Cane River

  Philomene had been free since spring, and most of the white men had made their way to Cane River by now. Narcisse had returned three months ago, long enough to give Emily his last name, long enough to plant another baby. Already the days were getting shorter. It was August, and Philomene had stayed to strip the leaves from the cornstalks and lay them out to dry to use as animal fodder. It was the last of the fieldwork she intended to do on Houbre’s farm.

  “Speak up, Philomene. Will you stay?”

  “We’ve stayed longer than we had to,” Philomene said calmly. “It’s time for us to move on, Madame. You never whipped me, true enough. If you had enough to eat, we had enough to eat. I can’t complain about our clothes, same as that mule over there wouldn’t complain about having to go without shoes. But these are freedom times now, and the account between us is closed and paid up in full.”

  Philomene’s belly would soon be large again, noticeable, and she was anxious for this confrontation to be over. She wanted to be settled in her new home before the baby made her movements more difficult.

  “If it hadn’t been for the wretched war,” Oreline said, “I was prepared to see after you forever, put food into your mouth, and that of your children, put clothes on your back, nurse you if you got sick, the way I did when you got the yellow fever. I treated Emily as if she were one of my own, and I was prepared to keep on taking care of you, even after you were too old to do for yourself. Are you saying that’s not worth something?”

  “We made the arrangement work, Madame, and there’s no need for harsh words now that things have changed.” Oreline kept saying forever, Philomene thought. She isn’t asking us to stay forever, she would have done for us forever. The only “forever” for a slave was more work at someone else’s bidding and an uncertain future left in others’ hands. “My body will wear out soon enough, Madame. I want to have something of my own before that happens. Something I can leave to my own children, the same way you want me to stay and do for you and your children, and your farm. I’ve been taking care of you and yours my whole life. I have to put my own children in the first place now.”

  Philomene rested her hands on her belly, finished, and then decided to try once more, picking her words carefully.

  “I won’t let freedom for Emily and me go to seed for lack of nurturing.” She thought of her unspoken bargain with Narcisse Fredieu, both all that she had lost and what she stood to gain. “My Emily will have a different kind of life from mine. I can’t do that on this farm.”

  “Just stay the year,” Oreline negotiated, “and then you can go off on your own. That’s what a lot of your people are doing. Just work out the year for a part of the crops.”

  It would have been easier to follow the path Philomene knew so many others had taken. Just pack up and leave without the weight of words or explanation, but she wanted the break to be civil and clean. The law declared her free, but the desperate woman standing in front of her was still white, and the need for caution was just as strong as it had always been.

  “I am sorry, Madame. I do not have an extra year to spare,” Philomene said. “It is a late start for me already.”

  “Six months, then. You owe me that.”

  “And what do you owe me for selling my Clement to Virginia?”

  The idea of freedom had made her so heady that the words were out before Philomene thought them through. Unmistakably accusing words that couldn’t be recalled. It would have been an unforgivable exchange between slave and mistress. In these shifting times they were disconcerting words between a freed woman and a landless farm wife. The previously unspoken took solid form and drew in breath of its own, putting the two women out of easy reach of one another.

  “You ungrateful girl,” Oreline said, her face twisted and ugly. “Standing there talking to me that way, carrying another bastard child. Those were difficult times. I did what I had to in order to save us all.” Oreline panted softly, as if her breath were being stolen away. The air was too thick with bared truth to go forward safely.

  Philomene drew back and reconsidered. There was nothing to gain by revisiting what could not be undone. Freedom or no freedom, there was everything to lose by setting up a backcurrent of ill will from her former mistress. Philomene no longer hated Oreline for selling Clement. That had become too heavy a beast to drag day after day, and she had deliberately forced herself to give up the hatred. She had long since shut out everything about Oreline except for whether she was useful or not useful, and she had bided her time. It was the way of things that Narcisse could be more advantageous to her now, and this was the right moment to move on. Antagonizing Oreline was foolhardy and counterproductive, and Philomene regretted pursuing that course.

  “Oui, Madame. Forgive me. You are right. I overspoke.” She drew in her voice, making it soft and humble, conciliatory. “You’ve been a good mistress, to my mother and to me and to Emily. I am grateful. It’s just that now is the time to go off and build up something for my own children. You are a mother. You must understand.”

  “Your mother would never do such a thing, running off at the first opportunity.”

  “I am not my mother, Madame.”

  “I see that now,” Oreline said. “Go, then. Leave me alone.”

  Philomene was glad to go. She never again wanted to work a farm on which she had no chance of earning a stake. She was aching to tackle fresh land. From the first news that the Yankees occupied New Orleans three long years before, she had played with the idea of staying on to work the land on Houbre’s farm as a free person. The teasing specter of freedom sharpened with each whispered report of Southern battles lost, and her dreams got bolder each passing year of the war. The more trampled and hopeless the Southern cause became, the more she allowed herself to envision her own land, and the Houbre farm became a hope too small, outgrown.

  But Philomene was not one for idle dreams and wishful thinking. She had learned the hard lesson about land ownership from watching the chain of events after Ferrier died from yellow fever. You could be forced off land you didn’t own, in the same way that if you didn’t own yourself, you or yours could be sold at any moment, on someone else’s whim. Neither Oreline nor Valery actually owned the land they were working for someone else, hoping for a good crop to split a small profit. If Philomene stayed with them, she was that much further from her goal.

  Freedom changed everything.

  Land was what burned at Philomene now. Her own land. With Narcisse’s sponsorship, if she worked hard enough, she could save to buy land herself. It was possible. She was sure this was the path for gathering her family back to where they belonged, together.

  Narcisse never answered her repeated requests for a piece of his own lands, ignoring her completely or clearing his throat and bringing up the subject of long-term debts and back taxes, but he arranged for Philomene to work part of his neighbor’s property. Narcisse agreed to move the cabin she had on Houbre’s farm to its new location, at the southwest corner of Richard Grant’s old plantation.

  Philomene didn’t care that Grant wasn’t French, wasn’t considered quality. There were more ruined quality folks than could be counted in Natchitoches Parish these days. Philomene cared only that she was free, and her children would be free. She was going to be a sharecropper.

  * * *

  Narcisse came back from the war changed. He wasn’t a broken man, but he moved more slowly, as if some of the air had been let out. Many of the men who came back were already reliving the battles, full of talk and opinions on the war and the insulting absurdity of the new government. Narcisse refused to say anything about where he had been, what he had seen, and he seemed relieved that Philomene didn’t probe. He was more content than ever to sit with Emily on his knee, letting his little daughter amuse him with her bright ways for hours at a time, playing in his beard, digging in his pockets, singing him her special made-up songs. There was little need to prod him in his duty to Emily. His daughter delighted him, and when he first returned he was in
cautious in his love for her, carrying her everywhere.

  Narcisse’s wife, Arsine, had died just before war’s end. His mourning seemed genuine to Philomene, even though he had never been that fond of her while she lived, as if he were uncomfortable at the thought of being without a wife. Many of his friends and neighbors were crushed or ruined by the war, financially and emotionally, but Narcisse came back whole, gone only a year and with the means to start over. Almost no one had managed to keep hold of their cotton along Cane River, but neither the Yankees nor the Confederates had uncovered the cotton stored on his wife’s farm in Campti. When Southern ports were thrown open, Narcisse recovered some of his wealth, at least enough to settle unpaid back taxes, debts, and interest.

  He held on to most of his lands, even as he allowed his world to narrow, letting things happen around him of their own accord, no longer hard-charging at life. He returned to Philomene’s cabin with a new hunger, as if the thought had entered his mind for the first time that she didn’t have to accept him there and that Emily was his only flesh-and-blood legacy.

  Philomene, determined to be settled into a new life by the time of the new baby’s coming, asked Suzette, Elisabeth, and her brother, Gerant, to move in with her on Richard Grant’s plantation, the first step in her plan to restore the family. It was to be the beginning of the realization of her true glimpsing. Elisabeth nodded, deciding immediately, eager for the chance to have her grandchildren and great-grandchildren around her, but Suzette was vague and noncommittal, no matter how hard Philomene pressed her. Gerant agreed, willing to do any kind of labor himself. Gerant had married, and as long as his wife, Melantine, would not be expected to go to the field, he was eager to move onto the land. They put that behind them, he said, and they wouldn’t go back.

  Philomene gambled with another false glimpsing, the first she had spun for Narcisse in more than a year. She found that his blind belief had gotten even stronger.

  “We’ll have a son, a younger brother for Emily,” she said to Narcisse, and he was as receptive as always, his desperate wanting blocking all else.

  She knew how to play the trick now. If the baby turned out to be a girl, she would say that the glimpsing must have been of a future son they would soon have. It would work out either way. “I see Emily and your son together, and he has the Fredieu look. Both he and Emily carry your name. The brother and sister play together, in front of a house. It isn’t this house we have here, it’s bigger, and there’s a wide door leading inside, on our own land. Elisabeth and Gerant are close by.”

  Narcisse stroked his dark beard down to its wavy point, considering.

  Every day Philomene prayed to herself. “Just get the child born. Let him grow up free and strong, and don’t let him be taken away from me.”

  The responsibility for the new life inside her thrilled and terrified Philomene, her first child to be born free. She woke sometimes in the middle of the night soaking in her own sweat, the details of her dreams scattered, recalling only vague uncertainties.

  What if Clement came back? Before freedom, she had never allowed herself to believe that she would ever see Clement again. Now he could come back to her with the same determination he had shown in the storm. She couldn’t feel him alive, try as she might, and without Clement Narcisse was her best bet for the life she envisioned. But what if she was wrong about Clement? What if he made his way to her? She had been living as if man-woman love were dead, substituting man-woman practicality, and she wasn’t sure what would happen if Clement found her now, hard and used. What would he do? What would she do? How far had she bound herself to Narcisse Fredieu for the sake of her family and her children?

  What if her glimpsings couldn’t protect this child, as they had protected Emily? What if Emily was all she was allowed?

  There were too many questions, and too few answers.

  25

  E lisabeth sat alone on the front gallery with a widemouthed bowl squeezed tight between her knees, shelling peas. A figure approached in the distance, his gait slow but steady. When he turned off the wider dirt road toward the farmhouse Elisabeth shared with Philomene and her two children, she paid closer attention.

  He was a colored man of middle age, and too much exposure to the sun had given his light honey–colored face the appearance of a golden-baked crust. His skin was pulled smooth and tight, most likely from hunger, Elisabeth supposed. One of the hordes of the displaced that flowed in or ebbed out like the tides since the war ended. As he came closer something tugged at her about the purse of his lips, the set of his eyes. This one was a high-yellow man, with a wide mouth, dirty reddish brown curls, and clothes that gave away that he was from somewhere else. That, and the soft slanting of his words as he came up to stand before the gallery and address her.

  “Good afternoon, madame,” the stranger said. His French was halting and stiff, but he could be understood. “Is this Elisabeth’s house?”

  “This is my granddaughter’s house.” Curious, Elisabeth thought. Slave Creole in words, but foreign in dress and manner. “You look like it’s been a while since you rested. Help yourself to a little water from the dipper.”

  “I have been on the move for some time. I appreciate it. Thank you, madame.”

  Elisabeth went back to her peas as he drank. She sized up this stranger asking about her. He seemed soft to her.

  “You’re not from around here,” Elisabeth said. “Where you come from?”

  “I’m from Virginia, madame.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Not in quite a while, madame.”

  “Come on inside with me while I dish you up something. We have the leavings of the stew from supper.”

  Elisabeth rose stiffly and carried the half-full tin of peas with her. The man followed her into the dark house, through the front room, and into the kitchen. Elisabeth waved him to sit at the pine table. She scraped out all that was left of the stew from the kettle into a wood bowl and handed him a spoon, and then she cut a quarter round of yesterday’s cornbread. She poured him some buttermilk and lowered herself into the chair across from where he sat.

  He hunkered over the bowl like a ravenous dog, barely taking the time to chew the small bits of meat in the stew. Mostly it was vegetables blended beyond recognition in the long cooking. The man crumbled what was left of the cornbread into his buttermilk and drank it down in gulping swallows. Only when he was finished did he look up, embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry. Like I said, it’s been some time since I last ate. That was very good.”

  “Sorry there’s not more.” The stranger seemed harmless enough, but he was fidgety, rubbing his fingers together nervously. “What are you doing looking for Elisabeth?”

  “No disrespect intended, but that’s something best taken up with her. I mean her no harm. They say she came through the war all right, and she lives here on this farm, but I might have gotten turned around on the road a little.”

  The man was trying to study her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  “Lots of women called Elisabeth in these parts.”

  “The Elisabeth I’m looking for comes from Virginia. She was sold away from there almost fifty years ago to a man called Pierre Derbanne, and ended up on his son’s place called Rosedew. She has a granddaughter, Philomene.”

  Elisabeth’s old memories began to stir, and she looked carefully at the man’s face for clues. She had liked this soft-spoken stranger who came out of nowhere, but now she was uneasy, unwilling to believe that she could make it all the way into her sixties, through slavery and freedom, and still feel the lurch of life shifting and becoming unsteady beneath her. “Who are you?”

  “Again, no disrespect, but I’ve already been to Natchitoches, Cloutierville, Isle Brevelle, and Monette’s Ferry tracking this farm down. Please, is it you?”

  “I’m Elisabeth. What do you have to do with me?”

  “You left Virginia nigh on fifty years ago? From Lost Oak Plantation?”

  “Yes,
that’s me. What’s your business?”

  “You had two sons, John and Jacob?”

  Elisabeth’s throat seemed to dry up, sealing off the escape of her words. The longer she took to respond, the more uncertain the man became, until he looked like a frightened little boy forced to drop his pants as he waited for a whipping. “You better tell me what you came to tell me, stirring up old sadness like yesterday’s soup.”

  The man spoke quickly then, but he tripped over his words, as if his courage had wound down. “They call me Yellow John. I think I’m your son. I came from Virginia to find you.”

  Off in the distance a jay screeched, and another of his kind answered the call. Elisabeth leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was still sitting there in front of her. She half expected him to disappear, carried away by the same play of mind that summoned him in the first place.

  “My John? What trick is this?”

  “No trick, madame. I’m sorry. I’ve had more time to get ready for this than you.”

  Elisabeth began to cry softly where she sat, her head in her big hands. “Praise be,” she said finally. “Come help me up.”

  Yellow John pulled her up from the chair, slowly, a bit awkwardly, as if he were afraid to touch her. Elisabeth used her hands to try to find herself in his face, and then she folded him in her arms. They stayed that way until she let him go.

  “How could you find me, all the way from Virginia?”

  “It’s a story that bears telling, madame, but first, could I bother you for a little more to eat? I haven’t eaten for several days.”

  Elisabeth gave him the rest of the cornbread and fried four eggs in the skillet, turning back to look at the man sitting at her table. Yellow John was more controlled in his eating this time, rationing his bread and eggs carefully to make sure he didn’t run out of one before the other, using the bread to sop up every bit of the runny yellow yolks. The plate he left behind looked as clean as if he had washed it.