The Cottoncrest Curse (12 page)

“Don't know when, Tee Ray, but I guess soon. They got that plot where the General was buried, along with what was left of his other sons. But you know all about that. I guess that's where they're gonna put the Colonel Judge and his wife.”

Tee Ray knew all too well about the plot. He knew his mother was not buried there. She was never allowed to be buried there, not that Tee Ray ever asked the Colonel Judge. His mother would not have wanted to be buried next to the General anyway. But that didn't matter. What did matter was that, if Raifer was looking for a bullet and if he had sent Bucky away, then Raifer must have found something. Or suspect something. Bucky, so anxious to please, could be very useful.

“Tell you what, Bucky. I think that your seeing the bodies is a good sign. An omen almost. You have described their deaths so perfect, it was almost like you could feel exactly what had happened.”

Bucky straightened up and walked more proudly next to his horse. He knew his way of telling the story made all the difference. It made it real. Tee Ray had seen that. The others always listened to and respected Tee Ray. They followed him. Bucky knew that if Tee Ray told the others how good and real his story was, the others would respect him as well.

“You know, Bucky, I would like to see those bodies. Just once, before they're put in boxes and buried. To pay my last respects and all. After all, I sharecropped his land for years. It's the least I can do. Do you think you could take me to see them?”

Bucky thought about it, but only for a minute. What was the harm? If anyone deserved to see the body of the Colonel Judge, it was Tee Ray. The flimsy could wait. Raifer didn't want anyone else seeing the bodies, that seemed clear. Why else had he asked Cubit to start making coffins rather than getting old man Ganderson in town, who usually handled this for all the white families, to build a couple of coffins? Raifer wanted all the glory for himself. He wanted to be all-important. That wasn't fair.

Bucky figured he could leave his horse here, and he and Tee Ray could double back to the barn behind the big house, look at the bodies, and be back here in forty minutes. Raifer would never know. Then Tee Ray could tell the others how important and resourceful Bucky really was. Raifer was getting old. One day he'd have to stop being sheriff. With the help of Tee Ray and the others, Bucky would have that job for sure.

“Tee Ray, let me tie up the horse off the road, and you just follow me.”

The old lady sat in a wide, wooden rocking chair on the veranda. The shade from the tall columns, and from the protruding second-floor porch and the even higher eaves, shielded her from the intermittent sun that peeked through the gathering clouds. She could smell the rain coming. She could feel it. The change in humidity caused her joints to ache.

She sipped daintily from the coffee in the porcelain demitasse cup, thinking how nice it was that these two pleasant men had come to see her. The younger one seemed so friendly, even if he didn't speak the language. And the fat, bald man, who had made her open her mouth and had looked in her ears and who had asked her all kinds of foolish questions, seemed nice enough as well.

She held out her cup and the kind black woman, who seemed vaguely familiar, promptly refilled it.

Raifer had patiently waited until she had arisen and had dressed. He had waited until Dr. Cailleteau had examined her. The Doc, although he had grumbled about it, had driven out from town saying that he hadn't seen her in almost a year and this was probably as good a time as any, what with all that was happening, and he ought to be there anyway when Raifer questioned her, in case she needed medical help afterward.

It was now almost noon. She was attired, as she always was, in a dress with a high lace collar that encircled her narrow, patrician neck. Long sleeves with lace cuffs covered her bony arms. It was obvious by her slow movements when she came out onto the veranda, leaning heavily on Jenny's arm, that she was in constant pain. Despite her aches, however, she sat in the rocking chair with an enviably erect posture.

She had become far more fragile since Raifer had last seen her more than a year earlier. Her skin was as thin as the finest gossamer linen. Her high cheekbones, of which she always had been justly proud, now seemed bony protrusions threatening to burst through. Narrow cracks ran from her lips and extended like tiny spiderwebs above and below her mouth.

“It was very nice,” Raifer began, “for you to see me today. You are looking quite well.”

The old lady gave Raifer a pleasant, blank smile.

“The last time I was here, we had talked about the time Cottoncrest was being built. Do you remember that?”

The old lady's expression did not change. She sipped at her coffee and, holding the tiny cup in both hands, gazed out at the Mississippi River, which was just beyond the wide path of live oaks that lined the entrance to the big house. Now and then a large trunk of a tree or a broken limb would swirl by, pulled under and then popping up a hundred feet downstream, a captive of the brown, swirling water that stretched almost a mile wide at this point before curving south again.

“I told you, Mr. Raifer, like I told Dr. Cailleteau, she doesn't remember either of you. From day to day she doesn't remember me. She doesn't even remember En glish anymore. Only French. It's like she's lost somewhere in the past, and everything recent has disappeared from her like shadows being chased by the sun.” Jenny stood dutifully beside the old lady. She didn't dare sit in the presence of the white men, especially the Sheriff and the only doctor in the parish. “Do you want me to translate for you?”

Raifer and Dr. Cailleteau could see for themselves that what Jenny and Sally and Marcus had all said was true.

Dr. Cailleteau had treated many patients who had the capacity to live but who just gave up, sliding into death rather than fighting it. For them the mind controlled the body; when the mind refused to struggle, the body ceased to function. And yet there were others who were completely different, where sometimes the body was able to go on but the mind was not. Ever since the death of three of her sons, thirty years earlier, Thérèse-Claire had been a changed woman, and the General's death had altered her permanently. She had become increasingly remote. Always the lady. Always gracious. But she had less and less to talk about and had more and more difficulty remembering names and events and faces. And now it had come to this, thirty years afterward.

Dr. Cailleteau had been on the battlefield, but when he had returned after the war the story became all too clear. It could all be traced to 1863, starting in April of that year. The General was home, recuperating from the injuries that had caused his leg to be amputated, when there had come the news from Charleston Harbor that at first had brought joy to the General and Thérèse-Claire. The Union's warships had been repulsed with the loss of only fourteen Confederates. Their oldest son was in command of a unit there, and they were proud, until the word came that he was one of the casualties.

Then, ten days later, over at Vermillion Bayou in Lafayette Parish, Major General Richard Taylor's Confederate forces were defeated by northern armies. In the retreat up the bayou, their second oldest son was killed.

As if that was not awful enough, starting in May 1863, there were more disasters for the South and for the Chastaine family. There had been the terrible battle at Plains Store, near Baton Rouge. Despite reinforcements being brought in, the Confederates were routed and had retreated to Port Hudson, leaving behind hundreds of dead, including her youngest son.

Then came two letters, six weeks apart. The first, from Augustine, let them know that, in leading his brigade, he had beaten back an attempted Union landing on the lower bluffs at Port Hudson and that he had been promoted to colonel. The second, in mid-July, had been hand delivered by a young orderly.

Thérèse-Claire had told François Cailleteau, on one of those long summer evenings on the veranda a few years later, that when the General had seen the orderly riding up to the big house under the arched oaks, his uniform immaculate, his posture rigid, that the General knew what was to come. The General did not even open the letter, sealed with red wax. He had handed it to his wife, Thérèse-Claire, who had read out loud the words Lieutenant Alden Reynard had written, declaring with sadness the news that he had to deliver. The Confederates had been forced to surrender Port Hudson. Only twenty-four hours before the surrender, Lieutenant Reynard himself, over his protests against being ordered from the field, had been sent out from Port Hudson in a regrettably unsuccessful effort to locate and bring in additional replacements. The morning before that order, his good friend Colonel Augustine Chastaine had led a troop of men against yet another attempted landing by Unionists at the foot of the bluffs near the bend in the river. Colonel Augustine Chastaine had fought valiantly and with great bravery against an overwhelming force. When last seen, Colonel Chastaine had been shot off his horse and was lying bleeding on the field of battle. After the Colonel had fallen, his men lost hope and retreated to the top of the bluffs. Due to the intense gunfire, the bodies of those who had fallen in that last charge could not be retrieved. Major General Franklin Gardner and the rest of the officers had been captured after the surrender, but, according to the best information, Colonel Chastaine was not with them, so it was beyond perchance that the Colonel had perished leading what all would remember as the most valiant efforts of a Confederate son. Lieutenant Reynard concluded his letter with the heartfelt hope that when the South emerged victorious from this conflict, as she must, Colonel Chastaine's efforts would be writ large among the mighty who had shown those cowardly blue-bellies, who fired upon our brave soldiers from the safety of ships, what true heroism was.

It was then, while the southern armies were in retreat in Louisiana and while the New Orleans port on the Mississippi River was firmly in Union hands after the fall of Port Hudson, that her husband began his own retreat, a retreat into himself. Four sons, all dead. A daughter, long before that departed. For the General, it was a slow descent into an internal hell that finally overcame him.

After the General's death, Thérèse-Claire had continued her own withdrawal. Now it appeared to Dr. Cailleteau that her retreat was successful and permanent. She was locked in her past, in a safe time before war. Before children.

“Ask her if she knew of anyone who would want to cause the Colonel Judge harm.”

“Mr. Raifer, do you really want me to do that? I haven't told her anything, and I don't want to upset her.”

“Jenny, either you do it, or I'll ask Dr. Cailleteau to do it, and I think she's more comfortable with you. Just do as I say. Ask her had the Colonel Judge—had Augustine—had any problems with anyone lately.”

“Yes sir, but it won't do any good.”

“Don't you backtalk me. Just ask her.”

“
La madame Thérèse-Claire, savez-vous si quelqu'un jamais a exprimé un souhait pour nuire M. Augustin?
”

The old lady looked puzzled, as if trying to recall something from the dim and distant past. Then she smiled once more, her cracked lips revealing a mouth filled with yellowing teeth, and, pointing at Dr. Cailleteau, said, “
Augustin. Cela'les un nom agréable. Je pense que j'a su une fois que quelqu'un a nommé Augustin. Est-ce que c'est cet homme?
”

She then turned back to look out at the river again.

Dr. Cailleteau leaned back in his chair and pulled out another cigar. She was in her own safe place. There was no hope for her to return to the present.

“Well?” demanded the Sheriff of Jenny.

“Mr. Raifer, all she said was ‘Augustine. That's a nice name. I think I once knew someone named Augustine. Is that who this man is?' ”

“There they are, Tee Ray. See, I told you.”

Tee Ray and Bucky had sidled around through the back door. The fields far behind the barn were now masked by the smoke, and if the wind shifted again, the soot-filled dark mass might even roll toward the house.

They were now standing over the boards that held the bodies, the sheets still in place, the cloth-covered bucket with Rebecca's head placed near her feet.

Tee Ray pulled back the white linen that covered the Colonel Judge. Flies buzzed around the body. Maggots were squirming in the nostrils.

They had closed the doors behind them, and the stale air inside was warm and heavy, the stench from rotting flesh filling the barn. “Bucky, you got gimp to bring me here, I give you that.”

Bucky pulled himself up a little taller. To have Tee Ray compliment him on his courage made him proud.

“Why don't you go keep an eye out. I just want to have a look-see. I think I'm entitled to that.”

Bucky knew that if anyone was entitled to gaze upon the Colonel Judge one last time, it was Tee Ray.

Bucky promptly went over to the door and peered through the slats where the wood had warped. He could see the big house a few hundred yards away and, north of that, paralleling the river, the fields where the fires would eventually reach.

As soon as Bucky's attention was directed outside, Tee Ray leaned over and stared hard at the lifeless man's face. No regal bearing now. No disdain for those he had treated as his lessers. As unworthies. No clever remarks to amuse those who came to his once-lavish parties. No more public embarrassment for those he refused to invite. No careful turns of phrases, all learned and full of fancy words, to confuse and confound. He was just another mass of dead flesh starting to putrefy, smelling so bad that even lavender water wouldn't mask the stench. Whatever soul he once had was long gone. Whatever fortune he once amassed was now for others to take.

Tee Ray gathered a mouthful of spit and let it drop on the Colonel Judge's cheek, the dampness making the maggots curl up. Serves him right. Dead was what the Colonel Judge should be. Just like his brothers were dead. Just like his father was dead. Just like Tee Ray's mother was dead.