The Cottoncrest Curse (33 page)

As Bucky and Tee Ray walked upriver from the foot of Canal Street into the Tchoupitoulas Wharf area, Bucky gazed around him in wonderment.

The street was crowded, although it was just shortly after dawn. The October sun that was casting its glow upon them rose over the west bank of the river, which, because of the Mississippi's serpentine path, was east of them at this point.

There were more people here in this one spot than lived in the entire town of Parteblanc. Bucky couldn't believe the variety of occupations, of dress, and of skin colors. Black women balancing baskets on their heads. Mulattoes hauling carts of goods. Strong-limbed sailors on the decks of massive steamships were directing crews of men carrying one armload of goods after the next up gangplanks and stowing them into immense holds below decks. Gangs of ruddy Irishmen were unloading roomfuls of furniture newly arrived from abroad—heavy armoires, intricate cabinets, inlaid tables, stout chairs, and fine linen. Scurrying pods of Chinese peddled tea and cakes alongside Negroes hawking winter vegetables. And in the doorways of the back alleys were women raising their skirts to their thighs, even at this early hour, seeking to lure the passing men inside.

“Come on, Bucky, keep up!” Tee Ray plowed ahead through the crowd.

Almost trotting to keep abreast of Tee Ray as they wove their way down the packed street, Bucky pointed out excitedly, “Look at that over there. A darky and a Chinaman, shoulder to shoulder, like it was natural. And them women in the doorways—white and black and all colors in between—showin' themselves all over. And the sun comin' up in over what they call west bank! Well, back at Parteblanc they ain't never gonna believe me when I tell them what I done saw. They just ain't. Have you ever seen such wonderment?”

“Once we catch the Jew and take care of him—and I got the feelin' we're real near to doin' that—we'll go down to a fast house, you and me. Then you're gonna see and experience some real wonderment.”

“Can't we go tonight, Tee Ray? Just once?”

“Afterwards, Bucky. Look, we're here.”

Tee Ray had stopped in front of a wooden building where there were two sets of shutters, one stacked on top of the other. The lower ones were closed, but the upper ones had been opened, and through them Bucky and Tee Ray could see that the ceiling was at least fifteen feet high. A sign hung over the door:
ISAAC HABER & CO.

“Remember, Tee Ray, I'm the one with the badge. I'm in charge, just like Raifer said.”

Tee Ray held his tongue and pushed open the door. Inside, a small, compact man with wiry hair was writing in a large ledger at a desk piled high with papers. The warehouse stretched out behind him. Above him, draped from the rafters, hung long ropes and coils of wire and huge nets. On the wooden floor were crates and boxes stacked high. Along one wall were skins. Long planks of rattlesnake and cottonmouth, stretched out in taut lines. Muskrat and rabbit in furry mounds. Bobcat and bear with their heads still attached.

Zig quickly took stock of the two who had just walked in. They were not buyers, traders, or trappers.

“You Mr. Haber?” asked the disheveled young man, almost a boy still, with a greasy face and stained shirt.

“Certainly.” Zig stood up, closed his ledger, and walked around the desk to shake their hands. “What can I do for two fine gentlemen this morning?”

Bucky reached into his pants pocket. He pulled out some twine, then some cigarette paper.

Tee Ray stewed while Bucky fumbled.

Finally, Bucky located his badge and showed it proudly. “I am Deputy Bucky Starner from Petit Rouge Parish, and I got some questions for you.”

“For an officer of the law, I have all the time in the world.”

“We don't need no time, Mr. Haber. There are really just a few things we got to know. First, do you sell fancy Jew knives?”

Zig remained calm and showed no emotion. This young man was both impertinent and foolish. “I am, as you can see, but a poor merchant. I buy skins and furs. I sell supplies wholesale. You need traps for wolves or bears? Traps I have. You need nets for shrimp or fishing? Nets I have. You need chandlery? That, too, I have.”

“We don't need no candle-ree. We got more than enough candles in Petit Rouge, and pretty soon we might even have gas lamps on the street corners and 'lectricity!”

Zig hid a smile. “Mr. Deputy, I am sure you have abundant lighting in Petit Rouge. Perhaps I was overexpansive and excessively indirect. You see, in addition to operating a wholesale and brokerage operation, I sell goods for use on ships, both those that are oceangoing and those that ply the Mississippi. That's what's called a ship's chandler. I apologize if I was being obtuse.”

Bucky wasn't sure he understood all the words Mr. Haber had just used, but he wasn't going to let on. “No, you were 'tuse enough with your 'ply. But what I want to know is about them fancy Jew knives what that Jew Peddler carries with him and done hid out at Cottoncrest.”

Zig shrugged his shoulders. “A Jew knife? Who knew knives had a religion? You know, Mr. Deputy, I learn something new every day. They just built a big Protestant church up on St. Charles Avenue. Maybe I can talk to them about what kind of Protestant knives they use. With all the Catholic churches in town, I must find out about Catholic knives as well.”

“We ain't lookin' for a Catholic knife used by Papists. We're lookin' for…”

Bucky stopped because Tee Ray had grabbed his arm. “He's joshin' you, Bucky.”

Tee Ray stood up and, reaching into his coat pocket, pulled out a flyer and handed it to Zig, saying coldly. “We're looking for four criminals. Two niggers—Marcus and Sally—a mulatto named Jenny, and a Jew peddler. They are wanted in Petit Rouge for theft, and the Jew Peddler carried a special kind of knife. Extra sharp. Ain't any kind of knife none of us have seen before. We heard that you sell fancy knives. Do you got that kind of knife, and do you know a peddler named Jake Gold?”

Zig studied the flyer. “Jake Gold, you say? Never heard of him.”

Today

“When I saw that big Rebel flag hanging from the porch on the second floor, I was glad that I had bought the little Rebel flag in Des Allemands and had stuck it on the dashboard.

“There was no one in sight when I drove up. The house looked deserted, all empty of feeling, like a place that had lost its soul. If he wasn't home now, I would sit in the car and wait, but the house was so huge, someone could be far in the back and you wouldn't know it.

“I walked up the front steps. They weren't the sturdy concrete structure you see today. The old pine boards were sagging badly, and the brick foundations on which they rested to keep them elevated above the moist soil had cracked.

“I walked across the splintered veranda and got to the big front door. Mildew had turned the corners of the double-wide entry a brownish green. There was no doorbell. The metal knocker was broken off its hinges, so I used my knuckles.

“I rapped several times, but there was no answer. I called out to see if anyone was home. No response.

“I walked around the house on the veranda under those huge columns. You saw for yourself during the first part of the tour; the view from there is a fine one. Of course, back in '61 there wasn't the fancy housing development that's there now over where the sharecroppers' cabins used to be or the petrochemical refinery and its city of metal and lights over there where the sugar mill was or even that grove of pecan trees where it used to be just fields. No, none of that was there then.

“So, I sat down, my back propped up against the front door, with my file folder on my lap, planning to wait. I tried to imagine what it had been like for Grandpapa Jake when he had spent long evenings here with the Colonel Judge. I tried to visualize Grandpapa and the Colonel Judge sitting right here on the veranda, talking about who knows what.

“They might have sat right up there, where those white wicker rocking chairs are now, whiling away an evening. Maybe Rebecca would come out and sit with them as twilight descended and the shadows stretched out from the oak trees to cover the lawn. Perhaps the Colonel Judge and Grandpapa had been speaking in French and switched to English while Rebecca was there.

“The world was changing around them. A new century was less than seven years away. A Jew from Russia in his twenties, a white-haired Catholic planter of Confederate aristocracy, and his beautiful young wife—somehow, in some way, the souls of those three were touched by each other.

“You know, though, I still find it strange that Grandpapa, who had escaped from Russia to avoid prejudice, could become friends with someone who had led troops in a war to keep people in slavery. I once asked him about that, and Grandpapa said that the Colonel Judge was a learned man with a tortured soul. That didn't make any sense to me and didn't answer my question. Then he told me something in Yiddish that the older I get, the more I understand:
Der ligen iz in di oigen, der emess iz hinter di oigen.
The lie is before your eyes, the truth is behind them. That's why I was at Cottoncrest. To get the truth. To reveal it as well.

“I must have started to doze off on that warm afternoon late in May because I don't recall hearing any footsteps or the latch turning.

“All I remember is that I was completely startled when the door opened abruptly from the inside. I fell backwards into the dark hallway.

“There was a shotgun pointed in my face and a man bellowing, ‘Who the hell are you, and what are you doing trespassing on my property?' ”

1893

“You got your badge out?”

Bucky showed Tee Ray that he had it in his hand.

“Don't want you diggin' in your pocket again. You're a deputy. Got to act like you're in charge at all times, understand?”

Bucky nodded.

“Got to get information carefully. You got to ask questions in such a way that don't set them off from the start.”

Bucky didn't respond this time. He was upset. Since the meeting this morning at the Jew store, Tee Ray had been jawing at him, just like Dr. Cailleteau. Tee Ray wouldn't stop breezing him, lecturing away at him like he was stupid. Complaining about what he did. About what he didn't do.

Bucky felt that Tee Ray was getting to be too carpetbagger, too high and mighty, especially on this trip where Bucky was to be in charge. Tee Ray kept on digging at him, and it was like picking away at a scabrous wound, just more and more irritating the longer it went on.

“Jew knife! You can't get no information from a Jew, Bucky, askin' about a Jew knife. Got to be more indirect with Jews. You opened up your mouth, and all that Jew merchant gone and done was make fun of you.”

Bucky and Tee Ray walked a ways in tense silence, finally turning off Canal Street, the Mississippi River almost a mile behind them. They turned right onto Rampart Street, the far edge of the French Quarter. The sun would set in a couple of hours.

Here there were no white businesses. No white homes. No white people on the streets. But the place was abustle.

Narrow two-story brick buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, sharing common walls. Each had tall shutters hiding the windows and trying to keep in the warmth on this crisp October afternoon. Small shops crowded the sidewalks, their wares on makeshift wooden tables. Voodoo stores, with strange vials filled with dried things and wicker cages with tiny live reptiles and bugs and spiders and cloudy liquids in glass containers. Stores with bright calicoes and pastel cottons, cheap silk and used taffeta. Bars. Cobblers. Dry goods.

It was all there. A little city unto itself. Tee Ray and Bucky were the only white people on the street. Negroes of every hue filled the area, their voices loud and boisterous, not soft and respectful as they were when they were around white people.

The Negroes made way for them as Bucky and Tee Ray passed, but they stared with a hard look, not with the downcast eyes of those in Parteblanc. They pointed at Bucky and Tee Ray. Some even laughed behind their backs.

Bucky was uncomfortable with their attitude, but Tee Ray was simply mad. He glared back at them, which only made the young men laugh louder.

Tee Ray whispered to Bucky under his breath, “You let me handle the nigger lawyer, you understand. I know the way to talk to niggers. They're not like Jews, trying to be clever and all. Approach 'em right. Show 'em who's boss. The sooner we get the information, the sooner we can leave.”

Bucky gritted his teeth. He knew it was going to come to this. Tee Ray was taking over. Well, if Tee Ray thought he was so smart, let him. Bucky had other plans. When they were finished here, Bucky would put them into effect.

They stopped before a door where the sign read “
L. MARTINET,”
neatly printed underneath a picture of the scales of justice.

Tee Ray didn't knock. He simply opened up the door and stalked inside with a firm stride. Bucky followed.

The only person in the room was a black man with closely cropped hair and spectacles above a thin, waxed mustache. He wore a nicely tailored dark suit and vest, a white shirt with a high, starched white collar, and was quietly working at a desk. In front of him a large law book was open. The man ignored them and dipped his pen into the inkwell and continued writing out a legal pleading in a careful, neat hand.

“Lawyer Martinet?” Tee Ray demanded. The black man at the desk didn't know his place enough to stand when whites entered the room!

The man at the desk put the pen down and looked up calmly. “And who is inquiring?”

Before Tee Ray could respond, Bucky interrupted. “The law! That's who!” Bucky thrust out his badge.

“Now, isn't that interesting. May I examine it?” Louis Martinet, without leaving his seat, reached across the desk and took the badge out of Bucky's hand. Adjusting his spectacles, he read out loud, “Petit Rouge Parish.”