Crescent City (41 page)

He fell. Backward he toppled over the railing, the defiance on his lips turning into a howl of horror. His body hurtled, his hands grasped at nothing—

And he lay twisted on the gravel at the verandah steps, at Miriam’s feet.

“Dear Lord,” said Sisyphus very softly.

For a moment there was a silence of disbelief. Then the silence broke into shock. Rosa and Emma emerged from the house, still crying. Young Eugene raced to bend over his father, Angelique knelt at his other side. Her hair, loosened in her terrified flight down the stairs, streamed over her face. Servants who, half curious and half afraid, had been peering out of hiding places in the quarters, now came running to view the disaster. The ragtag, roving mob of soldiery came, too. There, in a ring ten or twelve deep, they all stood, family, servants and enemies, looking down upon the still-conscious Eugene in his atrocious agony.

There was a babble of comment and opinion.

“Lift him! Carry him inside.”

“Water!”

“Brandy!”

Sisyphus took hold of Eugene’s feet, while Chanute and Maxim, grasping his shoulders, attempted a lift, but the very first tugging motion brought from him such a fearful cry of anguish that they at once withdrew their hands.

“Leave him alone!”

“Get a blanket!”

And amid the babble of directions and questions,
the breathless cries of Emma and Rosa and the sobs of her children, Miriam was as if paralyzed: Think, think, what’s to be done? What?

A single horse bearing a Union lieutenant came trotting rapidly up the lane. Someone on the fringe of the frenzy must have told him what was happening, for he swung himself off the horse, came at once to Miriam, and removed his cap.

“Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry! Sorry.” He looked around at the lawn, which was littered with broken furniture and bottles, with clothing, books and bric-a-brac. He looked at Eugene and shook his head. “How terrible … I don’t know … don’t understand this sort of thing.” His voice trailed away.

This unexpected sympathy was as painful in its way as the savagery, and Miriam’s lips quivered.

“We tried to move him. Perhaps, if you have a doctor …”

“None with us. Short of doctors. Armies always are,” the young man apologized. “But I’ve had a lot of experience, seen enough, perhaps I …” And he went to bend over Eugene, examining with eyes alone.

He looked up at the balcony from which Eugene had fallen, and shook his head again doubtfully.

“I don’t know,” he told Miriam. “Can’t say with any certainty, I’m not qualified, but …” His voice faltered into a minor key, with his eyes not on Miriam, but on the boy and girl who had taken their father’s hands and were still kneeling on the gravel path.

“I think his back’s broken.” And he murmured in pity as if to himself. “Blind, too.” Then he looked at Miriam again. “The truth is, I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am.”

She thought, I suppose it doesn’t matter. He will die. Quickly, I hope.

“Does that mean he will suffer very long?” she asked. “Can you tell me that?”

“I shouldn’t think so. And you’re left with all this,” the lieutenant said, gesturing toward the devastation.

“They were going to burn the house.”

The lieutenant said quickly, “I won’t have that I’ll have them out of here in half an hour or less. Sergeant!” he called.

The red face appeared at once. The red hand saluted.

“Put out the fires and prepare to leave. These people have suffered enough.”

“Yes sir,” the sergeant said.

It had been two hours since the last of the marauders had gone, and the dust of their bustling departure had settled. Eugene still lay where he had fallen. From somewhere Fanny had found a pillow that had not been ripped apart and this had been placed beneath his head. His pain had ebbed into paralysis. Rigid, motionless, as if he were lying on top of the sea, he was floating away.

“Pin dying.” The whisper was hardly audible even in the heavy stillness that had descended along with the fading day. “You know I’m dying.”

Huddled in their skirts, the mother and daughter kneeled and waited. Young Eugene’s head hung to his chest. After all these hours his strength was used up; yet still he clung to his father’s hand.

Suddenly the father made a faint movement to release the hand.

“I want …” His lips moved and stopped. Miriam leaned closer. “I want to talk to your mother.”

“I’m here, Eugene. You want the children to step away, is that it? You want to tell me something?”

Miriam nodded toward the verandah, where in the
early fall of night a line of servants still stood, leaned, and sat, grouping themselves around Emma, Ferdinand, and Rosa.

“You wanted to tell me something, Eugene?”

“The boy,” he murmured. “Take care.”

Her mind went back to the parlor, when after school the boy used to report to his father. She could see him, so graceful, bright, and charming, as he stood before the proud eyes of the father before those eyes had been destroyed.

“What did you do today?”

The answers had come with equal pride. “Oh, Latin, geometry, penmanship, and grammar.”

“Did you get a good mark on the map you did last week?”

“Yes, Papa, a good mark. I’ll show you.”

Take care of my son, he means. See that he is educated as I would have seen.

She swallowed hard against her tears. “Eugene, I promise you, I will do everything you would want.”

No pretense now, no refusal to acknowledge that he was about to die. That much at least they had always had in common, a scorn of pretense between themselves; as long, she thought now ruefully, as long as the public image was kept unblemished.

“Yes, I’ll see them through this war somehow. You can depend on it.”

Suddenly Eugene raised his voice. “And Angelique … They tell me she is very lovely. Well, that’s something to leave behind, isn’t it?”

“I’ll take care of her, Eugene, depend on that, too.”

A small, quivering smile passed across his face.

And she cried softly, “I’m so sorry about everything! That we could not have been happy together … If I’ve hurt you, I never meant to. It was never
what I wanted, as I’m sure you never wanted to do it to me.”

“No tears,” he said, but not as once he had used to sneer;
What, more tears, the woman’s weapon?

“No tears,” he repeated, and again the light smile quivered and faded.

And into that queer little movement, that flicker, maybe, of some recollected pleasure, Miriam read the story of his years with that flashing woman whose dark passion had once made him happy. Perhaps, forgetting her abandonment of him, he was wishing she were here with him now. She ought to be with him! She had taken whatever good he had had to give her, and should be with him now!

Toward midnight Eugene died. In a profound stillness, in the starlight, old Sisyphus, Chanute, and Maxim carried him into the house and laid him on the ruined sofa in the parlor.

Many years before, the previous owners of Beau Jardín had turned an old Indian mound, used centuries before that for burying, into their own family burying ground. Here, then, in the morning, while birds were noisy in the sheltering live oaks, they buried Eugene in a homemade coffin which had been made that night.

A sorry funeral, Miriam thought. At least Eugene would have thought so! He would have wanted everything to be done correctly: the burial in the synagogue’s own cemetery, with the men wearing striped trousers and top hats and the rabbi leading the Kaddish. But there was certainly no going back to the city now, and only young Eugene to say the Kaddish. He said it well, in the heartbreaking, boyish, husky voice which skips back into the soprano. Ferdinand, who barely remembered the words, joined with him. And,
after that, Maxim and Chanute poured earth upon the coffin.

I’m glad Eugene and I had those last words together, she thought, with her arms around her children. At least he lies in his own ground that he loved so well. And maybe, she thought irrelevantly as they walked back to the house, maybe his beech tree will survive its injuries. He would like that.

Two dozen sheep lay dead in the pasture after the previous day’s slaughter. The storerooms were wrecked; the food that had not been taken had been defiled with molasses; the entire crop of potatoes and beans was ruined. The smokehouse had been stripped of the meat supply for the coming winter. Nothing was left.

She walked about, looking things over. And wreckage stared back. There were no mules left, except for two babies. The wagons had been burnt. The cattle that they had not butchered, they had driven away to be sold at auction, no doubt, in New Orleans.

The overseer came out of his house. He was dressed for travel and carried a pair of bags.

“I was coming to give you notice,” he said with some embarrassment.

“Notice, Mr. Ransome? Sixty seconds’ notice?”

“I know. I’m sorry. But in the circumstances … There’s nothing left here. The die is cast. I’m going back to Connecticut.”

She wanted to say something about abandoning a sinking ship, or some other rebuke, trite but true. Then, thinking that it would, after all, make no difference, she swallowed her indignation.

“Good luck to you, then, Mr. Ransomé.”

He hesitated. “I don’t know what you’re going to do. You know at least twenty-five of the hands left this
morning? Went off into the swamps to hide or else follow the army, I’m not sure which.”

“Then I shall have to manage with the ones who are left,” she said coolly.

The veneer of courage was not very deep. I really need someone; how am I ever going to bring any order out of this? All the familiar sounds were stilled: the quarreling and singing in the fields and the busy rumbling of wheels; the cheerful bleats and clucks from the barns. The silence was hopeless.

All these people to care for! Ferdinand was suddenly old. Emma was crushed by the melancholy debris of the house; she had survived cruel tragedy, yet dirt and disorder defeated her spirits. In the midst of general madness the two children had to be nurtured and somehow educated into some pattern of normality. Rosa, in these last hours, had disintegrated. All day she had been moaning: “Oh, if Henry were here, if Henry … We had such a good life together .… He loved the opera … Oh, we heard Jenny Lind … and we saw George
Harby’s Nick of the Woods
at its premiere .… Such a beautiful life … he would never believe that I’ve come to this.” She was quite out of her senses.

Fanny came down the lane to meet Miriam.

“Simeon’s at the back door. He wants to talk to you.”

Wearily, Miriam responded, “What about?”

“About a crop. And he wants to tell you, he saved four mules. Hid them in the swamp.”

Well, that was a blessing. And Simeon was going to stay.

Fanny was handing her a velvet string bag. She couldn’t think what it was, she was so tired.

“What’s this, Fanny?”

“Your diamonds. Did you forget?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. Thank you, Fanny.”

For a moment, as so often in the past, they stood looking at each other, and as so often, too, Miriam wondered what the other was really thinking.

Fanny said softly, “I’m sorry about Mr. Eugene. Miss Angelique’s taking it very hard.”

“I know.” Then Miriam said, “I am, too,” and thought, We made each other so miserable, and still I would bring him back this minute if I could.

Fanny turned brisk. “I’m going to stuff the mattresses with Spanish moss. Those men ruined them with their machetes, or whatever you call those wicked things.”

“Sabers.”

“Well. Shall I send Simeon?”

“Yes, send him around to the verandah.”

Goodness, he must be seven feet tall! She didn’t even remember having seen him before, but then, there had been so many of them, working acres away from the house.

But suddenly a name came to her.

“Jasper.” Eugene had mentioned a Jasper. “Is he still here on the place? My husband always admired him, so I thought—”

“Yes, missis, he still here, but he much too old to run things. We all, there’s about twenty of us left, we all decided I’m the one. Yes, ma’am, I’m the one. I got youth and strength, and I knows how to run things.”

Miriam regarded him carefully and made a decision.

“All right, then, you’ll take charge, Simeon. You’ll plan with me, the way Mr. Ransome used to plan with my husband. You’ll teach me. The main thing is, we all have to eat. What’s to be done about that?”

“Well, missis, we got some vegetables coming up. They didn’t see the back garden behind the barn. And
I saved a few chickens in the swamps, some hens that belong to me. If we don’t eat them now, we can have eggs and pullets next summer. There are two cows left, one’s ready to calve.”

Around the corner came Chanute and Maxim with their brass buttons glistening. Miriam called to them.

“Come here. You know Simeon.”

They raised astonished, lofty eyebrows.

“But of course you know him! You’ve seen him around, don’t tell me you haven’t. Oh, I understand that you’ve never done field or barn work in your lives, but everything’s different now. No more fancy uniforms. If you want to eat, you’ll have to work, you’ll have to help out, you and Blaise. We all will have to help out. You understand?”

“Oh, yes, Miss Miriam,” they said in unison.

To Miriam’s surprise Chanute was grinning. And then Miriam did a reckless thing.

“Tell me, why haven’t you all run off the way the others did?”

The disparate three looked at each other, suddenly united in the singleness of their intent. The wide, white grins spread humorously. Chanute spoke first.

“Because. The Secesh will be back,” he said.

So it was as simple as that. They’d thought it all out. Well, no matter. Just take one day at a time, that’s all we can do.

One day at a time.

Now began a series of unexpected visitations.

A milk-blue sky was turning white, the sickly white of a fish’s underbelly, and Miriam was calculating how long it would be before the storm broke, when she saw a carriage turn into the lane. Four fine horses pulled it; a coachman rode high—and alone in the back seat sat a woman in a yellow dress so glossy that even at that distance it could be recognized as satin.