“Katie...please. Let’s just get out of here,” Nate said.
“ I want to know what he sees.”
Thomas paused and then relented. His gaze was now rested somewhere in the distance, and the cards lay forgotten.
At last he spoke directly to Katie, staring intently into her eyes. “You ask what I see. I see what the Creole call nzambis. One maybe good, one maybe bad. They are trapped in a big lonely house at the end of a long winding trail, in the middle of a great forest. They wait there...for what I do not know.”
“Can you describe them for me?”
“One I can see clearly. The other is in shadow, behind a petite, fair haired woman with sad eyes. She wears a long dress from the last century.”
Yes, with old fashioned skirts that make a swishing noise that grows closer and louder...in the middle of the night.
“You must not return to your house,” Thomas said. “There are bad energies there, but it was not always so before the Civil War, when it was owned by the man who built it. Now I see him. He is of your family—a man of Irish descent standing in white fields. Cotton. Acres and acres of it. He wears a Confederate uniform. Now I see his blood beneath a tree upon which swings a rope. The same man now lies in a deep blue circle that mirrors the sky. He looks at me with empty eyes.” A shudder passed through him. “No more. Mache pon. Souple!”
Katie felt nauseous and dizzy, and she wondered if it had been something she had eaten that morning. When she spoke, her voice came out stilted and monotone. “No, I will not leave. You must tell me the rest of it. I want to know all of it.”
Thomas re-stacked and spread the cards in a show of compliance, but before he could say what he saw, Nate jumped to his feet and flung the cards to the floor. “This has gone far enough. Let’s get out of here!”
Nate pulled a stunned Katie to her feet and bustled her to the front door, bumping into patrons along the way.
Madame Emmaline shrieked “I warned you. I told you about him!”
Then she approached Thomas with hands on her hips. “You run off the tourists. Stick to the locals from this day forward. Tell me what you saw that upset you so.”
“Just what I told Mademoiselle, just what you overheard.” Thomas did not look at her as he spoke but stared at the patrons fingering the candles and potions, seeking a talisman for truth and peace—just as he himself had done during a purposeless youth. What good was truth when it came too late?
Madame Emmaline shook him by the shoulders, as if to awaken him from a trance. “It is not the first time you saw nzambis. What is different? Did you know these people?”
“I never met them until today. I saw and felt blood calling to blood. When I touched the woman's hand, a curtain lifted, just far enough to see what I have never known, what I have sought to know my entire life. The young woman is blood related to me on my biological father’s side. The man I saw in the vision, I knew was my father, and on his finger was this very ring I wear. I wish to know his name.”
15: The Meetings
The inside of the Gentleman's Literary Club was dimly lit, brightened only by ladies with beaded headbands, dangling earrings and red rouged lips, against the back drop of embossed wallpaper patterned in maroon and gold. Candles flickered through the haze of cigarette smoke, and the air smelled of cheap perfume and nickle cigars.
Frank Clancy looked up from his chair, saw Jesse McCann and Buck Hennessy enter and turned his head. He knew Jesse would not set foot in the club unless he was on a mission, and Clancy wanted nothing to do with it. The earlier meeting downstairs at the bookstore had left his nerves a jittery jumble of paranoia.
The men seated themselves at the counter, and someone slid Buck a shot of red-eye. Buck reached for the glass, but Jesse caught him by the wrist. “Not this time, old boy.”
“One snort won’t make no difference no how,” Buck growled. “You’ve gotten a bit too goody-two-shoes for me of late. Why I remember when….”
Jesse cut him off. “I never claimed to be a saint, but we're here on business. In case you’ve forgotten, the country’s gone dry.”
Buck peered at Jesse as if he were some unknown species that needed further researching. “You know how to kill a good time better than a gaggle of nuns in a dance hall. If you’d let your Irish sentiments roll out, you’d be a right fun fella. Answer me this—why'd you agree to meet with this Higgins fella in a speakeasy anyhow?”
“For one thing, it’s the only private place in town. What's overheard here goes no further. Besides, this is where the man comes in the afternoon, when he’s anywhere close to Morgans Bluff. In fact, he’s walking in the door right now.”
Snake Eye Higgins loved to make a grand entrance. His presence filled the room and electrified the air around him. He strode in with his fringed rawhide vest, his lively eyes that consumed everything and everybody. All the club members turned to speak as he passed by, but he headed straight for the table where Jesse and Buck waited. He was more than a mere man. He was a big boned, renowned bounty hunter on the trail, single minded and committed—all for finding a decades-old skeleton for no reason he understood. He was a legend in his own mind, and promotion was as important as performance. He was ready for a little sensationalism to advance his career. He wanted not just to find the remains. He wanted to know who murdered Cyrus McCann.
He looked in Clancy’s direction, after shaking hands with Jesse and Buck: “Mr. Clancy, shoo off anybody there in the back booth, so I can talk to these gentlemen in private.”
Clancy scurried away to the back, whiskers twitching and eyes bulging. He returned alongside an ousted and disgruntled couple. “All’s clear, Mr. Higgins,” he announced.
The three men went back and leaned in with heads close together.
“Ask away,” Buck told Snake Eye.
“I need to know how to get to the old Hennessy home place, so I can talk to Louis Monet...if he’s still there, and if he’s still alive.”
“How can I help?” Jesse asked.
“I really don’t need you, Mr. McCann. There’s probably not much you can do. You’re needed at the mill any way. Best place for you for now.”
Jesse said nothing, but he knew it was a matter of time before he would insist on inclusion. For now he would bide his time, and let the man do the job for which he was more than well paid.
Buck, as usual, was not to be dissuaded: “I’m comin’ with you, whether you want me to or not...but I gotta advise you. You can drive only as far as a place called Blue Hole. Then you ain't got no trail at all. We’ll have to get out and walk, ‘cause comin’ through the underbrush will be like pullin’ ticks off a speckled dog. You won’t know what you’re lookin’ at or where to look first. You can't even get through on horseback. Of course you would know, after all your years in the piney woods.” Buck could not help but smirk.
“I do know. I also know you won’t be able to make it in that terrain, Mr. Hennessy.” Snake Eye pointedly eyed Buck’s empty and pinned pant leg.
“Don't tell me what I can and cannot do, Buster. I can do any dad-gum thing I’ve a mind to, including whoopin’ you if need be!”
“Lower your voice, Buck,” Jesse said.
Snake Eye simply smiled. “Far be it from him to take away the old man’s pride. When it's all said and done, pride is all a man can count on and all that's left at the end.”
The ride out started well enough. Buck had brought along a machete to cut through the jungle like area. His years as a lumberjack had taught him how to manage in the woodlands, and nothing other than his age and lack of a leg could slow him down. So after driving several miles, the trail all but disappeared at Blue Hole, just as Buck had said. They parked and got out to walk, with Buck slashing back the tangle of vines and brush, clearing the way for Higgins behind him. One fourth of the way to the old home place, Buck was slowing down and was unable to continue. “Go on ahead, Higgins. Chaps my hide to admit it, but I’m tuckered out and my leg’s gone rubbery. Here. Take the m
achete and whack your way on through.”
“I don’t need that. I’ll do just fine,” Higgins blustered.
“Suit yourself. I can make it back to the truck. if you ain't back in a couple of hours, I’ll go for Jesse. He may be a man of few words, but he’s man enough to bring you out of there.”
After a grueling trek onward, Higgins finally spotted the shack through overgrown bushes. He stopped to make sure his revolver was still tucked just inside his waistband. He was prepared, in case he walked into more than the elderly couple he was expecting. He knocked on the door several times without a response, and as he turned to go, the screen door creaked open. A woman who fit the Buck’s description of Phoebe peered out at him.
“Phoebe Monet?”
The woman re-latched the screen with shaking hands. “Who are you?”
“My name is Philip Snake Eye Higgins, and I’ve been sent by Mr. Hennessy. I’ve come to help the McCann family find their deceased relative. Mr. Hennessy thought it would be kinder for me to talk to you, rather than the sheriff. Seeing as your friend Buck is the only person who knows how to get here, you can believe it was he who sent me. I mean you no harm. I want to speak to Louis Monet.”
Phoebe’s keen dark eyes narrowed as she looked Higgins up and down. “Okay, so you found us. Why would I let you speak to my man, even if he was here?”
“Because, as I said, it’s either me as Buck’s friend or the sheriff. We would rather do this in a civilized way that brings no trouble to Mr. Monet. So which way will it be?”
Phoebe unlatched the screen, stepped aside and granted the bounty hunter entrance. She led him to a back room where a stooped, elderly man sat in a cane bottom chair staring out the window. He did not turn around when they entered.
“Mr. Monet?”
The old man finally turned and stared at Higgins with vacant eyes. Snake Eye moved forward and leaned down face to face: “My name is Higgins. I’m a friend of Buck Hennessy. He sent me to see you.”
“Buck? Buck, you say? Bon Dieu!”
“Yes sir. I understand you and he were friends back in the Civil War days. He says you pulled cotton together on the McCann plantation on Diablo Road. Is that right?”
“What do you want with me? Do I know you?”
“Jesse McCann has hired me to retrieve his uncle’s remains. Can you help him with that, sir?”
“Do I know his uncle ?”
“Don’t you remember Cyrus McCann?”
“Who’d you say you were again?”
Snake Eye took a deep breath and decided to go for broke: “I’m here to ask you where you hid the body of Cyrus McCann fifty-seven years ago. Can you tell me?”
Monet’s eyes went from blank to alert and back again. It was as if he had tuned out the static and switched off altogether. He turned to the window and ignored this man who would drag him into the real world where he did not belong.
“No use asking more questions,” Phoebe said. “You caught him on a bad day. Might as well leave now.”
“Is there anything you can tell me?”
“He never told me, in all these years, where he took poor sweet Cyrus. He said it was best that way, so I’d never be involved. He tried to protect me.” Phoebe began to sob. “The good Lord knows I don’t know where that body lies.”
“Do you think your husband had any reason to want Cyrus McCann dead?”
“He had one good reason, but Louis could never hurt nobody, Mr. Higgins. You don’t know him...not like Buck knew him. That’s why Buck helped us get away from Morgans Bluff.”
Higgins looked about the ramshackle front room, and his eye caught and held on the old photograph of the cotton field workers in front of the house on Diablo Road.”
“Who is the child on your lap here?”
“That’s Baby Thomas. Of course he has grown children and grandchildren now. Seems like such a long time ago that he was little.”
“Where does Thomas live?”
“New Orleans. I couldn’t keep him out here, but I had no family to take him in. My family was from the African continent, and I was brought over here as a little girl. I was taken from my mother and father by traders. So there'd been only the Monets left to take Thomas in. The boy was sent to live with Louis’ parents when he was six years old, so he could go to school and have a normal life. He was raised in their Haitian Creole culture, and that troubled me, because of all their voodoo down there.”
“Your husband did what he thought was best for the boy.”
“I believe so. We couldn't keep him hidden with us in this thicket, and we couldn’t come out and live a normal life either. They would’ve hanged Louis the minute they saw him.”
“Do you ever see Thomas?”
“The Monets used to bring him to see me, from time to time, and then he came by himself after he grew up. He sends us money from New Orleans, but we haven't seen him in a long time.”
Higgins was drawn back to the faded sepia photograph on the wall. He saw the images of Louis Monet sitting next to Phoebe and Baby Thomas sitting in her lap.
“Your son was a handsome lad in this old photograph, but there’s something unusual about him. Maybe it's his eyes. They look much paler than yours and Mr. Monet’s, but it’s hard to tell from a picture. What color are Thomas’ eyes?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Is he your natural son?”
“He is my natural son, and that’s all that needs to be said,” Phoebe declared.
Higgins let the subject go, but he stored a half formed idea in the back of his mind to pick to pieces later. He had just experienced one of his bulls-eye gut reaction.
It was time to trek back, and so, in parting, he handed her Jesse’s business card. “You can reach me through Cyrus’ nephew. If you or your son can get any information from your husband in a more lucid moment, contact Jesse McCann.”
“Why is finding a pile of bones so important to the McCann family now, after all these many years?”
“Jesse McCann wasn’t familiar with the history of all of his family. If you are a Christian, then you surely can understand the need to find whatever remains of the man and return him to the ground, where we all are meant to return.”
“Are you a Christian, Mr. Higgins?”
“What I am does not matter. I represent a family with traditional values. They pay me to do a job, and I aim to do that much and more, including clearing your husband’s name...if I find him innocent. Good day Ma’am.”
In the beginning the trail back was easy enough for Snake Eye—right up to one mile before Blue Hole, where Buck had turned back, machete and expertise included. Higgins pushed through, grunting and swearing loud enough to scare off all manner of wildlife. Deer and foxes scampered in his wake, and crows cawed in complaint. There was an intruder in their forest.
Higgins tumbled over hidden logs, ran into low hanging branches and scratched up his face in the underbrush—all the time chastising himself for not bringing the machete as Buck had suggested. The ground was so uneven that he turned his ankle before he reached the truck. When he at last arrived, Buck Hennessy was waiting and watching with folded arms and sleepy eyes. “I almost gave up on you. Find out anything?”
Higgins winced as he swung up behind the wheel. “Well, I don’t know yet.”
“Do you know where Cyrus’ remains are, or not?”
“Not yet, but there’s something more to learn about the killing itself.”
Buck sputtered. “Did I not tell you it was the Night Riders led by Jonathan Bonney? I’m plum wearing myself out telling folks. He and he alone had a reason and the means to carry it out. I ain't saying it again!”
Higgins did not comment. He was looking out the window of the truck, beyond the rope and straight down into the cavernous pool of blue water. “That’s a mighty deep hole there. See how the water darkens and becomes opaque?”
“Yep. Ain’t nobody been even close to the b
ottom and lived to brag about it, as far as I know.”
“There’s no telling what’s down there.”
“Most folks don’t even know it’s here, and those who do say it’s cursed. A Native man told me that when I was a kid, but that didn’t make me no never-mind. I tried to reach bottom when I was about ten years old. Couldn’t hold my breath long enough. Might near drowned.”
Higgins started the engine. “Fascinating, but let's get out of here. My skeleton search has been a bust so far, and I sprained my ankle in the process.”
Buck snickered in response. “You ain't near as smart and tough as you let on, are you, Big man? Are you certain you're a real East Texan?”
16: Nighttime at the House
On the morning the honeymooners left New Orleans, Annie loaded the wagon to prepare for the homecoming at the house on Diablo Road. With her was an unlikely crew: the boys, Granny Minna and her nurse, Rachel. Out from Morgans Bluff lay a long road and a bleak winter horizon, broken only by the starkness of bare hardwoods. Several miles out, the road narrowed into little more than a red rutted trail. Beyond that point, there was no evidence of human life-except for the occasional crack of a hunter’s rifle. Finally, they came to the vast Bonney property.
The house had seemed different at the wedding, when filled with colorful flowers and happy guests. What Annie had found charming, now seemed gloomy in the gray morning light. The house with its chimneys and spires jutting through a thick blanket of fog, seemed unsuited to time and place. The only illumination came from Elias Crow’s kerosene lamp as he approached the front door, large mocking mouth and single eye as cold and flinty as steel. Although he had covered the empty socket with a black patch again, in compliance with Nathan Bonney’s wishes, it did little to improve his demeanor.
Crow was a bad guy, as far as Tobias McCann was concerned. In the boy’s wish to avoid confrontation, he relied on the persuasive power of McCann blue eyes “Mama, may I please stay here in the wagon ‘till Daddy comes?”
House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) Page 10
