The Cottoncrest Curse (39 page)

Jake had used the blanket he had folded as a shawl, as well as the blouse and skirt that Jenny had lent him, to try to wipe up the excess blood off the metal platform. Their other clothes had been tossed into the marsh.

They took their seats as the train continued northward toward the first stop, Hammond, still more than a half-hour away. Jenny rested her head on Jake's shoulder, just like the night before. She was so tired.

Jake put his arm out and held Jenny. He remembered holding Rebecca that one night. At the Colonel Judge's request. Help me have an heir, the Colonel Judge had pleaded. An heir to save Cottoncrest.

By doing what the Colonel Judge had wanted, it had destroyed everything.

The Colonel Judge hadn't known who Rebecca really was. And even after he found out, he still loved her, although that love tore him apart.

Now there were only the children left. Children that the Colonel Judge couldn't bring himself to love and couldn't bring himself to abandon. But in death he had abandoned them anyway.

The coffin was still on the wagon.

Bucky had not left Tee Ray's body since it had been loaded on the riverboat for the ride upriver to Parteblanc. Bucky had sat in a chair in the hold, next to the coffin, the whole trip, not once going on deck to view the river or the sights. The odors of the hold were now imprinted in his memory. The combined stench of human sweat and dead fish. The grainy smells of the sacks of flour and wheat. The smell of old nets and rope, of muddy water and salted meat, of old barrels of wine and newly made pine crates. And of death.

Now that they were outside of Tee Ray's sharecropper's cabin, Bucky remained next to the wagon, as if guarding the body was the most important thing he could do. He could hear the voices from inside the cabin, voices of Tee Ray's wife and of Raifer and Dr. Cailleteau, but Bucky could not make out the words.

Inside, Mona Brady sat on the bed, surrounded by the children. She daubed her eyes with her kerchief. She had cried so much in the last few days, since the Sheriff had come out with the telegram, that she hadn't thought she had any more tears left. In unexpected moments, however, grief would overwhelm her. Like now.

Raifer handed her a small package. “This was Tee Ray's things. Most of it was pretty badly damaged, as you can imagine, but they salvaged what they could, and this is what they sent.”

Mona unwrapped it on her lap. There was not much. The buttons from Tee Ray's coat. A small wad of bills and some loose coins. Tee Ray's suspenders, a set of worn leather braces.

Mona looked up, her eyes starting to water again, and her lower lip quivered with grief. “That's it? That's all there is?”

“That's all they sent,” Raifer said kindly, putting his hand on her shoulder.

Mona shrunk back from his touch. “What about his daddy's revolver? Where is his daddy's other revolver? Tee Ray had taken down the second one a while back, and I know he must have had it with him. He wouldn't let his daddy's other revolver ever leave his hand. It was too precious to him.”

Raifer pulled up a chair so he could be at eye level with Mona, who was perched on the edge of the bed, the children hugging her and each other and weeping loudly as their mother's emotion spread to them. Raifer spoke softly and gently. “I didn't see Tee Ray carrying any pistol when I saw him and Bucky depart on the riverboat, Mrs. Brady.”

Mona pointed to the fireplace. Above the mantel were four nails. Two were empty, the wood behind them stained red with rust in the shape of a pistol. On the other two nails hung a rusty revolver with a large cylinder, an extended handle, and two barrels—a longer one on top and a short, fatter one underneath.

Dr. Cailleteau and Raifer both recognized it right away. It was a LeMat. Just like the rusty one found in the Colonel Judge's hand.

“We've got to do it, Doc.”

Raifer and Dr. Cailleteau were sitting in Dr. Cailleteau's parlor in front of a low fire. The twilight outside was giving way to the cloudy dark of the October evening.

The funeral had been a long one. Mona Brady and the children had wept loudly from before the start of the service at the Baptist church until after the body had been put in the graveyard behind the church and they had been led away by the preacher.

The Knights had been there, filling up the pews and swearing to get revenge. On coloreds. On Jews. On Catholics. On everyone they hated. It didn't matter to the Knights who was really responsible—the coloreds and the Jews and the Catholics all deserved whatever was coming to them.

The rest of the sharecroppers had been there as well as a smattering of folks from town.

At the back of the church Jimmy Joe had taken a seat in the last row, away from everyone else. It appeared to Raifer that, when Tee Ray's coffin was lowered into the grave, a strange and bitter smile momentarily had passed over the blacksmith's features.

Raifer reached out and poured himself another shot of bourbon and passed the bottle to Dr. Cailleteau. “If we don't, it will only hurt the family even more. They've suffered. Let them have their peace. Let them move into Cottoncrest next week believing that Tee Ray died in the pursuit of a Jew and a thief.”

“But not a murderer.”

“You know that's the way it's got to be, Doc. There can't be a killer of the Colonel Judge if he was the one who killed Rebecca and then turned the gun on himself. And there can't be a murderer if the bullet that the Colonel Judge used to shoot himself was found deep in Rebecca's back in a place under her dress we hadn't examined when Bucky was with us.”

Raifer reached into his pocket and pulled out the mashed metal bullet he had dug out of the floorboards at the landing on the second floor of Cottoncrest. Raifer tossed it on the table.

“Raifer, you know what Bucky is going to say, don't you? That he had it right all along. He's going to be acting out that scene of the Colonel Judge and Rebecca until he's eighty years old.”

“Doc, just write up the death certificates as Rebecca being killed by the Colonel Judge and the Colonel Judge then committing suicide lying across her back. I've already taken care of the LeMat that was in the Colonel Judge's hand. It will never be found. Let Bucky do all the talking he wants. By the time he's finished, everyone in Parteblanc will believe that the Cottoncrest curse got the Colonel Judge. And who knows, maybe that place really is cursed.”

Today

“Hank Matthews was starting to turn the conversation away from Ganderson, but I stopped him. I had that file folder with me, and now I opened it. ‘Mr. Matthews,' I said. ‘I think I have something you might be interested in. It's a letter.'

“He asked me why the hell he should be interested in any letter that I had, and I explained that there was a connection between my family and this part of the country. I asked him to take just a moment to read it. I told him if he would just look at it, it might mean something to him.

“He took it from me with suspicion. I told him that the letter was addressed to Jake Gold, who was my grandfather. He got even more suspicious, but he adjusted his glasses, and he read it.

“As he perused it quickly, his face turned red as blood.

“I don't know if he read it carefully, but he clearly had read enough.

“I had not really thought carefully about what his reaction would be. Maybe it was because I was so young. Surprise I expected. Shock, yes. Chagrin? Perhaps. Sorrow? Certainly a possibility.

“But it was none of those things. He exploded into unmitigated anger. Fury. Rage. Resentment. A hostility so palpable it was as if he were possessed.

“Matthews crumpled up the letter into a ball and angrily tossed it in my face. Picking up his rifle and prodding me with its barrel, he forced me off the porch, down the stairs, and onto the driveway, quick-walking me to my car, cursing all the time. I moved as rapidly as I could, stumbling along with the rifle barrel now in my back. I was afraid that even if didn't intend to shoot me, the gun would go off by accident if he tripped.

“I jumped in my rental car and gunned the engine. As I pulled out, the Oldsmobile's tires squealing, I could see him in my rearview mirror, just daring me to turn around so that he could shoot up the car. Or me.

“As I drove away, he yelled at me to get off Cottoncrest and never come back.

“I did as he said. I never returned to Louisiana at all and never came back to Cottoncrest… that is, until I came here today with you, more than fifty years later.

“You know, if I thought it would have had that effect on him, I never would have gone in the first place.

“What was in the letter? Is that what you're asking? I have it here. Yes, with me today.

“Look, it's in the inside breast pocket of my coat. Behind you. On the bench. Yes, that's it. In the envelope.

“Open it carefully. It's so old, and the paper is a little brittle. Look, you can still see all the wrinkles on the pages; this is the very letter that I had with me more than forty years ago.

“You're right. It's a copy. The old-fashioned kind, the kind that looks like a negative of a picture, with the background all black and the handwriting all white. I only brought with me a copy the first time I came; the original was too valuable. I still have that one, the original, in the bank safety deposit box back home, next to my will.

“Just in case anyone needs to get into that box, you know I keep the key to the box in the desk drawer, don't you?

“Okay, don't complain. If you say I've told you that fifteen times before, you're right. It's just sometimes I forget. When you get old, you'll see.

“Look how neat that handwriting is, with old-fashioned flourishes on the letters. I always liked that. It seems to match the old-fashioned flourishes in the language.

“Go ahead. Read it out loud.”

Dear Mr. Gold:

It is with regret that I must inform you, with this epistle, that you should not send any more money. I fear that it is for naught and that, despite all of your best efforts and intentions, all you have sent for the past sixteen years not only has had little salutary effect but, rather, has had deleterious consequences.

I have tried, with increasing vigor, to instill in young Hank the need to educate himself and to learn about the world. I have urged him to use his money to further his education and to accumulate a portion of it for future use. You can be sure that I have not revealed to him the source of the funds. He continues to believe that this largesse is entirely my own and that it is a purely eleemosynary effort of one who has taken a liking to a young man.

Despite all my efforts, the mechanisms of his mind have become altered. I fear they will not be righted in the foreseeable future. I would hope, as he ages and grows in maturity, that wisdom will accrue and that one day he will be in a position to comprehend the truth and appreciate all you have done for him and his dearly departed sister.

Even sixteen years later, I know how deeply you still must feel about the loss of his sibling. That she did not live even a week after Jenny brought her to Little Jerusalem is not to blame Jenny or anyone else.

“Who is Jenny? That's an excellent question. You know that I did not find this letter until after Grandpapa Jake had died, so I never had a chance to ask him. It's one of those mysterious things about the past that we never will know.

“Go ahead. Read on.”

I have never doubted the correctness of the urgent decision that had been made that awful night at Cottoncrest. I have always believed that saving the lives of both children was an angel's act of mercy and that separating them was the only way to spare both of their lives. Certainly, to protect their safety, they could not know the truth. Even had they each possessed some small memento and proof of their heredity and parentage, such as a small intaglio of their mother, it would have doomed them, for since the Cottoncrest curse struck that night, the rumors persist in Parteblanc and throughout Petit Rouge Parish that Rebecca Chastaine was of mixed blood.

It is better, of course, that young Hank not know at this time that these rumors were true. It is far safer for him not to have any awareness that his twin sister could not pass for white. He does not believe that he is passing, and certainly Jimmy Joe and Maylene do not know. They have held him out to the world as their son. They have never had another child, and I have long suspected that Maylene was unable to bear and thus convinced Jimmy Joe to treat Hank as his son once the baby had been brought to her by Jenny, who must have known of Maylene's plight and hoped that she would accept this child.

Maylene, as I have written to you previously, died egregiously estranged from her sister, Mona. One wonders whether there is some power at Cottoncrest, whether it be curse or otherwise, that destroys families and burrows deep into the minds of those whose lineage lies in Cottoncrest. It seems as if that power has ensnared young Hank's mind at present.

The one hundred dollars you sent for his sixteenth birthday I presented to him, as you desired, but he displayed not an iota of gratitude for this munificence. He is not only ill prepared to use your money wisely, but he has now absented himself and has not been seen or heard from in months. It is said by some that he has gone north and joined the army, but as you can appreciate, this is not something about which I can inquire without raising potential curiosity about my motives and subsequent disquiet and suspicion.

Therefore, I remit to you the money you sent in the hopes that, at some time in this new century in which we now live, young Hank will develop his moral compass and reject the rage of racism that seems to have infected his being for the moment. Perhaps he is merely reflecting Jimmy Joe's attitudes, although I fear it is more than that. This move to separate the races here in the South grows stronger by the moment. No doubt you have read in the papers about the rise of the Klan again and the pillages upon the Negro communities and the lynchings that have occurred. I assure you that what you read is but a thin veneer of the truth and that viciousness and hatred grow as segregation has become part of every aspect of life.