Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (41 page)

It was time to do something drastic, Josie thought. It was
no good making payments just to keep the interest up. She had to think bigger.

The creak of a wagon and harness came to her through the
window, and Elbow John’s hearty shout of welcome announced it wasn’t just a
tradesman. Josie tossed the pencil on the desk, glad to be distracted.

From the front gallery, Josie looked down on Mr. Gale
climbing out of his over-loaded wagon. His two little tow-headed boys sat on
top of a tarp-covered mound. They must be twice as big as they had been when
they’d left for Texas. Where were the rest of the Gales?

Josie met Mr. Gale at the top of the gallery stairs. “Come
in, please, Mr. Gale. I’m very happy to see you.”

Mr. Gale was begrimed with road dust and he held his hat
nervously. When he hesitated to sit on the horsehide sofa for fear of dirtying
it, Josie insisted. “It’ll brush right off,” she said. “Please sit down. Give
me just a moment, and we’ll have some refreshment.”

She called Laurie to ask Louella for lemonade. “And take the
children to the cookhouse. They need a drink and maybe some of Louella’s
corncakes. Take good care of them, Laurie.”

Josie sat down across from the former overseer. “Now, Mr.
Gale, I want to hear all about Texas.”

He shook his head. “It don’t bear telling, the half of it,
Mam’zelle.” He set his hat on the floor next to his down-at-heel boots. “It’s a
harsh country, no mistaking. The sun pulls the water right out of the soil, and
the soil ain’t but half a hand deep most places. First crop I planted withered
‘fore it was full growed.”

Josie waited while Mr. Gale collected himself. “They got bad
sickness out there, too. Diphtheria, they said it was. I lost my wife and
Roseanne. You remember Mrs. Gale and little Roseanne?”

“Of course I do, Mr. Gale. I’m so sorry. Your wife always
had a handful of cracked nuts or a ginger snap for Cleo and me.”

Mr. Gale wiped a hand across his stubbly jaw. “She were a
good woman,” he said.

Josie didn’t know what to say, and Mr. Gale seemed to have
told all he was going to. “Roseanne was the prettiest little girl,” she said.
“All rosy cheeks and smiles.”

“Yes, she were a pretty child.”

Laurie carried in a tray of lemonade in tall glasses. Josie
nodded to her to serve Mr. Gale first.

“You’re welcome to stay here, Mr. Gale. You’re on your way
back home? Alabama, was it?”

“Yes, Alabama. But my kinfolk there are all gone. This is
home to me and my boys now.” He drained his glass and set it on the side table.
“That’s what I come to talk about, Mam’zelle. Back in Donaldsonville, I heard
you got rid of that man LeBrec. I come to see if I can have my place back.”

“Mr. Gale, I don’t know what to say. Things have changed
since you left. The crash, and -- do you know about my grandmother?”

Josie told him about grandmother’s stroke, about their
inability to understand her, how she slept most of the day and railed the rest.
She told him how she had been trying to do the overseer’s job, and last of all,
she told him that however much she wanted to, she couldn’t afford to pay an
overseer now.

Mr. Gale thought it over. “I have a proposal, Mam’zelle
Josephine. You need an overseer, and my boys need a home. You let me move back
in the old house, you pay for vittles and lamp oil and such, and I’ll forgo my
salary until such time as we’ve got Toulouse making a profit again.”

Josie wanted to hug Mr. Gale, dusty jacket, stubbled chin
and all. “Mr. Gale, you don’t know what this means to me. I’ll make it up to
you, I promise I will.” Impulsively, she left her chair to sit next to Mr. Gale
on the sofa. “I have so much to tell you. And I want to show you what Old Sam
has had the hands working on, all the building we’ve done since you left.”

Mr. Gale stood up. “I’m eager to see the place, I can tell
you. You won’t mind if I pay my respects to Madame Tassin? Her and me go back a
long way.”

“Of course. You’re tired, and you want to get the children
settled in. I’ll tell Louella to fix your dinner, and Elbow John can help you
unload.”

“Thank you, Ma’am. I know we got business to talk, and I’ll
be ready first thing in the morning, if that’ll be all right.”

“I’ll have everything arranged, the accounts I mean. And
after breakfast, we can ride out to see the fields.” Josie grabbed Mr. Gale’s
rough hand. “Thank you, Mr. Gale.”

“And I thank you, too, Mam’zelle Josephine. I’m glad to be
back.”

With Mr. Gale in charge again, Josie began sleeping past
sunrise. Her mood lifted to have someone share the load of running the place,
and she began to think in earnest about more drastic plans to rescue their
finances. She had already looked over Maman’s jewelry, trying to guess what
each piece might bring. There were a pearl encrusted broach, a large sapphire
pendant, several rings with semi-precious stones, and one moderate sized
diamond. Not likely enough for the coming quarterly payment of interest on the
loans, but she’d see what they’d bring in New Orleans.

Josie carried the jewelry box to Grand-mère when she woke up
from one of her naps. Grand-mère couldn’t talk, and she could no longer hold a
pen, but she could still think, and she might know how much to expect from the
jewels.

“What about this one?” Josie said. “You think it’s worth
maybe fifty dollars?”

Grand-mère spoke; Josie questioned her. “More?
Seventy-five?”

Grand-mère nodded, and so they went through Josie’s mother’s
things until Josie had a good idea of how much to ask for them. She began
putting the jewelry away when Grand-mère became agitated. She gestured toward
her room and tried to tell Josie something.

“All right, Mémère. I’ll roll you in there, just a minute.”
In the bedroom, Grand-mère indicated Josie should reach for the black lacquered
box on the top shelf of her chifferobe. Josie placed it in her grandmother’s
lap and helped her open it. Inside was an assortment of rings and necklaces,
worth at least as much as Josie’s mother’s collection. But that was not what
interested Grand-mère. In the bottom of the box was a tiny concealed
compartment. Resting on the black velvet lining was a diamond pendant of one
very large stone surrounded by smaller diamonds that seemed to glow with blue
light.

Josie was stunned. “Grand-mère, I’ve never seen such a
beautiful necklace. You’ve never worn it, not in my whole life.”

Trying to understand her grandmother, Josie said, “You want
me to sell it, too?”

Grand-mère became upset, and the more upset she was, the
harder she was to understand. “Slow down, Mémère.”

Very slowly, each syllable as distinct as she could make it,
Grand-mère said, “Not for interest.”

“You don’t want me to spend the money on interest payments.”

Grand-mère nodded vigorously. With further effort, Josie
finally understood. Her grandmother intended her to use the diamond to finance
a business investment, something that would produce money rather than just
stave off the bankers until the next installment was due.

The old woman was exhausted. Josie called Laurie to help put
her to bed. Then she had Beau saddled. She needed to think. The diamonds meant
opportunity, but she had no idea what kind of opportunity.

She gave Beau his head and ambled along the river road,
musing on the ways people made money in the city. The streets of New Orleans
had always been full of vendors selling fruit or pies or gumbo. Even water, if
the weather was warm.

What could she sell? She couldn’t walk the streets like the
low class did, but she could have a shop. She imagined herself in a storefront
selling merchandise to strangers. At least she hoped they would be strangers.
She wouldn’t want her friends from society to see her.

Beau had trotted all the way to Cherleu while Josie was
preoccupied. When she caught sight of the old house, she drew up. No longer
gray and ramshackle, the mansion gleamed with a coat of white paint. The roof
shingles shone blond they were so new. The gardens were tamed, and the whole
effect was of prosperity.

If Abigail Johnston – no, Abigail Chamard -- knew I was
thinking of opening a shop, of selling merchandise myself, she would be
horrified. Women do not dirty their hands in Abigail’s world.

Well, I don’t live in Abigail’s world. I’ll never sit idle,
be some man’s ornament. Not now that I know what I’m capable of.

By the time Josie had ridden Beau back to Toulouse, he was
lathered, and she had a plan. She would take Louella with her to New Orleans.
They would rent a kitchen, and they would bake pies. All kinds of pies –
blackberry and apple, pork and chicken. She left her horse with the stable boy
and hurried to her desk to figure out the cost of making a pie. Flour, fruit,
meat, lard, salt, sugar. She tried to account for everything, even the cost of
running an oven.

Diamonds into pies, she thought. She could do it. She could
be in New Orleans within the month. For a moment, she wondered if Cleo had gone
to New Orleans, if she’d gone to Phanor the way Remy had. Neither of them would
want anything to do with her, though. Not after what she’d done.

Josie shook her head to dispel the image of Cleo’s panic
stricken face.
I did an awful thing that day
. She put a hand to her
forehead as if she could ward off the melancholia she’d suffered after Cleo
left.

She had to stop this – she couldn’t let herself think about
what she’d done to Cleo that day. She had to keep going. She had to save
Toulouse. 

The wind off the river sucked the warmth right out of
Josie’s bones. She hurried through the dawn light to the gray board cabin she
rented not far from Jackson Square. The neighborhood changed quickly between
the Cathedral and her little kitchen, but Josie had seen far worse streets when
she searched for a place to set up business. At least here the shopkeepers
occasionally paid a crew to pick up litter and dung and dead animals.

Josie fought the wind to pull the door open and let it slam
behind her. Louella already had a fire going under the brick oven. “It’s a cold
one, sho’ nuff,” Louella said. “Stand over here by de fire a minute ‘fore you
take off yo coat.”

The kitchen measured twelve feet on a side with a large
window and counter built into the street wall. The wind snuck in through every
crack, and until later in the morning when Josie would open the counter window,
it was dim and smoky inside. After the other places she’d looked at, though,
Josie knew enough to be glad of the board floor and a chimney that worked.

Josie rubbed her hands together and drank a cup of hot
coffee. Louella’s forehead was already beaded with sweat, and Josie too would soon
be grateful for the fresh air blowing in under the door.

Their early morning customers preferred fruit pies, so Josie
got to work peeling apples. The noon-time crowd bought mostly meat pies, and
there were two pork butts on a spit over the fire.

Josie and Louella had developed an efficient routine. Each
morning, Josie stayed behind in the rented room to count the previous day’s
receipts and keep the accounts by candlelight. Meanwhile, Louella walked alone
through dark streets to the kitchen to get the oven and the fireplace going.
She rolled out extra thick bottom crusts and lined the small deep pans with the
dough. When Josie arrived, she prepared the fruit with sugar, salt, cinnamon
and butter, filled the crusts, topped the pie with a thinner crust and pricked
an apple shape on top. By the time the scent of hot apple pie filled the little
shop, the first customers would be at the window.

It hadn’t taken long for the men who worked along the levee
to discover Josie’s shop. The first ones told their friends they could get a
cup of hot coffee and a pie wrapped in paper at a reasonable price, and the
pies were the best you could get on that stretch of the river. They paid in
various coins, and Josie learned to make change in English shillings and pence,
American half-dimes and bungtown coppers, Spanish reales, fips, medios, and
pistareens.

Josie’s strategy quickly began to yield a profit. She and
Louella baked as many pies, both fruit and meat, as they could until
mid-afternoon. Then they let the fires go out. Louella took whatever pies had
not yet sold to the Square and hawked them to the passersby. Josie remained in
the kitchen to clean the work table, the grates, the floor. She took stock of
what they’d need for the next day and then shopped for flour, lard, fruit,
onions, garlic or meat. On Butcher Lane she found the best prices for pork and
beef, but it was an unsavory place. She tried to manage the buying so that she
only had to smell the raw and sometimes rotting meat only two or three times a
week.

Josie wanted to be back at the boarding house before the sun
went down, and this time of year darkness came early. Though the room was in a
safer neighborhood than the kitchen, it was foolish to be on the streets after
dark. Besides, it was cold, she was tired, and her feet hurt. The lack of
Toulouse’s crystal vases, cut-glass lamps, and velvet upholstery didn’t trouble
her. She needed only a place for Louella and her to sleep, and a table and
chair for keeping the accounts. They were both exhausted by nightfall anyway;
they fell into their beds, indifferent to the bare walls and sparse
furnishings.

As Josie turned into Butcher Lane, she met the wind off the
river face on. She pulled the wool scarf tighter around her neck and because
she was watching her step in the nasty muck of the street, she nearly collided
with another young woman carrying a bundled baby.

“
Excusez-moi
,” Josie said and looked up into Cleo’s
startled face.

A medley of surprise, love, mistrust, resentment, and guilt
afflicted both their faces. Neither spoke as they read each other’s feelings
and tried to accept the improbable event of their meeting here, in a back
street of New Orleans.