A Twisted Ladder (33 page)

Rémi handed Jacob the oar and then settled himself comfortably with a flask of whiskey.

“You row,
mon frère
. Perhaps you will actually sprout a real callous on your hand.”

Jacob seemed to take this new duty in stride, and let Rémi direct him through the labyrinth of bayou. The sound of winged insects buzzing in the trees filled the air, distracting Rémi from his frustrations and easing his mind. Of course, the whiskey helped, too.

Rémi expected to see the river devil at every turn, but did not. Instead, he heard Ulysses’s whispers in the hissing snakes that wove themselves into Spanish moss, and he smelled his sour breath in the cattle-piss pastures as they warmed in the morning sun. Ulysses was all around the
ciprière
, but not immediately before him. Finally, they reached a shaded slough.

Rémi tossed Jacob a ball of twine. “Hang a bit of meat from one of those boughs.”

Jacob reached into the sack and selected a wing, plucking some of the feathers, and suspended it from a branch of water cypress. It dangled alongside robes of Spanish moss, shifting gently with the breeze over the water’s surface. Jacob looked down at his blood-stained shirt.

“You are getting good and dirty today,” Rémi said, his Creole accent thickening with whiskey. “Are you sure this is for you? I can tell Tatie Bernadette to show you how to tat lace instead. That is a much cleaner hobby.”

“Very funny,” Jacob said.

The two men pushed the rowboat onto the shore, then out of the way. They settled amid the tangled brush on a clearing of packed soil along the bank where they could observe the bait. Jacob cocked his shotgun and held it crossed over his chest, pointing away from Rémi.

They waited.

THE MORNING WARMED. RÉMI
was dozing in the sultry swamp air. He heard Jacob slapping at mosquitoes who laughed at the pungent oil he had smeared over his skin to keep them at bay. In Rémi’s mind, the cypress and pine stretched taller, slowly, wavering, the way a lone seed from a milkweed parachutes away on a gentle breeze. The bramble too, stretched its thorny branches, coiling and winding until it enveloped Rémi, forming mazes of sunlight and blackness.

A hand at his shoulder. “How long do we have to wait?”

Rémi opened his eyes, then closed them again.

Jacob shook him. “I said how long do we have to wait?”

The trees and bramble receded back to their original dimensions, leaving Rémi feeling exposed and slightly agoraphobic. He snorted and sat upright, glaring at Jacob as he took a healthy pull from his flask.

“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking that?” Jacob asked. “How long do you s’pose before we see an alligator!”

Rémi wiped his face. “How do I know? Sometimes only a little while, sometimes you sit all day and never see one.”

Jacob cursed. Rémi scanned the water, the thicket, and up above. All seemed quiet. He sighed and offered Jacob the flask. Jacob hesitated, then took a swig. He gestured toward the placid water.

“You catch a lot of gators round here?”

Rémi nodded. “Some. Easiest way is to shine them. You hunt them at night, and bring a lantern. You see the eyes shine in the dark, then you shoot them.”

He withdrew a rolled cigarette from his pocket and lit it, blowing fragrant smoke toward the water. “But it is better sport in the daytime. I used to catch them with my bare hands!” He spread out his fingers.

Jacob looked impressed. “Really? How’d you do that?”

Rémi reached over and retrieved the flask. “Well, first you find an alligator.”

Jacob chuckled.

“You find an alligator, and you walk up to him very slowly. If he is near the water, and you move suddenly, he will swim away. You should leave him alone while he is in the water because there he will always win. But if he is on the bank, and you move slowly, you can walk up to him and grab him behind his head.”

Jacob’s eyes swelled. “You ain’t serious.” He took the flask again from Rémi and helped himself. “You really do that?”

Rémi nodded with pursed lips. “You can’t be gentle, like a . . .” he groped for the English word. “Like a sissy.”

He tilted his head at Jacob with a sidelong smirk. Jacob straightened with mild indignation, but let the comment pass.

“You must be strong,” Rémi added. “Once you have him, he will fight and thrash. But if you have him behind the head, you hold on tight, and he cannot hurt you. Then you may do with him what you like.”

Jacob snorted and waved. “Aw, you just funnin.”

Rémi narrowed his eyes. He pulled up his shirt and moved a suspender to the side, revealing a long scar running from just above his navel to the outline of his rib cage.

“This is not
funning
.”

Jacob was awestruck. “How did that happen?”

“I did not have such a good hold on him. I held him and he thrashed.” Rémi moved his shoulders. “He knocked me off him. Used his teeth. Then he ran away to the water.”

“I guess you were lucky. He could have killed you.”

Rémi shrugged. “The alligator, he is not so anxious to get you. He would rather be left alone. Get away. But this was bad enough. I nearly died from infection.”

Jacob spat into the brush. He sighed and shifted in the tall grass, and seemed to be struggling for words.

“Look here, Rémi. I want to thank you. You’ve been real good to my family, even though my parents haven’t really been able to show their appreciation.” He chewed his lip. “Fact is, they don’t understand your ways out here. Maybe it was a mistake for us to come out to Louisiana like this. Anyway, you’ve been real decent. I know things didn’t work out the way you’d planned. . . .”

At this, Jacob’s voice trailed off, and Rémi felt a burning in his throat. Jacob reached into his satchel and pulled out a long thick wand of linen rags.

“Well, I brought you this.” He thrust the parcel into Rémi’s hands.

Rémi unwound the rags. As they fell away, they revealed an embossed leather sheath cradling the blade of a bowie knife. Rémi pulled it out, holding it so that it gleamed in the sun. From handle to blade, it ran the length of his entire forearm. He gave a long, low whistle.

“This is beautiful, my friend. Almost too beautiful to use. In the swamplands, things do not stay beautiful long.”

Helen’s face flickered in Rémi’s mind.

Jacob laughed. “It ain’t meant to sit around makin pretty. Go on ahead, beat the hell out of it. That’s what it’s for. Besides, I have another gift for you. Something I think you’ll like even better.”

Rémi lifted his brows. “Oh?”

“Yep. My gift is this. We’re not getting into the sugarcane business. I’m gonna go ahead and get into banking with my father. We’ve closed out with the co-op, so your name’s no longer on anything we have.”

“No sugarcane?” Rémi said. “What will you do with Glory? All that land?”

Jacob shrugged. “We’re looking at cotton, maybe. I got cousins in cotton. But even if we do that we’ll lease it out. Truth is, I’m no farmer!”

Jacob gave a hearty laugh. Rémi laughed too, a release of surprise and pleasure. It occurred to him how much he truly liked his brother-in-law. All entanglements and politics aside, Jacob was an affable fellow. And generous, too; the bowie knife was a magnificent thing. Perhaps Jacob was a little lazy, yes, and not terribly manly, but at least he chose to be a banker, a profession where those qualities did not matter.

“You are a good man, Jacob. Thank you for the knife, and for the news. I admit that I am relieved to hear it.”

Jacob laughed and slapped Rémi’s shoulder, raising the whiskey. But then he frowned, shaking the flask.

“Aw hell, it’s empty!”

Rémi stood. “Do not fear. As your guide, I have come prepared.”

He reached into a moldering blanket under a seat in the rowboat, and extracted a full demijohn. Jacob laughed. Rémi heaved it over his forearm, hooking the loop with his thumb, and took a swig that leaked down his chin. He passed it to Jacob and rested a hand on his shoulder.

“Jacob,
mon frère
. You might be a good fellow after all. I always thought you were just a fancy pants.”

“What? Who you calling
fency pents?
” Jacob said, mocking Rémi’s accent.

Rémi put his other hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “. . . but I misjudged you. You are like my brother, even though you are an American.”

They roared and slapped each other on the back.

“Well, ‘
mawn frair
,’ ” Jacob returned. “You’re my brother too, even though you are a Frenchy frog-eating Creole savage.” He belched. “From the backwater.”

The two bugled their laughter out over the water, and Rémi felt as though his mind tilted with the ricocheting sound; up through the treetops into the wildest reaches of the swamp. The demijohn traveled back and forth.

Morning wore toward noon. Jacob taught Rémi the words to his favorite mountain song, “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy.”

Well I’s walking down the street

Stoled a ham of meat

Keep my skillet good and greasy

All the time, time, time
,

Keep my skillet good and greasy all the time

Jacob spoke the words and Rémi repeated them, and together they sang only slightly off-key in the simple melody.

I’s a-goin to the hills

For to buy me a jug of brandy

Goin give it all to Mandy

Keep her good and drunk and woozy

All the time, time, time

Keep her good and drunk and woozy all the time
.

The boom of the duo’s voices echoed through the swamp, melting with the call of the herons and sawing insect wings. The demijohn’s contents dwindled, and they continued to sing with gusto as they lay on their backs across the packed soil, singing at the sky, singing with their eyes closed. And then once again, the trees and the bramble were stretching, encroaching, protecting, concealing. Rémi sang into the bramble, then laughed. His voice no longer echoed. Swallowed up in the thorns. He heard birds and Ulysses whispering to the snakes. Rémi nestled deeper into the sun-dappled passages, away from the sound of the river devil’s voice. But he fretted that Ulysses must be high in the boughs, looking down and seeing all, so Rémi turned down one of the black tunnels. He heard faint splashing sounds amid the chirping of birds. He sensed someone stirring nearby. Jacob.

“Hey the chicken’s gone,” Jacob said.

And for a second time, the bramble withdrew, and Rémi was no longer hidden. The return to a wakeful state dragged on him as though his blood had filled with lead. His head and stomach were on fire, and his lips felt pasted with hoof glue. He wondered if Jacob felt the same, because he heard his footsteps fade to splashes, as if his brother-in-law were drinking soupy water from the bayou.

“Damn it, Rémi, I said the chicken’s gone.”

Splashing again. Then Rémi felt Jacob’s boot nudge his leg. He rolled over with a groan, shirt plastered with sweat in the stifling air.

He ventured to open one eye. Jacob was rummaging in the boat for the sack that contained the rooster parts, which was apparently covered in ants, because he cursed as their sting perforated his skin.

Rémi blinked a smile, and sat up.

Jacob took out the largest hunk of the carcass and rinsed the ants in the swamp. “Damn it!”

He waded back to the lure, attempting to tie the chicken onto the broken length of twine still dangling from the branch.

Rémi cast a groggy glance toward the woods, and then back to the water, squinting out the shape of a drifting log, and the fuzzy outline of two people. Something about them set off alarms inside his dim mind, and he tried to shake off the fog.

It felt as if the cicadas must have left the trees and crawled inside his ears; their grinding seemed to emanate from his very brain, vibrating wings fluttering behind his eyes. He saw Jacob struggling to tie the hacked rooster to the limb, but the broken twine was now too short.

Behind Jacob in the water, Ulysses came into focus. Rémi sat up.

Ulysses’s eyes were fixed on Jacob. A silvery gleam caught Rémi’s attention, and he saw that Ulysses was carrying a machete.

“Ulysses, no!”

Jacob lowered the carcass with his left hand, still holding the twine with his right. “What?”

Rémi struggled to his feet. “Get out of there!”

Ulysses raised the machete.

Rémi staggered toward his brother-in-law, splashing into the bayou. With both hands on the machete, Ulysses gave one fluid swing, cleaving the bone above Jacob’s hand. Jacob shrieked.

The cicadas returned to Rémi’s vision, fluttering against his sight. Branches stretching. Rémi tried to call out, strained to see; he caught a glimpse of Jacob slipping below the water’s surface before the bramble and the cicadas blotted everything out. Slumber beckoned. Escapist slumber. Safely hidden. He sighed, yielded.