In the last hours of daylight, Bedford walked Lucinda back to the Wallers’, but she sighed and frowned, and when he asked her what the matter was, she would only shake her head. He invited her to linger on the porch but she pulled away, her hand on the doorknob.
“Lucinda, dear, what’s wrong? Is it something I’ve done?”
Lucinda gave him the back of her head. “It’s rather what you haven’t done. You don’t trust me, Bedford, and by your example, neither does your family. Jane was very cold and thoughtless with me today.” She opened the door, but he put his hand over hers.
“Of course I trust you. And as to Jane, I can’t imagine why she would be cold with you, but I’ll speak with her.”
Lucinda turned to face him. “Speak with her all you like, but you must lead by example.”
She walked inside, closed the door, and listened to him pacing and then retreating down the steps. She could play the slap-and-tickle game as well as anyone, and tomorrow she’d greet his anxious looks and reticent air with warm smiles and gentle encouragement. She had let him only kiss her cheek so far, his hands restrained by hers over the stays cinching her waist. But beginning tomorrow, she’d start to bring the pot to a full boil.
There were too many threats of discovery now, too many chances to be thwarted by Jane, by Tobias, by the Wallers; she had to move more decisively. If she had to pour whiskey down his throat (something he’d been doing on the sly himself more and more in recent days) and dance naked, she’d get Bedford Grant to reveal to her where the gold was hidden.
The following morning, she left for the school early. She made her way to the greenhouse first to write another letter, but as she approached the structure, she smelled the familiar odor of lit tobacco. She walked to the far side and saw Tobias seated in his usual place, his back against the wall.
She approached him slowly, careful not to alarm him. “I wanted to thank you for carrying me to the Grants’.”
He looked at her for a moment, one eye closed against the smoke, and nodded. “I had a cousin who had the shakes.”
She moved a few paces closer. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had any tobacco.”
He took another deep drag, let the smoke curl out between his lips, and then held it out to her. The smoker’s end was wet and glistening from being in his mouth, and in his one open eye was a challenge. She hesitated for only a moment, then stooped down and took the cigarette between her fingers. She drew deeply on it once and handed it back.
She looked around, laid the shawl on the ground, and sat next to him. She stared at his profile for a while. “Are you going to tell anyone about me?”
He looked her full in the face. “Who would I tell?”
“I don’t know. Whoever is most likely to reward you for the information.”
A slow creeping smile brought his lips apart, showing the tips of his teeth. “No one will thank me for that bit of news.”
She took the cigarette from him again. “How did you know?”
He let his head fall back against the wall and closed his eyes. “You ever walk along on a hot day and smell honeysuckle? You can’t always see it, it grows underneath sometimes, but you can sure smell it. It hits you sudden-like, and it stops you dead in your tracks.” He opened his eyes, turning his head to her. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the presence of a come-hither woman.”
She looked away but smiled and handed back the small butt end of the cigarette. “Why are you telling me all this? What do you gain from it?”
He squinted at her again. “I feel sorry for you. That surprise you? A black man feelin’ sorry for a white woman? But I do. These farmers get wind of what you are, and you’ll be out on the road before you can turn around.”
He pointed in a sweeping motion across the field. “Besides, all these people here, they can hardly stand the fact that I’m with them day after day, working my fields, raising my crops.” He crooked his thumb towards the greenhouse roof; the strengthening sun reflected off the glass negatives embedded there. “Looking at me, they understand they’re the upright dead, just like those ghosts there on the ceiling. Everything they knew or had or thought they were gonna have is gone.” He took out his tobacco pouch and some papers and began to roll another cigarette. “And you? You’re the mold in their bread. The worm in their belly that they live with but don’t know is there.”
He wet the paper with his tongue, then sealed it. “Yes.” He laughed softly. “How the mighty are fallen.” He handed Lucinda the cigarette, struck a light for her on the bottom of his match safe. “You and me, an upstairs girl and a slave that was, we are the new citizens for the coming of days.”
It took only a few days to convince Bedford, through furtive touching and desperate groping, kisses given and received on small, exposed places of naked skin, to take her to the place where he said he had discovered the gold.
On a warm evening after an unexpected rain, Bedford walked her to the clearing where the German had been killed and led her to the very banks where his body had been rolled into the water. At first she was alarmed, thinking the body had been discovered, but Bedford pointed across the water to a small island—what she had thought was simply a promontory jutting out from the opposite bank—and said, “That’s where Lafitte’s treasure is buried. There amongst the trees.”
They stood in the dark, his arm around her waist, and listened to the night sounds coming off the water and to the rustling grasses hiding the multitude of creeping, unseen things. She recalled the persimmons on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, and the alligators that guarded them. The island was so very near, and yet it would have to be approached with caution. She stepped closer to the waterline, ignoring the dense clay mud that leached into her shoes, and made a mental list of what would be needed to dig up the gold: a shallow boat for the crossing, ropes, picks, shovels, and, equally important, a sharp eye and a loaded gun for the swamp guardians. Bill would be pleased.
She shivered in expectation, and Bedford, thinking her cold or afraid, held her closer. He whispered to her, “I told you I would share everything I have with you.”
Kissing his cheek, she said, “Yes, Bedford, dear. I am certain now that you will.”
The next morning the air turned cool, and Lucinda watched the giant whooping cranes, their white and black feathers in stark contrast to the blue of the sky, gliding onto the bayou waters by the hundreds, heard their raucous calls carried with them from far northern places. Lucinda had been pushing Elam’s chair along the path towards Red Bluff Road and the schoolhouse but stopped to watch the birds, describing to him what he couldn’t see beyond his stiff, forward-facing view in his invalid’s chair.
She mused aloud, “They look too large and awkward to fly. How do you think they manage it?”
She looked down at Elam, smoothed some stray bits of hair off his forehead, and impulsively kissed him on the cheek. She had begun taking him to school with her every morning, placing him next to the stuttering boy, thinking it would do the both of them good. The boy talked to Elam throughout the day, his impediment lessening with practice. And for Elam, it was a rescue from the stultifying and suffocating air of the Waller house.
And because of her closer involvement with Elam, she now knew how the pistol had come to be in his lap. It was Euphrastus who, every morning, before Lucinda wheeled the invalid out the door, lifted the quilt and placed the gun underneath. When she asked him why he would do such a thing when Elam could neither move nor speak, Euphrastus answered that he hoped the constant reminder of his son’s unfulfilled duty as a soldier would rally him to, at the very least, claim his responsibilities as a Waller, cause him to shake off his imaginary wounds, raise himself from the invalid’s chair, and function as a man.
She took hold of the chair handles and continued rolling Elam into the schoolhouse, then settled him at his usual place. She told her students to work on whatever they pleased, only to be quiet.
She sat in her chair and stared out the wi
ndow, thinking of the letter she would post that day. She hid a tight, satisfied smile with the palm of her hand; soon she could quit this place and begin a life of protected comfort in New Orleans.
A sudden rush of air caused her to turn. May stood in the doorway, holding on to the door frame with outstretched arms, her hair blown into cascading ribbons around her neck. She wore the dove-gray dress and a fine lavender shawl that Lucinda had given her. May smiled excitedly, her cheeks and forehead wind-reddened and glowing, and Lucinda’s breath caught in her throat to see in one body such a perfect balance of color, form, and motion. A true and strong affection for the girl rose up like springwater and Lucinda smiled in return.
May took two steps into the room, seemingly unaware of all the other students staring at her as well. “Miss Carter,” she began breathlessly, pointing towards the door.
Lucinda looked through the open space, saw nothing.
“Your brother, Bill, is coming.”
Lucinda blinked and stood. On Red Bluff Road, a man walked slowly towards the schoolhouse, leading his horse. He looked closely at everything around him, swiveling his head from side to side, taking in the fields and houses in the distance. When he noticed Lucinda standing outside in the yard, he waved once and continued his same leisurely approach. The sun flared off a pair of spectacles and perhaps a glint of teeth showing through a growth of beard.
May came to stand next to her in the yard, and Lucinda felt the girl slip one hand into hers.
“I met him along the road,” she said. “You told him in your letter that you’d befriended someone he’d be interested in. And now he’s come to meet that friend.”
It took a moment for Lucinda to comprehend that May was speaking of the unfinished letter recovered from the greenhouse. She looked at May’s upturned face, rapturous with a girl’s expectation of being admired and a woman’s fevered hope of being pursued, and she suddenly realized that May believed that the friend referred to in Lucinda’s letter to Bill was not Bedford but herself.
Chapter 16
The crisis for Dr. Tom came the day after Nate’s return from Lynchburg in the form of a roaring fever and frightening visions that left him moaning and disoriented. Nate and the doctor sat with him through the night, nodding occasionally into sleep, only to be awakened again by the ranger rambling and calling out several times, “Watch it, watch it…”
The doctor warned Nate that the patient could be dead by morning, but by daybreak, the fever had broken, and Dr. Tom gave himself ten days to recover sufficiently to ride with Nate to Lynchburg.
The doctor shook his head but conceded, “I’ve known stranger things to happen. God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”
“God, and a lot of opiates,” Dr. Tom countered.
He gestured to Nate to help him out of bed, and the two of them shuffled around the room for a few minutes. Winded, Dr. Tom crawled back into bed. An hour later, he leaned on Nate again to walk out of the sickroom and into the doctor’s visitation room. By the fifth day, Dr. Tom could walk slowly, with only a little assistance, to the stable to see after his horse.
He ran one hand down the horse’s neck and then pointed to his old partner’s bay in the next stall. “He looks good, Nate. Few people could handle him. Has he reached around and bitten you yet?”
Nate smiled. “He tried it a time or two.”
“George had a scar on his thigh as big as Cleveland that he got from the very first day he was out with that big boy.”
Dr. Tom lowered himself onto a crate, supporting his lower ribs with one hand. “This lingering pleurisy is going to be a problem for me.” He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing shallowly, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a vial of dark liquid from which he drank. Holding the vial up to Nate, he said, “As could this.”
Nate frowned. “The doctor said you needed it.”
“The question is for how long, though.”
Dr. Tom sat for a few minutes looking out of the open stable door. “I got wounded at Dove Creek during the war. Caught a ball in the left shoulder. The camp surgeon dug it out but it had broken the collarbone and was painful as hell. We didn’t stop until we got to Mexico, and the only way I could ride was if I had enough laudanum to take the edge off the hurt. It wasn’t but a week before it got its hooks in me. I spent the next few months taking the edge off everything with those little vials. George caught wise and threatened to shoot any doctor who gave me any more. He took me into his home south of Austin and let me stay there until I got well.”
Nate placed another crate next to Dr. Tom and sat down. “Did you ever meet his daughter?”
“Yes.” Dr. Tom looked at Nate. “I married her.”
Nate blinked a few times and raked his hat off his head. There in front of him was the relatedness he had sensed between Deerling and Dr. Tom.
Dr. Tom backhanded the sweat from his eyes. “Oh, it wasn’t a love match, at least not on her part. George thought I could somehow manage to reclaim her, get her to lead a settled life.”
“She agreed to the marriage, though.”
“If you mean did we tie her down and threaten the minister until he performed the ceremony, then no. Deerling knew I’d take care of Lucinda. And I did my best.” He stood up, clung to the boards until his dizziness passed, and again laid a gentling hand on his horse’s neck. “I loved her, and I thought that would be enough.”
Halfway up the street, Dr. Tom staggered but waved away Nate’s offer of a supporting arm. He said, “Nate, you’re a good nurse and you’ve been a good friend. But the next time you try holding me up, I’m going to flatten you.”
Five days later, Dr. Tom settled his accounts with the doctor, and he and Nate walked to the stable to retrieve their horses. Their plan was to travel in a wide arc so they could enter the town of Lynchburg not from the ferry side at the south but from the north, and under cover of darkness. It would take them the entire day and part of the night, crossing spongy wet ground and several smaller bayou rivers, but Dr. Tom wanted to give them every advantage should they find McGill’s men in town.
They breached the narrow, sandy-bottomed banks of the San Jacinto at its narrows and turned south at sunset, the clouds to their right hanging almost vertically in the sky like a curtain. Dr. Tom had been quiet most of the day, conserving his strength, but his eyes, sunken from exhaustion and opiates, reflected the yellow light dully, like a shot glass underwater. They stopped to rest for a few hours a mile from town, making a low fire so they could brew enough coffee to keep them awake.
Nate had seen Dr. Tom drink from the laudanum flask several times during the day, and the ranger poured some of the dark liquid into his coffee cup, then drained it in a few swallows. He saw Nate watching him but offered no commentary. They drifted off to a half sleep, huddling under their long coats in the night air, but covered over the fire at the sky’s lightening murk in the east.
They tied their horses to a stand of trees, took with them short lengths of rope, and walked past a few small houses at the edge of town. Arriving at the stable, Dr. Tom kicked at the door, rousing the stable boy, who asked, in Spanish, who was there.
Dr. Tom kicked at the door again and said, “Federales.”
They saw lantern light appear from one of the small windows, and when the door finally eased open, they slipped inside. Dr. Tom asked the boy, “¿Tienes una yegua grulla aquí?”
The boy hesitated, but finally pointed to a far stall. Nate walked to the back of the barn and saw the gray mare standing quietly. He turned and nodded to his partner.
Dr. Tom pulled out a coin and gave it to the boy. “¿Dónde está el hombre ahora?”
The boy looked at the two of them for a moment, brows knit, but answered, “En el hotel.”
Dr. Tom put a finger to his lips in warning and they left, crossing the street to the hotel. The door was locked but a low window, its bottom frame flush with the porch, was not. Dr. Tom eased it open, slid a shabby armchair aside,
and the two of them stepped into the darkened lobby.
The night clerk was asleep at the desk with his head on his arms, and Dr. Tom took another coin out of his pocket and began tapping it on the desk. The clerk came awake with a start and, seeing the two strangers standing in the ill-lit room, began buttoning his collar, muttering, “I’m sorry, gentlemen. We’re closed right now. The door should have been locked.”
Dr. Tom scanned the lobby quickly and turned back to the clerk. “We’re not here for a room.”
“What are you here for?” The clerk looked nervously at Nate and the rope he was carrying.
“Information,” Dr. Tom said, his voice low.
“What kind of information?”
“William Estes McGill. Innis Crenshaw. Jacob Purdy. Any of those men staying here?”
The clerk had started shaking his head even before Dr. Tom finished speaking. “Look, you should leave.”
“One of the men rides a grulla mare that happens to be in the stable down the street.”
“If you don’t leave, I’m going to have to call the sheriff.”
Tom placed his Colt revolver on the desk. “You don’t have a sheriff here. Nor do you have a marshal; he’s in Harrisburg. But what we do have is a Texas state policeman.”
“A what?”
“A Texas state policeman.” Dr. Tom pointed to Nate, who opened his coat to show his badge.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Have you heard of the governor of Texas?”
“Yes, of course I have. Governor Davis.”
“Well, then, you ignorant son of a bitch, this is one of the governor’s hounds, newly appointed judge, jury, and executioner, at his discretion. He’s been empowered to act with or without all local officers of the peace. So, if you don’t want to be taken out and hanged right now for obstructing state business, you’ll give me an answer.”