The Tangled Bridge (50 page)

Severin was sitting on a bough, hunched over, filthy and naked. “How did you escape me so easily?”

Madeleine didn't reply. Her spirit stood and walked through the door, past Gaston, who was looking at the mêlée with watery eyes. Severin jumped down and followed.

The briar light illuminated things much brighter than the moon had. The water looked like liquid mercury. Madeleine could see Jane, standing with balled fists and tears in her eyes. Another girl was there, too, shrieking and bucking as someone tried to hang on to her. This girl—she looked so much like Jane she could be a twin, except that Jane was a bit older. The girl and the man who was holding her fell over the side of the boardwalk and into the bayou.

Madeleine went into the water, looking for the boy who'd been stabbed. She sensed he was already deep below. Down, down, all the way down, Madeleine and Severin followed.

Splashing above. Some of the others must have jumped into the water. But they were near the surface and couldn't possibly have seen what Madeleine saw in the briar light.

The wounded boy was below, face turned upward, eyes open. Her heart fluttered at the sight of his face. Something about his eyes. But his mouth was open in a horrific grimace. She thought he might already be dead until she saw his arms were moving, scraping toward the surface.

She caught up with him and realized why he'd been moving downward so fast. He'd been rolled right into the current. It had dragged him down to the bottom and was now pulling him toward the whirlpool.

Madeleine gave him the ability to survive without breathing first.

It seemed to take so agonizingly long. He was bleeding to death. She tried to drag him out of the current but of course she couldn't. This was not her physical body. He couldn't see her. Couldn't know what was happening beyond the fact that he was dying.

But she felt him go still, and knew that he was either doing without breath or he'd died. She looked into his face and saw blinking, confused eyes.

And she knew him. Gaston.

No beard, and his necklace was not a click beetle necklace, but these were his eyes. This was his jawline.

He was still falling backward toward the whirlpool, too weak from his wounds to swim out of the current. He wasn't going to drown, at least.

She wrapped her briar self around him and tended his wounds. Drawing from the fissure, the cool moss, the rainy scent. She could feel him healing beneath her grasp.

Gaston had been guarding the door up above on that boardwalk, she was certain of it. This boy looked the same age. Same exactly. He had a twin and Jane did, too?

He kept slipping back. The whirlpool was drawing him back. And then he was caught up in it, kicking, fighting. A good sign, though, that his strength had returned. Madeleine hung on as best she could. But then he was gone.

“In the hidey hole,” Severin said.

Madeleine looked, saw a rent in the bayou floor where Gaston must have disappeared. Madeleine went to it and felt it pulling her in. But that was impossible. She was not a physical being.

“To play for a small time or lifetime,” Severin said.

And that's when Madeleine saw the creature. The thing that looked like a man covered in oil, but with those impossibly long limbs. Its arms were open and reaching for her.

She withdrew. And for the second time, she escaped the briar of her own free will. Against Severin's will. A simple reach inside for something that was neither body nor mind.

*   *   *

HER PHYSICAL BODY GASPED
. The door was open and moonlight was spilling through it. She was once again on the pallet in the boardwalk shack.

Gaston was kneeling beside her, head in his hands. “Oh, Madeleine. What've you done?”

She pulled herself up and looked at him. “I don't understand.”

“I locked you up. Thought I could change it this time. Oh, you should have just let me die.”

 

sixty-four

HUEY P. LONG BRIDGE, 1933

FERRAR HAD HIS ARMS
around Patrice's waist and was lifting her up. She was barely aware that she'd slid to the earth when Hutch had said her name like that.

“Poor girl's starving,” someone nearby said.

And she heard Simms say, “Beat it, you. Everyone's starving.”

She reached for Hutch. “Trigger? Trigger, honey?”

“No brawr, no bri-arr,” was all Hutch would say.

She had him by the jowls and was staring into his face. His skin felt like putty and his cheeks were wet with tears and saliva.

But Hutch had little to do with it. If Trigger were here, he wouldn't be inside Hutch. He'd be standing here using Hutch the way a hunter throws his voice into a hollow.

Patrice closed her eyes and beckoned the inner world.

“No Briar!”
She felt herself being shaken and she opened her eyes. “Not yet, little lady.”

Simms was shaking her arm and Ferrar was pushing Simms away from her. Simms licked his lips, looking like he was about to square off with Ferrar. Hutch continued quivering and spitting.

“Just tell us what we need to know,” Ferrar said.

Simms pointed at Patrice. “She ain't supposed to do none a that voodoo here. Not now. Said she was gonna want to. Said she had to wait until they's all safe.”

“Who said?”

Simms pointed at Hutch. “Him. It. You ain't gonna get much more out of him than that.”

Hutch wiped his chin with his shirtsleeve and looked doe-eyed up at Simms. “You gotta take me back to the hospital.”

She could tell by the way he sagged that Trigger had let him go for now. It made her want to recede to the briar something fierce. To think, Trigger wasn't gone; he was here,
right here
.

“Tell us what happened,” Ferrar said.

Simms waved at Hutch. “Started last night. He's actin all crazy at the club. Finally took him to the hospital.”

Hutch said, “Med school at Tu-lane. But they ain't got no beds there. Kingfish done took'm away on account a Tulane ain't never give him no law degree way back when.”

“Kingfish?” Patrice asked.

“Huey P.,” Hutch said, and when Patrice didn't react, he added, “Huey Long, girl!”

Simms shook his head. “Forget it. This ain't about no hospital bed. He couldn't stay at Tulane so I took him to Charity Hospital.”

“He just left me there,” Hutch said.

“They took good care of him.”

“Like a sack a laundry.”

“Dammit, shut up. You weren't sick that way. Oughtta taken you to a priest instead.”

Simms turned to Patrice. “Listen, you can sit here and watch him sweat this out, but it'll take all damn night and to tomorrow.”

“Ooh!”

“Or I can just tell you what you s'posed to know.”

“Heaven's sake, tell me!”

Simms paused. “I will tell you. I'm about to do that right now. But I'm gonna need something from you.”

Patrice put her hands to her temples and realized tears were streaming down her face. The sun was turning a deeper orange. Soon it would blanket the entire delta in its color.

“What do you want?”

“First, tell your brother to stay out of my employee. Fact, tell him to stay out of all my employees. Ain't got the time for this.”

“He's here, listening. I don't need to tell him.”

“Alright, then. Next is a little bit more complicated. It's about your mama.”

“What!”

“Keep your voice down. Let's try to be civilized here. All I ask is that you help me out with your connection at Bayou Bouillon. The old man with the eye patch. They say he's still alive. They say it's a true blue miracle. All over again.”

Patrice listened, relieved to hear that Francois was alright. But in that same moment she realized she'd expected this. Even though they'd left him bleeding on the boardwalk, his chest gurgling where he'd been stabbed through the lung.

Leave me to the ghosts,
he'd said.

Ferrar said, “What do you want with that place?”

“Just a little commerce, that's all. Want to expand my business. Cut out the middle man, or the … middle woman. Go straight to the im-port.”

“That would be up to Francois. I can bring you there to talk to him, but what happens after that is up to him.”

“That's all I'm asking. Get me the signal so's I can get in there, and you put in a good word for me. Remember I ain't done y'all no harm when I had the chance. I been straight.”

Patrice looked at Ferrar, and Ferrar hesitated, then nodded.

He said, “I'll take you on the next run. No signals. You come on out there with me. We can go next week.”

Simms nodded, too. “Alright then. That's all I need. Your word. I'm gonna trust you on that because I know how you do. So now all this is just between us. No need to tell your mother.”

“Yes.”

“So here's what it is. Ole Hutch spent the night at the doctor's, but doc ain't know what to do for him. They say he talkin to God, so they called for a priest. A sister came instead. She sat with him all night long. Prayed on him. Then she figured he had something he was trying to say, so she wrote it all down.”

“Wrote what down?” Patrice asked him.

“What you think? All that stuttering and spitting he do. He talk in between that. Went on for all night, all morning. The sister wrote down what he said. Most of it didn't mean nothing.”

Simms handed Patrice a bundle of papers. She glanced through them, and her gaze fell on the words:

holy holy holy holy holy holy holy mercy full mighty early early early early and the moan moan moaning sunrise toothy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy …

Patrice knew at once what she was reading. Trigger was using the song, “Holy, Holy, Holy” as a pigeon exercise. Just practicing on Hutch, that's all, and if the nun were Baptist instead of Catholic she might have recognized the song as she transcribed it.

Forming thoughts for other people was difficult enough. The trick was to understand their manner of thinking, so you could disguise your thoughts as theirs. But causing a man to speak words for you was extremely difficult. Patrice could do it, but she'd been the only one of the four who'd ever mastered it.

Patrice scanned the pages until she found:

tell trees not dead tell trees not dead tell pa trees not dead not dead mama got me mama got me don't let mama lie she has two she has two let them go now she must let them go for me to go …

Patrice took a step toward Simms. “Where is she?”

“Your mother? I don't know. I'm supposed to take you with me, that's all. You come with me, we go for a little walk, then you'll get to see your brother and sister.”

“You tell me where she is!”

His face grew hard. “I don't know that.”

Ferrar pulled on Patrice's arm. “He doesn't know. Look at him. He's telling the truth.”

Patrice said, “Now she's got all of them.
All three of them!
”

Ferrar said, “Maybe she's going to try to capture you, too. So she'll have all four.”

“She made a bargain with us!”

“It might have been a trick to get you out of Bayou Bouillon, where you were protected.”

Simms said, “Look here, doll, I don't know what her game is. I took a big risk by telling all this. She find out she gonna cut me off, you get me?”

“I've got to talk to her myself. Face to face.”

“She don't see you go off for a little walk with me, she ain't gonna let'm go, is what she told me. You just s'posed to walk along with me and someone out there'll be watchin. Then they let the other two go and bring you in. She don't trust you and your voodoo, I guess.”

Ferrar looked into Patrice's face. “She will trap you, you walk with him. She wants you if only to punish you.”

In the papers that were now shaking in Patrice's hands, she saw the words the nun had transcribed at the very end:

she has my ghost but not my body she can't get to my body I will keep my body

Patrice longed to slip into the briar, just for a moment. Glimpse Trigger. Locate Maman, and Rosie and Gil.

She knew she couldn't recede into the briar, but she could use its tricks.

Simms was pointing at Ferrar. “I done my part. No matter what happens here, we got a deal.”

Patrice turned and looked at the faces lit up in the early evening glow, intensifying with every moment that brought the sun deeper onto the horizon. It filled the dark circles under the people's eyes, and the hollows at their cheeks and necks and collarbones—softened every hard line. Mother was not among them. She wouldn't be here, no, but she'd likely be nearby.

“Mother,” said Patrice.

And she closed her eyes, but not to will the thorns. She had to invoke this without briar. She felt it. Cultivated from Ferrar's presence. Something that reflected back from somewhere within her own being.

She said again, “Mother.”

“Mother,” Simms and Hutch both echoed back.

They gave her a strange look.

“Be careful,” Ferrar whispered to her.

“Mother,” Patrice said again.

And she heard the people in the next camp, and Simms and Hutch once again, say, “Mother.”

Patrice said the word again, letting it filter through all those people, and from the other camps she could hear the word echoing back.

Mother. Mother.

It rippled across the lips of every person at every camp, floating from this one to that. She let it ride beyond the clearing to elsewhere. Every woman, every man, and the children all said it:
Mother
.

“Come speak to me, Mother,” Patrice said.

The words washed from one end of the camp to the other, and across the thicket to the road beyond. The people on the ferry. The people across the water. Patrice felt that Gil and Rosie were saying it. Maybe even her own mother said it, too. It washed over New Orleans. They were all saying it. And after half a minute passed, they all said it again.