A Twisted Ladder (34 page)

NEW ORLEANS, 2009

M
ADELEINE OPENED HER EYES
. The bramble retreated. The sky opened wide. Darker now. Sam hovered above.

Madeleine rolled, gagging, her lips grazing the pavement. She saw and heard through a haze, felt skipping flashes of reality and dream. Her esophagus convulsed, and her brain zeroed in on the single task of opening that air passage.

Slowly, her throat relented, and oxygen filled her lungs.

“Maddy, oh my God!” she heard Sam say.

Madeleine struggled for breath. She blinked, trying to say something, trying to tell Sam she was fine, but her throat was sluggish.

Sam was frantic. “Here, don’t get up! Can you speak?”

Madeleine tried, but nothing came out.

“We need to get you to a hospital!”

Madeleine shook her head. She pushed herself up from the pavement and looked around, but no sign of Daddy.

“Try to lie still,” Sam pleaded.

Madeleine finally managed to whisper, “No, just need to catch my breath. Where did Daddy go?”

Sam shook her head. “I don’t know. I was calling Vinny and saw through the window. God, Maddy, I thought he was going to kill you. By the time I got out of the truck he’d run off.”

Madeleine whispered, “Let’s just get inside.”

Sam helped Madeleine to her feet, and they took shaky steps toward the house.

“Honey, you need to go to the hospital.”

Madeleine shook her head. “No, I’ll be fine. I want to be here in case he comes back. He’s dangerous. Is Vinny coming?”

“Two patrol officers are on the way. Friends of Vinny’s who understand the situation.”

Madeleine nodded. She had no qualms about locking her father up when he was in a violent state. She hoped they could find him before he did something even more dreadful.

HAHNVILLE, 1916

B
AYOU WATER FILLED RÉMI’S
mouth, shocking him from his swoon. He spat. The swamp roiled and frothed in a struggle that he did not at first comprehend. He saw Jacob’s hat floating on the surface like a wood-sprite’s boat amid sticks and leaves. Then he realized that Jacob was in the bayou, twisting and shrieking, bobbing in the direction of deeper water. A great leathery tail lashed the surface.

Rémi lurched back to the bank and grabbed his shotgun. The alligator was dragging Jacob away from shore, tiring him out. It likely intended to pull him under water to pickle him before feeding. Jacob was screaming.

Rémi aimed the shotgun, peering down the barrel through the V until the beast was in his sights. He saw the tail roll over, exposing a cotton belly. Rémi fired. He pumped and fired again, and then once more, until it stopped moving. Jacob’s legs continued to thrash at the surface, and Rémi vaulted into the water after him.

The hunk of fowl and Jacob’s mangled hand, canted at an unnatural angle, were still clenched inside the animal’s jaws. Rémi grabbed Jacob’s hair and yanked his head above the surface. Jacob gobbled for oxygen, then in a single desperate motion, wrenched his arm free of the beast, gouging his own skin and severing his index finger as he did so.

Jacob lifted the hand out of the water. Blood flowed in rhythmic waves from his wounds. Rémi dragged Jacob back to shore and tore off his own shirt, splitting it into shreds, and wound Jacob’s hand while Jacob looked on in rapture. Rémi twisted a stick into the bindings and tightened. Jacob yelped but allowed Rémi to secure it. The pulsing blood eased to a trickle. They paused in stunned exhaustion, blinking and heaving.

“Did you get him?” Jacob asked.

“What? Ulysses?”

“Did you get the alligator?”

Rémi stared at him, his chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. “He is dead. We must now get you to a doctor.”

“Get’m and bring’m back for me.”

“Are you crazy? He’s full of buckshot. We are going back now!”

“I want that gator!” Jacob rose and stalked back into the water.

“Merde!”

Rémi grabbed Jacob’s good arm and shoved him back toward shore, and then clumsily attempted to divine the alligator’s body from the shallows.

AFTER SOME TRIAL, RÉMI
had managed to lasso the alligator to the boat, and he’d towed it back toward home. The return journey had transpired in fewer than forty-five minutes, but in that time Jacob’s skin had turned porcelain, and he’d begun to shiver. Rémi had covered him with a moldy blanket.

When they finally reached Terrefleurs, Rémi barked orders at two plantation children who were catching frogs along the banks. They ran toward the main house for help, returning with Chloe.

Rémi heaved Jacob out of the boat, then swung Jacob’s good arm around his shoulder while Chloe supported him under the maimed one. Together they half-walked, half-dragged Jacob up to the main house. They took him to the sick room, where Rémi left Chloe alone with her patient. He walked out to the gallery and leaned his hands on the rail, looking out over the kitchen garden past the birds perched along the
pigeonnier
, scanning the landscape for any sign of Ulysses.

A group of plantationers had gathered where the alligator still floated alongside the boat like a fender, the children daring each other to touch it. Francois shooed them away and dispatched instructions to prepare the alligator for supper and to alert Glory Plantation of the accident.

The people of Terrefleurs scurried into action, loading the great beast onto a cart and parading it to the kitchen house. The cook would butcher it, pounding tenderloin steaks and frying them in lard, and she’d set them aside for Rémi, Chloe, Jacob, and the higher-ranking workers of Terrefleurs. She would cut the rest of the tail meat into strips and mix it with sausage and gravy for alligator étouffée. Rémi thought of Jacob’s wish for a pair of boots, and told Francois to set the hide aside for him.

Rémi returned to Jacob’s sick room. Chloe had given Jacob something to ease the pain, and he seemed removed from his wits as she tended the mangled hand.

Rémi pointed at Jacob. “You see? Ulysses did that. He cut him with a machete!”

“
Non
,” Chloe said in a hushed tone. “It was an alligator! You brought it home yourself.”

“I saw him use a machete!”

“The river devil uses these tricks to show what he wants. Jacob listened, and the animal listened. They did this themselves!”

Jacob shivered and rolled on the mattress. Chloe moved him back to his original position. He roused, saw Chloe, and laughed to the point of emptying his lungs. Gray sputum freckled the sheets. Jacob waved his maimed arm at Chloe.

“What do you think, old gal? Gonna save my hand, or start calling me Stumpy?”

Chloe’s expression was grave.

Jacob’s grimace froze on his face. “I was jokin about that.”

He looked from Rémi to Chloe. “Good thing I wasn’t holding that damned chicken with my right hand.” He laughed nervously. “Hey, you ain’t really gonna saw it off, are you old gal?”

Chloe asked Rémi to bring her some hard alcohol. By the time he returned with a bottle of bourbon, Chloe had removed the dressing except for the band of tourniquet and was washing the wound from a pitcher. Below Jacob’s arm, the water inside the basin turned pink. Chloe folded one end of a mangrove root into Rémi’s hand, then held the opposite end on Jacob’s tattered flesh. She recited something in a dialect Rémi only vaguely recognized as belonging to the lower native lands, and the few words he caught made very little sense. As she chanted she poured bourbon over the root connecting Jacob’s hand to Rémi’s. When the alcohol reached Jacob’s hand, he screamed and tried to pull his arm away, but Rémi held him fast.

“You should trust her. You need river medicine for this.”

Jacob groaned, and then slurred to a laugh. “You letting her work that voodoo on me? Does this mean I’m going to sprout me an itty bitty new hand?”

Rémi could not help but chuckle, and when Chloe finished, he took a swig of the bourbon. “You know,
mon frère
, you scream like a woman.”

Jacob’s laugh became a braying hee-haw, exaggerated by pain and liquor.

Chloe scowled.
“Tais-toi!”

The men attempted to sober, but errant snickers burst their pursed lips. Chloe roughly bound Jacob’s hand with clean bandages.

“Ow,” Jacob protested. “Your little witch doctor got a mean bedside manner.”

The door to the sickroom opened, and the physician, Doc Shaw, entered. His gaze lit on Jacob, then swept the room, resting on a pentagram that Chloe had drawn on the floor, topped with a cup of river water and a dish of salt. Jacob was howling with laughter, and he waved his bandaged hand in the air.

“Look, Doc, they gonna saw off my hand!”

The doctor blinked. “I heard you got in a fight with an alligator, son. Had a little something to drink, did ya now?”

Rémi steadied himself. “My brother-in-law is . . . not himself at this moment due to pain medicine.”

Doc inspected Jacob’s wound, and as he leaned forward Rémi realized that the doctor was himself in his cups. A miasma emitted from the doctor’s sweat and breath, an evolved sourness that could only come from a days-long bender.

Doc Shaw sighed. “Yup. That girl cleaned him up real good, but he’s lost a lot of blood and I’m afraid that injury’s a little too far gone. Now son, you know that hand’s gonna have to come off.”

“Just call me Stumpy!”

Doc Shaw gave him a tired look and turned a slow eye to Rémi. “It’s good that Miss Chloe gave him a little something to calm his nerves, being as the sedatives I carry are mild in comparison.”

Rémi gripped his arm. “You sure you are clearheaded enough for this?”

Doc Shaw’s expression remained placid. “It ain’t exactly going to require a delicate touch, Mr. LeBlanc.”

He nodded gravely toward Chloe. “This is not a difficult procedure, young lady, but it’s a difficult one to watch. I suggest you run along now. See if they need some help downstairs and keep the children out of earshot.”

But Chloe remained where she stood. “I will assist.”