White Doves at Morning: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (8 page)

"You been in my bed, Marse Rufus. But it ain't gonna happen again."

"Say that again?"

"You heard me. I ain't afraid of you no more."

It was silent inside the cabin. Outside, the wind off the Gulf rustled the cane and flapped the clothes drying in the yard.

"I wouldn't be talking out of school, Flower. There are houses in Congo Square for girls who do that," he said.

"I ain't afraid."

He took a step toward her, his eyes roving over her face and the tops of her breasts. Her hand touched the oyster knife she kept on the table next to the stove.

Atkins rubbed his mouth and laughed.

"Damned if being white makes any man less of a fool. If I ever get rich I'll buy you and carry you off on my saddle and keep you as my personal strumpet. You believe that? It's a fact. Wouldn't lie to you, girl," he said.

His eyes seemed to be laughing at her now, as though he were reliving each moment he had probed inside her, put her nipples in his mouth, lifted her up spread-eagled across his loins. She turned away and picked up the coffeepot and burned her hand. Behind her, she heard
him walk out the door, his boots knocking with a hollow sound on her gallery.

I hope the Yankees kill you, she said under her breath. But the vehemence in her thoughts brought her little solace.

WHEN she was a child, Abigail Dowling's father, who was a physician and a Quaker, taught her that a lie was an act of theft as well as one of deceit. A lie stole people's faith in their fellow man, he said, and the loss was often irreparable, whereas a monetary one was not.

In early August of 1861 the first casualty lists from Manassas Junction made their way back to New Iberia. The postmaster sat down behind the counter where he daily sorted the mail into pigeonholes, an eyeshade fastened on his forehead, and went down the alphabetized row of names from the 8th Louisiana Volunteers with his finger. Then he removed his glasses and placed them on his desk and with some very tiny nails he tacked all the lists to the post office wall.

He put on his coat and went out the front door and walked toward the end of Main, where he lived in a tree-shaded house behind the Episcopalian church. Without apparent cause he began to sway from side to side, as though he were drunk or possessed of epilepsy. When he collapsed against a hitching rail, a black deliveryman picked him up and sat him down in a chair against the front wall of the grocery. Then two white men took him inside and peeled off his coat and fanned his face and tried to get him to drink a glass of water.

Abigail stared through the grocery window at the scene taking place inside.

"What happened?" she asked the black man.

"Mr. LeBlanc's son got kilt in Virginia," the black man said.

"How did he learn?" she asked.

"I reckon it come t'rew the wire or the mail, Miss Abigail. That po' man."

Abigail hurried inside the post office. The wind through the open door and windows was lightly rattling the casualty lists against the wall. Her heart beating, she read the names of the soldiers under the captions "Wounded" and "Killed" and saw none there she could put a face with. She let out her breath and pressed her hand against her heart and then felt shame that her joy was at the expense of families that would never see their soldier boys again.

When she turned to leave the post office she glanced at the floor and saw a sheet of paper the wind had blown loose from the nails. She picked it up, her hand beginning to tremble. At the top of the page was the caption "Missing in Action." The third name in the column was that of Lieutenant Robert S. Perry.

She walked stone-faced down the street to her house, her ears ringing, unaware of the words spoken to her by others on the street or the peculiar looks they gave her when she didn't respond to their greetings.

Later, she did not remember drawing the curtains inside her house, filling it with summer heat that was almost unbearable, nor did she remember pacing from one room to the other, her mind drumming with her father's words about his experience as a surgeon with Zachary Taylor's troops in Mexico.

"I saw a lad, not more than a tyke really, struck by an exploding cannonball. It blew him into small pieces. We buried parts of his fingers and feet. I had to pick them up with forceps and put them in a sack," her father had said.

Why had she lectured Robert on slavery, trying to inculcate guilt in him for deeds that were his family's and not his? Were her piety, the sense of righteousness with which she bore her cause like a personal flag, even her sexual modesty, were all these virtues in which she prided herself simply a vanity, a self-deception that concealed the secret pleasure she took in the superiority of her education and New England background?

Could she deny she was not guilty of pride, the most pernicious of the seven deadly sins? Or of carnal thoughts that took hold of her sleep and caused her to wake hot and wet in the middle of the night?

She saw Robert's face before her, the shine like polished mahogany in the thickness of his hair, his eyes that were the bluest and most beautiful she had ever seen in a man. She saw him on a meandering, pebble-bottomed creek, surrounded by green hills, saw him rise from behind earthworks and walk with an extended sword toward a line of dark-clad soldiers, perhaps boys from Massachusetts, who in unison fired their muskets in a roar of dirty black smoke and covered Robert's face and
chest and legs with
wounds that looked like the red lesions of the pox.

What about her participation in the Underground Railroad? she asked herself. She had told slaves of the land across the Ohio, filling them with hope, in some cases only to see them delivered into the hands of bounty hunters. Worse, she had personally put Flower's aunt on a boat that overturned and drowned her.

She wanted to cut the word "traitor" into her breast.

She fell asleep in her clothes, the late afternoon heat glowing through the curtains in her bedroom. She became wrapped in the sheet, her body bathed in sweat, and she dreamed she was inside a tunnel, deep underground, the wet clay pressing against her chest, pinning her arms at her sides, her cries lost inside the heated blackness.

She awoke in a stupor, unsure of where she was, and for just a moment she thought she heard Robert's voice in the room. She pulled her dress over her head and flung it on the floor and, dressed only in her underthings, went into the backyard and opened the valve on the elevated cistern that fed trapped rainwater into the bathhouse.

She closed the bathhouse door behind her, stripped off her undergarments, and sat in the tub while the wood sluice that protruded through the wall poured water over her head and shoulders and breasts. It was late afternoon now, almost evening, and the light breaking through the trees was green and gold and spinning with motes of dust. Somewhere a bird was singing.                                     
,

You don't know that he's dead, she told herself.                              '

But when she closed her eyes she saw shells bursting in a field, geysering dirt into the air, while men crouched in the bottom of a trench and prayed and begged and pressed their palms against their ears.

Poseur, she thought.
Self-anointed bride of Christ, walking among the afflicted. Hypocrite. Angel of Death.

She put her head down and wept.

LATER, she opened all the windows of her house to let in the evening's coolness and tried to sort out her thoughts but could not. Her skin felt dead to the touch, her heart sick, as though it had been invaded by invisible worms. She thought she understood why primitive people during, mourning rituals, tore their hair and gouged their bodies with stone knives. She lit an oil lamp on her living room table and began a letter to a Quaker church in Bradford, Massachusetts, resigning her title of deacon.

Then she saw a man walk into her yard, wearing a gray officer's uniform and a soft white hat. He removed his hat when he stepped onto the gallery, and knocked on her door.

"Mr. Jamison?" she said.

"Yes. I was visiting in town and heard of your distress. Your neighbors and friends were concerned but didn't want to show a disrespect for your privacy. So I thought I should call upon you," he said.

"Please come in," she said.

He stood in the middle of the living room, his face rosy in the light from the oil lamp, his thick hair touching his collar.

"I understand you've been longtime friends with Robert Perry," he said.

"Yes, that's correct," she replied.

"Are you and Lieutenant Perry engaged, Miss Abigail?"

"No, we're not," she said, clearing her throat. "Could I offer you some tea?"

"No, thank you." He smiled self-effacingly. "I arrived at your door in a peculiar fashion. By steamboat. Would you take a ride with me?"

She turned and saw out the back window the lighted compartments and decks of a huge boat, with paddle wheels on both its starboard and port sides; a roped gangway extended from the deck to the bank.

"The cook has prepared some dinner for us. It's a beautiful evening. As I told you, I'm a widower. It took me some time to learn it's not good to lock ourselves up with our losses," he said.

The dining room on the steamboat was aft, and through the back windows, in the failing summer light, she could see the boat's wake swelling through the cypress trees and live oaks and elephant ears along the bayou's banks. Ira Jamison poured a glass of burgundy for her.

"I wasn't aware you were in the army," she said.

"I've taken a commission in the Orleans Guards. Actually I attended the United States Military Academy with the intention of becoming an engineer but after my mother's death I had to take over the family's business affairs," he replied
.

"Is it true you're instituting some reforms on your plantations?" she said.

"It hurts nothing to make life a little better for others when you have means and opportunity. I wish I'd done so earlier. No one has to convince me slavery is evil, Miss Abigail. But I don't have an easy solution for it, either," he said.

When he turned toward the galley, looking for the waiter, she studied his profile, the lack of any guile in his eyes, the smooth texture of his complexion, which did not seem consistent with his age.

He looked back at her, his eyes curious, resting momentarily on her mouth.

"You don't like the wine?" he asked.

"No, it's fine. I don't drink often. I'm afraid I have no appetite, either," she replied.

He moved her glass aside and folded his hands on top of the tablecloth. They were slender, unfreckled by the sun, each nail pink and trimmed and rounded and scraped clean of any dirt. For a moment she thought he was going to place one hand over hers, which would have both embarrassed and disappointed her, but he did not.

"Perhaps Lieutenant Perry is a prisoner or simply separated from his regiment. I haven't been to war, but I understand it happens often," he said.

She rose from her chair and walked to the open French doors gave onto the fantail of the boat.

"Did I upset you?" he asked behind her.

"No, no, not at all, sir. You've been very kind. Thank you also for ensuring that your employee did not harm Flower again," she said.

There was a brief silence. For a moment she thought he had not heard her above the throb of the boat's engines.

"Oh yes, certainly. Well, let's get our pilot to turn around and we'll dine another evening. It's been a trying day for you," he said.

She felt his hand touch her lightly between the shoulder blades.

THE next morning she went to the small brick building on Main that served as stage station and telegraph and post office. Mr. LeBlanc sat behind the counter, his eyeshade fastened on his forehead, garters on his white sleeves, sorting newspapers from Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Atlanta that he would later place in the pigeonholes for the addressees.

He had married a much younger woman and their son had been born when Mr. LeBlanc was fifty-two. He was a religious man and had opposed Secession and had dearly loved his son. Abigail imagined that his struggle with bitterness and anger must have been almost intolerable. But he held himself erect and his clothes were freshly pressed, his steel-gray hair combed, his grief buried like a dead coal in his face.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. LeBlanc," Abigail said.

"Thank you. May I get your mail for you?" he said, rising from his chair without waiting for an answer.

"Have you heard anything else about casualties among the 8th Louisiana Volunteers?" she said.

"There's been no other news. The Yankees were chased into Washington. That brings joy to some." Then he seemed to lose his train of thought. "Are you a subscriber to one of the papers? I can't remember."

He hunted through the pile of newspapers on his desk, his concentration gone.

"It's all right, Mr. LeBlanc. I'll come back later. Sir? Please, it's all right," she said.

She went back outside and walked up the street toward her house, staying in the shade under the colonnade. Men tipped their hats to her and women stepped aside to let her pass, more deferentially and graciously than ordinary courtesy would have required of them. Her face burned and sweat rolled down her sides. Again she felt a sense of odium and duplicity about herself she had never experienced before and heard the word
traitor
inside her head, just as if someone had whispered the word close to her ear.

That evening Ira Jamison was at her door again, this time with a carriage parked in front. He was out of uniform, dressed in white pants and black boots and a green coat.

"I thought you might like to take a ride into the country," he said.

"Not this evening," she replied.

"I see."
He looked wistfully down the street, his face melancholy in the twilight. A mule-drawn wagon, mounted with a perforated water tank, was sprinkling the dust in the street. "I worry about you, Miss Abigail. I've read a bit about what some physicians are now terming 'depression.' It's a bad business."