White Doves at Morning

Chapter Four

LATER that same night Flower left her cabin and crossed the cane field through layers of ground fog that felt like damp cotton on her skin. She entered a woods that was strung with air vines and cobwebs and dotted with palmettos and followed the edge of a coulee to a bayou where a flatboat loaded with Spanish moss was moored in a cluster of cypress trees.

The tide was going out along the coast. In minutes the current in the bayou would reverse itself, and the flatboat, which looked like any other that was used to harvest moss for mattress stuffing, would be poled downstream into a saltwater bay where a larger boat waited for the five black people who sat huddled in the midst of the moss, the women in bonnets, the men wearing flop hats that obscured their faces.

Two white boatmen, both of them gaunt, with full beards, wearing leather wrist guards and suspenders that hitched their trousers almost to their chests, stood by the tiller. One of them held a shaved pole that was anchored in the bayou, his callused palms tightening audibly against the wood.

A white woman with chestnut hair in a gray dress that touched the tops of her shoes had just walked up a plank onto the boat, a heavy bundle clasped in both arms. One of the white men took the bundle from her and untied it and began placing loaves of bread, smoked hams, sides of bacon and jars of preserves and cracklings inside the pilothouse.

Flower stepped out of the heated enclosure of the trees and felt the coolness of the wind on her skin.

"Miss Abigail?" she said.

The two white men and the white woman turned and looked at her, their bodies motionless.

"It's Flower, Miss Abigail. I work at the laundry. I brung something for their trip," she said.

"You shouldn't be here," Abigail said.

"The lady yonder is my auntie. I known for a long time y'all was using this place. I ain't tole nobody," Flower said.

Abigail turned to the two white men. "Does one more make a difference?" she asked.

"The captain out on the bay is mercenary, but we'll slip her in," one of them said.

"Would you like to come with your auntie?" Abigail asked her.

"There's old folks at Angola I got to care for. Here, I got this twenty-dollar gold piece. I brung a juju bag, too." Flower walked up the plank and felt the wood bend under her weight. The water under her was as yellow as paint in the moonlight. She saw the black head and back and S-shaped motion of a water moccasin swimming across the current.

She placed the coin in Abigail's hand, then removed a small bag fashioned out of red flannel that was tied around her neck with a leather cord and placed it on top of the coin.

"How'd you come by this money, Flower?" Abigail asked.

"Found it."

"Where?"

Flower watched the moss moving in the trees, a sprinkle of stars in the sky.

"I best go now," she said.

She walked back across the plank to the woods, then heard Abigail Dowling behind her.

"Tell me where you got the gold piece," Abigail said.

"I stole it from ol Rufus Atkins' britches."

Abigail studied her face, then touched her hair and cheek.

"Has he molested you, Flower?" she said.

"You a good lady, Miss Abigail, but I ain't a child and I ain't axed for nobody's pity," Flower said.

Abigail's hand ran down Flower's shoulder and arm until she could clasp Flower's hand in her own.

"No, you're neither a child nor an object of pity, and I would never treat you as such," Abigail said.

"Them two men yonder? What do you call them?" Flower asked.

"Their names?"

"No, the religion they got. What do you call that?"

"They're called Quakers."

Flower nodded her head. "Good night, Miss Abigail," she said.

"Good night, Flower," Abigail said.

A few minutes later Flower looked back over her shoulder and saw the flatboat slip through the cypress trees into a layer of moonlit fog that reminded her of the phosphorous glow given off by a grave.

THREE days later Willie Burke was walked in manacles from the Negro jail to the court, a water-stained loft above a saloon, and charged with drunkenness and attacking an officer of the law. The judge was not an unkindly man, simply hard of hearing from a shell burst at the battle of Buena Vista in 1847, and sometimes more concerned with the pigeons whose droppings splattered on his desk than the legal matter at hand.

Through the yellow film of dirt on the window Willie could see the top of a palm tree and a white woman driving hogs down the dirt street below. His mother and Abigail Dowling and his friend Jim Stubbefield sat on a wood bench in the back of the room, not far from Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers.

"How do you plead to the charges, Mr. Burke?" the judge asked.

"Guilty of drunkenness, Your Honor. But innocent of the rest, which is a bunch of lies," Willie replied.

"These men all say you attacked Captain Atkins," the judge said, gesturing at the paddy rollers.

Willie said something the judge couldn't understand.

"Speak louder!" the judge said.

"I'd consider the source!" Willie replied.

"We have two sides of the same story, Mr. Burke. But unfortunately for you the preponderance of testimony comes from your adversaries. Can you pay a fifty-dollar fine?" the judge said.

"I cannot!"

The judge cupped his ear and leaned forward. His face was as white as goat's cheese, his hair like a tangle of yellowish-gray flaxen.

"Speak louder!" he yelled.

"I have no money, sir! I'll have to serve a penal sentence!" Willie said.

"Can you pay twenty-five dollars?" the judge said.

"No, I cannot!"

"I'll pay his fine, me," a voice at the back of the room said.

The judge leaned forward and squinted into the gloom until he made out the massive shape of Jean-Jacques LaRose.

"The only fine you'll pay will be your own, you damn pirate. Get out of my court and don't return unless you're under arrest," the judge said.

"May I speak, Your Honor?" Abigail Dowling said.

The judge stared at her, his glasses low on his nose, his head hanging forward from his black coat and the split collar that extended up into his jowls like pieces of white cardboard.

"You're the nurse from Massachusetts?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, that's correct!" she yelled.

"Everybody in this proceeding is red-faced and shouting. What's the matter with you people?" the judge said. "Never mind, go ahead, whatever your name is."

Abigail walked out of the gloom into a patch of sunlight, her hands folded in front of her. She wore an open-necked purple dress with lace on the collar and a silver comb in the bun on top of her head.

"I know Mr. Burke well and do not believe him capable of harming anyone. He's of a gentle spirit and has devoted himself both to his studies and works of charity. His accusers-"

She paused, her right hand floating in the direction of Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers. "His accusers are filled with anger at their own lack of self-worth and visit their anger with regularity on the meek and defenseless. It's my view their testimony is not motivated by a desire to further truth or justice. In fact, their very presence here demeans the integrity of the court and is an offense to people of good will," she said.

The judge looked at her a long moment. "I hope the Yankees don't have many more like you on their side," he said.

"I'm sure their ranks include much better people than I, sir," Abigail said.

It was quiet in the room. One of the paddy rollers hawked softly and leaned over and spit in his handkerchief. The judge pinched his temples.

"You want to say anything, Captain Atkins?" he asked.

"I haven't the gift of elocution that Miss Dowling has, since I wasn't educated in a Northern state where Africans are taught to disrespect white people," he said. "But that man yonder, Willie Burke, attacked an officer of the law. You have my word on that."

The judge removed his glasses and pulled on his nose.

"You're a member of the militia?" he said to Willie.

"Yes, sir, I am!"

"Will you stop shouting? It's the sentence of this court that you return to your unit at Camp Pratt and be a good soldier. You might stay out of saloons for a while, too," the judge said, and smacked down his gavel.

After the judge had left the room, Willie walked with his mother and Abigail and Jim toward the door that gave onto the outside stairway.

"Where's Robert today?" Willie asked, hoping his disappointment didn't show.

"Mustered into the 8th Lou'sana Vols and sent to Camp Moore. The word is they're going to Virginia," Jim said.

"What about us?" Willie asked.

"We're stuck here, Willie."

"With Atkins?"

Jim laid his arm across Willie's shoulders and didn't answer. Outside, Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers were gathered under a live oak. The corporal named Clay Hatcher turned and looked at Willie, his smile like a slit in a baked apple.

IT rained late that afternoon, drumming on Bayou Teche and the live oaks around Abigail Dowling's cottage. Then the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and a strange green light filled the trees. Out in the mist rising off the bayou Abigail could hear the whistle on a paddle-wheeler and the sound of the boat's wake slapping in the cypress trunks at the foot of her property.

She lighted the lamp on her desk and dipped her pen in a bottle of ink and began the letter she had been formulating in her mind all day.

She wrote Dearest Robert on a piece of stationery, then crumpled up the page and began again.

Dear Robert,

Even though I know you believe deeply in your cause, candor and conscience compel me to confess my great concern for your safety and my fear that this war will bring great sorrow and injury into your life. Please forgive me for expressing my feelings so strongly, but it is brave young men such as yourself who ennoble the human race and I do not feel it is God's will that you sacrifice your life or take life in turn to further an enterprise as base and meretricious as that of slavery.

She heard the clopping of a horse in the street and glanced up through the window and saw Rufus Atkins dismount from a huge buckskin mare and open her gate. He wore polished boots and a new gray uniform with a gold collar and a double row of brass buttons on the coat and scrolled gold braid on the sleeves.

She put down her pen, blotted her letter, and met him at the front door. He removed his hat and bowed slightly.

"Excuse my intrusion, Miss Abigail. I wanted to apologize for any offense I may have given you in the court," he said.

"I'm hardly cognizant of anything you might say, Mr. Atkins, hence, I can take no offense at it," she replied.

"May I come in?"

"No, you may not," she replied.

He let the insult slide off his face. He watched a child kicking a stuffed football down the street.

"I have a twenty-dollar gold piece here," he said. He flipped it off his thumb and caught it in his palm. "Years ago a card sharp fired a derringer at me from under a card table. The ball would have gone through my vest pocket into my vitals, except this coin was in its way. See, it's bent right in the center."

She held his stare, her face expressionless, but her palms felt cold and stiff, her throat filled with needles.

"I lost this coin at the laundry and had pretty much marked off ever finding it," he said. "Then two days ago the sheriff found a drowned nigger in Vermilion Bay. She had this coin inside a juju bag. She was one of the escaped slaves we'd been looking for. I wonder how she came by my gold piece."

"I'm sure with time you'll find out, Mr. Atkins. In the meanwhile, there's no need for you to share the nature of your activities with me. Good evening, sir."

"You see much of Mr. Jamison's wash girl, the one called Flower? The drowned nigger was her aunt."

"In fact I do know Flower. I'm also under the impression your interest in her is more than a professional one."

"Northern ladies can have quite a mouth on them, I understand."

"Please leave my property, Mr. Atkins," she said.

He bowed again and fitted on his hat, his face suffused with humor he seemed to derive from a private joke.

She returned to her writing table and tried to finish her letter to Robert Perry. The sky was a darker green now, the oaks dripping loudly in the yard, the shadows filled with the throbbing of tree frogs.

Oh, Robert, who am I to lecture you on doing injury in the world, she thought.

She ripped the letter in half and leaned her head down in her hands, her palms pressed tightly against her ears.

HER journey by carriage to Angola Plantation took two days. It rained almost the entire time, pattering against the canvas flaps that hung from the top of the surrey, glistening on the hands of the black driver who sat hunched on the seat in front of her, a slouch hat on his head, a gum coat pulled over his neck.

When she and the driver reached the entrance of the plantation late in the afternoon, the western sky was marbled with purple and yellow clouds, the pastures on each side of the road an emerald green. Roses bloomed as brightly as blood along the fences that bordered the road.

In the distance she saw an enormous white mansion high up on a bluff above the Mississippi River, its geometrical exactness softened by the mist off the river and columns of sunlight that had broken through the clouds.

The driver took them down a pea-gravel road and stopped the carriage in front of the porch. She had thought a liveried slave would be sent out to meet her, but instead the front door opened and Ira Jamison walked outside. He looked younger than she had expected, his face almost unnaturally devoid of lines, the mouth soft, his brown hair thick and full of lights.

He wore a short maroon jacket and white shirt with pearl buttons and gray pants, the belt on the outside of the loops. "Miss Dowling?" he said.

"I apologize for contacting you by telegraph rather than by post. But I consider the situation to be of some urgency," she said.

"It's very nice to have you here. Please come in," he said.

"My driver hasn't eaten. Would you be so kind as to give him some food?"

Jamison waved at a black man emerging from a barn. "Take Miss Dowling's servant to the cookhouse and see he gets his supper," he called.

"I have no servants. My driver is a free man of color whom I've hired from the livery stable," she said.

Jamison nodded amiably, his expression seemingly impervious to her remark. "You've had a long journey," he said, stepping aside and extending his hand toward the open door.

The floors of the house were made of heart pine that had been sanded and buffed until the planks glowed like honey. The windows extended all the way to the ceiling and looked out on low green hills and hardwood forests and the wide, churning breadth of the Mississippi. The drapes on the windows were red velvet, the walls and ceiling a creamy white, the molding put together from ornately carved, dark-stained mahogany.

But for some reason it was a detail in the brick fireplace that caught her eye, a fissure in the elevated hearth as well as the chimney that rose from it.

"A little settling in the foundation," Ira Jamison said. "What can I help you with, Miss Dowling?"

"Is your wife here, sir?"

"I'm a widower. Why do you ask?"

She was sitting on a divan now, her hands folded in her lap, her back not touching the fabric. He continued to stand. She paused for a long moment before she spoke, then let her eyes rest on his until he blinked.

"I'm disturbed by the conduct of your employee Captain Atkins. I believe he's molesting one of your slaves, a young woman who has done nothing to warrant being treated in such a frankly disgusting fashion," she said.

Ira Jamison was framed in the light through the window, his expression obscured by his own silhouette. She heard him clear an obstruction from his throat.

"I see. Well, I'll have a talk with Mr. Atkins. I should see him in the next week or so," he said.

"Let me be more forthcoming. The young woman's name is Flower. Do you know her, sir?" she said, the anger and accusation starting to rise in her voice.

He sat down in a chair not far from her. He pressed one knuckle against his lips and seemed to think for a moment.

"I have the feeling you want to say something to me of a personal nature. If that's the case, I'd rather you simply get to it, madam," he said.

"I've been told she's your daughter. It's not my intention to offend you, but the resemblance is obvious. You allow an employee to sexually harm your own child? My God, sir, have you no decency?"

The skin seemed to shrink on his face. A black woman in a gray dress with a white apron appeared at the doorway to the dining room.

"Supper for you and your guest is on the table, Mr. Jamison," she said.

"Thank you, Ruby," he said, rising, his face still disconcerted.

"I don't think I'll be staying. Thank you very much for your hospitality," Abigail said.

"I insist you have supper with me."

"You insist?"

"You cast aspersions on my decency in my own home? Then you seem to glow with vituperative rage, even though I've only known you five minutes. Couldn't you at some point be a little more lenient and less judgmental and allow me to make redress of some kind?"

"You're the largest slave owner in this state, sir. Will you make 'redress' by setting your slaves free?"

"I just realized who you are. You're the abolitionist."

"I think there are more than one of us."

"You're right. And when they have their way, I'll be destitute and we'll have bedlam in our society."

"Good," she said, and walked toward the door.

"You haven't eaten, madam. Stay and rest just a little while."

"When will you be talking to Captain Atkins?" she asked.

"I'll send a telegraph message to him this evening."

"In that case, it's very nice of you to invite me to your table," Abigail said.

As he held a dining room chair for Abigail to sit down, he smelled the perfume rising off her neck and felt a quickening in his loins, then realized the black woman named Ruby was watching him from the kitchen. He shot her a look that made her face twitch out of shape.