Sandra Hill - [Creole] (29 page)

“Lance doesn’t have fleas. Me and Mam’zelle Harriet gave him a bath. And he only did his bizness once and that’s cause you scared ’im with your cane,” Saralee asserted from the table where she was eating dinner tonight
with Blossom, Ellen and Abel, who’d made his way over from his sickbed for the first time.

Harriet had prepared and was serving dinner tonight, after much protest from Blossom. She wasn’t much of a cook, but she could whip up a mean Spanish omelette filled with onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and oozing melted cheese. On the side was a dandelion salad with bacon-and-vinegar dressing, and Saralee’s beaten biscuits. A feast fit for the best gourmet connoisseur. Not that anyone noticed. Everyone was still talking about the ongoing implications of Etienne and Cain’s abrupt departure.

“How you gonna straighten out that boy now he’s gone?” Blossom demanded of Harriet, as if it were all her fault. As if she hadn’t asked the same question a zillion times.

“I tried, but he tricked me.”

“Hah!” Blossom exclaimed, giving her a thorough study. “Mebbe you was too busy thinkin’ of yer own pleasures the night he skedaddled off, ’stead of our plan.”

Here we go again!
Harried blushed.

That caught Abel’s interest. “I’ve been reading your book,” he started.

And Harriet put her face in her hands. She just knew what was coming.

“What book is that?” Ellen asked politely.

“Mam’zelle Harriet is a book-writer,” Blossom explained proudly, to Harriet’s surprise. Then Blossom spoiled the effect by adding, “But she ain’t learned how to pull in a man with her book-learnin’. Leastways, not yet.”

Harriet peeked at Abel, who was grinning with wicked anticipation. Luckily, all of this passed over Saralee, who was engrossed in surreptitiously feeding Lance bits of omelette.

“Harriet’s book is
Female Fantasies Never Die
,” Abel told Ellen with a straight face. “You should read it sometime.”

When understanding dawned, Ellen sputtered at Abel,
“Oh, you are a sinful man! You and your brother always were the teasin’est scoundrels in the bayou. Fornication and devilry…that’s all you ever thought about as boys.”

And as men. Some things never change
.

“Do you know what the dumb man said when asked to spell Mississippi?” Harriet asked sweetly as she passed beverages to the others at the table.

Ellen shook her head as if she didn’t understand what was going on around her. Blossom clucked her disapproval. Abel smirked, waiting for the punch line. And Saralee, in her own little world, was trying to get Lance to eat dandelion.

“The man asked, ‘The state or the river?’” Harriet whooped.

Since no one laughed, Harriet blundered on, checking first to make sure Saralee wasn’t listening. “Okay, this woman came home from a visit to the doctor and boasted to her husband, ‘The doctor says I have the breasts of an eighteen-year-old.’

“The dumb husband responded, ‘What did he say about your thirty-year-old ass?’

“The woman paused and replied, ‘I don’t believe we discussed you. dear.’”

Blossom and Abel laughed. Ellen said, “Really, Harriet, do you think that is appropriate talk for a lady? And, besides, I don’t understand the humor.”

“Harriet is saying that all men are dumb,” Abel explained.

“Oh, well, of course,” Ellen agreed, as if that was a given.

Blossom narrowed her eyes at Harriet. “You knows all this man woman stuff but you couldn’t keep Etienne here. Tsk-tsk!”

“And I needed to talk to Etienne.” Ellen sighed. “Now I don’t know what to do with the school.”

“Dint yer trip to Houma help?” Blossom asked, patting Ellen on the arm. Caught up in the frenzy of
roullaison
,
the sugar harvest season, not to mention Abel’s injuries, followed by Etienne and Cain’s hasty departure, no one had really had a chance to sit down and talk at length about anything.

“No,” Ellen said, then explained to Harriet and Abel. “I taught in Mam’zelle Baptiste’s school in California for five years after I graduated from Messiah Normal School in Ohio. But I came back here when Blossom wrote and told me about all the families returning to the plantation with no school.”

“How many children are in your school now?” Harriet asked, sitting down on the bench next to Abel. She slapped his hand away distractedly when he tickled her thigh playfully.

“Twenty-five…sometimes thirty,” Ellen said, picking at her salad. “There are just no supplies.”

Harriet frowned. “Who’s been funding the school?”

“At first, M’sieur and Mam’zelle Baptiste set us up. Then, after the war, the Freedman’s Bureau supplied some money. But half of the grants coming from Washington never made it to the schools once they filtered through every corrupt politician from the highest to the lowest level, North and South.”

“And?” Harriet prodded.

“When the Freedman’s Bureau closed, church organizations began to help. I’ve been getting my money through the Blessed Waters Free Church of Louisiana. But they’re poor, too. I went to Houma this week, to plead for at least two hundred dollars to buy books, paper, pencils, desks….” She exhaled wearily. “We need everything. The preacher told me they are rock-bottom dry and that I have to go to the church headquarters in Houston if I want to get more help.”

“Houston!” Harriet, Blossom and Abel all said at once.

Coincidence?
Harriet wondered.
Or fate?

Ellen nodded. “I was hoping Etienne would be willing to help. I just can’t continue to ask his father to pay. When
I saw that he’d returned unexpectedly, I thought that maybe God had answered my prayers. But now it looks as if I’ll have to close down the school, or make my way to Houston.”

“Hmmm,” Harriet said aloud.

“Now, Harriet,” Abel warned.

A loud commotion outside interrupted their discussion, followed by a shrill female voice inquiring of someone in the backyard, “Where’s Abel?”

Uh-oh!

Dressed in a formfitting, dark traveling costume, Simone made a grand entrance into the kitchen. Abel, his face awash with astonishment and pleasure, stood abruptly, then groaned at the anguish caused by that simple movement.

“Oh,
chérie
, I came as soon as Etienne and Cain told me of your injuries. I have brought a
bateau
to take you back to New Orleans with me. Already I have hired the best physicians to care for you there.
Non
, do not worry about the trip. You can lie on the flat bottom. We will put a mattress there. It is all arranged.” The whole time Simone blurted out her greeting, she held Abel’s face between her hands and kept kissing his cheeks and neck. Tears streamed down her face.

“Is she what I think she is?” Blossom whispered in an aside to Harriet.

“Yes,” Harriet said.

But even Blossom could see the love these two shared and she clamped her mouth shut, although she couldn’t help adding, “Is the boy plum crazy? Hankerin’ after a white woman? Them Swamp Angels will skin ’im alive, or cut off his pecker.”

In the end, after everyone settled down, Simone ate some dinner and sent a meal out for the black man who’d accompanied her. Then she told them all the news. Etienne and Cain had arrived days ago, checked to make sure that the caskets were still in the warehouse, transferred the gold to a piano and musical instrument cases, and planned to
board the steamboat
Southern Star
in a few days for Galveston, Texas.

“A piano?” Harriet asked.

“Music cases?” Abel asked.

Simone grimaced. “They’ve joined a minstrel show.”

Abel hooted with laughter. “Blackface? Oh, I would love to see Etienne singin’ a coon song.”

“But there is another reason why I rushed to your side,” Simone told Abel, biting her bottom lip indecisively.

“What?” he demanded. “Tell me, Simone.”

“Pope’s scurrilous gang knows Etienne is the agent hired by Grant. One of Charity’s customers told her several days ago. But I couldn’t get word to Etienne.”

“Oh, hell!” Abel exclaimed and put a hand to his lower back, bracing himself against the pain that must be throbbing there since his afternoon dose of laudanum was wearing off.

“They don’t know that the gold was hidden in New Orleans, or where it is now, but they’ve discovered that Etienne’s assignation point is somewhere in eastern Texas,” Simone continued. “Pope has dozens of hired guns covering the region from Beaumont to Corpus Christi.
Zut alors
, what a mean, lawless bunch!” She sighed deeply. “Etienne and Cain are heading for a trap.”

Harriet took a deep breath. “I’m going.”

“Harriet, you don’t know your way to the privy, let alone all the way to Texas,” Abel chided her softly.

“Well, I know the way,” Ellen declared, fingertips pressed to her lips in pensive concentration. “Harriet and I will both go. We can travel by pirogue to Morgan City with one of the field hands. That’s one of the stops for the steamboat Etienne and Cain are taking from New Orleans. I know some back ways that will save time. That way, Harriet can warn them and I can meet with the church officials in Houston.” She beamed at everyone.

“No, it’s too dangerous,” Abel said. “Besides, Etienne knows what he’s doing.”

“It’s my choice,” Harriet asserted. “You can’t stop me.”

“Well, at least it’s a plan,” Blossom said. “Of course, you gotta take Saralee with you.”

“Absolutely not,” Harriet said. “She stays here.”

“Nosirree. How’m I gonna protect her when these bad mens come searchin’ fer Etienne’s baby girl? Doan be tellin’ me they wouldn’t try to take her to use against ’im.”

“She could go with Simone and Abel,” Harriet offered.

“And live in a fancy house?” Simone asked, arching a brow cynically. “I may be a madam, but even I have standards.”

“A fan-fancy house?” Ellen sputtered, realizing for the first time that Simone owned a brothel.

“Well, send her to California to be with her grandparents,” Harriet advised.

“No time,” Abel concluded.

“Oh, blessed Lord, I’m surrounded by harlots and fornicators, and a woman book-writer who publishes works about harlotry and fornication,” Ellen continued, fixing on the most irrelevant parts of their conversation.

“Well, that settles it,” Blossom said, whisking her hands together with satisfaction. “That’s the plan then. You all goin’ to Texas to bring that rogue back here, safe and sound.”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere without my dawg,” Saralee said from the floor, where she was hugging the big lump of fur.

“Now, Saralee,” Harriet began.

“Uh-uh,” the little girl said, picking up the dog, which probably weighed as much as she did, its four legs hanging limply with resignation. She backed away from the table defensively.

“I ain’t carin’ for no dawgs,” Blossom said. “No sirree.”

“Besides,” Saralee added, “Lance will be a good guard dog for us on the trip.”

Everyone looked at Lance, who had escaped Saralee’s grasp and now perked up one ear. It immediately fell back down.

“Bet he could chase gators away. And bad men.”

Lance rolled his big, sad eyes and let loose with a measly “Woof!” which probably was short for, “People! They must have kibbles for brains.”

“First things first,” Harriet said. “I’m gonna need a gun.”

Everybody, including Saralee, groaned, and Lance put his face between both front paws and tried to hide under the table.

For just one second, Harriet wondered if Etienne would appreciate their help when she and Ellen and Saralee and Lance came charging down on him like the calvary to the rescue.

He’ll probably be really thankful
, she told herself.

Yeah, right
.

There was one important thing Harriet needed to do before she left Bayou Noir…perhaps never to return. Write a letter.

She followed Blossom out onto the front gallery after dinner that evening and badgered the old woman into disclosing a few family secrets. During the informative chat, Harriet learned about Etienne’s relationship with his father, James Baptiste, a wealthy rancher in the Sacramento Valley in California.

Finally, some crucial missing pieces fell into place in the puzzle that was Etienne Baptiste. Finally, Harriet understood the pain that consumed the man she loved. Yep, her beloved blockhead was a chip off the old blockhead. Apparently they both carried the same stubborn-to-the-point-of-stupidity chromosome.

Etienne’s father had repudiated him almost ten years before when he’d left Oxford to fight in the Civil War. Due to the nature of his work, Etienne had been unable to divulge the fact that he was a double agent or explain away
the Rebel uniform he’d worn at the time. Since then, the misunderstandings had snowballed.

His father had eventually found out about his service to the Union and his horrible imprisonment. Stricken, he’d tried to make amends, but by then Etienne had dug in his heels and refused any contact with his father. Furthermore, Etienne had forbidden anyone to talk about his father with him…not Blossom, Cain or Abel. James, equally bullheaded, forbade anyone to talk to him about his son, as well…not Selene, Iris, Rufus, Reba, or Cain and Abel on their infrequent visits.

And, of course, since Etienne himself had only acknowledged Saralee’s paternity recently, his father knew nothing of her existence. No one would have dared reveal the secret child’s existence until Etienne accepted her himself.

“Yer gonna write a letter to Etienne’s papa?” Blossom asked with horror, jolting Harriet from her contemplation.

“Either James or Selene.”

“Oh, Lordy!” Blossom exclaimed, dropping down into her porch rocker with a whoosh. “Etienne’s gonna explode. He won’t even read all them letters up in his room what come from Mam’zelle Selene. He made me swear a Bible oath one time not to ever tell his papa about his miseries.”

“Well, I didn’t make any promises.”

Blossom slanted her a sidelong grin. “Thass true. But, honey, the boy hardened his heart agin’ his papa fer so long, I figger it’s gonna take a hammer ’n chisel to break ’im down now.”

“How about a pen and paper?”

“Mebbe so, mebbe so,” Blossom said. As she shuffled off to get those supplies, she added, “I’m gonna pray to God to help you. Um-hm, thass what I’ll do. Dear Lord, please doan let Etienne kill Mam’zelle Harriet fer meddlin’ in his affairs.”

Blossom had a really comforting manner about her.

Now Harriet sat tapping her fingers on the desk in the
overseer’s cottage. Should she write to Selene or James?

Finally, she began to write.

Harriet wept as she sealed the envelope and left it for Blossom to mail on the first mail packet headed west.

It was over then. Another goal reached. Another door closed.

Who would have thought that a dog could get seasick? In a rowboat? But poor Lance had been puking his guts out over the side of the
bateau
for two straight days.

When he wasn’t hotdogging after every female hound in every homestead along the endless bayou streams, that was. It turned out that Lance was a lech, and that there were a few doggie testosterones still alive and kicking in his old body. Amazingly, the women dogs loved him.

Now, they were finally approaching Morgan City, having made good time. And Harriet had to admit to a thrill of excitement. Despite all the dangers and inconveniences of her time-travel odyssey, she’d discovered that she was enjoying the adventure. That could be dangerous.

She smoothed out the wrinkles in her pink gown and breathed deeply, in and out. She couldn’t control the but
terflies that danced in her stomach in anticipation. She’d be seeing Etienne again soon. She hoped he would be as happy as she over their reunion.

“There it is,” Ellen said now, pointing to the small, bustling town they were approaching. The schoolteacher sat stiff-backed in front of Harriet in the boat, wearing her usual white, long-sleeved, high-necked blouse with a dark blue, ankle-length skirt and sensible leather boots. Her ebony hair was pulled into a neat bun at her nape. She, like all of them, wore a wide-brimmed straw hat as protection against the sun’s rays. Ellen had been a godsend.

As they came in on Bayou Chene, they found themselves surrounded by a number of pirogues carrying Cajun families to town for visits and shopping. Two flatboats piled high with hogsheads of sugar from nearby plantations followed them, steered by workers wielding long poles in the sluggish water.

Saralee took great joy in waving shyly to the passing vessels. She looked precious in a green calico gown Blossom had miraculously whipped out for her just before their departure.

“How’s Lance doing?” Harriet asked when the girl peeked under the lid of the large wicker carrying basket on the floor of their boat. Abel and Simone had told them, before leaving for New Orleans, that most steamboats wouldn’t allow a pet in regular passenger areas. Thus, the doggie hotel.

“He’s sleeping,” Saralee whispered, replacing the cover.

“What else is new?” Harriet murmured. Lance was obviously all pooped out. Not that he didn’t sleep 90 percent of the time anyhow. He led a real dog’s life.

Daniel, the black field hand accompanying them, rowed their boat over to the shore and tied it to a mooring, along with dozens of other similar craft. Then, on Harriet’s instructions, he went off to make inquiries about the steamship. There were at least five sitting out in the waters of the three channels that ran southward from the flat water
front town toward the Gulf. With any luck, one of them would be the
Southern Star
, the one Etienne and Cain presumably still traveled on.

Some of the steamships that came in from the Gulf would continue west to Houma, or north to Baton Rouge and eventually connect with the Mississippi en route to Missouri. Still others, like the one they sought, would backtrack out into the Gulf and follow the coastline, hitting the harbor towns, including Port Fourchon and Cocodrie and Galveston, Texas.

“There it is, there it is!” Saralee cried. “Ooooh!”

Harriet sighed too when she saw that the largest of the steamboats was, indeed, the
Southern Star
.

“It looks like a frosted cake,” Saralee exclaimed, jumping up and down with excitement. Lance growled his displeasure at being disturbed.

Saralee was right. The majestic four-story steamboat was a confection of glittering white with gingerbread trim. Each level and its encircling deck were stacked atop the other like progressively smaller layers on a cake. The crowning glory was the all-glass pilothouse on the top deck with its two candlelike chimneys.

There was a scrambling of people coming and going down the gangplank. Passengers already crowded the decks. They were too many and too far away for her to make out if Etienne and Cain were up there. Roustabouts called out, “Make way, make way,” as they carried barrels up into the hold.

A loud whistle shrieked through the air.

“That’s the last signal for boarding,” Ellen said worriedly.

“I’ll go get our tickets,” Harriet said and rushed over to the shipping office where Daniel was just turning toward her with dejection.

“Ain’t no more tickets left,” he informed her. “They’s a band and minstrel show on this trip, and most folks booked their passages weeks ago.” As if to punctuate his
words, the Josiah Gilbert Ethiopian Brass Band came marching by, high-stepping and strutting as they played an exuberant version of “Dixie.” The guard near the gangplank allowed them to pass up onto the boat.

“We’ll see about that,” Harriet said and stormed up to the ticket agent. A few minutes later, a dejected Harriet returned. “No luck. He says we can get the next boat tomorrow, but of course that will do us no good.”

“Mebbe I kin find a way,” Daniel said. “I’ll go talk to that deckhand over there.” He pointed to a black man who was rolling up a long loop of rope, preparatory to lifting anchor.

“I’ll go, too,” Ellen offered.

Left alone, Harriet and Saralee exchanged a glance of sad resignation. How could they have come so far and then failed?

A group of gaudily dressed women brushed past them, chattering loudly. The one in the lead, a heavyset, blowsy woman with dyed red hair and big breasts practically falling out of a chartreuse bombazine gown, was exclaiming, “Where’s that Maxine? She was supposed to be here an hour ago. I swear, I’ll never take on another girl sight unseen.”

“Who is she?” Harriet whispered to a young black woman, dressed more sedately, who trailed behind the group, carrying several satchels.

The girl rolled her eyes. “Madam Irene. She’s openin’ a new house in Corpus Christi.”

Harriet didn’t need to ask what kind of house she meant.

“The Palace of Pleasure,” the girl added.

Yep!

The whistle blew a final warning and the hookers headed toward the gangplank in a swish of garish, jewel-toned satins and ruffles and flounces. The engine of the massive steamship revved up with a roar.

In a panic, Harriet sought frantically for some solution to her problem. And came up with only one.

“Madam Irene,” Harriet called out.

The woman stopped midwaddle and turned waspishly, “What?”

“I’m…I’m Maxine.”

“Huh?” Saralee said at her side.

Harriet nudged her with an elbow to remain quiet.

Madam Irene gave Harriet’s horrid pink gown a quick once-over of disgust. “Well, what you waitin’ for, girl? Get yer ass over here. You got a lot of explainin’ to do, but it’ll have to wait till we’re on board.”

“Uh…well, there’s a problem,” Harriet stammered, picking up her briefcase and grabbing Saralee by the upper arm, dragging her forward with her. “You see, the reason why I was late is that I had to bring my daughter with me.”