White Doves at Morning

Chapter Twenty-one

THE two-story gabled house next to the Catholic cemetery had been built in the 1840s by an eccentric ornithologist and painter who had worked with James Audubon in Key West and the Florida Everglades. Unfortunately his insatiable love of painting tropical birds as well as Tahitian nudes seemed to be related to a libidinous passion for red wine, Parisian prostitutes, gambling, and trysts with the wives of the wealthiest and best duelists in southern Louisiana.

Residents of the town believed it was only a matter of time before a cuckold drove a pistol ball through his brain. They were wrong. Syphilis got to it first. Just before the first Federal troops reached New Iberia, he gave all his paintings to his slaves, put on a tailored gray officer's uniform he had worn as a member of the Home Guards, then mounted a horse and charged down the bayou road, waving a sword over his head, straight into an artillery barrage that blew him and his uniform into pieces that floated down as airily as flamingo feathers on the bayou's surface.

The first night Federals occupied the town they tore the doors off the house, broke out the windows and turned the downstairs rooms into horse stalls. After the Union cavalry moved on up the 'I'echc into the Red Rivet country, the house remained empty, the white paint darkening from stubble fires, the oak floors scoured by horseshoes, the eaves clustered with yellow-jacket and mud-dauber nests. The taxes on the house were not paid for two years, and on a hot afternoon in late May, the sheriff tacked an auction announcement on the trunk of the live oak that shaded the dirt yard in front of the gallery.

Abigail Dowling happened to be passing in her buggy when the sheriff tapped down the four corners of the auction notice on the tree and stood back to evaluate his handiwork. But Abigail's attention was focused on the gallery steps, where Flower Jamison was sitting with two black children, teaching them how to write the letters of the alphabet on a piece of slate. In fact, at that moment, the broad back of the sheriff, the auction notice puffing against the bark of the tree, Flower and the black children arranged like a triptych on the steps and the vandalized and neglected house of a sybaritic artist, all seemed to be related, like prophetic images caught inside a perfect historical photograph.

Abigail pulled the buggy into the shade and walked past Flower into the building, trailing her fingers across Flower's shoulders. She walked from room to room, computing the measurements in her mind, seeing furnishings and arrangements that were not there. Tramps or ex-soldiers passing through town had scattered trash through the rooms and built unconfined cook fires on the hearths, blackening the walls and scorching the ceilings. She could hear red squirrels and field mice clattering across the roof and the attic. The wind blew hot and dusty through the open windows and smelled of fish heads behind a market and horse manure in the streets. But when she looked out on the gallery and saw the two black children, both of them barefoot, bending down attentively on each side of Flower while she showed them how to print their names in chalk on the piece of slate, Abigail felt a prescience about the future that was more optimistic than any she had experienced in years.

Wasn't it time to put aside anger and loss and self-accusation and live in the sunlight for a while? she thought.

She went back out on the gallery and sat down on the top step next to Flower and placed her palm in the center of Flower's back. She could feel the heat and moisture in Flower's skin through her dress, and she removed her hand and rested it in her lap. She looked at Flower's profile against the light breaking in the live oak, the clarity in her eyes, the resolute tilt of her chin, and experienced a strange tightening in her throat.

The two black children, a boy and a girl, both grinned at her. To call their clothes rags was a euphemism, she thought. Their poverty, the dried sweat lines on their faces, the untreated red cuts and abrasions on their black skin made her heart ache.

"You were born to teach," she said to Flower.

"That's what I'm doing. Every afternoon, right here on these steps," Flower replied.

Abigail touched Flower's hair. It felt as thick and warm as sun-heated cotton in a field. "Yes, you are. Like an African princess inside a painting. One of the loveliest, most beautiful creatures Our Lord ever made," she said.

She felt her face flush but knew it was only from the heat and the unnatural dryness of the season.

THE next morning Abigail went to the brick jailhouse set between Main Street and Bayou Teche, where the sheriff kept his office in the front part of the building. When she opened the door, he glanced up from the paperwork on his desk, then rose heavily from his chair, hypertension glowing in his cheeks, his mustache hanging like pieces of hemp from each side of his mouth. The sheriff's name was Hipolyte Gautreau, and he wore a hat both indoors and outdoors, even in church, to hide a burn scar from Mobile Bay that looked like a large, hourglass-shaped piece of red rubber that had been inserted in his scalp. The cuspidor and plank floor by his desk were splattered with tobacco juice, and through an open wood door that gave on to the cells, Abigail could see several unshaved, long-haired white men standing at the bars or sitting against them.

"It's my favorite lady from Mass'chusetts," the sheriff said. He had such difficulty pronouncing the last word, even incorrectly, that he had to touch a drop of spittle off his lip.

"It looks like you're about to have a tax sale," she said.

He fixed his gaze out the window on a passing wagon, his eyes seemingly empty of thought.

"Tax sale? Oh, you seen me nailing up that notice on the tree yesterday."

"That's right. How much will I need to make a realistic bid?" she said.

"How much money? You want to have a seat?" he asked.

"No," she replied.

He remained standing and pushed some papers around on his desk with the tips of his fingers. The crown of his gray hat was crumpled and sweat-stained and worn through in the creases. He pulled his shirt off his skin with two fingers and shook the cloth, as though removing the heat trapped inside.

"You don't need no old building, Miss Abby. Why not leave t'ings be?" he said.

"What are you up to, Hipolyte?"

He raised his index finger at her. "Don't be saying that, no. I'm telling you somet'ing for your own good."

"Somebody else doesn't want a competitor at the auction?"

He pushed his hat back on his head. The skin below his hairline was white, prickled with rash.

"Tell her, you old fart. Yankee jellyroll like that don't come around every day," a voice shouted from one of the cells. The other men leaning or sitting against the bars laughed inside the gloom.

The sheriff got up from his chair and slammed the plank door that separated his office from the jail.

"Who are those men?" she asked.

"Guerrillas. White trash. They calling themselves the White League now. You heard about them?"

"No," she replied. "Who else wants to buy that house, Hipolyte?"

"Mr. Todd."

"Todd McCain? From the hardware store?"

"He's gonna make it into a saloon and dance pavilion. Them Yankees gonna be around a long time," the sheriff said.

"What an enterprising man."

"You a good lady. Don't mess wit' him, Miss Abby." The sheriff's voice was almost plaintive.

"I think Mr. McCain should have been run out of here a long time ago," she replied.

"I knowed you was gonna say that. Knowed it, knowed it, knowed it," he said. He picked up a ring of big iron keys from his desk, then dropped them heavily on the wood.

AT dawn one week later and two days before the auction, Carrie LaRose drank coffee at the kitchen table in the back of her brothel and stared out the window at the red sun rising inside the mist on the cane fields. She stared at the plank table under the live oak where her customers drank and sometimes fought with fists or occasionally with knives, and at the two-hole privy that she herself would not use at gunpoint, and at the saddled black horse of a Yankee major who was still upstairs with her most expensive girl.

During the night she had felt chest pains that left her breathless, then a spasm had struck her right arm like a bone break. It was the second time in a month she had been genuinely terrified by premonitions of her own mortality. In each instance, after the pain had gone out of her chest, she had sat on the side of the bed and had heard heavy shoes walking in a corridor, then an iron door scraping across stone. She had pressed her hands over her ears, and her mouth had gone dry as paper with fear.

Now she sat in her kitchen and drank coffee laced with brandy and surveyed what she had spent a lifetime putting together: a termite-eaten house, a two-hole privy that her clientele shat and pissed upon, and a plank table under a tree where they got drunk and fought with fists and knives, then lumbered back into her house, stinking of blood and vomit.

The major, who was stationed in Abbeville, visited the brothel every Sunday night, mutton-chopped, bald, potbellied, effusive, his few strands of hair slicked down on his pate with toilet water. "Your randy fellow is back!" he would announce. Upon departure, he would wave in a jolly way and call out, "Just add it on my bill, Carrie!"

Last night he had sent an aide ahead of him to vacate an enlisted man from the only upstairs room with a tester bed, consumed two bottles of champagne, and started a fire by dropping a lit cigar in a clothes basket. But the major did not pay for services rendered, the liquor he drank, or the damages he did. One morning, when Carrie pressed him about his bill, he removed three pages of printed material from his coat pocket and unfolded and shuffled through them.

At the bottom of the last page were a signature and official seal.

"Glance over this and tell me what you think," he said.

"T'ink about what?" she replied.

"Sporting places have been banned throughout the district. The proprietresses of such places can be sent to prison and their property seized. It's all written right there in the document," he said.

She stared at the page blankly.

"But you don't need to worry. This is a tavern and cotillion hall and nothing more. Don't you be long-faced now. I'm going to take care of you," he said, his eyes trailing after a girl whose breasts bounced inside her blouse like small watermelons.

Now Carrie sat alone in her kitchen, her body layered with fat, her nails bitten to the quick, her fate in the hands of a man who could threaten her with pieces of paper she could not read.

The day was already growing hot and humid, but she felt cold inside her robe and short of breath for no reason. She clutched the holy medal and cross that hung around her neck and tried to suck air down into her lungs, but her chest felt as though it were bound and crisscrossed with rope. Again, she thought she heard footsteps echoing down a long corridor and an iron door scraping across stone.

The major walked down the stairs, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with a folded handkerchief, the buttons on his blue coat tight across his paunch.

"Having a late breakfast?" he said.

"I don't eat breakfast, me," she replied.

He looked disappointed. Then his eyes lit on the coffeepot and a piece of carrot cake on a shelf.

"I thought I might join you," he said.

"Last night s'pposed to go on your bill, too?" she asked.

"Yes, that would be fine."

"I want my money," she said.

"Carrie, Carrie, Carrie," he said, patting her shoulder.

He leaned across her to pick up the piece of carrot cake from the shelf. She could feel the outline of his phallus press against her back.

JUST before noon Carrie bathed and fixed her hair and dug in the back of her closet for a dress that had been made for her by a tailor in New Orleans. Then she powdered her face until it was almost white, rouged her cheeks, darkened her eyes with eyeliner and, with a silk parasol held aloft, sat regally in the back of her carriage while a Negro driver delivered her to the front of Abigail Dowling's cottage on East Main.

"Could I help you?" Abigail said, opening the door, looking past Carrie, as though an emergency of some kind must have developed in the street.

"I want to talk bidness," Carrie said.

"I'm probably the wrong person for that," Abigail said.

"Not this time, you ain't," Carrie said.

They sat down in the living room. Carrie fixed her eyes out the window, her back not touching the chair. Her red-streaked black hair looked like a wig on a muskmelon. She took a deep breath and heard a rattling sound in her lungs.

"Are you feeling all right, Miss LaRose?" Abigail asked.

"I got chest pains at night," she said.

"You need to see a doctor."

"The only good one we had was killed at Malvern Hill. I want you to find out what's wrong wit' me."

"I'm not qualified," Abigail replied.

"I wouldn't take my horse to the doctor we got. What's wrong wit' me?"

"What else happened when you had the chest pains?"

"I couldn't breathe. It hurt real bad under my right arm, like somebody stuck me wit' a stick."

Abigail started to speak, but Carrie raised a hand for her to be silent.

"I hear a man walking in a long corridor. I hear an iron door scraping across a stone flo'," she said. "I t'ink maybe somebody's coming for me."

"Who?" Abigail said.

"I growed up in Barataria, right here in Lou'sana, but I run a house in Paris. A colonel in the French army kilt my husband over some money. When I got the chance I fixed him good. Wit' a poisoned razor in his boot."

Carrie paused, waiting to see the reaction in Abigail's face. "I see," Abigail said.

"I was supposed to die on the guillotine. I done some t'ings for the jailer. Anyt'ing he wanted, it didn't matter.You know what I'm saying to you? I done them t'ings and I lived."

"Yes?" Abigail said.

"Anot'er woman went to the headsman 'stead of me. They put a gag in her mout' and tied her feet and hands. From my window I saw them lift her head out of the basket and hold it up by the hair for the crowd to see."

Abigail kept her eyes on the tops of her hands and cleared her throat.

"I think you've had a hard life, Miss Carrie," Abigail said.

"You been trying to borrow money around town. Ain't nobody gonna give you money to go up against Todd McCain. He's in the White League."

"How do you know?"

"He visits my house."

"You're offering to lend me money?"

"He's gonna set up a saloon, probably wit' girls out back. What's good for him is bad for me."

"And part of the deal is I help you with your health? I'd do that, anyway, Miss Carrie."

"There's somet'ing else." Carrie rotated a ring on her finger.

"What might that be?" Abigail asked.

"I cain't read and write, me. Neither can my brother, Jean-Jacques."

IT was late evening when Willie Burke walked into town and stood in front of his mother's boardinghouse on the bayou. A rolled and doubled-over blanket, with his razor, a sliver of soap, a magazine and a change of clothes inside, was tied on the ends with a leather cord and looped across his back. A narrow-chested, shirtless boy, wearing a Confederate kepi, was sweeping the gallery, his face hot with his work, his back powdered with dust in the twilight.

The boy rested his broom and stared at the figure standing in the yard.

"Mr. Willie?" he said.

"Yes?"

"Ms Abigail said she thought maybe you was killed."

"I don't know who you are."

"It's me-Tige."

"The drummer boy at Shiloh?"

"Lessen hit's a catfish dressed up in a Tige McGuffy suit."

"What are you doing on my mother's gallery?"

"Cleaning up, taking care of things. I'm staying here. Miss Abby said it was all right."

"Where's my mother?"

A paddle-wheeler, its windows brightly lit, blew its whistle as it approached the drawbridge. "She died, Mr. Willie."

"Died?"

"Last month, in New Orleans. Miss Abby says it was pneumonia," Tige said. He looked away, his hands clenched on the broom handle.

"I think you're confused, Tige. My mother never went to New Orleans. She thought it was crowded and dirty. Why would she go to New Orleans? Where'd you hear all this?"

Willie said, his voice rising. "Miss Abby said the Yanks took your mother's hogs and cows. She thought she could get paid for them 'cause she was from Ireland," Tige said.

"The Yanks don't pay for what they take. Where'd you get that nonsense?"

"I done told you."

"Yes, you did. You certainly did," Willie said. He went inside the house and stamped around in all the rooms. The beds were made, the washboards and chopping block in the kitchen scrubbed spotless, the pots and pans hung on hooks above the hearth and woodstove, the walls and ceiling free of cobweb, the dust kittens swept out from under all the furnishings. He slammed out the back of the house and circled through the side yard to the front. He squeezed his temples with his fingers. "Where is she buried?" he said. Tige shook his head. "You don't know?" Willie said.

"No, suh."

Willie pulled his blanket roll off his shoulder and flung it at the gallery, then winced and clasped his hand on his left collarbone.

"There's blood on your shirt," Tige said.

"A guerrilla gave me a taste of his sword," Willie replied. He sat down on the steps and draped his hands between his legs. He was quiet a long time. "She went to the Yanks to get paid for her livestock?"

"I reckon. Miss Abby said 'cause your mother was from Ireland, the Yankees didn't have no right to take her property. How come they'd have the right if she was from here? That's what I cain't figure."

"This war never seems to get over, does it, Tige? How you been doin'?" Willie said.

"Real good." Tige studied the failing light in the trees and the birds descending into the chimney tops. "Most of the time, anyway."

"Will you forgive a fellow for speaking sharply?" Willie asked.

"Some folks say my daddy got killed at Brice's Crossroads. Others say he just run off 'cause he didn't have no use for his family. I busted a window in a church after somebody told me that. Knocked stained glass all over the pews," Tige said.

"I doubt Our Lord holds it against you," Willie said.

Tige sat down beside him. He aimed his broom into the dusk as though it were a musket and sighted down the handle, then rested it by his foot. "Miss Abby done bought a big building she's turning into a schoolhouse. Her and a high-yellow lady named Flower is gonna teach there. She talks about you all the time, what a good man you are and what kind ways you have. In fact, I ain't never heard a lady talk so much about a man."

"Miss Abigail does that?"

"I was talking about the colored lady-Miss Flower."