Iron Lace (5 page)

Finally he turned and watched Marcelite undress.

Her shirtwaist dropped to the crude wooden bench beside her bed, followed by her homespun skirt. She faced him in garments elaborate enough to suit Claire. He had given her the pink, lace-trimmed corset at the beginning of the summer, and it still looked as new as it had on that June day.
Her chemise was snow-white, but the ribbon adorning it showed signs of wear. He told himself he must remember to buy her another.

She lifted her hands and began to uncoil her hair. It fell past her shoulders, past her waist. The airy room was pleasantly cool, but he could feel himself beginning to sweat.

She came to him without a word, holding out her hand for the straw hat he had already removed. He gave it to her and watched as she placed it carefully on the bench. He spread his coat while he waited, and when she returned he lifted his arms just enough so that she could push it off his shoulders.

Skilled and sure of herself, she took her time with the rest of his clothing. His eyelids drifted shut. He could feel the harsh whisper of her hands against his chest and arms, feel the damp breeze sifting through palmetto fronds to tease the beads forming on his forehead. Her hair brushed his face, and he savored the fragrance of the pomade she made from jasmine petals.

“You’ll help me undress, too,
non?
”

He opened his eyes as she curved against him, lifting her hair so that he could find the strings of her corset. His fingers were heavy and uncoordinated as he struggled with the hooks. He felt her sigh as the corset came apart, but before she could move away, he cupped her breasts in his hands and felt them rest heavily against his palms.

“And the lugger for our son?” she asked, arching back against him. “A boat of his own, one he can fish from and sail to the city?”

Her bottom danced in a slow, sensuous rhythm against him, her breasts swayed in his hands. Lucien groaned. “You’ll always have what you need,
mon coeur.
And so will your children. Always.”

She turned slowly, and her legs spread to cradle him. He lifted her and moved toward the bed.

“The lugger?”

“More, if I can give it,” he said as he fell with her to the mattress. “Trust me to take care of you. Trust me.”

Aurore Le Danois was hiding from her mother. One noise, one breath sucked in too deeply, the whisper of one black stocking rubbing another, and she would give herself away.

As she watched, her mother crossed the room, returning from the gallery where she had rocked unceasingly for the past hour. She passed the little table that sheltered Aurore, but she didn’t glance her way. At the doorway of her own bedroom, she raised her hand to her forehead and murmured something indistinguishable. Then she disappeared from sight.

Aurore waited, worried still. When she was certain forever had passed, she straightened one leg, biting her lip at the cramp that made it nearly impossible. When her mother didn’t reappear, she slid back against the wall and stood.

She watched her mother every day, and knew her habits. Now she would sleep restlessly, moaning sometimes, like the wind that bent the trees outside their door. But not until Ti’ Boo, Aurore’s nursemaid, came back from her daily visit to her uncle’s family would anyone think to check on Aurore. She was free, if she dared, to run outside and dance with the wind. She could play under the swiftly gathering storm clouds. And if the lightning came…

She clasped her hands. If the lightning came, she could watch it streak the dark sky and pry open the clouds. Rain would fall again, pure silver rain, as shiny as her bedroom mirror in New Orleans.

The wind beckoned. Leaves spun merrily, and many-hued petals of oleander flew light as angel wings through the air. Across the train tracks that ran in front of her, Aurore could see the empty cottages lining the other side of the clearing, and behind them, lowing mournful music, a small gathering of the sleepy-eyed cows who roamed the island.

The tracks were as empty as the houses. The tourist season was finished at the Krantz Place, and now the mule who pulled the tram car down to the beach twice each summer day was pastured behind the dining hall for a well-deserved rest.

She wished the season hadn’t ended. In summer there were other children. Under the watchful eyes of Ti’ Boo, she could romp and shout, and no one thought to tell her she must rest. No one remembered she was a frail, big-eyed child who took fever after too much excitement and sometimes couldn’t draw a proper breath. In summer she waded in the Gulf, and collected shells and driftwood. She had learned to crab this year, and to float with her feet toward the waves. Next year, Ti’ Boo promised, she would learn to swim.

She wanted to swim. She wanted to swim to the end of the Gulf, to the great water beyond, and never, never stop. She would leap high with the porpoises, and the sharks would not eat her. She was too thin, too pale, to interest sharks. Ti’ Boo had told her so at the beginning of the summer, when she was still a little girl and frightened to get wet.

A gust of wind lifted a curl off her neck and plastered it against her cheek. She giggled and held out her arms to embrace her unseen playmate. In a moment she was under the oaks, whirling to the wind’s rhythm. She scampered past the dining room. There hadn’t been a shout from her cottage or any of the others. In the summer, fifty people would have
seen her and asked questions. But now, on the last day of September, not even Mr. Krantz, who was such a large man he seemed to be everywhere, had spotted her.

She wanted to see the waves once more. Her family was leaving for New Orleans on Monday. Last night, her father, Lucien, had come from New Orleans to escort them home. And though they wouldn’t go to church tomorrow, because Papa said that the
chénière,
where the church was located, wasn’t a suitable place for his wife and child, her mother would pray in their cottage, and Aurore would be forced to stay inside.

Aurore knew that her father wouldn’t discover her escape. Earlier in the afternoon, she had heard her mother and father arguing. Papa had wanted to go sailing, but Maman had begged him not to. M’sieu Placide Chighizola had warned her of an approaching storm, and she believed him. Hadn’t he made her stronger with his herbs and diet? How could she believe he was wrong?

Aurore’s father had scoffed, saying M’sieu Chighizola knew nothing. The old man’s cures were voodoo, no better than the gris-gris bags carried by the blacks who still believed Marie Laveau, dead though she was, would save them from some imagined curse. His prediction of a storm was nonsense. Couldn’t Claire feel the slight chill in the air? Every sailor knew a big storm never followed a cold front.

Aurore had watched her mother grow paler. Her father had grown paler, too. As she continued to plead with him, he had raised a hand, as if to strike her. Then he had turned and stalked away.

Aurore thought her father was the handsomest man in the world, but at that moment his face had been twisted into a
horrifying carnival mask. She had seen his lips move under his luxuriant drooping mustache, and she had been afraid of the words he muttered.

Aurore had told Ti’ Boo about the angry words. Ti’ Boo had said that parents sometimes argued, and that once her mother had chased her father with a broom.

Aurore wished she was as old as Ti’ Boo. To be twelve, and able to leave your parents for the summer to work as a nursemaid! True, Ti’ Boo had to visit her aunt and uncle each day and submit to their questions, but Ti’ Boo’s life still seemed like freedom itself.

Someday Aurore would be twelve, too. She tried to imagine it, but she couldn’t. To be twelve. To be free!

The waves seemed to call her, with their own promises of freedom. Her mind made up, she started toward the water, following the iron rails. In the distance, she saw the roofs of the bathhouses where she and her mother changed before entering the water. Far to one side there were other bathhouses for the men. Ti’ Boo said that the men bathed without clothes, and that was why their houses were so far away. More than once, Aurore had tried to imagine such a thing.

As she reached the dunes and followed the track through them, she saw there were no fishermen today. Against the horizon, several boats with colorful triangular sails rode the angry waves, but no one fished in the surf.

She drew a sharp breath at the majesty of the waves. She was not foolish enough to get close. The waves ate into the shoreline hungrily, and they would eat a little girl, too. As she inched forward, the trunk of an ancient cypress, snatched by wind and water from some mysterious swamp, was flung against the sand, then snatched back.

She clasped her hands, as she had on the gallery. Far away, there was a silver flash, beyond the boats, beyond the waves. Light drifted down to the water between black thunderheads, as it did in the pictures of God’s son rising toward heaven. She crossed herself quickly, then clasped her hands again.

“Ro-Ro!”

She whirled at the sound of Ti’ Boo’s voice. For a moment she hoped she could hide; then she knew it was useless. She could only fling herself into the waves, and she was afraid to do that.

Ti’ Boo, her chubby face pink with exertion, came running through the dunes. “Ro-Ro!” She stopped and shook her finger at Aurore.

Aurore tried to look sorry. “I only wanted to see the beach once more, Ti’ Boo. I wasn’t going to go any closer. Truly.”

“You scared me to death. My heart, it’s stopped!” She clapped her hand over her chest.

“I didn’t think you’d be back. I thought no one—”

“No one knows but me.”

Aurore said a quick prayer of thanksgiving. “Don’t tell! Please don’t tell!”

Ti’ Boo flung her arms out dramatically. “The wind, it could carry you away!”

“I was careful.” Aurore took advantage of Ti’ Boo’s open arms to throw herself into them. She wrapped her arms around Ti’ Boo’s waist. “Don’t tell, please?”

Reluctantly Ti’ Boo stroked Aurore’s long brown curls. “Silly
ti’ oiseau.
I won’t tell, but if we don’t get back quick, someone’ll find us here.”

Aurore looked up at her friend. She thought Ti’ Boo beautiful, with her cheerful round face and her straight black hair
braided over her ears. “I don’t want to go home. I want to stay here forever.”

“Next summer, you come back, and I’ll take care of you again.”

“I wish you would come to New Orleans.”

“
Non,
my home, it’s on the b’you. What would my maman do without me, heh? Her with twelve to feed?”

Aurore brightened. “I could come with you to Bayou Lafourche. I could help.”

Ti’ Boo laughed. Aurore could feel the rumble against her ear. “And what would your maman do? Without her
ti’oiseau?
”

Aurore didn’t think her mother would mind too much.

“Come on. Le’s get back before anyone knows we went.”

Aurore took one last look at the waves. She promised them she would be back next summer, too. Then she followed Ti’ Boo through the dunes.

R
aphael Cantrelle stood high on a sand dune, one hand shading his eyes as he looked out to sea. In the distance there were pirate ships with billowing sails and masts so tall they speared the black clouds and carved a corsair’s route to heaven.

They were coming for him.

Raphael felt inside the pocket of his pants. His hand stayed there a moment, savoring the feel of his tiny store of treasure. He had a section of rope, a chunk of bread and smoked fish wrapped and tied in a piece of cloth, a shard of glass finely polished by the sea, two shells, and a piece of driftwood shaped like a dagger. The pirates would be proud to have him on board. Jean Laffite himself would beg him to sail on the biggest and finest of the ships.

He would have to say no.

As he watched, the ships disappeared, one by one, until there was nothing left but a clouded stretch of sea and sky and two fishing boats coming into port. He recognized one of the
canots,
with its red lateen sail and green body. It belonged to
the father of Étienne Lafont, a boy his age with whom he played when Étienne could sneak away from his family.

Next to Juan Rodriguez, Étienne was his best friend. Étienne wanted to be a pirate, too, but Juan was a pirate. Juan could teach him everything he needed to learn until the day when his mother no longer needed him and Raphael would sail away with Dominique You and Nez Coupé. And if they really were dead, as Étienne insisted, then he could sail away with someone else.

He wanted to leave the
chénière.
He knew of no other place to live, had never even crossed the pass to Grand Isle. But he knew that somewhere there had to be a village where no woman would call his mother names, where no man would tell his children they couldn’t play with him.

Only recently he had discovered that he was different from other boys. He was not the only child on the
chénière
without a father. From time to time, the Gulf waters took their toll, and boats washed in to shore, empty and battered by storms. But other fatherless children had families to see to their needs. Uncles and cousins, grandfathers and godfathers, brought them fish and game, milk and fresh vegetables from their gardens. Their mothers were welcomed into homes all through the village.

Raphael had learned from Étienne, just last week, that he had a family on the
chénière,
too, an uncle who was able to provide for Raphael’s mother. But no one brought her fish or milk. She mended nets and washed clothes to buy the fish she didn’t catch herself. Whatever else she needed, she bought with the coins she received from M’sieu Lucien or with the pretty gifts he gave her, traded to the storekeeper in the village, who sent them to New Orleans to be sold.

Étienne had taken Raphael to see his uncle’s house. It was one of the finest on the peninsula. Anchored on a slight inland ridge, it rose high above the ground and the other houses surrounding it. Étienne had told him that the house was made of
bousillage-entre-poteaux,
and that it was so sturdy it would still be standing on Judgment Day.

Raphael had found his way there half a dozen times since. He had twice seen the man who was his uncle. Auguste Cantrelle was tall, twice as tall as Juan, with a chest as wide as a lugger’s sail and curly dark hair like Raphael’s own. The second time, Raphael had stepped out of the shadows. Auguste Cantrelle had looked at him; then, with an angry face, he had hurried away.

He hadn’t asked his mother about the tall, tall man. Once he had asked her about his father, and she had told him that he had no father, that he had no family other than her and Angelle. After all, they were enough family for anyone, were they not?

Neither had he asked her about the boys who couldn’t play with him, the mothers who shielded their children when he passed, the bad names they called softly after him. He had seen that some people spoke to his mother and some did not.

Raphael’s hand slid into his pocket again, and this time he lifted out the packet of bread and fish. It had been some time since the noon church bell had tolled the Angelus. His belly told him it was time for food, but he didn’t want to eat too early. His mother had told him to stay away this afternoon. M’sieu Lucien was coming to visit, so there was no hope of begging more bread from her. He wasn’t supposed to go home until the sun was almost to the horizon, and if he disobeyed, he would go to bed hungrier than he was now.

He solved the problem by eating half the contents of the
packet, then carefully retying the string and saving the rest of the rations for later. Feeling better, he went to find Juan.

Juan’s house was far away, a long trip across the settlement, even though Raphael walked as fast as he could. Juan lived by himself in a house much like Raphael’s own, but there were no neighbors to share his marshy land. When the twilight breeze blew from the direction of Juan’s house, it always carried mosquitoes with it. He had asked Juan about them, and Juan had said that mosquitoes were kinder than people. Mosquitoes stung once or twice and took what they could, but people, they kept after you until every drop of blood was drained from your body.

Raphael had met the old man one morning outside Picciola’s store. Raphael had been waiting in the shade for his mother, chasing chickens to pass the time, when he noticed Juan coming toward him. The old man had walked like a crab, with swift little steps that veered to one side until he stopped, straightened, then veered to the other.

Juan was small and bent with age, although he carried no cane. Instead of a hat, he’d worn a red scarf, knotted and tied over one ear. No one had spoken to him as he wobbled his way toward the store, but Raphael had seen people move to one side, as if they were determined not to get in his way.

There’d been little reason to worry. Juan had avoided them with even more determination, preferring to stumble into the shade, rather than take a chance on the crowded path. But Juan had misjudged, and his foot had become entangled in the roots of a chinaball tree. He would have fallen if Raphael hadn’t sprung forward and braced him until he recovered his balance.

The old man’s swarthy skin had flushed with embarrassment, but he’d mumbled a
merci.
Then he’d reached inside his pants
and retrieved a small silver coin, pressing it into an astonished Raphael’s hand before he started back toward the store.

On the way home, Raphael’s mother had listened to his story, then taken the coin to keep with her own. In return, she’d told him that Juan Rodriguez was the son of a man who had sailed with Jean Laffite, and that some on the
chénière
believed Juan himself had sailed with pirates, too. Juan’s mother had been a bayou girl, and at Juan’s birth she had moved to the
chénière
to wait, always wait, for her husband to return from his journeys.

Raphael knew how hard his mother worked. There was little time for storytelling in her busy life, but on that rare day, with Juan’s silver coin jingling happily in her pocket, she had told him about others who lived on the
chénière.

The Barataria region, she’d said, had once been the haunt of pirates. Some of the people who lived here now were their descendants. He’d listened eagerly as she told more stories of the mélange of people who dwelled there, stories of people from Italy, Spain and Portugal, stories of people from Manilla and China who dried shrimp on tall platforms in Barataria Bay and danced over them until the shells fell off to be swept away by the currents. But it was Juan’s story he’d begged to hear again. He had gone to sleep that night promising himself that the next stories he heard would be from Juan himself.

At first Raphael had been afraid to go to Juan’s house alone. It was far from his own house, and Étienne had frightened him with stories about ghosts who haunted the marsh. But after a while he had found his way there.

Juan hadn’t spoken to him that first day, or the next. But after Raphael had visited for a week, carrying fresh water in a bucket from the well and helping Juan weave more palmetto into the thatch of his house, Juan had finally begun to talk.

Now Raphael visited Juan every day he could. Sometimes the old man was out in his boat and Raphael returned home without seeing him. But on lucky days, Juan was sitting outside, ready to tell stories. Raphael lived on these tales of conquest as surely as he lived on the bread his mother baked in her mud oven.

Today, when Raphael arrived, Juan was nowhere in sight. His boats were there, however, both the pirogue that he used in the marsh behind his home and the skiff he sailed into the Gulf.

Raphael knocked on the door of Juan’s hut, and when no one answered, he pushed it open a few inches to peer inside. The hut’s interior was more primitive than Raphael’s own. The floor was mud and the furniture nothing more than stumps of trees. There was a shrine in the corner, like the one Raphael’s mother kept, but no statue of the Blessed Mother presided over the simple wooden cross and the stubs of two candles.

Raphael closed the door and backed away. From the distance, he heard a clap of thunder. He didn’t want to be caught outside if the rain started again, but he knew better than to enter the hut without Juan’s permission. Just as he was turning to run back toward the village, he saw the tall sedge beside Juan’s house part in a rippling wave. As Raphael watched, terrified, the old man materialized in the mists rising from the marsh.

“Hey! ’Zat you, Raphael?”

Raphael swallowed hard. For a moment, his voice was locked in his throat, as if the ghosts he’d envisioned had wrapped their boneless fingers around his neck. He swallowed again, successfully. “I’z me.”

“You don’ see the storm comin’,
cher?
You don’ worry?”

Raphael shook his head and watched Juan stagger crab-like toward him. “It’s jus’ rain,” he said bravely, like a good pirate.

“
Non. Mais,
I wish you was right.”

“It’s goin’ away.” Raphael squinted as Juan drew closer.

“She goes ’way, then she comes back. Boom! Like that!” Juan clapped his hands.

“How do you know?”

“Me, I seen it before. The gulls go; and the pelicans. The cows, they go up to the ridges.”

“Why?”

“So they die slower.”

Raphael took a step backward. “It’s jus’ rain.”

“
Mais non, cher.
Is win’, too. Big win’.” He spread his hands wide. “Lights in the sky, this morning. I saw them lights. I know.” Thunder sounded in the distance once more. He dropped his hands to his side, as if his point had been made for him.
“Hein?”

“What can we do?”

Juan’s expression didn’t change. Slowly, he shook his head.

Raphael felt a thrill of alarm. He had experienced many storms in his seven years. He knew what it was like to be wet and miserable because his house leaked. But he could sense there was a difference between that and what Juan was saying. He tried to imagine a big wind blowing over the
chénière.
He couldn’t.

“The win’, she’ll take your house.” Juan turned toward his own house. “She’ll take mine, too, that one, and twist it to little pieces.”

Raphael thought of the few things he owned that weren’t in his pocket. Most important was a pair of leather shoes that M’sieu Lucien had brought all the way from New Orleans. He seldom wore them, but now that he was old enough for short pants instead of the cotton dress he had worn until summer, the shoes were important. He couldn’t let them
blow away. School was to start the day after tomorrow, in a brand-new building that had just been erected. Although his mother hadn’t yet promised he could go, he still held out hope. And he would need shoes.

There was also his rosary, and a tiny pirogue that he had whittled from a soft tree limb, along with a little man who sat in it. And there was Angelle’s doll. That last thought made his eyes widen. “Angelle, will she blow away, too?”

“You mus’ tell your maman to take you and Angelle to Picciola’s store when the win’, she start ’a blow. If she don’…” He shrugged.

Raphael nodded solemnly. “My
nonc,
Auguste Cantrelle, he has a big-big house.”

“That one.” He spat out the words. “He won’ take you in.”

Raphael thought about it, and decided Juan was right. “When does this storm come?”

“Who knows? Maybe soon, maybe later.” Juan moved forward and cupped Raphael’s chin in his hand. The old man stared at him long enough to make Raphael wish he could wiggle away. But he stood as still and tall as he could, and waited.

“Your papa, he was a good man.” Juan dropped his hand. “You didn’ know him, but me, I did. He was good, strong.
Les autres?
Those who say differen’?” He spat on the ground.

Raphael was affected by Juan’s words. He wanted to ask more, but he was spellbound by the revelation that Juan had known his father. Suddenly he was no different from the other boys on the
chénière.
His father had been a good man.

“Come, I show you somethin’.” Juan turned and started back the way he had come. Raphael was too excited by all he had heard to be frightened now of the marsh. He stumbled after Juan.

Juan parted the grasses, just like before. Raphael followed,
noting their route as best he could. The path was both solid and liquid, and in places the sedge was taller than he was. He followed Juan’s zigzag steps, glancing from time to time at a thicket of moss-draped trees in the distance.

They were almost at the ridge where three trees perched when Juan sank into water that came to the top of his boots. He turned and held out his hand to the boy. “You follow?”

Raphael looked at the water. He thought of what his mother would say when he returned with his pants wet and dirty. He thought of what Juan would say if he didn’t continue. Juan, who had known his father. He stepped in and sank to his chest.

Juan nodded his approval, then started forward.

The mud oozed between Raphael’s toes. His feet, as tough as shoe leather, still felt the prick of shells and roots. He thought of all the water creatures who could be lying in wait.