The Cottoncrest Curse (5 page)

“I speak only the truth about my goods,” Jake replied in French. “If you want to use your knife, the one you bought off that American trader last year that I've had to sharpen twice for you since then, you go should do only that. Why would I try to change your mind when you clearly know what you like? Since you are happy with your American knife, I'll simply put this one, with its fine wooden handle and blade so sharp it would cleave an apple in two and allow you to hold it together so that no one could see the cut, back into my cart.”

The customer was always right. Jake took the Freimer knife and slowly turned back toward his cart. No need to hurry. The longer he took, the better.

“You turn your back on me before I finish, no?”

Jake paused, his hand above the cart.

“I think you are becoming just like those American traders. Too quick. No wonder those American women are like ice. Their men do not know how to satisfy them. Too quick with everything, yes?”

Jake slowly turned back around, the Freimer knife still in his hand. “I think you are already like those Americans say the Acadians are— too slow. If you do everything as slowly as you do business, your wife must fall asleep on you before you begin, no?”

Trosclaire laughed loudly, his open mouth showing his five remaining teeth. “My wife, Aimee, and I have eleven children to show that I am not too slow!”

Jake responded with a grin, “That does not prove you are not too slow. It only proves that you have a wife who is very, very patient.”

Trosclaire reached under his rocking chair and retrieved a thick jug with a wooden stopper. He took a swig and, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, handed it to Jake. “My wife, she is patient so that she can enjoy everything. And I give her plenty to enjoy, I guarantee. You try this, my friend, and see if it does not make you enjoy life more.”

Jake stepped up onto the narrow porch and lifted the jug to his lips. If a customer offered you a drink, you knew you had a sale assured. The fiery liquid burned his gullet, but the reaction he showed was one of complete satisfaction. Humor the customer at every turn.

“How are you going to prove to me that this knife, she is all that you say she is?”

Jake shrugged his shoulders, as if he were puzzled. “That is a good question. What would you suggest?”

Trosclaire stood up, the old cane rocking chair creaking. Jake could see that two slats on the chair were broken, but Trosclaire didn't mind it, any more than he minded the fact that several boards in the porch were missing.

Trosclaire put his hands on his hips, looking out over the bayou, its brown water barely moving downstream, its surface broken here and there by an occasional fish feeding near the surface or a snake slowly swimming across to the reedy shore. “You are the man who wants to make the sale of this knife, which you haven't even told me the price of yet, so she must be expensive, and you want me to tell
you
how to prove what you want to sell me is good?”

Jake turned toward the bayou to look in the same direction as Tros-claire and remained quiet. Let the customer convince himself.

“A
boucherie
for a
cochon de lait,
I think. That, my friend, would be a good test.”

Jake nodded in agreement.

“And I think,” Trosclaire added, pulling a plug of tobacco out of his pocket and sticking it in his jaw, “you should have the honor. About your knife, I think, myself, she cuts like a dog's leg. You say no? You should show me how this knife, how she cuts so easily that the pig will not even squeal.

From Trosclaire's viewpoint, Jake's face showed nothing but agreement.

But, inside, Jake didn't like it at all. He was going to make the sale, that was certain, but pigs were not kosher. They did not have cloven hooves. They did not chew their cud. There was no way to slaughter a non-kosher animal to make its meat kosher.

And Jake did not want to kill again.

Dr. François Cailleteau flicked the ash from his cigar. When Bucky came into town to get him and dragged him away from his afternoon appointments, he hadn't been happy. But, he had ridden out here. Raifer wouldn't have disturbed him if it hadn't been important, and anyway, it had been more than a year since he had been out to Cottoncrest.

The ride from town had been long, and Dr. François Cailleteau found that the older he got, the less he liked to travel. He was getting too fat, and it was now difficult to get up on the rig. The road from Parteblanc to Cottoncrest was even more rutted than he had remembered, and his excess flesh rubbed uncomfortably against his clothing as the wooden wheels jolted along. Now that he was here at Cottoncrest, he was out of breath from his journey. A damn shame, he thought, that now even riding in a buggy was exhausting.

At Raifer's instruction Marcus and the other boys had taken the bodies out of the house, had laid them out on boards set up on saw-horses in the barn, and had covered them with sheets. Rebecca's head had been put in a wooden bucket set next to her body. The bucket also was covered with a sheet.

The boys were mopping up the staircase and landing. It had to be done, and it kept them away from the barn. Raifer had given them specific instructions on what to do. They didn't understand why he wanted it done in a certain way, but they nodded their heads and went to work.

The sharecroppers had come out of the sugarcane fields up to the big house to ask questions, but Raifer had told them only that the Colonel Judge and his wife were dead, that he'd have more information for them later. Although they already knew from Marcus that the curse had hit again, they were not going to cross the Sheriff. They retreated from the big house and congregated in small groups under the row of oak trees that lined the wide plantation entrance from the dock on the Mississippi River to the house, speculating on the curse and how Little Miss would take the deaths and what it all meant for their future.

As Dr. Cailleteau leaned against the rough walls of the stable, the flab of his neck pouring over his collar and partially obscuring the top of his tie, Raifer lifted the sheets off the bodies. The Colonel Judge's lifeless face was staring straight up at the barn ceiling high above them. Rebecca's full, shapely breasts pointed toward the floor, resting against the board, the stays at the back of her dress still tightly laced. She was heavier than she once was, and little mountains of the now unyielding flesh lumped beneath the bloody fabric. The afternoon sun, playing between the cracks in the wall and filtering through the hay in the upper loft, cast a yellow glow on the small of her back where the Colonel Judge's head had rested.

Despite Rebecca's bloody clothes and headless torso, and despite the fatal wounds to his friend's head, Dr. Cailleteau did not flinch. While serving in the Confederate army, he had seen worse. He had tripped on body parts blown off in battle as he tried to get to survivors writhing in agony. He had taken his scalpel and removed bullets from the stomachs and groins of soldiers while his orderly sat on their chests to keep them still, while assistants put tourniquets on the stubs of arms that had been blown off. More times than he cared to count, he had taken his saw and amputated a trooper's leg to save his life, the soldier screaming in pain as he was held down by those who were gagging from the gangrene's stench.

Dr. Cailleteau reached down and closed his friend's sightless eyes. “Well, Raifer, I don't know why you called me out here. If you want me to pronounce them dead, then that's easy.”

Dr. Cailleteau threw the stump of his cigar onto the dirt floor of the barn, ground the remaining glow out with the heel of his boot, and pulled another cheroot from the vest that covered his ample stomach. He took a match out of his pocket, struck it on the rough wood of the board on which the Colonel Judge's body lay, and lit the cigar, his sixth of the day. “In my opinion they're dead.”

Bucky started to smirk with amusement. The doctor always had a dry wit. Then Bucky caught Raifer's glare, and the smirk vanished.

“What I want to know,” said Raifer, “is exactly how this happened.”

Despite Raifer's harsh look, Bucky couldn't resist. He was going to prove to Raifer and the doctor that he was someone important, that he was someone smart, that he had been thinking carefully about things. He would show them both.

“I mean, it's clear, ain't it, Doc? The Colonel Judge slit her throat there on the stairs and then lay down on her back, all sad-like because he did it. Maybe he even hugged her, but she was dead already. And then he shot himself. It's the curse, ain't it. The curse came true again.”

Raifer's eyes drilled into Bucky, trying to catch his attention. That boy just couldn't keep his mouth from flapping.

Dr. Cailleteau took the cigar out of his mouth and exhaled a large cloud of smoke. “They found him lying on top of her? Well, Bucky, since you got this figured out already, why don't you tell me how he did it?”

Raifer let the boy yap some more. The Doc was just leading him on. Let the Doc have his fun, and then we'll get on with it.

Bucky felt a swell of pride. The Doc was relying on him. Wait 'til he told his friends!

“The way I figure it,” Bucky began, his hands carving the air with emphasis, “he had this here knife what we found.” Bucky's hand now grabbed an invisible knife. “He takes the knife, and he cuts her throat just like you scythe down a stalk of cane.
WHOOSH
.”

Bucky swung his invisible knife through the air, his arm extended, his elbow locked.

“She's dead, you see, the minute her throat is cut.”

Bucky, now pretending to be Rebecca, fell dramatically to the barn floor. From the floor he looked up at Dr. Cailleteau. “Dead. She's here dead and bleeding. The blood is gushin' out all over the place.”

Bucky then got back on his feet and carelessly dusted himself off, leaving bits of hay stuck in his hair and on his shirt.

“Then the Colonel Judge, he's sorry he did it. He killed her in anger or maybe a jealous rage. I mean, he was so old and she was so young. Or maybe because he was going crazy. Old people get like that sometimes, you know.”

Raifer knew that Bucky was getting himself in deeper and deeper. To Bucky, anyone older than thirty was ancient. Bucky wasn't stopping to think that the Doc was older than the Colonel Judge.

“Anyway,” Bucky continued, “he's now sorry, so very sorry, seeing her all dead and everything.”

Bucky was now fully engaged in his story. He fell to one knee. “So, he kneels down on the stair to see if maybe she's still alive.”

Bucky, as the Colonel Judge, vigorously shook the invisible body of Rebecca until it was whipping like cane stalks in a bad storm. He then laid her invisible body back onto the floor and raised his arms above his head, pouted his lips, and assumed an exaggerated expression of woe. “She is dead! She is dead! My loving wife is dead! What have I done?”

Looking up at Dr. Cailleteau, he dropped his pretended wailing and said, matter-of-factly, “He can't stand it. He must hug her once more.”

Bucky became the Colonel Judge again bending over Rebecca. “He puts his head down on her back, giving her one last hug. She's face down on the stairs, so he hugs her back… he don't hug her head, because he has cut her neck all up and it's too bloody, so he hugs her right here.”

Bucky reached out and grabbed a feed bag that was hanging on the stall and placed it on the floor. “The small of her back. Right here.”

Then Bucky laid down on his stomach, his face turned sideways on the feed bag. “He takes his pistol, and he puts it to his forehead…”

Bucky took an invisible pistol and, pointing it down onto his forehead and the floor below, pulled the trigger. “
BANG!
” The invisible bullet went through Bucky's forehead, heading toward the feed bag and the barn floor.

He stood back up and dusted himself off again. There was still hay in his hair, and now bits of feed were stuck on his collar and on his cheek.

“And that's the way it was done!” he said proudly.

Dr. Cailleteau waited a full minute before responding. He took a couple of puffs on his cigar. He leaned back against a stall door. Finally, he turned to Raifer and said, in his usual slow and deliberate manner, “And to think, Bucky figured that out all on his own.”

Raifer just waited. Let the Doc continue to have his fun.

Dr. Cailleteau looked over at Bucky. “You may have a real future, Bucky. If not in keeping the peace with a badge, then in one of those riverboat performing troupes that come through here on the way to New Orleans. Have you ever thought of doing that?”

Thought about it. Oh, he had thought about it. On his long rides through the back roads of Petit Rouge Parish, riverboats were something that filled his mind. He had never been on one, but he had imagined what it would be like. He would steam up and down the river. He would see New Orleans and Baton Rouge and Natchez and places so far away you could only dream about them. He would be in those plays they did with the fancy ladies. He would save a beautiful girl from a villain every night, and they would thank him and bless him, and the audiences would applaud. He would be famous.

Raifer saw Bucky getting worked up again. Before the boy had a chance to speak and run his fool mouth off some more, Raifer intervened. “Doc, just take a look at the Colonel Judge and tell me what you think.”

Dr. Cailleteau groaned as he shifted his massive bulk and walked over to the board where the Colonel Judge's body lay. Clenching the cigar in his teeth and puffing away as he worked, he put his fat hands, with short, squat fingers that moved with amazing deftness, on the Colonel Judge's cheeks and turned the now-stiff body back and forth to examine both sides of the head.

A small bullet hole was in the left temple. Powder burns were on the skin, and hints of blue powder could be seen in the Colonel Judge's white hair near the hole.