Nineteen Seventy-Four

by Sarah M. Cradit

  She did as asked, leaning forward into the desk. The blueprint was wider than it looked, and her arms were spread so far to the sides that she was folded almost completely over. Her face pressed into the soft paper, with nowhere else to go.

  “Like this?”

  Mr. Blanchard backed away. “Yes, Miss Deschanel.”

  “Did it work? Is it the right size?”

  “Be silent a moment. I’ll let you know.”

  Moments passed and turned to minutes. She imagined he had his tools and was marking down the measurements, or whatever it was he did, but his tools were on the desk, and she’d heard him settle into the chair across the room.

  Her arms ached from the unnatural position. Her calves had started to tremble as they wobbled in her high heels. A fresh heat soared through her body as blood coursed in unfamiliar directions.

  She wished she could see a clock. How much time had passed? More than minutes. And how many since she heard his zipper? The soft movement of flesh moving flesh?”

  Mr. Blanchard grunted. The sound was quick, clipped, like it had been scheduled ahead of time for precisely half a second. His zipper came up, and she felt the air change as he approached her.

  He leaned past and over her and reached for a pencil. Jotted a quick note. As he pulled away, the pencil landed on the edge of her shoulder. He traced it down over her back, through to the seam on her skirt, and then it passed under her skirt and rested at the precise spot where she’d grown damp from the confusion… from the secret knowledge of what had happened.

  Maureen stifled a moan. The pencil sat there, unmoving. The urge to press herself back onto it… onto him… left a sour longing in her belly.

  “Most helpful, Miss Deschanel,” he said finally. He removed the pencil. “You may go home.”

  * * *

  The rush of pleasure was immediate and overpowering. Elizabeth fell back against her pillow with a sigh that didn’t sound like her. Wasn’t her. Beside her, Connor moaned.

  They didn’t even finish the joint. Two hits, they each took, and that was enough. It was too much. It was exactly right. The rest smoldered in the ashtray they’d found in Charles’ room.

  “Touch me,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to open my mind and look for your future. Touch me.”

  Her eyes avoided the growing lump near his groin. It happened a lot now, and she was both afraid of it, and desperately excited that she had caused it, and that it could be hers. He was hers, and always had been, and she was his, but she wasn’t ready to explore what that really meant.

  Connor wrapped his hand in hers, and she closed her eyes and cleared her mind. Clearing it was both hard and easy… there was nothing there, thanks to the rush of euphoria… the heaven that replaced the hell she lived in every day.

  She searched, and searched, but it was pointless. There was nothing.

  Nothing except the two of them.

  Nothing except the bliss.

  SUMMER 1974

  * * *

  VACHERIE, LOUISIANA

  NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

  SUMMER ISLAND, MAINE

  Six

  Revelations

  The day started with one of the Broussard kids screaming about the swamp turning red.

  Charles didn’t know where Cordelia was. Supposedly she was still getting ready, though Maureen had whispered to him that she’d just been lounging on the couch in the bridal suite without a care. He searched for her, then followed the buzz of the wedding party and guests rushing toward the reedy cypress bog at the back property line of Ophélie.

  “Jesus wept, it is red!” Pansy cried. She pulled her husband, Placide, to the front of the gathered crowd, dragging her parasol across the ground behind her. “Look at that!”

  Her father, Pierce, crossed himself and whispered, “With the staff that is in my hands I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood.”

  “Daddy, how many times have I told you to stop quoting the Bible when ain’t no one ask you for it?”

  Irish Colleen frowned in deep contemplation. “If that’s not the strangest thing…”

  Charles blew out a breath. “That’s not really in the Bible, is it?”

  “Exodus 7:14,” his mother replied without pause. “But don’t you pay your superstitious cousins no mind, Charles. Today is a blessed day, not one for silly worries or end of the world scripture.”

  “It isn’t nothing, Cousin Colleen,” Pansy countered. “It’s the first plague of Revelations!”

  “Or,” Evangeline said, appearing in a gap of family. “It’s an excess of nutrients… iron… algae. You know, scientific explanations not involving some magical grandpa in the sky.”

  “You take it back, Evangeline,” Pansy warned.

  “Nah.”

  Pansy’s brows rose, scandalized. “I’ll pray for you.”

  “You think this is normal, then?” Charles asked. The morning was warming up, but not yet hot enough to explain the sweat accumulating at his brow and the nape of his neck. “Nothing to worry about?”

  “It’s not a Biblical prophecy foretelling the end of the world, no,” Evangeline said. “As for whether you should worry…”

  Colleen kissed his cheek. “Really. Everyone’s imaginations are just going wild. Now, if a plague of locusts appear, or fire rains down from the sky as hail…”

  “It is cloudy…” Augustus added helpfully.

  “Nobody fucking asked you for the weather report,” Charles said.

  Colin broke through at his side. He tapped his watch and mopped his brow with the other hand. “We’re already ten minutes off schedule, Charles. You should be saying your vows.” He turned to Colleen. “I’ll corral everyone back to their seats if you can go tap Franz to get Cordelia ready to walk?”

  * * *

  Thank God for his best man, because Charles wouldn’t have known where to show up, when, or even if he should. He’d had cold feet all night, and only Colin dragging him through the motions of waking, dressing, and aiming him in the right direction had led him to this point.

  Colleen nodded. “The rest of the bridal party is all accounted for?”

  “Weatherly hasn’t run off with a bridesmaid. Yet,” Evangeline quipped.

  “No, but he’s been calling himself a pallbearer rather than a groomsman,” Augustus said.

  “The bridesmaids are even more stuffy than the bride,” Elizabeth pointed out.

  “I’ll make sure they’re ready and in position, and that the organist is in his seat,” Colin said to Colleen. “Think five minutes is enough for the bride?”

  Maureen looped her arm through Colleen’s. She smiled sweetly. “Oh, we’ll make sure it’s enough. I have an especial relationship with Franz.”

  Everyone but Charles gave her a funny look. He suppressed a grin.

  Colin clapped his shoulder. “And you? All ready?”

  Ready to live? Ready to die?

  Both?

  Neither?

  And where is Cat?

  “Yeah. All good.”

  * * *

  Next came the insects.

  They started their assault when Cordelia was already halfway down the aisle. When she first started waving her hands around her, Charles assumed it was a physical representation of the same sinking disgust he was feeling as he tried to keep his sweaty hands from reaching for the flask inside his tuxedo.

  Then, the guests seated at the back followed suit, and the gestures poured forward over the crowd in a dark, grainy wave that only became clearer as it neared the bridal party standing dumbfounded at the altar.

  “Are those… bees?” Colin asked, one hand at his forehead, the other shielding himself from the inevitable onslaught.

  “Locusts!” Pansy cried. “I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen.”

  “Told ya,” mumbled Dan.

  “They are not locust
s, and you’re not impressing anyone with your Bible verses, Pansy,” Irish Colleen said with her best, you hush now voice. But the look on her face did not sell the message quite so well.

  “Do we even get locusts here?” One of Cordelia’s bridesmaids made a contribution to the day. Charles didn’t know her name. No point in learning it. The women here were not Cordelia’s friends, but rather, daughters of her father’s colleagues.

  Augustus grumbled as he leaned over to Colin. “I told them not to clear the cane until next week. Damn it all.”

  He marched off, unbuttoning his tuxedo jacket as he pushed through the crowd of panicked onlookers and the swarm of whatever had come barreling out of the cane when it no longer had a home.

  Cordelia closed her eyes. Her bouquet fell to the side and her lips moved, though she seemed now oblivious to everything around her. Was she meditating? Summoning her personal demon?

  It took thirty minutes to sort out the mess of bugs and disgruntled guests. Augustus and the hired ushers eventually moved the chairs and trellis to the front of Ophélie, and out of the path of the exodus of insects.

  Colin smiled tersely from his side as the music started back up. Even the faces amongst the crowd had dropped the pretense that this was a happy day.

  “Grasshoppers,” Augustus murmured to himself. “Not locusts. Not locusts.”

  The fact he felt compelled to clarify only put a finer point on this second plague of Charles’ wedding day.

  * * *

  The pronunciation of their union of man and wife was marked by a very sudden and powerful downfall of rain, which quickly evolved to hail and then…

  “These are rocks!” one guest cried, and then others followed suit with similar proclamations of horror and wonder.

  “We should tell them all to go home,” Cordelia remarked. The ring on her finger, that Charles had put there moments ago, glittered in the onslaught of water from the heavens. “Did what we came here to do.”

  “My mother would have a conniption if she didn’t get her party,” Charles said as they rushed forward for cover, traipsing up the broad porch. Whoever said the hail had turned to rocks wasn’t kidding… and Charles didn’t know what to make of it.

  “I’ve read about this,” Evangeline said, panting. Her wild curls were soaked and flat against her face, for a change. “It’s rare, but it happens.”

  “I’ll be,” Augustus said with a sigh. He tousled his soaked hair and flapped his jacket. “If that’s not the damnedest thing.”

  “It’s going to fucking dent my car!” Charles cried. Richard was leading a refurbishment of the old livery, so he’d parked his baby outside yesterday.

  “Yeah, this is the end for her,” Elizabeth said.

  “What?”

  Elizabeth shrugged.

  Irish Colleen pulled her shawl tight and turned to address the tightly-packed crowd on the porch. “I suppose this is our sign to head inside for the party!” she announced, with nervous laughter.

  “So the Lord rained hail on Egypt,” Pansy whispered with a shake of the head.

  As the thick crowd shuffled through the double doors, Charles pulled his cousin aside.

  “What are you talking about? Why do you keep talking like you’re Jesus?”

  “God,” Pansy corrected. “I’m quoting God, by way of His most holy book, the Bible.”

  Charles rolled his hands through the air. “Yeah, I get that. Why?”

  “Cousin Charles!” Pansy exclaimed, with both bejeweled hands clutched over her heart. “You’ve had no less than three of the plagues of Egypt accompany your wedding day!”

  Charles frowned. He’d never read the Bible, beyond the verses their mother sometimes made them read at dinner when they were younger. “Is that a bad thing?”

  Pansy laughed.

  Colin clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Be that as it may, all of these things come with logical explanations. Don’t listen to superstition, Charles. Not today, of all days.”

  “Of all days! You think it’s coincidence the Good Lord chose today of all days to rain down hell upon Charles?” Pansy asked.

  “I think summer storms are common in Louisiana,” Colin said, pressing his lips tight in growing consternation. Pansy was a tough one to take for anyone, but especially a pragmatic Sullivan who never liked even the hint of something supernatural to take front and center in a conversation. “And the cane was just cut. The grasshoppers had to go somewhere.”

  “And the swamp?”

  “Evangeline explained that… where did she go?”

  “Evangeline is too smart for her own damn good,” Pansy answered. “And science has its purposes, but not when it lets us veer from God and His message!”

  “Pansy, let’s not quote too much scripture, lest you piss off your voodoo gods, yeah?” Maureen said as she passed by with a knowing look and disappeared inside the house.

  Augustus ushered folks past, encouraging them not to dally at the door. With a wink at Charles, he nudged Pansy through and the crowd behind her prevented her from turning back.

  When it was just Charles and his brother, Augustus said, “No one expected this marriage to be a match made in heaven, right? So who cares about God and his Biblical messages? You already knew what you were getting into. The others just want something to gossip about.”

  “I really have to go in there, don’t I? Dance with her? Touch her?”

  Augustus looped an arm around his shoulder. “Tonight, yes. But after? Charles, when has anything ever stopped you from doing what you want?”

  Charles stared ahead, through the doors of the plantation that was his, and was now also Cordelia’s, and if fate was kind, his son’s.

  “If you tell anyone I gave you this advice, I’ll deny it,” Augustus said. “But you only need to get and keep her pregnant, Huck. That’s it. This is the beginning of your legacy, but it doesn’t need to be the end of anything else, not if you don’t want it to be. Yeah?”

  Charles nodded, and the smile slowly reappeared. That Augustus would even suggest this belied the bigger truth, that even Augustus could not deny the horror show this marriage would become. But he said the words out of both love and practicality, and Charles had never felt closer to him. Augustus was the family fixer, but it went beyond anything supernatural. He knew what they needed, and he delivered.

  Charles let his head rest on Augustus’ shoulder for a brief moment and then nodded deeper this time. “Yeah. You’re right, brother. You’re right.”

  * * *

  Charles wondered if he was the only bridegroom who’d ever intentionally, and successfully, avoided their own bride for the duration of the reception.

  He couldn’t take full credit. Cordelia had clearly masterminded some of the evasion herself, such as when she’d been on a “bathroom break” during the call for first dance, or how she’d managed to break the heel on her shoe just as toasts began. The second took forethought, and Charles admired her, however briefly.

  But as the last of the guests filtered out, just past one in the morning, he feared being alone with her. Not only that night, but all nights, and he thought back to Augustus’ words, this doesn’t need to be the end of anything else, and could think of nothing else.

  Irish Colleen was the last to leave, on the arm of Augustus. She looked radiant that night, and Charles had noticed it but not really seen it, not until she regarded him with sleepy, proud eyes. He sometimes forgot how young she was.

  “You’ve made me so proud, son,” she said. She craned on tiptoes to kiss him, and he leaned down to meet her. Her tiny hands patted his arms as they embraced. “You’re living up to your father’s greatness, and that is no small thing.”

  “Thank you, Mama.”

  Augustus smiled over their mother’s head. “Father was a good man, but you’re your own man, Huck. One day, someone will say to your son that they are living up to yours.”

  Charles blinked to erase the evidence of tears and closed the door behind them both.r />
  Cordelia was nowhere to be found. She hadn’t stayed to thank their guests as they departed, and he wondered, for a moment, if she’d left as well.

  Charles loosened his tie and ascended the stairs.

  * * *

  He found his wife in the bedroom. Cordelia sat upon the bed, rigid, hands folded. She wore a nightgown that was so matronly that, on anyone else, he’d think it an attempt at humor. Her spine formed such a straight line that he wondered if it pained her to keep it so, and then, secretly, hoped for exactly that.

  “I hope you can perform with expediency,” she said. “I’m wearied, but I know my duty and will not be said to have shirked it for my own comfort.”

  “Sorry?”

  Cordelia’s head, only her head, turned in his direction. “I’m exhausted. I know we need to fuck. Can you come quickly?”

  Charles laughed. He didn’t know how else to respond… how else to address the horror at these words, which might actually be funny coming from someone else. But they came from his wife. His wife. Charles’ blood raced to his head in a rush. Wife.

  “Can you?”

  Charles inhaled a deep breath. “I can try.”

  “Do that.” Cordelia lay back against the bed with all the tight control of a robot. She slid down her underwear and lifted her gown as high as her stomach. “It’s been a while, so I’ll remind you of the rules. Clothes on. You may remove your pants, of course, out of necessity, but I’ll ask you to keep a shirt on. You get five minutes. No kissing. No talking. I’ll make whatever sounds you want, but if you touch me anywhere above the neck, I reserve the right to abort with no questions asked.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I can create more.”

  Charles swallowed. This was wrong, all wrong. All of it. The way she lay, crudely sprawled but without any of the sexuality that would normally accompany such an image, made him feel like a predator, not a man. The thick swatch of dark hair between her legs did not beckon him, it repulsed him. It went beyond the physical and attached a deep disgust directly to his soul, like a passenger.