The Outcasts (14 page)

Even Prudone as he rode towards Deerling had given telltale signs indicating impending violence. But Nate had been completely at his ease during the crossing, the memory of Deerling’s death dropping away for the briefest while.

He sat quietly, looking at his hands, thinking of the two rivers that joined at the ferry crossing, waters so opaque and muddy that his falling body would have cast little reflection and left only the parting of eddies to signify he had ever been there.

L
ucinda’s eyes were closed, but she was acutely aware that Bedford Grant was staring at her. She sat on a worn chaise, her head tilted back to expose the full length of her neck, her legs stretched out before her, ankles neatly crossed. The hem of her skirt had been carelessly raised, revealing the curves of her insteps in her heeled, kid-leather boots. She arched her foot more appealingly and felt the laces tighten against her skin.

May reclined next to her, her head in Lucinda’s lap. Occasionally, Lucinda would let her fingers find their way to May’s hair, and she would stroke it as she would have a cat.

Jane was also in the sitting room, opposite her, quietly sewing. Lucinda suspected that Jane was staring at her as well, but with a different intensity and purpose.

Lucinda had begun spending quite a few evenings with the Grants, eating supper with them and taking long walks with Bedford afterwards. The evenings spent at the Wallers’, when Bedford came to call on her, were an exercise in monumental restraint—restraining herself from giving exasperated replies in response to both Euphrastus’s puffed-up jealousy and his wife’s and daughter’s ridiculous swooning over Bedford’s courtship.

She was frustrated by the continued reluctance of Bedford to give her any more accounting of the gold coins other than to promise her that he would eventually reveal where they were hidden. She had given faithful reports of her progress in her letters to her supposed brother, Bill, but it had been a while since she had received a response, and the silence was filling her with anxiety, keeping her awake at nights.

May stirred and sat up. “Miss Carter, come for a walk with me.”

Lucinda opened her eyes and stretched. “Only if your sister comes with us.”

Jane looked up from her work, her expression wary. The shooting of the German had at first left her terrified and clinging, needing reassurance from Lucinda almost hourly that they had made the right decision in hiding his body, but then she’d become silent. Jane had made herself ill with worry, and now it was Lucinda’s turn to be Jane’s nursemaid. She encouraged the girl to eat and take walks after she had confined herself to her bedroom for days. After a full week of fearfulness, Jane embraced despondency; she was indifferent towards her family, and increasingly cold and guarded with Lucinda, avoiding her whenever possible.

May, however, seemed unaffected by the incident, or at least undisturbed by it; she used every opportunity to revisit the events with Lucinda, talking about it in hushed and eager tones, as though she were discussing a bolt of fabric she’d been forbidden to buy. The constant talk of the shooting was fraying Lucinda’s nerves, and she hoped May’s troublesome excitement would soon diminish.

Lucinda smiled at Jane, who ducked her head closer to her sewing. “Jane,” she prodded, “you look pale. Come with us.”

Bedford asked Jane, “Have you not been feeling well?” He sounded surprised; his daughter’s anguish had gone completely unnoticed.

“I’m well,” Jane murmured. She frowned, but she put her sewing aside and stood.

After gathering up her hat and shawl, Lucinda took Jane’s hand and led the sisters out onto the porch. The late-afternoon air was chilled, and Lucinda pulled her shawl higher around her shoulders.

They walked for a while in silence, moving towards Red Bluff Road and away from the bayou. It was an unspoken agreement among them that they would not return to the clearing by the water.

They crossed the road and walked onto the adjoining stretch of prairie grasses, the remaining shafts yellowed and fragile under their shoes. The feeble smell of marsh water threaded the breeze. They slowed their steps only when a snake crossed their path. Its tail thrashed against the dry vegetation, making a vibrating sound, and Lucinda thought it a rattlesnake. But Jane shook her head and declared it a king snake, harmful only to the rodents that burrowed in the fields. She turned and leveled her eyes at Lucinda. “Don’t worry, Miss Carter. It’s just a pretender.”

Three herons lifted their heads in unison to watch the women approaching, their feathers blue-gray under the slanting sun, and May exclaimed, “That will be us in thirty years: skinny-legged and stoop-shouldered.” Raising her shawl like a flag, she shrieked and ran, chasing the birds into flight.

Lucinda smiled and turned her face to catch more of the sun. “Such a pleasant day. I almost hate to begin the week at the school tomorrow.”

Jane hugged herself tighter with her crossed arms. “I don’t suppose you’ll have to be teaching much longer.”

“Jane, look at me. Look at me.” When Jane raised her chin to return the gaze, Lucinda asked, “Haven’t I always been kind to you, and to your family?”

Jane hesitated but answered, “Yes.”

“Then why have you become so sour towards me?”

Jane exhaled sharply but said nothing and turned to stare across the field.

Lucinda placed her hand on Jane’s arm. “That man would have killed me.” When there was no response, she dropped her hand, and they watched May chasing grasshoppers from their hiding places.

Jane took a few breaths and turned to Lucinda. “When that man attacked you, he said, ‘Where is it?’ What did he mean? What was he talking about?”

Lucinda looked at her blankly; her main recollection of him was of his hands closing around her throat.

Jane impatiently drew a strand of hair from her face. “He wanted something back that you had taken from him, didn’t he?”

Lucinda felt her face redden and she turned away, trying to veil a sudden burst of anger.

Jane clutched at her hand. “You’re only after the gold, aren’t you?”

Lucinda looked at the work-worn girl in surprise, realizing she should have known all along that Bedford would have told Jane, his closest ally and confidante, about the treasure, although he never would have revealed his discovery to his unpredictable younger daughter.

She gathered her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of. And the only thing I took from my attacker was myself. That you should question me in this way distresses me no end. It will distress your father as well.”

There was an edge of a threat at the last, and Jane flinched, but her eyes narrowed.

May approached them, flushed and breathless, her eyes alert to the tension between the two women. She looked at her sister calculatingly and then linked her arm through Lucinda’s. Pulling her back towards the house, May said, “Don’t mind Jane, Miss Carter. She’s just jealous that you’re getting Father now. She’ll have to find her own man soon.”

In the last hours of daylight, Bedford walked Lucinda back to the Wallers’, but she sighed and frowned, and when he asked her what the matter was, she would only shake her head. He invited her to linger on the porch but she pulled away, her hand on the doorknob.

“Lucinda, dear, what’s wrong? Is it something I’ve done?”

Lucinda gave him the back of her head. “It’s rather what you haven’t done. You don’t trust me, Bedford, and by your example, neither does your family. Jane was very cold and thoughtless with me today.” She opened the door, but he put his hand over hers.

“Of course I trust you. And as to Jane, I can’t imagine why she would be cold with you, but I’ll speak with her.”

Lucinda turned to face him. “Speak with her all you like, but you must lead by example.”

She walked inside, closed the door, and listened to him pacing and then retreating down the steps. She could play the slap-and-tickle game as well as anyone, and tomorrow she’d greet his anxious looks and reticent air with warm smiles and gentle encouragement. She had let him only kiss her cheek so far, his hands restrained by hers over the stays cinching her waist. But beginning tomorrow, she’d start to bring the pot to a full boil.

There were too many threats of discovery now, too many chances to be thwarted by Jane, by Tobias, by the Wallers; she had to move more decisively. If she had to pour whiskey down his throat (something he’d been doing on the sly himself more and more in recent days) and dance naked, she’d get Bedford Grant to reveal to her where the gold was hidden.

The following morning, she left for the school early. She made her way to the greenhouse first to write another letter, but as she approached the structure, she smelled the familiar odor of lit tobacco. She walked to the far side and saw Tobias seated in his usual place, his back against the wall.

She approached him slowly, careful not to alarm him. “I wanted to thank you for carrying me to the Grants’.”

He looked at her for a moment, one eye closed against the smoke, and nodded. “I had a cousin who had the shakes.”

She moved a few paces closer. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had any tobacco.”

He took another deep drag, let the smoke curl out between his lips, and then held it out to her. The smoker’s end was wet and glistening from being in his mouth, and in his one open eye was a challenge. She hesitated for only a moment, then stooped down and took the cigarette between her fingers. She drew deeply on it once and handed it back.

She looked around, laid the shawl on the ground, and sat next to him. She stared at his profile for a while. “Are you going to tell anyone about me?”

He looked her full in the face. “Who would I tell?”

“I don’t know. Whoever is most likely to reward you for the information.”

A slow creeping smile brought his lips apart, showing the tips of his teeth. “No one will thank me for that bit of news.”

She took the cigarette from him again. “How did you know?”

He let his head fall back against the wall and closed his eyes. “You ever walk along on a hot day and smell honeysuckle? You can’t always see it, it grows underneath sometimes, but you can sure smell it. It hits you sudden-like, and it stops you dead in your tracks.” He opened his eyes, turning his head to her. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the presence of a come-hither woman.”

She looked away but smiled and handed back the small butt end of the cigarette. “Why are you telling me all this? What do you gain from it?”

He squinted at her again. “I feel sorry for you. That surprise you? A black man feelin’ sorry for a white woman? But I do. These farmers get wind of what you are, and you’ll be out on the road before you can turn around.”

He pointed in a sweeping motion across the field. “Besides, all these people here, they can hardly stand the fact that I’m with them day after day, working my fields, raising my crops.” He crooked his thumb towards the greenhouse roof; the strengthening sun reflected off the glass negatives embedded there. “Looking at me, they understand they’re the upright dead, just like those ghosts there on the ceiling. Everything they knew or had or thought they were gonna have is gone.” He took out his tobacco pouch and some papers and began to roll another cigarette. “And you? You’re the mold in their bread. The worm in their belly that they live with but don’t know is there.”

He wet the paper with his tongue, then sealed it. “Yes.” He laughed softly. “How the mighty are fallen.” He handed Lucinda the cigarette, struck a light for her on the bottom of his match safe. “You and me, an upstairs girl and a slave that was,
we
are the new citizens for the coming of days.”

It took only a few days to convince Bedford, through furtive touching and desperate groping, kisses given and received on small, exposed places of naked skin, to take her to the place where he said he had discovered the gold.

On a warm evening after an unexpected rain, Bedford walked her to the clearing where the German had been killed and led her to the very banks where his body had been rolled into the water. At first she was alarmed, thinking the body had been discovered, but Bedford pointed across the water to a small island—what she had thought was simply a promontory jutting out from the opposite bank—and said, “That’s where Lafitte’s treasure is buried. There amongst the trees.”

They stood in the dark, his arm around her waist, and listened to the night sounds coming off the water and to the rustling grasses hiding the multitude of creeping, unseen things. She recalled the persimmons on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, and the alligators that guarded them. The island was so very near, and yet it would have to be approached with caution. She stepped closer to the waterline, ignoring the dense clay mud that leached into her shoes, and made a mental list of what would be needed to dig up the gold: a shallow boat for the crossing, ropes, picks, shovels, and, equally important, a sharp eye and a loaded gun for the swamp guardians. Bill would be pleased.

She shivered in expectation, and Bedford, thinking her cold or afraid, held her closer. He whispered to her, “I told you I would share everything I have with you.”

Kissing his cheek, she said, “Yes, Bedford, dear. I am certain now that you will.”

The next morning the air turned cool, and Lucinda watched the giant whooping cranes, their white and black feathers in stark contrast to the blue of the sky, gliding onto the bayou waters by the hundreds, heard their raucous calls carried with them from far northern places. Lucinda had been pushing Elam’s chair along the path towards Red Bluff Road and the schoolhouse but stopped to watch the birds, describing to him what he couldn’t see beyond his stiff, forward-facing view in his invalid’s chair.

She mused aloud, “They look too large and awkward to fly. How do you think they manage it?”

She looked down at Elam, smoothed some stray bits of hair off his forehead, and impulsively kissed him on the cheek. She had begun taking him to school with her every morning, placing him next to the stuttering boy, thinking it would do the both of them good. The boy talked to Elam throughout the day, his impediment lessening with practice. And for Elam, it was a rescue from the stultifying and suffocating air of the Waller house.

And because of her closer involvement with Elam, she now knew how the pistol had come to be in his lap. It was Euphrastus who, every morning, before Lucinda wheeled the invalid out the door, lifted the quilt and placed the gun underneath. When she asked him why he would do such a thing when Elam could neither move nor speak, Euphrastus answered that he hoped the constant reminder of his son’s unfulfilled duty as a soldier would rally him to, at the very least, claim his responsibilities as a Waller, cause him to shake off his imaginary wounds, raise himself from the invalid’s chair, and function as a man.