She placed the coin in
Abigail's hand, then removed a small bag fashioned out of red flannel
that was tied around her neck with a leather cord and placed it on top
of the coin.
"How'd you come by this money,
Flower?" Abigail asked.
"Found it."
"Where?"
Flower watched the moss moving
in the trees, a sprinkle of stars in the sky.
"I best go now," she said.
She walked back across the
plank to the woods, then heard Abigail Dowling behind her.
"Tell me where you got the
gold piece," Abigail said.
"I stole it from ol Rufus Atkins' britches."
Abigail
studied her
face, then touched her hair and cheek.
"Has he molested you, Flower?"
she said.
"You a good lady, Miss
Abigail, but I ain't a child and I ain't axed for nobody's pity,"
Flower said.
Abigail's hand ran down
Flower's shoulder and arm until she could clasp Flower's hand in her
own.
"No, you're neither a child
nor an object of pity, and I would never treat you as such," Abigail
said.
"Them two men yonder? What do
you call them?" Flower asked.
"Their names?"
"No, the religion they got.
What do you call that?"
"They're called Quakers."
Flower nodded her head. "Good
night, Miss Abigail," she said.
"Good night, Flower," Abigail
said.
A few minutes later Flower
looked back over her shoulder and saw the flatboat slip through the
cypress trees into a layer of moonlit fog that reminded her of the
phosphorous glow given off by a grave.
THREE days later Willie Burke
was walked in manacles from the Negro jail to the court, a
water-stained loft above a saloon, and charged with drunkenness and
attacking an officer of the law. The judge was not an unkindly man,
simply hard of hearing from a shell burst at the battle of Buena Vista
in 1847, and sometimes more concerned with the pigeons whose droppings
splattered on his desk than the legal matter at hand.
Through the yellow film of
dirt on the window Willie could see the top of a palm tree and a white
woman driving hogs down the dirt street below. His mother and Abigail
Dowling and his friend Jim Stubbefield sat on a wood bench in the back
of the room, not far from Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers.
"How do you plead to the
charges, Mr. Burke?" the judge asked.
"Guilty of drunkenness, Your
Honor. But innocent of the rest, which is a bunch of lies," Willie
replied.
"These men all say you
attacked Captain Atkins," the judge said, gesturing at the paddy
rollers.
Willie said something the
judge couldn't understand.
"Speak louder!" the judge said.
"I'd
consider the
source!" Willie replied.
"We have two sides of the same
story, Mr. Burke. But unfortunately for you the preponderance of
testimony comes from your adversaries. Can you pay a fifty-dollar
fine?" the judge said.
"I cannot!"
The judge cupped his ear and
leaned forward. His face was as white as goat's cheese, his hair like a
tangle of yellowish-gray flaxen.
"Speak louder!" he yelled.
"I have no money, sir! I'll
have to serve a penal sentence!" Willie said.
"Can you pay twenty-five
dollars?" the judge said.
"No, I cannot!"
"I'll pay his fine, me," a
voice at the back of the room said.
The judge leaned forward and
squinted into the gloom until he made out the massive shape of
Jean-Jacques LaRose.
"The only fine you'll pay will
be your own, you damn pirate. Get out of my court and don't return
unless you're under arrest," the judge said.
"May I speak, Your Honor?"
Abigail Dowling said.
The judge stared at her, his
glasses low on his nose, his head hanging forward from his black coat
and the split collar that extended up into his jowls like pieces of
white cardboard.
"You're the nurse from
Massachusetts?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, that's correct!"
she yelled.
"Everybody in this proceeding
is red-faced and shouting. What's the matter with you people?" the
judge said. "Never mind, go ahead, whatever your name is."
Abigail walked out of the
gloom into a patch of sunlight, her hands folded in front of her. She
wore an open-necked purple dress with lace on the collar and a silver
comb in the bun on top of her head.
"I know Mr. Burke well and do
not believe him capable of harming anyone. He's of a gentle spirit and
has devoted himself both to his studies and works of charity. His
accusers"
She paused, her right hand
floating in the direction of Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers. "His
accusers are filled with anger at their own lack of self-worth and
visit their anger with regularity on the meek and defenseless. It's my
view their testimony is not motivated by a desire
to further
truth or
justice. In fact, their
very
presence here demeans the integrity of the court and is an
offense to people of good will," she said.
The judge looked at her a long
moment. "I hope the Yankees don't have many more like you on their
side," he said.
"I'm sure their ranks include
much better people than I, sir," Abigail said.
It was quiet in the room. One
of the paddy rollers hawked softly and leaned over and spit in his
handkerchief. The judge pinched his temples.
"You want to say anything,
Captain Atkins?" he asked.
"I haven't the gift of
elocution that Miss Dowling has, since I wasn't educated in a Northern
state where Africans are taught to disrespect white people," he said.
"But that man yonder, Willie Burke, attacked an officer of the law. You
have my word on that."
The judge removed his glasses
and pulled on his nose.
"You're a member of the
militia?" he said to Willie.
"Yes, sir, I am!"
"Will you stop shouting? It's
the sentence of this court that you return to your unit at Camp Pratt
and be a good soldier. You might stay out of saloons for a while, too,"
the judge said, and smacked down his gavel.
After the judge had left the
room, Willie walked with his mother and Abigail and Jim toward the door
that gave onto the outside stairway.
"Where's Robert today?" Willie
asked, hoping his disappointment didn't show.
"Mustered into the 8th
Lou'sana Vols and sent to Camp Moore. The word is they're going to
Virginia," Jim said.
"What about us?" Willie asked.
"We're stuck here, Willie."
"With Atkins?"
Jim laid his arm across Willie's shoulders and didn't answer.
Outside, Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers were gathered under a live
oak. The corporal named Clay Hatcher turned and looked at Willie, his
smile like a slit in a baked apple.
IT rained late that
afternoon,
drumming on Bayou Teche and
the live
oaks around Abigail Dowling's cottage.
Then the
rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and a strange green light
filled the trees. Out in the mist rising off the bayou Abigail could
hear the whistle on a paddle-wheeler and the sound of the boat's wake
slapping in the cypress trunks at the foot of her property.
She lighted the lamp on her
desk and dipped her pen in a bottle of ink and began the letter she had
been formulating in her mind all day.
She wrote
Dearest Robert
on
a piece of stationery, then crumpled up the page and began again.
Dear Robert,
Even though I know you believe deeply
in your
cause, candor and conscience compel me to confess my great concern for
your safety and my fear that this war will bring great sorrow and
injury into your life. Please forgive me for expressing my feelings so
strongly, but it is brave young men such as yourself who ennoble the
human race and I do not feel it is God's will that you sacrifice your
life or take life in turn to further an enterprise as base and
meretricious as that of slavery.
She heard the clopping of a
horse in the street and glanced up through the window and saw Rufus
Atkins dismount from a huge buckskin mare and open her gate. He wore
polished boots and a new gray uniform with a gold collar and a double
row of brass buttons on the coat and scrolled gold braid on the sleeves.
She put down her pen, blotted
her letter, and met him at the front door. He removed his hat and bowed
slightly.
"Excuse my intrusion, Miss
Abigail. I wanted to apologize for any offense I may have given you in
the court," he said.
"I'm hardly cognizant of
anything you might say, Mr. Atkins, hence, I can take no offense at
it," she replied.
"May I come in?"
"No, you may not," she replied.
He let the insult slide off
his face. He watched a child kicking a stuffed football down the street.
"I have a twenty-dollar gold
piece here," he said. He flipped it off his thumb and caught it in his
palm. "Years ago a card sharp fired a derringer at me from under a card
table.
The ball would have gone through
my
vest pocket into my vitals, except
this coin
was in its way. See, it's bent right in the center."
She held his stare, her face
expressionless, but her palms felt cold and stiff, her throat filled
with needles.
"I lost this coin at the
laundry and had pretty much marked off ever finding it," he said. "Then
two days ago the sheriff found a drowned nigger in Vermilion Bay. She
had this coin inside a juju bag. She was one of the escaped slaves we'd
been looking for. I wonder how she came by my gold piece."
"I'm sure with time you'll
find out, Mr. Atkins. In the meanwhile, there's no need for you to
share the nature of your activities with me. Good evening, sir."
"You see much of Mr. Jamison's
wash girl, the one called Flower? The drowned nigger was her aunt."
"In fact I do know Flower. I'm
also under the impression your interest in her is more than a
professional one."
"Northern ladies can have
quite a mouth on them, I understand."
"Please leave my property, Mr.
Atkins," she said.
He bowed again and fitted on
his hat, his face suffused with humor he seemed to derive from a
private joke.
She returned to her writing
table and tried to finish her letter to Robert Perry. The sky was a
darker green now, the oaks dripping loudly in the yard, the shadows
filled with the throbbing of tree frogs.
Oh, Robert, who am I to
lecture you on doing injury in the world, she thought.
She ripped the letter in half
and leaned her head down in her hands, her palms pressed tightly
against her ears.
HER journey by carriage to
Angola Plantation took two days. It rained almost the entire time,
pattering against the canvas flaps that hung from the top of the
surrey, glistening on the hands of the black driver who sat hunched on
the seat in front of her, a slouch hat on his head, a gum coat pulled
over his neck.
When she and the driver
reached the entrance of the plantation late in the afternoon, the
western sky was marbled with purple and yellow clouds, the pastures on
each side of the road an emerald green. Roses bloomed as brightly as
blood along the fences that bordered the road.
In the distance she saw an
enormous white mansion high up on a bluff above the Mississippi River,
its geometrical exactness softened by the mist off the river and
columns of sunlight that had broken through the clouds.
The driver took them down a
pea-gravel road and stopped the carriage in front of the porch. She had
thought a liveried slave would be sent out to meet her, but instead the
front door opened and Ira Jamison walked outside. He looked younger
than she had expected, his face almost unnaturally devoid of lines, the
mouth soft, his brown hair thick and full of lights.
He wore a short maroon jacket
and white shirt with pearl buttons and gray pants, the belt on the
outside of the loops. "Miss Dowling?" he said.
"I apologize for contacting
you by telegraph rather than by post. But I consider the situation to
be of some urgency," she said.
"It's very nice to have
you here. Please come in," he said.
"My driver hasn't eaten.
Would you be so kind as to give him some food?"
Jamison waved at a black man
emerging from a barn. "Take Miss Dowling's servant to the cookhouse and
see he gets his supper," he called.
"I have no servants. My driver
is a free man of color whom I've hired from the livery stable," she
said.
Jamison nodded amiably, his
expression seemingly impervious to her remark. "You've had a long
journey," he said, stepping aside and extending his hand toward the
open door.