A Separate Country (56 page)

I woke the next morning to the sounds of the wharf rousing itself, the shouts of the jobbers and foremen, the smells of the sugarcane, the rumble of the great cotton press. M. lay beside me, so pretty and untroubled. The sun through the window cast shadows on her face, highlighted her cheeks and her eyes. She had said nothing to me when I arrived home, nothing about the blood on my clothes, nothing about the men who had ransacked the place and left it wrecked, nothing about the manuscripts that had been taken.

The night before, after the final shot, the three of us—me, Rintrah, and the man Dauphin—had sat quietly for a few minutes before getting up and going our separate ways. There had been nothing to say, no other thing to do. Well, there was one thing to do. Rintrah helped me.

We carried Sebastien’s body across the Quarter and down the river to Levi’s factory, to my home. On every street we turned we passed hunched, black-cloaked figures of men and women who turned their back on us. No one offered to help, no one shouted for the police. They only turned their heads and walked on, past the two men carrying the body that still dripped a thin, precise line of blood down the banquette, marking our trail.

Around the back of Levi’s, surrounded by broken furniture and worn-out looms, stood a horse cart that looked in decent shape. We lifted Sebastien into it and covered him with an old oilcloth tarp. Rintrah said he’d send over a cart horse in the morning, and I thanked him. Those were the last words we ever exchanged.

Now I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake M., who the night before had held me for hours and whispered nonsense to me until I had calmed and fallen asleep. I looked out the window. The mist burned off the river, and in the receding fog I could see an old white horse hitched to the cart. One last thing to do.

The trip back down into Terrebonne Parish went faster than I remembered, probably because I never wanted to arrive at my destination. The bright white clouds, pure against the blue, whipped along the coast and made it seem that I was moving as fast as air. When I got to the turnoff, the hat and the doll were gone. I pulled up in the clearing outside the crazy-quilt shack, and suddenly knew with certainty what I would find. There were no voices and the stove was cold. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I pushed in.

They had cleared out. She hadn’t waited. By the looks of it, she had started packing just as soon as we’d left. Not a sign of them remained. Everything to identify them had been taken. The place had been swept, the windows dusted. Someday the shack would be discovered by fishermen, and they’d never guess who had lived there. The people who had built it had disappeared and would not be found.

I buried Sebastien at the very top of one of the old Indian mounds outside the clearing, underneath a great drooping willow. The ground was soft and I used an old rusted pot I found in the woods behind the cookstove. It took me a couple hours to dig the hole. I wanted it to be right. And all the time I was digging it, I kept wondering why I really gave a damn about this man, this killer. He was nothing like me, he was a Creole and a native son, he was a brutal and sadistic man. And yet I couldn’t leave him alone. I had learned, I suppose, that there were some things that needed doing and you were to do them however you felt about it. And whatever else was true about the man, he had lived by that rule and, in the end, he had died by it. Hood would have wanted me to bury him.

When he was deep in the grave, buried with his knives, I went over to the side of the shack and yanked two boards from the siding and lashed them together as a cross. On the cross I wrote the words
Died for another man,
and stuck it deep in the earth at the head of the grave. I was afraid to write his name, afraid he would be disturbed if anyone ever knew who it was buried there in that Indian mound.

I meant to go back and erect a proper headstone one day, but I never did. I don’t even think I could find that place now. It’s only a very dim memory.

I got back to my rooms after M. had gone to sleep. On my table, which she had mended, there lay a large stack of paper covered in her clear but crabbed handwriting. On top there was a note:
I told you I could read, but I didn’t tell you I could write, too. I was bored. Maybe I can sell these? Don’t you dare take them, this here is my property. Love, M. P.S. They were hidden in the wall, and thank God.
How long had it taken her to copy Hood’s book, and Anna Marie’s diary, and my notes? She must have done it in less than a week. I watched her breathe and began to pack up what few things I had. I found my adventure bag and stuffed in my clothes, the pistol Sebastien had given me, and my knife and fork. I left the pages on the table and went to sleep.

We left the next morning.

“Oh, we’re leaving, are we?” M. said, carefully wrapping the pages of the books in an old sheet and packing it in my adventure bag. “What makes you think I’m going with you?”

I just looked at her, and looked down from the window at the horse and cart. The old horse was happily chewing weeds at the base of the building.

“All right,” she said. “But you don’t touch this book right here. This here is mine. This is not your story, whatever you think.”

“Can I add some pages?”

“That you may, boyo.”

I hauled everything down to the cart and waited for her on the box with the reins in my hand. She came down a few minutes later in a simple blue cotton work dress and boots.

“Ah. And where are we going?” she asked.

We were headed uptown, toward the River Road and north.

“Home.”

“Don’t be cute.”

“It’s in Tennessee.”

She slept. The journey took weeks, and by the end of it we were husband and wife, at least that’s how we looked at it. And I’ve never been away from her again.

I
was wrong about never returning to New Orleans. I went back once, two years later, in 1881, when Anna Marie’s family finally decided to dig up their daughter and General Hood and move them out to the Hennen family plot in the Metairie Cemetery north of the city. I had been baptized a Catholic by then, and so I understood a little of the ceremony’s gravity.

They had been buried in identical pine boxes, the coffins of the poor. These had rotted and become packed with dirt. Anna Marie’s family was prepared, and had purchased two beautiful oak caskets, polished to a bright sheen. The priest said his prayers and the remains were transferred to the new caskets. I took a piece of Hood’s old casket, just a sliver, to bring home.

The Hoods, of course, had become very famous in death. Or, I guess, it’s truer to say that their living children had become famous. The Hood Orphans, those pitiable symbols of a nation ruined by war and disease, had broken hearts and opened purses across the nation. Nine children, the children of a beautiful society girl and her famous husband, all orphaned during one terrible summer month in 1879. The Hood Orphans were as well known as the president, and more well known than any congressman or governor or theater actor or opera singer. And as the parents of such extraordinary children, the Hoods now deserved special attention. They rolled to Metairie Cemetery in a glass-sided hearse followed by a long train of mourners. People on the street stopped and doffed their hats. At the cemetery, they were buried in tombs that had been carved in great detail and with great care, hard and solid and made of stone that would not wear and would never disappear.

I had already seen the Hoods buried once, back when only a few people could be bothered to attend, and so I wasn’t terribly moved by the ceremony, though the priest did a fine job. I wasn’t even there to be a mourner. I was there to deliver something.

John Junior was the only one of the orphans in attendance. He was the oldest, and I suppose he was the only one of them deemed old enough to participate. He looked awfully like his father. You could see he would become tall. At fourteen, he was already growing his beard. He stood perfectly erect, and when he smiled he tended to sneer. He was imperious and very sure of himself, even if he was terribly young.

After the funeral I approached him. I began to tell him about his father, and what he had done those last two years, and about the book that had been made out of what his father and mother had written. All the while he stared at me, unblinking. Finally he spoke while adjusting the sleeve on his new suit.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Eli Griffin, and I knew your father. He used to come and visit me at the ice factory.”

“You made his ice. An ice maker. Well, sir, I’m certain that my father would not have given this mysterious book to one of the help. I do not believe there is such a book. There is one book, and it has been published by General Beauregard, a great friend of my father’s, and there is no other. Have you read it?”

“Yes, I have.” A terrible, obsessive book, but I had read it.

“Ah, good, you can read. You never know. You read it, so you’ll understand when I tell you that I think there is nothing more to say.”

He was stubborn and confident, very much like his father, but stupid. I could see the stupidity in his dull eyes and his fussy suit.

“You are young, how can you know what else there might be to say?”

“I know plenty enough about my parents, I have no interest in reading the forgeries of his servants. But if, as you say, this book is rightfully mine, I will take it.” But I had already begun to walk away.

I would wait for the next orphan to come of age, and the next, and the one after that, until I found the child who would listen to me and who would care for the book as M. and I have cared for it. The child who could understand what happened to the Hoods, and who would be moved to change their life upon reading about them.

It was a long wait, but so is life.

WITH
GRATITUDE

T
hanks to my family, for the circumstances of my birth. That I was born in the South, surrounded by stories and storytellers, has to count for something. I remain grateful for those who have always kept windows of the past wide open to me. I am grateful to those, now gone, who have let me say that I cannot remember a time without stories and tales of lives before me.

Most of my people are gone, but included among the living are my brother, Marcus Sanders, and his wife, Candy Allen, his daughter, Nova, and her husband, Danny.

Jeff Kleinman, my agent, and Folio Literary Management have served me well. I grow more grateful over the years for Jeff in his roles as agent, sometimes-editor, mentor, and friend. In whatever role, I could not wish for more in an agent than I’ve been given. My circle of friends includes a lot of writers, and I know few who can make that claim.

Likewise, I landed on equally solid ground with Grand Central Publishing. These are precarious times, yet the folks at Grand Central have supported me at each and every turn. My editor Deb Futter’s support and encouragement fueled me through this process. I can never thank her enough for her expectation that I deliver more and better work. Likewise, I would be amiss not to thank Dianne Choie for holding down the fort on a day-to-day basis.

To my publisher, Jamie Raab, goes my sincerest heartfelt thanks. I also want to thank David Young, chairman and CEO; Emi Battaglia, associate publisher; Karen Torres, VP, trade sales & field sales; Jennifer Romanello, director of publicity; Elly Weisenberg, publicity manager; Martha Otis,
SVP
, advertising and promotions; Bob Castillo, managing editor; Nicole Bond, associate director, foreign rights; Nancy Wiese, VP, subrights; and Bruce Paonessa, VP, director of sales.

With regard to the book, itself, we were lucky enough to have Anne Twomey, VP, creative director, back to design the magnificent cover. With her this time were Charles Brock at the Designworks Group; Stephen Gardner, who did the photography; James Montalbano, who rendered the title type; and Laura Wyss, who researched the photos.

Thanks too to Tom Whatley, production director; Harvey-Jane Kowal,
SVP
, executive managing editor; Ann Schwartz, copy chief; Huy Duong, associate copy chief; Giraud Lorber, associate production manager; Blanca Aulet, assistant art director; Flamur Tonuzi, executive art director; Oscar Stern, creative director, advertising & promotion; Janice Wilkins, promotion director; Brad Negbaur, creative director, advertising & promotion; and Christine Valentine, my copyeditor.

I cannot forget folks who have moved on but not out of my world completely: Amy Einhorn, Todd Doughty, Ivan Held, and Larry Kirshbaum.

The care, wisdom, and encouragement of so many friends are not forgotten. I am forever grateful for Andrew Glasgow and Olivia and Justin Stelter, as I am for all those who hung in there when it all must have seemed like an unending bad play: Mary-Springs and Stephane Couteaud, Rick Warwick, Julian Bibb, Sherrie and Duncan Murrell, Monte Isom, Eric Jacobson, Caroline and George Ducas, Carol and Joel Tomlin, Charlene Corris, Ellen Pryor, Jay Jones, Angie, Gore, and Tamara Saviano, Riley May, Carroll Van West, Susan Whitaker, Beth and Peter Thevenot, Catherine Anderson, Hibah Qubain and Rob Hodge, Jim Duff, Tasha Alexander, John Bohlinger, Tim Young, Michael Balliet, Kelli and Bo Bills, Curt Jones, Doug Howard, the entire Vander Elst Clan—Lynn and Ghislain, Jenilee and Philippe, Nathalie and Tyler Stewart, and Marcelle Vander Elst—Bill McInness, Howie Sanders, Danny Anderson, Pete Donaldson, Lallie Wallace, William Pratt and Mrs. Ditto, Matt Futterman, Dave Pelton, Tommy Peters, Adam Goodheart, Kate and John Dyson, Deborah Warnick, Diana and Gary Fisketjon, Toby Standefer, Margie Thessin, Joe Cashia, Doug Brouder and all the great folks still at C.W.P.T., Bunny Price, Marianne and John Schroer, and the rest of the folks who allow me to work with them in preservation and for the community. Of course, any list should include the never-ending Heller Family: Kay and Rod, Patty and Hanes, Mary and Winder, and all the rest.

This book began when friends and I left a bachelor party in New Orleans, with Katrina on our heels. In the wake of the disaster, I found myself drawn back again and again to the city. When folks began to point fingers and talk about what had gone wrong in a place that has always seemed so right to me, I wanted to know how it had happened. We all knew about the Army Corp of Engineers, the inept and crooked politicians, the looters and all the rest—but, I wondered, did it really begin with Katrina?