ventured to open one eye. Jacob was rummaging in the boat for the sack that contained the rooster parts, which was apparently covered in ants, because he cursed as their sting perforated his skin.

  Rémi blinked a smile, and sat up.

  Jacob took out the largest hunk of the carcass and rinsed the ants in the swamp. “Damn it!”

  He waded back to the lure, attempting to tie the chicken onto the broken length of twine still dangling from the branch.

  Rémi cast a groggy glance toward the woods, and then back to the water, squinting out the shape of a drifting log, and the fuzzy outline of two people. Something about them set off alarms inside his dim mind, and he tried to shake off the fog.

  It felt as if the cicadas must have left the trees and crawled inside his ears; their grinding seemed to emanate from his very brain, vibrating wings fluttering behind his eyes. He saw Jacob struggling to tie the hacked rooster to the limb, but the broken twine was now too short.

  Behind Jacob in the water, Ulysses came into focus. Rémi sat up.

  Ulysses’s eyes were fixed on Jacob. A silvery gleam caught Rémi’s attention, and he saw that Ulysses was carrying a machete.

  “Ulysses, no!”

  Jacob lowered the carcass with his left hand, still holding the twine with his right. “What?”

  Rémi struggled to his feet. “Get out of there!”

  Ulysses raised the machete.

  Rémi staggered toward his brother-in-law, splashing into the bayou. With both hands on the machete, Ulysses gave one fluid swing, cleaving the bone above Jacob’s hand. Jacob shrieked.

  The cicadas returned to Rémi’s vision, fluttering against his sight. Branches stretching. Rémi tried to call out, strained to see; he caught a glimpse of Jacob slipping below the water’s surface before the bramble and the cicadas blotted everything out. Slumber beckoned. Escapist slumber. Safely hidden. He sighed, yielded.

  thirty-one

  NEW ORLEANS, 2009

  MADELEINE OPENED HER EYES. The bramble retreated. The sky opened wide. Darker now. Sam hovered above.

  Madeleine rolled, gagging, her lips grazing the pavement. She saw and heard through a haze, felt skipping flashes of reality and dream. Her esophagus convulsed, and her brain zeroed in on the single task of opening that air passage.

  Slowly, her throat relented, and oxygen filled her lungs.

  “Maddy, oh my God!” she heard Sam say.

  Madeleine struggled for breath. She blinked, trying to say something, trying to tell Sam she was fine, but her throat was sluggish.

  Sam was frantic. “Here, don’t get up! Can you speak?”

  Madeleine tried, but nothing came out.

  “We need to get you to a hospital!”

  Madeleine shook her head. She pushed herself up from the pavement and looked around, but no sign of Daddy.

  “Try to lie still,” Sam pleaded.

  Madeleine finally managed to whisper, “No, just need to catch my breath. Where did Daddy go?”

  Sam shook her head. “I don’t know. I was calling Vinny and saw through the window. God, Maddy, I thought he was going to kill you. By the time I got out of the truck he’d run off.”

  Madeleine whispered, “Let’s just get inside.”

  Sam helped Madeleine to her feet, and they took shaky steps toward the house.

  “Honey, you need to go to the hospital.”

  Madeleine shook her head. “No, I’ll be fine. I want to be here in case he comes back. He’s dangerous. Is Vinny coming?”

  “Two patrol officers are on the way. Friends of Vinny’s who understand the situation.”

  Madeleine nodded. She had no qualms about locking her father up when he was in a violent state. She hoped they could find him before he did something even more dreadful.

  thirty-two

  HAHNVILLE, 1916

  BAYOU WATER FILLED RÉMI’S mouth, shocking him from his swoon. He spat. The swamp roiled and frothed in a struggle that he did not at first comprehend. He saw Jacob’s hat floating on the surface like a wood-sprite’s boat amid sticks and leaves. Then he realized that Jacob was in the bayou, twisting and shrieking, bobbing in the direction of deeper water. A great leathery tail lashed the surface.

  Rémi lurched back to the bank and grabbed his shotgun. The alligator was dragging Jacob away from shore, tiring him out. It likely intended to pull him under water to pickle him before feeding. Jacob was screaming.

  Rémi aimed the shotgun, peering down the barrel through the V until the beast was in his sights. He saw the tail roll over, exposing a cotton belly. Rémi fired. He pumped and fired again, and then once more, until it stopped moving. Jacob’s legs continued to thrash at the surface, and Rémi vaulted into the water after him.

  The hunk of fowl and Jacob’s mangled hand, canted at an unnatural angle, were still clenched inside the animal’s jaws. Rémi grabbed Jacob’s hair and yanked his head above the surface. Jacob gobbled for oxygen, then in a single desperate motion, wrenched his arm free of the beast, gouging his own skin and severing his index finger as he did so.

  Jacob lifted the hand out of the water. Blood flowed in rhythmic waves from his wounds. Rémi dragged Jacob back to shore and tore off his own shirt, splitting it into shreds, and wound Jacob’s hand while Jacob looked on in rapture. Rémi twisted a stick into the bindings and tightened. Jacob yelped but allowed Rémi to secure it. The pulsing blood eased to a trickle. They paused in stunned exhaustion, blinking and heaving.

  “Did you get him?” Jacob asked.

  “What? Ulysses?”

  “Did you get the alligator?”

  Rémi stared at him, his chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. “He is dead. We must now get you to a doctor.”

  “Get’m and bring’m back for me.”

  “Are you crazy? He’s full of buckshot. We are going back now!”

  “I want that gator!” Jacob rose and stalked back into the water.

  “Merde!”

  Rémi grabbed Jacob’s good arm and shoved him back toward shore, and then clumsily attempted to divine the alligator’s body from the shallows.

  AFTER SOME TRIAL, RÉMI had managed to lasso the alligator to the boat, and he’d towed it back toward home. The return journey had transpired in fewer than forty-five minutes, but in that time Jacob’s skin had turned porcelain, and he’d begun to shiver. Rémi had covered him with a moldy blanket.

  When they finally reached Terrefleurs, Rémi barked orders at two plantation children who were catching frogs along the banks. They ran toward the main house for help, returning with Chloe.

  Rémi heaved Jacob out of the boat, then swung Jacob’s good arm around his shoulder while Chloe supported him under the maimed one. Together they half-walked, half-dragged Jacob up to the main house. They took him to the sick room, where Rémi left Chloe alone with her patient. He walked out to the gallery and leaned his hands on the rail, looking out over the kitchen garden past the birds perched along the pigeonnier, scanning the landscape for any sign of Ulysses.

  A group of plantationers had gathered where the alligator still floated alongside the boat like a fender, the children daring each other to touch it. Francois shooed them away and dispatched instructions to prepare the alligator for supper and to alert Glory Plantation of the accident.

  The people of Terrefleurs scurried into action, loading the great beast onto a cart and parading it to the kitchen house. The cook would butcher it, pounding tenderloin steaks and frying them in lard, and she’d set them aside for Rémi, Chloe, Jacob, and the higher-ranking workers of Terrefleurs. She would cut the rest of the tail meat into strips and mix it with sausage and gravy for alligator étouffée. Rémi thought of Jacob’s wish for a pair of boots, and told Francois to set the hide aside for him.

  Rémi returned to Jacob’s sick room. Chloe had given Jacob something to ease the pain, and he seemed removed from his wits as she tended the m
angled hand.

  Rémi pointed at Jacob. “You see? Ulysses did that. He cut him with a machete!”

  “Non,” Chloe said in a hushed tone. “It was an alligator! You brought it home yourself.”

  “I saw him use a machete!”

  “The river devil uses these tricks to show what he wants. Jacob listened, and the animal listened. They did this themselves!”

  Jacob shivered and rolled on the mattress. Chloe moved him back to his original position. He roused, saw Chloe, and laughed to the point of emptying his lungs. Gray sputum freckled the sheets. Jacob waved his maimed arm at Chloe.

  “What do you think, old gal? Gonna save my hand, or start calling me Stumpy?”

  Chloe’s expression was grave.

  Jacob’s grimace froze on his face. “I was jokin about that.”

  He looked from Rémi to Chloe. “Good thing I wasn’t holding that damned chicken with my right hand.” He laughed nervously. “Hey, you ain’t really gonna saw it off, are you old gal?”

  Chloe asked Rémi to bring her some hard alcohol. By the time he returned with a bottle of bourbon, Chloe had removed the dressing except for the band of tourniquet and was washing the wound from a pitcher. Below Jacob’s arm, the water inside the basin turned pink. Chloe folded one end of a mangrove root into Rémi’s hand, then held the opposite end on Jacob’s tattered flesh. She recited something in a dialect Rémi only vaguely recognized as belonging to the lower native lands, and the few words he caught made very little sense. As she chanted she poured bourbon over the root connecting Jacob’s hand to Rémi’s. When the alcohol reached Jacob’s hand, he screamed and tried to pull his arm away, but Rémi held him fast.

  “You should trust her. You need river medicine for this.”

  Jacob groaned, and then slurred to a laugh. “You letting her work that voodoo on me? Does this mean I’m going to sprout me an itty bitty new hand?”

  Rémi could not help but chuckle, and when Chloe finished, he took a swig of the bourbon. “You know, mon frère, you scream like a woman.”