Cane River Part 19

It would have been easier to follow the path Philomene knew so many others had taken. Just pack up and leave without the weight of words or explanation, but she wanted the break to be civil and clean. The law declared her free, but the desperate woman standing in front of her was still white, and the need for caution was just as strong as it had always been.

"I am sorry, Madame. I do not have an extra year to spare," Philomene said. "It is a late start for me already."

"Six months, then. You owe me that."

"And what do you owe me for selling my Clement to Virginia?"

The idea of freedom had made her so heady that the words were out before Philomene thought them through. Unmistakably accusing words that couldn't be recalled. It would have been an unforgivable exchange between slave and mistress. In these s.h.i.+fting times they were disconcerting words between a freed woman and a landless farm wife. The previously unspoken took solid form and drew in breath of its own, putting the two women out of easy reach of one another.

"You ungrateful girl," Oreline said, her face twisted and ugly. "Standing there talking to me that way, carrying another b.a.s.t.a.r.d child. Those were difficult times. I did what I had to in order to save us all." Oreline panted softly, as if her breath were being stolen away. The air was too thick with bared truth to go forward safely.

Philomene drew back and reconsidered. There was nothing to gain by revisiting what could not be undone. Freedom or no freedom, there was everything to lose by setting up a backcurrent of ill will from her former mistress. Philomene no longer hated Oreline for selling Clement. That had become too heavy a beast to drag day after day, and she had deliberately forced herself to give up the hatred. She had long since shut out everything about Oreline except for whether she was useful or not useful, and she had bided her time. It was the way of things that Narcisse could be more advantageous to her now, and this was the right moment to move on. Antagonizing Oreline was foolhardy and counterproductive, and Philomene regretted pursuing that course.

"Oui, Madame. Forgive me. You are right. I overspoke." She drew in her voice, making it soft and humble, conciliatory. "You've been a good mistress, to my mother and to me and to Emily. I am grateful. It's just that now is the time to go off and build up something for my own children. You are a mother. You must understand." Madame. Forgive me. You are right. I overspoke." She drew in her voice, making it soft and humble, conciliatory. "You've been a good mistress, to my mother and to me and to Emily. I am grateful. It's just that now is the time to go off and build up something for my own children. You are a mother. You must understand."

"Your mother would never do such a thing, running off at the first opportunity."

"I am not my mother, Madame."

"I see that now," Oreline said. "Go, then. Leave me alone."

Philomene was glad to go. She never again wanted to work a farm on which she had no chance of earning a stake. She was aching to tackle fresh land. From the first news that the Yankees occupied New Orleans three long years before, she had played with the idea of staying on to work the land on Houbre's farm as a free person. The teasing specter of freedom sharpened with each whispered report of Southern battles lost, and her dreams got bolder each pa.s.sing year of the war. The more trampled and hopeless the Southern cause became, the more she allowed herself to envision her own land, and the Houbre farm became a hope too small, outgrown.

But Philomene was not one for idle dreams and wishful thinking. She had learned the hard lesson about land owners.h.i.+p from watching the chain of events after Ferrier died from yellow fever. You could be forced off land you didn't own, in the same way that if you didn't own yourself, you or yours could be sold at any moment, on someone else's whim. Neither Oreline nor Valery actually owned the land they were working for someone else, hoping for a good crop to split a small profit. If Philomene stayed with them, she was that much further from her goal.

Freedom changed everything.

Land was what burned at Philomene now. Her own land. With Narcisse's sponsors.h.i.+p, if she worked hard enough, she could save to buy land herself. It was possible. She was sure this was the path for gathering her family back to where they belonged, together.

Narcisse never answered her repeated requests for a piece of his own lands, ignoring her completely or clearing his throat and bringing up the subject of long-term debts and back taxes, but he arranged for Philomene to work part of his neighbor's property. Narcisse agreed to move the cabin she had on Houbre's farm to its new location, at the southwest corner of Richard Grant's old plantation.

Philomene didn't care that Grant wasn't French, wasn't considered quality. There were more ruined quality folks than could be counted in Natchitoches Parish these days. Philomene cared only that she was free, and her children would be free. She was going to be a sharecropper.

Narcisse came back from the war changed. He wasn't a broken man, but he moved more slowly, as if some of the air had been let out. Many of the men who came back were already reliving the battles, full of talk and opinions on the war and the insulting absurdity of the new government. Narcisse refused to say anything about where he had been, what he had seen, and he seemed relieved that Philomene didn't probe. He was more content than ever to sit with Emily on his knee, letting his little daughter amuse him with her bright ways for hours at a time, playing in his beard, digging in his pockets, singing him her special made-up songs. There was little need to prod him in his duty to Emily. His daughter delighted him, and when he first returned he was incautious in his love for her, carrying her everywhere.

Narcisse's wife, Arsine, had died just before war's end. His mourning seemed genuine to Philomene, even though he had never been that fond of her while she lived, as if he were uncomfortable at the thought of being without a wife. Many of his friends and neighbors were crushed or ruined by the war, financially and emotionally, but Narcisse came back whole, gone only a year and with the means to start over. Almost no one had managed to keep hold of their cotton along Cane River, but neither the Yankees nor the Confederates had uncovered the cotton stored on his wife's farm in Campti. When Southern ports were thrown open, Narcisse recovered some of his wealth, at least enough to settle unpaid back taxes, debts, and interest.

He held on to most of his lands, even as he allowed his world to narrow, letting things happen around him of their own accord, no longer hard-charging at life. He returned to Philomene's cabin with a new hunger, as if the thought had entered his mind for the first time that she didn't have to accept him there and that Emily was his only flesh-and-blood legacy.

Philomene, determined to be settled into a new life by the time of the new baby's coming, asked Suzette, Elisabeth, and her brother, Gerant, to move in with her on Richard Grant's plantation, the first step in her plan to restore the family. It was to be the beginning of the realization of her true glimpsing. Elisabeth nodded, deciding immediately, eager for the chance to have her grandchildren and great-grandchildren around her, but Suzette was vague and noncommittal, no matter how hard Philomene pressed her. Gerant agreed, willing to do any kind of labor himself. Gerant had married, and as long as his wife, Melantine, would not be expected to go to the field, he was eager to move onto the land. They put that behind them, he said, and they wouldn't go back.

Philomene gambled with another false glimpsing, the first she had spun for Narcisse in more than a year. She found that his blind belief had gotten even stronger.

"We'll have a son, a younger brother for Emily," she said to Narcisse, and he was as receptive as always, his desperate wanting blocking all else.

She knew how to play the trick now. If the baby turned out to be a girl, she would say that the glimpsing must have been of a future son they would soon have. It would work out either way. "I see Emily and your son together, and he has the Fredieu look. Both he and Emily carry your name. The brother and sister play together, in front of a house. It isn't this house we have here, it's bigger, and there's a wide door leading inside, on our own land. Elisabeth and Gerant are close by."

Narcisse stroked his dark beard down to its wavy point, considering.

Every day Philomene prayed to herself. "Just get the child born. Let him grow up free and strong, and don't let him be taken away from me."

The responsibility for the new life inside her thrilled and terrified Philomene, her first child to be born free. She woke sometimes in the middle of the night soaking in her own sweat, the details of her dreams scattered, recalling only vague uncertainties.

What if Clement came back? Before freedom, she had never allowed herself to believe that she would ever see Clement again. Now he could come back to her with the same determination he had shown in the storm. She couldn't feel him alive, try as she might, and without Clement Narcisse was her best bet for the life she envisioned. But what if she was wrong about Clement? What if he made his way to her? She had been living as if man-woman love were dead, subst.i.tuting man-woman practicality, and she wasn't sure what would happen if Clement found her now, hard and used. What would he do? What would she do? How far had she bound herself to Narcisse Fredieu for the sake of her family and her children?

What if her glimpsings couldn't protect this child, as they had protected Emily? What if Emily was all she was allowed?

There were too many questions, and too few answers.

25.

E lisabeth sat alone on the front gallery with a widemouthed bowl squeezed tight between her knees, sh.e.l.ling peas. A figure approached in the distance, his gait slow but steady. When he turned off the wider dirt road toward the farmhouse Elisabeth shared with Philomene and her two children, she paid closer attention. lisabeth sat alone on the front gallery with a widemouthed bowl squeezed tight between her knees, sh.e.l.ling peas. A figure approached in the distance, his gait slow but steady. When he turned off the wider dirt road toward the farmhouse Elisabeth shared with Philomene and her two children, she paid closer attention.

He was a colored man of middle age, and too much exposure to the sun had given his light honeycolored face the appearance of a golden-baked crust. His skin was pulled smooth and tight, most likely from hunger, Elisabeth supposed. One of the hordes of the displaced that flowed in or ebbed out like the tides since the war ended. As he came closer something tugged at her about the purse of his lips, the set of his eyes. This one was a high-yellow man, with a wide mouth, dirty reddish brown curls, and clothes that gave away that he was from somewhere else. That, and the soft slanting of his words as he came up to stand before the gallery and address her.

"Good afternoon, madame," the stranger said. His French was halting and stiff, but he could be understood. "Is this Elisabeth's house?"

"This is my granddaughter's house." Curious, Elisabeth thought. Slave Creole in words, but foreign in dress and manner. "You look like it's been a while since you rested. Help yourself to a little water from the dipper."

"I have been on the move for some time. I appreciate it. Thank you, madame."

Elisabeth went back to her peas as he drank. She sized up this stranger asking about her. He seemed soft to her.

"You're not from around here," Elisabeth said. "Where you come from?"

"I'm from Virginia, madame."

"Have you eaten?"

"Not in quite a while, madame."

"Come on inside with me while I dish you up something. We have the leavings of the stew from supper."

Elisabeth rose stiffly and carried the half-full tin of peas with her. The man followed her into the dark house, through the front room, and into the kitchen. Elisabeth waved him to sit at the pine table. She sc.r.a.ped out all that was left of the stew from the kettle into a wood bowl and handed him a spoon, and then she cut a quarter round of yesterday's cornbread. She poured him some b.u.t.termilk and lowered herself into the chair across from where he sat.

He hunkered over the bowl like a ravenous dog, barely taking the time to chew the small bits of meat in the stew. Mostly it was vegetables blended beyond recognition in the long cooking. The man crumbled what was left of the cornbread into his b.u.t.termilk and drank it down in gulping swallows. Only when he was finished did he look up, embarra.s.sed.

"I'm sorry. Like I said, it's been some time since I last ate. That was very good."

"Sorry there's not more." The stranger seemed harmless enough, but he was fidgety, rubbing his fingers together nervously. "What are you doing looking for Elisabeth?"

"No disrespect intended, but that's something best taken up with her. I mean her no harm. They say she came through the war all right, and she lives here on this farm, but I might have gotten turned around on the road a little."

The man was trying to study her when he thought she wasn't looking.

"Lots of women called Elisabeth in these parts."

"The Elisabeth I'm looking for comes from Virginia. She was sold away from there almost fifty years ago to a man called Pierre Derbanne, and ended up on his son's place called Rosedew. She has a granddaughter, Philomene."

Elisabeth's old memories began to stir, and she looked carefully at the man's face for clues. She had liked this soft-spoken stranger who came out of nowhere, but now she was uneasy, unwilling to believe that she could make it all the way into her sixties, through slavery and freedom, and still feel the lurch of life s.h.i.+fting and becoming unsteady beneath her. "Who are you?"

"Again, no disrespect, but I've already been to Natchitoches, Cloutierville, Isle Brevelle, and Monette's Ferry tracking this farm down. Please, is it you?"

"I'm Elisabeth. What do you have to do with me?"

"You left Virginia nigh on fifty years ago? From Lost Oak Plantation?"

"Yes, that's me. What's your business?"

"You had two sons, John and Jacob?"

Elisabeth's throat seemed to dry up, sealing off the escape of her words. The longer she took to respond, the more uncertain the man became, until he looked like a frightened little boy forced to drop his pants as he waited for a whipping. "You better tell me what you came to tell me, stirring up old sadness like yesterday's soup."

The man spoke quickly then, but he tripped over his words, as if his courage had wound down. "They call me Yellow John. I think I'm your son. I came from Virginia to find you."

Off in the distance a jay screeched, and another of his kind answered the call. Elisabeth leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was still sitting there in front of her. She half expected him to disappear, carried away by the same play of mind that summoned him in the first place.

"My John? What trick is this?"

"No trick, madame. I'm sorry. I've had more time to get ready for this than you."

Elisabeth began to cry softly where she sat, her head in her big hands. "Praise be," she said finally. "Come help me up."

Yellow John pulled her up from the chair, slowly, a bit awkwardly, as if he were afraid to touch her. Elisabeth used her hands to try to find herself in his face, and then she folded him in her arms. They stayed that way until she let him go.

"How could you find me, all the way from Virginia?"

"It's a story that bears telling, madame, but first, could I bother you for a little more to eat? I haven't eaten for several days."

Elisabeth gave him the rest of the cornbread and fried four eggs in the skillet, turning back to look at the man sitting at her table. Yellow John was more controlled in his eating this time, rationing his bread and eggs carefully to make sure he didn't run out of one before the other, using the bread to sop up every bit of the runny yellow yolks. The plate he left behind looked as clean as if he had washed it.

"Thank you kindly." He pushed himself back from the table.

"Who told you about me?"

"Old Ma.r.s.e Robert. He didn't hide from Jacob or me that our mother's name was Elisabeth, and she'd been sold to a place called Cane River in Louisiana. He used us to get back at his wife, I think, never denying we had his blood, bringing us up to the big house under her nose, even teaching us to read a little."

Yellow John stole glances at Elisabeth as he talked, as if judging whether or not he was holding on to her attention.

"I grew up, and got me a wife from there on the place, and we tried to have children, but we kept losing them before they were born. The third time, my wife made it through to the end, but the little one tried to come out feet first. They couldn't save mother or child. I lost them both on the same day. It doesn't seem I was meant to have children of my own." Yellow John hesitated, as if he weren't sure what to say next.

"Go on," Elisabeth prodded, but she was careful not to spook him.

"One day, I overheard young Ma.r.s.e talking about a slave they just bought, sight unseen from some distant relation from Cane River, Louisiana. I made my way down to the quarters to see this new boy as soon as I could manage. He was a barrel-chested fellow, quiet, had the slow look of someone fresh sold. He couldn't speak one word of English. He was young, and still shy of coming into his full force, but he knew his way around hot metal and horses."

"Clement?" Elisabeth had trouble keeping up with so much news, so many twists and turns.

"Yes, Clement. We went fis.h.i.+ng together almost every Sunday, and we fas.h.i.+oned a language together while he taught me his French and I taught him my English. He had a quick mind, but it took some doing to draw him out. He was about the age my dead boy would have been had he lived, and I came to think on him as a son."

"And Clement told you about us?" It was more statement than question.

Yellow John nodded. "It was slow going at first, but he understood more, bit by bit. I was hungry for news of Cane River, and after a time, it became clear that his Elisabeth and my Elisabeth were the same. His Elisabeth hadn't been born to French by the speaking of it, and she came to Louisiana from Virginia, with a sad tale of children left behind, and being sold to a family named Derbanne. Philomene had told him the story before he got sold to old Ma.r.s.e Robert.

"He described Cane River as the most beautiful place on earth. Virginia is pretty country, too, but his mind was on his old river home. He talked of you, and his own mother, Eliza, and your daughter Suzette, but mostly he talked about Philomene and their two baby girls, Thany and Bet. I've never seen a man so set on one woman. There's no shame in marrying again when you have to leave someone behind, especially so young, and there were plenty of girls ready on our place, but he never committed to just one."

"Where is he? Where is Clement?"

"When the whisper talk of freedom started, we decided that on the very day of jubilee, we would set out walking to Cane River together. Clement never got to put one foot on the path back here. He died after the men of the place went away to fight in the war." Yellow John's voice became soft. "His was a stupid death, with no meaning at all in it. A water moccasin must have bitten him first, his leg was so swollen with poison, but he fell into the river and drowned. I decided to come on to Cane River by myself anyway. I know Clement would want me to tell Philomene that he didn't ever let go of her."

As she tended the blood-filled blisters on John's feet, Elisabeth didn't know whom to cry for first. Clement, who had died away from his home, so close to being able to come back to Philomene? Philomene, who had yet to hear about Clement and had already traded love for protection? Yellow John, whose torn and b.l.o.o.d.y feet would heal, but who had spent an entire lifetime nursing an empty hole where his mother was supposed to be? Or herself, looking at this stranger calling himself her son, unable to replace the sweet little baby in her mind's eye with the weary man in front of her now. Instead of the joy of reunion, she felt the theft of the past years that had taken so much from both of them. Her pain was mixed with anger at the waste.

Her son was no longer a young man. She had missed it all. First steps, favorite foods, selection of a wife. His dark, curly hair was uneven and touched with gray, untended. She knew nothing about him other than the fact that he craved her so much, he had come all the way from Virginia to see her.

"And Jacob. What happened to my Jacob?"

"Jacob is a shoemaker in Richmond, with a wife and four grown children. He was lucky. After we were free, he knew where all his children were." The lids of Yellow John's eyes drooped almost shut for a moment, and he fought back a yawn. "We agreed if I couldn't find you, I'd go back to Virginia to live out my days with them."

"You've walked a long way, and you need sleep. There's fresh hay in the barn, and I'll get a blanket. When you wake up, we can talk more. You're home now."

Elisabeth was tired, too, more than the usual dip at the tail of the afternoon. Seeing Yellow John had worn her out, and she was uncertain whether her dreams would be restful when she closed her eyes. She would tell Yellow John later about his half-sisters and half-brother, and about his great-niece Emily, five years old and down for her afternoon nap on Philomene's bed.

There was too much to tell. He didn't know that Philomene was the strong one who planned the next step. That when a lifetime of being a slave made it hard to make decisions, Philomene did the thinking for all of them, and they let her. That the young guided the old.

Elisabeth had a son who was healthy and could even read, and the Lord had led him back to her only through the bad business of Clement being sold. Sometimes good came out of hurt, compensation came out of pain. He gave with one hand, and He took with the other.

Her son was with her now, but it would fall to Elisabeth to tell Philomene that Clement was dead.

It was almost dusk by the time Philomene and Gerant came in together from the field. Elisabeth came outside and waved them aside before they could go into the barn to bed the mule. They left the animal outside and went into the house instead.

"There's someone sleeping in the barn," Elisabeth said. "Someone important to this family."

Her daughter's work dress was ringed with sweat stains, and a rag tied around a burst blister on one hand had dried stiff. "Who is it, Memere? Memere?" Suspicion clouded Philomene's face, her body newly tensed as if ready to do battle, her tiredness pushed aside.

"My son, lost once, but found again." Elisabeth felt sapped of her energy, but she pushed herself forward. "I had to leave him behind in Virginia."