A Twisted Ladder

by Rhodi Hawk

  Jameson seemed to have caught Madeleine’s hesitation, and assumed that hawkish look once again.

  “And, I’d like to go over your testimony one more time before you take the stand.”

  Madeleine stood tall and tried to sound confident. “That sounds fine.”

  “We’ll give you a call to set a time.”

  MADELEINE WAS GLAD SHE had agreed to attend the trial, because she was not prepared for just how imposing the courtroom turned out to be. More importantly, it gave her a chance to practice keeping Severin in check. Madeleine discovered that she could maintain entire conversations without saying a single word. She simply had to organize her thoughts into sentences, and Severin would reply as if Madeleine were speaking aloud.

  Thus she managed to keep the child occupied, though it left little room for her to concentrate on what happened on the stand. As an observer, that wasn’t really an issue. But when on the stand, Madeleine would have to be able to concentrate, which meant ignoring Severin for a period of time. She had no idea how she would handle that.

  As the time drew nearer to her testimony, Madeleine’s face had been in the papers and on the news. They had resurrected the details of how she found Anita in the water and later led the police to Zenon.

  “All eyes are going to be on you,” Ethan said.

  “I know.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “I think so. It’s been months, and no real incidents.”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t so sure that was going to work. But you seem OK.”

  And then Madeleine said, “I’m not sure what I would have done without you here.”

  He stepped toward her. “You would have made it. You’re tough. But I’m glad you’re letting me be here for you.”

  “It’s all right, you know. I wouldn’t hold it against you, if you decide . . .”

  He stopped. “Decide what?”

  “You know. If my condition gets too weird. It’s a lot to ask of someone if . . . I’m just saying it could get much worse. In fact it’ll probably get much worse.”

  “Are you giving me permission to leave you?”

  She looked away.

  Ethan said, “Good God, Madeleine, I work with the human brain for a living. If anyone can handle this, it’s me. The only time I get second thoughts is when I get the feeling you’re trying to get rid of me.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve just seen first-hand where this can lead, when Daddy was at his worst. I can hardly stand the thought of you seeing me like that.”

  “I told you I’m willing to take this on. The question is, are you?”

  IN THE MORNING, SHE awoke very early. Ethan was still sleeping.

  Between meetings with the U.S. Attorney and familiarization with the courtroom, Madeleine felt she could tackle just about anything Joe Whitney had in store.

  She just wished Jameson would stop harping about being truthful. Madeleine had no desire to stand before the court and lie. She would tell them the entire saga exactly as it happened, and only leave out those parts that pertained to Severin.

  The problem was, when getting sworn in, the oath is to tell the whole truth. That was the part that Madeleine did not want to think about.

  She went to the kitchen and made coffee and toast, paying attention to each smell and sensation. Cleared her mind in preparation of her testimony. Severin fussed about the room, but her mood seemed stable. Madeleine sat at the table and stared at the wall, letting the silence settle in, listening to nothing but the space around her.

  “Severin,” she finally said. “I have to go to court today.”

  “We’ve been going there almost every day.”

  “Yes, we have. Only this time I have to take the stand, which means I have to testify.”

  Severin wriggled on the couch.

  “I have to talk to the lawyers for a long time,” Madeleine said. “And I may not be able to speak to you. Do you think you can be a good girl and behave while I’m up there?”

  Severin’s eyes shimmered in the pre-dawn light, and she smiled with magnanimity and sweetness. “Of course!”

  sixty-nine

  NEW ORLEANS, 1927

  RÉMI STARED UP AT them, his feet rooted to the landing. Chloe pulled the door to narrow the opening, but he had already seen into the master bedroom, where Jacob Chapman had been in his bed.

  Rémi’s mouth went dry. Even in the dim light, he could see Chloe’s expression. Her eyes searched Rémi’s face as though wondering if he even recognized what he saw. Rémi felt sick. Ulysses began to laugh.

  Rémi was moving again, so rapidly that his mind moved more slowly than his body. He lunged spiderlike up the staircase and burst through the door. Jacob was hurriedly dressing next to the bed. Rémi pounced on him, knocking him to the ground and wrapping his hands around his throat.

  Jacob gagged once and then grimaced, gripping Rémi’s forearm with one hand and hitting at his face with his stump. Jacob’s tongue began to protrude.

  Behind him Chloe was shrieking. “Non, Rémi! Non!”

  She gripped his shoulders and tried to wrench him away. With one quick movement, he backhanded her, sending her sprawling to the floor.

  He turned back to Jacob who had managed to take a breath and struggle free, though he made no move toward counterattack.

  He could kill Jacob now. Kill him with his bare hands. And what a satisfying way to elicit death.

  The damnable pipe smoke. It stole his rage. Molded his thoughts. He realized, then, that the sensation didn’t seem to come from within him. It came from . . .

  He raised his eyes to Chloe. She pulled herself to her knees and wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. The three of them were heaving on the floor, blinking and gasping.

  Rémi thought to kill them both.

  And in the next instant, he thought instead to throw himself over the handrail.

  He gripped the roots of his hair. This turmoil of thoughts, these warring notions.

  He did neither. Instead, he rose to his feet and escaped.

  ULYSSES HOUNDED RÉMI THE entire distance back to Terrefleurs. With sour breath and vile words, he spoke of Rémi’s doom, chiding him for not having sought vengeance on the adulterers. Had he not warned Rémi about Jacob? Had Rémi not foiled Ulysses’s efforts to kill Jacob? And how could Rémi expect Chloe to remain faithful after all these years? She had only taken Rémi as a lover and a husband out of pity. She had no real loyalty to him. Ulysses told Rémi he had only one choice; he must take revenge on those who had betrayed him. If he did not, it would mean his ruin.

  “Take your knife,” Ulysses said, lisping French through sparse teeth. “Go back to the house on Rue Toulouse. Remember it is your house, your own house where they fornicate. Kill them both. Burn the house down.”

  “Get thee hence, you devil!” Rémi shouted in despair, but Ulysses only railed the louder.

  The children delighted to see their papa when he returned to Terrefleurs, but quieted when they realized his state of mind. Rémi confined himself to the men’s parlor where he sat, damp and filthy with mud.

  In the evening, Patrice quietly entered her father’s room with a tray of supper.

  “Was it mother?” she asked, hands folded at her apron.

  Rémi sat in silence, barely able to discern his daughter’s words through Ulysses’s droning.

  Patrice sighed. “Whatever mother did, I’m sorry. She’s quite—careless.”

  She busied herself at the vanity. “Papa, won’t you carve me a new doll?”

  Water poured from the pitcher into the basin. Patrice was using a linen towel to wash mud from her father’s face.

  The feel of soft cotton roused him from his reverie for a moment, and even Ulysses paused in his diatribe.

  “A new doll would be nice,” she said.

  “But I just carved so many.”

  “Papa, they keep you in this world with us. Haven’t you noticed?”

  Rém
i looked up at his daughter as she washed his face. “You’re talking river magic.”

  She smiled at him. Such a soft expression; such tenderness.

  Ulysses spoke again, breathing his sickness into the room: “She is a beauty, is she not? She truly cares for you. You should take her as your wife once you have gotten rid of her mother. You heard what she said. She hates her too.”

  Rémi jumped to his feet and knocked the basin of water to the ground.

  “Leave me, Patrice!”

  She stood frozen for a moment, then calmly gathered the broken pieces of porcelain and left the room.

  Rémi was alone again with Ulysses. He had nearly drowned Chloe in the river once because of Ulysses’s words. And what the beast had said now about Patrice was grossly unthinkable. It filled him with revulsion to think that the eyes of this demon had fallen upon his daughter.

  He became frantic, fearing that Ulysses might harm Patrice or his other children with the same tricks he had used to take Jacob’s hand. He escaped to the work shed, only vaguely aware of Marie-Rose and the twins as they scurried into hiding at the sight of him. He stumbled on an abandoned game of marbles and fell sprawling to the soft earthen floor of the shed. The dirt became affixed to his soaking hair and clothes, dotting his lashes. The way the children hid, he must’ve looked like a wild beast. The children huddled under a workbench with wide eyes, hands pressed to mouths. They seemed to melt into the shadows as if in hopes that he not see them. And indeed, the shadows were creeping forth.

  Rémi snatched a hammer and a bucket of nails, and ferried timbers from the wood pile back to the house, and the rain bore down all the while. When he had assembled enough lumber, he withdrew to his room, nailing the boards across both doors and sealing himself inside the men’s parlor.

  Ulysses smoked Rémi’s tobacco, watching.

  “This is your doom then, you know this?” He blew a cloud of smoke toward Rémi. “Shall I make it easier for you?”

  He watched with large, deep-set eyes, as he took another puff from the cigarette. He leaned forward and blew the stream of smoke onto the tangle of boards nailed to the door. “Get this over quick, eh?”

  The wet boards steamed, and then the steam became smoke. Rémi heard crackles of flame.

  He dropped his chin, still heaving with exertion. “So be it.”

  The sound of crackling subsided, and the smoke vanished from the boards.

  “Coward,” Ulysses said, and then sighed. “And so tell me, what is this? You barricade your doors, and what does that do?”

  “It will keep everyone out of here so that you cannot touch them.”

  “Ah.” Ulysses shrugged, then began to laugh. “And what makes you think I cannot get out? For that matter, you can get out. What is to keep them safe from you?”

  He laughed more deeply, the brown stumps of his teeth gaping. “You may not listen to me now, but eventually you must if you are to save yourself. I give you good advice.”

  Rémi gripped the wood and closed his eyes. He pressed his face into the smoky, splintered boards. No escape. No refuge. He knew Ulysses’s words were true. When he wandered the briar, deep in a dark bayou with the black trees and wavering ground, he often knew not what the self he left behind might be doing. A husk of a body while his mind was elsewhere. His children likely were not safe in the company of that other self.

  He ground his teeth and wrenched the boards from the door, leaving the wooden frame pocked and ragged.

  FROM BEYOND THE WALLS of the men’s parlor, Rémi could hear the popping sound of the radio. It was time for Rose’s storybook program. Rémi tried to shut his ears to the confused buzz of sound, hideously tangled with Ulysses’s relentless drone:

  “Your children, and the children of the plantation, they call you the loup-garou. You are their bogeyman, not me. You creep the woods and hide and spy in the shadows. When the children are naughty, their mothers tell them that the loup-garou will take them down to the bottom of the bayou.”

  He knew of no escape from Ulysses’s incessant taunting. Even if Rémi sought the quietest corner of the woods, there would still be Ulysses and his venom. Never silence.

  “Listen, Rémi,” Ulysses was saying. “Do you hear it? Listen to that radio.”

  And then, mercifully, Ulysses fell silent. So conspicuous was his silence that Rémi did listen. He turned his head toward the wall where the radio announcer’s voice filtered into the room.

  Rémi caught the broadcast in bits: “Mississippi River . . . torrential rains . . . bursting levees . . . Missouri . . . northern Louisiana.”

  Rémi opened the door and walked into the great room where the children and Tatie Bernadette sat assembled around the radio. The twins looked up at their father with round eyes. Rose’s radio program had been preempted with the news of flooding that had already saturated Missouri and Arkansas, and was beginning to tear through Louisiana.

  The announcer spoke of rains that had begun to fall last October, and now returned with force. From Canada to the southern United States, creeks and streams overflowed their banks and overwhelmed the rivers they fed. The spring floods coursed into the Mississippi River from Minnesota and Iowa down through Mississippi and Louisiana. Since January, a serious threat of massive flooding had begun to loom, and as the winter progressed into spring, the situation was becoming disastrous.

  Already the northern states along the Mississippi River and one of its biggest feeders, the Ohio River, had been overwhelmed, and that torrent was working its way south. Scientists predicted that New Orleans would soon disappear under the Mississippi.

  The announcer’s voice, otherwise so devoid of any emotion, was strained. He spoke of discussions to destroy the levee below the city; sacrificing St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes in order to save New Orleans.

  Rémi was amazed. So fleeting had been his mental respite that he did not attend much to the threats of flood. His levee was sound enough, or so he thought, and although he charged Francois to organize the reinforcing of it, Rémi did not fret much over the possibility of minor flooding. It was a regular occurrence on River Road.

  If the river was already swollen beyond flood levels, then regardless how strong the Terrefleurs levee was, water could crest over the top of it.

  Ulysses was speaking again. “Think of this, Rémi. Because of you, Jacob Chapman has the biggest levee for miles around. Now Glory Plantation will stay dry while Terrefleurs is washed away. He will have nothing to do but laugh at you while he screws your wife.”

  “Tais-toi, filthy pig!” Rémi snapped. “You think I do not know this?”

  Marie-Rose started to cry, and Tatie Bernadette hustled the children from the room.

  DAWN BROKE OVER GLORY Plantation, but the ghost of the sun provided very little light. Rémi could barely make out the gray rows of cotton through shrouds of gentle, sustained drizzle. The air was unseasonably cold and Rémi was soaked to the bone. Because the Crow’s Landing levee was so sturdy, no workers were keeping watch or filling sandbags.

  Except for Ulysses, Rémi was alone.

  Relics of the Great War, mementos stashed in an old trunk as remembrance to a lost brother, would serve one last purpose. Rémi’s hands were numb and clumsy as he positioned the six petard grenades at the base of the levee.

  Beyond the wall of earth, the Mississippi River raged. During the night she had risen by another fourteen inches. And somewhere downstream, perhaps miles away, she carried the pull-ferry Rémi had used to cross her. It had broken free just before Rémi reached the far bank. He had had to spin untethered on the platform until it lurched near enough to the north side so he could jump across to the banks of Glory. He was sure that the ferry was now in splinters scattered along the Mississippi’s path.

  He had watched the torrential flow and wondered whether downriver, the Terrefleurs levee might already be gone. But what did it matter now? No turning back. If Terrefleurs was to flood, so be it. Rémi could do nothing about it now. He had had time
enough for one task only: either to blow up the levee at Crow’s Landing and flood Glory, or scramble to reinforce the Terrefleurs levee. But the best hope for Terrefleurs was to burst the levee at Crow’s Landing. Diverting the torrent to Glory would mean less strain on the Terrefleurs levee.

  Rémi might not be able to concentrate long enough to fully deal with Jacob, but at least in this one quest, Ulysses would gladly assist.

  Despite the roar of the river and the hissing rain, Ulysses’s voice came loud and clear, not only to Rémi’s ears but inside his very mind. Ulysses was calm and solid. To be working alongside him after struggling against him for so long was a relief.

  “We will flood his land,” Ulysses said. “He will lose the new house.”

  Rémi picked up one of the old grenades and examined it. Water beaded on the paraffin wax, and Rémi wondered if his brother’s relic French grenades would even explode. On one of them, the paraffin had worn away and rust bloomed along the iron cylinder.

  “We will ruin him, and then we will kill him.”

  Rémi turned the grenade over in his hand. Wire lashed the iron cylinder to a block of wood, and a smaller block lay on top. Inside were two shotgun cartridges positioned in front of the fuse. He crouched and laid the petard next to the others.

  “Line them up. Strike the nail in the hole. Six in a row, bom bom bom bom bom bom! And then you throw. There and there.” Ulysses pointed to the top and center of the levee. They had positioned sandbags as targets where the explosions would cause the most damage. “You have five seconds. Aim well; you will not have a second chance. Do not strike the first until you are ready to strike them all. No good to try to make careful aim with the river coming at you.”

  For just a moment, Rémi imagined the faces of his children, and his throat grew thick and numb. Could he survive on vengeance alone? How long before his children turned away from him as Chloe had? How long would he continue to inflict pain upon them all?