by Rhodi Hawk
Jacob’s laugh became a braying hee-haw, exaggerated by pain and liquor.
Chloe scowled. “Tais-toi!”
The men attempted to sober, but errant snickers burst their pursed lips. Chloe roughly bound Jacob’s hand with clean bandages.
“Ow,” Jacob protested. “Your little witch doctor got a mean bedside manner.”
The door to the sickroom opened, and the physician, Doc Shaw, entered. His gaze lit on Jacob, then swept the room, resting on a pentagram that Chloe had drawn on the floor, topped with a cup of river water and a dish of salt. Jacob was howling with laughter, and he waved his bandaged hand in the air.
“Look, Doc, they gonna saw off my hand!”
The doctor blinked. “I heard you got in a fight with an alligator, son. Had a little something to drink, did ya now?”
Rémi steadied himself. “My brother-in-law is . . . not himself at this moment due to pain medicine.”
Doc inspected Jacob’s wound, and as he leaned forward Rémi realized that the doctor was himself in his cups. A miasma emitted from the doctor’s sweat and breath, an evolved sourness that could only come from a days-long bender.
Doc Shaw sighed. “Yup. That girl cleaned him up real good, but he’s lost a lot of blood and I’m afraid that injury’s a little too far gone. Now son, you know that hand’s gonna have to come off.”
“Just call me Stumpy!”
Doc Shaw gave him a tired look and turned a slow eye to Rémi. “It’s good that Miss Chloe gave him a little something to calm his nerves, being as the sedatives I carry are mild in comparison.”
Rémi gripped his arm. “You sure you are clearheaded enough for this?”
Doc Shaw’s expression remained placid. “It ain’t exactly going to require a delicate touch, Mr. LeBlanc.”
He nodded gravely toward Chloe. “This is not a difficult procedure, young lady, but it’s a difficult one to watch. I suggest you run along now. See if they need some help downstairs and keep the children out of earshot.”
But Chloe remained where she stood. “I will assist.”
Rémi wrinkled his brow. “Should we not take him to the hospital in New Orleans?”
“No, that wouldn’t be wise.”
Doc Shaw made ready for the procedure. As he carried no sort of instruments for amputation in his black leather bag, Chloe went to see what Francois might have among his tools. She returned with a saw and a gun screw that Francois had modified to serve as a clamp. Rémi handed the physician the gift Jacob had given him, the new bowie knife, the sharpest and the truest blade on the plantation. Tatie Bernadette appeared with strips of old linen sheets.
Doc Shaw turned to Jacob. “You ready for this, son?”
Droplets of sweat sprang to Jacob’s brow. It seemed that for the first time he absorbed the enormity of the situation, and he began with vehemence to protest the removal of his hand. The physician explained to him that the procedure was a necessity, and that Jacob’s very life was at stake.
Jacob turned to Rémi. “You always givin me a hard time about bein a sissy. Well now you watch. I’m gonna go through with this and you can tell everyone I took it like a man.”
Rémi stared at him. “You have my word, mon frère.”
Jacob looked at Doc Shaw. “Have it your way then, Doc, I’m ready.”
Doc Shaw nodded, and he and Rémi bound Jacob to the bed lest he struggle during the procedure. Jacob began to sing “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy,” his eyes fixed on Rémi. Rémi put his hand on his brother-in-law’s shoulder and sang with him.
Honey if you say so, I’ll never work no more
I’ll lay around yo shanty all the time, time, time
I’ll lay around yo shanty all the time
The blade moved. The men sang.
Rémi marveled at Jacob’s stoicism as he sang through clenched teeth. The odd groan of misery broke through, but Jacob kept returning to the song. It did seem unlikely that only a few hours before Rémi had considered his brother-in-law not the least bit manly. Now Rémi believed him manlier than any in Terrefleurs, and possibly even Louisiana.
Jacob’s hair was slick with sweat, as were the bindings that held him steady on the mattress. They sang the song over, repeating it for the full length of the procedure. Jacob sang through each moment until it was finally finished, never missing a stave.
thirty-three
NEW ORLEANS, 2009
SAM INSISTED ON STAYING the night. Madeleine had declined, but Sam was having none of it. She lingered long after the policemen had left, putting off going home to feed her dogs and grab an overnight bag as long as she could.
“You sure you’ll be OK for a couple of hours?”
“I’m fine. Go on ahead, I’m a big girl.”
“Yeah, you’re a big girl who can’t stand to let anybody help her.”
Madeleine chewed her lip. “Ethan said something like that to me.”
“Well he’s right. Letting people help you is a show of faith. You sure you don’t want me to call him?”
“No, we’ll talk again soon, but not like this.”
“Tell you what else. I wish you would’ve let me take you to the hospital. Here.” Sam grabbed a fresh ice pack from the freezer and exchanged it for Madeleine’s limp one.
When Sam left, the house was cemetery-quiet. There had been no sign of Daddy. Madeleine turned on the TV in the bedroom to The Weather Channel, killing the silence. She started a bath and let the tub fill while she went down to the kitchen to fix a cup of tea.
At the little round kitchen table, while the kettle churned on the stove, the wallpaper hung loose near that same bubble that had been driving her mad. It reminded her of the day Daddy had introduced her to Ethan. So much had happened since then, and yet here she was, staring at the same damaged, fragile paper she had been unable to leave alone.
And despite herself, she still couldn’t resist. She leaned forward and tugged at it again. Perhaps if she pulled it all the way off, it would be less of an eyesore. Or motivate her to undertake the kitchen remodel once and for all.
As she pulled back the top layer, Madeleine saw yet another pattern lying beneath. The same toile she’d seen in Terrefleurs. Not surprising that the family would use the same paper at two residences; it made her smile. Though old, the material proved thick and of good quality, and Madeleine realized it was fabric, not paper. The more she pulled, the more she saw of the original design beneath. The fabric halted just before the scar in the wall where it bubbled out, forcing Madeleine to give it a concentrated tug.
Suddenly, it gave way and came off the wall in a broad sheet, exposing a hole of lathe and crumbled plaster where the bubble had been. She coughed against the dust, turning her head and squinting. A tickling sensation shot up her arm. She looked down and saw an outpouring of black spill from the hole. Bramble. It snaked toward her in rolls. She gasped and took a step back, but even as she did, she saw the dark stems disperse into spiders. They flew up her arm and disappeared at her hair. She jerked her arm away, trying to shake them off her body. The sudden movement sent fresh courses of pain through her abdomen where her father had kicked her.
The room was spinning. She had to grip the chair even though the spiders were scattering across it. The tea kettle was shrieking now. Spiders were darting to every corner of the kitchen and disappearing into crevices. She brushed and slapped until she was certain they had vacated her body.
She turned off the fire beneath the kettle and the kitchen was once again silent.
Fabric gaped horrifically behind her. Fabric that had concealed a nest of spiders, not bramble. Simple everyday spiders.
A cup of tea no longer seemed appealing. She turned her back to all of it and headed for the stairs and her bath. The last thing she needed was for the tub to overflow on top of everything else.
She peeled off her clothes and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror. A tomatoey knot on her right cheekbone. But most of the damage Daddy’d done was at her neck and
torso, not her face. And yet she wore a haggardness that looked as though she’d been beaten daily for weeks. A sallow, poisoned look. She’d be returning to work sporting that look.
Sam’s ice pack felt cool against the knot as Madeleine settled into the scented bathwater. She thought of the time when she was fifteen years old, when Daddy had gone on a rampage and beat her in an attempt to “exorcise her devils.” Marc had come home from fishing in the bayou to find his sister crumpled on the floor with their father raging at her. That’s when Marc had snapped. He’d ripped a loose board right from the siding of the house and whacked Daddy across the back. And then he heaved it and swung again, and the board connected with Daddy’s shoulder. Daddy snatched the board from his son’s hands, and then paused, looking as though he might finish them both off, but instead he just left. Was gone for several months after that. One of the many times Marc and Madeleine lived alone together.
Though bloodied and wracked with pain, Madeleine had been horrified at what her brother had done.
“Daddy can’t help it,” she’d told him. “He’s sick. When he’s sane, when he’s his real self, he wouldn’t harm a frog.”
“Horseshit,” Marc had said. “Daddy can take his medication and be normal. I’m tired of sitting here wondering if maybe one day he’ll kill us or himself or all of the above. If he gave a damn about us at all, he’d be taking his pills like it was his religion.”
Jasmine clicked across the mosaic tile floor and up to the claw-footed tub. She rested her paws and nose on the rim and peered in, Kilroy-style. Madeleine smoothed her head with her wet hand, slicking her kewpie doll hair down flat.
“All right, Jazz, I’m done wallowing.”
She sighed, unplugging the drain. Jasmine shook her hair back to its frizzy state.
But as Madeleine rose and stepped out of the tub, the room began to swim again, and her vision faded. She reached out to steady herself with the towel bar, but caught only a handful of cloth. She veered, crashing to the floor.
And then, black.
MADELEINE OPENED HER EYES unsure whether an hour or just a few moments had passed. Her cheek was pressed to the mosaic tile and Jasmine’s tongue was flicking her ear. A shard of pain throbbed at her forehead where her skull had cracked against the tile. She put her hand to her head and felt around, but found no blood. The cheerful voice of a meteorologist reporting the national forecast floated through the doorway of the bedroom.
Madeleine rolled over with a groan, and Jasmine pressed her nose to her skin.
“It’s fine, Jazz.”
She was doing it again. Telling that damned LeBlanc heirloom lie. She wasn’t fine. She’d just fainted out of the bathtub. Sam had been right; she should get to a hospital.
With some effort, she hoisted herself to her knees, then lurched forward and vomited into the toilet. And then again. She climbed to a full stance with the pedestal sink for support and glared at herself in the mirror.
In addition to the swollen cheek Daddy had bestowed, she now also had a knot on her forehead and pearls of vomit on her lips, not to mention circles under her eyes from chronic headaches. She rinsed her face. When Sam returned, they’d go to the hospital.
I should call her to let her know. I should get dressed.
She tried to think where her cell phone was, but her head was pounding. She fell into bed naked, asleep within minutes.
“WOOF.”
Jazz was standing on the bed, nose pointed at the door. Again: “Woof.”
“Shut up, Jazz.”
Madeleine tried to coax her back down on the comforter, but the little dog jumped off the bed and trotted out the door. Madeleine looked around, aware that she should be doing something, though the pillow lured her like quicksand. She was supposed to be getting dressed, she remembered, but she couldn’t recall why. She just wanted to sleep.
Jasmine was barking downstairs.
“Jasmine, shut UP!” Madeleine shoved her battered head under the pillow.
Samantha. Sam was coming back. She had a key though. She could let herself in.
Jazz continued to bark downstairs, her excitement escalating, and then she was whining and yipping. Madeleine listened for the sound of Samantha opening the door in the foyer below. Nothing. Then suddenly, Jasmine fell silent.
Madeleine sat up. “Jasmine?”
Nothing.
“Jazz!”
She heard her galloping up the stairway. Jasmine bounded through the door and leapt up on the bed and stuck her paw into Madeleine’s eye.
“Shit!” Madeleine flailed as Jasmine dodged away and spun around, whining and growling.
“What is it!” But even as she groped for a bathrobe, Madeleine caught a whiff of something not quite right. Smoke.
“SHIT!”
The smoke detectors pierced all sounds in a sudden burst.
She jumped out of bed and ran to the stairs. An orange glow flickered at the front downstairs wall.
“Shit shit SHIT!”
She was pinto-bean naked, stumbling, looking for a bathrobe. Her hands seemed to have lost their dexterity and she could not form a coherent thought with the smoke detectors screaming. She managed only to stagger and curse.
“Closet!” she said aloud.
Her body followed the command and retrieved a terry cloth robe. A crashing sound downstairs. Madeleine wrapped herself in the robe and made it to the landing again when another sound caused her to pause.
Over the hysteria of the smoke detectors, she heard her father’s voice calling her name from downstairs.
“Daddy?” she yelled back.
And then she clapped her hands over her mouth, because she realized what was happening. That he had set the fire.
She backed toward the bedroom again, but he was already coming up the stairs.
She felt completely vulnerable. An image of the shotgun flashed through her mind, locked in the cabinet downstairs. A terrible means of protection against her own father. She would have to get down to the living room to reach it.
Then he appeared at the top of the stairs, reaching toward her. “Baby girl!”
She raised her hand in a stop gesture. “Don’t come any closer!”
His eyes were wide. “Honey, we got to get out of here. This house is a vehicle of death.”
Madeleine’s back stiffened. But he clearly recognized her.
Jasmine approached Daddy with her tail tucked under, and he scooped her up. “We have to go out the back to the courtyard. The front door’s swallowed up.”
“We can use the balcony off my room.”
“No good. We could make it outside but we’d have to crawl over a wall of fire to make it to the ground. Back balcony, honey, follow me.”
He headed toward the opposite direction of the corridor.
Below, flames ballooned up the drapery in the foyer and with sickening, coiling beauty, the middle floor became entangled. Flames rolled and tunneled. Black banshees of smoke swirled toward the center of the house. Even as she staggered forth, bright flames were disappearing under curtains of black. It had been only a minute or two ago that the smoke alarms had begun sounding.
She staggered after her father, who turned again and called to her.
“Come on, honey!”
They covered their mouths with their clothing and dropped, creeping along the passageway, moving as fast as they could on all fours. Madeleine’s lungs cramped. She felt her way along the hall, winding, following her father until visibility shrank to sheer black and she could no longer see him. She realized the hall runner ended beneath her hands and knees, and she felt only floorboards. How could she have lost her way along the wide, straight hall runner? She flung out her arms but felt nothing, not even a wall, only the flooring and the sense of fire folding itself toward her.
She rose in panic, but the smoke immediately netted her. She collapsed back down on her belly.
“Honey! Madeleine!”
“I’m here!”
Their h
ands found each other. They touched faces. She could feel Jasmine’s fuzzy head just below her father’s chin. She saw nothing but senseless blurs that scorched her vision.
She moved alongside him, keeping her body close to his as she crawled on her elbows in a side-to-side scrabble like an alligator.
Glass panes in front of them. The rear balcony. Then all at once they were outside, gulping fresh air and stumbling down the fire escape.
Daddy set Jasmine down when he reached the courtyard below, and she vaulted up into Madeleine’s arms. Madeleine clutched her tiny, trembling body.
“Baby girl,” Daddy said, patting her hair. “Madeleine, you all right, honey?”
Madeleine felt a rush of comfort at the sound of him speaking her name, and realized she was shaking.
“Daddy, what happened?”
“I had to bust in to get you. Didn’t have my key on me.” And then other hands were on her, and the courtyard filled with firefighters.
“This way, ma’am,” someone shouted. She allowed herself to be led out into the street. She and Jazz clung to each other as if they each held one end of a winning lottery ticket. Madeleine wobbled, and someone steadied her, and she vacantly registered that she was walking barefoot on filthy pavement as she climbed into the back of an ambulance.
Madeleine cleared her throat and voiced the ridiculous announcement that her house was on fire. An oxygen regulator clamped down over her face.
“Ow,” she said into the mask and touched the plastic over the knot on her cheek.
But the air inside that apparatus tasted divine. She breathed in, tried to pull herself together.
Daddy sat with her at the rear of the ambulance, his hand on her knee and an oxygen mask over his own face. He watched the firefighters struggle against the raging house. An EMS worker took Madeleine’s pulse, and spoke calming words like “you’ll be all right” and “shallow breaths.” Jasmine made herself disappear into the terry cloth. All around, flashing emergency lights competed with the shimmering glow of the burning. Madeleine’s home. The same place she was supposed to fill with her heart.
