Benjamin January 6 - Wet Grave (20 page)

But instead of saying it, he only kissed her, and her arms went around him, hard, clinging: Don't leave. Don't leave.

Life is so goddamn short.

They went in her room together and stretched out on the bed, kissing first, then pulling off each other's clothes, her skin matte silk and sweet-smelling under his wondering fingers, her hair, released from the tignon, handfuls of light, soft, walnut-colored curls. He took her carefully, even in his need for her remembering that the only other time a man had touched her, it had been violent rape. But she didn't shrink from his body, didn't brace herself, didn't react in any of the ways he thought or feared or imagined she would or might. Only held him, tighter and tighter, her breathing thick and deep in rhythm with his. Afterward she wept, the way rocks would weep if they could when an earthquake breaks them apart, and slept almost at once, clinging to him still, leaving him to marvel at the way her face relaxed in slumber, and the softness of her breast above the corset's hard line.

The afternoon's storm woke them both, and he unlaced her corset, both of them smiling now, and disentangled themselves from what seemed to be delicious forests of petticoats, and they made love again.

When I die, he thought, if they ask me, What time would you like to have, out of all your life, to be in for eternity, it will be this. With the rain falling, and the far-off lightning flickering in the window, and Rose here beside me at peace with all things future and past.

“When I was a little girl I used to wonder what made the lightning,” she murmured. “Of course there were no books, and nobody to tell me anything about it. But I made myself a telescope out of spectacle-lenses and cardboard, and I went out to the tallest tree in the middle of the island to watch the lightning through it, trying to catch the moment when it first leaped out of the cloud, to see what I could see. I have no idea why I wasn't hit.”

“And you still don't believe the Virgin Mary looks after children?”

“In the light of what you say I'll consider the possibility. I still wonder if there isn't some way to divert the lightning enough to make a balloon ascension into a storm. There has to be something one can do.” And she leaned back against his shoulder, the fey blue-white flashes from the window outlining her face in the dark.

They talked, and made love again, and dozed; and later walked along the levee to the market in the rain and bought gumbo and dirty rice for a couple of pennies from one of the carts there, and sat in the shelter of the brick arcades, watching the rain fall on the river until it was nearly dark.

“I need to write to Uncle Veryl in the morning,” said Rose as they walked back toward her room. The rain had stopped by that time, and queer, warm spooky winds tore the cressets along the levee to streaming yellow ribbons of flame; every awning and abat-vent and gallery along the street seemed to creak and whisper as they went by. “To ask when, or if, he would like help in sorting out Artois' laboratory.”

And January was reminded that with Artois gone, the mainstay of Rose's livelihood had also vanished.

It brought home to him like the pinch of a too-tight shoe how precarious his own finances were, how long it would be before he had so much as a dollar to offer toward a life together. . . .

If, he reflected, she even wanted a life together.

And he realized that incomparably joyful as the day had been, it had answered him little. He still had no idea what she would say if he asked her now, Rose, will you be my wife?

So at her door he kissed her, and said, “Dinner tomorrow?”

And her fleet smile told him that she still valued her solitude; as he himself, he reflected, would value his once he got past that dazzling surge of need to be with her every single second, to never let her out of his sight. Her eyes thanked him for understanding. “I'll try to finish up the translation of Helen I'm doing for M'sieu Songet, and see if he has anything else for me. Madame Vroche tells me that her son-in-law can get me work making cigars if the very worst comes to worst.”

January opened his mouth to protest-Cigars!-and closed it. It was only through chance and careful saving that he wasn't making cigars himself.

So he only said, “Till then,” and kissed her, and his soul went up in fireworks at the tightening of her hand around the nape of his neck, savoring and prolonging the kiss.

He almost danced his way home, through the hot, sticky night.

In the Rue Condrs someone said, “Benjamin,” and he turned, to see the man known around town as Ti-Jon spring over the flowing gutter and cross to him, lithe and wary as a big black cat.

Ti-Jon's owner was a man named Dessalines in Rue Bourbon, who rented out Ti-Jon's services to whatever gang of stevedores needed another strong back that week. Like many slaves-far more than the city fathers considered safe or advisable-Ti-Jon “slept out.” He found his own lodging, his own food, his own clothing where he could out of the slender wages paid him, returning only on Saturday nights to Monsieur Dessalines' house to hand over the sum agreed upon with Ti-Jon's renter.

This meant that Ti-Jon lived in attics and back-sheds and shacks like those of Hesione's neighbors; that he was lucky if he saved enough over his wages for an ounce of sausage to put in his rice and beans. The shirt he wore tonight was a patched cast-off diaphanous with hard use and, like most slaves in the summer, Ti-Jon was barefoot and likely to remain so until first frost.

But in a quarter of town where every house was an enclosed fortress with but a single gate, where no slave could enter or leave except by passing under the master's eye, this was an acceptable exchange. Ti-Jon had to see his master only once a week, and if Monsieur Dessalines had retreated to the lakefront for the summer, Ti-Jon wouldn't even visit him that frequently. All he had to do was send the money, behave himself, and keep quiet.

Men had paid more for less freedom than that. “Ti-Jon,” said January. He'd heard the Cathedral clock strike ten not very long ago: if the City Guards caught them out, they'd both risk a stay in the Cabildo. And Ti-Jon was smoking a cigar, another infraction of the white man's law. But watching for the City Guards at any time became second nature, whether you were free or not, if one was a man of African extraction in New Orleans. It was understood between them as they both stepped into the shadows of a carriageway, their shoulders touching the wrought-iron bars that closed off the tunnel of flagstone and stucco behind them. From the garden beyond the gate, January smelled sweet-olive, a thick, intoxicating scent in the wet, and heard the peep of frogs.

“That was a fine funeral yesterday,” said Ti-Jon. “And a good wakin', I'm told.” He had, naturally, not been invited-the free colored, especially the higher class that the demimonde aspired to, had nothing to do with even French-speaking Catholic slaves.

“He was dear to me,” said January. “And to my lady Rose.”

“I hear tell,” said Ti-Jon, “that you've asked questions around the town, and have said as how you know who killed him. Is that true?”

January heard the cautious note in Ti-Jon's voice and narrowed his eyes in the darkness, trying to make out something of the man's face. But he saw only a glint of watchfulness in the slave's eye; the rest of his features drowned in shadow.

“Two days before he died Artois stumbled across a secret, the kind of thing other men have been beat up over, or maybe killed if someone thought they could get away with murder. He was seen getting into a carriage with two men, bad men by all accounts, one of whom at least knew what Artois had learned. When Artois was found drowned, he had bruises on his arms and neck, where his head had been held underwater. You tell me what else to think.”

“You thinkin' what you want to think.” Ti-Jon's voice was dark velvet coming out of a deeper dark. He stood nearly January's height, African-black, intelligent and wary, and a keeper of his own counsel. Most of the runaways in town went to Ti-Jon for advice about getting along in the cracks and shadows of the white man's world. “There's nuthin' I can tell you about that. But what you've told me is a big jump, from Artois St. Chinian climbin' into that carriage with Franklin Mulm to Artois St. Chinian bein' dragged out of some gutter with bruises on his arms. There's men who saw Artois St. Chinian leave Mulm's house that afternoon on his feet-drunk, but walkin'. Men Mulm told off to go after him, see he got home all right. The boy sent 'em away.”

“Who told you this?” asked January, thoroughly taken aback and trying not to let it sound in his questions. “Mulm?
Or Burke?”

“Men who was there,” answered Ti-Jon, and blew a cloud of smoke. “Men who heard Mulm tell the St. Chinian boy a couple lies about who those guns was for. Small lies, but the boy believed 'em. He wouldn't have gone to anyone. Mulm's no fool.”

“I can see that,” murmured January, his breath feeling a little strange in his lungs. Ti-Jon, he thought. Why would Ti-Jon ally himself with Mulm? His acquaintance with the slave wasn't deep, but what little he knew of the man told him that Ti Jon was no man's lackey.

Had the saloon-owner offered him money to buy his freedom?

But there were other men who'd warn off January cheaper. Other men who'd tell him these lies-if they were lies...

But not men he'd believe.

On the other banquette, two indistinct shapes reeled along, their arms around each other, singing in English about the merry month of May. Moments later a third shape slipped out of the shadows, pursuing from doorway to carriageway to the black gulfs beneath the abat-vents, a cautious little drama that would surely end with the two singers slumbering penniless in some dark corner of the levee-if they were lucky, and the robber didn't have to put up a fight for what he wanted.

“Where those guns is goin' is a secret,” Ti-Jon went on. “A secret Mr. Mulm and myself, I might add-would rather your friends at the Cabildo didn't go around askin' questions about, if you understand what I mean. There's a lot at stake here.”

“So much at stake that you'd rather not ask yourself whether or not Mulm was telling you the truth?”

Ti-Jon was silent. Behind the cigar-smoke January could smell the sweat in his clothing, the dirt of his body, the smell he was familiar with from his childhood in the quarters when there was no way to wash for weeks on end during the cane-harvest, no time and no energy left at the end of the exhausting day. You could only do so much with swims in the river and basins of cold water in the dark before dawn.

“There's a lot at stake.” Ti-Jon's deep voice was slow, as if he struggled within himself. The cigar glowed like a firefly in the dark with the gesture of his hand. “You can use a bad man to a good purpose, Benjamin. You know that. If you gotta fight for the lives of your family and the Devil offers you a weapon, you gonna tell him go away, youd rather they all die? Burke told Mulm he thought that boy'd seen what was in that box, and Mulm went out as quick as he could, to catch the boy before he talked around about the guns and to convince him it was none of his business. It wasn't hard, Mulm said. St. Chinian was like all your quadroons an' your octoroons, wantin' to just lie low an' not make a fuss an' maybe the blankittes would go on lettin' him pretend he was one of them. There was no reason for Mulm to kill him.”

“No.” January's heart beat hard, and he knew now where the guns were going. And he felt angry and baffled, knowing that Mulm was lying to Ti-Jon and knowing the slave wouldn't want to be told it. Knowing, too, that anything he told Shaw would be countermanded by the same bald lies. Of course Mr. Mulm wanted to talk to young Michie St. Chinian-a simple matter of business. A couple of upstanding white gentlemen saw the boy leave Mulm's house, and such was Mulm's concern that he tried to get young Michie St. Chinian escorted home.... A few too many whiskeys, how were we to know the boy wasn't used to them? He sent us away, said he didn't need a nursemaid....

Whoever held his head underwater until his lungs gave out, then soaked his clothes with whiskey and dumped him in a seedy part of town, it hadn't anything to do with Mr. Franklin Mulm.

“As a favor to me,” said Ti-Jon, “keep this quiet.” He blew more smoke, a mist in the street-lamp glow. “And to yourself.”

January drew in a breath, desperate not to say what he was thinking: You're a fool. Do you think this is going to do any good? Do you really think the end justifies the means?

But he made himself say, “I'll do that.”

And walked home through the silent streets with the mosquitoes whining in his ears, trying not to think too much about what he had just heard.

And wondering why a man like Franklin Mulm-a saloonkeeper, a part-time slave-dealer, a land-speculator, and a whoremaster-would risk his money and his freedom by smuggling guns on behalf of a slave revolt.

“What should I do?” asked January.

Olympe replied, “Nothing.”

Paul's hammer in the workshop out back tapped, very loud in the doldrum afternoon. The smells of the drying herbs above the cold parlor hearth, the sulfury whiff of the gunpowder she used in her gris-gris, the mildewy scent inextricably tied, in his mind, to every memory of New Orleans           all these impressed themselves on him, like the unspeaking presence of that deity who lived in the blackpainted bottle on her shelf. He felt the whole room watched him, and not just his sister with her dark, jeering eyes.

All your quadroons an' octoroons, he heard Ti-Jon's voice again, wantin' just to lie low... maybe the blankittes would let him pretend he was one of them.

He wanted to shout at her, just because I know revolt is hopeless doesn't mean l'm its enemy!

But she hadn't said a word. She was still, like her big gray cat, staring at the swept hearthbricks.

He asked, “Do you know about this?”

“What cause would I have to know about a slave revolt?”

“Because you're a voodoo. You deal in secrets.” Olympe had her own reasons for doing things, and January understood that whatever she told him, she would tell him as part of some wider scheme. But as with his torment in his dreams of Rose, there was no one else to whom he could go for advice.