Mimosa Grove (28 page)

And then there was Justin. She wouldn’t tell him, because it served no purpose he would ever understand, but she knew, as surely as she knew her own name, that in another lifetime his name had been Joshua, and he’d given a promise to a woman that he was still trying to keep.

But what of Joshua? Had he made it to the river? And if he did, how long did he wait? Did he witness Chantelle’s untimely death, or did he, too, fall prey to the fury of a rejected husband who valued pride above those he’d promised to love?

As she sat staring out the window, Marie knocked on her door.

“Laurel…honey? You awake?”

The knob turned, then Marie pushed the door inward and came in carrying breakfast on a tray.

Laurel got out of bed, took the tray from her and set it aside, then put her arms around Marie and tried not to cry.

Marie frowned but held tight to Laurel, sensing she was in some distress.

“That was a bad storm last night,” she said. “Did you have some bad dreams? Here now…you get yourself back in bed and have some of my hot biscuits and jam.”

“Not unless you sit with me,” Laurel said.

Marie looked a bit taken aback, but when Laurel dragged the tray into the middle of the bed, then sat down, the old woman followed. Laurel buttered a biscuit half, then topped it with jam and handed it to Marie.

“For all you have done, for all the years you’ve done it.”

Marie smiled a bit self-consciously but took the bread and ate.

“Not bad, if I say so myself.”

Laurel fixed the other half for herself and, sitting cross-legged in the bed, shared her meal and her dreams.

It was hours after that when Laurel remembered the lightning strike, and immediately, she had to go see. She changed her shoes and then went to find Marie to tell her where she was going.

Marie frowned at the news. “What if that old painter still prowlin’ around in the trees?”

“They say it’s already dead,” Laurel said.

“There’s more than one cat in this state,” Marie argued.

Laurel frowned. “So…do we have a gun?”

“Your grandmama wouldn’t have slept a wink if she knew there was a weapon on this place.”

Something about the way she answered made Laurel suspicious.

“Okay…but do you have a gun she didn’t know about?”

Marie blinked; then she started to grin.

“I knew you was somethin’. First time I laid eyes on you, I knew you gonna be hard to match.”

“Well?”

“Can you shoot?” Marie asked.

“I’m not afraid of guns. I can certainly take aim, and I can pull a trigger. Have I ever shot one before? No.”

Marie shrugged. “Me, neither. But two old women livin’ alone out here in the bayou didn’t make sense without something to protect us. Wait here.”

Laurel grinned. The more she got to know this feisty little woman, the more she hoped to grow old just like her.

Marie came back with a shoe box and handed it to Laurel with a flourish.

“It’s in there,” she said. “Loaded an’ all. I had the man at the pawn shop load it when I first bought it, and since I haven’t had call to use it, it’s still full up.”

“How long ago was that?” Laurel asked as she untied the string around the box and lifted the lid.

“Um, nearly ten, no, eleven years, I guess.”

“Lord,” Laurel muttered, and then took out the gun.

It was a revolver, and she didn’t want to know how old it was before Marie had bothered to purchase it. But it was loaded, that much she could see. She picked it up gingerly, then let it hang between two fingers while she debated the best place to carry it on her.

“Here,” Marie said, and took a small canvas tote bag from the back of the kitchen door. “This is what I use when I pick apples to make pies. This bag holds just enough apples for two pies. I reckon it can hold one gun.”

“Okay,” Laurel said, and put the gun inside.

“Just sling it over your shoulder like a purse,” Marie said. “I don’t think the gun will go off…do you?”

Laurel grinned. “Don’t ask me. You’re the expert, remember?”

Laurel rolled her shoulder to test the weight of the bag, then traded it to the other side and rolled it again. Both times, the handles slid downward and she just caught the bag before it could fall.

Marie snorted beneath her breath and took the bag off Laurel’s shoulder before she started out the door. “We don’t neither one of us have sense enough to pound sand in a rat hole, and if you tripped and fell, likely you’d shoot yourself in the ass, so I’m thinking you just leave this here with me, go see about your lightning strike, and then get back here on the double.”

“I think you’re right,” Laurel said, and started out the door as Marie called after her, “You have any troubles, you just holler. I’ve got the gun.”

Laurel kept on walking without letting herself consider the consequences of that remark.

“In a shoe box. Eleven years. Lord have mercy,” she muttered, then laughed.

It felt so good to be outside after three days of rain that she began to jog. The ground was soft beneath her shoes, still spongy from the storm. Drowned flowers and downed limbs were lying everywhere, and she made a mental note to give Tula a call and have her grandson, Claude, come help her clean up the mess.

The closer she got to the trees, the louder the roar of the river became. When she was at the edge of the grove, she turned and looked back at the house, aligning the windows of her room with where she was standing, then turned around and closed her eyes. In her mind, she saw darkness and rain pouring against the windows—then the flash. It had been left of center of the view from her windows, which meant she needed to go a little bit west. It shouldn’t be hard to find, because, from the sound she’d heard, it had certainly struck something.

She opened her eyes and struck out in a westerly direction, but always looking inward toward the grove, looking for a blackened tree or one that had fallen, or maybe one that had split. She’d heard that lightning would travel through a tree and then come out through every root, ripping up the ground as if there had been an underground explosion. She was curious to know if that was an old wives’ tale or true.

A pair of white cockatoos flew past her head in a parallel race near the ground, while a raucous blue jay hopped about beneath a tree, feasting on worms that had been flooded out of their holes. On the outside, it made Mimosa Grove look like her own portion of paradise, but there had been snakes in paradise and a cougar in hers. She approached with caution.

Even then she almost didn’t see it. If a half-dozen birds and a small squirrel hadn’t erupted from the same spot and taken to the trees, she might have missed it. Curious as to what had caused them all to gather in one location, she shoved through a tangle of bushes and vines, then had to catch herself from falling into the hole.

She’d found the tree. It appeared to be one of the older ones. Lightning had split it right down the middle, and, weakened by the separation and age, it had toppled, taking centuries of dirt and the entire root system with it as it fell.

“Oh, my, what a shame,” Laurel said, thinking of all the life and years this tree had survived and stood witness to, only to be felled by a simple act of nature.

She leaned over carefully and stared down into the hole where the roots had been, squinting slightly as her eyes adjusted from bright sunlight to the darker qualities of shade.

The hole was deep. Far deeper than a grave. And there were all sorts of underground denizens that had been uprooted with the tree. Earthworms roiled together in small, muddy clumps as if disoriented by the weightlessness and light. Rocks of various sizes and shapes had been partially revealed, like shy strippers showing only bits of their skin. Something in the roots caught her eye, and she moved a bit closer to see, only to be startled moments later when she saw it was a small black snake.

Still a city girl at heart and unable to tell good snakes from bad, she stepped back to give it a wide berth, and as she did, tripped on an exposed root from another tree and fell backward onto the ground.

It was the unexpected motion that startled her, more than the impact of the fall. And she was already laughing at herself when she started to rise. Then she froze.

Being prone rather than upright had drastically changed her view of the fallen tree—and what lay tangled within it. They were unmistakably bones, caught within the spidery, weblike network of roots, then washed clean from the downpour after the tree had fallen. She was wondering if they were animal or human when she saw the small skull and somehow she knew. For the first time in centuries, Chantelle LeDeux, or what was left of her, lay exposed to the bright light of day.

She moaned softly, filled with regret, then rocked back on her heels, and as she did, she saw a second skull. It was larger than the first, and with a crack that ran from the eye socket to the top of the head. These people had not died a natural death.

“Oh, God…oh, God,” she whispered, then pushed herself upward and took a couple of steps back. Taking a slow breath and making herself calm down, she retraced her steps to the edge of the hole and then knelt. If she stretched just the least bit forward, she would be able to reach the second skull. Without thinking of what might happen, she leaned forward, and time stood still.

Joshua was scared. As scared as he’d ever been in his life. The night sounds on the river were frightening, but not as frightening as facing his angry master would be. He’d been whipped near to death just for breaking a dish. He didn’t want to think what would happen for knocking the man out and helping his wife get away.

So he sat and he waited, praying for the sound of her voice, waiting for the touch of her hand to give him courage to do what must be done.

Morning dawned, and still he sat huddled down in
the canoe, afraid to stay, needing to run, but he’d given her a promise he wasn’t willing to break.

As he sat, he thought he heard dogs, and the sound made him sick. They weren’t just the barks of dogs in the woods. If they were hounds, they belonged to the massuh and were most likely on his trail.

He stared up at the riverbank, willing Chantelle LeDeux to appear, but all he saw were the trees beginning to be defined by color, as well as shape, as the light continued to spread.

Mist was rising from the water now as the warmth of the sun kissed the surface. He stared downriver, wondering how far he would be able to get before they shot him on sight. He thought of his woman, and then his baby girl, and knew he would never see them again. Something had happened. Something bad, or Chantelle would have come. It took him a few moments to realize that when he’d thought of her then, he’d thought of her by name. It was the first time he’d let the familiarity into his head.

With one last look toward the banks above, he reached down into the canoe for the paddle, and as he did, color in the river caught his eye. He swallowed a moan.

A flash of yellow, then a shadow of pure white. Chantelle had been wearing a yellow dress when he’d last seen her. Dear God, he didn’t want to be right.

He looked again, and as he did, huge tears filled his eyes.

“Poor baby…poor tiny little thing…I shoulda killed him where he lay.”

He shifted his weight so that he was balanced on both feet, then bent over and lifted her half-submerged body from the stream.

Her face was swollen, both from the beating and from being in the water all night, and something, probably a big catfish, had eaten the small finger from her right hand.

He pulled her across his lap, then tried to straighten her dress and fix her hair.

“So, little missy, you done tried to keep your word to me, didn’t you? You came, jus’ like you said you would.”

Then he closed his eyes and lifted his face to the morning.

Upriver, the hunters froze, stunned by the high, keening sound of animal pain and the roar that followed.

“God have mercy,” one of the man muttered. “What was that?”

But it was LeDeux, bandaged and bloody and at the head of the pack, who turned his head toward the sound like a wolf suddenly scenting prey.

“It’s him,” he said. “And when we get him, don’t forget that he’s mine.”

The men nodded, none willing to look at their friend who’d been so shamed. They all believed his story and were incensed on his behalf. None of them wanted to think one of their women might turn to a Nigra’s bed. It was different when a man took one of the women. It meant nothing and, to most, was simply a way of strengthening the seed of his chattel. But for a woman to take a black was a sin most foul. They empathized with LeDeux in many ways and yet secretly wondered what had been lacking in him that would have caused his own woman to do such a deed.

“Let’s go,” LeDeux said, and unleashed the dogs.

Joshua heard them coming before he saw them. He glanced down at Chantelle’s body, where he’d laid it out upon the ground, then picked up the club he’d made of a piece of deadfall and waited for fate to catch up.

Yesterday, when he’d gotten out of his sweet woman’s bed, he’d had no thought of dying on the morrow, but yet it had come, and he would not leave Chantelle behind just to try to outrun it.

Suddenly the dogs came out of the trees and were upon him, snarling and snipping at his arms and his legs as he swung the club, trying to keep them back. But when one of them got past him and bit at Chantelle’s leg, he lost control.