A Twisted Ladder (48 page)

Severin stepped down from the porch and moved toward her.

“Oh God. Please just go away.”

But Severin drew nearer, and Madeleine succumbed to the urge to escape, though she knew it was futile. Ridiculous to think she could outrun a hallucination.

She scrambled toward the dock. It was useless trying to be practical. She was driven by instinct now. And her instinct was to run.

BAYOU BLACK, 2009

A
NITA TWISTED SHARPLY TO
her left, jerking, but he brought her down on her side. Sun-bleached driftwood snapped beneath her. She screamed and flailed. She saw a glint of metal in his hand, and she rolled over on her stomach and tried to claw away from him. A sudden pressure in her back, and she saw the knife streaked with blood. She kicked in desperation while the blade flashed over her. Her hand curled around a sharp stick and she plunged it into his shoulder.

Zenon went rigid. Anita scrabbled out from under him and tore into the woods. The foliage was so thick she had to hack at it with her arms, unable to run through the crush. The litter of rotten wood on the ground shifted under her feet. Had she killed him? Trees were twisting in the heavy breeze. She heard the sound of thrashing behind her, but she couldn’t tell whether it came from the approaching storm, or him. She pushed forward with all her strength.

Where am I?

She racked her brain. She could not tell how long they’d been in the car, though she guessed it had to have been several hours. Anita scrabbled over a fallen tree trunk that stood higher than she did.

She realized her strength was failing. Her hands and feet were going numb, and her legs threatened to buckle. He had wounded her. How could she not have known that the knife pierced her body?

Her steps were increasingly ragged. Her hands and clothing were soaked in blood. She could hear him somewhere behind her, and she cursed the sounds her own body made in the woods, giving her away. She realized:

I am going to die
.

I am going to die
.

And then she felt the strange inclination:

Come back. It’s over
.

Yes. She should turn back and go to Zenon. She felt the tug with absolute clarity. That is precisely what she should do.

Anita retraced her steps to find him. He was in there somewhere. She no longer had the strength to climb over the log, but she saw a thinner area of brush and stepped into it. It formed a rough path back to the place where she’d left him.

Come back
.

She held her arms out, stepping calmly. Where was he? The pathway twisted, and now she wasn’t certain whether it led back to him or in another direction.

The notion left her. Disconnected. She stopped moving, confused. Couldn’t remember why she’d thought it logical and right to return to Zenon. In fact, the thought that she’d almost done that very thing sent her into a fresh panic. She turned again, though she had no idea which direction led toward or away from him. She ploughed through the brush. Ran.

The trees parted and she found herself at the edge of an expanse of black water. She backed away and whirled around. A tunnel ran through the brush, a much clearer trail that turned back into the woods. But the trail would leave her much more exposed. With her injured foot and her body becoming sluggish, he would eventually catch her.

She stretched her arms out before her and stepped into the water, opaque like a mirror. Like oil. She swam as quickly and silently as she could. Stinging in her back as the bayou stole her blood. The splashing water filled her ears when she raised her head, and when she sank beneath the surface to propel herself forward, the sound was deeper than silence. Thick and rushing like blood flow.

At the far bank, she stole a look around, but did not see him. She swam further to where the water T’ed off into a smaller passage hidden by a thick stand of trees. A little rest. Just for a moment. So difficult to move now. She hung suspended in the water, and the water pulled the heat from her so that she would match its temperature. She felt as though she was becoming part of it. The bayou wrapped around her, shielding her, claiming her.

She thought, “I would rather die than let Zenon catch me.”

One more effort to lurch forward, and she reached the grove of water cypress. Her limbs would no longer stretch. Her body was curling into itself like a petrified spider. Something inside her was loosening, trying to escape that husk. An inner wobble like an egg yolk that wanted to break through the shell. She felt strangely elated, but yet she still fought.

She could only move in sluggish pulses now. Tried to disappear among the tangled root system. A refuge opened to her, a place where the giant cypress knees rose high and formed a cove large enough for her to slip inside. She huddled in, her colorless, shaking hands grasping at floating plants and waterlogged sticks, creating a nest among those roots. She braved another look across the water.

He was there, pacing along the bank, little more than a dark shadow. He turned to the trail behind him, then disappeared into it.

Anita let out her breath in a rush, even as her vision was blurring. She felt suddenly weightless, euphoric. A cool, brilliant nirvana. She should rest. She should . . . Her body detached. That inner wobble was so strong. A helium balloon contained by a cobweb. She broke through it.

HAHNVILLE, 1920

C
HLOE SUPERVISED ROUNDING UP
the cattle herself. The herd was small, and so with the exception of two milking cows and a bull, Terrefleurs would need every single one.

In the previous days, every man, woman, and child on the plantation had helped revive the old refinery that lay at the far end of the cane fields. The structure had gone to waste and was overgrown with brush and vines. The field workers had hacked away at the tangles until they unearthed the rotted building beneath. Inside, light poured through holes in the wall and ceiling, illuminating the rusted equipment that lay in dust.

Refining raw sugar had been a part of Terrefleurs’ cycles before the days of the Sugar Trust. Now, with Chloe unable to sell the cane through the Trust, she decided Terrefleurs would once again refine its own sugar.

She was taking a considerable gamble, because decades had passed since they had done it, and only a few surviving old-timers had any vague memory of the process. Francois told Chloe the three basic steps: separating the crystals through a centrifuge, vacuum pan evaporation, and charcoal filtering. They would be relying on spotty knowledge and archaic, rusted equipment. If the attempt failed, they would ruin the crop in the process, and the plantation was in no position to lose an entire season’s yield.

The workers had scrubbed the rust from the centrifuge and vacuum pan. They would use the pan to boil molasses, and it was imperative that it contain as few impurities as possible. Even the centrifuge, which separated the raw sugar juices from the cane, had to be sparkling clean so as not to introduce bitter flavors.

Francois had replaced corroded and missing parts as best he could through the makeshift machine shop that he’d used to repair farm equipment in the past. Chloe saw to it that the workers patched the refinery’s roof to prevent rain from seeping in, but other than that, she did not spare them to completely repair the structure. Terrefleurs could afford to refine its own sugar once or maybe twice, and even then Chloe could only hope to break even in the process.

When the refinery was ready, it was time to focus on acquiring the charcoal that would filter impurities from the raw sugar. Traditionally, the process called for animal charcoal.

Chloe strode down the rear steps, intending to go to the corral where the cattle had been assembled, but she heard Patrice’s voice shouting from somewhere nearby. It sounded like she was counting rapidly. Chloe looked to the
pigeonnier
. The twins were in the garden with Tatie Bernadette. She looked to the workers’ allée and saw children running from the kitchen house in a pack while Patrice finished her count. The children hid themselves among the cottages. And then, down the center of the allée, Patrice came running. Her cheeks were plump and flushed, her legs long and gangly. She searched, the children melting into their hiding places as she approached and peeking around the sides of the buildings when she wasn’t looking. Patrice found a little boy crouching behind the rain barrel. Both of them shrieked and Patrice tagged him.

“Patrice!” Chloe shouted.

Patrice jumped to a stance and faced her mother with her hands behind her back.

“Ici!”
Chloe said.

Patrice ran to her and presented herself in the same stance. Her hair was pulled tight from her smooth dark face, and it fanned out behind her in a pony tail of spun sugar.

“Did I not tell you to stay away from the children?”

“Yes’m.”

“Why do you disobey me?”

Patrice turned and looked toward the others. The children had retreated out of sight in the allée.

She looked back at her mother with her chin down and her blue eyes wide. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know! You think I have time for your bad behavior? You think I have nothing better to do?”

“Maman, why are the cows in the corral?”

Chloe put her hands to her hips. “They are in the corral because it is time for slaughter.”

“Each and every?”

“Listen to me, eh? This place is dying. We will butcher the cattle to feed the people, and make charcoal from the bones. After that there will be no more food.”

Chloe pointed down the allée. “And no more children. You see? Their parents will leave here. Good as dead. And their children go with them, good as dead. This is what happens when a plantation dies.”

Patrice listened, eyes filling with tears.

Chloe leaned over, a hand to her belly. “Here now I have you and your brothers. And soon there will be another baby. What will we do on a dead plantation? We will have to leave too, and try not to starve. Your papa is lost in the spirit world. He can do nothing.”