One More River (25 page)

Is this . . . is this some relative of yours? he asked.

Aurora Mae laughed. She laughed as if she’d invented laughter, that is in a dozen ways, all of them big, hearty, loud. Everything in the room felt electrified by the sound of it.

No!

Laura Anne’s and Mickey Moe’s scalps tingled. Their hair stiffened at the roots.

It’s me!

She leaned forward with her mouth open, ready to join with them in a second round of mirth, but they were plain dumbstruck with disbelief.

Me. It’s me.

She pointed to the woman in the photograph and then to her own chest.

Me.

Because they continued to sit there immobile, wondering if she was crazy or they were themselves, she relented and told them most of what they’d come to find out, at first hesitantly, then as she warmed up to her task, in a rush. She told them about herself and Bernard Levy, about their time together with her brother Horace up near Saint Louis on the family compound. She told them how happy they were, how close. To prove it, she told them everything Bernard ever told her about his background. She told them things even Horace did not know. She did not tell them about the night the kluckers came and abused her and took her away. To cover that episode, she made up a story, told them Bernard and Horace were conscripted by a landowner who transported them downriver by force. In this tale, she left the family farm soon after to search for them. She had many adventures, she said, most unpleasant. After a time, she gave up the search. She was alone, heartbroken. She wanted nothing of men, having experienced more than she wanted of them out in the world without her brother’s protection. In the course of avoiding them, she discovered the best way to rid herself of their attentions was to become, well, this! she said, slapping her thighs, and this! her breasts, and this! her close-cropped hair. One by one, I shed the things that made them go after me. I found other pursuits until all by accident, or you might say by an act of God, after nearly two year, in a wet season, I landed at a plantation close by here, a place called Ghost Tree. Your daddy and my brother worked there, too, only we did not find one another on its grounds for quite a while.

When she told them about the flood, she told as much of the truth as she remembered, which was everything. She told them how Bernard was a hero that day, who saved a hundred souls and murdered a monster bent on killing her along with all the black men on the levee. He was a brave man, your daddy, she finished. With the heart of a titan. He was a saint. A saint.

She stopped. Mickey Moe frowned, trying to absorb her narrative. Laura Anne, knowing he was expecting a different kind of story, stroked his back in comfort.

So. My daddy was a poor river rat who murdered an evil man to save the love of his life, which would be you, not my mama, and together with Bald Horace, you stole all the victim’s gold and went, where? Your separate ways? After all that?

Aurora Mae clammed up.

Not at first. Later on.

Well, what happened? What?

She put her two hands on the table and raised herself up.

I ain’t talkin’ about that. I have no desire to revisit that particular piece of time. You don’t know what the world was like after the flood. So much destroyed. So many dead. The ones alive were homeless. Negroes were mostly stuck in labor camps where they got paid in food if they were lucky. If you tried escapin’ and were caught, they just killed you. No questions asked. Life belonged to those with a gun and those with gold. We had both. Then there were things happened it’s not my place to tell. Let’s just say for now that I came here. The men went elsewhere.

But you were in Guilford that time when I was a boy. You lived there.

No. I didn’t. I was visitin’. I’d do that from time to time, startin’ with that occasion I showed up a mess at your mama’s house while she was havin’ a party. You couldn’t have been more than a baby that time. Oh yes. That was some occasion. But that’s her story to tell, not mine. You want to know that story, you ask your mama. Tell her I told you to ask her. Yes, you tell her I told you.

It was as if she’d punched him in the gut with all her considerable might. He could not speak. He sat open-mouthed, crumpled over, a hand holding his belly. Laura Anne spoke for him.

His mama knows about you?

Oh yes. You ask her. You ask her about Aurora Mae Stanton. You’ll see.

Stunned, shaken, Mickey Moe got up. He felt caged by all this knowledge, as if the truth were pressing in on him from every side. He had to get out of there or be squeezed to death.

Thank you, m’am, he said. I need to go absorb what you’ve been tellin’ me. I confess it’s been a shock.

Aurora Mae rose also. Of course, she said. It’s a lot to take in. I understand that, son.

They said their good-byes, which to Mickey Moe sounded hollow, as if he lived inside a great bell and the words he spoke reverberated back at him through still air. Laura Anne put her arm around him and guided him out as she might an invalid.

They were out in the street, squinting into the bright Tennessee sun. They walked to the car fast, in a hurry to get away from all the terrible news they’d just had land on their heads like a tree limb in a hurricane.

All along your mama knew, Laura Anne said in disbelief after they were back in the car with the doors locked. I am dumbfounded by that. Dumbfounded. We have to get back to Guilford and ask her about it. Right away.

Mickey Moe was in tears. He laid his cheek down over the steering wheel pointing himself in her direction. His damp face, his red eyes twisted up her heart.

If you wish to separate yourself from the son of a murderer thief, one with deranged tastes in women as a bonus, I completely understand, Laura Anne. I set you free without bitterness.

Now don’t get yourself in an uproar, she said. I’ll still marry you. Who your daddy was makes no difference to me. I told you that on the day we met. I’ll marry you today. I don’t care what my parents think.

And for the first time since she’d fallen in love with Mickey Moe Levy, she felt 110 percent released from her parents, her upbringing, and her social caste. Liberation exhilarated her. It was one thing, she realized, to voice modern opinion about a woman’s place, quite another to seize control of your own fate. She was doing it, really doing it and how about that? she thought, how about that? She gave her lover a bright, shimmering gaze of triumph, but Mickey Moe surprised her.

No, darlin’, he said, taking up her hand and kissing her fingertips. I thank you. We’ll do that but not today.

No?

No.

He straightened up. Put the key in the ignition and shifted into gear.

I’m taking you back to the motel, he said. And then I’m goin’ back to the woods for your daddy’s gun.

Oh honey, I don’t think so. The police could be there by now if Walter Cohen’s told them anything at all. How can we trust him, you know? We don’t know him.

Mickey Moe pulled out of the parking spot and into the street. That’s alright. Didn’t you hear, Aurora Mae? I am the son of a man of action. A hero. And I’m going to do what the son of such a man does.

I don’t understand.

I’m going to protect my woman’s family. That’s what.

With extraordinary courage filling him up in that place Aurora Mae had utterly depleted with her story, he drove Laura Anne back to the motel.

T
HE THREE OF THEM LIVED
up there in the big house attic for a time, waiting for the second crest and the third to pass on by. After that, they waited for the waters to stabilize. Day after day, they huddled together on the upstairs balcony, leaning against the wrought-iron gazelles that supported them. From high up, they could study the Mississippi and the new routes the floodwaters cut through the countryside. They watched the bloated bodies of livestock and humans float by along with rooftops, tires, whole ancient trees with their roots sticking up like the hair of a crazy man, wooden barrels, plows, machinery parts. They made a guessing game of identifying the mangled ruins of civilization, the way one conjures objects out of passing clouds on a fair afternoon. They went downstairs only so far as they had to, to the second floor for the bathroom or to gather more furniture for firewood, as they found the nights damp and cold like wintertime. There wasn’t any reason to hide, not to go all the way downstairs or even out the door. The rains had ceased, the river quieted. There wasn’t anybody around. It shouldn’t have mattered how they carried on in the buildings or on the grounds of Ghost Tree Plantation, but it did.

Sometimes at night, Bald Horace would get up and pace and fret over how his critters might be getting along until Aurora Mae or Bernard reminded him he’d opened their paddocks and coops the day the crest came, thinking they’d have a better chance free. Once they jogged his memory, he imagined all his babies out there sorting for themselves. Now they are prey to wild beasts and hungry humans, he thought and sat down and cried.

Aurora Mae developed a habit of standing in front of Bernard the handsome’s wardrobe mirror, running her hands over herself, clucking her tongue, murmuring to herself things like “Well, lookit here” and “This sure is somethin’, ain’t it” in a manner that awed the men. They didn’t interrupt her or comment. They tried not to watch, but it was quite a spectacle. She’d pass by the mirror, then stop, go back, make her repetitive self-examinations, talk to herself in wonderment. It was as if she’d never before comprehended what had become of her young, strong, and magnificent self.

Bernard was the happy one. Details of the trauma he’d experienced, that of the flood combined with the haunting guilt of murdering his name-twin, faded away each time they rose up to enslave his mind. In an act of will, he pushed all ugly, fearful questions aside and focused on the future when they’d leave Ghost Tree and find a home together. What joy that would be! Aurora Mae would have housemaids to wait on her, ten little dogs to cuddle. Bald Horace would have all the goats and chickens and pigs a man could desire to dote upon. And he, Bernard Levy, would keep his love by his side where he would never lose track of her again. Out of all past misery and terror, untold delights would blossom beneath their feet and buoy them to a heaven on earth. In the meantime, he busied himself sewing gold coins into their clothes and making backpacks that would hide more in clever compartments a Pinkerton couldn’t find.

Early one morning, a wayfarer showed up on the property. He strolled right up to the front door and knocked. They waited upstairs to see if he’d go away, but he did not. He’d noticed the smoke coming from the chimney and knew there were people about. He banged away, relentless. Eventually, full of dread, they trooped downstairs en masse and opened the door. The man doffed his hat, taking Bernard for the original Bernard Levy whom he’d never met.

Sir, he said, kind sir. My brother worked for you. The family’s lookin’ all over for him. His name was Carter. Do you have any word of him, any at all?

No one had seen the King of Prussia man since the day of the first crest, which is how they chose to recall events. It beat recalling the day of the murder of Bernard the handsome.

I don’t know what happened to him, Bernard the survivor said. He was here one day and then there was the crevasse and he was gone. I’d go into the town if I were you and inquire there.

That’s where I come from, the man said.

Then we cannot help you.

They gave him a packet of food and a bottle of spirits to help him along his way. They watched him walk down the road.

Bald Horace said, I guess that’s it, then. If they’re lookin’ for Carter, they’ll be lookin’ for the big man soon enough. We’d best be gone.

His sister and the man who loved her agreed.

The next morning, they put on the clothes Bernard had altered and tried on the packs he’d salted in gold.

It’s a heavy burden, Bald Horace said.

Can’t be helped, Bernard responded.

They set out.

Any other time, they would have made a strange procession. There was Bernard in his service livery and one of the big man’s panama hats, Aurora Mae in a fresh costume fashioned out of Ghost Tree bedsheets and table linens, and Bald Horace tagging along, bent over from the weight of his backpack plus that of the goat cart he pulled behind, which was loaded high with everything they thought might be useful on a trip to nowhere in particular. Any other time, local authorities coming across their path might’ve stopped to ask them who exactly they were and where they got a cart full of goods. But these were flood times, and they were not the only motley crew on the road. There was a great crush of humanity on the move, remnants all, odds and ends of half-crazed folk with water still in their ears, most either homeless or scavengers. Among those legions that emerged in that time from out the Delta’s sodden skirts to wander or pillage, Bernard, Aurora Mae, and Bald Horace were flyspecks, passing curios in a great and desperate parade.

They trekked along the riverbank, looking for transport. One time early on, they met up with a steamship loaded with refugees run by a hard, stout man with three weeks’ worth of scraggly beard. Bernard waved his hat at him until he steered close enough to converse.

Where you headed?

Up north. There’s not much left south of here.

Might you be goin’ to Saint Louis?

I might be. If you got the fare.

They negotiated a price, but when the captain saw that Aurora Mae and Bald Horace were part of the deal, he balked.

No niggers, he said. They’s swarms of ’em tryin’ to get north, and I ain’t takin’ any of ’em. They’s enough white people on the move. Don’t need no trouble takin’ thievin’ niggers.

Bernard insisted. The captain stood firm. Bernard offered him double his price per head. The captain weakened.

But she’s a big’un. You pay three times for her.

He would not take on Bald Horace’s cart for any amount of money. The three stuffed their pockets with whatever small things they found most necessary—shells for their handguns, a few toiletries, a hunting knife, bits of wire and rope, a flint—and abandoned the rest.