by Jimmy Fox
To my Little Wing, from her great-grandmother, Gray Wing,
granddaughter of Black Wing, daughter of Long Black Feather,
High Priest of Vultures. Grow like Corn,
be strong as Death, like smoke rise to Heaven.
She had come here to Tadbull Hall today because she could not destroy the little book. This genealogist was stubborn and clever, more so than the others who had preceded him. He would not stop digging up the past, he would not go away, in spite of the harsh words she’d said to him in front of the smoldering museum, words she did not fully believe herself.
Death. Death had been on her mind a lot lately. Was his death the only way to stop his snooping, to end her torment? And what if she died, what if the Sacred Cougar came for her this time? Someone would go through her things, find out the secrets she had kept even from her husband! Death would not be enough. She had to get her affairs in order, in case, in case . . . the worst happened.
Over the past few days, she had secretly burned in the trash barrel behind Three Sisters Pantry everything else she treasured. The photos of her great-grandmother in her rocker, weaving a basket of pine needles. Her grandmother’s big English Bible that recorded the births, marriages, and deaths of generations unaware that they were Vulture Cult descendants. Letters, postcards, clothing, quilts . . . whatever had been passed down to her mother, whatever might give this prying Nick Herald a clue, whatever might taint others with her awe-inspiring, horrible ancestry. Watching the smoke from the barrel drift heavenward, she had realized with a start that she was performing the ancient rituals of death on her own life.
She feared this Nick Herald. His brown eyes were always thinking, working things out. Whenever she lied to him, his brows contracted into one, and she could feel his doubt touch her, like hands probing a sick place on her body. He saw with all his senses, like a traiteur. Was he a healer of the family soul, or a wicked spear-thrower of evil knowledge?
Exposure would be unbearable, but still she could not destroy everything, not her great-grandmother’s special gift, this little French Bible, as damning as it might be. Those forest days spent with Birdie had stuck with her, as had the stories of the great honor bestowed on the families that constituted the Vulture Cult. Today, people would not understand; they would turn on her, say things behind their hymnals, refuse to eat the good food at her store . . . but the heritage should not die. Her own child should have the Bible, even if he did not know what it signified, even if he did not know he was her child.
This was why she had called Wooty that morning, why now she followed him up to the attic, to Old Man Tadbull’s collection of Katogoula artifacts and images. She and Wooty had always been like aunt and nephew.
“Now that our museum’s gone,” she said to Wooty, “had an idea maybe you’d put this old Bible in amongst the other Katogoula stuff up here. Cleaned out some old closets and found it. I was going to try and sell it at the store, but it’s such a pretty little thing. I wanted it to have a good home.”
Such a beautiful baby he had been. How he had grown into this fine man, future master of this wealthy place.
He hesitated and then extended one of his handsome hands to take the book, no bigger than two decks of cards. Her hands . . . his were so like her hands. For a moment, she thought she might cry, tell him the whole story so elaborately hushed up, the sad tale that not even Royce knew. She would have gladly died just to embrace him.
No, she was all right now. “You’ll take it, won’t you, Wooty?”
CHAPTER 25
Tuesday morning, three days after the fatal museum fire and a day after Luevenia Silsby’s visit, Nick, Holly, and Wooty followed Mr. Tadbull up the central spiral stair tower toward the attic of Tadbull Hall.
“Great-granddaddy, Wooten the First,” Mr. Tadbull said proudly through wheezes, “fought for the Confederacy under Pike, Cooper, and Stand Watie—you know, that Cherokee from Georgia—in the Trans-Mississippi Department. ’Course Great-granddaddy, he already knew lots about Indians before he went to Indian Territory, you understand. The man damn near spent his whole life amongst ’em here.”
Wooty brought up the rear, hanging back several steps, hands in pockets, tight-lipped, preoccupied. Nick could see Holly wasn’t comfortable with this meeting, either. There was still bad blood between them. Her phone call setting up this private showing hadn’t helped matters. Unusually reserved, she tried, not quite successfully, to ignore Wooty; now and then she glanced up at Nick, as if searching his face for a sign he was ready to leave. But he wasn’t.
Nick could smell the past exuding its musty, alluring pheromone from every crevice of the solid old house, hear it call his name softly like a dream-lover in the night. America, for most of its life, had cannibalized its physical past to feed its revolutionary appetite for unfettered progress. As if fulfilling some mythic destiny, this modern giant heedlessly ate its parents. But the old could nourish the new as more than just fuel, and Nick was glad that this appropriately radical idea had taken hold in America’s continuously maturing ethos. Landmark structures like Tadbull Hall served a crucial purpose in preserving the history of America, just as surviving castles and manor houses of medieval Europe salvaged remnants of their times.
The original resident families were influential and wealthy, their houses centers of economic, political, and social life when local government and associated record keeping had yet to be established or had broken down through war, famine, or disease. And it was odd characters like Mr. Tadbull’s great-grandfather and grandfather who snatched bones of the past from the rapacious, dumb jaws of voracious modernity.
The houses themselves were archaeological treasures, holding vital clues in their very construction to contemporary thinking and social organization. Tadbull Hall featured many of the architectural strategies of the time to lessen the effects of the brutal Louisiana summer heat. The plenum, as it was called, the column of open space around which the stairs circled, was one such innovation; it took advantage of natural convection to move hot air up and out of the house, and to bring cool air up from the brick basement. Nick had also noted the central hallways, with doors and windows placed for maximum cross-ventilation. The sun-blocking large adjustable shutters and latticework made him homesick for Creole New Orleans.
No, Nick was not ready to leave. Not by a long shot.
“Spent lots of time in Indian Territory, Great-granddaddy did,” Mr. Tadbull continued, considerably winded from hauling his belly up the steep stairs. “Helped get some of those tribes out there to go with the Confederacy. Later on, he took a minié ball in the butt at Prairie Grove, Arkansas. Gotdamn, that must’a hurt like hell! Damn thing’s downstairs in my study. Yep, Great-granddaddy organized a company of these here local Indians when the war started. Not many of ’em came back, though. Most of the surviving ones went on to Indian Territory, called for their families to join ’em. A few stayed in the forest and hereabouts. Good thing, too. Got ’em recognized, didn’t it?”
They entered a narrow room that stretched across the width of the house and meandered to the rear, in an eccentric way—which seemed the common thread in everything associated with the Tadbulls. Nick determined that the open space didn’t occupy the entire area of this floor. Several generations of Tadbull women had been unwilling to cede all of their attic storage space to this family art gallery and local-history museum.
“There’s closets and storage rooms up here you couldn’t find with a gotdamn Katogoula hunting hound,” Mr. Tadbull declared, referring to the famous local breed of big shorthaired, hog-chasing dogs with strange dissimilar eyes of bright blue, gray, or yellow. “Who knows what all’s in ’em. I sure don’t.”
Crammed storage rooms, hidden closets, padlocked chests . . . holding, perhaps, a faded list of unknown significance, a diary, an album of stained photos, or a rodent-nibbled batch of letters. Nick let his mind wander among such imagined genealogical riches; he missed some of Mr. Tadbull’s subsequent narration.
>
“His son, your grandfather, painted these watercolors?” Nick asked finally, hoping he wasn’t betraying his raging curiosity enough to set off any warning bells in the man’s head. It was the same in genealogy as in antique or stamp collecting: the owners of treasures often clammed up when they realized the immense value, monetary or otherwise, of what they had.
“That’s right,” said Mr. Tadbull, still without any telltale suspicion. “My granddaddy was like that, you know. Sorta strange. An artist, and all. After the War of Northern Aggression, Great-granddaddy used to go off for weeks at a time with the Katogoula men, hunting and fishing, living with the damn tribe. Took my granddaddy with him. That’s how he got to know so much about ’em, and put down what he saw in these here paintings. Wooty kinda followed in my granddaddy’s footsteps, you might say. We couldn’t hardly keep him inside, but he was always running off to play with the Katogoula children.”
Still no reply from Wooty.
Far from the clatter of family life downstairs, these attic quarters had served as a restful enclave for the Civil War veteran and then for his son, the artist. Bleached-pine floor, white plaster walls, cantilevered ceiling altered to accommodate modern air ducts. Watercolors, oils, and black-and-white photographs of local Indians covered almost every inch of wall space. Mr. Tadbull explained that Katogoula women, a hundred years ago, had made the unpainted wicker furniture, using local vines and twigs. The day bed, rocker, and tables were all still in place, just as his grandfather had left it, ready for another century of use.
Close to a window stood a tall easel with a nearly finished oil painting of a moonlit bayou scene, pencil lines indicating where the paint would have gone.
“He went a little soft in the brain, at the end,” Mr. Tadbull said. “Started seeing things in the moss and the fog.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Bascove Tadbull. The Indians just called him Old Man Tadbull.”
Holly said, “If you look closely at the trees, you’ll see the limbs are the hair of a malevolent female creature of the swamp.”
The woman had the soul of a teacher: she couldn’t keep a good lesson down. Holly retreated into sullen silence when she saw Nick’s smirk. He thought the work showed the influence of Caspar David Friedrich, the influential nineteenth-century German painter, but kept quiet, not wanting to sound pedantic himself.
Nick moved so that the window was behind him and squinted his eyes. “Yeah, I see it now. It would have been his masterpiece, I’d say.”
“Gothic Romanticism,” Holly said, caught up in the dank spookiness of the painting. “Caspar David Friedrich.”
“I don’t know who y’all talkin’ about there,” Mr. Tadbull admitted, “but I’ll take your word for it. Anyhow, we keep the attic thisaway for folks visiting us, show ’em somebody in the family had a little culture. Right, son?”
“Whatever, Pop.” Wooty would not share his father’s good-natured self-depreciation.
Mr. Tadbull went on, showing no awareness of his son’s silent brooding.
“They say when Great-granddaddy Tadbull came back from the war, an old Katogoula healer-woman told him he’d die one night soon in this house, while he was sleeping. So you know what he did? Gotdamn if he didn’t never spend another night here as long as he lived! Had him a tent out there under that old oak, and he used to sit with his Indian friends—the ones that were left. They’d smoke and watch the fire till dawn. They say he slept up here during the day a lot. Guess he out-foxed old Death, ’cause he lived to his nineties. Died two . . . no, no, wait, three years, wasn’t it Wooty?—sure was, three years before I was born.”
Nick had turned his attention to the paintings and photographs—windows of art, allowing glimpses of Katogoula ways during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Grandfather Tadbull clearly loved the subjects of his works, the Indians who had been his companions since childhood. He’d shared much of his father’s superstitious nature, judging from his selection of subjects and cryptic style.
The modern Tadbulls seemed unconcerned with anything remotely spiritual. Still, there must be something to Wooty. Nick couldn’t see Holly falling for a clod.
“Mr. Tadbull,” Nick said, “these should be put on wider display. Scholars would love to get their hands on these pictures. They could answer a lot of questions about how the Katogoula lived in those days.”
“Well, now,” Mr. Tadbull said, rubbing his chin, “I never thought they were that important. Or that valuable, either. But the fact of it is, I’m of a mind with my daddy. He wanted to burn ’em all, turn the attic into a billiards room. Say, did I tell you there’s descriptions and such on the back of some of ’em?”
This was new to Holly. Nick could see the explorer’s lust awaken in her green eyes.
Mr. Tadbull stopped before a watercolor showing men and boys wading in a sluggish bayou, casting a white powder on the water. The painting dated from the twenties or thirties, Nick guessed. The Indian fishermen wore shirts, trousers, and hats that would have looked natural on Main Street, though it was odd that they were fully dressed and half-submerged. Had Christianity made them ashamed of their traditional, natural nakedness? Nick saw the scene as a clash of ancient and modern ways.
“I always ’specially liked this one,” said Mr. Tadbull, removing the watercolor from the wall. “Let’s see what Granddaddy says is going on right here. I do believe some of those descriptions fell off over the years and got swept up in the trash.”
“That’s too bad,” Nick said, as blandly as he could manage. Good God, what irreplaceable genealogical information had been lost already?!
On the torn, brittle paper backing, only a portion of the pasted-on descriptive label remained: a scrap of flowing words, in the elegant style of the day, by a hand used to transforming inner visions into art.
Vince . . . grandnephew of Luke . . . . and their clan . . .
A meth . . . ng used by the Katog . . .
On the Bayou Fostine, August . . .
They take the poison, devil’s shoest . . .
Many fish thus are . . .
Grandfather Tadbull had meant this inscription to be the finishing brush stroke of the painting, an integral part of the whole work of art. Nick was sure the old man would have gritted his teeth to know what a dolt his grandson had grown up to be. Maybe Wooty was right to have such a low opinion of his father, which seemed so obvious from the young man’s demeanor.
Nick imagined himself running away from Tadbull Hall, carrying half a dozen pictures, stealing them to save them from further sad deterioration at the hands of the present master of Tadbull Hall. What a crime to allow this precious heritage to fall victim to further neglect! He’d done worse for baser motives.
He squirmed in the cast. The arm and shoulder felt much improved, but probably not up to his over-eager ideas for honorable larceny.
As he handed the picture back to Mr. Tadbull, he spotted a small Bible on a shelf of one of the wicker tables, haphazardly resting amid other old books. He knew instantly that it was almost a twin of the one lost in the museum fire. Twins again. Has to be a sign. He could be superstitious himself, when it suited his purposes.
This Bible, at least, was something he could save. Wouldn’t even strain his arm. It was his duty, right? He tried not to look at it, but his mind whirred away with elaborate rationalization.
From downstairs the maid shouted that Wooty had a telephone call. He curtly excused himself and left.
Mr. Tadbull hurried to the plenum. “Wooty, you going out, son? You let me know if you do, ’cause I need me a pree-scription from the Wal-Mart.”
Even at the distance of two floors, Wooty’s exasperation came through in an unintelligible, snarling retort.
“Excuse me,” Holly said. “I’m going to the, uh . . .”
“Oh, well, sure, sweet thing,” Mr. Tadbull said. “You know where it is. You bring your cameras over here anytime, you hear?” And then, after Holly had descended the stairs, he said, “I sure do like tha
t gal. Liked her hair long, though. Can’t understand why my gotdamn bull-headed son don’t sling her over his shoulder and carry her down the aisle. . . . Now, look at this one, here, Nick.”
His back to Nick, Mr. Tadbull now faced another painting, which portrayed a nighttime powwow, with the Katogoula participants in full ceremonial regalia, masks and feathers and animal skins and weapons abounding. Nick quickly walked to the wicker table and slipped the Bible in a side pocket of his coat.
Mr. Tadbull showed Nick to the door, after a quick tour of the study stuffed with historical oddities dug up or collected by several generations of the family. Nick had expressed appropriate wonder at Great-granddaddy Tadbull’s minié ball.
He took the opportunity to visit the Tadbull family cemetery, a short walk behind the house—a pretty little graveyard overhung by serpentine oak limbs dripping moss. A few minutes later, he dawdled on the white shell drive, waiting for Holly. She’d been gone half an hour or so, but he knew she could take care of herself. He wasn’t worried. Probably some unfinished romantic business with Wooty. He began to face the possibility that their recent intimacy had been a fluke.
Gargantuan fatsia partly obscured her VW van in a three-car parking area to the right of the porch. Daydreaming, Nick thought the fatsia looked like dark green hands reaching for the overcast fall sky. Then he noticed them: Holly and Wooty standing between her van and his muscular, feline, black Porsche. Through the van windows, Nick could clearly see that Wooty was angry, Holly worried and angry. He spoke fast, each word an accusation; he whipped an index finger repeatedly in the air before Holly’s face.
Holly slapped him, hard. That shut him up. He glowered at her, moved a few inches closer. For a second Nick was afraid he was going to hit her back, and he considered what he would have to do to break it up. Instead, Wooty turned quickly away and stalked off on a strip of lawn between a vegetable garden and a rose bed, toward the back of the house.
Holly drove her van away from Tadbull Hall. Nick had some more work to do in the Armageddon courthouse, and then he was heading to New Orleans. He’d convinced himself he could drive, in spite of his injuries. Holly was dropping him at the motel to collect his stuff.
